Chapter 3
Chapter three
THE MOMENT YOU LOOKED AT ME
Orion
Riordan slammed the door to his office once we returned to Ergastiri from Balor’s prison, and it startled me.
“Easy! We knew that it was unlikely Balor would ever cooperate with us,” I reminded him, my concern spiking as he continued to stalk away. “What is wrong with you? First you snarl at Amira this morning and now—”
“I am fine. My apologies, Orion. I am not at my best right now,” he admitted with apparent exhaustion.
“What is wrong?” I insisted, but he merely shook his head as he took a seat behind his desk. “Riordan.”
“You would not understand,” he tried to dissuade me, but his avoidance only made me more determined.
I moved into his space, forcing him to sit back in his chair as I took a seat on the desk right in front of him.
“Talk to me,” I ordered in a tone that was reserved for when we were alone. One corner of his mouth twitched in amusement at my audacity to make demands of the king, but it faded as he considered how best to explain.
“It is… Amira.”
“What about her?” I pressed, surprised when a flush began creeping up his neck and tinged his cheeks.
“I am… We have not… had time together since I have been too busy and exhausted from—”
I cut him off with a disbelieving laugh.
“I am sorry, but are you telling me that this foul mood is because you have not been fucked? You were celibate for centuries and now you cannot even last a couple of days without her?” I verified.
“It is not the same—” Riordan began but stopped with a frustrated shake of his head.
“What is not the same?” I asked, but he stayed silent, glaring at me as I regained my composure. “I am sorry for laughing. What is different about what you are feeling?”
Riordan continued to frown, clearly uncertain he even wanted to satisfy my curiosity after my outburst. But then the king heaved a sigh as he averted his gaze from mine.
“Ktínos indulge their urges. Imítheos save them until they find their mate,” he revealed finally.
I hesitated in astonishment as I realized what he was telling me. All this time, I had thought his people simply did not feel desire, but it was much more complicated.
“So you are saying your… drive is heightened?”
“Why do you think my people traditionally leave court to seclude with a new mate and their skiá for a month?” he demanded. His tail swished moodily over the edge of his seat as his flush of embarrassment darkened.
This time I was the one who had to look away for fear of what my reaction might betray. I was familiar with the custom of mínas agápis. But I had not realized it served a purpose beyond providing an excuse for newly bonded trios of skiá and taíri to go on extended vacations.
And now all I could think about was how tired Amira often seemed. Was that really because she had been trying to keep up with a carnal appetite meant for two?
I pulled my mind away from such tantalizing thoughts before they could register on my face and quickly got up to put some space between me and Riordan.
“I will not mock you about it again. It is clear that this causes you genuine distress,” I acknowledged.
“Thank you,” he murmured as he leaned over his desk where I had just been sitting. He braced on his elbows as he rubbed his hands over his face and into his hair.
“I am also… afraid, Orion. I will not lose either of you to this war,” Riordan stated firmly.
“I know,” I reassured him, my stomach sinking with an uncomfortable feeling while I stared at his forlorn profile. “We feel the same about you,” I added, but I could tell it was not what he’d wanted to hear as his jaw clenched.
“I need you to… keep making an effort with Amira so you can be there for one another if I am—”
“Stop,” I hissed, furious when I realized what he was about to say. He raised his head to glare in frustration.
“Orion—”
“I’d rather let him burn the whole fucking kingdom to the ground than give you up!” I shouted and shoved away from the wall to advance on Riordan angrily.
“I cannot allow you to do that,” he insisted softly.
“Why the fuck not? Would you give me or Amira up if the situation were reversed—”
“Of course not!” he snarled as if offended.
“Then why would you expect us to? Do you really not know that I would spill the last drop of my blood and give up the final breath in my lungs for you? Do you truly not know how much I—”
I bit off the confession on a harsh inhale as emotion threatened to overwhelm me. I tried to avert my eyes as he rose from his seat, but his hand seized my hair at the back of my head to bring our foreheads together.
“Of course, I know that. But it is not either of your lives that will pacify the Wild Hunt, so I am the only one who can make this sacrifice to protect the both—”
“This is not a sacrifice I want, Riordan! Fight for us! Fight for our future, even if it is fleeting, because there is no world in which I could exist without you,” I pleaded.
Riordan stilled, but after a moment, his thumb began to trace slow soothing circles on the back of my head in a way that made me want to melt into him even more.
“I know that you did not mean for me to catch the drift of your thoughts from earlier. But I did,” he whispered.
I froze, my fear replaced so quickly with a painfully familiar ache for him that it made my head spin. My heart throbbed with hopeful yearning as I dared to wonder what he wanted to hear from me.
But then, just as they always did, the ugly doubts and self-loathing began creeping in like weeds to strangle me.
Because no matter how far removed I had become from my vile past, it would forever live in the deepest parts of my soul.
My heart had been irrevocably fractured and my body was branded and scarred from it, but it was my mind that had borne the worst of the disfigurements.
It was my thoughts and memories that were forged into the monster from which I could never escape.
I was about to pull away from Riordan when another memory broke through the rising tide of self-loathing and shame.
A memory of the gentle sensation of Amira’s soft lips on my scarred flesh.
How she had kissed the brands on both of my forearms to prove that she did not find them reprehensible. She did not find me reprehensible.
It took every ounce of determination I could drag from the depths of my heart to turn back the tide of self-doubt, but I forced it down.
“What would you like me to say? You chose well—”
“I want to hear about this future you want me to fight for so badly. What does it look like to you?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to respond impulsively but stopped without knowing what to say, my heart pounding so hard it hurt my chest.
“You have to know… how I always felt,” I breathed, hardly able to believe I had uttered the confession aloud that had been weighing on my heart.
“Say it,” he commanded, making me shiver from the demand in his voice. He only waited several heartbeats before he became impatient with me, and then his hand slid to the back of my neck to clench me commandingly. “You will say it,” he insisted, still soft but firm.
I sucked in a breath and held it, trying to regain control of my erratic heart so my voice did not tremble.
“I love you. I have always loved you,” I whispered.
Riordan released a breath of what sounded like relief, and his thumb traced another gentle pattern on the side of my neck. He still held me as if he was afraid I might flee from him if he let me go.
“Not always,” he recalled in amusement that made me jerk my head back to stare at him in astonishment that he did not seem surprised by my admission.
“Always. Certainly not as deeply as I do now, but I was yours the moment you looked at me,” I reassured him.
Riordan blinked, his amusement faltering in lieu of his surprise at this new confession. But then he tilted his head playfully again as his eyes lowered to my mouth.
“Then why do I recall you punching me in the face the first time I looked at you?”
“That was not the first time,” I pointed out, and his brows rose at me.
“You will forgive the oversight since you did tell me never to bring that up when you punched me. But I need to know, so I will risk your ire now,” he declared with a playful seriousness. “How did I make you mine?”
I could not seem to get in enough air to form words for so long that it made him smile, but he waited this time.
“It was… You looked at me in a way that no one ever had before. Like I was more than just a dirty beggar boy. You… possessed me. For years after, I would lay awake and agonize over what you must have been thinking that had made you look at me like that.”
Riordan stared at me in awe, and then his eyes lowered to my mouth again, and my pulse roared in my ears. I had to resist the urge to lick my lips.
“As my life got harder, I started to think back on that first meeting with resentment because it… felt like you lied to me when you looked at me like that,” I admitted.
His eyes widened, his hand tightening on my neck as if he could stop me from thinking these things in the past.
“And that is why I punched you,” I finished.
“Orion—”
“Please do not. I don’t want to talk about that.”
He seemed to consider arguing, but something in my expression convinced him to let it go for now.
“I thought of you too,” he revealed, giving me a faint smile when my mouth dropped in shock at his admission.
“And I was so relieved to see you at Ergastiri. Before you punched me, of course,” he added with a smirk that made me snort at him.
“But I thought about you, and I worried about what may have happened to you in that city.”
“Why?” I wanted to know. Needed to know.
“I am not sure,” he admitted as his thumb brushed my neck affectionately again. “But some Imítheos youth have been known to recognize their future skiá at a young age. Perhaps I knew we were meant for one another.”
“So all this time…” I trailed off when he nodded in understanding of my confusion. “Why did you not say?”
“Imítheos do not feel desire the way Ktínos do until we choose a mate. I knew I could not give you what you would have wanted from me,” he explained.
“You thought I would pressure you?” I guessed.
“No!” he assured me, looking genuinely horrified by the assumption. “No, I never wanted to make you feel like you had to be loyal to me. But that doesn’t mean I did not love you all along,” he tried to reassure me.
But I was far from pacified. It felt like my heart sank into my stomach as I read between the lines.
“But all those lovers I took… Did I hurt you?”
He sighed, tilting his head back as if he regretted how the conversation was going.
“I did not begrudge you for having those relationships. They were natural to you and satisfied a need I could not at the time. I didn’t know how long it would be until our trio was complete, and I knew you wouldn’t thank me for keeping you celibate for long,” he tried to tease me.
“Riordan—”
“I did what I felt was fair at the time, but I am sorry if it was the wrong choice. What I am trying to say now is that I love you too,” he cut in with frustration.
My heart thudded against my ribs as I repressed the instant and vicious impulse to tell him not to. To make sure he knew that I was wholly unworthy of his affections in ways that he would never even be able to imagine.
But I stubbornly battled down those urges and allowed myself to shift closer until my lips brushed his. I savoured the delicate sound of his breath being drawn in sharply and the tremble of his lips as he awaited my next words.
“And now? Do you feel desire for me now?”
He did not bother to respond verbally. He kissed me, and it felt like I split in half when my heart nearly seemed to burst out of my chest. My mind scattered as my body reacted with an instinctive greediness to devour this man that I had loved for almost all of my life.
Mine.
All yours, he agreed mentally, drawing my attention to the fact that the barriers between us had been obliterated by the intensity of our passion.
But I was far too distracted by the feeling of his hard cock against mine to care about privacy.
My mind was too consumed by the realization that I could recognize the similarities in the way he and Amira kissed me.
I always expected her claim on my skiá to enrage me, but the fact that I could almost feel her kiss against his mouth only fuelled my desire for them both.
It reminded me that they would have learned to kiss together, and it was such a heady thought.
They had a unique rhythm, but there was so much I could teach them: pleasures I could share that they might not have thought to explore yet…
I was certainly more experienced.
I shut down the connection with Riordan the instant the vicious, self-deprecating thought blared into my mind. Hoping he had not seen something I was not yet ready to share with him, I gently broke the frantic kiss so we could both catch our breaths.
“N-not yet,” was all I could think to gasp, and he gave a groan of impatient need.
“I have tasted you, Orion. I need more,” he demanded. His voice was so deliciously commanding and rough with lust that all I wanted was to sink to my knees for him.
But he would not be like the other lovers I had taken in the years since I left the brothel.
I would not be able to set the same kinds of emotional limits with him or continue to conceal my physical scars from him.
He was going to be angry about what I’d endured and disappointed in me for not confiding in him sooner.
And even though I knew it was unlikely, there was still a kernel of doubt about whether he would be disgusted by me.
“Soon,” I promised, and he nodded reluctantly before drawing in a deep breath to compose himself.
“Does your hesitation have anything to do with what Amira knows about you that I do not?” he guessed.
I closed my eyes and nodded, listening as he heaved a sigh through his nostrils. Then he stepped closer again to press lingering kisses against my forehead and temple.
“I can feel how much you want this,” he informed me. Those words and his fingers trailing down my bare bicep sparked a need for more that was almost undeniable.
“I really do,” I answered, almost breathless as I leaned my head against his shoulder and tried to breathe through the burning ache for him.
“I want this too. I will wait for you to be ready for it, however long that takes, but please… Please do not make me wait too long to finally lay claim to you,” he pleaded. “My sanity cannot bear it.”
I could not hold back a groan when my straining cock throbbed harder, my body, mind, and heart at war with one another. But it was my mind that always won with its agony over how to come to terms with my past so I could finally share my darkest truths with the man I loved.