Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Lory
Eternity and all-consuming pleasure still held her in their sensual claws when Khayrivven scrambled off her with a groan that was definitely not one of ecstasy.
One of his hands reached for his forehead, wiping his hair back from his face, while the other rested upon his heart like he was worried it might slap out of his chest.
A grin crept onto Lory’s lips.
“This was different,” she murmured, crawling after him to the edge of the bed and wrapping her arms around his waist, but they slid off his naked form as he pushed up from the bed, opening the narrow armoire beside the bed and slipping into a pair of black pants he extracted from a drawer.
Then, he started pacing, determined to wear a track into the stone floor.
“What just happened?”
For a beat, Khayrivven stopped, measuring her like she was a danger rather than the woman he’d just bedded, and the remorse she found in his storm-gray eyes made her chest constrict.
“What happened, Khayrivven?” Watching him pass back and forth before the bed, Lory tried to make sense of this sudden change in him.
She’d seen it before, lovers she’d taken for a night or two grow bored of her and withdrawing. She’d done it herself a couple of times, but this… This was different.
Khayrivven wasn’t shying away from her or taking a quick exit. He wasn’t kicking her out either. If anything, he seemed to be guarding her exit, as if he was worried she’d bolt.
Draping the covers around her, Lory shimmied back against the headboard and studied the Flame-born captain fighting a silent battle.
“What just happened?”
He merely kept moving, as if motion would solve whatever problem he was gnawing on.
Perhaps he was freaked out by the intensity of their connection.
If the streak of blinding light as she climaxed had been remotely similar for him, she’d even understand why he was at a loss for words.
But something was off in the way he’d put distance between them like he could no longer bear being close to her.
Something about the entire situation was very, very wrong.
And it had all started with that soul-altering moment when they’d both found their release.
“Khayrivven?” If he wasn’t going to answer soon, she might just need to get out of that bed after all and plant herself in his path so he had no other option. “What was that?”
“I don’t know.” The look in his eyes suggested he knew more than he cared to admit, and that alone made red alarm bells go off in Lory’s mind.
“If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t freak out like that.”
His brows rose on his forehead as he turned on his heel an inch before the armoire and paced the other direction.
“If I knew exactly what happened, I wouldn’t freak out,” he corrected, and his admission that something was wrong indeed made panic rise in Lory’s chest. He didn’t make it farther than to the bed.
There he stopped with a sigh, perching on the edge of the mattress, hiding his eyes and fingers digging into the black mass of his hair as he rested his head in his palms.
Carefully, Lory studied the side of his face, the quirked line of his mouth an imprint of frustration, and something inside of her whispered to reach out and touch him.
Khayrivven didn’t flinch when she traced his shoulder blade until her fingertips lingered on the torch-shaped scar he’d once shown her. The scar they shared. Both branded for their magic and both alive. She, because of him.
Things had gone so well not fifteen minutes earlier. She’d felt weightless and so engrossed in him that she’d no longer been properly listening when he’d said something—had interrupted himself.
And then—
“What did you mean, You’re mine?”
She hadn’t ever gotten a declaration of love—it wasn’t common among street dwellers to bind themselves to others out of love, but out of necessity—and she wasn’t quite sure if You’re mine exactly described that emotion.
“I meant that I don’t want to share you with anyone else.
” He lifted his head, half-turning where he sat, and his features softened as he eyed her across the bed.
Lory could have sworn that was a bitter half-smile on his lips as he reached for her with a trembling hand and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear.
Lory hadn’t noticed her braid had come undone, but she noticed the army of goosebumps rising on her skin as Khayrivven’s finger grazed her cheek.
In her years on the streets, she’d watched many couples walk the alleys of Dunai—old and young, newly in love or married for decades.
She’d never seen the expression on a man’s face that Khayrivven held now, torn between affection and remorse, emotions so deep, they tore his eyes into bottomless pits.
And a deep yearning stared back at her that she knew only too well.
Every day Khayrivven was gone, that sort of emotion filled her from top to bottom.
“Does that mean you love me?” She’d never dared ask before, wasn’t even sure if it was something she was supposed to be asking, but after what they’d just experienced together, the question was legitimate. If he felt remotely the way she did, his heart would burst with love.
His head moved from side to side in a slow shake. “No.”
That word. That single word tore right through her, leaving a hole in her chest, and Guardians help her if that pain didn’t mirror in Khayrivven’s own eyes.
So easily, he shook his head anyway. Perhaps almost two decades of living with the enemy had destroyed more of him than she’d wanted to believe. After all the secrets he’d shared, all those words he’d spoken…
You’re all I ever dream about. All I can see when I’m awake.
It didn’t add up. Nothing did. Not the tenderness in his gaze when she pulled back from him and slid toward the other edge of the bed. Not the throbbing sensation tugging on her heart as she turned away, willing herself to look away from that beautiful face.
His words said he didn’t love her, but everything else about him said the opposite.
Maybe he didn’t know what he wanted? Maybe he had tired of her after all.
Maybe some insane part of him believed he was protecting her by not speaking the truth, and Lory could taste the lie in the air like charred soil.
Whatever it was, Lory wasn’t going to beg him.
She wasn’t going to push him. She wasn’t going to stay one more minute and listen to him.
If he wasn’t ready, that was his choice. “All right—”
Cool stone met her feet as she stood from the bed, and it took her a minute to fully pick herself up and get her chin to lift and her shoulders to straighten.
This wasn’t one of the school corridors, where Khayrivven needed to be cruel and deny he even acknowledged her existence. This was his bedroom, and they’d just broken apart the skies for a moment.
Time to get out of here, or she’d forget she had any dignity.
She made it about three steps before Khayrivven’s hand caught hers in a desperate grasp. “Don’t go.”
Don’t go? Was he serious? There were about a hundred other things he could have said. He could have told her how he felt if he didn’t love her. Or he could have told her it was a conversation for another time, but—
But it didn’t matter. If she stayed, it would make her pathetic.
If she left, it would do the same, but at least he wouldn’t watch her fall apart.
Vengeful anger was a petty emotion, but it gave Lory the strength to resist the promise of his arms around her and his lips against her as he glanced up at her, those eyes full of possibilities.
Stay…
“And do what, Khayrivven? Relive mind-blowing sex, only to hear you have no real feelings for me whatsoever? You can’t tell me you don’t want to share me with anyone else, and a minute later tell me you don’t love me. I’m not your possession or yours to do with however you please.”
Lory wasn’t proud of the tears collecting in her eyes as she ripped her hand from his, but one more second of feeling his skin on hers and her strength might falter.
She picked up her shirt and pants on her way from the bedroom, slipped into them, and collected her boots where, not an hour earlier, he’d gone down on his knees and wrung pleasure from her with his tongue and lips.
He’d fucking said that, after over two weeks, her scent hadn’t left his skin. And now—
“Don’t go.”
She didn’t look back as she tried to open the door—and found herself trapped by the magic that she’d been grateful for an hour ago.
Frustration replaced hurt and anger, streaming from her in a groan that she wasn’t proud of but described her state of mind better than words ever could. “It’s not like you’re giving me a choice, are you?”
“I’ll let you go if you hear me out.”
Of course there was a condition. There always was.
Not this time. Lory shook her head so hard she nearly tore a muscle in her neck.
“You let me go now, I might hear you out one day, when I no longer feel like throttling you.” Because that was how things would have to be from now on.
No more admissions of her feelings. No more pining over his absence.
He wanted to play unavailable despite the obvious chemistry near-exploding whenever they were in the same room together? Not with her.
You stupid, stupid girl. You had to choose the one man who makes himself emotionally unavailable. Scolding herself wouldn’t make her feelings go away—she wasn’t even sure she wanted them to. But for now, she needed to put a foot down and tip the balance of this game.
Not a game. Something earth-shattering and soul-altering. They could have been incredible together.
“I guess people are right when they say some things are too good to be true.”
Lory wasn’t sure she imagined the stroke of heat painfully hitting her chest, right where the fiery cord had tangled with the thread she had no name for.