Chapter 30 #2
Nes dared to hope he’d only peeked in and gone on his way. It was silent out there. But her sprouting hope was squashed before it had the chance to bud. A clatter followed by rhythmic thumping and swearing tore open the bundle of anxiety nestled in her chest.
It sounded for all the world that the duke found her candlestick. Stubbed his toe, most likely. A vision of him hopping around on one foot floated into Nesrina’s mind, and despite the anxiety saturating every fiber of her being, she had to bite back a giggle.
A rush of water broke the silence as the bathtub taps were turned on.
Oh, no.
The thudding of her anxious heart propelled bile up her throat.
The image of stubbed-toe Kas morphed from one of a man clothed to one who was lacking attire.
She half—no, fully—expected him to throw open the door and bear down on her.
She didn’t want that to happen. That would be terrifying.
It was not what she wanted to happen. Not at all. Definitely not.
No Kas, clothed or unclothed, intruded on her hideout. Eventually, the taps were turned off and she heard splashing as he climbed into the tub in the center of the room.
Who takes a godsdamn bath at midnight?
Stifling a yawn, she inched farther into the room, making her way toward the window.
Really? Now I’m tired?
Aside from the occasional muffled splash, the washroom was quiet.
But she knew he was still out there, and she was trapped.
Dim moonlight was enough to confirm she stood in an empty closet.
Something about the extensive built-in shelving and floor-to-ceiling mirror at the far end told Nes this was a room for a woman.
“Oh.” Her voice, luckily, remained no louder than a breath as she realized she was in the future Duchess of Stormhill’s closet. Nes swallowed back the little ball of confusion rising up her throat.
Then she waited, and waited, and waited more. As she considered whether she could open the window, magic herself a ladder, and climb to the grass far below, all without being seen or heard, the muffled splashing grew louder, then stopped altogether.
Silence descended, the oppressive sort that left her with nothing but the thudding of her heart to keep her company.
She was ready to tear out her hair as anxiety urged her to climb out that lened window.
Finally, a low glugging indicated the tub was draining, and she relaxed .
. . a little. It wasn’t until she was positive he’d left the chamber that she dared to emerge from the closet.
The robe she’d fallen into unintentionally, then sniffed, intentionally, was gone.
She hoped the lit candles weren’t a sign of his impending return.
Nes spent a few minutes trying to release the hidden panel again before giving up and moving to the main door.
She cupped her hand to the wood and listened to the count of forty, wanting to be positive he’d gone away, ideally out of his apartment altogether.
Silence greeted her, so she steeled herself and eased the handle until she had enough of a gap to sneak out.
Nes thanked the gods the hinges were so well oiled as she crept into the dim hall and assessed her surroundings.
Flickering light drew her eyes to the left where a bright chamber expanded off the short corridor.
His bedchamber, she’d wager. There was one door across the way, cracked to a dark room, and another stood to her right, closed, at the end of the hall.
That one. Nes was fairly certain the closed door would deposit her somewhere near the library. If she could manage to get out of the apartment undetected, she could compose herself and figure out how to get back to her room.
A low murmur from a man and chuffing from a dog told her Kas and Lellin were very present in the lit chamber to her left.
Now or never, Nes.
She made a dash for the door, and her fingers closed around the brass handle as a familiar voice cut through the silence.
“Tilal, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Oh, no.”
Behind her, he chuckled, low and predatory, closer than he’d been before. Her heart raced, horribly thrilled when she should have been terrified.
Nes turned to him, trying and failing to wipe the guilty look from her face.
He was still ten feet away, advancing like a Gramenian big cat.
She raised both hands in surrender and hoped she appeared suitably sheepish—confused, ideally—so she could sell that she’d inadvertently wandered in.
It wasn’t a lie! But the gleam in his eyes and the smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth said he wouldn’t believe for a moment that she’d turned up by accident.
She should really correct the misconception. Her heart throbbed as she took in the sight of him, five feet away and dressed in nothing more than his robe.
Run, you dolt.
Before Nesrina could heed her thoughts and try the door again, he was on her.
In the most excruciatingly exciting attack of her life, Kas pressed both hands to the wall, crowding her against it.
She was caged. Staring up at him, mute, the delicious scent of sandalwood, cardamom, and cloves wafted over, offsetting the acidity making waves in her stomach.
His cozy aroma did nothing to slow the rapid beating of her heart, if anything it sped things up, dangerously so.
The duke made a low sound, somewhere between a growl and a sigh, a resigned predator.
Her heart stalled, and she blinked at him as she wet her lips.
A muscle in Kas’s jaw tensed, then his mouth opened as if he planned to speak, but he thought better of it, and shook his head.
The move sent his curls swooshing from side to side and Nes nearly reached up to smooth the locks from his forehead. In an attempt to suppress her lustful musings, she grasped the skirts of her nightgown and sighed. Her breath carried with it a hundred unspoken words, easily.
In a flurry of movement, he leaned down, breath hot against her lips as he wrapped her in an embrace.
With his left hand cupping the back of her head, his right hooked around her waist; he pulled her hips toward him, and she arched her back.
Soft and needy, his lips worked against hers, coaxing her to relax.
She kissed him back, of course. She couldn’t help it.
But even as his firm grasp sent smoldering heat from his hands straight to her core, even as her lips pressed against his and their tongues warred, even as he tightened his hold on her, and his knee slipped between her legs—even then, Nesrina knew she could not allow herself to give in.
Her ever-present anxiety no longer threatened to corrode her throat. It had fallen back into a tightly wound ball in her stomach. But still, it was there. For every soothing pulse of heat that flooded her core, a beat of nerves rippled out from her gut.
Abruptly, she turned her head to the side and lifted her hands, her fingers slipping inside his robe as she pushed him off. “I can’t.”
He dropped his hands to his side and stepped back, giving her space. “Shouldn’t or can’t?”
“Can not.”
He looked hurt, almost. “Why?”
Why? Does he not understand? She took a step toward him, clenching her fists as she allowed the sadness she’d been shoving down for the past few weeks to surface.
With it came frustration, annoyance, and plain old anger.
It was easier, somehow, to work with that than her nerves that were begging to take the reins.
“Why?” She stepped toward him again, parroting his question as she brought her finger up to his chest. He stepped back. She advanced again, accidentally jabbing his exposed pec—she’d been aiming for the robe.
“Yes, why? You said you shouldn’t—”
“Can’t,” she corrected, punctuating her single word response with another jab.
“Why?” He reached up and captured her hand, forcing her to stop poking at him.
“You are a duke! I’m a tutor. That’s why.” This time she stepped away from him. “I can’t. I just can’t! I can’t do”—she waved her hands up and down, gesturing to his full form and beyond—“this.”
His lips pinched, quivering. “You keep saying that. What do you think is going to happen?”
Nesrina glared.
“Honestly, Nes, do you expect to be arrested? And if so, by who? The duke?”
Stomping was her direct response to his needling questions.
“You think I can take some sort of side position as—as your mistress,” she hissed, her stomach dropping out as she gave voice to the concept that had been plaguing her for days, “and still remain in the employ of the Crown? Here I thought you had a modicum of intelligence, Lord Kahoth.” Her hand flew to her hip as she popped it out, pushing those pesky nerves away and yanking frustration to the forefront.
Nesrina poked again at his chest. “Enough brains, at least, to realize that I can’t lose my post as tutor.
I can not, it’s my sole source of income.
You’d have me out on the streets without a reference to—to satisfy your needs? ”
He blinked at her, and for a second, she hoped she had stunned him into silence.
Of course, she hadn’t.
When he spoke again his voice was low, raspy, full to bursting with uninhibited desire that nearly undid her. “And what of your needs?”
Nesrina stamped her foot again and grunted. “I just told you my needs. I need to keep my position. I need to save money. I need to not keep doing whatever this is. I need to go to bed!” With that she spun away, pulling out a move dusted off after a few weeks of disuse.
Nes thought she heard him chuckle as she hurried back to the door.
“It’s locked,” he called, conveniently waiting until she tried and failed to turn the brass knob.
Frustration burst from her nostrils, and he rumbled with laughter. Infuriating man.
Refusing defeat, Nesrina spun back and stomped his way, refusing to make eye contact with the evidence of his desire, proudly tenting his robe. Kas jumped to the side and pressed himself against the wall, playing as if he was terrified of her tiny, angry form.
The move, for some reason, rankled. How can he be silly at a time like this? That esheb. That stupid, rude, impossible man!
She glared at him as she passed and found herself in his spacious chamber.
A cozy living area lay to her right with a velvet-covered sofa before a welcoming fireplace.
Lellin poked her long snout up over the edge of the couch and sniffed the air before lying back down.
To her left was his bed. A massive four-postered beast that looked to be about the same size as the one they’d slept on in Rohilavol.
Plenty of space for the enormous duke to .
. . sprawl out at night. She swallowed thickly.
“To your right.” Kas had followed her down the hall and hovered at her back. She refused to look over her shoulder, knowing she’d be greeted by the wide planes of his chest and his partially opened robe.
She turned, finding a set of double doors.
“Oh, and Nes,” his voice rumbled, close enough his breath heated the crown of her head, “I have never, not once, thought of you as a mistress.”
Without looking back, she frantically twisted a handle. It opened, and she fled.
“I have never, not once, thought of you as a mistress.” His deep voice tumbled through her mind as she raced up the stairs.
Shoving open her bedroom door, she flew inside and locked it at her back.
What the fates does that mean? Kas hadn’t sounded like he was lying . . . but his behavior was decidedly un-friend-like.
Leaning against the closed door, Nes let out a shaky breath that spoke of a far greater depth of emotions than she was willing to unpack at the moment.