Chapter 21 #4
His smile turns lopsided. “If you say so,” he says with a shrug, waltzing back to finish preparing the bed for them to sleep in.
“And suddenly I find myself thinking of ways to punish Kiran for assigning you to be my roommate.”
He slides his eyes to her, a sharp curve wedged deep into the corner of his mouth.
“I remember a time when you begged for me to be your roommate. How did it go, again? Something like, ‘there’s always room for a handsome man like you in our chambers’ and ‘you and I can share a bed.’” He laughs at his own impression of her voice, dropping his eyes back down to the pillows, seeming content with himself at mocking the words Marcella said to him upon their first meeting.
Heat stings Marcella’s cheeks. It was different when she made those comments; she didn’t know him then, and it was all too easy to make light of his annoyingly handsome features and toned body.
It was almost like joking about the obvious shielded her from the ramifications of it—protected her from falling captive to it.
Look at her now, the damned, flush-cheeked fool.
She heads over to the far side of the room and turns her back to Gray, finally stripping off her dirty clothes and draping herself in Gray’s blissfully clean tunic.
Once finished, she steadies herself and struts right up to him, determined not to show him a lick of the embarrassment she feels.
Instead, she braces a hand on her hips and lifts her chin.
“I remember you blushing like a school girl at the mention of sharing a bed with me.”
Officially finished with his work on the bed, he turns around slowly, facing Marcella head on.
Slowly—unnervingly so, actually—he scans her, his eyes snagging on the hem of his shirt as it hovers above her bare knees.
“Yet look at us now,” he says, a thick rasp to his voice.
“Sharing a bed as if it’s nothing at all. ”
“It is nothing,” she confirms, her expression firmly locked to his. “Means nothing.”
Yet even as she says the words, the way her chest tightens and stomach somersaults tells her that isn’t entirely true.
His eyes—his warm eyes, a swirling mix of earth’s finest color pallet—hold her like a caress. “Of course.” He makes a gesturing motion to the bed behind him, still not looking away from her. “After you.”
Marcella snorts, lifting her chin and folding her arms across her chest, not budging an inch. Gray scoffs—the sound more a laugh than anything else—and shakes his head, amusement brightening his handsome face.
“Must you always be so stubborn?”
“Would I be me if I weren’t?”
He grins at that. “Fair point.”
He starts unbuckling the leather belt strapped around his hip—that micro grin wedged permanently into the corner of his lips—and Marcella’s heart picks up speed in her chest. “What the hell are you doing?”
He arches a taunting brow. “You don’t expect me to sleep in all this, do you?
” His eyes dart down to his toes—which are still encased in combat boots—before slowly roving up his own body for emphasis.
Which results in Marcella scanning his body, too.
Which also results in a cluster of butterflies suddenly fluttering about her stomach.
She grits her teeth in annoyance.
He just had to be all noble and almost die today, making Marcella painfully aware of feelings she was perfectly content being blissfully unaware of.
She makes an exasperated expression, feigning complete and utter boredom. “I don’t care what you sleep in, Nightenjoy, so long as you let me sleep in peace.”
“Great,” he chirps, tugging his shirt over his head and discarding it somewhere across the room.
In that passing moment, Marcella realizes she is faced with two very contrasting options.
One option is to allow her gaze to roam freely and without restraint, snagging on each and every slope of muscle stretching across Gray’s sculpted torso.
The second option is to deny herself the thing she very much wants to do, instead choosing to look entirely uninterested, not letting her eyes so much as flick down at his exposed chest.
Naturally, she chooses the latter—self-preservation of pride and all.
With her heart now skipping in her chest, she breaks their unending eye contact—putting an end to the seemingly silent challenge—and makes to strut past him, stopping only to drum her fingers against his bare shoulder.
“Be sure to wash up before getting into bed, would you? I’d prefer not to be holding my breath from a foul smell all night. ”
She swears she feels Gray stiffen. Biting down on her growing smile, she drops her hand from his shoulder, slowly letting her fingertips glide down his skin—a humming sensation overtaking the tips of her fingers as she drags them across his toned bicep.
She walks over to the other side of the bed, propping herself up on the thick sheets and nestling beneath the quilted covers.
“Good night,” she chirps merrily, driving her provoking knife deeper. “Enjoy your cold bath.”
In a nearly imperceptible gesture, he angles his chin over his shoulder, just enough to glance back at Marcella, something indiscernible glinting in his gaze.
Wordlessly, he walks across the floor and again rummages through his satchel, a fist full of fresh clothes clutched between his fingers as he strides into the bathing chambers.
In the downtime of his absence, Marcella tries to fall asleep. She shuts her eyes, conjures image after image of clouds, sheep—all the shit they tell children to visualize when they can’t sleep.
It doesn’t work. Not even a little.
Her mind, it would seem, is instead too preoccupied with conjuring visuals of all the different ways tonight could go.
Imagining what it would be like to feel Gray’s skin against hers.
Contemplating if she would feel guilty for moving on from Griff so soon.
Wondering what Gray would be like in bed.
Would he be soft and gentle, like his personality?
Or much like the flashes of that hidden anger he keeps on that tight leash of his, does he have a carnal side he keeps locked away?
Would his kisses be light and reverent? Or hungry and consuming?
The questions roll through her mind wave after wave, relentless and utterly hypnotizing. Honestly—and to her absolute irritation—she thinks about it so much, she finds the space between her legs throbbing, begging to find out the answers to those demanding questions.
So by the time Gray pads back into the modest room, the smell of freshly used soap wafting through the air, Marcella presses her knees together and her face down into the pillow, cursing her body for getting so riled up over mere thoughts.
She then pretends to be in the gentle grips of a peaceful sleep, keeping her shut eyes as still as possible and the rhythm of her breaths as smooth as she can.
Through her closed eyelids, she is able to note the distinct dimming in the room as the candlelight winks out completely.
She feels movement on the other side of the bed as Gray shifts in beside her.
Marcella’s breath catches in her throat at his proximity, and her task of maintaining the illusion of sleep becomes a hell of a lot harder.
Because there is something about being covered in a veil of darkness which gives a person courage; that allows them to act uninhibited, as if bravery is bred in dark bedrooms where actions grow bold and defenses wane soft.
She opens her eyes, her vision taking a moment to adjust to the pitch black room. “How was your bath?” she asks with a taunting lilt.
She hears rustling beside her, and Gray turns over on his side. “I thought you were asleep?” He sounds so close.
Too close.
Her throat dries, but she swallows against the sensation. “Can’t sleep,” she admits.
“Why not?”
“Too many things on my mind.”
A slight pause. And then—
“Do you want to talk about it?” His voice is so soft—so filled with genuine concern that something might actually be bothering her, completely unaware that he is the source of the many things swarming her thoughts.
Marcella rolls onto her side and lays her cheek on her palms as they press together atop her pillow.
She has a sneaking suspicion Gray is laying in a similar position directly next to her.
It’s hard to explain, exactly, but aside from the obvious sensation of a person being near, there is this current of electricity she can feel passing between them.
Similar to the feeling one has when they first meet the eyes of another—that initial jolt.
Only, this is unending and far more intense.
“Maybe eventually,” she murmurs after a moment, biting her lip sheepishly, feeling like she can drop her guard tonight. Be a softer, more vulnerable version of herself—a version she does not reveal easily.
Maybe it’s from the thrill of being in a new place with a man in her bed after going so long without any sort of intimate touch. Maybe it’s her having a completely normal human need she wants sated. Or maybe…
Maybe it’s more. Maybe it has always been more, and Marcella has just been too stubborn to admit that to herself until today.
“Whatever it is you have to say,” Gray replies, his voice like a soothing caress to her senses, “I’d like you to know that I want to hear it. No matter how heavy, no matter how dark or light or funny or terrible—if it is coming from you, then it has my full interest.”
Marcella finds herself stunned at the words, and despite being enshrouded by a thick darkness dulling their visibility to nothing more than a fuzzy shadow—Marcella has never felt so seen.
“I miss my family.” She blurts the words softly, completely surprised by her own sudden admission.
Yet Gray doesn’t miss a beat. “What are they like?”