27. 26 #2
“It’s the easiest way.” I shrugged. “We know he was there, and I’ve spoken to him a couple of times now.”
“He’ll get suspicious. I want to be in the room,” he replied, and I saw his hand tense under the table.
“Dressed all in black with your mask on?” I asked, trying to keep the tone light even as I shook my head. “You’re too recognisable. Fella could come, instead.”
His grimace didn’t lift. He stared at me with that intensity I had come to crave. “I don’t like it, Annie.”
I took a gulp of the wine. “We can talk about it later, then. But think about it.”
Davian stayed still, watching my mouth as I talked. He nodded, slowly, but I could tell he hated to do it. “Was that everything?”
I placed my hands on the table. “I want to speak with Granville, too.”
“I agree we need to speak with him,” Davian said quickly. Then he paused, scanning my face with a groan. “Don’t give me that look.”
I smiled. “I think he would speak with me if I went alone. I’m just the fopdoodle to him. He’ll underestimate me, and he’s curious. He doesn’t understand what was going on with Robar. I could use that.”
Davian stared for a moment longer, then he groaned louder and leaned back. He threw up a hand in defeat. “What you’re saying makes sense. I just wish there was a way to make it safer.”
I nodded, biting into some roasted carrot. “You can try to find one, but we don’t have time to waste.” I swallowed and waited until he leaned forwards again and looked at me before I finished. “I can’t let someone else die.”
“You are infuriating.” He shook his head and smiled despite it all. “You know, I figured you weren’t coming to my room to ravish me, but I’m still disappointed.”
I choked with my mouth halfway to my cup. “I apologise for disappointing you.”
How did he have the nerve to just say it? To so openly state his desire for me? Was it because that was all it was? The words alone had warmed every part of me, and flushed me to my core.
It was a gauntlet laid before us. I lowered my cup, hating to lose at a game that should have been mine. I kept our eye contact and tried to see him as any other patron. They were always someone I wanted to please, but I wasn’t used to this sick need to be needed by another.
Davian’s eyes darkened. “It doesn’t help that every time you say something intelligent, I find it horribly attractive. My Wisdom upbringing, I suppose.”
I breathed carefully through my nose. “That goes both ways,” I said, when I trusted my voice.
“It does?” His voice was as husky as that first night in the Eclipse.
I lifted my chin. “Yes.”
Davian hummed, and it was a line shooting straight through me, pulling at my insides. He lifted his cup and drained it. A drop fell from the corner of his mouth and he wiped it with his thumb, his lips parted. I clenched my thighs together.
He smirked. “You cannot fathom all the things I want to do to you.”
I moved my hair to fall around my shoulders, drifting my fingers over my neck. “If I could stop thinking of your hands on my body, I promise you my life would be much easier.”
He stared at my hands. “Fuck.”
Davian reached into his coat and deposited too many coins on the table. He stood, and I could see the bulge of his trousers. I licked my lips unconsciously as he reached his hand out to me.
“Come with me,” he said.
I placed my hand in his without blinking, and rose to my feet. My legs felt shaky as he looked down at me. I thought we might kiss, then, and I inhaled sharply.
Then he was walking away from the table, away from the canal, pulling me with him.
My core pulsed as he strode with me in tow. I needed him right now. Everywhere, anywhere. “Where are we going?”
Davian flashed a look back. “Out of sight.”
Fuck.
As soon as we were around the corner of the building, into the shadowed alleyway between the taverna and the next lodgings, he released my hand and whirled on me. I was already ahead of him, stepping back until I hit the stone wall.
His smile was starving, his pace immaculately fast. A hand came to grip the fabric at my waist as his other settled loosely over my shoulder.
I breathed in, staring up at him. He was everywhere, everything.
Davian’s hand drifted from my shoulder to rest like a shadow, barely brushing my neck. It was enough to make my knees weak; enough for the dampness between my legs to drip down my leg. “Were you thinking of my hand here?”
I bit my lip. “Yes.”
The hand at my neck tensed, and I got a hint of relief from it. Its warmth sent me reeling, just as the cold stone at my back grounded me.
His other hand moved from my waist to my thigh, and he cupped me over my skirts. I hissed in a breath.
“What about here?” he asked.
“Davian,” I gasped.
He groaned, and pressed his mouth to my shoulder, rubbing his length against me.
The friction was almost religious.
Then he stepped back. His hands fell away from my body, and he raked them through his hair. He looked half-crazed, and I didn’t understand.
His eyes shuttered, and he murmured a swear so lightly it could have been a prayer. “I want to own you, covet you, cage you. Samiscus encourages it. Praising the depraved edges of my thoughts. You’ve taken hold of my mind, Annie.”
At the mention of Samiscus, my own mind went to Ekris. Guilt seized me, and I looked to the ground.
“What is it? I’ve said too much.”
I breathed, letting sense catch up to me as my lungs remembered how to work. “No.” I shook my head, realising Davian would misunderstand. “Everything you said. I feel it, too. I want you more than… More than I can comprehend.”
Davian inhaled. Nothing in him looked satisfied. The hunger had not abated. He watched my panting chest with unabashed desire. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt. “Thank fuck.”
I held my hand up, regretting the words almost as soon as I said them. “But we can’t.”
Davian flicked his eyes back up. “What?”
“I can’t give you what you want.”
“What I want?”
I flushed. “What we both want.”
His eyes darkened. “Why not?”
I sighed, and breathed out the truth. “Ekris.”
A silent beat passed.
“Ekris.” He repeated my reason, his voice disbelieving and flat.
I nodded.
Davian just stared at me, standing utterly still in the shadows. “You left him.”
“He’ll let me return.”
“He won’t.”
“He promised he would.” I swallowed, feeling the escape of a slightly cooler breeze as it hit the back of my neck. “I went to the altar, and he told me if I discovered where Ragnifort was, that he would let me back.”
Davian’s expression fell colder than I’d ever seen it.
I netted my hands together and looked at my skirts in shame. “I could be an Ekrissian again. But only if I’m still pure.”
The breeze stopped. No howls, no skittering. Just distant voices and the weight of Davian’s judgement. I squeezed my hands together tighter.
“So that’s it.”
I didn’t look up. “What do you mean?”
“That’s the reason you’ve been helping.”
I blinked and met his gaze. That was not what I was expecting.
I thought he knew when I came to him and told him I would help if he knew where Ragnifort was.
Why else would I care about that? What reason would I have but Ekris?
I realised I hadn’t explained why, but surely… I frowned. “It’s not the only reason—”
Davian sighed. “I’m an idiot.”
“I do want to help. I want to know what happened to Seera. Saskia. Jusia.” My voice cracked. “She was my friend.”