This was a mistake.
Apart from Celidon, they were even more alone here than they had been in the stables. And this was far more intimate – Tristan’s personal room, suffused with the scent of him, the visual of his rumpled sheets, his nearness as potent as a drug. Alethea was sharply reminded of his earlier flirtation. She wasn’t sure he had ever looked at her the way he’d just done, before suggesting he follow her into her room. And here she was, in his…
He’d touched her, too. She wasn’t likely to forget.
It was everything she had ever wanted. She had spent so long wanting him to look at her that way, wanting to be seen by him, wanting to be touched. His joy, his hunger were contagious. Whatever she had told herself about being his friend, about being content to remain that way, it all seemed delusional now. She could never be content to be his friend, after that look.
“Good idea,” she answered, smiling. Drinking him in.
But this was dangerous territory. Alethea did not know how to navigate his attention, now that she had it. He was not a stable-boy she could control, and he was not hesitant like Gawain. His hand over hers, as he moved it across the silken velvet, had all the self-confidence she would have expected. If only she had expected how it might feel.
Like falling in the dark. Like being drunk.
His magic tugged at her through his skin, as if pulling her in for a kiss.
“Beautiful,” she confirmed softly. The room felt very warm. “Maybe with some of this?” Her free hand reached for a sample, raw silk in muted gold – subtle, next to the intensity of the red. She set them beside each other, and tilted her head, considering.
She hadn’t removed her hand from beneath his.
“Where were you thinking of putting it,” she began, turning her head to look at him. He was very close. She could have counted the dark lashes framing his beautiful eyes, or watched his pupils dilate and contract. “The curtains?” It was hard to look away again, now that she could study him so closely. He was not a boy anymore, had gone from being soft and cute to…this, in the time they were apart. A man. And he’d had women, in that time – his experience clung to him, forbidding and seductive. It was in his scent, in the his eyes, in the way he moved.
She wondered what he saw, when he looked at her. She wasn’t so innocent as he remembered, either, though she certainly didn’t have even a fraction of his expertise.
The thought gave Alethea pause.
As if on cue, there was a brisk knock at the door, and an older man appeared holding a clipboard and something for Tristan to sign. The prince – no, King – stepped away from her; she took a moment to subtly catch her breath, to flex and unflex her fingers, to order the blush out of her cheeks. For the first time in her life, it obeyed. But why should she blush? They hadn’t been doing anything, when Tristan’s man appeared. What would he tell people, that they’d been rubbing elbows over fabric samples? Her gaze shifted from the table to Celidon, and she forced a casual smile.
Gods, she probably wasn’t fooling anybody.
“I understand if you need to step away,” she reassured Tristan gently as he returned, “I can wait.”
She had been waiting ages, after all. Years. Maybe they needed more, before they could be sensible.
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