An Excerpt From Icon and Inferno
By Marie Lu
“Winter,” she murmured hoarsely, swallowing, terrified. “Winter, I don’t understand how you can live with an open heart. Everyone hurts you. Why don’t you protect yourself better? Put up walls?”
“What if protecting yourself kills you in the end?” he said. “What if the thing your heart needs most is right on the other side of that wall? I know it’s dangerous to expose yourself to everything the world wants to throw at it, to everyone who wants to take something for themselves. But I still leave it open, just in case something beautiful comes in.”
She didn’t believe his words, not entirely, but a lump rose in her throat nevertheless, lodging there, threatening to choke off her words.
“There are those who see your worth, Winter,” she whispered back. “Not for gain. Not for money. Just for you.”
He searched her gaze, and for a moment, she thought about looking away again, turning her back, and asking him to leave.
“Not everyone you love will leave you behind,” he whispered.
She felt herself leaning toward him, felt him leaning down to her, felt her hand touch his sleeve as he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. The tether between them pulled taut, and she felt the pain of it in her chest as surely as if her lungs had squeezed. But she couldn’t break away now. She didn’t want to.
And then he was kissing her.
He pressed his hands against the sides of her face and kissed her deeply. She didn’t know what was happening, didn’t understand it, was too afraid to disturb it. Her mind buzzed with something akin to panic.
She pulled at his shirt’s buttons, impatiently undoing each one. He was doing the same, tugging off her suit jacket and loosening the collar of her shirt, pulling its tails out from her trousers. She let him slide the shirt off her shoulders and shrugged it away. His shirt was open now, too—she had pulled it down his arms to reveal his bare chest.
His kisses moved from her mouth to her jaw to her neck. One of his hands unhooked her bra and ran along the smooth skin of her back. She felt feverishly hot against his lips.
“What are we doing?” he murmured in her ear. “Syd—what are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, her head tilted back, eyes closed, a small noise escaping her as his lips worked along her neck. “I don’t care.”
There was a warning buzzing somewhere far in her mind, telling her that this would be a mistake, that they would both regret it, that it could end their friendship, this fragile partnership. It felt like stolen time. Wrong, illicit, unbearable. But she didn’t want to care about that right now. The door was closed; their room was silent; no one else was here. And right now, all she wanted was to forget about everything gone wrong in the world. All she wanted was to indulge this fear in her chest, give in to the thoughts that had been tugging at her heart for a year.
All she wanted was him.
So they tore frantically at each other, leaving a heap of clothes on the floor before he pushed her against the fabric of the bedframe, her arms wrapped around his neck, his hands gripping her bare hips. Her breaths came shallow and rapid against his ear. He smelled like hints of cologne and sweat and champagne.
She met his gaze. His eyes were hooded with desire, so searing that it sent a thrill of fear through her.
“What are we doing?” she whispered again, echoing his words from earlier.
“What do you want me to do?” he rasped back.
A wild recklessness surged in her chest. “Surprise me.”
His eyes looked dark with want. He pressed his lips against her ear. “Stay still.”
She did.
He kissed her jawline gently, then her collarbone, her shoulder, then trailed down her body, making her skin tingle with each contact. His lips studied her every softness, slowed down and lingered wherever she shivered with pleasure, worked reverently on her until she arched, shuddering, a small cry emerging from her throat. She could tell that he had been with plenty of others before, that he knew exactly what to do and how to do it, and it left her in a heady fog of both envy and ecstasy.
“Winter,” she murmured, meeting his gaze with her hazy one. “Tell me,” he whispered. “Do you like that?”
She closed her eyes. “Yes.” “Do you like this?”
A shiver rippled through her body. “Yes,” she gasped. “This?”
She sucked in her breath sharply. “Winter,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Winter, I can’t—”
“Then don’t,” he whispered back.
Now she was seeing stars, could barely tell the difference between the fuzzy contour of his body and the darkness of the night. What he was doing to her made it too difficult for her to gather her thoughts, so she gave up and gave in, let her body go.
Pull me into the water with you, she thought. Just this once. ...
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