Chapter 11
?
No regrets, I guess.
Morana
For all my faults, Morana?
Commitment isn’t one of them.
Kyran’s words echo in my skull, and I can’t drag my gaze off him even as he goes back to his worksheet and pretends he didn’t just say the most beautiful collection of words I’ve ever heard in my life.
I force myself to work on my sheet, too, just so I might have a chance to keep from falling apart.
Once done, I find that I’m still reeling.
Except, now I’m reeling, replaying earlier, and keenly aware that I am sitting next to a man who genuinely believes he wants to marry me.
“Done?” he asks, voice no longer vibrating with lethal gravity.
Setting my FrostPlays-brand ice-blue pen down, I fold my hands in my lap and nod. “Yep.”
“Who’s messier?” Kyran reads the first question, looks at me, looks toward my dining room table, and says, “I think we both know the answer to that, and I have to say, I am delighted to inform you that, before tonight, I would have put down a different one.”
My face heats. “Oh, stuff it. Yes, I’m a slob.
You’d never be able to live with me. I like things everywhere.
My favorite pictures are the ones you see something new in every time you look at them, and I want my living area to reflect that energy.
Meanwhile, the messiest you are is when you’re trying to bug me.
I mean, seriously.” I huff and twist a lock of my hair between my fingers.
“The only time your room isn’t immaculate is when you’re trying to flirt with me. ”
“My gaming room looks a lot like yours.”
As if I haven’t noticed. I mutter, “Yeah. I love it. I was just…giving you a hard time about it when I told you I probably needed a tetanus shot after being in there.”
He warms. “It occurs to me that when you froze after seeing it for the first time, you were probably fangirling, not horrified.”
He’s not wrong.
But I am not obligated to tell him that.
He says, “I keep my room bare because there are fewer things for my sleep-paralysis demons to hide behind.”
My heart twinges at the thought of that. “Really?”
He nods.
“That sucks.”
“I’m naturally neat, but…definitely in more of a chaos hovel way. Where everything is in its place, but there’s a lot of everything, like in my gaming room.”
“Personally, I think your bedroom is creepy. I’m shocked that it helps with your nightmares. If I were picking decor to offset demons, I’d opt for plush. Ice blues and pale pinks. And, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but your bed?”
“What about my bed?” he murmurs, all suggestion.
I temper my breaths and contain myself. “There’s not a single stuffed animal on it. Stuffed animals, since the beginning of time, have been known to fight monsters. It’s like you’re not even trying to not have scary dreams.”
He ponders that for a moment, then a familiar glint of mischief takes hold of him. “You’re so right. You wouldn’t happen to be able to connect me with a life-size doll maker, would you? I’d like to order myself a mistress to cuddle and protect me from the baddies.”
My eyes close. “Ugh.”
“No? I suppose I could ask Maelin to make it for me… It’d be more accurate that way, too. She knows her twin best.”
“I so dearly wish you hadn’t seen that card. It’s disgusting. You can just say I’m disgusting. I wish you’d acknowledge it outright.”
“Disgusting?” he murmurs. “What were you planning to do with my life-size likeness that would make it disgusting?”
My eyes snap open. “Nothing. Gross. I just—”
“You just…”
I tear my gaze off him. “You’re a comfort character.
And I’m…” My stomach hurts. This is terrible.
“I’m lonely. Ever since Maelin left, it’s felt so cold here.
I’m not used to being all by myself, and before you go all therapist on me, yes.
I’m fully aware that her moving out so suddenly presses on this abandonment issue I’ve got. ”
No jokes, softly, he says, “Our house is huge, Morana. You can have a room in it as far away from me as you can get. You don’t have to be here all by yourself.”
“Right. Because being on the other side of the same house when you’re willing to drive all the way out to mine is supposed to do anything where it concerns privacy from you.”
“To be fair, there’s less walking between my room and the garage than there would be between my room and the south wing.”
“As if tucking me all the way back in the south wing would make me feel any less alone?” I drawl.
“You’re right. What am I thinking? You should absolutely come redecorate my room and share it with me instead. My ulterior motives are now laid bare. You’re much too smart for me to get away with any of my dastardly plots.”
I roll my eyes to the next question on our worksheets. “Who apologizes first after a fight?” I read, then I scoff. “What a joke.”
“I know.”
“What did you put?”
“We don’t fight, obviously. We never have and never will.”
Oh, so now he’s also lying to me? When I answered this one honestly?
I hate how perfectly matched in a flawlessly equal opposite way that makes me feel.
“I put you.” The picture of him topless and struck appears vividly in my head.
My stop wasn’t in question. There was no coercing.
No complaints. He just obeyed, and then he experienced a remorse so palpable I could see it before he apologized.
Basically.
Could not be me.
Yeesh.
He’s kind of…too sweet, isn’t he?
I could never be half so saccharine.
What happened wasn’t even his fault. It was all on me. I kissed him. I escalated the situation. I should have apologized. And, yet, I didn’t.
I haven’t.
Biting my cheek, I say, “Kyran.”
“I can’t believe you accuse me of making the first move,” he says, looking at my sheet. “I’m much too innocent for skullduggery of that nature.”
I catch on that word for a moment. Skullduggery. Who says that? What does that even mean?
Deciding that he absolutely stole it from someone or somewhere, I repeat, “Kyran.”
His blue eyes hit mine.
I bite out my cheap apology. “I’m sorry.”
“For…daring to accuse me of attempting to seduce you?” His eyes skate over me, practically undressing, before they close. “When I would never.” He sniffs. “I accept your contrition.”
My eyes roll. He really is such a genuine lunatic. I clarify, “For earlier. For kissing you.”
“Morana,” he states.
My chest pinches. “Wh…what?”
“Never, ever, apologize for kissing me. I apologized earlier because I went farther than you wanted, but you can’t go too far with me. You never need to apologize for touching me. I don’t want you sorry that you have. Ever.”
Heat zips down my spine, settling in my belly, so I tangle my fingers at my midsection, hoping it’ll quiet down.
Lifting his hand, he catches a lock of my hair and tucks it behind my ear, letting his fingers graze my cheek as they pass. “I am yours, mistress. You will always be at liberty to do whatever you want to me. Without repentance. Without regret.”
That kind of power is surely going to be disastrous in my hands.
Tender, he says, “You…don’t regret earlier, do you?”
I can still feel him, at my neck, nipping so hard I wouldn’t be surprised if it made me bleed. I know I’m bruised. He touched me in ways I’ve never been touched before—like he wanted access in to my very soul. It made everything else I’ve ever experienced pale in comparison.
Do I regret knowing that it happened?
Do I regret knowing that my frail efforts to brother-sister us can’t ever come back now?
Do I regret how drastically this has changed everything?
Maybe. Maybe just a little bit. Maybe just because it’s change, and change is scary and hard.
But, do I regret anything so much that I don’t dearly wish to find myself in a position where I might be able to touch him again?
I say, “No. I don’t.”