26. Drunken Confessions #2
The words didn’t rouse my usual depths of antipathy towards how people felt towards my allure.
It was one thing to want to feel an affection towards me that was almost entirely false.
Alluin loved me better than anyone else in the world, though, and I knew how hard it was for him to stop constantly thinking.
If I wasn’t actively using my allure geas—if it was only that Alluin could feel that endless draw to focus on me—then maybe it was no different than how I felt when he commanded me.
Hesitantly, I relaxed my grip on my magic. “Like this?” I asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Such perfect torment,” he breathed, his whole body relaxing. Alluin laced his fingers into my hair and tugged, the pressure against my scalp making my lashes flutter and need coil in my gut. “Take me home, Zhi. If we’re gonna do something stupid, I want to do it in our bed.”
Gods. It was a damn good thing I was already committed to not seducing people with my allure geas, because the idea of doing something stupid in bed with Alluin was incredibly enticing.
“I doubt we can make it home.” I nuzzled his neck and sighed out my pleasure against his warm skin. “Leah had the right idea, drinking beer. Ridiculous of you to drink fortified wine. I’ve got a bed here, though. Maybe we can make it there.”
Alluin grunted. Without moving, he raised his voice and called, “I’ll pay ten silver to someone if they’ll help pour us into Zhiolas’ garrison bed.”
My cheeks started heating, and I went completely crimson when one of my captains said, with great glee, “General, I would have done it for free.”
I woke up half-naked with a shirtless Alluin sprawled between my legs, which would have been a lovely way to wake if it hadn’t been accompanied by a ferocious hangover and roiling nausea.
I lay there and breathed for a while, trying to get my body to pull itself together.
It would have been easier without Alluin’s whole torso compressing my stomach, but he was fully unconscious, his cheek resting on my sternum and his arms akimbo.
There was no shifting him even if I wanted to do so.
I had no memory of actually making it to bed.
Everything started getting fuzzy right around when I started kissing Alluin’s neck, though I was fairly sure I still remembered most of the conversation.
My cheeks warmed as I remembered it—Alluin talking about scars, Alluin straddling me, my very unwise decision to put my tongue on him, something about my allure geas.
I’d said and done things that were far outside the bounds of our relationship.
He’d said worse. We’d been so drunk, though, and we’d spent the previous several hours thinking and joking about sex as we tried to nudge Dain’s soulmate into taking advantage of his obvious desire.
That was enough to make even Alluin say stupid things, let alone me.
As if he could hear me thinking about him, Alluin groaned and cracked one eyelid. “Where the fuck are we?” he asked, sounding like he was on death’s doorstep.
“My room in the garrison,” I replied, grimacing as the act of speaking made my headache redouble. “Fuck. Remind me not to let Leah talk me into drinking games ever again. How much do you remember?”
Alluin pushed himself up, swaying a bit, and rubbed the side of his mouth.
“I don’t really remember them leaving,” he said.
“They were there, and then…maybe we were talking? Someone put us to bed. You told me that if I was going to be between your legs, you shouldn’t be held responsible for what your dick had to say about that, and then you passed out. ”
He sat all the way up, then paled, sweat breaking out on his forehead. “Fuck,” Alluin whispered.
I was already moving. I lunged for my wastebin, fell out of bed in the process, and got it in front of Alluin before he started heaving his guts out.
My vision grayed out for a second from the movement; I slumped onto the ground with a groan, head throbbing and a distinct sense of disappointment settling in my gut like silt.
Of course he didn’t remember. Of course he wouldn’t remember.
Alluin had been thoroughly sauced, a result of the foolish decision to play a drinking game with fortified wine, as well as several thieved pulls off of the fruity cocktails I’d gotten.
Him saying I would look pretty with his marriage-marks on my shoulders wasn’t any more meaningful than him asking about long-healed scars as if they were still there.
“We are sometimes very stupid, Lu,” I said when he’d finished puking and was sitting there panting over my defiled wastebin.
It wasn’t the first time it had been used in such a fashion, and I doubted it would be the last. Carefully, I leaned my head back against the mattress, deeply grateful to past Zhiolas for purchasing blackout curtains.
“I’ve got mortal ibuprofen in the toilet cupboard, for whenever one of us makes it over there. ”
Alluin gingerly set the wastebin on the floor and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He took a careful breath. “Zhi, did I…kiss you?” he asked, sounding unhappy about it.
I closed my eyes for a moment, hating his discomfort.
“No,” I said softly. “I licked your neck and you told me to stop. You were the one keeping his head, even though I’m fairly sure you were drunker than me.
” Even though I could have kept the information to myself, I felt like he deserved to know.
It wasn’t as if we’d been in our bedroom. People had seen us.
He hesitated, then nodded, his hand going up to rub at his neck. “It’s… We were drunk.”
“Hey.” I leaned my head against his thigh and wrapped my hand around his bare ankle.
“Don’t be upset. It wasn’t my finest moment—though, to be fair, you were straddling me at the time,” I added, giving him a wry look.
“We both made some inadvisable decisions. Want to chalk it up to trying to get Leah to ride our prince, and us getting caught up in the mood?”
Alluin sighed and set his hand on my head, rubbing his fingertips across my temples soothingly. “Let’s hope they had a better evening.” He gave his head a half-shake. “You said there’s ibuprofen?”
“Toilet cupboard, bottom shelf.” I looked up at him as he stood. “Bring me some? And some water.”
“Sure,” he said with a half-smile. “Anything else you want from me?”
Gods, that wording. So many things, I thought, but what I said was, “That’s fine for now.”
“Alright, then.” Alluin turned and stretched, the muscles of his back tensing and sliding in a glorious display. “Don’t miss me too much.”
I closed my eyes again, drooping against the bed.
I’m such a fucking coward, I thought, longing settling into me with comfortable ease.
I knew Alluin enjoyed me—knew he was attracted to me, liked playing with me, would probably take great satisfaction in fucking me.
If I invited him to have sex with me, I thought that he would agree.
It was a terrible idea. I would never be content with being his light-of-love or friend-with-benefits.
I wanted everything—his love, his life, his name written on me in an eternal claim—but he was Alluin, and I was…
me. Yet as I sprawled there and waited for him to come take care of me, all I could think of was how perfect he’d felt in my arms, and of how badly I wanted him there again.