Page 45 of Gilded Curses

Her eyes narrowed as her tone turned hostile. “I just do.”

He didn’t know what happened in that garden, but it was clear Sahira didn’t like Aurora. “If I’d allowed it, she would have fucked me in the bathing chamber, and I turned her down. I wasn’t going to encourage her by meeting her in the garden.”

“Why did you turn her down?”

He blinked at her as if she’d spoken a foreign language. For a second, he almost believed she might have.

Did she really just ask him why he didn’t go screw another woman under a bush? After everything they’d been through, she should already know the answer.

But when she continued staring at him, he realized the stubborn, maddening woman expected an explanation from him.

Unable to control his temper, he threw his hands in the air. “You’ve got to be kidding me! Are you being purposely obtuse, or do you just enjoy pissing. Me. Off?”

When her eyes widened, he shook his head and restrained himself from shouting at her again. Yelling wouldn’t solve any of this, but he didn’t know how to get through to her.

“I don’t…. I’m not sure what to say,” he told her. “I told you I haven’t fucked any other women since you were trapped here. Aurora made it very clear she was willing to have sex with me. Maybe she was trying to talk to me then, but I wasn’t going to let her in that room.”

When Sahira started to speak, he held up his hand to hold off whatever she might say. “And not because I didn’t trust myself with her. I didn’t want to fuck her. I don’t know what else you want from me, Sahira. I’ve told you the truth about all of it.”

“How am I supposed to know that for sure? Just like these things, you’ve done nothing but play games with me since I entered the Cursed Realm. You manipulated me, used me, and purposely tried to make me think you were having sex with other women to hurt me. You think I’m wrong for doubting you, when you’re why I do.”

Orin closed his eyes and flinched when she compared him to the dagadon. He never wanted to be like them, but to her, he was. And he’d never meant to hurt her.

There was a time when he didn’t think he could trust her, but he’d been wrong. He trusted her with his life; she’d become so important to him, and he couldn’t lose her.

He’d always believed caring for others was a weakness; it wasn’t. Yes, it might get him killed because he would do whatever it took to keep her alive, but she didn’t weaken him.

If anything, she made him stronger because he would savage this realm, and everyone in it, to ensure her happiness. She was fuel for the fire already inside him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am, but I can’t take it back. And I never meant to hurt you.”

“You didn’t mean to hurt me? What did you think would happen when you started acting like you were having sex with a bunch of other women?”

“I didn’t know, and that’s what I was trying to find out,” he admitted.

Am I really saying this? But he was, and he wasn’t going to stop.

“I was trying to see how you’d react.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“Because I wanted to know how you felt!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Sahira blinked at him as his shouted words sank in. First, had he really just apologized? To her? She didn’t think he knew the word sorry, never mind actually use it, but she was sure she’d heard it come from his mouth.

She started to respond, but no words came out, so she stood there, gawking at him. Finally, she found words again. “Why did you want to know how I felt?”

He scowled at the wall over her head before lowering his gaze to the floor. “I was trying to see if that night, our first night, felt as different to you as it did to me.”

Sahira’s breath sucked in when he lifted his head and their gazes locked. In his eyes was a vulnerability she’d never expected to see from Orin as he stared pleadingly at her.

“I would take it back if I could, Sahira.” He ran a hand through his hair and tugged at the ends of it. “But I can’t change the past. I wish I could. All I can do is assure you that you’re not a game to me anymore.”

“What am I to you?”

He lifted his hands helplessly before they fell back to his sides. “A friend.”