Chapter 27
Grimes
After a few hours, the doctor closes up the medical tent for the night and tells me to take Florian home.
I hire a horse and cart because he’d never be able to manage the long walk.
Abask is wicked stuff: he remains in much the same state for the next three days.
I lose track of how many times I empty the sick bucket.
After a while he’s bringing nothing up, just a tiny bit of bile.
Or it’s just a dry heave that cuts him in half, wracking his slim body with pain.
Between vomiting I feed him tiny sips of water and wash his fiery forehead with a cool towel.
He lies in my own bed, the window open to provide what meager breeze the hot days can offer.
My neighbor Breta runs in and out to check on us, and to bring something for me to eat, because I refuse to leave Florian’s side.
I attempt to feed him tiny bites of food to get his strength up, but every time I try he looks even more nauseated, pulling his head away in desperation, his eyes pleading with me.
I still feel like shit, too. My whole body aches from the gang’s beating, as bad as after my toughest fights.
But it’s nothing compared to Florian’s suffering.
Compared to what could’ve happened to him if Hevra had gotten his way.
Judge Draved told me that according to Galbravan law, Florian’s thirty-year sentence with Hevra would’ve begun after he served out my two years.
Being placed in the same sentence as that scumbag gave me a crawling feeling all the way up my spine.
I snatch a few moments’ rest here and there when Florian is sleeping fitfully. But I refuse to leave the room, either dozing beside him on the bed or in the chair by the window. I want him to know I haven’t left his side, if he’s capable of understanding anything at all.
Breta watches me care for him, hands on her hips.
That I told you so look on her face would be enraging if I had any energy to spare on getting enraged.
At last she says she wants to talk to me in private.
I’m not sure how much Florian can even understand in his state, but she’s adamant.
So I get him settled, a little quieter, his head on the pillow and his eyes fixed on the wall, and creep outside the room.
“Do you still deny you love him?” Breta demands.
I shake my head. I’m too exhausted to argue anymore. It seems pointless to deny it to myself, or her. I knew when Draved told me Florian had been drugged, and I imagined him helpless and alone in his enemy’s power, without me to protect him.
“Then make it up to him when he wakes up,” Breta says.
Make it up to him? Easy for her to say.
**
Finally, on the third morning after his poisoning, Florian looks at me with something approaching lucidity in his blue eyes.
“Hey,” I say, like he’s back from a long journey. “How are you feeling?”
“You caught me again,” he whispers. His voice is creaky.
He doesn’t sound mad about it. Can’t he remember my confession, my revenge plot? Maybe his memory is still patchy. He lurches for me suddenly. Trying to kiss me. Apparently he remembers our lovemaking, if nothing else. I pull back, feeling guilty when hurt steals into his exhausted eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he says. “Don’t you want to?”
Don’t I want to? Stars, I want to more than I want to breathe.
“Why do you want to?” I ask. “Can’t you remember what I told you?”
“Yeah. You won me in that bet because you hated me and wanted revenge.”
I blink at the matter-of-fact tone. “Okay, so why do you still want me?” I say. “I treated you so poorly.”
He heaves a heavy sigh. He looks exhausted again already after only a few words, worn down by the abask and lack of food.
“I guess because I’m a useless, needy slut,” he says.
Those sound like someone else’s words. They have no place in his beautiful mouth.
“I won’t allow you to talk about yourself like that,” I say.
“Sorry, Boss.”
He looks down until I lift his chin, smiling at him.
He smiles back, but he looks so weak it breaks my heart.
I’d drain the last of the poison from him by taking it into my own body if I could.
I want to kiss away those dark shadows under his eyes and caress his hair and pull him onto my lap.
But I have no right to touch him at all.
Not after what I did. It was my fault he almost lost thirty years of his life.
Not to mention whatever other horrors Hevra had in store for him.
“You’re hurt,” he says, running worried eyes over my face. The bruises have faded since their peak, but they’re still bad enough to prick at his gentle heart. “What happened?”
“Nothing much,” I lie. “I’ll tell you when you feel stronger.”
He leans close, his eyes wide and locked on mine.
He’s practically begging me to cuddle him.
I can’t resist that look. I rationalize that he needs comfort while he’s ill; it doesn’t have to be romantic.
It would be cruel to refuse to hold him, in the circumstances.
So I put my arms around him. He folds himself happily into my embrace, his arms stealing around my waist. Then he climbs right onto my lap.
When I don’t object, a sigh of contentment comes from the very core of his being.
He relaxes like a baby animal that finally feels safe.
Because of my embrace? My heart, that I’ve guarded and kept aloof for so long, feels as though there’s a large, deep crack opening up in it.
Florian is pushing himself inside in his own sweet, gentle way, forcing my heart open wider and wider until the world seems brighter and my bitterness starts to feel like a waste of years instead of the very point of my being.
No. Don’t go down that road. I can’t deny anymore that I love him. But he couldn’t feel the same way. He still isn’t thinking straight. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He can’t have forgiven me already. I don’t deserve that affection in his eyes. Certainly not that trust.
He looks at me closely, his face screwed up like he’s trying to figure something out.
“Boss, I don’t mean to be rude, but is your nose even more crooked than usual?”
I can’t help laughing at his big, worried eyes.
“It got broken again,” I explain.
He frowns. “Okay, you really need to tell me how all this happened.”
He sounds like he means it.
I take a deep breath. “When I was fighting those people who came after you.”
I don’t get any more specific. He doesn’t need to hear all the gory details about the abask and the contract yet.
He looks utterly confused. “I’m sorry you got hurt because of me. I don’t remember anything.”
“Don’t you dare apologize to me, Florian. It’s me who should be apologizing to you, on my knees.”
His gaze flickers over my face, lingering on my eyes, then my lips. “But I’d much rather be on my knees for you, Boss,” he breathes.
His deft fingers sneak down the collar of my shirt, at the back of my neck. Fire flickers through me. Quickly, I shift his weight so he’s not in contact with my cock.
“You need to rest,” I say, trying to sound firm.
“Later, then?” he says, irrepressible.
“Do you really still want me?” I blurt, authority crumbling. I’m incredulous. “Even after my revenge scheme?”
“Yes, I really do.”
We look at each other, our breath light between us, our faces so close.
Tears come to my eyes. I don’t know how lucid he is, if he really means this, or if he’s still suffering from the effect of the drug.
The hope that his words give me is almost too much to bear.
What if he takes it back later when he’s back to normal?
I place a light kiss on top of his head and so gently, I disentangle myself from his sweet, needy grip.
“Rest now,” I say. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”