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“Careful,” Kiaran growls, and then Ariadne slips an arm around me.
“You can lean on us sometimes, you know,” she whispers.
Still panicky, I let them take me out of the inn. Is this what being with others, having feelings for others is like? Losing that snark and bite that kept me going, that kept me alive all these years? Is that a good thing?
This… relaxing part?
Still not sold on it.
I shake Kiaran off the moment we clear the entrance of the inn and he skulks off, grumbling under his breath. Having Ariadne by my side feels less like I’m a useless blind man and more like I’m walking with my girl.
Her soft snort of laughter lets me know she knows exactly what I’m thinking, but I’m still dazed and don’t give a damn if anyone thinks me weak for it and mocks me.
“You’re something, Finn,” she breathes, and there you have it.
“All of us are something,” I mutter.
“But you’re the strongest of us.”
I almost miss a step. “How do you figure that?”
She tsks and rests her head on my shoulder, not giving me a reply.
“It’s not true,” I say. “I’m the weakest link in this clan. I’m blind, for fuck’s sake.”
“But inside, you’re steel. You know what is important. What you need.”
My turn to snort, because those days are long gone. I wonder if I ever did know. In any case, right now I’m lost, and seeing the others’ confidence in bed and with each other, I feel like a mole who’s been pulled out to the light for the first time in his life.
And he’s still blind, only now it matters, where it didn’t matter in the dark before. When you live and breathe darkness, when you don’t know the light, you don’t miss anything, but once you’ve been out of your hole in the ground, that airless, suffocating passage that doubled as your tomb?
It changes everything.
The feeling of wrongness persists as we walk through the streets, between tall houses that echo our steps and the clopping of Skotos’ hooves. Then again, Taj is mad at me and funny how something that mattered naught to me not so long ago now has me twisted up in knots.
It seems that relaxing parts of you held tense and rigid for most of your life—and I am referring to my mind rather than other rigid parts of me, thank you very fucking much—isn’t easy.
That forming relationships with people that go beyond saying hello in the morning and nodding as you cross paths with them is much more complex than I ever thought.
Also pleasurable, my mind provides and I shush it.
I have enough confusion plaguing me as it is, without a constant reminder of last night’s activities.
Ariadne leaning over me, her breasts heavy, nipples hard, her scent wrenching at me, my cock brushing over her belly…
Dammit.
I’m hard, and the fact that Taj hasn’t noticed and teased me about it leaves an ache in my gut. Kiaran is walking ahead with him, and I need to do something. Bridge this suddenly bothersome chasm. Having Ariadne pressed to my side counts for a lot, but I need the others, too.
Talk about suddenly realizing all the things. The thought of going on without them, without their respect, their appreciation, would hurt like a damn wound to the chest.
“Taj!” I call out. “Wait.”
“What do you want, Finn?” he says without stopping. “I feel guilty enough without your help.”
“I wasn’t going to accuse you of anything,” I say.
“That’s a refreshing change.”
