CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
EMMERY
Despite everything, Emmery almost laughed when Dez returned, and not because of the citrus tea, cinnamon pastries, or the soup that tasted like her childhood.
No, it was the extra plate of lemons.
And, of course, he grimaced as she sucked the juice from the rinds. But it seemed he had catalogued her favourite things in his infallible mind.
Though her sadness threatened to destroy her, the gesture spurred warmth in her chest, and she clung to it. Because no one had ever cared for her even a fraction of that magnitude.
As they sat by moonlight and kept each other company, Dez didn’t push her to talk and instead updated her.
Emmery’s heart hurt as he told her of Senka’s trickery and Brennen’s stagnant state.
She made a note to see him in the morning.
Cyrilla had returned with news and Fionn and Vera had smoothly tended to things in their absence, including a strange attack in a village not far from the Sacred Lands.
Emmery sank into his soothing voice, unaware how much she needed it. And while she had every intention to return to her bed, the heaviness of the food and the exhaustion in her limbs made her eyelids far too heavy and his blankets much too soft.
Some time later, the sound of a door clicking shut woke her. Aera leapt onto the floor and toddled away, likely to go stretch out on Emmery’s bed.
Through the open wind, the night breeze swept in a biting chill and moonlight flooded the room.
The mattress sank beside her as Dez settled on his back and tucked himself under the quilt.
His face was clean shaven now, back to his old self.
As he turned to face her, his hand rested over his heart, she distinctly remembered it pounding against her cheek as he carried her, but—
That was impossible. She must have imagined it.
For a moment, they stared at each other. Though the air thickened with lingering words they didn’t dare speak aloud, their eyes said it all.
Emmery broke the silence and murmured, “I should return to my room.”
He ran the tip of his tongue along his bottom lip before he pulled it between his teeth, as if tasting their kiss from days ago. She followed the movement, recalling how soft his lips were, how his fingers sank into her hips, and the way his sweet blood exploded on her tongue.
“Would you stay if I asked nicely?” he asked, his voice hoarse either with fatigue or longing. Maybe both. “I sleep better with you at my side.”
In my arms, hung unsaid, but it was written across his face.
Not a single part of her could fathom going back to her cold, empty bed. And when she slept with Dez, it seemed he chased her nightmares away.
“Stay,” he said softly. “Please.”
And all her morals, every fragment of remaining self-restraint and good intentions, soared out the cracked window. “If you insist,” she whispered. “Since you’re so persuasive when you’re polite.”
Dez chuckled and she closed her eyes at the sound, letting it fill that empty chasm in her chest where that foreign presence now lingered. “Rest assured I only use manners for evil. Leverage, really.”
As she buried her face in the pillow and laughed, the heaviness inside her lifted a bit, like a pebble off a landslide.
He shut his eyes and sank into sleep easily, as if he hadn’t rested while that Collapsed state kept her hostage.
Emmery lay awake and watched him while she thought of the labyrinth vision, the kiss in Thirst that had set her blood on fire, and how badly she wanted to kiss him again. The thought consumed her mind.
While Dez had implied the thorns were the reason for his abstinence, they’d never inhibited her attraction to him.
The guilt kept her away; the shame of wanting him when she shouldn’t.
When she was betraying Shade. But now that everything had fallen apart and she’d lost every path to him, that desire she’d shoved down, the one that roared in her veins and lived in her dreams, grew into a rampant beast she couldn’t tame.
Go to sleep, Emmery, she told herself. Just shut your eyes and go to sleep.
But as Dez rolled and pulled her flush against him, his body curled around hers like he was made to hold her, Emmery’s heart tripped over itself. She settled against his bare chest as his arm banded her waist and his face pressed into her hair, still damp from her bath.
He mumbled her name, his voice lost in sleep.
All her restraint, the barriers, the walls she had put between them these months—they all came crashing down. And she allowed herself to want. To want him.
Because she wanted his sunshine smiles and quips. She wanted him to fill the emptiness inside her with his light and shadows. She wanted Destonne to make her feel alright in that infallible way he knew how. And, right now, she needed him more than she ever had before.
She tipped her head up and studied his face, then whispered his name into the dark. Dez didn’t reply as his even breaths stirred her hair. He smelled so damn good she wanted to bury her face in his chest, drag her tongue over his skin, and taste him.
Her fingertips brushed the strong line of his jaw, and she traced the tendons in his neck, over his muscled shoulder, and down his chest. His scarred skin was uneven but soft, and warmth radiated off him like golden sunrays.
She trailed her lips to the underside of his jaw, kissing, and making her way up.
While his eyes remained shut, he said groggily, “Tell me … what exactly are you up to?”
Carefully, she stretched and pressed her lips to his chin and his cheek. Wherever she could reach.
“Something foolish,” she murmured, only a sliver of space between them. “Something completely and utterly foolish.”
Then her lips found his.
Dez groaned low in his throat, maybe in anguish or relief, but he kissed her back and his lips gave under hers. His arm tightened to pull her closer as his hand wove into her hair.
She plummeted into the kiss. Her arms wound around his neck as she arched into his body, perfect and toned beneath her softness. She dove off the cliffside, and if darkness waited below, she would gladly descend into the shadows with him. Would bathe in it if that was the cost.
Heat pooled in her belly as his hand slid from her waist, down her thigh, to hitch her knee around his hip where she found him hard and ready for her.
The kiss heated, hands frantic, fueled by scorching desire as he rolled her atop him, and she straddled his hips.
But then his eyes sprang open, as if doused in reality, and Dez gently pushed her back.
His chest heaved like he couldn’t get air into his lungs, and he barely clung to that thread of restraint as his thorns threatened to burst through.
Emmery’s hair fell in a curtain around them and her hands braced either side of his head. Lost in that haze of lust, she wanted too many things and longed for Dez to give them all to her.
He squeezed his eyes shut, like he summoned every shred of strength inside himself. “We haven't talked about what happened.”
“I don’t want to talk,” she said. She leaned down to kiss his throat. “The last thing I want to do is talk.”
He inhaled between clenched teeth as she sucked on his neck.
His hands found her waist beneath the fabric of her shirt.
“You are making it—” He groaned and his hips rolled as if he couldn’t help himself.
“You’re making it impossible for me to be a decent man right now.
But I need you to tell me what this is.”
She licked a path up his neck and kissed him again, this time with fervour to show him exactly what she wanted. How she wanted to forget everything but him and fade into each other.
Dez moaned against her mouth in both yearning and frustration, before he pulled away and rolled her onto her back. “What is it you want? I need you to say it. For the sake of my sanity.”
A sinful little smile painted her lips and she asked sweetly, “What if I want to play?”
He shut his eyes like he silently counted to ten. “Really, Emmery. Where is this coming from? Because you’ve endured something I can’t even begin to imagine. And I’m afraid—” He turned his face away and sighed. “I’m afraid we’re playing different games now, angel.”
“What game are you playing, Dez?” She tilted her head and studied him. “Because I can think of a dozen fun things that I think you would enjoy, too.”
He returned to her then and scrutinized her the way she usually hated but now craved. Her heart thundered with anticipation. With desire. It banged against her ribcage, stretching for him.
Could he feel it? His smirk told her he certainly could.
Dez raised his brow in a silent command: answer now or no game.
A sigh slipped between her lips, and she stared up at him, unsure if what happened between them was truly the labyrinth’s trickery, the celestial trumpet, or a moment of weakness where they fell into each other.
“I want you. Tonight,” she breathed, her desire flooding the space between them. “Just tonight.”
Dez searched her face, and Emmery could practically hear his thoughts churning as he examined the situation. His expression steeled and his heavy eyelids darkened his stare. For a moment, she thought he might say no, laugh at her, or turn her away.
“You want me.” He drew out each word like he didn’t believe them. His gaze dropped to her lips and remained caught there like a rabbit in a snare. “And you think you can handle only a single night with me?”
She hadn’t considered it, but she knew what she wanted right now: her and Dez and this damn bed bathed in moonlight.
“I’m willing to take the chance if you are,” she hummed.
“Honestly, Em, you’re not seeing clearly, and I don’t want you to regret this,” he said, his tone careful.
“After what you went through, what we went through, and you lost—” He turned away again, perhaps to search for an excuse.
“Besides, I haven’t taken the draft, and I’m assuming you haven’t either. ”
Emmery slowly shook her head. “It’s not … necessary. For me.”
His brows pinched and he opened his mouth to speak, but her expression stopped him, and he studied her in a way he never had before.
No games. No flirting. Merely compassion.
“I can’t,” she started, but swallowed the words and closed her eyes.
She had never actually said it aloud, not even to Maela or Fionn.
It was the kind of admission she wanted to inhale back in.
An admission that fed the hollow part of her that no praying or healing could undo.
It would always be the reason for her loneliness.
Afterall, who would want to be with someone so utterly fractured, who couldn’t do an act so natural, miraculous, and beautiful? And she’d been robbed of it.
She skimmed her finger over her shirt where the scar across her abdomen lay. The one that had broken her so completely.
Dez grew incredibly still and his lips parted for a breath. “Em—”
“Don’t,” she stopped him, not wanting pity, or to turn this into something it wasn’t.
What it didn’t need to be. “It’s fine. It happened when I was attacked.
Where I was cut, and what was damaged never healed.
” The words hung there, suspended, and impossibly heavy.
Emmery didn’t want to look at them a moment longer so she took his face in her hands and said, “I haven’t been with anyone in a really long time.
And after the last, I was checked by a healer. They didn’t find anything else.”
His brow lifted. “How long is a really long time?”
Emmery shrugged though her cheeks burned.
“Roughly eighty. Er, ninety years.” She closed her eyes and let the words flow from the shadowed part of her soul.
“The only time I did, it was … bad. And rough. He hurt me and—” Her voice broke and the words dropped, crashed through the floor, and left a massive chasm between them.
A huge gaping hole of destruction she’d once again created, because, evidently, she was bearing all her secrets now.
Or maybe she subconsciously tried to sabotage this.
Dez’s hand found her cheek, and his thumb skimmed her birthmark as he leaned his forehead against hers. “I would never hurt you. Will never hurt you. Ever.” He pulled back a sliver. “You know that, right?”
And as she looked up into his eyes, she said, “I know. I trust you.” Because she did—more than anyone else. “It’s in the past. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. Even if it happened long ago, it's important and valid. And thank you for telling me. For trusting me with it.”
Emmery watched him wrestle with whatever he planned to say, perhaps an admission to match hers. Dez opened his mouth, then shut it before he pinched the bridge of his nose and steeled himself.
“I should tell you, I’ve never—” He shook his head and tore his eyes away in shame.
“This all happened to me when I was quite young. And I’ve never wanted anyone before.
Not like this. Not enough to try. But for you…
” His stare bored into her, permanently leaving an imprint beneath her flesh.
He ran his thumb across her bottom lip. “I hope you know I would crawl across broken glass to have your perfect lips wrapped around my cock, but—”
He studied her mouth as if he imagined just that.
Her on her knees for him, his head thrown back in ecstasy as she unravelled him, made him come apart for her.
His hand fisted in her hair as he murmured praise in his husky accent that made her knees weak.
His breaths quickening, panting, and his hips losing their rhythm, thrusting into her mouth, surrendering control.
A shiver worked its way through her, wanting and waiting for him to act on that promising look. Gods, the depraved things she’d let this man do to her.
“I’ll give you anything you want. But I have a condition. I’m afraid there’s something incomparable that’s the object of my desire.”
She couldn’t pull air into her lungs as her ribs caved in, her body burning and yearning in too many ways. Blinking slowly, she gazed up at him. “And what’s that, Dez?”
“Because I’m a selfish, greedy, despicable man, I know it won’t sustain me. I need more than your body,” he breathed. His words struck her square in the chest as his thumb traced her lip, like he memorized the shape. “I want your heart too, Emmery.”
She’s mine. His words rang through her head and lived inside her blood now. Her stomach hollowed as she swallowed her hesitance. Things were too complicated, and she couldn’t promise him anything. Not beyond tonight.
“Dez—” she started, but he seized her and kissed her with enough force to muddle her thoughts and tangle her emotions.
“I know you’re not ready for that,” he said against her lips.
“I’m willing to wait. I’ll wait forever if that’s what it takes.
And I’m so confoundedly desperate for you, angel, if all you want is me tonight, then—” He smiled against her mouth and it was the embodiment of everything she craved. “I’m yours.”