28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter twenty-eight
C ortane wasn’t happy about the ward situation, but I think she understands it’s the only shot we have. Claudius wanted her out of that prison for a reason and I intend to make it happen for him, whatever the consequences. Blossom is awake when we return to the wellness centre and some of the knotting in my stomach starts to release. Her deep blue eyes have lost a little of their lustre when she looks up at me. I feel like I have aged in the hours I have been away from her.
‘How are you feeling?’ I ask as I sink onto the narrow bed beside her and take her hand. Her warm skin releases more of the tension from my shoulders.
She flicks her gaze to River, who sits in a chair across the room – as if he’s giving her as much physical space as he can bear. A little spark of gratitude lights in my chest. I’d told him to take it carefully with her, and he’s nothing if not respectful of both of us.
‘Like I’m floating on a cloud,’ she says in a voice full of whimsy, and I laugh as she looks around the room.
‘That will be your pain meds.’
She drops her voice to a mock whisper I don’t think is purposeful. ‘Are there actually several stupidly attractive men here, or am I dreaming?’ she asks. ‘Wait. Are you here?’
I grin at her as her eyelids start to droop.
‘I am, but I’m going to leave you to sleep,’ I say, the pull for my own bed suddenly making itself known. I glance at River, who is clearly settled in for the night, and he nods at me. ‘River will stay here with you and I’ll be back first thing, okay?’
She lets her eyelids drop closed with the slightest nod and I press a kiss to her forehead. Standing, I look at River.
‘Anything changes,’ I say, ‘ anything , and you call me.’
‘Of course,’ he says.
Nix mutters something to Quillian as I walk back to where they stand by the door. There’s a long pause as we all watch each other, a sudden awkwardness tingling my skin. Nix clears his throat.
‘He’ll walk you up,’ he says carefully. ‘I’ll keep Riv company for a bit.’
My heart beats in time with my aching footsteps as we get closer to my door. To where I will say goodnight to Quillian. Before I can work out what to say to him in the wake of Nix’s seeming … approval, we’ve reached my apartment and I turn to face him. His face has the softness I have come to expect when he looks at me, with no trace of the fierceness he holds back in the presence of the prisoners. Or even Nix. It’s like it’s a look he reserves just for me and my cheeks heat at the thought.
He scans my face and opens his mouth to speak.
‘Do you want a hot drink?’ I ask before he can say the night is over. Despite its horrors, I’m not ready for him to leave yet.
A faint smile graces his mouth, the dimple just beginning to show on his left side.
‘I’d love one.’
My apartment feels at once too big and too small when we enter and, belatedly, it occurs to me it’s his first time here, in my space. It feels like it’s been full of visitors recently between the former warden, Nix and River, and – of course – Cortane. But this is the first time the tall man before me has been here.
I make a fist to stop myself from reaching out and head for the kitchen. Collecting two mugs, I place them on the bench as I prepare the tea. It’s a mixture Blossom has made up from different ingredients she sources both from Nuntainia and the island itself; purple flowers float in the hot water I pour into each cup.
Quillian joins me in the kitchen and leans back against the counter, placing his hands on the bench on either side.
‘How are you holding up?’ he asks.
I let the question really sink in as I allow my gaze to trail over his blue uniform.
‘My feet hurt,’ I say.
A wicked grin graces his face. ‘I can help with that if you like.’
Little flurries of warmth skitter through my belly at the sight of the spark in his eyes.
‘I might take you up on that if you’re not careful.’
He watches me as he slowly picks up his tea cup and blows across the top of the liquid before taking a sip. The movement of his mouth captures my attention and I have to force myself to look at him properly.
‘What did he say to you?’ I ask. I don’t have to say when. It’s clear he knows I’m talking about his moment with Nix in the wellness centre.
He draws a deep breath. ‘That if I was fucking with you, he’d fuck me over in return.’
I swallow.
‘But he didn’t need to warn me, Luka.’
I can feel my brows start to furrow. ‘What do you mean?’
Quillian’s shoulders drop as he sighs, placing his cup back down and resuming his hold on the bench behind him. ‘This wasn’t part of the plan,’ he says. ‘I – none of us – were supposed to create attachments. Not here. Not anywhere. At least not to anyone but each other.’
His words settle over me. There’s something comforting in knowing they all know each other. Even if his relationship with Nix is a complicated one. And it increases the intensity of the tug I can feel towards him. But I’m still not totally willing to declare my hand. Not on my own. There are a lot of leaps I am taking at the moment, a lot of risks to my heart, and this one …
‘And are you forming an attachment?’ I ask, heart pounding.
He scoffs a laugh. ‘I know I acted like an asshole the other night, but … it hasn’t been mixed messages, Luka.’ His voice is almost a whisper now. ‘I’m just terribly bad at not breaking things. I should have been honourable enough to not go there at all.’
‘Are you referring to me or Nix?’
‘Take your pick. But staying away is proving … more difficult than I’d hoped.’
‘So you opted to have Traelen end my extension? Effectively sending me away?’
Quillian holds my gaze, the space between us heating.
‘You needed to have that as an option – you still do. Do I want to send you away? No. But nor will I trap you here, or with us, against your wishes or your best interests.’
‘Will you tell me what’s really going on? Fill in the blanks for me?’
He’s quiet a long time. ‘Yes,’ he says eventually. ‘If you’re okay that you can never not know. Once you know, you’ll be bound to us in some way. Forever.’
I stare at him but there’s no jest on his face. Waiting for the hesitation to creep in brings nothing, just a solidifying knowledge that this is my path. For good or bad.
‘Even if it’s just to keep our secrets,’ he adds softly. ‘But, for full transparency, people who know our secrets, and are not with us, are generally considered loose ends.’
My ribs expand with a deep inhale, and I try to keep my eyes from widening.
‘I would do everything I could to keep you from harm,’ he continues. ‘But I’m not completely infallible. If you’re not sure, it’s best you just don’t know. Not officially. The connections I can see you’ve already made on your own make you enough of a risk to our cause – you know too much. Blossom, too.’
I place my teacup on the kitchen counter and take a moment to absorb its details. The way the pale green vine winds its way around the rim and dips down to circle the bottom. How the white flowers decorate the vine, their naivety threatening to strangle the delicate cup.
Quillian’s hand still grips the edge of the counter beside his hip. The brown skin of his knuckles is marked in several places, and I wonder how many times he’s split them. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even shift a finger. But I can feel the heat in his stare as he watches me.
The rhythm of my heart is fast and loud in my ears as I slowly lift my face and meet his gaze. A jolt of heat rushes through me, starting in my cheeks, sparking in my stomach and landing low in my core.
‘And if I don’t want to know,’ I say, ‘I’d be expected to just walk away?’
‘I’d insist on it. For both your safety and Blossom’s.’
I lean the side of my body against the bench near him, the stone pressing into my soft flesh. He looks down at me, almost over his shoulder. I’m close enough to him I could run my fingers over the muscles in his arm that are filling his shirt. If he turned to face me, we’d be almost chest to chest.
The thought takes hold and I can’t dislodge it.
‘I know you can’t see the whole picture from where you are now, Luka,’ he says, his breath just reaching my face. ‘But you’ve seen and learned so much – now you’re standing on a precipice.’
‘I do know that much.’
‘But you don’t see how deep the drop is.’
‘What if I decide tomorrow?’ I ask, a voice in the back of mind telling me I’ve already made up my mind.
He closes his eyes briefly. For a moment, I think he’s disappointed. But when they open again, they’re full of opportunity. Of desire.
‘Then it would be impossible for me not to ask what you want to do now – before you … decide.’
‘I want to believe you didn’t mean it when you said “you shouldn’t have”. I want to believe you don’t regret spending that night with me.’
He exhales heavily, pieces of my hair dancing away from my face.
‘I was right when I said I shouldn’t have.’
I suppress a flinch and start to draw back but he takes my hand and I still, his skin hot on mine.
‘Because,’ he says firmly, ‘I shouldn’t have brought you any further into this. Part of me still wishes Claudius hadn’t, and I stand by that – in addition to his grief, I can see why Nix wanted you far away from all of this.’ He pauses. ‘But, then, perhaps I wouldn’t have met you and I certainly can’t regret the time we’ve spent together. I am grateful for that night. For what you reminded me of.’
My fingers twine between his of their own accord and I look at where they join. ‘Which was?’
‘What it is to have something worth fighting for.’
I suck in a quiet breath as I look back to his face. At the seriousness there. Lifting our joined hands between us, I move to stand in front of him. Our hands at shoulder height, our arms press against each other to the elbow.
‘You want to fight for me?’ I ask.
‘Yes. But only if you’re absolutely sure you want to be part of something other than what you see here.’ He lifts his eyes to the door to indicate the prison and, I assume, the wrongness here. ‘I would never force you, Luka.’ He lifts his other hand to my face, sliding his fingers along my jaw, and into my hair until I press my face into the palm of his hand. Tingles of sensation running down my sides, my toes curling. ‘But we agreed to decide all that tomorrow.’
‘We did,’ I say, my voice betraying the heady tension that’s warming me from the inside. ‘So I suggest you kiss me before I combust.’
I can’t help the small groan that escapes my throat as his face cracks into a hungry smile, his dimple on full display. Slowly he lowers his face to mine, stopping short of my mouth and resting his forehead against my own. His skin is warm and his breath hot on my lips.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, Luka.’ His voice is so quiet I can barely hear him over my expectant heart. ‘Please, forgive me.’
There’s a desperation in his voice that chips at me. I can’t help the corner of my mouth lifting slightly at the knowledge I’m not in this on my own. Quillian is leaping as much as I am. I let go of his hand and take his face in both of my hands.
‘Done,’ I say. I press my lips to his, softly. He almost sags against me, the tension leaving him, only to be replaced with a different kind.
Wrapping my hand around the back of his head, I bury my fingers in his short hair and move to kiss the side of his neck. I brush my lips across his ear.
‘Forgiven,’ I say. ‘But expecting you to make it up to me tonight.’
‘Hopefully not just tonight,’ he says into my neck where he drops his head, trailing his lips along my throat. I tip my chin back, exposing the most sensitive skin. The slight drag of his mouth along my jaw deepens the warmth spreading through my limbs. I open my mouth to take his kiss but instead he bends and drops a line of kisses down the middle of my chest and over the top of each breast. All without even moving my clothing.
It’s so much slower than the first time we were together but the subtle throb in my body gives away how ready I am for him. He wraps his arms around my back, one sliding down to hold my ass and pulls me against him. Finally his mouth finds mine and it’s soft, and gentle, and wanting.
It sets fire to the need that’s building between my legs.
I tug his shirt from his pants and slip my hands up his taut sides, the contours of his stomach running under my thumbs.
I can read his tattoo, River had said, the memory warming alongside the building heat of my body. As if those two things belong together.
Slipping my hands up and over his shoulders, I slide his shirt off and down his arms, letting it fall to the floor before I trail kisses along his collarbones. Shifting to his right side, I brush the explosion of colour with the pads of my fingers, little bumps breaking out on his skin as he stills. Waiting.
Seamlessly woven in the different patches of colour that overlap and bleed into each other is a line of text that starts just behind his ear before winding down his neck and across his right pectoral muscle. His brown nipple hardens as I trace the letters and words, putting it together.
For those that prove the colour of their soul.
I stare at it for a moment, the understanding that this is what Cortane said to me – must have been what Claudius had tattooed as well – slams into me. Slowly, I pull back to look at him and am almost swallowed whole by the depth of emotion swimming behind his eyes. As we stare at each other, my hands still on his body, my legs and hips pressed against him, I find I don’t know what to say. How to articulate what feels like the cementing of a fundamental shift that’s been occurring in me. One that’s partly to do with Quillian, and partly not.
But one that his tattoo seems to symbolise in a way I can’t explain.
So I take his face in my hands again and kiss him in a way that I hope tells him instead, opening myself up to everything he can show me as his lips crush mine in return. Dragging my hands back down his body, I slide my fingers in the front of his pants, eliciting a sharp inhale from him. I grin into the kiss, nipping his bottom lip between my teeth before breaking away and leading him by the pants into my bedroom.
I was hyper-aware of his presence in my apartment when he first came in but here, in this room, it feels like it was made to accommodate the two of us. Leaving my door open, he closes in behind me, removing my hand from his pants, and crossing my arms carefully across my chest as he presses against my back.
Gently, he takes the hair that hangs down my back and scrapes it over one shoulder, blowing softly on the patch of skin he’s exposed. Skin that prickles when he runs a finger down the top of my spine, towards the zip in the back of my dress, and slowly drags it down.
The shoulders of the silky fabric loosen first, slipping to the sides, the sheer pieces bracing the tops of my arms until Quillian slides them off. My breasts are suddenly heavy under their own weight as the dress skims my hips and drops to the floor.
His large, brown hands wind around me from behind, cupping a breast in each one and I lean further back into him. Kisses land on my neck as he pinches my nipples between his fingers, forcing my head to drop back on his shoulder and my legs to press together in an attempt to abate the aching between them.
I press my ass into him, his clear need doing nothing to simmer down my own desire. Not wanting him to move his hands unless it’s to claim me further, I tuck my fingers into my underwear and let them fall, kicking them to the corner of the room.
Quillian groans loudly as he firmly runs the flat of his hand down my stomach and grips me between my thighs. Molten heat surges through me and I arch into him, gripping his arm. He circles his fingers just at my entrance and I push against him, creating friction against the heel of his palm as his fingers pulse just inside me slowly, so slowly.
‘More, Quillian – I need more,’ I beg.
He pushes half a finger into my swollen core, teasing. ‘Like this?’ he asks against my ear, voice husky.
It’s there – the ledge I want to go over. Close enough for me to almost see it with my eyes shut. But he’s keeping me so far from it.
‘More,’ I demand, clutching his forearms.
More fingers drive their way inside, suddenly filling me, and I cry out. He applies pressure when his fingers find a place that makes me see stars, my knees going weak as he pulses in a circular pattern. Holding me to him with one arm across my chest, he keeps up his relentless rhythm.
A rhythm that drowns out all thought other than chasing that ledge.
I clench my thighs around his hand and suddenly the ledge is flying at me. Fast enough for me to shudder, unable to catch my breath before it slams into me. A cracked sound tears from my throat and he kisses my neck and the side of my face where I turn into him.
‘I got you,’ he murmurs. ‘I got you.’