I’d never heard a better plan.
I spun and had my hand on the door before I understood I’d moved.
No!
Spinning around, I met my eyes in the mirror, and I did something I hadn’t done since my father and brother died.
My eyes misted with furious, panicked tears.
I lied to my reflection. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
But nothing was okay.
And I begged for the sun to rise.
Chapter Thirty-Four
______________________________
Pim
ELDER NEVER CAME back to bed.
I’d waited for him. I’d sat up until my eyes became dry pebbles and the tired scratch made me close them.
I slipped into fitful sleep.
In my dreams, I hated him and ran far, far away.
In my nightmares, I loved him and begged him to stay.
By the time I woke up, I was confused and angry and ready to forget what had happened. I didn’t know if it made me weak or brave, but I was willing to trust him despite the circumstances of last night.
Maybe it was because of last night.
He’d shown he wasn’t as invincible as he believed.
He was fragile…same as me. And that fragility made him brittle and incapable of bending.
He’d broken something.
I was willing to see if there was a cure before running away.
I didn’t know the time when he finally exited the bathroom, but the sun pinked the sky and dawn had well and truly stolen the night.
I lay still beneath the covers. The same covers that smelt like him. Like us.
My heart reached out to soothe him, but I didn’t ask if he was all right. Something had happened. I could taste, touch, and hear it.
Tension cascaded in giant rolling sheets off him like a cape or royal cloak, strapped tight to his throat and trailing wherever he went.
Shedding my tiredness, I lay stiff and uncertain as he prowled around the room, gathering his clothes and slipping from white towel to black suit.
I waited until he was dressed before I sat up, clutching the bed covers to my throat. I didn’t ask if he was okay. It was obvious that he wasn’t. I didn’t ask what had happened. It was obvious he wouldn’t tell me. I didn’t ask a million things I should’ve asked. Instead, I asked the one thing I probably shouldn’t.
The one thing I’d fretted over all night.
The one thing I needed to know to be able to put this behind us.
“Elder…”
He didn’t look up from fastening his tie.
“El….
His body twitched—the only sign he was faking ignoring me and was as attuned to me as I was to him. He didn’t reply and another interminable long minute passed. I let him believe I wouldn’t press. That whatever I needed to say wasn’t that important.
But that was the thing. It was important. Deathly important because I wanted more of what we’d shared—despite the terrifying ending. I wanted more of the magic he weaved and not just from intimacy but from the emotional bond linking and looping, tying and tethering us the longer we spent together.
For him to deny me that after showing me its existence…
For him to fuck me rather than make love to me—now I understood the difference—would be the cruellest trick I’d ever endured.
I inhaled hard. “Please tell me there will be another time.”
My voice never rose past a whisper, but the silence in the room made it seem like the loudest shout.
Elder shifted, his large hand falling from his tie like a heavy paw. He clenched it into a fist. “There won’t be.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.” He turned and raked his fingers through his damp hair, his shoulders slouched and face pinched from tiredness.
I let him vanish to the other end of the suite, partially hidden by a wall and roman column. Should I leave him or go to him? Should I push or back away?
Tears prickled. It was hard to give so much when he’d hurt me. I needed an apology, even if he couldn’t reassure that it wouldn’t happen again.
With nervousness morphing into trapeze fleas inside my belly, I slipped out of bed and wrapped myself in the sheet. Padding toward him, I willed my eyes to remain dry as I found him sitting on the couch with his hands clasped tight between his legs.
I looked at the carpet and asked one word. “Why?”
His shoulders slouched. His face pinched with stress as if he held himself back and it drained every ounce of him. “As I told you before when you asked that question, they’re my reasons not yours. I don’t need to explain them.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling hard. “Just stay away from me.”
I didn’t know the English language could be so vicious. He didn’t speak letters, he spoke weapons, and they cleaved and shot me into pieces.
I hugged myself tighter in the sheet.
Another long minute ticked past. “I’m stronger than you think,” I murmured. “I know I still have a lot to overcome, but my mind is already in a better place because of you. If you think what happened last night has ruined—”
“It’s nothing to do with you,” he snapped.
“Well…I’m glad. But you need to know that other men…they still make me fear. Other people don’t have my trust. But you do. You mean something to me.”
Standing there, I was an outcast to his life, and it wasn’t fair. He’d yanked me into his world, he’d set my fate on a different path, and he expected me to share everything I was in return.
Yet he refused to do the same.
I wanted to talk after two years of silence. I wanted someone else to know me rather than scrap letters to an imaginary friend called No One.
“Talk to me. Help me understand why you don’t want to touch me again. Tell me how I can make it possible for us to be together.”
His body vibrated with something I couldn’t name—fighting urges I didn’t understand. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to touch you.” His voice was grim. “I want to so much it hurts.”
Sparkles dusted over my skin. “Touch me then.” I inched forward, the white linen billowing around my legs.
He shot up, his hand out to halt me, backing away as if I wanted to give him poison and not a kiss. “No.”
“No?”
“No.” His eyes squeezed shut for a fraction of a second. He shook his head. “I told you. This was a one-time deal. I’m barely keeping it together, so stay over there and fucking accept that this is where this ends. Do you hear me?”
Cactus spikes and fish hooks stabbed at my arteries. “So this is over?”
He marched away, his legs not nearly as steady as he portrayed. “You want to label this?” He glared over his shoulder. “Fine. Yes, this is over. I am your rescuer. Nothing more. You have doctor’s appointments today that Selix will escort you to. You will be well looked after in my care. But tonight, when we’re back at sea and I tell you what I should’ve fucking told you yesterday, I doubt you’ll even wish to call me that.”
“What…what do you mean?”
“I mean I have information on your mother.”
I sucked in a gasp. Could that be true? Where was she? How was she? And why exactly did that knowledge fill me with dread rather than hope?
“You’re trying to get rid of me.”