Rylen Appreciation Week - Day 4
I didn’t have enough time to finish my romance-y piece, so here’s another excerpt from Truths Half Told Beget Lives Half Lived. This is a little snippet from chapter 14.
...She shook her head, her hand dropping from the wall as a wry smile cut through her serious expression. "I can see you won't be convinced, but for the record, you're being rather dramatic. You are not responsible for this war, and everyone here knows that you do everything in your power to keep your people safe. It is a tragedy when any life is lost, but I forbid you to deride or devalue yourself in my presence, Rylen."
"As you wish, your highness," he responded quietly to her authoritarian tone, the epithet feeling more like a caress than a taunt at this point.
She bestowed upon him a rueful smile and shook her head at the nickname. Her eyes did not falter, however, and the absolution offered up in those glittering depths tempted him more than anything ever had before. He hadn't known how much he craved it, from her especially, until she offered it up so freely. The truth he read in her gaze and the sincerity of her words nearly sent him to his knees as warm and ardent affection bloomed in his chest. He didn't register his own movement until he felt the curve of her hip under his hand and heard the slight inhalation pass between her parted lips.
The heady scent of fresh bread and cinnamon filled his nostrils, and he leaned closer, inhaling softly and letting his eyes close briefly at the deep longing pulsing under his skin. And yet, standing so close to her, he'd never felt more content in his life. He waited for her to back away from him, but she stood like a statue, her elevated breathing the only indication that his actions had affected her at all. He opened his eyes and looked down, nearly groaning aloud at the sight of her gaze locked on his mouth. Perhaps she wasn't as oblivious to him as she seemed.
"Any other rules I should know about?" she asked in a slightly rough tone.
"Plenty," he rasped. "But as you seem to be the exception to all of them, lass, I don't see much point in continuing the conversation."
"All of them?" she asked on a whisper.
At this, her eyes flicked up to his, wide and guileless, a hart frozen in the path of a lion. All the weakness, the self-doubt, the exhaustion faded away at the drumming in his chest, the humming of stifled electricity under his skin and the breathless quiet between them. Her closeness and his lyrium addled emotions conspired to stoke the fires of desperation in his fingers. Keeping his hand on her hip, he raised the other hand slowly, as if any sudden movement might send her skittering away.
The instant his loosely curved fingers came in contact with the supple skin of her neck, the caged lightning broke free and ripped through his gut. They simultaneously sucked in shuddering breaths, jolts of sensation arching through each point of contact, and her eyes fluttered closed as his shaking fingers grazed over heated skin in the lightest of touches. He gently cupped her jaw, and her thick lashes trembled against her cheeks in response, her skin burnished golden in the glowing torchlight and warm under his callused palm.
Spots of color bloomed high on her cheeks as he felt the twin electric shocks of one hand grasping his back and the other gripping his upper arm. He had the sudden urge to brush his lips across those high cheekbones just to see how deep a flush he could elicit from the prickly, perfect woman who had so quickly and expertly turned his world upside down.
And so, he did. He leaned down slowly, memorizing every detail of her skin until his eyes fell closed as he brushed his lips over one cheekbone. His lids, heavy with the desire to lose himself in her, cracked open just enough to take in the sweet flickers of emotion crossing her face as he slowly skimmed his lips over the bridge of her nose. She sucked in another breath, and another, her stuttering exhalations washing sensuously over his jaw while he descended upon the other cheek. His lips lingered there a moment while he inhaled the spice of her skin, reveled in the softness of her face under his wind-burned lips.
He breathed her name against her skin like a prayer, aching to taste her lips and yet hesitant - as if the deeper part of him knew that it was a line he dared not cross. With torturous slowness, he slid the hand on her hip around her back and pulled her close while pressing feather light kisses to the corner of her eye, her eyelid, her eyebrow. He paused to kiss that place between her brows often scrunched in disapproval, especially at him, and then rested his lips against her forehead, fighting to control the breathless sensations urging him to go faster, taste more.
All the want inside him condensed to this one moment, this one thing. He wanted - absolution, compassion, provocation, intimacy, happiness - and he wanted them with her. Only her. He truly had broken all his rules, but in this one moment, he couldn't bring himself to care...
