20. Resting Place #3
“What if I’m not kind enough to offer you the same thing?
” My chest hurt. Everything hurt. “What if I'm not kind enough to want to let you go?” I found the edge of the stone pool with my hand, because I needed something solid, because I felt like I had to hold onto the earth, or I would be torn from it.
“You’ll figure it out. This…it isn’t fair to you.”
Fair. And that was the cosmic joke, that anything about this was fair.
“You think it’s more fair to have you and then lose you?
” My breath wavered. I was terrified. I was more afraid than when the bird monsters tried to kill us.
The easiest thing I’d done should be speaking aloud, just speaking, but I shook.
“You think it’s more fair to take me in your arms and make me fall in love with you and… ” The tears were over everything.
He went still. He looked like someone had punched the wind out of him. Like I had. “Is this…is this about sex?”
That strangled a laugh out of me.
He kept going, “There are bonds that people hold onto, and we…or is this about virginity?” He just kept speaking. “Because you’re beautiful, Annora, you’ll find someone who knows you’re worth more than that, even among humans they wouldn't be that blind—"
“This is not about sex!” I felt like such an idiot, and he was staring at me, just…
“I want to be your wife. I do want to be the person you take to your bed. I want to be someone you don’t avoid looking at.
I want you, and I don’t know why that’s difficult to believe, when you’re kind and you’re good and you’re smart except for this, and everyone sees that you’re someone who’s trustworthy and desirable except you.
Flipping Tyralk sees it and you call him a baby for it, but you don’t let them want you as a friend and you don’t let me want you as…
” I ran out of air. Maybe I couldn’t breathe.
Maybe this was the stupidest way to die, dying of crying while naked in the water with an orc.
He was shaking his head. “If this about taking care of you when you’re hurt, that’s normal, Annora, anyone would—"
“Stop. Please.” I was gasping, trying to fight through, to make my voice something that could be understood.
Maybe anger was the piece that let me get breath.
“Saints, Vrathgar, please, let me be in love with you! I can’t help it.
I’ve been falling for you since that curse-ed cell.
” I hugged the blanket around myself. “You said you’d chosen me. Let me choose you back.”
He was motionless. The water lapped around his ribs.
“I don’t mean to take anything away from you,” he said.
“That wasn’t my intention.” He pulled back a step, the ripples washing against my shoulders where I perched, balanced on my toes out in the deep, broken and breaking.
“I…give me a moment.” He raked his fingers through his hair.
I was grateful for the lamplight reflecting on the surface of the pool, for everything the water hid.
I was grateful for the golden shine off his arms and his shoulders, the water in his hair and down his face.
“What would it look like?” His jaw worked. “Letting you…us, trying?”
“We tried before. Before I killed…” I floundered. “Before the men who wanted to hurt you.”
“They wanted to hurt both of us.” He watched me, so cautious, his eyes so cold.
“But we were…we were figuring it out, and then they came, and I…and we…”
“Did you think I stopped wanting to be married to you because you killed for me?”
I had never put it into those words. Maybe I’d only felt it, in my gut, somewhere, that that was where it all went wrong.
“Nora, that’s when I found out you were afraid. That’s when I found out you were sleeping with me to keep yourself safe.”
It sounded bad, said out loud. “...oh,” I whispered, just “oh,” like an idiot.
“I’d always thought I’d be safe from that mistake, yeah? That I could tell when a woman wanted me. But I never thought to ask if I was wanted for the wrong reasons.”
This was definitely a conversation that would have been better to have with more clothing on, but at least in the water I could stand to face him.
At least I wasn’t lying on the ground. “I…” My voice squeaked, and I tried again.
“I don’t know how to fix this. I can’t…undo how stupid I've been. I can’t… I can’t fix that you were hurt.”
He was still looking away. “I can’t fix how I hurt you, either.”
“I don’t know how to fix it.” I sounded so small, so pleading. “Can you tell me how to fix it?”
“I don’t know,” his voice rasped. “Can you tell me how to fix you?”
The tears burned on my face. “You’ve been taking care of me every day. I have no way to take care of you.”
He shook his head, eyes still elsewhere. “Taking care of me is not your job.”
“But I want it to be.”
“Hah.” He was quiet a moment. His features flickered harsh in the deep shadow, and his lips wavered, the lips I knew had been soft against mine. “Maybe we fix things the same way,” he was husky. “We take time, and we look out for each other. Maybe things just…heal when they heal.”
I gathered my breath. “You said I could ask you for something,” I wavered. “When we got married. You said…I could ask one thing.”
His throat moved as he swallowed. “What do you want to ask me for?”
“Let me kiss you.”
He looked at me.
I stepped closer, out away from the edge. He stayed motionless in the water.
“Please,” I whispered.
He didn’t move. “This is a terrible idea.”
My mouth was dry. “What happened to not telling a woman what she wants?” I had chosen bravery, but I wasn’t brave.
Everything in me screamed to hide. But if there was a shred of him that wanted me, I needed to try.
We were almost touching now, and to kiss him I’d have to rise out of the water, but I was already on my toes.
I could hold onto his shoulders, but… “Can you lean down a little?” I whispered. “You’re very tall.”
He stared at me, those eyes still twin flames, molten gold. His lips pressed together. “Aren't you afraid you'll regret this?”
“No.” The lump in my throat felt like it was my entire heart.
“But you are afraid.”
I couldn’t lie to him. “Yes.”
“What are you afraid of?”
I’d throw every last bit of dignity into the depths of this pool, if it meant keeping him. “I’m afraid,” I got out, “that I'll never get to kiss you again. I'm afraid we said goodbye before I ever got to say I love you. I'm afraid that I had one chance to keep you, and I ruined it all. I’m afraid—"
His lips crushed into mine. And knowing I might have to let him go didn’t stop my arms from wrapping around his neck.
Whatever held him back didn’t stop his hands from finding my waist, the bare skin at my back.
He kissed me, and I kissed him back, and maybe if he knew how desperately I wanted him, how hungry my mouth was for his, then even if this was goodbye, if he couldn’t bring himself to love me, maybe someday he would be more ready to love someone else.
The blanket flowed in the water around us, sometimes dragging at my legs, a buffer between the firmness of his body and mine. He cupped the back of my neck, my face, my jaw, and he tasted like salt tears, like spring water and earth. He tasted like the bite of willow bark with honey.
He pulled back, just a hair, just a thread out of reach. His eyes were closed. “I’m not thinking clearly.”
My arms were still around his neck, and my knees brushed against him. “Do you have to?”
He shook his head. “I should take pains…not to hurt you.”
“You’re not hurting me.”
“You’re hurt…”
I pulled him back to me.
He let me. He let me draw him back into the kiss. His breath ran ragged against mine. He’d said he wanted me. When he breathed like this, I believed him.
His hand trailed down my back, clenched against my skin, and I was panting, my gasps mirrors to his. Then he paused. His mouth hovered over mine, waiting. He swallowed, like he was fighting something. “It’s just comfort you want? Just…just pleasure?”
I whispered. “Would it be so awful, to comfort each other?”
He nodded, and I didn’t know if he answered my question or his own, till he growled out, “Just…just comfort, then. We shouldn’t…we shouldn’t risk a child.”
It crossed my mind that I should tell him, about the draught in Bogdanna’s cottage.
But nothing in this world was foolproof.
Even Meg Thatcher had brought forth twins, two years after the quieting of her womb.
Nothing was certain. If he didn’t wish for a child tying him to me, I shouldn’t risk it either.
“Right,” I said. “We can hold each other.”
His mouth took mine again.
My legs wrapped around his waist, around the rough fabric of his breeches, and he pulled me to him. His hands were in my hair, on my shoulders. The blanket got caught on his arm, as he moved, and in one impatient move he yanked it off.
I intook air. He froze, like he stumbled at the intimacy. He was stopping. God, I’d been his wife. This shouldn’t stop us. I tangled my fingers in his hair and pulled him back.
The water was warm. I was weightless, painless, able to reach, able to take what I wanted to be mine. His body was hard and smooth against me, and I wanted closer, wanted everything, wanted him so much.
I pressed in against him. He buried his face in the curve of my throat, his shoulders going tense under my fingertips. “I’ve missed you,” I whispered, and he groaned. That sound, the music and the grit in it, it felt like everything.