“We should go back inside,” she said, in a half whisper. She did not want to go back inside. She wanted to stay here, with Will achingly close, almost leaning into her. She could feel the heat that radiated from his body. His dark hair fell around the mask, into his eyes, tangling with his long eyelashes. “We have only a little time—”
She took a step forward—and stumbled into Will, who caught her. She froze—and then her arms crept around him, her fingers lacing themselves behind his neck. Her face was pressed against his throat, his soft hair under her fingers. She closed her eyes, shutting out the dizzying world, the light beyond the French windows, the glow of the sky. She wanted to be here with Will, cocooned in this moment, inhaling the clean sharp scent of him, feeling the beat of his heart against hers, as steady and strong as the pulse of the ocean.
She felt him inhale. “Tess,” he said. “Tess, look at me.”
She raised her eyes to his, slow and unwilling, braced for anger or coldness—but his gaze was fixed on hers, his dark blue eyes somber beneath their thick black lashes, and they were stripped of all their usual cool, aloof distance. They were as clear as glass and full of desire. And more than desire—a tenderness she had never seen in them before, had never even associated with Will Herondale. That, more than anything else, stopped her protest as he raised his hands and methodically began to take the pins from her hair, one by one.
This is madness, she thought, as the first pin rattled to the ground. They should be running, fleeing this place. Instead she stood, wordless, as Will cast Jessamine’s pearl clasps aside as if they were so much paste jewelry. Her own long, curling dark hair fell down around her shoulders, and Will slid his hands into it. She heard him exhale as he did so, as if he had been holding his breath for months and had only just let it out. She stood as if mesmerized as he gathered her hair in his hands, draping it over one of her shoulders, winding her curls between his fingers. “My Tessa,” he said, and this time she did not tell him that she was not his.
“Will,” she whispered as he reached up and unlocked her hands from around his neck. He drew her gloves off, and they joined her mask and Jessie’s pins on the stone floor of the balcony. He pulled off his own mask next and cast it aside, running his hands through his damp black hair, pushing it back from his forehead. The lower edge of the mask had left marks across his high cheekbones, like light scars, but when she reached to touch them, he gently caught at her hands and pressed them down.
“No,” he said. “Let me touch you first. I have wanted . . .”
She did not say no. Instead she stood, wide-eyed, gazing up at him as his fingertips traced her temples, then her cheekbones, then—softly despite their rough calluses—outlined the shape of her mouth as if he meant to commit it to memory. The gesture made her heart spin like a top inside her chest. His eyes remained fixed on her, as dark as the bottom of the ocean, wondering, dazed with discovery.
She stood still as his fingertips left her mouth and trailed a path down her throat, stopping at her pulse, slipping to the silk ribbon at her collar and pulling at one end of it; her eyelids fluttered half-closed as the bow came apart and his warm hand covered her bare collarbone. She remembered once, on the Main, how the ship had passed through a patch of strangely shining ocean, and how the Main had carved a path of fire through the water, trailing sparks in its wake. It was as if Will’s hands did the same to her skin. She burned where he touched her, and could feel where his fingers had been even when they had moved on. His hands moved lightly but lower, over the bodice of her dress, following the curves of her breasts. Tessa gasped, even as his hands slid to grip her waist and draw her toward him, pulling their bodies together until there was not a millimeter of space between them.
He bent to put his cheek against hers. His breath against her ear made her shudder with each deliberately spoken word. “I have wanted to do this,” he said, “every moment of every hour of every day that I have been with you since the day I met you. But you know that. You must know. Don’t you?”
She looked up at him, lips parted in bewilderment. “Know what?” she said, and Will, with a sigh of something like defeat, kissed her.
His lips were soft, so soft. He had kissed her before, wildly and desperately and tasting of blood, but this was different. This was deliberate and unhurried, as if he were speaking to her silently, saying with the brush of his lips on hers what he could not say in words. He traced slow, glancing butterfly kisses across her mouth, each as measured as the beat of a heart, each saying she was precious, irreplaceable, wanted. Tessa could no longer keep her hands at her sides. She reached to cup the back of his neck, to tangle her fingers in the dark silky waves of his hair, to feel his pulse hammering against her palms.
His grip on her was firm as he explored her mouth thoroughly with his. He tasted of the sparkling lemonade, sweet and tingling. The movement of his tongue as he flicked it lightly across her lips sent delicious shudders through her whole body; her bones melted and her nerves seared. She yearned to pull him against her—but he was being so gentle with her, so unbelievably gentle, though she could feel how much he wanted her in the trembling of his hands, the hammering of his heart against hers. Surely someone who did not care even a little could not behave with such gentleness. All the pieces inside her that had felt broken and jagged when she had looked at Will these past few weeks began to knit together and heal. She felt light, as if she could float.
“Will,” she whispered against his mouth. She wanted him closer to her so badly, it was like an ache, a painful hot ache that spread out from her stomach to speed her heart and knot her hands in his hair and set her skin to burning. “Will, you need not be so careful. I will not break.”
“Tessa,” he groaned against her mouth, but she could hear the hesitation in his voice. She nipped gently at his lips, teasing him, and his breath caught. His hands flattened against the small of her back, pressing her to him, as his self-control slipped and his gentleness began to blossom into a more demanding urgency. Their kisses grew deeper and deeper still, as if they could breathe each other, consume each other, devour each other whole. Tessa knew she was making whimpering sounds in the back of her throat; that Will was pushing her back, back against the railing in a way that should have hurt but oddly did not; that his hands were at the bodice of Jessamine’s dress, crushing the delicate fabric roses. Distantly Tessa heard the knob of the French doors rattle; they opened, and still she and Will clung together, as if nothing else mattered.
There was a murmur of voices, and someone said, “I told you, Edith. That’s what happens when you drink the pink drinks,” in a disapproving tone. The doors shut again, and Tessa heard footsteps going away. She broke away from Will.
“Oh, my heavens,” she said, breathless. “How humiliating—”
“I don’t care.” He pulled her back to him, nuzzled the side of her neck, his face hot against her cold skin. His mouth glanced across hers. “Tess—”
“You keep saying my name,” she murmured. She had one hand on his chest, holding him a little bit away, but had no idea how long she could keep it there. Her body ached for him. Time had snapped and lost its meaning. There was only this moment, only Will. She had never felt anything like it, and she wondered if this was what it was like for Nate when he was drunk.