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He sat facing her, his legs long and easy, shoulders rolled forward in a way that accentuated their breadth.
It was then that Karou had another flash, a split in the surface of time, and a glimpse, within, of Akiva. He was sitting just like this, his shoulders heavy and relaxed in just that way, but… they were bare, as was his chest, and he was all tawny muscle, the right shoulder a snarl of scar tissue. Again, on his face, the smile that hurt with its beauty. Again, an instant and it was gone.
She blinked, cocked her head, and murmured, “Oh.”
“What?” Akiva asked.
“Sometimes I think I see you, in another time or something….I don’t know.” She shook her head and waved it off. “Your shoulder. What happened to it?”
He touched it, watching her intently. “What did you see?”
She blushed. There had been something so sensual about that moment, him sitting there shirtless and happy. She said only, “You… smiling. I haven’t seen you smile like that, not really.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“I wish you would,” she said. “For me.”
He didn’t. Pain flashed over his face and he looked down at his knuckles and then back up at her. “Come here,” he said, and reached out, easing the wishbone’s cord up and over her head. He hooked a finger around it. “Like this.”
She didn’t take it. She said in a rush, “Whatever happens, we don’t have to be enemies. Not if we don’t want to be. It’s up to us, isn’t it?”
“It will be up to you,” he said.
“But I already know—”
He shook his head, sorrowful. “You can’t know. You can’t know until you know.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “You sound like Brimstone,” she muttered, and set about composing herself. And then, finally, she lifted her hand to slip her pinkie around the wishbone’s free spur. Her knuckle came to rest against Akiva’s, and even that small contact kicked off an effervescence all through her.
Now, all they had to do was pull. Karou waited a beat, thinking Akiva would lead, but then she thought he was waiting for her. She checked his eyes—they were on hers, searing—and tensed her hand. The only way to do it was to do it. She started to pull.
This time, it was Akiva who jerked his hand away. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.”
He reached for her face, and Karou covered his hand with hers, pressing it to her cheek.
He said, “I want you to know…” He swallowed. “I need you to know that I was drawn to you—to you, Karou—before the wishbone. Before I knew, and I think… I think I would always find you, no matter how you were hidden.” He was focused on her with extraordinary intensity. “Your soul sings to mine. My soul is yours, and it always will be, in any world. No matter what happens—” His voice cracked, and he took a breath. “I need you to remember that I love you.”
Love. Karou felt bathed in light. The cherished word leapt to her own lips to answer him, but he beseeched her, “Tell me you’ll remember. Promise me.”
Here was a promise she could make, and did. Akiva fell silent, and Karou, sitting forward, breathless, thought that that was all—that he would just say something like that and then not kiss her. Which was absurd, and she would have protested had it come to that, but it did not.
One of his hands was already at her cheek; he lifted the other. He cradled her face in his hands, and then it was as smooth as inevitability: a gliding together. His mouth brushed hers. A dip, a touch like a whisper—a gentle, gentle grazing of Akiva’s full lower lip across both of Karou’s in an upward lilt, and then there was space between them again, so small a space, their faces so close. They breathed each other’s breath as the pull gathered between and around and in them, astral, and then the space was gone again, and all there was was the kiss.
Sweet and warm and trembling.
Soft and hard and deepening.
Mint on Karou’s breath, salt on Akiva’s skin.
His hands in her hair, plunged to the wrists like it was water; her palms at his chest, the wishbone forgotten in the discovery of his heartbeat.
Sweetness gave way to something else. Pulse. Pleasure. What overwhelmed Karou was the realness, the deep physical trueness of Akiva—salt and musk and muscle, flame and flesh and heartbeat—the feeling of allness. The taste of him and the feel of him against her lips—his mouth and then his jaw, his neck and the soft place beneath his ear, and how he shivered when she kissed him there, and somehow her hands slipped under his shirt and up, so that only her half gloves were between her hands and his chest. Her fingertips danced over him and he shook and crushed her to him and the kiss was so much more than a kiss now.
It was Karou who leaned back, drawing him down with her, over her, and the feel of all of him against all of her was total and burning and… familiar, too, and she was herself but not herself, arching into him with a soft animal mewl.
And Akiva broke away.
It was quick as shattering—a lurch and he was up, leaving behind the jagged edges of the moment. Karou sat up fast. She didn’t know where her breath had gone. Her dress was bunched at her thighs; the wishbone lay abandoned on the blanket, and Akiva stood at the foot of the bed, faced away from her with his hands on his hips and his head lowered. His breathing matched hers in rhythm, even now. Karou sat silent, overcome by the power of what had possessed her. She had never felt anything like it. With space between them now, she was chastened—what had made her take things so far?—but she also wanted it back, the ache and salt and allness of it.
“I’m sorry,” said Akiva, strained.
“No, it was me, and it’s all right. Akiva, I love you, too—”
“It’s not all right,” he said, turning back, his tiger eyes violently ablaze. “It’s not all right, Karou. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I don’t want you to hate me more than you already—”
“Hate you? How could I ever—”
“Karou,” he said, cutting her short. “You have to know the truth, and you have to know it now. We have to break the wishbone.”
And so, at last, they did.
43
S NAP
Such a little thing, and brittle, and the sound it made: a sharp, clean snap.
44
W HOLE
Snap.
Rushing, like wind through a door, and Karou was the door, and the wind was coming home, and she was also the wind. She was all: wind and home and door.
She rushed into herself and was filled.
She let herself in and was full.
She closed again. The wind settled. It was as simple as that.