Where The Ice Gives Way Chapter 91

**Charlotte**

The hallway goes completely still around his words. All I can hear is him. All I can feel is the way my hand is still caught in his, and the way he’s standing so close that the front of his jersey brushes mine when he breathes. My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my throat, and Blake’s eyes dart from my lips to my eyes. He doesn’t do anything except stand there and wait. The bond pulls low and deep inside me, warm enough that it almost feels like I’m standing too close to a fire. My fingers tighten around his without me meaning to, and his thumb shifts once over the back of my hand in answer. I look at his mouth. Then back to his eyes. “Yes.” It barely comes out above a whisper, but he hears it. His free hand lifts slowly, and his fingers slide gently along my jaw, coming to rest against the side of my neck. Every part of me goes quiet under the touch. He steps closer, until there is no space left between us. I can feel the heat of his body all the way down the front of mine. The brush of his jersey against my arm. The faint clean scent of soap and cedar and Blake wrapping around me until I can’t tell where my breath stops and his starts. My eyes fall shut right before his lips touch mine, and our first kiss is so soft it almost hurts. The world narrows down to that one point of contact, warm and light and impossible. His lips leave mine for a mere second before he kisses me again. This time, deeper, slower, sure enough to send a shiver through my whole body. I make a small sound before I can stop it, and his hand tightens slightly at my neck.

I feel the bond between us open. Not in some wild snapping rush, or in the dizzying way it sometimes hits when he looks at me too long or smiles at me in that playful way. It pours through me in a warm, overwhelming wave of calm and want and something so close to home that for one stretched second, I don’t know how to stand under the weight of it. My free hand comes up without thought and grips the front of his shirt, and he makes a low sound against my mouth that I feel more than hear. His head tilts slightly, and mine follows without me thinking about it, and suddenly, this isn’t soft in the same way anymore. There’s hunger in it now, a raw, primal need to permanently claim. My knees go weak, and one of his arms slides around my waist before I can wobble, pulling me in properly. I let him because not a single part of me wants distance right now. Shanti stirs inside me, warm and pleased and impossibly calm beneath everything else. Mate, she murmurs. I think I hear Lex answer, but I’m too lost in the feeling of Blake’s mouth on mine and his hand splayed at the small of my back and the way every one of my breaths keeps getting stolen and given back altered somehow.

He pulls away, only enough that our foreheads stay pressed together while we both try to breathe. I keep my eyes closed for a second longer. His breath touches my mouth when he laughs quietly. When I open my eyes, I am met with warm, dark eyes. His hand hasn’t moved from my waist. His other is still holding mine. His lips are a little swollen. I think mine probably are too. The thought sends heat flooding through me so fast it reaches my ears, and Blake’s mouth curves. “There you are,” he says softly. I blink at him. “Where did I go?” He smiles wider now. “You disappeared for a minute,” he says. I let out a breath that turns into a laugh before I can stop it. Then I hide my face against his chest because what else am I meant to do with myself after that? His arm closes around me immediately. Holding me close while I stand in the middle of a mostly empty hallway and listen to his heart thudding almost as hard as mine. The steady beat of it under my cheek does something dangerous to the centre of me. It makes me want to stay. It makes me want more. It makes me understand exactly why I climbed into his bed last night and asked for peace. Whatever this is, whatever he is, my body already knows how to soften when he’s near. He lowers his mouth to my hairline. “Still think saying I’m your boyfriend was a mistake?” he asks quietly. I lift my head enough to look at him. “No.” A grin breaks fully over his face, bright and so unfairly beautiful it makes my stomach flip all over again. “Good,” he says.

A burst of laughter comes from the direction of the courtyard doors, and reality edges in around us again. I pull in a breath and glance down the hall. “We should probably go back.” Blake follows my gaze, then looks at me again, and the expression on his face says very clearly that he does not agree with this in the slightest. “Probably,” he says, but neither of us moves. I laugh under my breath. “Blake.” He sighs like I’ve asked something truly unreasonable of him, then lifts my hand and presses a kiss to the back of it so quickly I barely have time to react before he’s drawing back. “You’re cute when you short-circuit.” I stare at him. “I’m not short-circuiting.”

“You’re doing it right now.” He laughs, low and warm and entirely too satisfied with himself, then threads his fingers through mine properly and starts walking us back toward the courtyard doors before I can recover enough dignity to leave him in that hallway by himself.

As we get closer, the sound of lunch swells. My pulse jumps again as the doors come into view and with them the very real possibility of Annabelle clocking my face in one glance and screaming loud enough to crack the windows. I slow, and Blake glances down at me. “What?” I lower my voice. “Do I look…” He stops walking, and one corner of his mouth lifts. “You look like you’ve been kissed in a hallway.” I make a strangled sound, and he leans in, close enough that only I hear him when he says, “So do I.” He winks and squeezes my hand, before he opens the door and the noise of lunch rushes over us whole. I step back out into it with Blake beside me, my lips still warm, my hand locked in his, and the strange, steady calm inside me opened wider than before. When Annabelle looks up from the lunch table, sees our faces, and slaps both hands over her mouth before turning to Jessica with wild delight, I know with absolute certainty that nothing about this day is ever going to feel ordinary again.