Maybe I Like Hazards Tonight
No blog this week!
Instead, here is one of my favorite tension filled scenes from Smoke and Memory. It’s a stormy evening, too much wine, and two people with a lot of chemistry standing way too close to each other…
“Your friend is a hazard,” I said.
“He arrives with an apple and exits with collateral damage,” Luc replied. “It is a kind of symmetry.”
I reached for the bottle again, a motion more instinct than necessity, and tilted it, watching the wine pour into my glass. It caught the firelight and threw a ribbon of red across my wrist. It looked like a line someone might follow to find out where I ended.
“Maybe I like hazards tonight,” I said. I didn’t mean Branick.
“I know,” Luc said.
The knowledge sat between us like a hearthstone. Solid, old, warming everything around it whether we asked for it or not. I could have basked in it. I could have backed away. Instead, I took another swallow of wine and let the room keep pulling me forward.
The latch on the side door jiggled. A voice, Branick’s, murmured something about “treacherous corridors” and “traitorous rugs,” then trailed off again as if he’d been distracted by his own reflection, or a crumb, or the idea of trouble.
I set the goblet down. The stem chimed faintly against the wood. The sound felt like an agreement.
Outside, the storm pressed its palm to the windows and left streaks that looked like fingers. Inside, the room held its breath for me.
I pushed off the table, the floor farther away than my feet expected. Not a stumble, not quite; more like the beginning of a dance where you lean too early and were caught anyway. The heat of the hearth slid along my back as I moved, drawing the outline of my shoulders through my shirt. My mouth tasted like dark fruit and potential.
I didn’t look at the door again. Didn’t look at the mirror. I looked only at him.
“You always stand so still,” I said, noticing my words slurring. My voice had softened, husky, like the wine had pressed its fingerprints into my throat.
The fire threw copper light across his face. His stillness wasn’t absence, it was power coiled in waiting. A hawk on a branch, feathers tucked, eyes sharp. A predator who didn’t need to prove it could strike because everything else in the forest already knew.
I planted myself in front of him and looked up. My head tipped back, dizzy not from the tilt but from the altitude of him. My hand lifted before I thought better of it, my fingertips brushing the edge of his coat where it fell open over his chest. The fabric was cool. Beneath it, he was not.
The coat shifted minutely under my touch. I followed the seam upward, reckless, bold, to the space just above his collarbone. My fingers hovered at the edge of his throat.
I lifted up on my toes so my lips were close to his ear and whispered, “One more glass, and I’ll give you more than a kiss.”
The words left me trembling. Not because they were untrue, the wine had only loosened what I already wanted, but because I couldn’t take them back. They hung between us like the lightning outside, sizzling, waiting to strike something.
Luc clamped a hand around my wrist, dragging me just close enough for my pulse to stutter. His grip was firm, unyielding, but not painful. A tether, not a shackle. The heat of his palm burned against my skin, and the strength under that restraint told me exactly how deliberate his control was.
His other hand found my waist, light but commanding, holding me still. It wasn’t even pressure, it was intent. My shirt bunched minutely where his thumb brushed the fabric, and my body reacted like he’d branded me. My breath hitched, my knees weakened. The room spun not from wine but from the way he looked at me now.
“Careful, Auralania.” His mouth was next to my ear. So close his breath ghosted over my skin.
I turned to face him, my mouth just inches from his now. My lips parted before I even realized it. My heart tried to crawl out of my chest, desperate, wild.
“Another inch,” he murmured, voice low enough to scrape along my bones, “and I may not stop you.”