Chapter 28 #2
But … she was drunk and already lying on the bed, the white dress fanning around her. And she was … beautiful. He’d always known it of course, just hadn’t let himself think it. But here, now, she looked soft. And lovely. And oh, he was so fucked.
They were both silent for a while, Hark removing the blades he had strapped to his body and discarding the jacket he had chosen, and Arla … watching. He could feel her eyes on him, and it made him nervous in a way he wasn’t familiar with.
The bed creaked as he joined her on it, and she turned her head to face him. The moonlight poured in from the window in the roof above them, illuminating her in a shade of soft silver.
‘Could you take the pins out of my hair?’ she asked quietly, batting her eyelids as they drooped against the darkness.
‘Do I look like a maid?’ he huffed, reaching for her anyway.
He didn’t know what he was doing – gods, he had never tended to a woman’s hair unless he was running his hands through it during rather less innocent activities – but he found himself gently prising the silver pins from the golden crown she had woven.
Of course she had packed silver pins; she couldn’t have settled on a less expensive – and more practical – set of hair accessories for travel. He rolled his eyes at the thought.
After what seemed an age, he collected the pile of pins in his hands and placed them on the dresser, averting his eyes from the girl splayed out on the bed, her hair a wave of sunlight around her.
She had always had pale, golden, silky coils for hair that were unruly when left loose, but now they were wavy and less sharp than usual—
Stop it.
For half a moment it all felt wrong. They should be out there, like she’d said, rescuing those the King of Kastonia had ordered to be imprisoned. They should be—
An odd noise – something between a squeak and a breath – escaped her, immediately capturing the gaze he had withheld seconds before. She hiccupped again, and he bit sharply on his lip to fight the laughter clawing its way up his throat.
‘It’s not funny,’ she protested, turning on her side to face him.
Gods, she needed to stop looking at him like that.
‘You’re staring, Stappen.’
He was.
He didn’t think he could stop.
It was why he had noticed how cold she was. She shook slightly and it pained him to watch her look so vulnerable.
‘You’re cold,’ he said.
‘Obviously.’
Don’t you fucking dare.
‘Come here.’
Fool.
She looked at him, her body becoming preternaturally still for a heartbeat. And then she was shuffling closer to him, turning so that her back was pressed against his chest. She was freezing. But the feel of her against him…
‘Don’t tell the others,’ she whispered.
It dragged a smile from Hark. Arla Reinhart, who had never once given a single thought to the way others perceived her, asking him not to breathe a word of it to his friends.
Slim chance of that ever happening. Not when the feel of her pressed against him was sending him spiralling.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ he managed, groaning when she shifted even closer.
She turned slowly at the sound, until she was facing him and her lips were only inches away.
‘This is a bad idea,’ she whispered.
Hark swallowed. ‘The worst.’
She huffed a laugh. ‘I don’t even like you.’
‘You’re the bane of my life.’ He was sure their faces were closer now. ‘Fuck it.’
They came together slowly and then all at once.
Where the last time he had kissed her had been lust, desperation and revenge all tangled together, this was gentleness and patience.
Their lips moved together as if they had been carved from the same mould, and in that moment there was nothing else that mattered besides the girl he held so desperately close.
She moved against him, pressing her body closer, closer than he thought was possible.
He could feel every inch of her. Every curve and swell.
And when she ran her hands down his torso, lower and lower until the hard ridge of him was beneath her palm, Hark thought she could kill him right then and he’d let her do it.
She kissed him harder, her hand a blessing and a curse as he struggled to hold on to the edge of sanity. He wanted her. Wanted her so much it hurt.
But no.
No, he couldn’t.
Not when she’d drunk so much. Not when she’d barely been able to make it to this bed without him helping her.
He gripped her wrist gently, so gently, and held her hand in his. ‘Not tonight, Reinhart,’ he whispered softly.
The pained groan that came from her had him questioning his ability to keep his hands off her. ‘Another night, when you’re not so deep in your cups that you don’t know what you’re doing. When I touch you again, I want you to remember every second of it.’
Her chin dipped, everything about her softening as she smiled weakly.
He almost choked on the laughter in his throat when she hiccupped again. ‘You’ll hate yourself tomorrow,’ he said, stretching his back against the wooden headboard.
‘Yes,’ she said, with too much surety for his liking.
He felt overcome with an unfamiliar emotion. Regret. For what had happened to her family and to her kingdom at the hands of his people. Regret for what it had made her into. The only thing that eased the ache was how soft she was in this moment, when the world had made her so unbreakably hard.
‘Go to sleep, Reinhart,’ he whispered.
He was met with silence, her chest already rising and falling deeply. He counted each breath she took until his eyes became blurry, and then he let the darkness swallow him, too.