Page 191 of Sorrow & Strangers

“I do”—she nods—“and gratitude.”

“I do not wish for your gratitude, princess.” In fact, the thought of it threatens to twist me into knots, and that version of me is not safe for anyone. Is that why she’s holding back from me? Why she sucked me off but won’t let me do the same? Is this all because she feels gratitude for what I did?

“Then what do you wish from me?” she asks, cocking her head.

It would be easier to list the things I didn’t want from her.

“Your continued presence in my life,” I answer, cupping her cheek. And for you not to have sucked my cock out of some sense of gratitude that I killed someone who was threatening you.

“You don’t want to know how I went from hating you to sucking your cock?” she asks, her eyes finding mine again, that mischievous spark back in them.

My lips twitch in response. “You never hated me.”

“I still shouldn’t have said . . .”

Ah, I see. She thinks those words haunted me and kept me away. Regret and guilt had control of her life for a while, and she is still struggling to see through the opacity they created.

“Did you feel it? Even for a moment?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.

“No,” she says without hesitation, shaking her head.

“And I knew that. I knew it almost instantly.” I stroke her hair back again. “It took only a moment of clarity for me to see what those words really were to you.”

“What were they to me?” she asks, her frown putting an adorable crease between her eyebrows.

“The last bastion between us,” I answer. “If you could have hurt me with your words enough to keep me from you, you wouldn’t have to admit what you feel for me.”

She thinks for a long minute, the silence stretching painfully. “I regretted them the second they left my lips, and I-I didn’t know how to take them back. Then I heard about Torin and I . . .”

“I didn’t do so to manipulate you or to make you indebted to me,” I say, my stomach twisting. I really hate the idea of this moment between us having anything to do with that prick. Did you suck my cock out of gratitude? I can’t ask the question because if the answer is yes . . . I know I’ll react badly. Right now, she’s pressed against me, both of us stripped, lying in my bed, and I don’t want this to end.

“I know,” she whispers. “Because you didn’t tell me.”

I hadn’t planned on her knowing at all. She stopped having dreams about him when I rid the realms of his filth, so I thought on some subconscious level she knew he was no longer a problem.

“You’re the reason we’re here at All Souls. Right?”

I pause for a second, then nod.

She brushes her fingers softly against my cheek, staring at me, her ice-blue eyes searing me. “Who are you?”

Helplessly, I lean into her touch. “I can’t tell you yet,” I say, letting my eyes drift closed for a moment, reveling in the feel of her. “Your dreams are attached to your conscious barriers. The training is so that I can tell you one day. Please trust me when I say it is for my benefit as well as yours.”

“The oath is broken,” she says, and I open my eyes to look at her bare palm before pressing a kiss to it. She stopped coming to train, so the oath was nullified, the mark disappearing from our hands. “You can visit my dreams whenever you wish.”

“Are you inviting me into your dreams now?” I ask, and though I infuse my tone with playful smugness, I know this means something. Especially for her.

“I’m telling you that the oath is broken.”

“I would like an invitation to visit them,” I say, catching her hand in mine, biting the pad of one of her fingers. Not that I wouldn’t visit them without it, but I still want the invitation.

“You can enter my dreams,” she says, like a queen granting a boon.

My lips twitch into a smile. That’s enough for now, and it’s a lot for her. I wrap my arm around her tightly, molding all her glorious curves against me.

“Stranger,” she moans softly. I lean down to nip along her jaw, wanting to savor every moment of this stolen time between us.

“We should talk about limits,” she broaches, and I pull back slightly in surprise at the term. “I’m not sure how far we should go while we’re here.”