Page 202 of Between Despair and Hope

“If you’re going to be cruel to me, stalk me all over Astana, there should be benefits to the arrangement, I’d think.” Her voice stuttered with her breath.

“Some bravado for someone who has probably never been touched here before,” I whispered, lips close to her ear. “Unless you’ve done it yourself.” She jerked away from me, tightening her grip on my wrist, but I swore she tugged my hand closer to her body. “You hate this just as much as I do. Is it some sort of elven trickery? Some cursed elvish nonsense?”

“Are you asking me if I’ve—if I’ve seduced you with magick?” I wasn’t sure what made her stutter—her fury or the way I rubbed her clit.

“Well, I can’t think of any other reason I’d—”

“You truly think you are the only one to suffer a loss of someone you loved. You are not the first, and you won’t be the last. You don’t have to prove your suffering by withholding joy or—or pleas—”

I slipped a finger into that tight heat and drew it out slowly. Gods, she was tight. Slick with need, she still clamped around me. She took a deep breath, chest expanding as her mouth dropped open. Her thick brows furrowed in frustration as she glared up at me.

“If I withhold pleasure, it is for someone else’s benefit, not my own,” I said.

“I’m trying to speak to you about—”

“About how your pussy is eager for my touch?” I slipped another finger in beside the first, and she exhaled forcefully, shaking as she lurched forward. She dropped my wrist, planting her hand on the desk beside her. I didn’t care to hear what she had to say—about accepting joy or otherwise. Not for a few reasons. One being the obvious—I was two knuckles deep in her sweet warmth—but the other was because I’d heard it all before. I didn’t think I was proving anything. I’d wondered myself why I wasn’t like the other people I knew who could move on. Hell, Raj’s wife had only been dead for five years, and he was bedding a beautiful woman who seemed to care about his children and fuss over him. And he was happy. I’d never been married to Lu, though I’d thought about it. I’d been nothing more than a friend until that last year with her. And yet, I was living my sixteenth year without her, still hanging onto her memory. It wasn’t that I didn’t long to be free of the past. Even more so now that Rainier was living his. Without the option? These past months since Emmeline had been back made me fucking crave freedom from Lucia’s memory. I worried I’d never get it.

Maybe the novice was right though. Maybe that was why I hated her. Because I couldn’t help but look at her the same gods damned way I had looked at Lucia.

“Such a filthy mouth,” she said on a sigh. “It serves you well in being distracting.”

“Is my hand not filthy too? You grind on it so well.”

“May the gods forgive me for it too,” she murmured, closing her eyes as I continued dragging my two fingers in and out, gaze tearing down her body as she writhed for me. “Maybe you will too.”

I froze, fingers stilling. “What do you mean?”

“Because I shouldn’t add to your regrets. You’re trying to prove something to yourself, aren’t you?”

She moaned as I pushed my fingers in deeper, tilting her head back so her long waves flowed down to the desk. Free hand planted on the desk beside her, I crowded her body as I pushed my fingers in and out, palm pressing hard against her clit.

“And what could I be trying to prove? That my dick can still get hard despite you being a novice?”

“Our time in the temple already proved that,” she said, staring hate at me along with a coy smirk.

“Gods damn it all, Nor,” I said, right before I surged forward and claimed her mouth. The mouth which had haunted me every fucking day since I first tasted it. This time it was me who pried her lips to part, me who swept my tongue into her mouth and traced and battled her own with it. Me who moaned into her as her fingernails traced a path up my side. Me who plunged my fingers into her wet pussy as she leaned back on the desk for support, legs drifting farther apart to make room for me.

“I don’t know what it is you’re trying to prove, but something tells me you’re failing at it.”

Her voice in my mind was less jarring this time, a soft purr to match what I hoped I was making her feel. I deepened our kiss and angled my hand, using my thumb to rub that sensitive little nub.

“Oh, skies,“ she said, sounding breathless even in my mind. I didn’t think she meant to say it to me, and I smiled against her lips. I didn’t understand it, this desire to make her scream my name and rid myself of her for good. Using my free hand to boost her up, I let it slip down to her pants after, about to rid her of them completely, when I knocked something off the side of the desk. It landed with a clunk, and I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if the glare of the sunlight reflecting off it hadn’t shined right in my eyes. Pulling away for just a moment, I glanced down.

The gilded miniature portrait of Lucia sat right in the middle of a ray of sunlight warming the ground.

I extricated myself from Nor and stumbled a few steps backward, stomach lurching.

“Get out,” I barked. “What the fuck am I—you need to leave.”

“Dewalt,” she said, adjusting her pants as her gaze followed mine. “It’s alright. It’s not broken. Here, let me—”

“Don’t touch it,” I demanded, quiet and full of anger I didn’t know where to direct. She looked up at me from where she knelt, pity and confusion warring in her eyes. I fucking hated it. “Just go, Nor. This was a mistake. I wasn’t thinking. You should leave.” Wiping my clammy hands on my pants, I nodded toward the door to encourage her.

“I—uh, you’re right. That was a mess. A huge mistake.” She nodded, brushing her hair behind her ear, and I felt guilty when I saw her injured skin. And when she adjusted, her blouse moving on her shoulder, the evidence of her abuse fully revealed to me, I regretted the coarse words I’d said to her. She was used to men being rough with her, and she probably deserved some gentleness. It wasn’t me who could give her that though. She walked past me to the door, eyes darting away. It made sense for her to feel that way; we both knew I wasn’t stable at the moment. How could I go from distrusting her, from questioning her every motive, to having my fingers in her and kissing her like I’d been kissing women haphazardly for the past sixteen years? And then to dismiss her because of a picture of the long-dead woman who’d held my heart hostage? Fucking hell.

Truly irrational behavior.

One of her hands rested on the doorknob while the other moved to her mouth. To wipe away the trace of me.

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