33
ORAYA
Raihn didn’t talk for a long time when we returned to the city streets. He was walking fast and I matched his pace, not sure where we were going. He adjusted his hood, looking straight ahead, not so much as glancing at me.
But he didn’t have to.
I felt a pang of sympathy for him. He had few pieces of his human identity left. I knew how much he valued the shards he could salvage. As much as he tried to pretend it was all about shitty beer, I knew otherwise.
I shouldn’t care. I knew I shouldn’t care. Yet I just kept walking beside him.
“Sorry,” he muttered, finally, once we had walked a couple of blocks.
“It’s nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing. Not really.
“I guess I can’t go back there for a while,” he said. “But at least…” He stopped short, and I realized that we’d come to the same boardinghouse he’d brought me to before. He flashed me a wry smirk, barely visible under the shadow of his hood. “At least we have some other safe havens.”
The man at the front desk was, once again, asleep—at which I could’ve sworn Raihn breathed a sigh of relief. He led me up to his apartment. The place looked the same as it had the last time we were here, though a little messier—more papers scattered over the desk, a used wine glass beside the basin, the bedsheets a little rumpled.
I eyed those bedsheets longer than I meant to.
Raihn sat down at the edge of the bed and fell back over it, sprawling out as if collapsing from exhaustion. Then he caught my eye and grinned.
“What?” he said. “You want to join me?”
A teasing prod, of course. And yet I could imagine it so clearly. How his body had felt beneath me. How he’d smelled. How he’d tasted.
What he’d sounded like when he came.
How he’d held me when I did.
I hated him for touching me the way he had back at the cottage. Just brought all those unwelcome thoughts back to the surface.
“You ever have companions up here?” I asked.
What the hell?
Why did I even ask that?
I made a mental note to never drink again.
His smile broadened, brow furrowing. “What?”
“Nevermind.”
“Are you asking if I fuck other women in this bed?”
“Nevermind,” I grumbled, turning away.
But he caught my hand, fingers gently intertwining with mine—not pulling, though, just hanging there between us.
“I’m married,” he said. “In case you forgot.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled. “A difficult marriage. No one would blame you for seeking some easy pleasure.”
What are you doing, Oraya?
He scoffed. “Easy pleasure. Like there’s such a thing.” His fingers drew a little tighter—pulling my palm closer, drawing my fingers between his, the slide of his rough skin against mine sending uncomfortable shudders through other parts of my body.
His eyes didn’t leave mine.
“I like a little fight,” he murmured. “Besides, she’s ruined me for all others. My own fucking fault, though. I knew it from the beginning.”
His hood had fallen back, dark red hair fanning behind him on the bedspread. His shirt, partially unbuttoned, revealed a triangle of his defined chest and a hint of dark hair. The muscles of his throat shifted as he swallowed, perfectly in time with the slight shudder in my breath—like he sensed my desire, and was reacting to it.
He was lonely. I was lonely. Both of us were mourning the worlds we’d thought we’d known.
At least this time, I was willing to admit to myself that I was tempted. Maybe that was why I was willing to dangle my fingertips close to the flames.
“Hard pleasure, then,” I said.
“Only good if it hurts,” he replied.
I took a step closer to the bed, so my legs were pressed against the mattress—Raihn’s knee between them, nearly brushing the apex of my thighs.
I’m fucking exhausted. So tired of pretending.
Even then I’d been pretending. Pretending I didn’t feel what he did. The hunger.
He sat up slowly, the movement making his knee slide forward. I could have stepped away, but I didn’t. Instead I settled onto it, pulling myself partially onto his lap—the pressure of his leg, and the roughness of his clothing and mine, sending a little spark of pleasure up my spine.
I lifted our intertwined hands, tilted so his thumb was facing me, and before I knew what I was doing, lowered my mouth to it.
His skin was salty and clean. Even his hands held that scent of him—that scent of the desert and warmth. I slid my tongue over the rough pad of his thumb, drawing a slow exhale from Raihn. I held his gaze, unblinking, and he didn’t relinquish it, meeting the challenge. He wasn’t even breathing.