Chapter 32 Arwyn
ARWYN
Hector floated on his back in the middle of the lake, eyes closed and lips wide in the most beautiful smile I’d ever witnessed.
Whereas he was unbothered by the world, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. A halo of grime and ash haloed him, disturbed with the soft movements of his arms. His slender figure was kissed by the fresh water, a puddle growing in his belly button.
I stood on the bank, bare feet sinking into the soft mud. Water lapped over my toes, not cold but not too warm either. It was just… perfect. A strange word to use whilst stuck in a limbo run by a demon lord.
I’d been in the same position for a while, just watching, studying Hector with every ounce of my attention whilst my mind whirled with the things I knew I had to admit.
Just not yet.
I didn’t want to ruin the air of peace that encased the lake, and everything in it.
A cool breeze danced over my naked body. I’d left the fitted black boxers, which seemed extra snug as I looked over at Hector; his golden curls dancing around his head, his perfect skin, the body I knew so well, the body I craved.
I gave up trying not to get hard over him. It was, if anything, an impossible feat.
“Are you going to join me, or continue standing there watching like the grim reaper?” Hector’s voice skipped over the lake’s surface like a stone.
“I’m just enjoying the view,” I replied. “Is that such a crime?”
Hector’s smile grew wider, his eyes fluttering open to face the endless blue sky. “Perhaps you’d prefer the view with only inches between you and it… Arwyn. Come to me.”
His last three words were my siren call. Unable to refuse him, not that I even wanted to, I took cautious steps into the shallows. It was hard not to giggle as the fine weeds tickled my ankles, then my shins all the way up to my thighs.
“How are you feeling?”
Hector cut me off with a sudden splash of water. “No. No questions. No worrying. Nothing but us, the water and silence. Okay?”
I swallowed down hard. “I can’t promise you silence, but I can meet you in the middle.”
“Meet me in the middle?” Hector drank me in, eyes wide and full of a mutual desire. “Do explain.”
“There are some things I want to tell you,” I said.
“Especially before we go back to the base. I… I want us to be on the same page with everything. And for that, we need to talk about The Burning. Believe me, I want nothing more than to just exist here with you, and pretend like nothing is wrong, but I can’t. ”
Hector studied me, eyes tracing up every inch—and I mean every inch—of my body.
“Such as?”
The rune-mark I cast on you. Eleanor Letcombe. My father’s secrets. “That’s a loaded question.”
Hector frowned, pouting with his lower lip. His expression alone had the power to set a fire in my groin. “Then I have rules. Only once I kiss you, we can speak. Until then, can we just… pretend like nothing is wrong. Okay?”
We were so close now. My hands reached out beneath the water, my long fingers entrapping his small waist in a vise-like grip. “What’s stopping me from kissing you right now, and getting to the nitty-gritty?” I asked.
Hector kicked his legs out, water forcing between us. He tried everything in his power to swim away from me, but I refused to let go. His laugh was the music to my soul. It loosened up my internal worries and started to brush them away.
This—us—was so easy.
I laughed alongside him, hungry hands grasping blindly for other parts of his body to hold on to.
At one point Hector dove beneath the water, squirmed free of my hold, swam beneath my parted legs and came bursting back up behind me.
I didn’t have the chance to spin around before his arms were around my shoulders, his legs clamping on either side of my hips.
Hekate, the press of his toned body against my back sent ripples of pleasure through me.
“You’re trouble, little kitty. And you know it.”
“Wow,” Hector whispered into my ear, lips brushing my skin so tenderly I thought my cock would rip free of the too-tight boxers. “I haven’t heard you call me that in a while.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
Hector dragged a tongue down the curve of my ear, all the way to the base of my throat. Just when I thought he was about to skin teeth into my skin, he replied. “No. Actually, I want you to lean in close, and whisper it to me.”
“There are many other things I could be whispering to you, Hector Briar.”
“Is that so?”
More heat, more hardness… I could even sense something pressing into my back. “Kiss me?”
“You’re like a…” Hector stopped himself, gaze distracted. His expression sharpened as his eyes left mine, and landed on something I couldn’t see.
“What is it?” I tried to turn around, to shift Hector around until he was facing me, but it was no good. “What’s wrong?”
Soft, careful fingers brushed over the sensitive part on the back of my head. I’d forgotten about the wound there. Dread, and relief, uncoiled within me as Hector probed at it.
“When did this happen, Arwyn?” Hector’s tone was serious, as if I wasn’t getting out of answering it.
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about anything right now?” I shot back. Faced with the conversation I’d wanted to have suddenly made it hard to answer. “Not until we kiss.”
“It looks painful.” It was a statement, one I couldn’t argue with.
“Kiss me first, then I’ll explain.”
Hector’s exhale told me everything I needed to know.
He was… worried. Perhaps a little frustrated.
What made matters worse was the way he looked at me as I finally managed to turn around and face him.
Before, his eyes had glanced over me in a hungry, devouring type of way.
Now, he studied me in a new light. He was searching…
looking for more wounds that he’d missed.
From the grimace that overtook his devilishly handsome face, I knew he’d found what he was looking for.
A cut over my brow. A fading bruise on my cheek. The smear of crusted blood in my hairline. Small marks that I’d tried to heal myself with a few spoken spells, but failed to entirely conceal. Only the wound on the back of my skull had been left as an afterthought.
“Did he do this?” Hector practically growled.
I didn’t need Hector to say the name to know that he was talking about my father.
“No, darling.” I did it. My decisions, my choices. I lifted a dripping wet finger to my lips and tapped them. “Kiss first, tell after.”
Hesitantly, Hector obliged. After all, it was his rule. I closed my eyes, inhaling through my nose, as his soft mouth found mine. Colours danced in the darkness behind my eyelids, each one bright… each one an embodiment of the emotion that Hector made me feel with his kiss.
There was nothing starving about it. Nothing desperate or demanding of more.
It was simple. It was perfect. I tilted my head, hands running up Hector’s chest, fingers dancing over his nipples and up to rest like a band around his throat.
He moaned as our lips parted, and our tongues joined the fray.
Hector rested his arms over my shoulders. He anchored himself to me, back arching until his chest pressed into mine.
Then it stopped. He pulled away, worry creasing the lines across his forehead.
“Now tell me.”
I ran a tongue over my swollen mouth, devouring every last scrap of Hector’s taste, using it as an elixir to give me the strength to face the truth. Dutch courage, that’s what people called it. Drinking hard liquor to give them the confidence to do, or say, something they’d usually shy away from.
Hector, his kiss, was exactly that for me.
“It wasn’t Tomin who hurt me,” I admitted, unable to ignore the slight widening of his eyes. The relief that washed over him wouldn’t last long though. “In fact, it was you in a twisted, fucked-up kind of way.”
Hector gasped, mouth flying open. I stopped him saying anything until I finished.
“Or, more specifically, it was my fault.”
“I don’t understand.”
I reached up and laid a palm on his cheek. “Before The Burning started… the night when we slept together, I may or may not have put a little rune-mark on you. A small spell to protect you.”
Hector’s eyes widened a fraction. “You did what?”
“A mark of protection. A way of keeping you safe. It was my decision, so before you go running your mouth and berating me, I did it because I wanted to.”
“Did. What.”
I used my spare hand and lifted my fingers to the flesh over his heart. I began tracing the marks that I could still see, faint lines where my spell clung to his flesh. Hector looked down, but I knew from his lack of reaction that he couldn’t see the mark I’d cast upon him.
“Everything that happened to you, any pain, any wounds, any consequences, I took them upon myself.” I refused to take my eyes off him. “And I will not apologise for it either, so don’t even demand that of me.”
Where I expected anger from Hector, all I received was sadness.
Tears flowed freely, spilling down his face, melding with the lake’s water that clung to his skin like jewels. “You put yourself in harm’s way for me?”
I smiled, utterly and completely proud of myself. “And I’d do it again, and again… if given the choice.”
Hector eyes glazed over, his mind going elsewhere. No doubt he was running through the events of the last trial, piecing everything together. When he was ready, when his mind was sure he’d figured it all out, only then did he speak.
“The wound on your head. That was when I hit my head against a gravestone. It was so hard I saw stars, but there was no mark on my skull. No sign that anything had happened.”
I shivered at the thought of him nearly knocking himself unconscious. “I wasn’t there, but if that is what happened, I believe you.”
“And these.” Hector’s hand traced the countless marks across my face, and down my torso. “These are from when I fought against the Hunters who attacked me and Kai. I knew they’d hit me a few times, but again, it was like they hadn’t. No marks, no pain.”