Chapter 11 #2
When she returned, she could swear there was a faint scent of burnt plastic in the room, but the fireplace was off, and she looked around for the potential source.
Nothing was out of place. The kitten was once again asleep on the couch. Deryn, hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, stood in the middle of the room, face unreadable.
“So, ahem, when is our next outing?”
Something crossed those sharp features, something uneasy, something dark, that Paloma couldn’t decipher.
Even the thought that this woman could hold something dark in her was seemingly outlandish.
She was just so… Paloma couldn’t find the words, but dark wasn’t one that fit.
Neither was elemental, and yet for a second, she could swear those eyes held power, power to send up the world into flames.
She shook her head. She was tired. Between the resort and the campaign and all the demands of her business on the mainland, she was stretched too thin.
Deryn was still watching her, clearly expecting an answer, and Paloma tried very hard to gather her thoughts.
“There are two events next week, and then one more the week after.” She opened her phone and accessed her calendar. “You don’t have to come to all three, you can choose two and let Lachlan know the times and places you will pick me up.”
“Ah, so I should be the one picking you up?” Deryn’s smile was teasing.
“Ms. Crowhart, it’s the expeditious thing to do. I have no clue where you even live these days.”
“I still live at Ceridwen’s.”
“Ah.”
Deryn bristled. “What is that ‘ah’ supposed to mean?”
Paloma waved her away.
“Nothing, it’s just an ah. An exclamation to keep the conversation going. The polite thing to do. But your oversensitivity on the topic is telling.”
Deryn threw her hands up in the air.
“Telling what?”
“Nothing, nothing…” Paloma settled on the couch and picked up the kitten, who purred and nestled.
Paloma lifted her gaze to Deryn whose eyes were sparkling, and not in the romantic literature way of describing the phenomenon. No, they looked like they held fire itself, and Paloma felt her cheeks flame for some reason. It was suddenly too hot in the room.
“I am staying with Ceridwen because it suits me, Ms. Allende. How’s that?”
Paloma pursed her lips and kept petting the kitten.
“It’s none of my business, Ms. Crowhart. You can stay wherever. Given that your sister Seren lives in the family house, and given how close you all are, I was just surprised—”
“You could’ve asked if you were curious, you know?
Not like twenty other people haven’t already done so.
I just…” Deryn trailed off before turning to face Paloma fully, the fire in her eyes scorching now.
“I hate that place! Since mom… Since everything! So, I never stay there when I’m back on the island.
Not everything has a neat and tidy explanation or resolution.
Sometimes things are messy. And they don’t fit those nice and tidy labels you want them to fall into. ”
Deryn snatched the kitten from Paloma’s lap and slammed the door to the suite shut behind her. The last thing Paloma heard was a loud yelp, as no doubt the claws came out yet again.
Well. That was educational. Paloma sat on the couch for a few more minutes, rewinding the evening in her mind. She had just come back from the office, spent and weary. The signal from security that Ms. Crowhart was on her way up had seemed to immediately energize her.
She wanted to tell Mason to send the woman away, on purpose. Because her body’s reaction was too much, too urgent, and too…familiar. She knew what this reaction meant. It was the same one that got her to forsake sanity and seek out Deryn at the Rooster.
She didn’t stop Mason from letting Deryn use the private elevator. She didn’t hide in her suite. She opened the door, and there Deryn had stood, the gray kitten in her hands, confused and a little angry. And those shoulders a touch stooped—holding the weight of the world in them.
Paloma wanted to slam the door in her face.
She told herself she couldn’t because of the kitten.
Her love for cats was something Elinor teased her mercilessly for.
She was known to drop everything—business, pleasure, anything really—if there was a cat in the immediate vicinity.
And yet, she had never allowed herself to keep one.
Paloma reasoned it away as being too busy, too in demand, traveling too much—
Her brain screeched to a halt at the list of excuses. They were exactly the same ones Deryn used just thirty minutes ago. How the tables had turned.
Still, the vision of Deryn at her door, with the adorable gray fuzzball in her strong, capable hands…
“Paloma Allende, you are a mess, amiga. Why is it always hands for you?” Her own voice echoed with fatigue in the emptiness of the room, and she finally allowed herself to take off her heels.
The Manolos dropped heavily to the carpeted floor, and she stretched her legs, her toes curling at the pleasure of having a lazy evening all to herself.
She’d read. She’d take a luxurious bath, then she’d lounge in front of the fire…
A memory intruded of her and Deryn on the soft blanket in front of that very fireplace. Naked, sated, in between bouts of sex.
Paloma shook her head. She really should’ve found a different place for their encounter. Everywhere she looked in her suite was now filled with memories of sweat and skin and pleasure. Even the damn couch she was on now.
Mierda.
She picked up the phone.
“Yes, it’s me. Send the design team to 1326 in the morning.
Tell them I need everything replaced. The couch, the carpets, the piano.
” There was a gasp on the line. Paloma lifted her eyes to the heavens.
“I know it’s a hundred years old, and before you tell me they’d need time to find another one, I know.
I don’t care. Take the current one out. Donate it to the town’s elementary school.
They give classes to those who want to learn on weekends.
When I visited, their current instrument was falling apart. Thank you, that’s all.”
She ended the call and reclined back on the cushions. The orders did not give her satisfaction. In fact, they made her feel worse. Worse than what, she didn’t know, but it wasn’t a good feeling.
Restless, beat, and wired at the same time, she got up and decided that the bath was moving up on the list of activities.
As she watched the water and the bubbles fill the immense marble tub, Paloma ran through the events of the day in her head.
The outing to Market Square went better than she expected.
She was not asked anything inappropriate or embarrassing.
On the contrary, the idyllic image of her and Deryn had later been splashed all over the Caw with positive comments.
And her tête-à-tête with Marsha was eye-opening in itself, with the older gossip for once acting kind and interested in what Paloma had to say.
All things considered, a worthy effort on everyone’s behalf, especially Deryn’s, who, despite not saying anything at all, was perfect for the role of arm candy.
Paloma lowered herself into the tub, sighing as the water caressed her skin. She relaxed, letting the heat and the lavender scent calm her senses.
Her mind returned to Market Square and the big, wide-eyed look Deryn kept giving her as they held hands. It felt a bit like a double challenge, to react neither to the eyes nor to the warm, slightly calloused hand in hers.
Those eyes were where the danger lay. Paloma knew it. She had almost given in to them today. One look, and the flames called to her, a sight she had seen before, a sign she had sought time and again, through wars and borders, through trials and death.
Paloma knew those eyes.
She remembered the look in them just days ago when Deryn asked why she wasn’t after a real partner. She also remembered being truthful, simply stating the facts—her wife’s death, Roxanne’s treachery. So why did it feel disingenuous back then and like an outright lie now?
It had been the truth, her truth. Her heart’s truth. So why was she now regretting it?
Because another betrayal is not what you’re afraid of…
She had framed it that way to Deryn, but Deryn didn’t know that Paloma had lost more, had lost everything—and not just once or twice before. Paloma had seen her life fall to the ground in blood and ash once again, eons ago. And that loss…
Paloma’s fingers trembled on the edge of the bathtub. She had no idea how to explain that death, or those visions, to Deryn. They weren’t real. They weren’t hers, so why did they hurt the most? Maybe Deryn would understand, or maybe Deryn would think her a fool.
Something told her it would be the former.
Deryn Crowhart of the Dragons Crowharts would hear her, would know what she meant.
That something was seductive. That something was very much like fire itself.
Warm and tantalizing until it consumed you whole.
Beautiful, till you could not take your eyes away from the destruction it wrought.
But Deryn would understand…
The thought of Deryn, in her torn jeans in winter, in her leather jacket in the snow, with her pink bangs and shaggy, silky hair, with her eager smile and ridiculous freckles, made her hot all over… Amidst her anguish, she was burning up with a new flame.
She wondered if she’d set the water temperature too high. But it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was tantalizing, a feeling of being consumed, tended to…
Paloma’s hand drifted downward, caressing her breasts, one then the other, allowing time to play with the nipples, to tease them into sharp points, needy and begging for more. For another touch, another tug, for a hungry, wet mouth…
She let them yearn as she glided lower still, her stomach muscles tensing, enjoying the sensation of the heat spreading everywhere she touched, till she reached the short hair, tangling her fingers in it, letting the warmth catch up to her touch, letting herself anticipate, allowing her thoughts to flow, to wander, to run wild…
Her fingers delved into her folds, slippery even in the water, and she moaned, unrestrained.
There was nobody to hear her, no reason to feel embarrassed, and nothing to be shy about.
She wanted this, wanted this release, this little fantasy of heat and friction.
Her fingers circled her clit once, twice, before moving downward still, letting the tension build.
Her mind conjured strong hands skimming all over her, a rough voice filled with desire telling her hot, filthy things, things that should fluster her, should make her blush.
Instead, these things made her knees spread farther, opening up, made her want to be taken, to be speared, to be penetrated.
Want those long, sure fingers and those red, hungry lips to take her.
She thrust two fingers into herself without preamble, with a rough and fast rhythm.
“Yes, yes… Please…”
She didn’t know to whom she was pleading.
Or for what. She was too far gone, the tremors of her thighs announcing the coming orgasm, signaling how close she was, how unbelievably fast it would be upon her.
Paloma was never easy in bed. It had taken her years to figure herself out.
Years and many lovers who either disappointed or left her cold, so why now? How…
The voice in her ear kept murmuring, the whisper abrading her nerve endings, sending her careening toward a raging inferno. But she needed something, just a little—
“And then as I slide in and out of your tight cunt—”
Deryn…
Paloma came with a shout, shaking and almost sliding too low into the water, the bubbles covering her neck and chin.
She sputtered and then allowed herself to float, limp and sated.
She should be horrified at what she had just done.
Mortified too, but certainly horrified, because it was unconscionable. It was…
She licked her lips and closed her eyes.
It was something she would have to examine later.
Weeks after and Deryn Crowhart was still the best orgasm she’d had in years…
Probably in her life. Even flying solo, the woman was lethal.
And so, the horror and the shock and the self-recriminations would have to wait.
Maybe tomorrow she’d find it in herself to feel all those things.
Right now, liquid fire was running through her veins, and the feeling of needing more was rising, a touch too acute for her to ignore.
“Damn her,” Paloma whispered as she tugged on an already hard nipple once again, and reached for the little drawer by the tub. She’d need mechanical assistance to help quench this fire.