Chapter 24 #2
“You’re the noisiest sleepwalker I’ve ever heard,” he said, and I pulled back to give him a half-hearted glare. He flashed a grin before turning serious. “I woke up when you left your room and tracked you up here. By the time I got to the top of the stairs, you were at the edge of the window.”
So that was why he was without a tunic. I shuddered, unable to stop myself from imagining what would have happened had Harthon been a second later. “Thank you for pulling me back. It’s time I start saving your life, because I’m in a rather dreadful amount of debt to you.”
His hands slid to my waist, and the roiling in my belly was replaced with the same flutter I’d felt when he’d woken me from my nightmare in the woods. When he’d kissed me. “You saved my face from the wolf. You’re already working your way out of that debt.”
“Something tells me I’m going to accrue more before I can pay it all back.”
“If you take too long, I’ll have to add interest.”
“I’ll have to make an appeal to the Princeps then. There’s no way I could pay interest, too.”
One of his thumbs began to move, a slow glide back and forth. “Fortunately for you, the Princeps is rather understanding of such dilemmas.”
My eyes fell to my hands. To the tanned skin, mounded muscles, and light smattering of hair beneath them.
A few white scars were gathered by his heart, evidence that he’d cheated death more than once.
Lower, his body was a rugged mixture of ridges and dips, of obvious strength and brawn. He was so incredibly…male.
When I found his eyes, they were smoldering, watching me with singular focus.
Maybe it was the fact that I’d almost just died again, or that he was bare-chested and I was a female.
Maybe it was the way he’d been merciless yet fair at the justice hearing, but I said something more daring than I ever thought I’d say.
“Is there anything I can do that would help the Princeps to look upon me favorably?” I whispered, no longer feeling the cold stone against my feet, but only heat.
The gold flecks in his eyes only blazed brighter. “Are you trying to bribe me, carella?”
I could hardly breathe. “Is it working?”
All Harthon did in response was dip his head. And then his lips were on mine.
I’d thought the brush of his lips in the woods was a kiss, and only now did I know how wrong I was.
That had merely been a touch. A tease. Now, his mouth was soft and coaxing, tugging at my upper and then my bottom lip, sending a wash of tingles throughout my body.
I followed his lead, kissing him back, and then his tongue followed his lips.
I gasped at the invasion and he pressed his advantage, delving deeper.
Slowly exploring. Taking and giving, but not demanding.
Patiently allowing me to adjust and learn.
My back bowed as his hands pulled me into his length, and I knew then what true helplessness was.
Because I could never, not even if I wanted to, pull away from him. He was an addictive fire, scattering my senses, consuming them.
My body sent my chest into his of its own accord, and his fingers strained against my back before he brought the kiss to a soft end. He rested his forehead on mine as I kept my eyes closed, absorbing the feel of him and trying to collect my thoughts.
The only one I managed to find was that I wanted to get lost in him again, and I would never be able to convince myself that I didn’t want his lips on mine.
I hadn’t even managed to convince myself of it the first time, not really.
No matter what I’d told myself, I’d been waiting for him to do this ever since that private moment in the midnight woods.
“Your feet are going to freeze. We need to head back,” he said softly, and only then did I register the numbness in my feet.
Without warning, he swept me into his arms and started for the stairs, carrying me as if I were a feather as he smoothly glided down the steps.
“This is completely unnecessary,” I stated, even as I wrapped an arm across his shoulders, the ends of his hair surprisingly soft as they brushed my skin.
“I disagree. What if you make a break for it and fling yourself from the window?” he replied with an air of amusement.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not dreaming anymore. We’re probably safe.”
“I prefer certainty over probabilities, whenever possible.”
I took another angle as we came into the hallway. Even though it was warmer here, he still didn’t release me. “Don’t you think it’ll look odd that you’re carrying the magvis around?”
“You’re mysterious to them. You could have hurt yourself for all they know.”
“You’re naked from the waist up.”
“What a profound observation.”
He wasn’t getting it. “It’s the middle of the night. You’re half naked. My hair’s messed up. They might…you know…think things.” Not that those things would be very far from the truth. Only minutes ago, his tongue had been in my mouth, evoking responses I didn’t know I could have.
His responding grin was devious. “What kind of things? Do tell.”
I wished to knee him, only holding back because I didn’t want to be dropped on the hard stone. “You know what kind of things.”
“No, actually, I don’t know what kind of things you’re thinking of. You’re rather innocent, Etarla, so I’m not sure how far your imagination expands.”
My face flamed at his response, and then came a prickle of embarrassment. To him and all his experience—and most others my age—a kiss was probably nothing. To me, it’d been earth-shattering.
We reached my door which was still open, and he set me down inside the shadowed space. “And just to be clear, your innocence isn’t something I look down upon. Quite the opposite actually,” he said, and then he closed the door, sealing us both in the room.
Before I could even ask his intentions, he strolled to my unmade bed and toed off his boots.
“W-what are you doing?” I asked, frozen by the doorway.
“Going to bed.”
“But you’re in my room.”
He glanced around the space. “I am. There happens to be a bed in here.”
Panic, nervousness, and excitement bloomed all at once.
“But you also have a bed in your room,” I pointed out, trying to understand.
Aside from our meeting with Aric, I’d spent almost no time with Harthon ever since we’d returned to the Citadel.
And until tonight, he’d seemed rather keen to forget that our lips ever brushed during our trip to Josenne.
Now he wanted to stay with me in bed?
“I do. But if I stay in that bed, I can’t make sure that you don’t walk up to that tower and out of that window in another dream.”
Oh. It wasn’t as if he’d intended to kiss me again and…and do what people did after kissing. Find some sense, Etarla.
“You could just put a guard at my door.”
His mouth twitched. “If I cut off your path to the tower, you could end up going out of the window in this room. Again.”
As unlikely as that was to happen, I couldn’t completely rule it out, not after what had just happened.
I sighed and slowly approached the bed, recognizing that he was determined to stay.
Arguing further would make a bigger deal out of it than it was.
We’d slept together in the woods before. This was the same.
Except that we were alone.
In a bed.
He was naked from the waist up.
And he’d just kissed me. Skies, my lips were still swollen, my body still buzzing.
He stretched out on one side, and I gingerly crawled in, giving him my back and trying to leave space between us.
With his size, it was difficult, and I was nearly rolling off the mattress’s edge.
My muscles turned rigid as I tried to keep myself still.
He drew the blankets over me, then reached for my waist and gently tugged me back.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re beginning to sound rather repetitive,” he observed as my back came flush with his front, his bare skin searing me through my thin clothes. “But to answer your question, I’m helping you get comfortable.”
Cocooned in his heat and his presence, I was comfortable, as I always seemed to be when we lay together.
I’d forgotten how good it felt, to have him at my back, to know he was with me.
Unable to help myself, my mind drifted back to our moment in the tower.
To the moment when I’d almost died, the way he’d held me with such panic, and the wicked things he did with his lips and tongue.
Carella. He’d called me that only once before, though I didn’t know what it meant.
I opened my mouth to ask when he spoke. “At those justice hearings, I have to act a certain way. I planned to check in with you when it was over, but my cabinet hounded me.”
He said it as if he thought I might fear him now.
He was frightening, yes, but I understood why he’d acted the way he did.
If anything, his choices had reaffirmed my confidence that he was the right leader to bring through the Domus.
“You have a reputation to uphold. You may have been harsh and indifferent, but people got what they deserved.”
“In no small part thanks to you. That woman was going to prison or facing punishment. You changed her life,” Harthon said, his fingers brushing over the fabric at my waist.
He gave me too much credit. “You already suspected the man. If I weren’t there, you or Ana would have found the truth. As it was, I only asked about her hair.”
I wasn’t saying it to be kind. It was the truth. Harthon was shrewd.
“You cleverly unraveled his lie and sought the truth, and you didn’t allow the fear of judgment to keep you quiet. That’s something few can do.”
“You do it.”
“I try.”
He did more than try. It was almost like he doubted himself, like he doubted his ability to be so good to his people.
“What’s going to happen with her? She won’t have a source of income or shelter now. Will she even be able to pay her way back to Falsgard?”
“She’ll acquire his home and savings, as well as the small farm he owns. She’ll end up better off than most. My men are escorting her back to Falsgard, where they’ll check on her brother,” he answered.
Gratitude swelled.
I’m not a good man, Etarla, he’d said to me what felt like years ago.
He was wrong. So incredibly wrong.
Sleep beckoned and silence descended, interrupted only by the occasional bird call or sounds of a night guard’s movement in the halls. As I closed my eyes and sank into him, the question that niggled at my mind came out. “What does carella mean?”
“Something rare,” he answered vaguely and left it at that.