Chapter 21 #5
She snorts, the sound filled with a thousand memories.
“I am the quiet one of my family, believe it or not. The least stubborn, too. My brothers are all thickheaded and filled with more personality than they know what to do with, passed along honestly from our loud mother and hard-headed father. It made life on our farm rather…interesting, to say the least.” She smiles, a warmth spreading through her chest that she hasn’t been privileged enough to feel lately.
“But there was love. In our cooking. Cleaning. Farm work. In the songs we’d sing and constant music we’d play. In everything, there was love.”
“Sounds colorful,” he says through a quiet laugh. “And wonderful. Will you tell me more about it? Your life before coming to Bathara, I mean.”
She blinks, a wrinkle forming between her brows. “You want to hear about all that?”
“I already told you—I want to hear everything.”
Her heart squeezes, and a tingling warmth spreads in her chest. Something she’s never quite felt before—something exceeding attraction or desire.
“Okay,” she whispers.
She tells him everything. About her life growing up in Rolfbear.
Her family’s struggles with poverty and being incapable of putting nutritious meals on the dinner table when it was at its worst. How—after her magic awakened and she went through and cultivated all the fields in her small farming town—everyone held a banquet in her honor, where the music played on until the sky bled red from an approaching dawn.
She tells him about her brothers and how unbelievably protective they are over her.
How they were nearly bursting with joy when they took her to the Ardoris Comet Festival.
About how her parents cried before she left for Bathara, tears of pride and sorrow mixing together to form a single salty riverbank on their cheeks.
She talks and talks and talks, words surfacing from long forgotten places she didn’t even realize still harbored things to say.
All the while, Gray listens and asks questions when he wants to know more about something she’s told him.
In return, she finds herself asking things about him, as well.
About his life in Rivara. What it was like growing up as the son of the very famous Sterling Nightenjoy.
Gray tells her about the pressure he sometimes feels to be a man as great and well-respected as his father.
Tells her about his talented mother and how she is one of the best Gardners in all of Solaya, pure adoration punctuating his every word.
As they converse, without realizing she’s doing it, Marcella inches closer and closer to Gray, the edges of her forearms now scraping against his while one of her bent knees brushes against his thigh.
Heat courses beneath her skin when she realizes how close their bodies are to being entangled.
How appealing the idea of nestling into his side truly is.
Truthfully, thinking about it shows her just how badly she wants to be held—held by Gray Nightenjoy, that is.
She wants to feel his arms wrap around her while he presses her against his chest. She wants to curl her fingers around his arms and rest her eyes, feeling safe and unguarded.
Most importantly, she wants him.
All of him.
Every precious piece.
She swallows against the lump now in her throat, willing her racing heart to still.
Silence fills the room as their current line of conversation reaches its natural end.
She uses the pause to inch surreptitiously toward him, moving slowly and in small increments, hoping what she’s doing won’t be quite as noticeable.
Though she knows it’s always noticeable.
Through the expanse of a blackened veil, stretching between them like a mask covering all the unsaid words, she leaps—reaching for him across the illusionary distance.
Slowly—tentatively—her fingers brush against his skin, tracing the outline of his body, rising until she is sure they’ve found the slope of his jaw.
She cups his chin lightly between trembling fingers and swipes her thumb across his stubbly cheek, scooting even closer, until she can practically feel his breath against her lips.
A warm hand lands on the curve of her hip, twitching subtly before splaying its fingers across her side and squeezing tightly, dragging her closer to an unmovable body. Marcella sucks in a quiet yet sharp gasp, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.
A simple touch should not feel like that.
Like her body is being set ablaze. Like she has just been struck by lightning and her nerve endings have absorbed the electrical shock, sending the sensation cascading down the fabrics of her skin.
Her chest tightens with emotion, and she finds herself overwhelmed by a conglomeration of feelings for this person in front of her.
This pure, wholly good, and entirely genuine heart that has always been beating a fingertip’s length away from her grasp.
Marcella nestles into the curve of Gray’s body, tucking her leg between his, pressing their chests together—which in turn presses other parts of them together, making a throbbing ache appear between her thighs once more.
Her nose brushes against his, and Gray finds her effortlessly in the darkness, gently gliding the tips of his fingers from the corner of her temple, down her cheek, until they reach her chin.
He pinches it between tender fingertips and tilts it up toward what she can only assume would be his lips.
Then he slides that hand down, along the curve of her hips and onto the small of her back.
He wraps the entire length of his arm around her waist, swallowing her whole in his embrace as he drags her across the remaining space between them, pressing their hips firmly together.
She melts at the hard bulge she feels waiting for her.
With an undeniable, burning need now coursing through her, she slides her free hand around Gray’s neck, toying with the strands of his still semi-wet hair, their chests flush with each other as they remain silent.
It’s as if they’re both scared words will shatter the moment, seemingly both aware of how fragile a thing it is.
So Marcella continues to say nothing as she subtly—as covertly as one possibly can in this situation—grinds her hips against him, relishing in the low, breathy groan rattling in the back of Gray’s throat as a result.
His fingers dig into the skin of her back as he fists at the shirt covering her body—his shirt.
Flames dance deep in the pit of her stomach.
She threads her fingers through his hair and tugs, almost tempted to moan from the sequence of passing touches alone. Yet she manages to keep all her noises restrained, not letting a single sound slip past her lips. Instead, she is preoccupied with a consuming thought—
Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me.
Marcella—completely consumed by him and lost to the swirling haze filling her mind—seems to lose every semblance of her usual defenses as she accidentally lets the thought spill from her lips.
“Kiss me,” she breathes, a thousand other words resting in the cadence of those simple two.
Gray’s hand clenches then unclenches against the small of her back. He stills completely. “I…can’t.”
A heat entirely different from the one she was previously feeling invades her body, and she rears back, the delicate moment officially splintered. “Why?” The question slips out before she can think better of it.
“Because….” He sighs, the sound heavy and loaded and filled with a finality that nearly shatters Marcella’s heart. “I can’t—”
“You know what?” Marcella interjects, feeling unable to hear his explanation as both embarrassment and self-preservation fuel her scrambling, hollow words.
“It’s fine.” She pulls back from Gray’s embrace entirely, rolling away to her side of the bed, putting her back to him as she refurbishes her armor.
She hears the rustling of sheets as he shifts. “Marcella, please. Let me explain. It’s not…” Another sigh. “It’s not what you think. I want—”
“I mean it, Gray,” she again cuts in, a sinking feeling turning leaden in her stomach as her chest carves a hollow hole inside itself. “You owe me nothing because this was nothing. Nothing even happened.”
“But you wanted it to.”
She can’t tell if it’s meant as a question, a statement, or something else entirely. For whatever reason, it feels like the worst response he could have given her.
Her bottom lip quivers as she feels like the world’s biggest fool. Why had she even assumed he feels that way for her? At the end of the day, he’s done nothing but be a good friend to her. Key word, friend.
The words she whispered while swept up in their hypnotic moment haunt her. Kiss me.
Fuck, she was so ignorant for letting her guard down. For getting so swept up in the feelings of being in bed with another person, covered by the shields of darkness. He doesn’t feel that way about her. It seems so gods-damn obvious now. Still…
Rejection sucks, and for the life of her, she cannot recall ever feeling it as viscerally as she does in this moment. It stings. Hurts. Rubs her raw, until she feels like she has nothing of worth to give.
“Just go to sleep, Gray.” The words tumble hollowly from her lips, barely above a whisper.
“Marcella,” he murmurs, reaching a hand out to touch her shoulder. “Please, let me explain.”
The touch makes her jerk—makes her stomach flip, but in a way that nearly makes her nauseous. She doesn’t want to be touched—not after learning the person she now realizes she truly wants doesn’t want her back.
“Go. To. Sleep.” She enunciates each word slowly, speaking with a finality that leaves no more room for discussion. He pulls his hand back, the stretching silence uncertain as she wonders if he will or won’t say anything else.
If she does or doesn’t want him to.
But it seems she was firm enough in her response, because she feels the mattress dip and the sheets rustle as he seems to shift back into his sleeping position, not deigning to say anything else.
And as heaviness clots the air, so different from the buzzing possibilities fluttering through the night-kissed room mere moments ago, a single tear slips free from the corner of her eye, strolling slowly down her cheek until it mingles with the corner of her lips, as if in some cruel, poetic kiss.
It is the only moment of pity Marcella allows herself to have.