Chapter 37 #2
You deserve infinitely more than a quick fuck…
Looking at the sly, charming commander before me, I wondered if there was any part of him that felt the way Gavin felt. That I deserved… more.
“I don’t do harmless fun,” I retorted truthfully.
“Not like that.” Though I didn’t think ill of anyone that did.
What consenting adults did with each other in the privacy of their bedroom was between them and the gods.
But for me? The thought of being intimate with someone I didn’t love and trust made me feel exposed and anxious.
Elias leaned back again and shrugged. “It’s an open offer.”
“Not happening,” I uttered sharply, tightening my coat and spare blanket around my shoulders, not because of the mild chill in the air.
He chuckled. “I promise I’d make it quite good for you.”
“I don’t doubt your confidence in the slightest, but I’ll pass.”
Elias took another drink. My blood boiled when I noticed he was still laughing at me.
“What’s so funny?”
He gave me a sly grin. “I just think you’ll change your mind.” “I think I won’t.” I wouldn’t.
“You’re quite sure of yourself.”
“I’m sure you’ll get tired of waiting for me to change my mind and find somewhere else to stick yourself.”
I thought he’d laugh. Instead, he fell silent, and his typically sharp, fiery blue-gray eyes turned sad . “You’ve got me all figured out, don’t you, Fera?”
My stomach dropped. We both made plenty of assumptions about each other. Firing quips back and forth was a defining feature of our… whatever this was. Had I hit a little too hard this time?
“Maybe you’re wrong,” he suggested, looking dejected and hopeless. Lonely. Maybe it was the alcohol, but Elias Winterton looked vulnerable . “Maybe I’m not as debauched as you think I am.”
I opened my mouth to speak but found no words.
“Yes, Fera,” Elias sighed. “I fuck a lot.” He thumbed the mouth of his flask.
“Because it’s easy, it feels good, and it’s distracting.
” He pointed the rim of the bottle at me.
“Do you know what’s not easy? Having your entire life planned out for you the day you’re born, and not having a damn say in any of it. ”
Another drink, and his words spilled out like they had been begging for release.
“They told me where she was three years ago. After a lifetime of preparing for her, I was twenty-three when the idea of her finally became real. And believe me, I wanted her, but the pressure of it all, of being what Simeon wanted, what she needed…. fuck , sometimes I felt like I couldn’t even breathe.
It wasn’t right, but I needed something , because I felt like I would just crack .
And then, after a while, it just became…
easy. Mindless,” he added, staring blankly into the fire. “And I needed something mindless.”
I turned my face away to hide the tear in my eye, quickly wiping it away so he couldn’t see.
Because I knew what needing to choose felt like.
In Brinnea, I’d pressured and begged Gavin to sleep with me.
In hindsight, I was ashamed. Although what we had wasn’t mindless , I understood the impulsive need to take control of one choice that was still yours, regardless of the consequences.
“I should have gone to get her myself.” Elias tossed a stick into the fire.
“But Simeon assured me he had a plan. We sent four people to retrieve her. They were supposed to meet her and her mother, but then Elowen, fucking Elowen—” Elias hissed and thrust another stick into the flames.
“—left earlier than she was supposed to. Abandoned her own daughter. So, I don’t know how long she was up there alone.
Terrified, cold, probably hungry, too. By the time I found that out, the four had already left.
A few weeks later, she was dead.” He ran his hands over his face.
“Elowen was sent away, but the damage had already been done.”
I gave nothing away. He poured himself out to me like he’d been dying to speak for ages, and I was just the receptacle for his thoughts.
“To make it worse,” Elias continued, “a few months earlier, the Butcher slaughtered her stepfather and five-year-old half brother. So, for the last months of her sheltered life, not only was she alone, scared, and the gods know what else, she was mourning .” A tense pause. “If I had just?—”
“Stop.” Reminders of Phillip’s and Oliver’s deaths were still raw, but I’d found some peace with what happened.
I couldn’t listen to him berate himself for something out of his control.
He was a victim of Simeon’s lies, too. “It’s not fair to blame yourself for what happened when there were clearly things you weren’t made aware of. ”
Long silence lifted the hair on the back of my neck, even more so when he stood up, rounded the fire with alarming purpose, and sat down beside me. Our thighs and shoulders touched.
We were too close. He lifted his hand to my jaw.
“What are you doing?” I hurried out, but he didn’t pull back. The tips of his fingers grazed the bottom of my cheek, summoning goose bumps across my skin.
“What do you think I’m doing?” He stared hungrily at my mouth.
“You… you were talking.”
His thumb brushed over my bottom lip. The way my body was starved for touch and connection made him hard to ignore. He wanted me, and his heated gaze was mesmerizing. “Fera, I really don’t want to talk anymore.”
I raised my palms to his chest, halting him. “I can’t,” I whispered. There was the curious urge, the potential for a brief lapse in judgment I could fall into now but later regret. And then there was everything else, especially him .
I love you so much more than I want to fuck you.
“You can’t ?” Elias repeated, confusion contorting his handsome face.
I can’t , I thought. I won’t. I don’t want to.
All true, but I just said, “Good night, Commander.”
I turned away, too afraid to witness the hurt or rejection I caused. I couldn’t let it sway me. While my stomach was twisted up with undesired feelings, my heart was steadfast in what it wanted.
I’d often wondered if I’d latched on to Gavin because I’d had nowhere else to go. But now, when I did have other choices, my heart still chose him.