A Power Unbound (The Last Binding, #3)

by Freya Marske

Alan had never needed to lean on anyone. It was intolerable that he now kept turning out the pockets of his soul and finding caught in their seams the desire to let someone else take his weight. The desire to be held, even kissed.

It moved like an iron over his irritable nerves and uncreased them.

He felt as if he’d been beaten for dust, hung in the sunshine, and then re-laid on a comfortable floor.

Despite the gulf between their lives, they had this in common: neither of them was given to trust. Both of them had been twisted up by the plain facts of their existence. The past could turn you into a strip of paper with a single side, so that comfort and vulnerability slid away down invisible channels and couldn’t be grasped. Except, perhaps, if you bent your will towards unlearning your own history. If you let yourself soften and be porous. Even if only like this, in silence, and at an angle.

“I would take your heart between my ribs and guard it like my own. Is there any way I could make you believe it?”

I would write you into immortality. I would trap you in ink and wear the pages next to my skin until they fell apart. Kiss me until I know you. Kiss me until you know me, and unmake me, and love me anyway.