Free Soul of Flame (Imdalind Series #4) by Rebecca Ethington

rumbled through my ear as I lay against his chest, my hand moving up to run against the smooth, white lines of the thin scars that peppered his warm skin.
    “It’s okay,” I whispered as he shivered under my touch. Just don’t get so excited next time, I spoke into his mind, the feeling of his excitement still pulsing through me.
    His eyebrows rose a bit, that familiar smirk of his pulling at his lips. His enthusiasm surged as he tried to understand what I could hear from him, what I felt from him.
    “I can’t hear you word for word,” I explained, answering his unasked question again. “I only hear pieces of your thoughts and feel pulses of your emotions.”
    “My emotions?” he asked, his voice even more surprised as his mind ran over similarities that I didn’t understand.
    “Yes,” I whispered.
    “So tell me…” Ilyan’s wide hand moved over my hair, his fingers gentle as they pulled through the strands. “What am I feeling right now?”
    My stomach tangled around itself as I heard the answer. It was something that I had felt a million times before, something that I had even told him. For some reason, though, this time it felt weird to sense the emotion so strongly from him, knowing he wanted me to experience it and to tell him what he felt for me. The heavy sound of his heartbeat echoed in my ear as my own matched his beat for beat, the comfort of our heartbeats taking away my embarrassment.
    Love. I sent the word into his mind, my breath catching as his emotion swelled.
    “Not quite…” He chuckled, my nerves heightening again. “It is more than love; it is astounding, all-encompassing love.” He sighed into me, the last of my stress leaving as he pulled me away from his chest, his hands warm on my shoulders as he looked at me.
    The chilled air swirled around us as I gazed into his eyes, and the deep pulse of his passion moved through me. I had no desire to look anywhere else.
    What is going to happen to us, Ilyan? I asked as I placed my hand over his heart, thunder rumbling at the contact as if the earth were reacting to the feel of my skin against his.
    Ilyan placed his hand over my heart as I had his, the warmth spreading over my collarbone. He didn’t look at me, he only looked at his hand against me before closing his eyes.
    I focused on the pulse of his heart against my hand, our breathing the only sound in my ears as I waited for an answer. Ilyan finally looked up at me, his hand lifting to glide over the side of my face before he moved to sit behind me. My heartbeat surged at feeling him there, at feeling his chest against my back while he held me from behind. Even when he had braided my hair in the hotel near Isola Santa he had never sat this close, close enough I could feel the beat of his heart. A ripple of calm moved up my spine before he leaned away, his hands moving up to weave through the damp strands of my hair once more.
    Ilyan ran his fingers over the crown of my head and through the long waves in a gentle rhythm that sent goosebumps down my spine. The pressure of his hands was soft as he moved my hair away from my face and into a low ponytail, the soft tips of his fingers fluttering across the back of my neck before grazing the mark behind my ear, and I gasped, my magic jumpstarting at the contact.
    I sighed as the sensation left, Ilyan’s joy and misplaced worry mixing together as heavy Czech words I didn’t understand drifted over to me. His fingers continued to move through my hair, deftly separating it before he began to twist and pull it into a braid.
    “I was ten when my father first taught me how to braid.”
    “Your father taught you how to braid? Isn’t that kind of girly?” I asked, unable to hide the smile from my voice, or picture Edmund himself knowing how to braid for that matter. I had always assumed Ilyan had taught himself, a necessity of having long hair.
    “To you, perhaps, but to my kind, braiding is the way to care for and to show your affection to