Chapter 36 #2
His eyes harden. “What I want, what I need, and what is right are three entirely different things.”
I almost laugh, stabbing my gaze at the crowd giving us a healthy crescent of space. “How very cryptic of you.”
Can he hear the hammer of my heart? Because I can. It’s roaring in my ears, rattling me to the core.
It’s telling me to push him further—to hack and hack until I break him apart so I can inspect his insides. See if he’s just as stony beneath the hard surface.
I don’t realize his grip on my arm has loosened until cold fingertips graze across the bare skin at the small of my back ...
I jerk from the contact.
“Despite how murderous I am,” he mumbles, and there’s a roundness to his words, like they had to veer their course to get here. “You do look ravishing in that color.”
My breath hitches, head whipping to the side, blood rushing to my cheeks as he begins to trace little circles over my sizzling skin.
They’re tight, taunting, and more delicate than the tapered tip of a paintbrush. They’re stirring my insides, twisting a coil of nerves in my lower stomach like a living, breathing, hot-blooded serpent.
A dampness forms between my legs, and I tighten the press of my thighs, feeling that flush shift from my cheeks, down my neck, where it pinches my nipples into hard peaks.
I’m a stone statue, tentative to move lest I scare him away. Worried that if I shift, he’ll smell my body’s reaction to the small dose of attention he’s gifting me.
“Thank you,” I whisper, barely loud enough to stir the air.
“Though I’m not sure how I feel about everyone being privy to all ... this ,” he grinds out, drawing his circles lower, lower , until they’re dancing around one of the twin dimples stamped above my bum.
I clear my throat and try not to squirm.
He’s never touched me this way—open and exploring. Like he’s painting little secrets on my skin.
“It’s just a back ...”
“It’s not just any back, Orlaith.”
I swallow the tart taste of indecision, questioning everything I’m about to do.
With a few stirs of Rhordyn’s finger, he’s unwoven my resolve and turned me into a pathetic puddle of need. I’m a slave to these sips of attention he feeds me—I need them like I need the breath in my lungs—and I can’t afford it.
The cost is far too steep.
Strong, composed, resilient ...
“Why did you lock my door?” I ask, biting the words from my slate of hardened resolve.
For a moment, I think a line forms between his brows, but when I blink, it’s gone.
“A kindness.”
It’s probably a bad time to tell him that while I appreciate the thought, his execution needs work.
“That’s it?”
“Yes. But you’re here now,” he says, studying the crowd. He turns those eyes back on me, and I realize exactly why there’s so much space separating us from anyone else—like there’s a barrier physically stopping them from stepping too close.
There’s a lethal dexterity in those silver-spun eyes that’s gutting .
“Why are you here, Orlaith?”
I swallow, looking away before my insides spill. “Sucker for punishment, I guess.”
His fingers pause.
The silence stretches while he carves my cheek with his icy blade of perusal, before he grunts and looks away, allowing me to finally draw a half satisfying breath as he begins painting those circles again.
“And what did you do with the bluebells?” I stab my stare at the side of his face, though he continues to survey the crowd. “Toss them over the balcony or hang them up to dry?”
“Neither,” I bite out. “You’re not as smart as you think you are.”
“They’re on your pillow, aren’t they?” He meets my stare and steals my breath for a haunting moment.
How does he know?
“I don’t miss much, Orlaith. Certainly not when it comes to you.”
A gasp slices into me ...
“I know every glimmer in your eye, every rapture that makes your soul sing . I know that right now, your spine is locked not by your own accord, but because my fingers have you wound like a puppet on a string,” he says, tightening their delicious swirl and making me throb in places that ought not to throb.
Not for this man.
He leans closer, his breath an icy assault on my ear, and I find myself arching like a flower—reaching as if he’s the sun and not a bitter frost that’ll likely leave me ruined.
And I’m angry. So angry at myself, because I’d probably enjoy it. Being ruined by Rhordyn would be better than never drinking the sips of his affection again.
“I know that your cheeks are flushed because you’re embarrassed by the dull ache between your legs. By the wetness you can feel smeared between your thighs. You’re worried I can smell it. I can.”
My heart slams against my ribs, his stare flaying me, then picking at my insides.
“I know you’re fighting some internal battle, because although I can smell your arousal ... I can feel your anger licking at my skin like a flame .”
A beat passes—sweet, innocent limbo. A peaceful, stolen moment that’s doomed to die a grisly death.
I know it. Can feel it in the air, like the ocean drawing a watery breath.
When his beautifully carved mouth opens, I almost reach up and slam it closed.
“Let the anger win, Orlaith.” His fingers stop their circles, that door slamming shut between us again. “Let the anger win.”
And then he’s gone, leaving me alone at the wall, crushed against it by his parting words.
A terse reminder that I may be his, but he’ll never be mine.