“That depends,” Kieran replied, his voice still low, but a touch less brittle than before.
“On?”
His eyes met mine in earnest. “On whether or not that would make you uncomfortable.”
Oh. Considering the day he’d just had, I was surprised it even mattered right now—though, perhaps I shouldn’t have been. Kieran had always prioritized my comfort and my consent.
“No,” I answered honestly. “It wouldn’t make me uncomfortable at all.”
“Then yes, Little Conduit,” Kieran rasped, the nickname feeling like a caress. “You may very well get to see me drunk tonight. I don’t get belligerent or anything, I promise. Just a bit stupid. And probably very handsy, later.”
I quite like the sound of that.
“But in the meantime,” he continued. “Distract me, please. Tell me about your day.”
For the next half hour or so, Kieran and I sat at my breakfast nook and drank together while I told him about my day, answering his questions about all the inane details—the subjects of my lectures, what I had for lunch, what, exactly, Sia and Laurel had said when they’d managed to corner me in between classes for a mild interrogation over where the fuck I’d been lately.
“Yeaaahhh,” Kieran said, finally starting to smile a bit. “Pretty sure I’m overdue for one of those with Hans and Jer aswell. Obviously, there were some other priorities today, but…Yeah. It’ll happen.”
“Apparently, Laurel already tried to grill Hans for information the other day,” I informed him. “Naturally, he gave nothing away.”
“Don’t you dare give him any credit for that,” Kieran snorted, now on his third glass of gin. “He would’ve run his mouth if he knew anything about it, you know godsdamn well the man’s a worse gossip than Ansari.”
I laughed rather hard at the accurate observation, and when Kieran joined me, the familiar sound of rolling thunder in his chest had me pressing my thighs together.
I was only on my second glass of whiskey, but I was a bit of a lightweight. I could already feel the enjoyable effects of the liquor as it loosened my limbs, freeing so much of my pent-up tension and anxiety and simply releasing it into the aether. My body began to feel warm, and free, and…
“Fuck. You can’t keep looking at me like that, Little Conduit,” Kieran said, his gaze darkening behind another long sip of gin.
“Mmmm, and what way is that?” I stepped off the barstool in search of some kind of quick snack.
“You know godsdamn well.”
I cocked my head and shrugged, nibbling on a stray scone. The pastry had nothing on Kieran’s cooking, but it would do.
“Do I?” I asked, attempting to feign innocence while also struggling not to stare at his mouth and the way his tongue glided over his lower lip.
Kieran just stared back at me, holding my gaze as he took another slow sip of his drink. Craving his closeness, I tossed the scone aside and joined him on the other side of the nook, standing behind where he sat and running my hands over his shoulders again.
When he set his empty glass down on the counter, it felt like an invitation. Emboldened by whiskey and desire, I threaded my fingers through his hair andtuggedso that his neck bent back over the cresting rail, his face upside down as mine hovered above. I caught a flash of fangs as he sucked in a surprised breath.
“Can I look at you like this?” I breathed, leaning down and offering what was, at first, a chaste but lingering kiss.
The placement of his mouth against mine in reverse felt both foreign and familiar as I ran the tip of my tongue ever so slowly across the seam of his lips. I could taste fire and juniper as they parted, but my wicked side had come out to play, and I pulled back until my lips were just out of reach—taunting him. Attempting to tease the Kieran I knew,myKieran, back to the surface now that his daemons had time to settle.
And I knew I’d been at leastpartiallysuccessful when an irritated snarl rumbled in his throat.
“I am going to fuck you up if you keep playing like that, Arken,” Kieran warned darkly. “Don’t test me right now.”
There seemed to be a legitimate undercurrent of warning in his words, but the heat pooling at my center only seemed to intensify. I ran my nails against his scalp, affectionately this time, before dropping my mouth next to the shell of his ear.
“Is that a promise, or a threat, Captain?” I crooned.
The way he forced a heavy exhale through his nostrils, his mouth remaining set in a thin, hard line as he kept an iron grip on the countertop and his empty glass of gin…
Fuck me. It was both. It wasdefinitelyboth.
Reaching past him, I took another sip of my whiskey with a cocked brow, awaiting his response.