Chapter 21 Secrets Shared in Other Ways
Secrets Shared in Other Ways
“You really expect both of us to sleep on…that?” I was so flustered I couldn’t even remember the word for bed.
Radven’s smile widened, his eyes flashing devilishly.
“Oh, believe me, butterfly. I have no intention of sleeping tonight.”
When I imagined how I was going to lose my virginity, I’d always pictured something cheesy and romantic—a nice dinner with a man I loved, a trail of rose petals leading to the bed, a long night of sweet, soft kisses and whispered words.
I definitely didn’t picture it happening in a suspiciously lumpy bed in a tiny room at an inn in a magical, faraway land—with a man who was clearly, by every definition of the word, a rogue.
My body, however, clearly hadn’t gotten the memo, because it was getting way too hot and tingly. I needed to shut this down, now. And that meant laying down some boundaries.
Still standing in the doorway, I crossed my arms, trying to slow my heartbeat back to its normal rate. “I told you not to get any ideas.”
Radven, meanwhile, was clearly very amused at my expense.
“Ideas have been had, I won’t deny it,” he told me. “But that’s not what I meant about not sleeping. Alastor and Oak will be joining us here as soon as they’re able, and I mean to wait up for them.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t be opposed to some recreational activities in the meantime…
” he began, then raised his hands defensively when he saw my face.
“You don’t have to give me that death glare.
It was just a suggestion. Believe me, butterfly, I enjoy my women willing. You have nothing to fear from me.”
I wasn’t sure it was entirely true that I had nothing to fear from him—I was still pretty certain this man wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if he ever saw me as a threat to himself or his brothers—but in this area, at least, I found that I believed him.
It’s not him I’m worried about, I was forced to admit as I stepped further into the room.
It’s me. These last couple of days had been such a whirlwind that I wasn’t sure which way was up anymore, and it felt like all my senses and all my emotions were right at the surface, just waiting to break free.
It was like there was a charge building up in my body that had nowhere to go, that desperately needed release.
Feeling like this, while sharing a bed with a wicked, beautiful, dangerous man, was a recipe for disaster, and I knew it.
And I suspected—though I hoped I was wrong—that he knew it, too.
I edged along the foot of the bed. There was hardly any room to walk, and there definitely wasn’t enough room for one of us to sleep—or even sit—on the floor.
But I also had no intention of standing all night, and I wanted to prove to myself that I was stronger than the sensual fantasies trying to push into my brain, so I went to the opposite side of the bed as Radven and tentatively sat on the edge of the mattress.
Radven, I’m sure, noticed how awkward I was being, but he thankfully chose not to comment on it. He’d pulled a knife out from somewhere under his clothes and was spinning it skillfully between his fingers as he stared up at the ceiling.
“When do you think they’ll get here?” I asked. “Your brothers.”
He glanced in my direction. “If all goes well, by midnight.”
“And if all doesn’t go well?” I hadn’t forgotten the huge burst of power we’d felt when we were fleeing from Laitha, and despite Radven’s urgings to trust them, the knot of worry in my stomach had never really disappeared.
Apparently his hadn’t left him, either, because he became serious again. “If they’re not here by dawn, then we keep moving.”
I couldn’t hide my shock. “Without them?”
“That’s the plan,” he replied, assuming an air of casualness again. “The meeting point changes every night for the next ten days.”
“And where would we go next?”
He cast another look in my direction. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
Once again, he seemed determine to dodge my questions—not that it really mattered, I reminded myself. Any destination he named wouldn’t mean anything to me—this place was completely alien, and I didn’t belong here.
A knock on the door announced the arrival of our dinner—which turned out to be, no surprise, a couple of platters piled high with meat.
“Lamb,” Radven told me, passing a plate to me.
I set it in front of me on the bed, drawing my legs up to sit cross-legged on the mattress while I ate.
It turned out that Theradorian lamb tasted exactly like the lamb back home.
It was comforting—and I was starving—but at the same time, it felt strange to be sitting here stuffing my face when Alastor and Octavian were still potentially in trouble.
And while I was trapped in another world, with no idea if I’d ever get home again.
The lamb lost its flavor. Now that we’d stopped moving and settled down for the night, the full weight of the day’s events hit me like a brick. I was trapped here. In a world where I didn’t belong and where I was clearly in danger.
I never had the chance to tell Esmer and Isaac what was going on, I realized, remembering our last conversation and how I’d promised them I’d tell them before I made any big decisions regarding the brothers. They’ll never know why I just disappeared.
And then there were my parents, and my coworkers—I’d definitely be losing my job—and, oh god, all of my succulents were going to die without me there to water them.
And for what? A world that caused me constant pain unless I had a bunch of pearls strapped to my body?
It was hard to breathe. I stood up, stumbled my way around the bed to the single window, and fumbled with the shutter until I could push it open all the way. There was no glass in the window, and I gulped in the fresh night air, grateful for the crisp evening breeze.
“You all right, butterfly?”
Radven had come up behind me, and in this cramped little room that meant he was standing right against my back.
I couldn’t swallow down my panic.
“What am I doing here?” I asked without turning around to face him. “I shouldn’t even be here. How am I going to get home?”
Radven was silent for a short moment, then said, “Well, I suppose you’ll get home the same way you got here. If you were able to create a bridge from your world to ours by being descended from both worlds, it only makes sense that it would work in the opposite direction, too.”
Yes, that was what I’d assumed—hoped—would be the case. But I was still a little fuzzy about how I’d done it the first time around, aside from the part where I’d put myself in unbearable pain first.
I spun away from the window, pushing past Radven and dropping onto the edge of the mattress, where I drew my knee up to my chest so I could reach my ankle and the pearls tied against my skin.
Radven was immediately beside me, his hand coming down on top of mine, stopping me from undoing the knot.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Going home,” I said. “Or at least seeing if I can make another bridge.”
“You can’t do that here. Not around all these people.
” His grip tightened on my ankle. “If there’s anyone with any significant power nearby, they might sense you the minute you remove those pearls.
And if you try to create something as powerful as a bridge, you’ll alert everyone for leagues who has even the smallest amount of talent with essence.
If you fail at creating a bridge, you’ll draw our enemies right to us. ”
And if I succeeded, I might escape, but I’d be leaving Radven here to deal with the consequences and the danger.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked, ashamed by the desperation in my voice. “Stay here forever? I can’t do that. I have a life back home.” Not much of one, if you asked Esmer…but that didn’t mean I was ready to give up everything I’d left behind.
“We’ll find a way,” Radven said, his contact-altered eyes boring into mine. “We’ll go somewhere secluded, far away from everything, and we’ll find a way.”
There was a promise in his voice, an assurance I never would have expected from Radven, of all the brothers.
“Why?” I heard myself ask. “Why are you going through all of this trouble to help me?”
He sat back slightly, but his hand was still curled around my ankle, the pads of his callused fingers pressed into my skin. His eyes, despite the contacts, were as sharp and observant as they’d ever been, and it felt like he was looking into my soul, right down to the deepest parts of me.
“You brought us home,” he said finally. “Everything has a price, butterfly, and I have no objections to paying you what you are owed.”
“You make it sound like an obligation.” I tried to pull my ankle away from his grip, but he didn’t release me.
“It’s not an obligation. It’s how I believe the world should work,” he replied. “One act of generosity for another.”
“Or a secret for a secret,” I said, referring to our very first meeting. God, it felt like ages ago, even though it had only been a day.
He smiled at that, the wicked, feral side of him returning.
“Yes,” he purred. “A secret for a secret. Do you have another you’d like to share?”
“Are you offering another secret of your own?” I countered, more and more aware of his hand on my ankle. “How many more secrets do you have?”
“More than most people,” he replied. “Enough for a lifetime. Perhaps two.” He leaned close again. “Why? Is there something in particular you wish to know about me?”
If I were being honest, there were quite a few things I wanted to know about Radven—like how he’d become this man, the one Octavian said had been forced to “make choices no one should ever have to make.” Or how his life had become intertwined with those of Octavian and Alastor.
Or how many people he’d killed, and why.
“Not all secrets are shared with our voices,” he said after a moment. “Some secrets are shared in other ways.” His thumb brushed against my ankle, skimming lightly across my skin, and my skin prickled with pleasure.
Sweet jesus, I was right before. Ankles are erotic. Every second that he touched me there, my skin grew hotter and more tingly.
But I hadn’t lost all of my faculties yet. “You don’t care about Octavian—Oak?”
His eyes, which had been watching the slow path of his thumb against my skin, snapped back to my eyes. “What about Oak?”
“We kissed,” I reminded him. “You saw us.”
His shoulders relaxed again—I hadn’t realized they’d tensed up until that moment.
He shrugged and smiled, dismissive. “Oak kisses lots of women. It doesn’t mean anything.
” Then he looked at me, and he grew serious once more.
“I mean it. Oak would never intentionally deceive a woman—he’s too honorable for that—but he’s not looking for love.
All he does is leave a trail of broken hearts in his wake, I suspect because—” He cut himself off abruptly, looking almost surprised with himself for nearly letting his tongue slip. “Trust me on this.”
That certainly didn’t make me feel any better, and I didn’t know how to respond. “I just don’t want to get in the middle of anything. Whatever competition you have going on between the two of you, I don’t want any part of it.”
He sat back, looking genuinely surprised. “Competition?”
“Chasing after the same woman. Or whatever.” Having never been in the situation before, I wasn’t sure how to describe it.
“I don’t want to be part of whatever game this is.
” At least my head didn’t—my body had different ideas, but I’d been doing a pretty good job of shutting it down so far. “And I don’t want to come between you.”
“Ah,” he said. “If that’s what you’re worried about, then you’ve got it all wrong. No woman, no matter how exquisite she may be, will ever come between my brothers and me.” His tone had grown dangerous again, his words tinged with an edge I hadn’t heard since the previous night at the masquerade.
I hadn’t meant to imply that, but it still didn’t fully address the situation at hand. “Well, it might not be a competition, but I don’t know how I feel about being part of any sort of ‘consensual sharing’ situation either.”
He released my ankle then, sitting back on his heels. His wicked smile had returned, but the sharpness in his eyes suggested I still needed to be on my guard.
“I don’t share women,” he said. “This isn’t about sharing, or stealing.
In my experience, no woman is spoken for until she says she is.
It’s her choice—not mine, not Oak’s, not anyone’s but hers.
” He rose so that he was standing over me, his eyes never leaving mine.
“So the question is, butterfly, are you spoken for or not?”