Avow (10 page)

***************

Scarlet leaned back against the desk in her small quarters at the inn, her servant’s dress catching on the corner and tearing slightly.

Nathaniel had spent the last few hours explaining Scarlet’s past and the boys’ immortality to her. It was a lot to take in and most of it was disturbing.

Gabriel smiled at her from his post by the door, no doubt trying to make her feel comfortable. She smiled back at him, confusion winding through her head. He had practically been her husband in her previous life, yet somehow he seemed like a stranger to her. Like he was a warm, soft dream that had existed in one reality, but had no place in this one.

She rubbed her pounding chest for the third time that hour. “So I am semi-immortal?”

“Correct.” Nathaniel watched Scarlet clutch at her heart again. “How does your heart feel?”

Confused. Anxious. Unstable.

“Fine.” Scarlet dropped her hand. “It’s beating rather fast but otherwise it’s fine.”

From across the room, Tristan’s eyes slid to her and Scarlet’s nervous feelings vanished. Tristan was alive. Everything would be fine.

She tried to memorize his new green eyes. They suited him better. The brown had been handsome, but the bright green was…alive. Like living fire, burning emerald as he looked at her with an almost-smile. She wished they were alone so she could touch him and smell him and taste him—

The emerald flames brightened.

“—start happening?” Nathaniel’s voice pulled Scarlet away from Tristan’s hot gaze.

She blinked. “Come again?”

Nathaniel cleared his throat. “I asked when you felt your heart begin to race.”

“Oh. Uh…” Scarlet knew exactly when her heart had started to pound, but she didn’t want to announce to the room how her heart had become a hungry drummer the moment she ran into Tristan’s arms.

“Today.” That was a safe, non-embarrassing answer.

”Before or after we found you?”

“After.”

Tristan turned to Nathaniel. “Are you concerned about her heart?”

“I don’t know.” He frowned. “I feel like I’ve read something about ferociously beating hearts, but I
cannot
recall…” He trailed off for a moment, then shook his head. “Oh well. The most important thing,” he smiled at Scarlet, “is that you are alive and well and have your memories back.”

She smiled at Nathaniel. She wasn’t sure what to think of him. He was quirky and awkward, and not at all what Scarlet would have expected a wizard to be, but he seemed genuinely pleasant.

Gabriel looked out at the night sky through the window. “It is too late to travel tonight, but perhaps we can purchase rooms here for the evening and head back home first thing in the morning.”

Home.

The word had Scarlet’s soul aching. She’d been dead for over a hundred years. Her home no longer existed. A deep sense of loss overtook her as she thought about her mother and the hut they’d shared and how Scarlet had hunted and lived in the trees.

All that was gone. What would become of her now?

Nathaniel
and
Gabriel headed downstairs to speak with the innkeeper with Tristan right behind them. But when he passed Scarlet,
Tristan
paused.

Kissing her forehead, he whispered, “Everything will be fine, Scar.”

And the aching in her soul immediately vanished.

***************

Scarlet waited until nearly midnight before tiptoeing from her room. She’d had a few hours to think and realized two things that made her belly flop.

She needed to sort things out with Gabriel—which was sure to be uncomfortable.

And she was upset with Tristan for leaving her as Gabriel’s fiancé in her last life.

Since she would most likely not be getting any alone time with either of them, Scarlet decided to do the least ladylike thing imaginable and visit both their doors at an ungodly hour. Oh, the horror.

She crept to the door of Gabriel’s room and tentatively knocked. A moment later, his boyish face appeared in the dim light of the corridor.

“Hello, Scarlet.”

“Hello.” Her nerves jumped. “Um…I just wanted to apologize for…earlier…with Tristan.” She swallowed, feeling guilty for clinging to Tristan in front of Gabriel when the boy had done nothing but love and care for her in her previous life. “I was not trying to hurt you or offend you—“

“Scarlet,” Gabriel smiled, “you do not need to apologize.”

“But I do.” Her heart squeezed. “I was nearly your wife and, while I don’t know what that means for us now, my behavior today was still shameful—“

“Do you still want to be my wife?” He asked this casually, as if asking if she enjoyed kittens.

Scarlet hesitated for the briefest of moments. Not because she didn’t know the answer, but because she didn’t know how to explain that, no, she did not wish to be his wife, but she did still love him. She was not sure she could explain it even to herself.

He shook his head. “I love you very much—“

“I love you too,” she blurted. What she did not blurt out were all the gray areas inside her love for him. The hidden places, the compromised pieces, the tempered facades.

Was love supposed to be gray?

He was smiling, but it
did not
reach his eyes. “I know you do. But we were together because of our dedication to Tristan and our belief that he was no longer alive.” He paused. “You are not mine, Scarlet. And—as my brother so often reminds me—you never were.”

“I belong to no one,” Scarlet said.

“Precisely. So you have no obligation to me.” He shifted his weight. “I love my brother deeply and wish to see him happy. If your heart takes you to him, so be it. If it does not, that is fine as well. You will not lose my love or friendship either way.” He leaned in and kissed her cheek softly. “Good night, my Scarlet.”

He gently closed his door, leaving Scarlet speechless in the dark hallway with the gray parts of her heart floating in the darkness as she pondered her relationship—or lack thereof—with Gabriel.

But thinking of Gabriel brought her thoughts back to Tristan and, therefore, her pent-up anger at his flippancy in handing her off to Gabriel. And then, of course, there was his complete stupidity in trying to save her life by sacrificing his own.

All gray areas ceased to matter as she headed down the inn’s large staircase with her argument face on. Once she reached the lower floor, Scarlet found several drunken patrons walking about the lobby and halls. Some singing, some stumbling, and some hiccupping their way through tall tales only other drunks would believe. The play seemed to have put everyone in a jovial mood.

Careful to avoid a swaying man with flushed cheeks and two missing teeth, Scarlet ducked her way toward the corridor of guest rooms and tried to act natural. Well, as natural as a young lady with her hair undone could act while walking the halls of an inn at midnight.

She turned into the back corridor, the hallway growing darker as she left the bright candles of the lobby. When she came upon Tristan’s shadowed door, she found it unlatched. Scarlet steeled herself for the carefully-constructed rant she had planned.

How would Tristan feel if she tossed him to her sister to love and wed? She shuddered. The very idea of sharing Tristan made her skin boil.

Slowly pushing his door open, Scarlet quietly stepped inside his candlelit room and saw him standing in the corner. Waiting. His green eyes lit as he took her in, but otherwise his face remained unreadable. Handsome, and filled with a thousand lovely memories, but unreadable.

No. I will not think about his face. Or his memories.

I
a
m angry.

She lifted her chin to speak, but no words came. He lifted his chin for no reason whatsoever, but the movement had Scarlet’s eyes traveling over the dark scruff along his jaw and the thick contours of his throat and—

No. No throat-gazing.

I
a
m angry. I do not belong to anyone. Tristan had no right to offer me up to Gabriel.

She took a nervous step back and accidentally brushed against the door, causing it to fall shut and close them into his room. Her throat went dry as they looked at each other across the dark space. The flickering candlelight made his whole body seem alive with shadowed movement, but he remained perfectly still.

Was that amusement on his face?

She stared at him, hoping her hard features still looked convincing as her mind insisted on thinking of non-angry things.

Hunting with Tristan in the morning and sparing with him in the afternoons. Dinners with him and her mother and splashing with him in the river. Deep kisses in the night….

Tension filled the space between them and Scarlet inwardly groaned.

Bloody hell, she was no longer angry.

Something about the candles and the scruff and the unsolicited memories had worn her down. And now she was standing silent in Tristan’s room like some ridiculous statue intruder.

She turned to leave. She would be angry
with
him tomorrow.

“Scar,” Tristan said.

As she turned around, she opened her mouth to excuse her odd behavior with a brilliant lie she had yet to come up with, but lost her voice when she saw the softness in his eyes. Her heart filled with love and all she wanted to do was kiss him—anger be damned.

In an instant, his unreadable expression turned to one of longing and, with two swift strides, he crossed the distance between them and crushed his mouth against hers.

Scarlet immediately sank into his arms, relief, love, and joy flooding her soul as she kissed him back.

He pulled back and ran his eyes over her in awe. Cupping her face in his hands, he gently smoothed his thumbs over her cheekbones. “God, I love you.”

Scarlet stared into the magical green eyes she
was not
yet used to, but already enchanted with, as she ran her hands up his chest. “I love you more.”

“Never.” He smiled and began to kiss her with a hunger that made her insides tighten. She curved her body into him and parted her lips, letting his tongue slide into her mouth.

Her hands roved over his broad shoulders and to his back, gripping his thin shirt for a moment before sliding a hand into his hair.

She loved him so much. She wanted him so much.

He pulled back from her with a curious look, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths.

“What is it?” She was out of breath as well.

He tilted his head at her. “I think…I think I can feel you.”

“Feel me?” Her thoughts went several inappropriate places and Tristan’s eyes lit again.

He swallowed. “I think I can feel your emotions. I can feel how
you are
happy and confused and… how you want me.” His voice was hoarse on these last words.

Scarlet’s cheeks grew hot.

“And I can feel your heart beating as if it were my own.” He glanced at her chest where her unruly heart was going wild.

“But how is that possible?”

He shook his head. “
Perhaps
this is part of my blood living inside you.
Perhaps
,” he swallowed again. “
Perhaps you are
a piece of me now.”

At the thought of being a piece of Tristan, Scarlet’s heart nearly spilled over with joy.

“You’re pleased.” He smiled. “I can feel that you’re pleased.”

“That is remarkable.” Scarlet’s mouth fell open. “You can truly feel me.”

He nodded. “And when you touch me, it feels…euphoric.”

“Euphoric?” The idea of her touch giving him pleasure made her feel powerful, and suddenly she wanted to touch him all over.

His eyes fell to her chest again. “Your heart is racing.”

He placed his hand over her heart, his palm resting against the fabric of her dress while his fingers pressed into the bare skin above her neckline. They stared down at where her heart pulsed beneath his hand. Heaving. Demanding.

A warm tremble ran through her and his eyes darkened.

Was his breathing heavier than it had been a moment ago? Was hers?

“Hunter.” Her voice was breathy and damp. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say, but it didn’t matter. Tristan swept her mouth into his before words could form, kissing her deeply. His lips enraptured her, his tongue running along the soft inner flesh of her mouth. Hot. Wet. Desperate.

He ran his teeth up her jaw and stopped below her ear, a lick searing her sensitive skin. It was all Scarlet could do not to claw her way into his clothes. She wanted to be closer to him. So much closer.

His hands ran along her body and up the sides of her ribcage as his mouth came back to hers. Scarlet rubbed her hips against him, sliding her palms down his back to the hem of his shirt. She slipped her hands underneath and felt his warm skin against her fingers. His hands moved around her body; gripping her hips, brushing her curves—