CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MOIRA
Moira was holed up in bed with a smutty romance novel and a cup of jasmine tea when Rhys shouldered his way into the bedroom. He was balancing a large paper bag from her favorite deli in his arms.
“Moira,” Rhys said. He said her name like an incantation, like it was the only thing standing between him and total desolation.
“You really did leave the Society early,” she said, glancing at the clock on the bedside table. “Won’t you miss the meeting?”
“I don’t care. I needed to be with you,” he said.
Moira smiled, warmth spreading through her chest. No matter how far he wandered from her in pursuit of his lofty ambitions, he always knew where home was.
Rhys sank down onto the edge of the bed. He fastidiously unpacked a veritable bucket of Italian wedding soup, two cannoli, and a sugar-dusted lemon square. Moira propped herself up a little more in bed, grinning at the feast.
“What are you reading?” he asked. “Monster romance or more historical?”
“Regency werewolf romance. Best of both worlds.”
“And how long have you been sick?” he asked. “No fibbing.”
“Just since this morning,” she answered truthfully. “It’s only a cold, Rhys, really it’s nothing.”
“Hush and let me baby you,” he said, opening the lid to her soup and handing her a plastic spoon. She ate gratefully, the healing soup warming her from the inside out.
“How did the conversation with David go?” she asked.
“He accepted,” Rhys said, swallowing hard in a way that told her there was more to the story.
“And?”
“And I kissed him.”
Moira’s eyebrows crept up towards her hairline. “You two keep doing that.”
Rhys looked over to her, agony in his dark eyes. “Are you angry with me?”
Moira snorted, taking another sip of her soup. “Rhys, I told you that you can have whoever you want, so long as you don’t lie to me.”
“Yes, but that was just a hypothetical. This is real. Our relationship comes first, no matter what other… forces are at play. I want to make sure you’re alright.”
“You can start by telling me how it happened.”
“It was in my office at the Society. I asked him to be my second, and he agreed, and it just… happened. Well, I made it happen.”
“You’re David’s superior now,” Moira pointed out, poking at a floating meatball. “That’s dancing pretty close to a violation of professional ethics.”
“I know.”
“That just made it hotter, didn’t it?”
“Moira,” Rhys said darkly. “Please, take this seriously.”
“Oh, I’m being dead serious,” Moira said. “If you can’t talk about something as simple as sex with me, how as we supposed to talk about something as complicated as polyamory?”
Rhys wrinkled his nose. “I’m not a big fan of that word.”
“Too bad. It’s a perfectly good word, and I’m gonna use it. Here, I got you something.” She reached over to the nightstand and retrieved a hardcover book, adorned with a sticky note that simply said “Read me. In full.”
“Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy,” he read aloud.
“I read it; it’s good. If I’m willing to do my research, you should be too. And I want your ass in therapy yesterday to work on all that Catholic guilt. Those are my terms.”
“Terms for what?”
“For you to explore… whatever this is with David. Do you want that?”
“I don’t…” Rhys huffed. “I don’t know.”
“Well,” Moira said, sipping her soup thoughtfully. “The way I see it, you ought to figure that out, sooner than later. I’m not gonna be your emotional go-between, either.”
“Moira, I would never ask you–”
“I’m just setting down my boundaries, alright? I think it’s important that we all do so before this gets any further.”
Rhys just scowled. Moira was certain that many of the Society brothers would come to dread that stormy scowl, but she wasn’t fazed by it.
“I want… I want too much, Moira. More than I have any right to ask for.”
Moira gently grasped her husband’s chin in her hand and looked him in the eye. Stubble scraped against her fingers, evidence that he hadn’t been able to find the time to shave in a few days.
“You’ve always wanted the world, Rhys. That’s one of the things I love about you. Wanting David is no different. But hear me when I say y’all need to sort this out sooner than later. David is my friend, and I don’t want him getting hurt because you can’t say where you stand.”
Rhys latticed his fingers through his wife’s. “Are you alright with this? Really?”
Moira took a deep breath, taking a moment to let her thoughts coalesce. “I’m alright with taking it day by day, together. And since we’re coming clean, there’s something I need to tell you, too.”
“You’ve met somebody else,” Rhys said, a joke undercut with very real anxiety. “I knew this day would come.”
“I haven’t, at least not in the traditional sense. But I might, someday, and I hope you’d be as open to letting me explore those feelings as I am open to letting you explore your feelings for David.”
“That seems fair,” he said somberly. “But seriously, what did you need to tell me?”
“David and I have a… physical connection,” she confessed.
Rhys blinked at her. “I don’t understand.”
“David is an intuitive, just like me. We have different specialties, but the skills are the same. So, when I touch him…”
Moira squeezed Rhys’s hand, hoping it got her point across. Rhys still looked baffled.
“I can feel his emotions,” Moira went on. “I know when he’s agitated or excited or upset. And he can feel me right back. It’s like having a conversation without words.”
“You never told me that before,” Rhys said. It wasn’t an accusation, but there was a strange sort of hurt in his eyes.
“I wasn’t trying to keep anything from you. It was just never the right time.”
“No, I’m not cross, it’s just… I guess you two really are connected.” Now he sounded surly, like a teenager getting left behind to watch the house while his parents went out to dinner together.
Moira made a tsking sound with her tongue. “Do I detect a note of jealousy?”
“Yes, fine,” Rhys said through gritted teeth. “I hate how easy it is between the two of you. I wish it was that easy between David and I. Between you and me.”
Moira raked her fingers through Rhys’s curls, remembering how she used to trim his hair over the bathroom sink when they were college kids with no money between them.
“It only looks easy because we work at it, Rhys. So that’s what I’m gonna tell you. Work for what you want.”
Rhys looked at her with those impossibly dark eyes, filled with so much longing and ambition that she was suddenly terrified that all the want inside him was going to swallow him whole. But then he blinked, and he was himself again.
“Alright. I’ll put in the work. But if you at any time feel uncomfortable or neglected, you tell me.”
“I will. I need you here, Rhys, with me. Not all the time, but plenty of the time. I know what the High Priesthood means to you, but you haven’t been there for me when I needed you since you stepped into the role. That can’t keep on. Do you understand?”
“I do. I won’t jeopardize what we have, Moira. Not again.”
“You’d better not,” she said with a queenly smile. Something about that smile must have lit a fire in him, because he leaned over her and said, “Let me kiss you. I want to make you feel better.”
Moira pressed her fingers against his lips. “I don’t want to get you sick.”
“Then I’ll just have to kiss you everywhere else,” he said, pressing his lips to the delicate shells of her ear. “Put that soup down. You can finish it after I’ve finished with you.”
Moira giggled, but she did as she was told. She let Rhys lay her back against the pillows, twice as gentle as usual since she wasn’t feeling well, and she let him tug the sheets down over her stomach and off her calves. She let him push her dress up around her waist, pull her cotton underwear to the side, and press a lingering kiss to the hot bud between her legs. She tangled her fingers in his hair and let him devour her, savoring every swipe of his tongue, every desperate grip of his fingers in her thighs.
And then, after blissful minutes upon minutes, she let him make her come with a gasp and a laugh.