Chapter 293
WILLA
I lay in Lucian's sleeping bag, clutching the edges of the jacket he had thrown over my shoulders the moment he had carried me into his tent. I was shivering.
The aftershocks of what had happened was coming now. My breath rasped in and out of my lungs.
I couldn't get past the thought that just one minute more and I would have been dead. Found with my head sunk in the pool when the others came to take their baths at night.
Lucian was squatting beside me, an unreadable expression in his brown eyes.
He gently pushed clumps of my damp hair away from my face. Without a word he got to his feet.
He walked over to a corner of a tent, rummaged through a bag there, found a thick heavy blanket and threw it over me.
I wasn't cold. Not really. But the warmth of the blanket somehow made me feel loads better.
Lucian resumed his earlier attitude; squatting by my side, his hands hanging loosely over his legs, watching me closely.
I was exhausted. Tired in the kind of way where you slept for hours and hours. Still closing my eyes when there was a very attractive male just within reach was completely out of the question.
I managed to stop my teeth from chattering long enough to say, "Thank you, Lucian... For saving me. If you hadn't come when you did... I'm sure something worse would have happened."
Lucian did not answer. His closeness, the way he focused on me like I was the only thing that mattered in the world, left me breathless.
Could he see the pulse in my throat racing? Could he hear my heart beating in time to it?
"You make me feel things," Lucian suddenly said out of the blue.
"W-what?" I stuttered and shifted slightly.
Lucian pushed a lock of hair behind my ear. His finger stroked my earlobe for the briefest of moments just before his hand fell back to the side.
"You make me dream of things," he continued as if I hadn't spoken. "Forbidden things. Things I would rather not think about." His voice grew soft. As soft as a caress. "That's how much of a hold you have on me, Willa. That's how much you affect me."
For a long time after he had spoken, I couldn't say a word. Words seemed to have been lost somewhere between my brain and mouth.
Lucian regarded me with his head cocked to one side. A little smile started to play at the corner of his lips.
"Aren't you going to say something?" he asked softly. "I've admitted that you-" He paused, searching for the right word. "bother me in a whole lot of ways. I go around acting unaffected by you but that's really all it is. Acting." His eyes grew far and distant. "Question is why a little slip of a girl like you can have this much of a hold on me. Why do you make me reconsider a lot of things?"
His fingers absently went back to my earlobe. Touching and Stroking
"What things?" I asked, a question that was really meant to distract myself.
Still I wondered. When he said he was reconsidering, did that mean he was willing to break free of society's conventions that said a werewolf and a Lycan prince could not be together? Or was he talking about something else? If-
My thoughts immediately broke off when Lucian moved. His knees touched the floor.
He leaned close.
"W-what things, Lucian?" I repeated.
My eyes were already drifting closed, long before he came near enough for our lips to touch. He curved a finger under my chin, tipped it up.
Now I could smell his aftershave and some alcohol on his breath. When he breathed, it fanned my face.
I swallowed, waited for what I knew was coming. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel the struggle in him, the questions he was asking himself.
He let out a stifled groan of frustrated surrender and pressed his warm lips to my own cold ones. I let out a breath I wasn't aware I had been holding.
My hands reached out of the blanket. They reached up, fisted themselves in Lucian's hair.
I told myself I was going to pull him away, to tell him to stop. But even as my fingers curled around his hair, I knew I was lying to myself.
Kissing Lucian felt so good I doubted I could stop, even if someone barged in. Even if the tent came crashing down around us.
His tongue did that thing again where they slid along my lips with a light caress. He traced the outline of my teeth. He pressed me me to him and kissed me like his life depended on it.
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