Chapter 13 #2
She shrugged, leaning comfortably into me.
“No, I don’t miss fucking Lara. It always came with the consequences of fleeting passion.
” The look she gave me was molten with desire.
“We could never go deep as lovers. We didn’t tell each other things—we never even seemed to want to.
Eventually, it ruined the sex, and that was all we had left. ”
Her words were a bit blunt, but they were precise, cutting right to what I’d feared, that some part of her still ached for Lara Achilles. It was as though she’d thrown a door that had been closed between us wide open, and I was marveling at the invitation to walk through.
“Oh,” was all I could manage. We’d told each other so many intimate things already. It was easy to talk to Rhiannon, to tell her things I’d never dreamed of telling another lover.
“I don’t seem to have that issue with you,” she said, her hand moving onto my knee.
The way her dress was cut revealed that the cadence of her breath had gone from even to something quick and labored.
My cock jerked at her touch and every muscle in my abdomen clenched.
Her hand slid further up my thigh, a dark, sensual energy winding into every word.
“When I talk to you, it’s like my whole heart opens up.
I fuck things up, the way I always do, but I still want to tell you things. ”
I glanced at the room. Not a single person looked our way. It was as though we were invisible. Rhiannon’s hand was at my inner thigh now, and my legs spread almost involuntarily as she cupped my balls through my dress pants, then squeezed.
“Fuck,” I breathed as her hand slid up to lightly tease my cock.
“Kiss me,” she ordered in that sweet way of hers that she only used for my benefit.
“No,” I replied, my head clearing just enough to think about what she’d said. “Why did you say you fuck things up?”
She drew back, her shoulder slumping as though I’d insulted her. I reached out to touch her face, to pull her chin so that she had to look at me. Her eyes were so sad. There was so much pain there. So much ancient pain.
“Because I do,” she said with a horrific little laugh at her own expense. “That’s what I do. Fuck other people’s lives up. Stick around, you’ll see.”
Whatever she was thinking of went back further than her and Lara, further than even the Maere.
Someone had torn her down from the beginning, made her feel small and worthless.
I wracked my brain quickly, thinking about the blunt way she sometimes spoke.
About the sharpness in her that drove me wild, and how that might be misinterpreted by some as rudeness, rather than refreshing honesty and clarity about what she thought and felt.
Before I could say anything, the waiter came by.
His face, at least, wasn’t an odd blur. “Good evening, I am Marcus. Have you dined with us before?” He was a tall human with pale skin, sprinkled with freckles and bright blue eyes that didn’t quite focus on either one of us.
In fact, it was almost as though he was looking at someone else.
“Good, good,” he said before either of us could say a thing. “I’ll get that right out for you.”
Rhiannon laughed as he disappeared. “What do you think we’re getting?”
“Who could tell?” I shook my head as the tension broke between us. “I don’t think you fuck things up.”
Rhiannon looked down at her hands. It was the smallest I’d ever seen her look. “Objectively, that is not true. Our swords, for example—”
“Your people made a grave mistake, Rhiannon. They have hidden from the world for a long time. They don’t know who you are.”
“And who am I, Eryx?” she asked. Not defiant, not challenging, but curious.
I ran my thumb over the ridge of her high cheekbones, then pushed my fingers into her silken hair, winding them in at the base of her neck.
“You are kind and capable. You do too much, and expect too little in return. You’re the sharpest person I’ve ever met…
” I breathed her in. “So damn smart, and so fucking sexy.”
Her eyes widened, hearing me describe her. I bent closer, loving the way she reacted when I spoke into the sensitive shell of her ear. “You are the most beautiful creature on the face of the planet.”
She made that whispery gasping noise again, breathing just one word, “Eryx.”
The way she said my name was so full of need that I stopped holding back.
I kissed her. Gently at first, then hard as she melted into me.
Her mouth opened for me, her tongue meeting mine as I drank her in.
I folded her into me, not caring who watched me kiss her.
There was nothing I wanted more than this woman.
Her hands pressed against my chest, her fingers gripping the lapels of my jacket.
When my lips trailed away from hers to kiss her jaw, her neck, behind her ears, she gasped. “No one is watching, Eryx. I don’t think any of them can see us.”
I glanced up. She was right. The entire restaurant went on just as it had when we came in.
They weren’t trying not to look as my fingers grazed her hard nipples, or as I dragged my tongue along her neck to suck the deliciously soft column of her neck.
They simply didn’t see us. My cock was so hard I thought it might burst.
“Would you care to test that?” I asked with a grin.