I stop just short of telling him I’ve pictured how it would feel between my thighs.
More than once.
Barely dropping his chin, he looks down at me, slicing me with his silver stare, and I feel that look in my chest.
Ugh. Feelings.
I don’t want those right now.
I let my head flop back, arm tumbling to the side as I sigh. “Why are you here, Rhordy?”
“My indifference is just as lethal as my affection,” he murmurs, the smoky words drifting from my grasp the moment they ignite.
“Lethal for who?”
The world continues to thump past.
“You.”
“You’re not making any sense,” I slur, hearing his lucid response moments before I slip into a thick sludge of sleep …
“Good.”
Shoulder leaned against the windowsill, I push the filthy curtain aside and look out upon the moonlit night, scouring the cobbled street three stories below my room that smells like a brewery.
A man wobbles past, pausing in the middle of the road to flop his cock out and take a piss, whistling a tune to the sky, belting out the chorus in slurred, broken notes. He walks straight through his own puddle to continue on his way, weaving a crooked path through the cramped neighborhood.
Cindra strides into view, dressed in her fake merchant’s robe that drags along the ground behind her, white dreaded hair hanging down her back. She glances up at my window and gives me a curt nod, face tight. Three men follow, each pulling a cart piled high and covered with furs.
Three—not the eight the last mail sprite suggested would be coming on that barge.
“Fuck,” I mutter, peeling the curtain further back so I can check down the street for stragglers.
All I can see is the empty road that weaves deeper into the city.
“Please no …”
My pulse goes wild, and I whip my head around, looking athertucked amongst my crumpled sheets—hair a tangled mess spilled across the pillow, her tortured expression lit by a single lantern hanging off the wooden headboard.
She thrashes her head, hands reaching for nothing as a shrill cry splits her lips. “D-Don’t take him.Please—”
I charge across the room in two strides and drop onto the bed. Leaning against the headboard, I stretch my arm over the back of it. Face crumbling, she blindly pads at my chest, another whimper ripping free as she grabs my shirt, using the fisted grip to pull herself close—clawing at me like she’s hanging off the edge of a cliff. Like I’m the only thing stopping her from plunging.
Leg threading over mine, she fits herself to me, and slowly—so fucking slowly—I let my arm settle upon her back.
“I … I can’t do this again.” Her murmured words attack my chest. “Please—I can’t. Take me instead…”
My blood roars, crackling through my veins.
Take me instead …
I draw my chest full, hold it, force the wild surge back down, cracking my neck.
I uncurl her fist from where it’s clenching my shirt like she thinks I’ll ever leave, prying the material from her iron grip.
Another whimper. “No—no, no, no …”
The hurt curdling her sound tills imbalance in my chest.
