Chapter Seventeen – Esme
Chapter Seventeen
Esme
I can’t believe I’m kissing him, but here I am, on the kitchen floor, my mouth on his, and I can’t get enough of his taste, his heat, the hard press of his body against mine. He’s still on his knees, I am too, and I climb onto his lap, because I don’t want to stop.
My first kiss. My parents made sure I’d be a virgin through and through when they sold me off for political gain, so they’d minimized my contact with boys and men, aside from the ones they pushed on me during balls and events. But I never wanted to kiss those.
I don’t regret it now. I’m glad Osric is my first kiss. I want him to be my first… everything.
His mouth is overwhelming. His taste, the strange edge of him, all of it goes to my head like strong liquor.
It seems impossible that a kiss can do this much.
I fall into him and wrap my arms and legs around him.
He catches me and holds my weight without effort.
The hard, perfect shell covering his chest makes me want more.
We kiss for a long time, messy and hungry, and not elegant at all. I’m nothing like the young lady I was raised to be.
There’s something about his saliva that makes it hard to stop.
I’ve never kissed anyone, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I don’t think a kiss should taste this sweet.
I’ve never tasted anything sweeter, and I keep going back for it, pressing my mouth harder against his to get more.
I don’t think the taste of him is natural.
I feel the shape of his body under my hands, I feel his cock, hard and heavy against my stomach through our clothes. He wants me as badly as I want him. There’s the proof, pressed into me, and it makes me bold.
Then Osric tears himself away.
The clicking in his throat is loud now. He can’t suppress it anymore, and I hear it clearly, rising out of him in waves.
My pussy gushes and clenches around nothing.
I want him so much, it scares me. This isn’t polite desire.
It isn’t a girlish crush on a handsome stranger.
It’s physical, deep, and humiliatingly honest.
He stumbles back, and I have to untangle myself from him. He gets to his feet. I stay on the floor, rattled, my hair loose and my dress twisted, looking up at him.
“This can’t happen,” he says.
“Osric…”
“If we do this and you die, I’ll never survive it.” His voice is low and wrecked. “I’m doomed either way. But you can still be saved.”
I know I must say something, convince him to get back down on the floor and into my arms. I open my mouth but nothing comes out.
He turns and walks out of the kitchen, through the back door, into the garden.
It takes me a minute to snap out of the weird trance I entered. Our first kiss turned my brain to mush. I get up and go after him, but I only make it to the porch before I slam right into Darina.
She’s sweaty, dusty, and furious, grit in her hair and a red flush of temper across her face.
“I can’t believe you left me there,” she yells.
I immediately feel terrible.
“I’m so sorry. Come inside. Come, let me get you water.”
She lets me pull her in, which tells me she’s more tired than angry. I pour her a cup from the pitcher, and she drains half of it in one go. Darina has never managed to stay angry at me for long, and I’ve never deserved her kindness less than today.
“Our bags are still in the car,” she says, wiping her mouth. “I can’t drive the thing. It’s just sitting out there, in the middle of the road, like a monument to everyone’s terrible decisions.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I meant it! Come upstairs. Let’s get you cleaned up. There’s a lot I have to tell you.”
“You need to wash too.”
“I know. It’s dire.”
We go up to my room and into the bathroom, where we fill the basin and work on each other with wet cloths. She scrubs the grit from the back of my neck. I work the dust out of the fine hairs at her temple. While our hands are busy, I tell her everything.
“I’m his mate, Darina. His fated mate. He’s known since the auction, and that sound he keeps making, the clicking he tries to hide by coughing or clearing his throat, is the proof. It’s the mating call we read about in the book. All this time, he struggled with it so I wouldn’t know.”
She wrings her cloth out into the basin.
“All right. The book made the whole thing sound almost civilized. So, why has he been trying to shove us out the door?”
“Because there’s more, and it’s bad. It turns out that when a Scorpius male never finds his mate, he enters a feral rut that makes him dangerous to everyone. His own people put him down.”
Darina stops moving.
“That’s what’s been happening to him,” I say. “That’s what the whole city knows and we didn’t. Nobody exiled him, but they were going to, so he sold his house in Haara and moved out here to the edge of it. What he told us about retiring because he needed a change…”
“Was a lie.”
“It was the polite version. He came out here to go feral where he can’t hurt anyone. His plan is to end it himself.”
“Oh. That’s awful.”
“He’s been fighting it the entire time. There’s a shaman who makes him a tincture that delays the rut.
I think that’s where he went the morning his car was gone.
But the tincture stopped working. He kept raising the dose, but it doesn’t work anymore, and me being in the house makes everything worse.
So, he locked himself in his room and starved himself, trying to hold it back. ”
“That’s why he wants us to leave?”
“Because he’s running out of time. That’s what he meant on the road, when he said that if I stay, I’m as good as dead.”
This next part is the hardest to say out loud. I fold and unfold the cloth to give my hands something to do.
“There’s one more thing. The book we read left something out on purpose. It’s about how the claiming ritual ends.”
“How does it end?”
“With the male stinging his bride.”
“What?”
I blush.
“At the peak of it, the male plunges his stinger into his mate. For a Scorpius female, it’s nothing. But my body wasn’t made for it, so… No one knows what happens if I get stung like that. His shaman said I might survive it because I’m his fated mate, but we can’t know for sure.”
Darina is on her feet before I finish.
“Then we leave,” she says. “Now. He’s right. He’s been right this whole time! Thank goodness Osric has more sense than you!”
She looks at my face and sees that I don’t agree with her.
“Esme, you can’t risk your life on a theory.”
“He can’t just skip the sting. I asked him, and he said that in the moment, it’s not a decision he can make.”
“Then that’s more reason for us to go! Come on. Let’s find him and ask him to drive us to the portal. At this point, it’s safer for us in Concord than here.”
I jump to my feet.
“Don’t say that.”
She throws her hands up.
“All right, fine. We’ll pick random coordinates. As long as we don’t land in another desert, I’m fine with any city on Alia Terra.”
“Stop. Just take a breath. We can’t leave. I can’t. If I do, then he dies, Darina. Haven’t you been listening?”
“And that’s horrible, and I’m sorry, but I pick you over him.”
I let out a laugh.
“Oh, Darina.”
I draw her into my arms and hug her tightly. She clings to me and rubs her fingers over my back.
“I kissed him,” I say, out of nowhere.
“Esme…”
“Just now, in the kitchen, and it was incredible. Something is happening between us. Something deep and real. I can’t deny it.”
She pulls away, and I watch contradictory feelings dance in her eyes. She wants me to be safe, but she also wants me to be happy.
“I can’t just stand here and do nothing while you put your life in danger,” she says.
“I’d be doing it for him,” I say. “For love.” It’s the first time I say the word out loud, and it’s easier than I expected. “For the chance at it. Is that so terrible? Isn’t love the one thing that’s actually worth risking my life for?”
Darina shakes her head slowly.
“I know it’s your decision, but it’s the most dangerous decision you’ve ever made. I thought you were reckless when you told me about the bride market and then convinced me to come with you. When you accepted a venomous monster as your buyer. But this… This tops it all.”
“I know. But I don’t know what else to do. This is the only thing that makes sense.”