CHAPTER 17 #2
The silence between us thickened. All I could focus on were his rough hands kneading my muscles into relaxed submission.
“Why do you let him get to you?” I sucked in a breath as he reached the back of my knee. “Nothing else rattles you.”
“Not nothing.” He shrugged. His fingertips lingered at the sensitive flesh behind the joint, then he began working his way back down. “Too much history between us, I guess.”
“Oh.” That much I understood. Things were the same between me and Merria. My heart sank into my stomach. Stop it, I told myself. Wep wasn’t my betrothed. Hell, Ell wasn’t even my true betrothed. I was trapped in a game I didn’t want to play.
“We can change the game, Small One.”
I ignored her, busybody that she was becoming. “At least it was a good hit.”
Wep laughed and pressed a thumb into the hollow of my foot. Creator, his hands were heaven. I bit back a moan. “It felt good, too.” His smile turned wry. “And I did pull that punch.”
“Sure.”
“Got all his ribs intact, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, that’s the measurement? Whether you crack bone?”
He shrugged, a cocky little thing. “Maybe.”
“I didn’t kiss him,” I blurted out. “I mean, I wasn’t going to. I didn’t want to.” My face started burning, and I tried to wipe it away with my hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying. Forget it.”
His hands stilled.
I examined the lines in the quilt. There was an ironic lack of florals for a place so in tune with nature.
“I’m not here to control you.”
“I know.”
“What you do doesn’t have to be my business—”
“I shouldn’t have said—”
“—unless you want it to be.”
My eyes snapped to his. It was a monumental mistake, but one I was burning to make. His eyes were guarded, but they pierced through me all the same.
Instinctively, I knew I had to be the one to make this move. It was slow and awkward trying to inch my way down the bed without using my entire right leg.
Wep turned to me, tracing his hands up my thighs as I scooted toward him. He should have laughed. I should have laughed. The sight of me was surely ridiculous. When I made it within his reach, his hands scooped beneath me and lifted me the rest of the way straight into his lap.
“Your ankle,” he whispered, devouring me with his eyes.
“Fuck my ankle.” I’d been playing a losing game for weeks now.
It was time for me to have a win. I wanted to crash into him.
I wanted to push every inexplicable thing I’d been feeling into him, just to see if his control would finally break.
But his brother had just snapped that control in half so easily that I knew another break wasn’t what he needed.
So, I took my time. I pressed my lips to his and kissed him slowly, letting him decide if he wanted this.
We both knew it was wrong, but a kiss had never felt so incredibly right.
He deepened it, stroking his tongue against mine and igniting my whole body in fire and lightning.
I was the charge in the air before a storm and the flickering blue precursor to white hot flames.
His fingers delved into my hair, cradling the back of my head and angling our kiss even deeper.
My hands wandered over his impossibly muscled arms. This man was all hardness wrapped up in soft skin that I was desperate to feel beneath his long-sleeved shirt.
I ran my hands down his chest, and his breath hitched as I traced his taut abs, but he didn’t pull away, and thank the Martyrs he didn’t because I needed to touch every inch of him.
I raked my teeth over his bottom lip, sucking it into my mouth and teasing it with my tongue. He moaned, and I instantly needed to hear it again. That was, until he drove all thought from my mind, tracing his lips and tongue over my jaw and down my throat.
“Yes,” I whispered, lost in this moment and never wanting it to end.
I tried to rock my hips against his, but at this angle, I had no way of moving without transferring any weight to my ankle.
I was completely at his mercy, yet there was nowhere else I wanted to be.
His teeth raked over my neck, driving me wild with need, ankle be damned.
“Serae.” My name was a prayer on his lips.
“Please don’t stop.” I didn’t care that I was begging.
His lips returned to mine, and I couldn’t remember why they had ever been apart, why they had ever spent a moment not locked together in this unimaginable heaven.
“We can’t continue,” he said, but his wicked mouth told me otherwise as his tongue slid back into mine, thoroughly exploring me and then opening for me to do the same.
A small voice in the back of my head sounded, and this time it wasn’t Vaya’la.
It was the absolute buzzkill known as conscience, logic, responsibility—take your pick.
She was telling me that no good could come from following this path.
This man would ruin me, and I would let him.
And maybe, just maybe, when I was ripped away from this fantasy world I’d been indulging in, I’d run the risk of ruining him too.
It was that thought that brought me back to my senses. There were so many sinful things I wanted to do with him, but I did not want to be the reason for his pain.
The kiss slowed, and he ran his hands down my back like a sorrowful caress.
“I know you’re right,” I sighed.
“You need rest.”
I nodded, the weight of this mistake, my father’s deception, and my impending betrayal threatening to crush me as it came crashing back down.
Wep kissed me again, slow but firm, and it was the kiss of an ending. It was the sort of kiss that said goodbye without words. His strong arms lifted me and settled me back against my pillows. He looked like he might say something, but a knock sounded at the door.
Callagh’s face peeked through. “Teke just found me and said—oh!” Her eyes rounded as they darted between me and Wep. “I’ll come back.”
“I was just leaving.” He retreated from my side, and it took all my strength to keep my face neutral. To Callagh, he added, “Marr Magda is sending along a few remedies for her.” Without quite meeting my eyes, he added, “I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
I nodded as he withdrew. Silence reigned in his wake.
Callagh eyed me, seeing too much and saying too little. “Are you all right, my lady?”
“Yes, of course.” I knew she heard the quaver in my voice. “I just need a minute.”
There was a bit too much understanding on Callagh’s face.
“I’ll go to the healer’s for your remedies.
And I’ll collect your tray from the guards.
” Dane was still having all of my food checked, though there had been no further incidents.
In our last lesson, he told me the cook to blame had been dismissed, and he had assigned the most-trusted Kish to me, a round-faced woman I’d met on my first trip to the kitchens.
I got the feeling there was something he was leaving out.
I sat there in my bed, ankle propped on a pillow I didn’t even realize Wep had placed, feeling the ghost of his lips against mine and wishing everything about my life were different.
White petals were strewn all along my bed.
Something from Callagh—had I told her jasmine was my favorite?
I had no space in my mind to consider it.
Pity was a hollow, thankless thing, but self-pity was a whole different low.
That was where I seemed to have taken up residence.
“We control our own fate, Small One. Sleep.”
It was many long hours, plus the aid of Magda’s nighttime remedy, before my mind stilled enough to comply.
THREE DAYS of bed rest at the behest of a very tender, very swollen ankle turned out to be one of the busiest times I’d spent in the Riht.
Callagh spent most of the day with me, helping prepare and perfect the flower dyes.
It was a long, tedious journey that left my room littered with petals.
They somehow got everywhere—in my tub, on the bed, between my sheets, under every piece of furniture in the room, and even atop my wardrobe.
I didn’t remember setting anything up there, but that didn’t stop them from tumbling down on my head one morning as I went to dress.
We began by grinding, grinding, grinding.
The petals needed to be reduced to the finest of powders to be effective—otherwise the dye would turn out chunky and irregular.
We talked while we worked about everything except a certain copper-haired man who had taken over every moment of silence in my mind.
The first afternoon, Grinding Day, Teke sat with us after training, singing and teaching us songs.
By evening, my arms were so exhausted, I could barely lift the spoon to my mouth.
But I had three dozen small jars of powder to show for it.
True to his word, Wep visited in the evening.
He kept distance between us, asked the same questions as the healer had about my ankle, then offered to play errand boy and collect anything I might want from town the following day.
He raised his eyebrows at my request for the cheapest clear alcohol he could find, the palest vinegar, and an inquiry at the blacksmith about iron salts.
“You’re not going to tell me what all this is about, are you?” he asked before leaving.
“Not a fan of surprises?” I smirked.
“No. The jars?”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
He lingered in the doorway. He’d worn a tight tunic that hugged his every muscle, which was completely unfair to come here looking so good. I, on the other hand, was covered in flower dust, wearing the most unflattering smock, and had more hair outside my unraveling bun than in it.
“See you on Mixing Day, then.”
“Right.” He tapped a fist against the doorframe and left.