Chapter 288: Damn Right He Kissed Her

The last thing she remembered was Nicholas’s face. The first thing she felt was a pulse under her cheek that she hoped was his.

Her eyes fluttered open to gold, but not from torches.

Gold water lapping against skin she couldn’t account for and a warmth so thorough it had settled into her bones without asking.

Confusion came first. Her brain felt like someone had swung a sledgehammer. Then the tingling registered. Sparks lit up every inch of her skin like the sun after a long winter. She was in water. Her bare skin was against someone else’s bare skin and there was a lot of contact happening in a lot of places.

Her eyes opened fully and the gasp came out before she could stop it.

Naked.

Nothing separated her from the man holding her but warm water and whatever dignity she still had left, which, at this point, could fit in a thimble and still have room for a middle finger.

Her face went the color of a pomegranate.

Just another naked-and-glowing wake-up. You’d think she would be getting used to it by now, but she was not.

An arm clamped tighter around her. One of his hands was already working slow circles against her scalp, which she was only now noticing because her brain had been busy processing the nudity and had deprioritized the head massage.

"Hey, Guinevere. It’s just me, Nicholas. I’ve got you."

His voice was low and close and the sound of it went through her like someone had just turned the volume up on every bad idea she’d ever had.

Her muscles resisted for two seconds. Three. Then they gave up the fight and she melted into him like her body had decided this was correct.

For a second, she felt safe.

Safe in a way that she couldn’t remember feeling before tonight. Like the world and every sharp thing in it had been put behind a door and the man holding her was the lock.

She could feel his wolf as if it had moved in without asking, blurring every line between them. It was entirely too pleased with this arrangement. Very cute. It made her almost smile.

Then a rumbling started under Nicholas’s ribs, the vibration traveling into hers. Apparently purring was not exclusive to dragons and cats because his wolf was full-on doing it with the energy of a golden retriever who’d been told it was, in fact, a good boy.

If someone would have told her she would be held by a purring wolf king in a glowing tree pool a week ago, she would have asked what they were drinking and whether there was enough for two.

But the massaging on the back of her head, the way his arm held her, the feel of the water and the sparks against her skin, pulled something loose in her chest.

A memory. Or the edge of one. Close enough to feel but too far to see, like reaching for a word you know but can’t say. It was warm and it was kind and it made her deeply, inexplicably sad in a way she had no framework for.

Her eyes burned. She shut them before they could betray her.

Nicholas’s wolf stopped purring. The silence it left behind was louder than the rumble had been.

"Hey, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere."

He kept massaging her scalp like the fate of the world depended on it and his arm stayed clamped around her like a seatbelt. The silence stretched for a full minute before he broke it again, voice careful.

"What are you thinking about right now?"

She didn’t know how to answer that. How do you explain a sadness you can’t source? A memory you can’t reach? The feeling of something missing that you can’t name because the name is inside the thing that’s missing?

But that wasn’t the only thing. She also remembered Nicholas on the floor of that corridor. Not breathing. His eyes on the ceiling. The void in her chest where he should have been. He was alive right now, or they were both dead, and she wasn’t fully sure which option they’d landed on.

She didn’t want to scare him.

"Guinevere. I’m a grown up. Talk to me."

Her brain was a hellscape of half-formed thoughts, chasing its own tail and losing. Enough of that.

When she spoke, her head was still on his shoulder and she wasn’t looking at him. Naked with eye contact felt like a competitive sport she hadn’t stretched for.

She gave him the part she could put into words.

"You d-died trying to help me."

A tear fell out of her eye. Hot. Traitorous. It hit his collarbone and sat there like a tiny, warm confession.

"I’m s-sorry about your summit," she added.

He swallowed. She felt the movement against her temple. But he didn’t hesitate.

"Hey, Guinevere. Eyes on me."

He waited.

She lifted her head slowly. His thumb caught another tear before it could finish its journey, wiping it off her cheek with a gentleness that had no right existing in someone who’d already done the whole death thing.

Then his hand found her chin. Tilted it up. Held it there with a grip that was soft and absolute and left her zero room to look away.

"Not your fault."

His mouth was on hers before the words finished landing.

She jolted. The sparks where their lips met were so immediate and so sharp she almost pulled back. The boldness of it caught her sideways.

Then again, she had put her fangs in this man’s neck and they were goddamn naked. You don’t get to bite someone and then clutch your pearls about a kiss.

He pulled away. Pressed his forehead against hers. Close enough that his breath was her air and her air was his and the boundary between them was a technicality that neither of their wolves recognized.

"Not your fault," he repeated. "Not up for discussion. And if the same situation walked through that door tomorrow, I’d make the same call."

Her insides twisted. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want any version of reality where Nicholas Shadowfell died for her. Once was already too many times and the memory of his still chest was going to live in her body long after the bruises healed.

Then Lunaris climbed back into her head. Her father. The corridor. The Dragon King. The entire, towering, smoldering wreckage of her week stacked itself in her chest and she swallowed it down because this was a pool and not a therapy session.

"That’s not all of it." His thumb was stroking her cheek with the slow patience of a man who had already decided he was staying in this pool until she talked. "What is it, baby? Talk to me."

It wasn’t Nicholas’s fault she did what she did. She had made her choices, and marking him to save his life was one she would make again in a heartbeat.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Tried again. Swallowed.

Two false starts. Third time is the charm.

"I just committed treason in Lunaris and am unsure how to fix it."

It was the simplified version. The short version of a catastrophe that included marking a comatose dragon, waking up under a stranger, getting chased by police, getting arrested by demons, getting cuffed in dragon iron, and defying her father’s Alpha command in front of witnesses.

Nicholas didn’t flinch.

"Walk me through it."