Page 43 of Brought to Light
Linden’s outfit made mine look plain, with all kinds of flowing blue silk and fancy gold buttons and honest-to-fucking-God stockings underneath. Of course, most of the people here were wearing stockings. I’d drawn the line there, and had black pants and boots.
Not that I had any problem with Linden’s stockings. I’d been fantasizing about how I’d want to take them off ever since he put them on, and that wasn’t because I didn’t like them.
If I ever even got the chance to touch him, let alone try to undress him.
Because Linden hadn’t exactly been giving me a green light to undress him over the past few days.
Strike that. I’d gotten a red light on so much as speaking to him.
He’d been there when Jesse and I came through the portal, hanging back behind Lady Lisandra and watching solemnly as we stepped out. He’d looked at me—one long, unreadable look. He hadn’t said a word to me. He’d quietly introduced himself to Jesse, and then he’d taken Kaspar by the arm and walked away, leaving me staring after him with a hard, cold lump of misery in my gut.
I deserved it. Fuck, did I deserve it.
But every damn time I’d tried to get him alone and talk over the past few days, we’d seemed to ‘accidentally’ get interrupted by someone who needed one of us to do something right that minute.
Try on a jacket. Write a polite note to someone who’d congratulated Linden on his new title and wealth. See a visitor, give an opinion on something in the kitchen, and so on and on and on.
Actually, all of those were things they needed Linden to do. No one seemed to need me to do anything except pace the halls and wait for thirty seconds of Linden’s time. Which I didn’t ever seem to get. Even when no one interrupted us, he always managed to think of somewhere he needed to be, dashing off with a fake half-smile and without meeting my eyes.
I’d have tried to track him down at night, but I’d been bunked down with Oskar, Kaspar, and Jesse in a sort of bachelor barracks, and I had no idea where Linden slept. It would’ve been an easy enough thing to find out, except that if Linden wanted me to know…sneaking up on him in the middle of the night like the assassin I was trying not to be anymore felt fucking wrong.
I missed him, though, a down-deep ache that I couldn’t ignore.
And I’d started to wonder if I’d missed my chance completely. If I’d spend the rest of my life trailing around after him at parties like this, armed to the teeth and scaring the guests. Aching for him, and never allowed to touch.
I caught a flash of blue silk and a glimpse of the brightest smile in the room and zeroed in.
There he was. And that tall, handsome guy talking to him had leaned in way too fucking close.
I’d sworn to myself I’d stay out of the way, lurk against the wall, and let Linden do his lord of the realm thing. I didn’t have any official status here. Yeah, I’d killed Evalt, which gave me a certain level of reputation…but it was the kind of reputation that made people side-eye you and shuffle out of reach, not offer you a glass of rainbow liquor and try to be your friend.
I didn’t have any official status in Linden’s life, either. I wished I could’ve had a few hours alone with some of that liquor, because then at least I could’ve brooded about it drunk instead of stone-cold, miserably sober.
No time for brooding, though. The tall guy put his hand on Linden’s arm, thumb rubbing over the curve of Linden’s shoulder, and I’d pushed off from the wall and into the crowd before I’d even made a conscious decision.
A path appeared before me like magic, no one wanting a flashlight through the eye, I was guessing, and it only took me a minute to get across the room. By the time I did, the too-handsome asshole had Linden’s hand in his, and he’d gotten close enough to start angling for a kiss.
Linden saw me coming over the guy’s shoulder, and his eyes went wide. “You should probably stop touching me,” I heard him hiss under his breath.
My fists clenched at my sides. Why hadn’t he told the fucker to get his hands off before I came along, if he didn’t want to be touched like that?Didhe want to be touched like that by someone else? Was it only getting caught he cared about, because he thought I’d, what, hurthimif I caught him with another guy?
I pushed past the guy and turned to stand shoulder to shoulder with Linden. “Hi,” I said.
And it was all I needed to say. The fucker scuttled off into the crowd without a word, dropping Linden’s hand like it’d gone white-hot.
When I got done staring a hole into the back of his head, I turned to Linden, not sure what to expect.
The look in his eyes nearly had me on my knees. I’d thought Lady Lisandra held the gold medal for eye-fucking a guy into submission, but Linden managed it with no more than one glance at me from under his lashes.
Okay, fucking enough. Enough of this ball, enough of other people thinking they could put their hands all over him, and enough of not having touched or even really spoken to him forthree fucking days.
“Let’s get some air,” I growled into his ear. I felt his shiver where his shoulder brushed mine.
“Why don’t you escort me to the gardens,” Linden said, in a strange, strained tone that could’ve meant anything fromAnd then you can fuck right offtoAnd then you can fuck me against a wall.
My heart raced, and I all I could do was nod. He set his hand in the crook of my elbow, and the simple touch felt like it burned through my jacket and shirt and all the way down to the bone. A couple of knots of revelers looked like they meant to start chatting away at Linden, but two scowls cleared a path, and I whisked him out through the glass doors in the farthest corner of the ballroom and onto the terrace.
More people stood out here, laughing and drinking, the bright feathers in their hair bobbing and their silk robes swishing as they gesticulated.
