Chapter 19 #2
I walk myself all the way up on my hands until we’re face to face. “Why would I want to get out of a situation I purposely put myself in?”
He gives me a look that says he doesn’t believe a word. “Ly.”
“Alaris.” I echo his incredulous tone.
“I know you’re lying.”
“I’m not.” It started as an excuse. But now it’s a mission. I want him to acknowledge that he feels this attraction between us too.
He tips his head to one side, his crystal earring glinting. “Really?” He grazes a light touch along my ankle. Even through my leggings, it shoots tingles up my leg. “You want this?”
“Ye…yep.”
He traces up my calf, teasing the edge of my skirt. His eyes stay on my face, steady and certain. “This is really what you came here for? Sex?”
The word makes me flush. I swallow. “Mm-hm.”
He draws a slow circle on the inside of my leg. Every nerve sparks where his finger moves. “You can tell me you wandered into the wrong room,” he says, eyes lazy. “One word, and we both forget this ever happened. So?”
“No…right room.”
Heat blooms through my blood as his hand disappears under my skirt, circling higher and higher. My breath hitches as he grazes my inner thigh, before dipping back down.
“Such a liar.” He’s still smiling. He thinks I’ll stop him. He thinks I’ll lose my nerve and bolt.
My pulse is thundering, but I hold his stare. Slowly, intentionally, I let my knee fall open.
His eyes widen.
“What’s the matter?” My voice comes breathless. It started as a lie, but every pass of his fingers is stoking it into truth. “Afraid I might be telling the truth?”
The lazy confidence settles back over his face. “Not in the slightest.”
I want to wipe that smirk off his face, because he did this on Somnus too. He walked me around that whole manor on his arm, charming and unbothered, and never once meant to take me to bed. I’ve watched a parade of women go up to these rooms since the day I got here. Why all of them, and not me?
He can reject me because I work for him, or because he’s not interested. But he doesn’t get to reject me just because he believes I’m not serious.
…and I think he is interested.
Even though the lids are heavy, I see the heat in his eyes as they flick to my lips.
“Then let me show you.” I lay my palm flat on his chest and his breath stops under it. I drag it down, appreciating all the hard muscle under the silk. I slide my hand lower, lower…
He inhales sharply.
He snatches my hand and pins it to the ground behind me, his mouth hovering close to mine. “No you don’t. With me, it’s always ladies first.”
The circles continue, each loop rising a little higher than the last. I shudder as his slow touch skates along my inner thigh again, and again.
“You want me to touch you? To kiss you? To stroke between your legs?”
It’s getting harder to listen to his words, all my attention claimed by the distance between his fingertips and the center of my thighs. “Ye…yes.”
“Which? You’ll have to be clearer.” He tilts his head, and his hand slides higher, higher. “I don’t like missed expectations.”
The ache builds with every inch he advances. My hips cant toward him before I can stop them. My lips part.
He has to see his effect on me, but his smirk tells me he still thinks this is a game he’s winning.
His fingers graze a few inches away from where I need them, and all of me strains after the pressure I’m craving. My thighs open wider to give him access.
But he stops.
He’s waiting. He’s holding the door open one more time, certain I’ll exit.
But he’s wrong. My blood is heated, the spot between my legs thrumming. I know he could unravel me and make me feel things I’ve never felt. I’ve wanted it since Somnus, some reckless impulse in me brought to life ever since I ran from death.
He smirks, sliding away. “We’ll just call this a misunderstanding.”
I grab his wrist and pull him back. His hand lands on my thigh. He goes completely, unnervingly still, every trace of a smile gone.
I let go of his wrist and set my hand back on the floor. He doesn’t close the distance, but he doesn’t pull away either. His fingers flex on my thigh, once, every muscle gone tight. His eyes bore into me, carved from obsidian.
“Careful,” he says, his voice full of gravel.
“You be careful.” I lift my chin toward his. There is a breath between our lips. Energy rolls off him, zeroed in on me. Got him. “You can say you don’t want this. But you can’t say I don’t.”
“Ly—”
“You told me if I really wanted it, I would say it. So I’m saying it.” I rock my hips toward him once. “I want it.”
So slowly, I feel every heartbeat, his fingers close the distance. They press flat where I’ve needed it most.
I contract and gasp, the sensation exquisite.
His forehead drops to mine, his breathing harsh.
He drags one slow circle that empties my head, and I make a sound.
I need him to do that again. I roll my hips, trying to get his fingers under the leggings, onto bare, slick skin. I fist the front of his shirt.
A hard edge digs into my palm through the silk. I adjust my grip and recognize the shape. I freeze.
Oh no.
In a second, he’s out from between my thighs. I fall back on my hands. The place he touched throbs against the seam of my leggings, and my arms quiver.
He stands and walks toward his desk. I force my breath to even out, keeping my face as controlled as I can as I curl my legs under me.
His shirt pulls taut across his shoulders. For a moment I’m worried he’s angry, but when he turns toward me, that smirk is back, his gaze just a little cloudy. “Just a misunderstanding then, my evil-minded Ly?”
I nod at the floorboards, trying to slow my breathing. “Wouldn’t want to keep you from your appointment. I believe Lady Rialla is waiting.”
He exhales, voice flat. “I suppose she is. I wouldn’t want to keep her.”
My teeth clamp. This was nothing to him, when he enjoys so much more with the women who visit weekly. “Wouldn’t want that.”
I need to get out of here. I use the bed to help me stand.
He starts forward, his eyes narrowing. “You didn’t take that bath I told you to, did you?”
I pause. He draws my attention to the dull ache, dampened since yesterday, but still there in my shoulders. Caught again.
“I always do as you command,” I lie. The one thing I can’t stand to think about right now is his irritating attentiveness. “Excuse me.”
I curtsy and stride for the door. I wrench it open and dash as fast as my shaking legs will carry me back to my rooms.
I’m wrecked. I’m rocked. This isn’t how it was supposed to go.
Down the corridor I race, passing room after room I’ve searched and scoured. But now I know it was all pointless. I don’t have to go into any other rooms and hunt. I don’t have to risk sneaking back to his room again either.
I’ll never find the stone in any corner of this house. He doesn’t hide it in a vault or a hidden compartment.
It’s always with him. He keeps it around his neck, hanging just below his heart.