To affirm something in his mind.
“You’re real,” he said, and the anguish in his voice ripped my heart apart. “You’re fucking here. You’re fucking real.”
He trailed knuckles down my cheek before flattening his palm across my face. I closed my eyes, leaning into his palm. I disappeared into that touch.
“Did you think I was a ghost?” I joked softly.
“When I went to bed, I saw you in the dark.” He gripped my cheeks with both hands, eyes crazed. “I heard your voice in the crashing of the waves, a raspy whisper floating through the salt air. I’ve seen you and heard you in a hundred different ways and dreams. You’re never there. Not really.”
“Oh,” I whispered, losing my voice.
He cradled my face with his hands, his eyes aching. I desperately wanted to know what caused those eyes to ache. I placed the back of my hand along his cheek.
“I missed the sugar on your lips, Grayson Crowne.”
He thread his fingers through my hair, pulling me until I could almost taste it. “I missed the lemon on yours.” His touch glanced my skin, feathering odd places. My collarbone, my jaw, skirting down my neck and the top of my shoulder, before skating across my rounded belly.
“I thought you were mad,” I said.
“I am,” he said, blue eyes piercing. “I’m mad you lied. I’m mad you put yourself in this position. But I’m furious I ever let you leave in the first place. I’m…” His eyes broke, and he paused. “This never would have happened if not for me.”
I pressed my hand to his face. “Grayson—”
He cut me off, walked me back, consuming my space until I was flush against the very same wall where I’d first begged him for more.
Where I’d first stolen his kiss.
His love.
He dipped his head to the crook of my shoulder, trailing his nose up and down in a mindless, lust-crazed way that made me go cross-eyed and weak-kneed.
“Why aren’t you wearing your locket?”
My eyes flickered down. “He took it.”
Something flashed in his eyes, but he said nothing. His palm stayed on my belly, pressing the empire waist back to feel and expose my bump. Something buzzed and burned his blue eyes. Something I couldn’t read, something deep and hollow.
What happened in the two weeks that I was away to make my Atlas look so weathered? Prisoner. Prisoner. Prisoner.
“What happened?” I asked. “What did they do?”
He pressed his forehead to mine, palm flat on my stomach, closing his eyes.
“How is she doing?” His voice was rough and jagged, like he was holding himself back to ask the question. He parted my thighs with his knee, and I forgot what he’d asked.
Focused only on the perfect pressure his knee applied to that deep, aching part of me. On the primal possession radiating from that grip on my stomach, like he wanted to sear it into my belly, into us.
“Snitch,” he grated.
“She’s perfect,” I breathed the answer on a shivery breath.
His strong fingers came to my face and his touch turned fevered. Desperate. He dragged my lips closer until we shared one breath. Questions in my head died on my lips at the look in his eyes.
Why did a servant give me that letter? What’s going on? Have you found the coin? Are we safe yet? Is this over yet?
The world melted away, the silence amplified by the crashing of the waves and our breathing like one, magical spell. It was just me and Grayson, in the room that had always been our secret from fate.
“How are you doing, Snitch?” His lips were so close to mine I couldn’t think past the heat of them or the growl hitching his voice. The curling in my stomach and the pounding of my heart. I leaned on my tiptoes—