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CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE
AIKA
When I slip in through our balcony doors, the monkey wakes from his sleep on the back of the sofa long enough to chitter happily at me, then closes his eyes again.
Remy doesn’t look nearly so pleased.
He’s sitting in the oversized armchair near the fire, running his fingers over the empty glass of whiskey balanced on his knee. The flickering flames highlight the tense muscles in his jaw, the only obvious sign of his discontent.
His cinnamon eyes flit from the glass up to me, meticulously scanning my body. He’s so focused, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s counting my exact number of eyelashes or tracking the seconds between each of my blinks.
His gaze lowers, snagging on my hands where Damian’s blood is still caked under my nails and in the crevices of my skin.
He swallows, taking a slow breath through his nose.
“Yours?” His quiet voice is still too loud in the charged silence.
“No,” I reply in the same low tone.
He nods, almost more to himself than to me.
He leans forward to dip his hand into a kettle warming near the fire, pulling out a steaming white cloth. I can’t help but watch his fingers as he wrings out the water, my eyes drawn to each of the ten digits, the casual strength in his deft movements.
I am intimately familiar with those hands, have felt them explore every single inch of my skin. But they seem foreign to me now, unreachable in my current state.
My feet drag me to stand in front of him before I even register moving, but he is expecting me. Gently, he reaches out, taking one of my hands in his before beginning to wipe away the crimson staining my skin.
Then he’s dipping the cloth back into the kettle, wringing it out until the water is pink, and repeating ministrations. I am frozen, barely breathing, as he moves from my hands to my wrists, my neck, and finally my face.
His touch is soft, and he doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask me questions or demand answers. The judgment I expected to see in his features is absent, replaced with something fierce and conflicted.
I know that the emotion isn’t for me, or at least not for this version of me, not entirely. Just the same, I can’t help when it fills me with a sudden, visceral need to remember that this body is mine, that it is capable of more than giving or receiving pain, that I am real and here, in this moment and room and existence.
Before I can think better of it, I wrap my hand around his, halting his movements and stepping even closer to him. With me standing and him seated in the massive chair, his face is level with mine, inches from mine.
“I know that Gemma was the one you cared about.” My words are barely a whisper this time, my breath mingling with his.
His eyes are a storm of uncertainty, but somewhere in the maelstrom there is an echo of the longing I feel, strong enough to batter against the defenses I have already let fall to the wayside.
So I keep going.
“I know that sometimes you hate me for not being her, but I don’t care.” My tone is desperate, pleading, and I don’t care because Iamdesperate right now. “Just…lie. Just for tonight.”
I am losing everything and everyone in my life, and soon, I will lose him, too. But I have him now, or at least this fragment of him, held captive by whatever game we are so delicately playing.
He studies my face before leaning forward to take what I am clearly offering, close enough that his lips brush mine when he finally speaks.
“I don’t hate you, Aika.” The cloth falls from his hand, landing on the bare floor with a soft thunk.
“Yes,” I murmur. “Just like that. You can go back to hating me later.”
“I wish that were true.” He barely gets the words out before he is crushing his mouth against mine.
It’s warm and solid and everything I need right now. Everything I’ve always needed. He tastes like whiskey and endless contradictions.
The Remy who used to be mine mingled with the prince who never will be.
The hands I was admiring moments ago gently encircle my waist, holding me like I am fragile, breakable, and it’s the last thing I want to feel right now. I bite his lip, pressing myself against him until he understands what it is I need from him.
