31. Chapter 31
Chapter 31
S itting in the buzzing Main Hall in anticipation of the recital, I’m barely aware of my surroundings. Except for him. He’s sitting right next to me, and even if it weren’t the annoying pull I constantly feel towards him, there’d still be all the displeasure he’s exuding.
Then there is me . It all happened so fast — one moment, we were kissing in that inn, the next, we were on our way to the flesh market, and here I am now, sitting next to him after having done my best to avoid him for an entire day.
Because all I want is to pick up where we left off in that inn, and I can’t feel anything but gut-twisting guilt about that.
Still, the point of all this was to try to cheer him up. So the next time he blows a sigh through his nose, I turn to him and I say. “I thought you loved music.”
He gives me this indecipherable look and doesn’t say anything, turning back ahead and leaving me staring at his profile in growing restlessness.
“Are you still mad at me?” I ask, referring to what happened in the inn.
He turns to frown at me. “Mad? You asked me to come and I came, doesn’t mean I want us to be here.”
I blink at him. “I meant, mad because of me getting mad at you —”
The realization hitting him, he shakes his head, his frown growing deeper. “No…” He leans to talk in my ear. “You’re leaving , Anyi. Once and for all. We could be mere hours from the Order summoning you with the information, and we’re…” He blows out a breath. “Sitting at some vapid gathering, where we can’t even talk in peace.”
I pull away. “Well… It’s your sister’s recital.”
For a second, he just looks at me. “My sister’s recital,” he grumbles with a scoff as he leans back in his chair, going straight back to exuding displeasure.
It’s at that moment that the recital starts. We keep sitting next to each other in silence, all through the first three performances, the last of which is Farryn on the harp.
“What did you think?” she comes to ask as soon as she gets off the stage.
“You were simply amazing, Farryn,” I say.
But Farryn doesn’t seem to be interested in my opinion. As the next performer starts climbing up the stairs to take her spot, she’s already fixing her eyes on Orpheus in anxious anticipation.
He clears his throat and gives her a slight smile. “I have to admit I did have expectations, little sister, but you’ve managed to exceed them all.”
A smile tugging at my lips, I watch Farryn fight to suppress a squeal. “Thank you, brother,” she finally says, her voice a touch overly formal in an attempt to hide the emotions.
She floats away as if on a cloud.
“ Now can we leave?” Orpheus turns to ask me.
“No one is stopping you, Orpheus,” I say as the next student starts playing.
“If we left together,” Orpheus insists, “you could take a bath, I could make dinner, and then you could tell me all about—”
“Shhh.” I hate doing this, but I can’t deal with this just yet. I wouldn’t know how to be with him. So I motion at the stage. “I’m enjoying this, I suggest you try to enjoy it, too.”
“ This ?” he asks with a scoff. “You’re enjoying this?”
“Yes, I quite like the melody.”
He looks at me for a moment then turns away.
We listen to the song in silence, but now there’s a restlessness about him that’s making my eyes dart in his direction.
Then, as soon as the student finishes playing and the people start clapping, he gets up and heads for the stage.
I frown. The clapping dies down, giving way to an excited murmur. The rest of the audience and I watch Orpheus take the seat in front of the piano and place his palms above the keys.
He turns his head just enough to lock eyes with me, and hits the first keys.
It’s one of those things, where the very first note shakes you and the rest of them just add to it, the music swelling both outside and inside you, until you feel as if that something incorporeal in you is somehow taking flight and sending vibrations into the world around you.
This particular melody makes you feel longing. Powerful, unquenchable longing.
And all the while, he keeps glancing away from the keys to lock eyes with me, each look he gives me only making me more breathless, more sure of what I feel deep inside me.
This music, it was written for me .
*
It’s only when he stops playing that I notice all the other eyes on me. Still, I get up and walk out of the Main Hall, my confusion only having grown.
With this thrumming in my chest, I quickly make my way into the first bathroom I find, grabbing onto the sink with both hands and fixing my eyes on my reflection in the mirror.
He’s not Jericho, I tell myself, for the millionth time.
Jericho. Jericho was one of a kind, and not just that, it was as if he was made for me. He was passionate, driven, kind, and he’d sacrifice everything for me, even his happiness.
Then again, I may as well be describing Orpheus. When you put aside the superficial differences, they’re the same man and that’s what I’ve been feeling from the moment I first laid eyes on him. That strange quiet that looking into his eyes made me feel.
I spot him in the mirror even before he walks into the bathroom. Slowly, just as he comes to a stop in front of me, I turn around. He dips his head, we lock eyes, and I find an apology in his.
“Are you cross with me?” he asks in a low voice.
The look, the voice, the words, they all make me snap. I watch him tense up as I take him by the collar of his shirt and tug him close, pressing my mouth to his.
We stay like that for a second, as if frozen in place. Then he groans, wraps his arms around me and parts my lips, the touch of his tongue making my stomach do a violent flip. Breathlessly, we keep kissing, his hands searching my body and my fingers running through his hair and down his chest, until we’re tearing at each other’s clothes and bumping into the wall.
This seems to make him snap out of it. He pulls away to look at me with glazed eyes, then throws a quick glance around the room. And he hesitates, but he says, “This is not where I’ll be making love to you for the first time.”
I pull him closer and whisper in his ear, “Then take me to your room, Orpheus.”
He goes all tense, then, the next thing I know, he’s lifting me off the ground, and I only manage to wrap my arms and legs around him before the room around me turns into a blur.
When the image around me stills, I watch his hand close the front door shut just before he pushes me against the wall with my legs still around him. Closing his hands around my ass, he parts my lips and starts kissing me.
I moan into his mouth. He pulls away, his eyes ravenously fixing on my lips. With rushed movements, he gets his hand under all the layers of my skirt and then between my thighs, stroking slowly and deeply until he makes me let out another moan. He grits his teeth and pulls his hand out to start fumbling with the straps of my corset.
When they don’t immediately give in, he loses his patience and rips the thing in half, making me draw in a sharp breath. He lowers his gaze onto the nipple showing through the thin chemise, then takes the flesh of my breast in his mouth, the vibration of his growl against it making me squirm with a shiver running down my spine.
It’s with glazed eyes that he looks up. “You’re about to get very loud, Anyi,” he whispers as he gets his hand under my dress again, “so loud, you’ll thank the gods we’re at the top of a hill.”
“I thought you’d take me to your bed, Orpheus,” I protest as I grab his wrist.
He pulls away to look at me, glazed eyes narrowing. “No no, I’m taking my time with you.” His lips come to hover in front of mine. “By the time you’re in my bed, you’ll be naked, wet, and desperate for me.”
Gods. He buries his face in my hair, making me let out another moan when he starts kissing my neck, but then my gaze darts to the floor, where I see Nymeria looking up at us with curiosity in her eyes.
I freeze. “Orpheus,” I call out.
He stops, looks up and then over his shoulder. “Out, Nymeria,” he commands and moves to turn back to me.
She just keeps standing there. I chuckle.
Orpheus lets out a low growl and puts me down. “Stay put,” he turns to tell me with narrowed eyes, as if he’s expecting me to run away.
“ Nymeria ,” he warns when she darts onto the commode.
I watch her make him chase her into the kitchen, but then my eyes come to fix on the stairs leading to his bedroom. My lips curl into a smile when the thought occurs to me.
Why would I stay put when what I really want is to roll around with him in a bed that smells like him?
I tiptoe past the kitchen and then dart upstairs, blowing a laugh through my nose when I hear a confused, impatient, “Anyi?” sound behind my back.
Suppressing a laugh, I open the door, step inside and move for the bed.
It makes my breath catch, when he appears to grab me from behind and press his back into me, so tight, I can feel how hard he is through all the layers of my dress. “Running away from me, hm?” he grinds into my ear. “That wasn’t very nice of you.”
I squirm in his arms, making him let out a growl when I rub against him. “Maybe I’m not a nice person,” I whisper as I turn around, his eyes filling my field of vision and sucking me in.
They narrow. “Then I suppose I shouldn’t be taking any chances with you,” he says as he slowly lets go of me and takes a step back with this smirk on his face.
I frown. Then I feel ropes of sand slither around my wrists and yank my arms above my head. Swallowing roughly, I look up at the ceiling, only to see the ends of the ropes get absorbed by the ceiling, tightening until I can’t move my arms at all.
I look down to see him slowly walking over to me, his head tilting as he drags his eyes up and down my body. The look makes my heart start pounding.
Once he stops in front of me, he fixes his eyes on mine and, without looking away, starts untying, unbuttoning and unfastening with such deftness and precision, it all makes the coil in the pit of my stomach wind tight.
“Oh you’ve done this before, haven’t you?” I drawl in a breathless voice.
The fingers stop working, the lips curling into a smirk. “It was all practice for the main event.”
Still looking at me, he takes my chemise off and drops it to the floor.
Holding my breath, I watch him stop himself from looking and start slowly walking around me, his chest falling up and down. It’s only when he comes to face me again that he grabs me by the waist, presses my core to his and lets his gaze drop to my breasts, his nostrils flaring and his jaw clenching.
Breathlessly, I keep my eyes fixed on his face, feeling his gaze slowly stroke my naked skin, closely followed by a palm of his hand forcefully sliding up my waist.
Then that frown appears and I let out a chuckle.
The eyes dart up and lock with mine. He grabs me and presses himself tight to me. “What are you giggling about, hm?” he demands with a touch of defiance in his voice, his breath stroking my lips.
“I just love that little frown.”
“Only because you don’t know what filthy thoughts hide behind it,” he tells me as his hands start diligent work on removing the outer layers of my skirts.
“Filthy thoughts?” I muse. “And here I spent all this time thinking you were a true gentleman — taking me dancing, writing me music, stealing flowers from my hair.”
“Stealing flowers?” he echoes in a thick voice as he lets the skirts fall to the floor. “I don’t recall ever doing such a thing.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He steps back, walks around me and pulls my drawers down. “Then again,” he whispers as he comes to stand in front of me again, letting his eyes drag down my naked body. I watch him swallow roughly. “My mind may have been elsewhere.”
He comes to pull me into a tight embrace again. “There are many other things I do recall,” he tells me as she traces kisses down my collarbone and works a hand between my legs, “in excruciating detail.”
I draw in a breath and then let out a loud moan when he starts sliding his fingers up and down, the other arm wrapped tightly around my back.
I squirm, the need to touch him swelling inside me. I open my mouth to tell him to untie me, but then he lets go of my waist and drops to his knees, cupping my ass with his hands as he starts trailing delicious kisses up my thighs.
When his mouth finally finds the sweet spot, I let out a whimper and he growls into my flesh, making a shock of pleasure knock all air out of my lungs. With rushed movements, he reaches under my thigh and throws my leg over his shoulder, his tongue still stroking and gently nibbling when his fingers find their way inside me as well.
It makes me let out a dragged out moan, my spine arching to grind against his face. He starts pushing his fingers in and out, his other hand gripping my thigh tightly.
He pulls away to look up at me and whisper in a thick voice, “I’ve never tasted anything sweeter than you, Anyi.”
The words make need for him explode inside me.
“Untie me, Orpheus,” I demand.
He shakes his head, smirking. “I don’t think you’re in a position to make demands, princess, I’ve made sure of it.”
When his tongue finds the sweet spot again, my muscles start clenching and loud moans escaping my lips until I cry out as he takes me over the edge.
“Orpheus,” I call out, “I need you.”
It’s with a feral look in his eyes that he appears in front of me. He releases me, hoists me up with my legs around him and lays me on his bed with his face hovering over mine, eyes diving deep.
I’m still tingling from my orgasm, but when I feel him between my legs, it sends a shudder through me. With parted lips and without taking his eyes off me, he slowly drags the tip up and down before he pushes inside. His jaw clenching, he groans deeply and lets his forehead fall to mine.
“Anna… Gods, how can you feel this good, Anna?”
I wrap my arms and legs around him, making him push himself deeper inside me as the hard muscles of his back flex under my fingers.
Letting out a moan, I rush to find his lips. We kiss, deeply and hungrily, his thrusts becoming more forceful with each stroke of tongue against tongue.
Then he slides his hand between us and starts circling my clit, making me lose my breath and clench around him. Using my legs to press him tighter to myself, I buck my hips, making him groan into my mouth, until he’s slamming himself inside me and we’re falling apart, tangled and breathless.