It snows on Easter.
Blizzards, really. Heavy white flakes that stick immediately and pile dizzyingly fast into bright, soft barriers that seem to block every door and window on the Caliburn campus.
“Dumb bullshit,” Kai grumbles as he kicks through the snowdrift blanketing the front steps of Camlann House. “Like we never left Siberia.”
No one has anything to add.
Easter Mass is subdued. The chapel is cold; we can see our breath in the pew. The sunlight through the stained glass is somehow both too sharp and too weak, and the hymns and the homily about life returning would make laugh out loud if I weren’t still so…numb. Barely any other students are there, anyway. It is, technically, the last day of Spring Break. Even if it doesn’t feel like it.
Five days. No, six—six days we’ve been back.
After church, the five of us walk wordlessly back to Camlann House.
Inside, at least, it’s warm: a fire is going in the living room and the air is thick with the savory smell of an Easter brunch almost ready for us. I’d be shocked if anyone is hungry, but I guess we’re going through the motions until things feel normal again.
Normal.
A desperate, clawing feeling digs at my chest, thinking of that word.
How can anything ever be normal again?
“Gwenna?”
I snap back to reality. Callahan is gesturing for me—my coat. I nod and shrug my arms out of the sleeves. “Yes. Sorry. Thank you.”
He takes it and puts it on the hook, then adds his next to it as Lanz slips in from the right and hangs his on the other side. Callahan’s face is stoic and unreadable; Lanz’s just looks pale, save for the pink on his cheeks, so deep he almost looks feverish. Kai skips the coat rack entirely and flings his over the back of the couch before throwing himself into an armchair.
“Well?” he says, glancing at the rest of us trickling in from the foyer. “Now what?” He chews a hangnail on his thumb. “How about you go get us some fancy vintage to uncork, Pretty Boy? It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Lanz glances at the mantel clock, then seems to think better of it. “Sure.”
“Gwenna?”
Kingston. Last to come in, now stripped of his scarf and coat, just a deep red sweater and eyes intent on mine.
“Could I speak with you for a moment?” he asks.
All at once, everyone else is occupied. Callahan picks up a book from the coffee table. Kai gets very busy with the fireplace, calling over his shoulder to Lanz—“you gonna plunder that wine cellar, or what?”—who nods and disappears towards the basement stairs.
Kingston waits. Waits for me, and I nod and take the steps to the landing.
We’re not going to talk.
His bedroom door is barely closed before he seizes my face in his hands and kisses me. Hard and deep and burning in a way that’s almost unlike him—almost. And I am glad, relieved, honestly, and surprised at the rush of that feeling as I arch away from the door and into him.
This is what we’ve done—all we’ve done, it feels like—since we got back to campus. Since we touched down in Helsinki, really—desperate and frantic, clutching the counter of the first-class lounge bathroom and muffling my cries with his mouth, channeling the shock and disbelief that we were all somehow still alive.
Now, his broad hands fit to my waist as he unlocks his mouth from mine. “Is this all right?” But I’m nodding before he even finishes the question, pushing his hands up my ribs and taking the edge of my sweater with it.
I need this. Very badly. And so does he.
I never understood that before—needing someone. Needing anyone, let alone more than one.
Now I do.
I shed my sweater and blouse and fumble for his belt, loosening the buckle as he tugs his own sweater over his head. Somehow, we land on the bed, his shirt unbuttoned but still on and my skirt hiked to my hips as I straddle him.
I reach for my waist and shove at the top of my tights, but it’s a clumsy movement, and I’m about to lose my balance when Kingston grabs me by the waist and shucks them out from under my skirt.
Rips them.
The force sends me flat on my back. I wriggle my hips, trying to shimmy out of my underwear, but Kingston holds me still and sucks a kiss against my neck.
“Don’t bother.”
With two firm fingers between my legs, he pulls the fabric to the side and enters me.
“Fuck,” I shudder.
Kingston shifts his weight, thrusts, and lets out a moan of pleasure from deep in his throat.
That sound. That sound is holy and ungodly all at once. I want to bathe in it, live in it, have it hold me captive for the rest of my natural life.
“Do that again,” I manage to murmur.
Kingston’s eyes flick open, and he slows the motion of his hips. “Which part?” he pants.
“I…” I can’t think straight. I shake my head. “Any of it.”
He nods. “Okay.”
And thrusts into me again.
Fuck. I don’t know if I think it or say it or both. I’m braced against the pillows, half seated, half dressed, clutching bedsheets in my fists; he is diligent, focused, intense and intent even with his shirt undone and his pants rumpled somewhere at the end of the mattress. He is desperate, we are desperate, and I am not going to make it much longer. The tight, hot stretch of his cock inside me, the sweet, slow friction of fabric over my clit every time he thrusts…
It’s too much.
“Ah!”
I cling to him as I come, pounding and clamping and full, and feel his moan vibrate through his chest and mine as he follows me a half-second later.
Slowly, through our breathing and the faint clattering of wind against windowpanes, things settle again.
Wrapped in his arms, I stare at the ceiling, around us. I hadn’t even been in Kingston’s room before we left for St. Ignaty’s–such a strange thing to realize, that we’d been through all that and yet I’d never seen where he sleeps–but it’s him. Thoroughly. Practical and organized and spare, from the hospital corners on the bed to the single neat shelf of textbooks–current semester only. A wall calendar, but just the date grid, no picture. And a wooden cross–same as they all have in their rooms, I think.
Beside me, Kingston shifts. He sits up, reaching for something at the foot of the bed.
My tights, I realize. Or what’s left of them.
He smoothes them out on the rumpled bedsheets, like he’s surveying for damages.
“I’m sorry.”
I sit up too, smiling. “Why? You paid for them.”
Kingston’s cheeks go a shade darker. “I shouldn’t have.”
“Disagree.” For Kingston Pendragon to lose even a modicum of control? He can’t not realize how…hot that is. There really isn’t a better word for it.
Two sharp knocks rattle the door.
“Hate to interrupt, lovebirds,” comes Kai’s voice, “but we’ve got visitors, so maybe make yourselves decent.”
Kingston frowns. So do I.
“Visitors?” I clear my throat. “Plural?”
“Who’s—” Kingston barely gets a word out.
“Who d’you think, King?” Kai sounds irritated. “Our favorite stepsister. And her lovely mother.”