Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
Ivy
Ijolt out of sleep at an unexpected pressure around my waist.
I tense instinctively and realize it isn’t just my waist. There’s solid warmth all down my back that matches the weight on my side.
Stavros. He’s drawn himself against me on the bed and looped his muscular arm around my belly in a loose embrace, his smoky spicy scent wafting over me.
I don’t think he’s aware of what he’s done, though. The soft, slow rasp of his breath behind me tells me he’s still asleep.
The heat of him courses right through to the center of me. I’m starkly aware that there are only a couple of layers of thin fabric separating our bodies.
How in the realms did we end up like this?
After he drifted off in the middle of the second chapter I was reading, I set the book aside and tried to doze off where I’d been sitting on top of the covers. But the lacing of my dress felt too constricting.
He has seen me in my chemise and drawers before—including much shabbier ones than what Casimir has supplied for my noble role here at the college. I decided it didn’t matter if he happened to see me again and wriggled out of the dress.
But then it was chilly in the open air. And he hadn’t stirred from his end of the bed—he’d actually rolled away from me.
I thought it’d be safe enough to tuck myself under the covers at my end. It did help me get to sleep.
Until now.
Julita lets out a faint chuckle. So much for sticking to his side. He’s more interested in sticking to yours. Who would have known Stav is a cuddler when he’s asleep?
I can’t tell whether she’s annoyed as well as amused. I drop my voice to a whisper. “I definitely didn’t. This isn’t what I agreed to.”
Hmm. You did put all those ideas about Signy and her lovers in his head.
She’s definitely teasing me. I guess that’s better than bitterness?
I grimace. “I didn’t mean to say that. And I told him it wasn’t my idea.”
It seems he had ideas of his own.
A lump rises in my throat as I sort through my groggy thoughts. He is asleep—he’s never shared a bed with me before.
“I doubt this has anything to do with me anyway,” I mumble. “He must be used to sleeping with someone else.”
How many lovers has the exalted general taken in his time? How many stuck around long enough for him to develop any kind of bedroom habits with them?
Those questions shouldn’t stir a twinge of jealousy deep in my gut.
“What should I do?” I murmur to Julita.
I get the impression of her presence shrugging. He made the move. I can’t imagine it’ll be easy to detach him unless you want to rouse him. It might be more fun to let him wake up on his own and become horrifyingly embarrassed, if you don’t find his nearness too distasteful.
I don’t find it distasteful at all. My body is tingling with eager exhilaration.
Which might be a problem in itself.
But I’m too tired to worry about that right now. Why not enjoy the protective warmth, even if it’s not entirely meant for me?
My ghostly passenger isn’t wrong. It will be pretty satisfying to see how Stavros reacts when he realizes he snuggled up to me. I’ll be able to hold it over his head for years.
The thought gives me a strange sense of contentment. I press my head deeper into the pillow and close my eyes, willing the giddiness of my pulse to slow.
If his body is looking to cuddle, I can at least assume he isn’t having any nightmares. And maybe the show of supposed affection will convince my mind for one night that he isn’t any kind of threat either.
I’m just starting to drift off again when Stavros shifts his position against me. His hand slides down… and dips right between my legs.
Oh! Julita exclaims alongside the spike of arousal that shoots up from my core.
In an instant, my sex is aching, my breath catching in my lungs. A gasp stutters out of me.
And Stavros wakes up.
I feel it in the hitch of his chest and the tensing of his muscles against my body. His words come out in a hasty mumble as he yanks his hand away. “Ivy—I didn’t—Gods—”
He’s started to pull away from me when his frame freezes up even more. A husky note enters his hazy voice. “You’re wet for me.”
I’m pretty sure my drawers are outright drenched from his unconscious groping. The evidence of my arousal must have lingered on his hand.
I should say something to break the moment, but need is still humming through my body. My lips part, and all that comes out is a whimper that sounds like a plea.
“Fuck,” Stavros mutters, so raw a heady shiver ripples through me.
He shifts toward me again, setting his hand on my hip like a question.
This is absurd. I shouldn’t want this.
But the only thing I’m certain of in my sleepy haze is how much I do.
My head tips back encouragingly as if of its own accord. My hips give a slight rock, guiding his hand forward.
Another guttural curse spills from Stavros’s mouth, his breath hot on my hair. Then his fingers slide back to the place where I craved them most.
I bite my lip but can’t quite restrain a moan. Stavros echoes the sound with a ragged breath and ducks his head to brand his mouth against the crook of my neck.
He strokes his hand between my legs, setting off pulse after pulse of pleasure. I open my thighs a little wider to give him more access, and he makes a strangled sound.
“That’s right. Want to make you come apart for me. Gods, I want to feel all of you.”
He releases me to a whine of protest that I haven’t finished before he’s delving his hand right beneath my drawers. The caress of his fingers against my most sensitive skin brings another gasp to my lips.
Stavros molds his body against me as he has his way with my sex. His forefinger circles my clit in a spiral of blissful sparks and dips lower to explore my soaked opening. When he curls it right inside me, I shudder with a swell of delight.
Even through the daze of mingled fatigue and pleasure, I notice the bulge nudging against my lower ass. If the strain in his voice and the eagerness of his touch weren’t enough to convince me, that’d be plenty of proof of how affected my unintended lover is.
I can’t let him keep all the control here, can I? I’m not going to be selfish.
As my hips sway with the rhythm of his hand, I reach behind me. At the graze of my fingers, Stavros growls.
The rocking of his hand speeds up. A second strong finger dips between my folds, parting them, stretching me in just the right way.
As the heel of his hand starts to rub against my clit to giddying effect, I drag my fingers up and down his rigid cock through his drawers. Gods smite me, there’s a lot of him.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if that part of him is as massive as the rest.
Stavros buries his face in my hair, his urgent breaths tickling over my scalp. I’m too lost in the pleasure to figure out where the waistband of his drawers are, but I curl my fingers around his length as well as I can amid the fabric to pump him properly.
With a groan, he bucks into my grasp in time with his pulsing hand. The wave of pleasure is building inside me, already fogging my vision.
Even as I press into his touch, desperate for the release I can taste, I’m determined to bring him with me. I grip him tighter, work my hand faster, reveling in the broken panting that shows he’s as lost in the moment as I am.
Stavros plunges his fingers even deeper into me with a graze of my clit, and a dam inside seems to burst.
I come with a rough cry and a clench of my sex around him, the final surge of ecstasy searing through my body. But even as my muscles shake with my release, I manage to pump him harder in turn.
Stavros groans again, how much because of my climax and how much my touch, I don’t know. Either way, his hips jerk behind me.
In an instant, his drawers are as damp as mine, the hot spurt of his release soaking through to my wrist.
He withdraws his hand slowly to rest it on my belly, and mine drifts back to my thigh. As our breaths even out and the final shivers of bliss dissipate, a sheen of ice creeps through my chest.
How much did he really want this intimacy with me, rather than whatever woman his bleary mind imagined in his sleep?
Will he think I prompted the interlude somehow? Lured him in with my riven wiles?
What if this is the moment that tips him back over the edge to reviling me?
I hate the ache that lances through me at the thought.
I tug myself away over the short remaining space to the very edge of the mattress and flip around to face him. “This wasn’t— I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
Stavros peers back at me, his damaged eyes unfocused in a way he doesn’t usually allow them to appear when he’s fully alert. He knits his brow. “Of course you didn’t. You barely even wanted to sleep in the bed.”
The tension keeps constricting around my ribs like a vise. My swallow brings back an echo of the burn of the rope around my throat. “I stayed on my side. I didn’t even realize you’d moved until you were already right there.”
He frowns and seems to stir himself into greater wakefulness. “I’m not upset. That was—” His head twitches to sharpen his vision. “Curse it all, Ivy, don’t look at me like that.”
My hands ball between us. “Like what?”
“Like you’re fucking terrified of me.”
My mouth opens and closes again. I stare back at him, and the only honest thing I can say spills out. “What if I am scared of you?”
I don’t think I’m imagining the pain that flickers through Stavros’s expression. He shifts his hand toward me but stops before it touches my face, maybe noting the stiffening of my posture.
“I’ve told you how sorry I am,” he says hoarsely. “I swear I don’t see you as a threat anymore. Gods above, I trust you… as much as I trust anyone in this place.”
And there it is. My lungs constrict so tightly I can barely breathe.
I push myself into a sitting position, every part of me braced to run. “But you don’t trust me completely. Or you wouldn’t feel like you needed to qualify that statement.”
Stavros gives a ragged laugh. “This is how I was trained. I don’t trust anyone completely—not even myself. It doesn’t matter.”
The bottom of my stomach has dropped out. I scramble right off the bed, snatching at my discarded dress.
“Of course it fucking does,” I retort. “You can laugh about it, because it doesn’t matter to you. But what it means to me is you could change your mind back again at any moment, after any mistake, and I’d find myself with a noose around my neck after all.”
“Ivy.” Stavros jerks upright in my wake, but I’m already darting past the bedroom door.
I haul my gown down over me as hastily as I can and toss my cloak over the undone laces. Grabbing my boots, I tuck them under my arm with my balled underskirt.
Every motion, every brush of my drawers against my sensitized parts, reminds me of what an idiot I was just a few moments ago.
With a thump of the covers, Stavros’s footsteps barge after me. “Ivy, you have to listen to me—”
No. Listening to him is how I ended up in his bed to begin with.
I bolt for the door and flee down the hall with my cloak flapping around me.