Chapter 35 Not The Smartest
Not The Smartest
“Ishould handcuff you to the bed,” she grumbled, glaring at Caelum with those stunning green eyes of hers. “I should get a magicked set of handcuffs from Valor and lock you to the floor until you promise to stop doing this insane, suicidal shit, Bones!”
He shivered at her words, and fought back a smile, knowing she likely wouldn’t react to it well at the moment. He held out an arm instead, the best he could do to try and coax her to come to him where he sprawled on the mattress of his tower bed.
She saw him do it and scowled.
“Piss off,” she snapped. She folded her arms where she stood next to his bed, pressing her lips together as she stared at him. “Didn’t you literally just promise me, less than a week ago, that you weren’t going to leave me behind next time? After the Tunis thing?”
He nodded wearily, closing his eyes, and let his arm fall to the mattress.
Gods, he wished he had the energy to fuck her.
Or hell, even just kiss her.
Realistically, though, he felt like absolute shite.
While he’d enjoyed her taking off his shirt and trousers, all he could think about was sleep.
His bed had never felt so good. He just really badly wanted his witch in the bed with him, preferably naked.
Preferably completely naked and wrapped around him.
It felt like he might die if she left him here.
“C’mere,” he managed, through the fog of pain potions.
They’d poured at least three different concoctions down his throat while he’d been in the school’s hospital building.
He didn’t remember a lot of what else they’d done to him, not specifically, but he remembered those damned pain medications because those were the only thing that made a noticeable difference in how he actually felt.
“C’mere,” he said again. “Got them out,” he added, slurring his words faintly. “Mocking. Minh. Greythorne. Thought you’d be really hacked off at me if I let those fuckers kill them… or worse. Or worse. It could’ve been worse, Leda. They maybe wanted Luc.”
The last things he said tasted bitter in his mouth.
His mind returned to the ritual he’d seen in Tunis, but he tried to shake it off.
“Come here, kitten,” he coaxed.
He looked around his room then, squinting at the floor.
“Where is that little black fluff of a creature? Maybe she’ll sleep with me.
” He purred in the back of his throat. “Come here, kitty. Kitty. Kitty. Kitty… ah. There you are.” He found her on a cushion by the fire with relief.
The cat stared at him with indifference, blinking its large, green eyes.
“Come here, you little fuzzy fuck. My witch won’t come to bed with me. ”
The cat yawned, then curled back up in a tight ball on the cushion, closing its eyes.
“I am unloved,” Caelum said desolately.
Leda scoffed at him, but he saw her eyes brighten. “You’re impossible,” she said scathingly. She wiped her face. “I really am going to lock you to your bed.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
“You won’t enjoy it,” she warned.
“Promise to sleep with me if you do?” he asked, his tongue being difficult again. “All I can probably handle right now, kitty kitty.”
She rolled her eyes, but that time, she closed the gap between herself and the bed and climbed up on top of it. She crawled over to him over the duvet, and he felt his cock twitch, even under everything they’d poured down his throat and done to manipulate his magic.
“Valor says you’re lucky to be alive,” she retorted.
Caelum scoffed, the sound openly dismissive. “Drama queen,” he slurred. “Your cousin’s a drama queen. And a lecturing cunt.”
When he looked at her, she bit her lip.
She might’ve been thinking about kissing him.
Or she might’ve been sorely tempted to hit him.
It was difficult to tell.
She didn’t do either. Instead she stretched out next to him and wrapped an arm lightly and carefully around his waist, avoiding the places they’d patched up, bandaged with various spells, and covered in magicked herbs, creams, liquids and whatever else.
“I’m fine,” he told her.
“Liar.”
“Totally fine. Perfect, even. So I’ve been told.”
“Shut up, Bones.”
His fingers sank into her black hair. He sighed openly at how soft it was, relieved that it felt like hers again.
He wanted to touch her all over. He wanted her to touch him all over.
He never seemed to get enough of her hands on him, even apart from the sex.
He knew some of that was probably childhood shit, things a mind doctor would have all kinds of things to say about, and theorize about, but he didn’t much care about the why.
He just wanted to take off both of their clothes and wrap himself around her.
“I love that you worry about me,” he blurted. “Is that fucked up?”
“A little.”
“I love that you care,” he amended. He closed his eyes. “I love that you care, wife.” The word made his chest hurt. He stared up at the ceiling. “Fuck. Wifey wife. Wife.”
She exhaled in a way that sounded more like an eye roll.
Wife? Had he said that aloud?
He might regret saying that later.
The thought was there and gone, but he couldn’t hold onto the feeling long enough to make sense of it, much less for it to really worry him. He closed his eyes, but the world immediately started spinning.
“No one fucking worries about me,” he mumbled. “Only wifey.”
“Your mother does.”
His mother. He frowned as his eyes flickered open.
True. That was true. She worried.
Now that his father was in prison, he was beginning to think his mother worried about him a lot more than he’d ever known, or let himself believe.
He remembered the presents she would try to sneak him when he was little, the candy she’d mail through the post when he was at boarding school, the hugs she’d give him in the shadows when his father wasn’t around, wouldn’t notice, or berate her for turning him into a spoiled, pampered, little pussy.
The thought should have been laughable, but now it just made him sad.
It made him sad for his mother, too.
“My mother loves you,” he said. He corrected himself. “Adores you. She absolutely adores you. I’m pretty sure she wants to abduct you as a daughter, to the underworld with me. I told her I’d try not to let it come to that.”
Leda stiffened the tiniest bit. It was barely perceptible. She didn’t move where her head rested on his chest, but he fought to play back his words, wondering again if he would come to regret them. He couldn’t bring himself to care.
“Do you really think all this…” Eyes half-open, he motioned vaguely between them, in a haphazard circle. “…All this,” he repeated. “Is just because I can fuck you?”
She tensed a few degrees more. He felt it all along his skin and magic where she leaned against his arm and side.
He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.
He wondered if he should keep waiting but he could feel himself dozing off, and this felt important. Anyway, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from talking now that he’d started.
“It’s not,” he said. “It’s not that.”
She scoffed quietly.
“It’s not,” he growled. His throat felt thick and he fought to slow the spinning. “I do want to fuck you. All the gods-damned time. But it’s not that. It’s not only that, wife.”
He felt her cheeks heat beneath his fingers and glanced down to see her bite her lip. She looked all cute and flushed and sleepy in his arms. He definitely didn’t mind. She glanced up at him, almost like she heard him, scoffed louder, and rolled her eyes.
“Maybe you should wait until you’re not high as a kite to talk to me, Bones,” she suggested with a half-yawn.
“I strongly suspect you’d be expressing yourself very differently if your brain wasn’t under the influence of about six pain relieving spells and potions.
” She snuggled back into his chest, then added, “You don’t want to say anything you’ll regret tomorrow.
Especially things you really don’t mean. ”
He fought to think about that.
Turning over her words, he shook his head seriously.
“No,” he said. “No, I mean it. Definitely mean it.” He shook his head, slower that time, his eyes closed.
“It’s not a different, new thing, Leda. Was thinking this before.
At dinner. And after,” he added. “And before. At the Tower. Not sad about the Forsooth thing… Antonia. Not sad. Maybe you’re sad, but I’m not. Want you to be happy.”
She scoffed a little again, but only pressed her face into his shoulder. “Okay.”
“Believe me?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Are you going to let me fuck you tomorrow?”
“Go to sleep, Bones.”
He caressed her face with his fingers, and shivered. Her skin was so soft.
She was beautiful. So fucking beautiful.
“Go to sleep,” she mumbled.
He clutched her tighter, with a possessiveness that wanted to stop his heart.
He woke up to an empty bed, which displeased him.
He fought to get past his annoyance long enough to down the pain potion she’d left him, with a big note on the front, tied on to the bottle with what looked like one of her hair ties.
Even after the potion kicked in, well enough that he could sit up, squint around at the sunlight dappling his tower floor, and begin to contemplate a shower, he remained irritated and strangely restless without her there.
His skin prickled, and even as the pain eased, he felt a broader discomfort that made his jaw clench.
By then, it had occurred to him why she’d likely darted out of there without waiting for him to wake.
The carriage would be coming to Bonescastle today, likely sometime just before noon. It tended to leave and return to Bonescastle a bit earlier for breaks than it did for the first day of the school year, meaning the day of the start-of-term banquet.