Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
GWENNA
On Kai’s shift, we go to the salle again. Once more, I post up on a bench with my reading, and Kai dresses in his whites and proceeds to drill: warm-ups, footwork, bladework.
But now it feels different.
I’m not watching him. But I am…aware of him.
Maybe in a way that I wasn’t before. I saw a glimpse of his back again—the welts still there, a little healed, maybe, but not gone.
Morgan’s nine-herbs salve is in my bag. The right thing to do is to give it to him.
When someone’s hurting, you help them. Right?
I stare at the words in my book, not seeing anything.
Kai doesn’t want my help. Why would he? What am I to him? To any of them, honestly?
Or vice versa?
Clang. Kai’s blade glances off the wall, missing the target, and I jump. He glances at me, flashes a look that seems to say sorry and I return it with a no big deal kind of expression.
But my heart’s hammering.
I told Kingston I trusted him. Trusted them, by association. And I do. In the sense that I trust that they will do what they said they’ll do, because I see how dedicated they are to this whole…thing.
You don’t make vows like that if you’re not deadly serious, after all.
But beyond that…
“I’m distracting you.”
Again, I jump. Kai’s right in front of me, on the edge of the far strip, swiping his hair out of his face.
“What?” I shake my head. “No, you’re not. It’s just…boring reading.” That’s not untrue. If I weren’t so full of inexplicable nervous energy right now, it’d put me to sleep.
Kai smirks, grabs his water bottle, plops onto the bench a foot or two away from me. “And yet you persist.” He puts the water to his lips, takes a drink. Then shakes his head. “You and King. Always with the reading. I don’t get it.”
I tip my head. “You’re a TA.”
“Yeah, in art history,” he says. “Pretty pictures. Naked ladies. What’s not to like?” He shrugs, grinning, almost like he’s trying to…provoke me somehow. Not in a cruel way, though.
Still, I feel the need to defend myself. “Well, this reading is fairly important. You know, given the nature of the quest you’ve devoted your life to, and everything? So maybe you should thank me for taking on so much of the boring part.”
Kai laughs. “Yeah, okay.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He lifts a shoulder. Doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Kai,” I say, almost exasperated. “You can’t tell me you don’t care about this. You took a vow. You were consecrated by a bunch of…faceless monks in France. You literally do nothing else but this.”
Kai snaps his gaze to me.
“What was I going to do, Gwenna?” he bites out.
“Seventeen years old, no parents, no home, and no skills beyond being able to hit people with swords pretty hard. I’d painted myself into a fucking corner.
” He puts his elbows on his knees, leaning forward to stare at the strip.
“You know how expensive a sport this is to participate in? It’s not fucking…
pickup basketball. An FIE kit alone is gonna run you a thousand bucks, and that’s before you even get into all the travel and logistics to actually get to any events.
” He runs a hand through his hair, damp strands weaving over the tattoos on his fingers.
“So none of it really matters to you,” I say flatly. A familiar disappointment twinges in my chest.
He just doesn’t care.
Kai’s voice is sharp and sudden.
“I didn’t say that.” He straightens up, wincing as he does, and looks me dead in the eye.
I swallow hard.
“I didn’t say that,” he repeats. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I repeat. “Sorry for…offending you. I guess you are…”
I trail off. Kai’s eyes narrow.
“Guess I am what?”
I breathe out hard and flatten my palms against the pages of my book. “I guess you are doing your best to make sure nothing happens to the quest object.”
Kai’s nostrils flare. “Is that what you think?”
“Is that not the truth?” I look right at him. “Why else would you bother doing this, Kai? What’s in it for you?”
Kai stands up. Strides over to me, crouches down, and plants a hand on the wall behind me so that he’s staring straight into my face.
Inches away.
“I could give a shit about what the Brothers want. I could give a shit about that vow.” His voice is low and taut, his words close enough to brush over my skin. “I bother, Gwenna, because if anything else happened to you, if anything else ever, ever happened to you, I would never forgive myself.”
My breath catches in my chest.
We’re so close. So, so close.
Then Kai gets up.
“I’m done here,” he mutters over his shoulder, walking toward the locker room.
“Kai!” I jump to my feet. “Wait, I—”
Kai waits.
I don’t know how I was going to finish that statement.
“I…have something for you.” The words drop out of my mouth automatically. “For your…back. A salve.”
Kai blinks at me. Chews his lip ring.
“Yeah, okay.” He nods into the locker room. I crouch for my bag, my fingers suddenly trembling a little, and fumble around for the tin from Morgan.
The locker room is deluxe—soft lighting, carpet, polished sinks and showers, tall wooden lockers with nameplates for each fencer—but that’s not what takes me aback.
Kai’s sitting on a bench, jacket off. And now that I see his wounds up close…
“Jesus,” I breathe. “What happened, Kai?”
“You really wanna know?” Kai looks over his shoulder. Then frowns. “Scratch that. You don’t.”
“No,” I protest. “I do. I—”
“I’m telling you, you don’t,” Kai says shortly. Not unkindly, though. “Just patch me up.”
I swallow, nod, and unscrew the top of the salve. “This might…sting a little,” I say. “Emphasis on might. I actually have no idea.”
Kai snorts a soft laugh, and it’s at that moment that I realize exactly what I’ve offered to do.
No. It’s fine. I can touch Kai. That’s not weird. It’d be weirder not to. It’s the right thing to do when someone’s hurt.
…I would never forgive myself.
I scoop a small lump of the substance out on my index finger. It does, as Morgan promised, smell like the mouth of hell, but I guess that’s what makes it work.
“Jesus.” Kai pulls a face. “What’s in there?”
“Secret herbs and spices,” I deadpan, rolling my finger and thumb together. It’s surprisingly smooth, at least. “I have no idea. But it’s supposed to work, so…” I take a step closer. “Hold still, I guess.”
Slowly, gingerly, I put my fingers to his spine, where the skin is so red it’s almost purple. Kai flinches, at first, but then, like he’s trained himself, steels his muscles.
“Sorry!” I cry. “Sorry, sorry, I—”
“You’re good,” he says through his teeth. “You’re fine.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmur again, spreading the salve with as light a touch as I possibly can. His skin is warm—hot, really—under my fingertips. “Does that help, at least?”
Kai nods. “Yeah. It—ah!” He winces, but shakes his head. “It’s a good hurt. I think.” Then he adds in a mutter “fucking Morgan better not be poisoning me.”
“She’s not,” I affirm, and apply another smear, this one a few inches below. Already, the first bruise looks better, feels less inflamed to the touch as I glide my fingers below it. I
When I reach the bottom of his back, I realize Kai’s eyes are closed.
“All done,” I say softly. “I think.”
He blinks. Looks a little dazed. “Thanks.” Tentatively, he sits up straighter, as if waiting for a shock of pain that doesn’t seem to come, and his face relaxes. “Damn. The witch was right.” Then he frowns. “Too bad it smells like Satan’s asshole.”
“Yeah,” I say, staring distastefully down at my hand. “A necessary evil, I guess.”
I look around for a sink, but before I do, Kai’s swinging his legs around the bench so he’s facing me.
“Sorry. Here.” He bends over, picks up his jacket from the ground, and gestures at me.
Confused, I frown—but Kai just sighs and reaches for my wrist. Pulls my hand towards him and gently wipes it off with his fencing jacket.
“You shouldn’t have to go around smelling like death all day, at least,” he says.
“Ha. Thanks.” My heart is suddenly, painfully pounding. Touching him before was one thing. Touching him like this is… “Your jacket?” I ask—for some reason. It’s all I can think to say.
Kai lifts a shoulder. “Laundry. It exists.”
He’s still holding onto my wrist. Undoubtedly feeling my pulse race, every little beat of my heart.
“You feel better, though,” I say. Beat. Beat.
Kai nods. “Yeah. I do. Thanks for…” He trails off.
“Mhm.” I nod. Beat. Beat.
“You didn’t have to.”
“No,” I agree. “I didn’t.” Beat. “But I wanted to.”
Kai looks up at me. Right in the eyes.
Works his jaw to the side like he’s deciding something.
“Fuck it,” he mutters.
And he pulls me down to him.
I nearly lose my balance, landing sidesaddle on the bench in front of him, but I don’t fall, I can’t fall, because Kai’s arm is wrapped around my waist as he kisses me.
He kisses me. Kai kisses me, hard and hot and almost too firm, and when he breaks away he pants into the inch of space between our mouths.
“I’m sorry,” he says, forehead still pressed to mine. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“No.” I shake my head under his grip. “Don’t—”
Somehow, he knows what I mean, and he kisses me, takes me, a second impossible time, with the warmth of his lips and the glide of his tongue and the little scrape of metal on my skin. I clutch at him, press into him, kiss back even as he clamps his hold around me harder.
Then he pulls away slightly, and the rush of disappointment that cools over me is almost painful. But he doesn’t let me go. Just holds my head in his hands at looks at me.
“I’m fucking crazy about you, Gwenna,” he says, voice low, eyes locked on mine. “You know that, right?”
What? I’m so stunned I can only answer honestly. “No.”
The answer seems to amuse him. “Then let me prove it to you.”
God, this is such a mistake, this is such a mistake, I think, but I can’t not.
I’m beyond reason, I’m possessed, running my hands over his arms and nipping at his lips and shifting under his touch as his hands find their way down my body.
He leans into me, pushing me back slightly with a hand bracing the small of my back as the other slips its way to my hip, under the waistband of my skirt.
Someone gasps. Me. Fuck. My face and neck blaze with heat, but I don’t tell him to stop, I can’t tell him to stop, I’d die if he stopped even if my legs are starting to tremble the further down his touch goes.
I’m scared. Not scared he’ll hurt me but scared that I don’t know what’s going to happen, what I’m supposed to do, and to my horror I realize Kai must notice too, because he briefly stops his hand, stops kissing me, and nuzzles into my neck.
“Relax,” he whispers into the space beneath my ear. “It’s supposed to feel good. If it doesn’t, I’ll stop.”
Throat too thick for words, I just nod, find him again to kiss him, and slip back under his touch. He moves swiftly, easily, the tips of his fingers skating under my clothes and over my hip and—
“Mmph.” I bleat some muffled noise into his mouth.
It’s…I…
He slides his finger back.
“Ah!”
I sound insane, random syllables. He kisses me harder, closer, so close I can feel the heat of his bare chest even through my sweater, and dimly I realize I’m on my back now, laid across the narrow bench. Kai strokes me again, just lightly, but the sensation makes my whole body shudder and clench.
Am I going to…
How will I know?
My eyes fly open, and when they do, I find myself staring at the lockers behind me, like I’m remembering for the first time where I am, the name KINGSTON PENDRAGON gleaming down at me from the plaque.
Gently, Kai takes my chin in his hand and tips my head back down. “Please.” He leans in and whispers against the hollow of my neck. “Forget about my goddamn brother.”
His fingers twist against me again, and I gasp.
Never mind. I’ll know.
But if I—
When I—
Will he know?
It’s too late now, I think desperately, it’s too late with his hand spanning the full breadth of my hips under the waistband of my panties and his fingertips stroking harder and firmer as his body presses mine hard into the bench beneath us.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “That’s it. Break for me, angel.”
I cry out against his mouth as I come.
Ragged, hard, pulsing, it rips through me, splitting me wide open as I clutch the back of Kai’s neck for purchase, panting into his ear as he holds me, firm and steady, not stilling his hand or slowing his rhythm until he feels me go slack.
Then slowly, gently, he retracts his hand, a startlingly cold sensation in its wake.
“I’m…” I stammer. “I’m…”
I’m so wet, I think. And blush.
Kai grins. “You’re gorgeous.”
He grips my head in both hands, strokes my left cheek with still-slick fingers, and pulls me in for a kiss—a slow, burning kiss, and it’s only then, when our bodies are close again, that I feel a stiff brush of something and notice the protrusion peaking under his fencing breeches.
Oh God. I gulp, breaking the kiss. Was I supposed to…I wasn’t even thinking...
Obviously, my mind retorts. Obviously you weren’t fucking thinking, Gwenna.
Kai follows my gaze and chuckles.
“Relax. It’s not gonna hurt you. Or me,” he adds quickly. “I’m fine.”
“You’re…” I swallow. “Are you sure?”
He leans back, so he’s sitting up, straddling the bench, and locks a hand around each of my wrists to guide me up with him. When I’m upright, he lets me go.
My hands are shaking.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically. But Kai’s eyes are wide now, his jaw tense. He darts his gaze from my hands to my face.
“Are you sure?”
I roll my lower lip under my teeth. Blow out a long breath.
“How about we both agree that we’re both fine?” I say.
Because the world is settling back on its axis. Gravity is returning things to their proper places around us, details sharpening back into focus, and—
Oh, fuck.
We can’t do this. Kai can’t do this.
I look up at him, the last of the warm haze giving way to cold reality.
“I’m…Kai, I’m so sorry,” I start, but Kai cuts me off.
“Don’t be.” He smiles. “I made my choice a long time ago.”