Chapter 49
elaine
“I don’t like this,” Vera said, pacing the room.
“I know,” I whispered, sitting on the foot of the bed.
She sighed hard, raking her hand back through her hair, and she leaned against the window, rain streaking against the glass, twilight spilling purple ink on the horizon. “I don’t like Whitecliffs.”
I stood up with her, stroking her back in the way I knew calmed her down. She closed her eyes with a tortured sigh. “We can trust Yulia,” I said.
“I trust that Yulia’s motives are… temporarily… aligned with ours,” she said. “I don’t trust the Whitecliffs. In general.”
I nodded, resting against her side. I was apprehensive about it too—with the manor compromised, we had to get out somewhere to see if they would make another attempt on the manor, and Yulia offered a Whitecliff safehouse.
I still remembered the night the Whitecliff assassins surrounded me, artificial light gleaming on the metal of their handguns.
But I also remembered the night Yulia had saved us all from Quayle.
And right now, we didn’t have a lot of options.
But it was different for Vera. She’d grown up thinking they’d killed her mother and, in a way, killed her father too. She’d grown up fighting them tooth and nail at every corner.
And now here she was, working with the Whitecliffs, while it was her own family that tried to kill her.
“If anything happens, we’ll be ready,” I whispered. “But for now, this is the safest place we can be.”
She gritted her teeth. “Glenn… first he took my mother from me. Then he took my father from me. Then he took me away from me. And now if he wants to take…” She glanced at me, and she sighed, pushing off from the window and heading for the bathroom. “I’m getting ready for bed.”
I knew when she needed a minute. I nodded, and I sat in bed in my nightrobe waiting for her. When she came back to bed, dropping in next to me, I draped myself on her side, and she immediately moved an arm around me, holding me into her.
“Are you okay?” she whispered. “You were held hostage…”
I pressed my face into her shoulder. “I wasn’t afraid. I knew you’d come for me.”
She sighed, a heavy, anguished sound, and she kissed the top of my head. “I’m sorry… I left you in danger.”
“If I’d gone with you, I’d have been in more danger. And if we never did anything about the Blackbirds, that would be worst of all. This was the best we could have done.”
She held me tighter, kissing the top of my head again, and my chest swelled. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she whispered.
“You’re so stressed, Vera…” I ran my hand over her front, feeling the tense knot of muscles in her abdomen. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just tense. A lot out in the field. And then knowing we were going back as fast as we could and all I could do was wait…” She clenched her fist against my back.
“I’m okay. I promise.”
“Just a lot of tension.”
“Do you…” I blushed, burying my face in her collar, and I hesitantly lifted the hem of my nightgown. “Do you want any help with the… tension?”
I felt her tense up more, her breath catching, and she put her hand on my bare thigh, her fingers gripping firmly into me. My heart beat faster.
“I’m all yours if you want…”
She brushed her thumb over my skin before, with a strained breath, she reached up, took the hem of my nightgown, and put it back down. “Go to sleep,” she said quietly, and my stomach sank.
I should have said yes, should have gone straight to sleep and forgotten it. Instead, I said, “You don’t want it?”
She rolled over, facing away. “We have to focus on the mission. Early in the morning. We need to sleep.”
“Vera…” I swallowed back the bitter, ugly feeling, and I nodded, settling back into bed. “Okay. Sorry. Goodnight.”
She didn’t say anything. Not at first, anyway. At length, though, she sat up, legs slung over the edge of the bed, and she hung her head. Slowly, I sat up with her.
“Vera?”
“We should get rid of our contract,” she said in a cool, steely voice, and I felt myself splintering.
“Did I… do something wrong?”
The clock ticked in the corner of the room. Vera’s words were larger than life when she spoke. “I don’t want to fall in love, Elaine. I can’t.”
“Vera…” I welled up, pressing myself against her. “It’s okay to,” I whispered. “I’m also…”
“Don’t.” She shook her head. “You’re in the middle of a lot of shit right now. Your emotions are going to be running wild. Just because you feel something for me now…”
“It’s not like that. Vera, you’re not this monster you think you are. You’re a human being. You’re a woman. A woman who’s been hurt. A woman who’s doing the best she can.” My voice fell off into a whisper, eyes full of tears and stars as I looked at her. “A woman I’m falling in love with.”
She turned to me with tears heavy in her eyes, teeth clenched. “I’m damaged, Elaine. I’m broken. There’s nothing here to love. Just broken glass, and if you try to grab hold of it, all you’ll see is reflections of somebody else. And you’ll be left with nothing but blood.”
I took her face in my hands, cradling her as I whispered. “You’re wrong, Vera. You have your broken edges like we all do. And I’m not afraid to get hurt if I hold them.”
“Dammit, Elaine,” she whispered, and she kissed me, intensely, passionately.
I threw my arms around her, and I went with her as she pushed me down onto my back, her tongue touching my lips. I grasped her hip and held her down into me, and she moaned hungrily, rocking her hips against mine.
“Give me everything,” she rasped as she pushed my gown up.
“Everything,” I whispered. “It’s yours.”
“Elaine.” She growled my name in heat, desperation, want, and it rolled through my body in waves.
She kissed me furiously and lovingly all at once, her hands claiming me not only as her lover but as her wife.
She was rough and fast at first, shoving my dress up and ripping off my panties, and then she was slow, deeply passionate, her fingers teasing me as she held herself just up over my face, staring into my eyes.
She took my hand, and she guided it to the front of her pants. I gasped at the touch, moving to push my hand into her pants, to touch her, to please her.
We never did this, never… touched each other at the same time, mutual pleasure. It was always her making me come, or her making me pleasure her. This was different.
It was messy and quiet here in the low lights of the safehouse room, thin insulation meaning we had to be quiet, but it was real. Vera’s fingers against me… and the feeling of how wet she got from touching me like this, throbbing against my fingertips…
I gasped as my orgasm came on, and Vera picked up on it, and she bent down and kissed me, deeply, passionately. “Vera,” I whispered in between kisses. “I’m getting… I’m…”
“Come for me, darling.”
“Oh, God. Vera… Vera!” I cried out her name as the orgasm swelled up where her fingertips touched me, and I crested beautifully, riding the top of the wave before I crashed down into the warmth of her embrace.
Of her heat on my fingertips. It wasn’t long before she buried her face in my shoulder and cried out for me not to stop, and I gave her what she wanted.
Everything she wanted. She came hard enough I felt her throbbing under my fingertips, and she kept herself buried tightly against me even after she finished.
We fell asleep that night wrapped in each other’s arms, me breathing in her air as much as I possibly could, taking in every bit of her.
And when morning came, the bed was empty next to me.