Chapter Seventeen Taissa #2
He’s shirtless, standing by the bed with his classic I hate everybody in the world expression as Claude fusses over his hair. His rich olive skin basically glows underneath the lights, and she realizes that they’ve rubbed oil all over him, defining his…his impressive muscles.
Taissa’s mouth dries out as she traces the defined contours of his body, gaze snagging on the deep V right above the hem of his black briefs.
The memory of him underneath her, hard and ready, has Taissa wishing somebody would give her a glass of cold water as she comes to stand on the opposite side of the bed, tracing his features almost reverently with hungry eyes.
Well, that hunger fades somewhat as his own eyes snap toward hers, full of irritation. His glare says, Get me the fuck out of here, Cho.
Her eyes move down to his feet, and she smirks. They’ve also put him in trainers—although his aren’t garishly fuchsia, but a plain black. Still, the sight is enough for a laugh (verging on nervously hysterical) to bubble up in her throat…
It’s about to spill out as Vetta pops up next to her.
“Your robe, miss?” the stylist asks pointedly.
Taissa’s stomach swarms with nerves. She’s a professional athlete, she’s played in the biggest tournaments, fallen hundreds of feet through the air…
but nothing makes her more nervous than undressing in front of Kion fucking Locke.
He’s still looking at her, still watching as she weakly unties the robe’s sash and lets the fabric drop into a gray puddle of silk below her.
Kion’s eyes darken. Taissa swallows hard as they rove across her body, snagging on that little lace river running from her breasts to where the skimpy thong rests over a place that is, for some horrible reason, beginning to ache in want underneath Locke’s gaze.
Is she imagining it, or has he begun to breathe harder? Is his throat bobbing?
Why are his fists clenching and then unclenching at his sides?
Across the bed from each other, heat stirs between them. Pure heat, the kind that can truly burn. For a moment, the photographers and stylists turn into dust on the wind, and it’s only them and that scorching something crackling in the air.
But then it’s over—Kion is looking away, his jaw tight, and the lead photographer (a small, middle-aged gnome with a potbelly) is urging them to climb into bed together.
Heart beating fast, Taissa obliges, slipping onto the bed (feeling less graceful than she’d like due to the ridiculously heavy shoes).
Somebody has expertly messed up the sheets to look as though they’ve been caught in the midst of a shag.
The smell of Kion’s cologne envelops her as he settles beside her.
Oh, Morgana, they probably look ridiculous.
Lying side by side on top of the sheets, refusing to look at each other…
like two awkward teenagers after the prom.
“I bloody hate people who wear socks during sex,” Kion mutters out of the corner of his mouth, scowling. “This is even worse.”
“I miss my baffies,” she mumbles sullenly. After ages wearing only them, the trainers are pinching her toes unpleasantly, and they feel the same weight as bricks.
Clearing his throat, the gnome begins to call out various pose suggestions.
Taissa’s heart is pounding so hard that she swears it’s about to break a rib as Kion—listening with a grimace to the instructions—rolls so he’s braced over her, one of his legs pressed between hers, his lips only a millimeter away from hers.
Taissa trembles at the feel of his rough leg hair as it rubs against the soft insides of her thighs.
His breath tickles her face, and she can’t stop her mind from imagining what it would feel like to have him panting against her, moving inside her…
As her cheeks warm, she looks anywhere but his eyes, focusing on the Bonding glyph tattooed on his chest. But there’s another glyph there, too, so small that she almost missed it.
Her lips part in curiosity as she recognizes a Level Two Glamour glyph, almost like a looping, inverted 3 with surrounding spirals.
As the cameras click away from the side of the bed, she stares at it, puzzled.
If she wasn’t so close to him, there’s no way she would have noticed it.
Glamour glyphs are used to hide a great number of things.
Sometimes, magistrates (or Taissa, on the train to the match) will use them to go undercover—the glyphs can transform appearances into something new altogether.
But more usually, and more typically, Glamour glyphs are used to conceal physical features, like warts or burns (or, in her case during fourth-year, a badly done red dye job on her hair).
Why is Kion wearing one? For a moment, she feels a wry glee—is he concealing a zit?
But Kion Locke isn’t very vain. She doesn’t think he’d be much bothered by a pimple.
Frowning, puzzled again, she reaches out to trace it with a finger…
In a flash, Kion has flipped them over so she now straddles him, so that his hands are now closed around her wrists.
As the photographers whisper excitedly, Kion glares up at Taissa with so much fury that she feels herself flinch.
His anger is concealed—nobody knows him well enough to see it but her, to see the way his eyes have become dark slashes.
His grip is firm yet gentle, but Taissa still winces—confused.
Feeling hurt and suddenly oh so vulnerable.
She can handle him hating her out on the pitch.
It’s harder to handle it when she’s clad in nothing but lace, and is close enough to feel his thudding heartbeat.
Kion, staring up at her, catches the motion. The flinch. His eyes suddenly soften, almost with…regret? Slowly his hands fall from her wrists, rising instead to brush a wayward strand of hair out of her eyes, smoothing it behind the shell of her ear.
Sorry, Cho, he mouths. He’s not looking at her, either, though. His eyes, so angry not so long ago, are now shuttered and staring at a point just past her.
Taissa blinks.
Kion Locke.
Apologizing to her.