34. A Study in Restraint #2
“Terrible injustice, that is. And you don’t think twice was enough?” I probe because Francesca smiling at me like that makes me stupid. She shakes her head, tipping onto her toes, and I exhale a tired laugh. “You’re drunk.”
She pouts in response. “ Twice . Then you became very princely and polite—didn’t even bring it up.
Y’know, I literally thought I hallucinated it.
” She laughs to herself at that, slipping her small hands beneath my suit jacket.
“Like a fever dream or something. Like I wanted it so badly that I made it up.”
I’ve replayed those kisses more times than I’m willing to admit, but she’s looking at me like I’ve wronged her in some undeniable way. As though she’d done her piece and waited for my move, and I went and missed it. Always missing things.
I should’ve… I don’t even know what.
Girls at university, at all those events, didn’t give a damn if I never circled back. Maybe I’ve spent too long with those who didn’t care to dissect my bluntness. Maybe I just assumed Francesca would know, and I feel dumb for not realising that silence doesn’t have meaning to everyone.
That it can read like indifference.
“It happened,” I tell her. “But you almost died, and I wasn’t about to rank your life above a kiss. I’m sorry. I’m—well, I’m not good at this.”
Every word bleeds truth, and I’m hoping she believes me because the truth always manages to sound clinical when I say it.
She leans back just enough to look me in the eye. “Good at what?”
I test the words in my head first before attempting them. “At doing what’s expected. And… knowing what people expect, I guess.” I think of my mother and my brothers and then add with a frown, “End up hurting people because of it sometimes.”
The second I’ve said it, I decide I can’t look at her. And she—fuck, this girl—just slides her palm to my jaw. That gorgeous grin is back on her face when she says, “Oh, so you’re basically just an average man?”
A quiet laugh bursts from me, only fuelling her amusement. “That’s so fucking offensive?—”
“You didn’t let me finish,” she drags her words, poking my chest. “Difference is that you’re a good one. I can’t be mad when you chose my safety over yourself. Not a lot of men do that…” She leans in on a whisper. “Especially the hot ones.”
A good man.
Never been accused of that before. At least not by anyone who’s not my mother, and she’s inherently biased.
Good is a perfect press release in my family.
Good is the sort of reputation that my father buys.
It’s not… me . Doesn’t even sound like it should belong to my name or fit on my shoulders.
I can try, though—pretend even. Enough that it becomes practice, and practice turns me into something good.
Then I remember I’m willing to kill if my motivations reach their breaking point.
If I unlocked that door. I would wrap my hands around the spine of my father’s cruelty and snap it.
A husband. A father. The king. Three faces on the same pathetic man, and I would strip him of them all.
I would personally staple Edmund’s hands to the Sheffolk family genealogy record, underline his name in red and add a warning to not resurrect him because he wanted to fuck his cousin.
And pity the man who strangled her when I catch up to him.
Alright, not entirely good. But maybe good enough.
Francesca squints at me. I’m in my head, and she knows it, but all she does in response is whisper, “I still want that kiss, though.”
The damn cottage is in sight, but still, I entertain her with a response. “You’ll have to earn it.”
She perks up at that. “Earn it?”
“Spell my name. If you can do that, I’ll consider it.”
“Easy. N-U-M-E-R-I-C.”
I stare down at her, lips twitching. “Numeric?” I repeat, calm on the outside whilst my ribcage rattles. “That’s not my name.”
“Yes, it is. Num- eric .” Slower this time, as though I didn’t catch it. “Because you’re my math boy, obviously.”
I feel the hit of that possessive determiner low enough to think she might’ve kneed me in the fucking crotch. “Francesca…”
“C’mon, add to the equation. Turn two into three. ”
Her dark brows are wiggling suggestively, and I’m torn between laughing and pinching myself because there’s no way this girl is real.
I’m already leaning in, against my better judgement.
She’s still laughing when I cup her face, slipping in a quiet victory cheer before our lips meet.
I steal the breath from her lungs, then walk her back.
One step, then another. When her spine finally hits the tree, she gasps, allowing my tongue an easy entrance.
Still amused by herself, she whispers it quietly again.
Numeric . Three syllables, and she hands my entire identity back to me.
She called me numbers and logic, found my name in that word, and I’ve never felt more seen than by this tipsy phantom currently sliding her hands into my hair.
My forearm presses to the bark beside her head, knee sliding between her legs because I need her closer, but I’m hitting fucking resistance. Layers upon layers of velvet.
“ Fuck’s sake ,” I mutter against her mouth, trying to hike her leg up. “Swear the world built you to be untouchable.”
“Maybe I am— ah .” Her voice breaks when I drag my lips along her jawline, finding the soft spot beneath her ear.
I mouth there repeatedly, and she melts on my name.
It’s the prettiest sound, half moan and half laugh.
There are other words mixed in between, but they amount to nothing because I lift to steal them once more.
Her grip on my hair has turned to desperation, and I pull back just enough to say, “I know.”
Because I do know.
Tonight could’ve ended so differently. She could’ve been gasping for breath, throat swelling, but instead she’s here, still breathing.
Kind of breathing, because I can’t stop dragging her into me as though she owes me air.
I start to move down again, aching to leave proof of this moment, but she stops me just as I reach the slope of her throat.
“Careful,” she laughs. “Any lower and you’ll get a mouthful of Charlotte Tilbury.”
I halt, recalling the bruises. Think of something else .
Something that isn’t the smell of lavender or the way your name sounds on her lips.
I try to chase desire away with thoughts of Pablo—Henrik’s dumb cat—and how his mouth constantly smells like dead fish.
A useless apology forms on the tip of my tongue because I almost pressed my want for her into someone else’s damage.
But she sees it, doesn’t give the regret a chance to breathe.
She tucks a few strands of blonde behind my ear, offering a quiet, “It’s okay.”
Eyes glossy from the wine, dress crooked from the way I’ve tugged, and I can’t help but think she’s so damn beautiful.
Next, she grabs my tie and tugs. The knot gives in without resistance, much like my rationality.
She drops it to the ground, fingers already working at the top two buttons of my shirt.
Air hits my throat, accompanied by a breathy, “Let’s trade positions,” before she puts her mouth to my skin.
I tilt for her, savouring the open-mouthed kisses, the wet slide of her tongue as she suckles her mark into me.
I’m fisting her skirts like a frightened schoolboy because she’s claiming the spot right where my pulse is the loudest. I try to stop it, muffle it into my forearm, but a needy sound rips right out of me.
“Was that a whimper, Your Highness?” She smiles against my neck.
“It wasn’t.”
“Sounded like a whimper to me.” She’s laughing, pleased, and greedy —I’m fucking losing it.
One second later, and I feel her teeth sink in, flesh being taken hostage by her mouth. It settles into a throb, a deep sting that she then licks over. A fucking hickey.
“Did you just leave a mark?”
“Uh-huh.” She bites her glossy lip like she’s proud of herself, and my own pride won’t let her gloat.
I frame her jaw, tilting her face to mine. “Open for me.”
Her lips part in surrender, and my tongue licks past her teeth.
She moans throatier than I’ve heard before, hands shooting to my lapels.
I don’t rush it, carefully tracing the inside of her mouth as though trying to map it.
Eager little witch sucks me in, laving the roof of my mouth and whimpering when I pin her tongue.
It hits me mid-kiss: the scent of artificial citrus. A fucking vape. That smell shouldn’t be here, just a few feet away from the place Francesca calls home.
I break off from the kiss, and she chases my mouth instantly. “Hm, no, no, no, come back.”
“Later,” I tell her, easing some errant strands from her eyes whilst pretending not to be listening for a third presence. “As much as I adore being manhandled against a tree, you’ve drunk a vineyard. Water, aspirin, and then sleep, alright?”
“What if I don’t want aspirin? What if I want your mouth?”
Her hand slides up to the hickey she left, and I almost say, ‘ Fuck the water and aspirin. ’ But the night is watching, and the synthetic citrus still floats on the air.
When she tries to kiss me again, I tilt and press my lips to her jaw. “Inside, baby. Please.”
With lips puffed from too much love and still panting a little, Francesca looks at me with a dangerous amount of faith.
Understanding flickers in her gaze; she nods once, twice, before letting me retrieve the bottle.
Hand closing around the neck, a glint on the base momentarily steals my focus.
There’s something embossed there. Gula III .
How odd. My mind already begins tugging on the thread but I file it away for later.
Right now, my concern is Francesca. She stumbles less than she did a few minutes ago, and by the time I’m opening her front door, she’s the one pulling me.
I set her on the couch with a glass of water and force her to eat two chewable electrolyte jellies.
She does so with an irritated frown before begging for yoghurt, but priorities .
First I help unzip her dress and get the pyjamas out of the stack of clothes on her vanity chair because I need her safe in bed.
When she disappears into the bathroom, I switch on all the lights, delivering a brief knock on the spare bedroom door, to which Percy responds with a muffled, “Still alive!”
Francesca’s body is already heavy with sleep after she’s changed, brushed her teeth and almost completely washed off her make-up.
I cross the room to help her, but she tilts dramatically, claiming she’s too tired.
I don’t argue, obviously, just hide my smile in her hair as I hoist her up.
Her thighs are bare and warm in my hands, and I try so fucking hard not to think about it.
I lay her down gently in bed. Tuck her in.
Another glass on the nightstand with an ibuprofen set beside it.
Sleep steals her on a little whistle-like exhale that would’ve made me chuckle if not for the circumstances.
My chest unclenches as the tension leaks from her expression.
Alive. Not choking on candles and cake. Not anything but asleep and clutching the tie she didn’t even realise she’d been clinging to all this time.
The relief nearly knocks me off my feet, but I can still smell that candied drug.
Someone thought they could watch us. They thought they could watch her from the treeline.
I’ll deal with it in the morning when I’m not half-drunk on the taste of her and this ungodly night.
For now, I take the couch, stretching long on what little space is offered.
Memory holds strong, but the citrussy scent steps out when mildew walks in.
Then fingers—thin, cold and small—curl into my hand. I squeeze once. She squeezes back.
“Alright,” I mumble into the throw pillow. “You and me, then. Let’s keep watch for our girl.”