Chapter 43 I Might Die
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I Might Die
IRINA
Iscreamed. Clawed at the blankets that wrapped around me too tight, like Stefan’s arms. Bile rose in my throat, I swallowed it back. The storm outside raged, but a completely different one seethed in my head.
“Shh … I’ve got you,” a voice whispered. Another ragged scream tore from my lungs, muffled by the tangle of blanket. Arms wrapped me up with just the right amount of pressure.
“That lightning was close, but we’re okay,” the voice continued, a deep, soothing lilt.
“Don’t leave!” I gasped, my throat raw from my screams. I wrestled my arms free of the blanket, clinging to Henry. “Just don’t leave me.”
His hand found my hair, fingers combing through the strands. “I won’t leave you, Catnip.”
I focused on those words, on the warm comfort of him as the yacht rocked again, cresting a wave, and the thunder growled, and something that I’d never let out, not in ten years of holding the guilt, the grief, inside, loosened in my chest, in the protective embrace of a man who was everything I needed. Everything I wanted.
I cried for my dead brother. Great, big, gulping sobs, and eyes that filled again and again. And words started coming out of me. Words I’d never told anyone.
“I k-killed my brother.”
Henry’s hand stilled, but he said nothing. I kept talking.
“Andrei died because of me,” I rasped. “My brother drowned, and I hid in my room and let it happen.”
Henry’s palm slid under my hair, his fingers gripping my neck. “I don’t think—”
“I d-did!” I insisted, coughing through another sob. “I heard him scream, heard him run past my room. My uncle … I thought he was coming to punish me, so I stayed in m-my room.”
A wail tore from me. “I didn’t go to … to check on him, and he ran away from my uncle, and he fell in the river.
He died alone, and … t-terrified in the storm.
While I fell asleep feeling relieved that …
that Uncle hadn’t come for m-me! I didn’t even know until the next morning when they …
they pulled his little b-body out of the water. ”
I couldn’t say more, couldn’t breathe through the pain of those words, finally out in the open. Henry didn’t speak. But he did pull me closer until I was cradled in his arms, his thumb swiping rhythmically, brushing away the tears that wouldn’t stop.
The storm battered us, but I was protected in his arms. I was grateful for his silence, I realised. I wasn’t ready to hear someone else’s opinion on my guilt. Having his silent support was just what I needed.
He held me like that until my tears dried. And he kept holding me until the storm blew itself out and the yacht stilled. Only then did he stand, and help me to the bathroom, where he wet a cloth with warm water, and gently cleaned the tear tracks from my face.
Back in my bedroom, he pulled the covers down and gestured for me to get into bed. My heart stammered as I complied.
“Don’t leave,” I begged pitifully. His smile was soft, and free of judgement.
“I wasn’t going to.” He sat down on top of the comforter and reached for the copy of The Hunger Games he’d gifted me weeks ago. “Where are you up to?”
I wasn’t going to lie to this man, so even as the blush crept up my cheeks, I whispered. “I haven’t started. I find reading for enjoyment very difficult, even more so when it’s not my native tongue.”
He pressed his lips together, and for a second, I thought he was holding back anger. But that was not Henry’s way. His lips pulled free of the hold he had on them, and a smile burst onto his face.
“Thank God! I was worried you’d read it and hated it, and you didn’t want to hurt my feelings!”
I managed a watery giggle. “I did watch the movie with Kat,” I confessed. “Just because I was curious about what you’d written inside.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. It arched above his glasses. “And what conclusion did you come to?”
“I don’t want to draw conclusions,” I hedged, not wanting to confess that the conclusion I’d come to was that I was more than a little infatuated with him. “Not without reading the original. The movie was wonderful, but I’m sure I’m missing so much detail.”
“I could find you a copy in Romanian,” he offered. “Or I’m sure there’s an audiobook—”
“Or … you could read it to me?” I suggested shyly. Henry’s face flushed, and he ducked his head.
“I’ve never much liked my reading voice,” he mumbled. I reached for his free hand, squeezing it.
“I love the sound of your voice,” I told him. “Will you read it to me?”
His eyes darted between mine for a long moment, and then he shrugged. “I think I’d like to.”
I tugged at the blankets until he shifted, and I pulled them back from his side of the bed. “Get in.”
There was no hesitation this time as he clambered under the covers with me. His warm body was a magnet that I was powerless to resist, and I shuffled over until my head rested on his chest, and his arm came around me, fingers toying with the sleeve of my pyjama top.
The tension in my muscles melted the second I was within his embrace. He made a small sound in the back of his throat, something that could have been a cough, and then he opened the book, bracing it with one large palm so he didn’t have to release me, and he began to read.
How he could dislike his voice was beyond me! It was deep, but mellow, and the intonation as he read made the words come alive in my brain. Even the gentle circles he was tracing on my bare arm, just beneath the end of my sleeve, couldn’t distract me from his voice.
The first time Gale called Katniss ‘Catnip’ was the only time he stumbled over the words, before coming to a stop. “I’m sorry I didn’t come up with a more unique nickname for you,” he rumbled.
I grinned, turning my face into his chest. “I love it,” I murmured into his T-shirt before lifting my head to look up at him. “I mean, clearly this story is very special to you, so … it makes me feel like I’m special too.”
His green eyes, glimmering behind his glasses, found mine, and then darted lower, to my lips. My heart stopped as his pupils expanded, devouring his emerald irises.
“You are special,” he said roughly, and then he snapped the book shut, and I heard a thud as he dropped it on the bedside table. “Catnip …”
“Henry …”
“I think I might die if I don’t kiss you right now.”
A breathy gasp fell from my lips. “What about the rule?”
His Adam’s Apple bobbed, and he slid lower in the bed until his head was resting on the pillow, his breath fanning across my cheek. “I don’t know if the rule applies anymore.”
Butterflies launched into flight in my stomach. “You mean …”
He cupped the back of my head and tilted my face until his lips were brushing the corner of my mouth. I forgot to breathe.
“I mean, I want—need—to be able to touch you … kiss you … taste you …” His tongue darted out, dipping across the seam of my lips. “All the time.”
O Doamne. “I need that too!”
And then there were no more words.
His mouth was on mine, lips a gentle caress. The yearning in that kiss stole my breath, echoed the desperation I felt for this man to own me … body and soul. We wanted … we needed. All the time.
Maybe tonight was the start of something more … something that didn’t have an expiry date. Something more had been simmering for quite some time, and we’d both just been too afraid to admit it. Until now.
I squeaked as he deepened the kiss, his fingers tight and possessive on the back of my neck.
He took my mouth in earnest, hot and demanding, his tongue pressing my lips apart, sweeping in to taste me.
I moaned and licked into his mouth, our tongues dancing and sending electric currents shooting outwards, filling me up with sparks until I was lit up from the inside out.
“Can I touch you, wherever I want?” Henry broke the kiss to ask, his lips trailing fire along my jaw, nipping at my earlobe.
“I’ll be mad if you don’t!” I panted, shivering as his mouth, his tongue, made a path down my neck to my collarbone.
I wound my fingers into his hair, a gasp wrenched from me when he rolled us until his body was over mine, his thigh between my legs.
The corded muscle of his quad pressed right against my clit.
I spread my thighs wider as his leg moved, rocking against me, my head falling back against the pillow as achy heat blossomed everywhere his body met mine.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he rasped, sliding his fingers up under my pyjama top. My stomach dipped at his touch as he traced my body upwards, sliding the top away until it was at my collarbone, one thumb brushing over a tight nipple.
“Please, Henry.” I arched my breasts towards him.
With a rumbling groan, he scooped me closer, taking my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, seeking my mouth again in a searing kiss.
My body melted into nothing more than sensation.
His hungry lips on mine, tongue tasting me, flicking against mine in a way that made me ache for it delving between my legs again.
The almost painful pleasure of his fingers working my nipples, pinching and soothing with gentle strokes.
And holy shit, the press of his thigh between my legs, grinding and rubbing against my swollen clit, and the piercing that made everything so much more intense.
I whimpered against his lips, fingers sliding down to claw at his back through his T-shirt, and he groaned into my mouth.
Little thrilling zings shot through me, fluttering in my stomach, soaking my panties as I ground myself against his hard thigh.
His cock pressed, long and thick, against my hip, and when I moved on his leg, he let out a low moan, his cock pulsing.
He pulled back from my mouth, face flushed, hair wild.
“Let me look at you,” he whispered, tugging at my pyjama top. I shifted, gasping as his thigh hit me at a whole new angle as he dragged my shirt over my head.