In the Veins of the Drowning(77)

Another painful twist of nausea moved through me. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.” Agatha pulled open Theodore’s wardrobe. A handful of dresses hung within that I recognized from the dressmaker’s cart. Agatha picked one in wine-colored silk from the rack.

“I’m just going to throw up on it.”

Agatha strode toward me, determined. “I don’t know how this is going to go, Imogen. I don’t even know what to think about it all. You might have to fight for him. You might have to let him go. But whatever will be required of you cannot be accomplished while you’re naked.”

A sad laugh bubbled up in my chest. I let her help me into a chemise and stays, pausing to dry-heave into the washbasin. She tugged on the laces at my back. “Tell me your plan.”

Plan seemed a grand word for the jumble of tasks that crowded my mind. “I don’t know… I have to find Eusia. We learned she’s a spell woman, or she at least possesses some magic, like a Mage Seer does. Theo said there were books on magic in a study here. I need those books.” I swallowed back a surge of nausea. “We need to unbind first. I’ll take the draught now—”

“Imogen?” My head snapped toward the open door. Theodore stood there, sallow, with a hand clutched at his stomach. His wide eyes bounced between me and Agatha. “You were going to take the draught?”

Agatha let go of my laces while they were still half undone. “I’ll go.” She gave my hand a quick, parting squeeze. “Call for me when you need me.” She skirted past Theodore to leave.

The pressure in the room changed. With slow steps, he came closer, and my sickness abated. His green eyes were pained, his voice gruff. “Answer me.”

“I was. You haven’t spoken to me in a day and a half. The empress…” I couldn’t find the words to explain our interaction. “And you and Halla—you’re so lovely together. It’s your engagement party. And I have my own responsibilities to see to—”

“I cannot even see her for the way you encompass me.” Emotion etched his face. “You fill my every sense. You stalk my waking mind. You make up the entirety of my dreams. I couldn’t speak to you after what Lachlan said because it shocked me—that he was right. About what I feel—”

“Theo,” I whispered, cutting him off.

He shook his head sharply. “It’s not the blood bond. We both know it’s not. There is something between us that that Godsdamned bottle of muck cannot sever.” He closed the rest of the distance between us, cupped my face in his hands. He spoke over my lips. “What I feel for you is beyond reason—beyond duty and desire. You have tipped my whole world on its side, and you are the one clear thing in the chaos.” His nose brushed the end of mine. “You. I want you.”

I closed my eyes at the impossibility of his admission, at the danger in it. Rohana’s words lanced my mind. It was no wonder he couldn’t see reason. For my soul was the water, shifting, wild, rolling through destructively, but Theodore’s had roots. They burrowed deep, held strong, and I had poured through their empty spaces—drowning him.

He kissed me then and every clear thought I had muddled. His lips were hot and soft, and they met mine with a desperation that cracked straight through my flimsy resolve.

I rose up onto my toes. I kissed him like he was air, like he was light, and I had spent my whole life gasping in the dark. He moaned into my mouth as his tongue swiped across mine. Hard fingers curled into the strands of my hair. He set his lips across my jaw, my neck.

“Don’t think me selfish,” I breathed. “Don’t resent me for this when I should be finding and reading those books. When I should be taking that severing draught.”

There was agony in his look. “If you are selfish”—he gave me a deep, luxurious kiss—“then I am a gluttonous, greed-riddled fiend for how badly I want you.”

If I thought myself weak when it came to Theodore before, I’d been wrong. I met his kisses with shameful abandon. He pulled at my half-loose bodice, dragging his mouth over my bare shoulder, over my collarbone. He grunted in frustration when he couldn’t get the bodice any farther down.

“Turn around.” He spun me, kissed my neck from behind as he walked me toward the bed. He pressed me over its edge, curling his body over mine as he undid the rest of my laces and set his lips and teeth and tongue over the expanse of my back. He set indulgent kisses over the skin that hid my wings. As he peeled my gown and stays and chemise off, his lips dragged lower, lower, all the way to the base of my spine. His words were husky, curling steam across my skin. “Too many clothes.”

Finally, they were a pool of fabric encircling my feet. Theodore made a low, smoky sound of approval as he took me in, bare and bent over the side of his mattress. With the softest touch, he swiped a few errant strands of my long hair away and placed the softest kiss upon my middle back. “Perfect,” he whispered, sending a shiver through me. “You’re beautiful.”

He set kiss after gentle kiss down my back, until he knelt behind me. I let out a shaky breath as his lips brushed slowly over the curve of my backside, as his fingers grasped and kneaded my flesh. He nudged my thighs wider. The first swipe of his tongue coaxed a moan from low in my chest.

The world narrowed to him alone, to the heavy spiral of heat that he sent through my belly with each flick of his talented tongue. With a forceful grip, he moved my knee up over the edge of the bed, and deepened his attention. That heat spread through me in a cresting wave. “Theo,” I called out, weak and high.