Chapter 19 Rhea
CHAPTER NINETEEN
RHEA
Pleasure wraps around Rhea’s skin, caressing her bones in a warm, tingling embrace.
The six-foot-whatever, dark-haired and tattooed third-year on top of her grunts his satisfaction as he rams himself into her. He holds himself upright with one hand against his headboard while his other cups Rhea’s breast, his fingers nimbly toying with her peaked nipple.
Rhea alters between closing her eyes and staring up at the ceiling.
Satisfaction builds inside her, but it is merely a bodily response—not an emotional one.
She is attracted to…. Lyle? Lukas? Luther?
Fuck, she forgot his name.... but that is as far as it goes for her. Is as far as it ever goes for her.
Leo grips the back of her thigh and hoists her leg over his head, hooking the back of her knee behind his neck. Lucky for him, she happens to be very flexible, and so she doesn’t complain when he pushes her knee closer and closer to her chest as his thrusts quicken.
“Fuck,” he groans.
Leviticus finds his pleasure, reaching over for a linen rag resting on the table beside his bed as he spills over into the fabric and not inside of her.
A true gentleman, really.
His body slackens with relief after, and he rolls off of her, discarding the sullied rag and laying next to her while panting in breaths. “You didn’t finish, did you?”
“No,” she answers truthfully.
He shifts onto his side, propping his head up with his fist. “I can change that,” he hums, reaching out with his other hand and gliding a finger from Rhea’s breast down toward the slope of her stomach.
She feels a microscopic glimmer of pride when she resists the urge to shield her torso with her arms—a sign that all her hard work is paying off. Instead, she musters her best playful smirk. “If that’s an offer, then I gladly accept.”
He grins wickedly, and before Rhea knows it, he is between her thighs, his tongue teasingly gliding over her swollen clit. At the breathy moan escaping her lips, he adds more pressure to his strokes, integrating his fingers as he sucks and bites her sensitive nerves.
Pleasure finds Rhea quickly, and she erupts in an explosion of ecstasy, gritting her teeth and squeezing her eyes together as she rides out the burst of euphoria for as long as she can.
Maybe Lithaniel is a keeper, after all.
When Rhea reopens her eyes, the knots in her chest feeling temporarily unwound, she sits up and stretches her arms above her head, letting them fall onto Levy’s shoulders after. “This was fun.”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “Is this the part where you tell me it was a one time thing, though?”
She shrugs, rising from the bed. “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll just have to see what the gods have written for us.
” She flashes him a mischievous smile and collects her pile of clothes from the floor, using them to shield her exposed body.
As she does, she glimpses a cozy thin sweater which looks as though it would swallow her whole, hiding every inch of her.
Perfect.
She points at it. “Do you mind if I wear that out? I promise to give it back.” She drizzles her words in honey, adding a small pout in her lip for extra security.
Leon smirks, rising up in his bed and folding his arms across his very broad, very attractive chest. “Alright,” he drawls. “You can borrow it if you can answer me one thing.”
“And what is that?”
His smirk deepens, and he leans forward to cup his chin in his palm. “What’s my name?”
Fuck.
That is the golden question, isn’t it?
“Uhm, well… your name is…is…”
He barks a laugh, rearing back to lean against his headboard. “I knew it,” he says through laughter. “You did forget my name.”
Well, there is certainly no denying it now. Rhea shrugs, playing it off as coolly as she can. “Don’t take it personally—I’m really bad with names.”
He runs a hand through his silky hair, his smile filled with a simplicity Rhea envies. “My name is Link. And the next time I see you, I expect you to remember it.”
“Alright, Link. In exchange for me remembering your name, can I wear your sweater?”
He folds his arms over his chest, his biceps flexing from the movement. “You can,” he answers airily.
“Thank you,” she chirps back, resting her clothes on the bed and quickly throwing his sweater over her head.
It is soft and loose at the neck, caressing her skin like a hug.
She draws half her hair back next and plucks her favorite dagger—forged in the style of a hair pin once belonging to her late mother—from her pile of things, stuffing it through her newly secured bun.
Rhea regathers her belongings into her arms and heads straight for the door, offering him a parting smirk. “This was fun.”
His eyes are bright. “We should do it again sometime.”
She snorts a laugh. “What a typical response for me to remember you by.” Then, without another word, Rhea slips out the door, quietly pulling it closed behind her.
With nothing but the oversized sweater covering her body, Rhea strides down the corridor, heading back to her bedchamber.
She drifts into deep thought as she ponders her plan for the task Tynan assigned to her while being at the academy—locating and transcribing some old book.
Yet as she considers the deal they struck, she finds herself thinking about the man himself and her relationship to him instead.
Rhea always wondered why Tynan Dalmar bothered investing in her.
Why he put forth his coin, his tutors, his resources, education, training—all the things typically reserved for the children of nobility.
For a stint, her young, impressionable mind was convinced he had grown to care about her.
And the most twisted part of that was, despite hating him with every fiber of her being, the more Rhea believed the thought to be true, the more she realized she wanted it to be.
Draven was always gone, occupied with tutors, the other heirs, or one of Tynan’s sick lessons.
And though he tried desperately to show up for her throughout the years, she still felt lonely.
So the more she ached for someone’s attention and approval—even someone as twisted as Tynan—the more she fought to receive it.
After she hit puberty and fully came into her body, Tynan introduced her to the world of nobility as a magic-less orphaned girl of some distant relative from across the Arteman Sea.
She became known throughout the Erandor Kingdom as his charity project.
And when the head of House Hikari—her mother’s disgraced noble house—came knocking on Tylderon’s door as a result, Tynan held council with him behind closed doors.
The man did not come back after that.
As such, with Rhea’s body now deemed somewhat of a “desirable object”, as Tynan put it, and with the way her lowborn status resulted in people only disregarding her, she became useful to him. So, she began attending prestigious social events alongside him.
He became philanthropic; she became a spectacle.
Her task was usually a simple one, at least. She was given a target for the night, and she was to get that person abhorrently drunk.
Make them comfortable enough to loosen their tongues, then keep them talking.
Thankfully, given the nature of Draven and Tynan’s arrangement over Rhea, she never had to actually offer her body for information.
If, no matter how hard she pushed, the person chose not to speak, she was always instructed to excuse herself politely and waltz away without another word.
Though, since those she spoke with always assumed she was nothing more than a penniless charity case, that seldom happened. They were more than happy to write her off and speak freely—like her lesser mind couldn’t possibly grasp the nuances of politics.
They were all self-righteous bastards.
Over time, Rhea began to realize she had been slowly conditioned to rely solely on one man.
On his words. His resources. His praise and approval.
Some days he would be kind to Rhea, treating her like she was his own daughter.
Other days he would reject her, acting as though she was nothing more than a beggar brought in from the street. Repulsive. Dirty. Imperfect.
How cruel it is, to know you hate someone and everything they stand for, yet still long to receive their approval.
Yet this will be the end of all that. The end of her relying on Tynan for anything.
The end of watching Draven be forced to bend to Tynan’s whims—of watching him live a shackled life because of her.
She will fulfill the final task Tynan has given her, freeing both herself and Draven of lives they never wanted in turn.
All she has to do is find the item Tynan wants and provide him the knowledge inside.
Simple. Easy. Not at all a big deal or violation of Draven’s trust.
Right…?
Rhea sucks in a sharp breath just before slamming into a hard object. She presses her palm to her head and glances up, only to realize it wasn’t an object at all, but instead a body. Not just any body—fucking Finlay Fjolla’s.
She groans at the sight of him, making to storm past without offering him a word. Yet he sidesteps her, blocking her path.
“What are you doing on the third-year’s floor?”
“None of your business.”
Finlay narrows his eyes on her. “Actually, it is, seeing as I oversee this aggregate.”
She scoffs. “Go fuck yourself.”
He snorts. “I’d say the same to you, but it looks like someone already has.” His eyes slowly glide along her body, hovering at the hem of Link’s sweater as it sways loosely over her knees, moving along to the wad of clothes in her hands next. “Who is the unfortunate bastard?”
She mocks puppy eyes and a pouty lip. “Aw, are you jealous?”
He laughs bitterly and drops his arms. “I just want to know who in my aggregate has such poor standards.”