“Yes?”I mumble into the back of his head.His hair smells like bonfire even though we didn’t have a fire last night.I think I might smell like that too.The scent of heathens.
“You’re not in chains,” he comments.
“No, sir,” I tell him, moving my hand so that I’m grasping on to his fingers.“You didn’t do your due diligence,” I add, knowing how that will hurt his pride.
I hear him swallow.“You were here the whole night?”
“If by ‘whole night’ you mean the couple of hours of sleep we got, then yes.Don’t you think you would have noticed if I left?”
He groans, running his hand over his face.“I don’t know anymore.I could sleep for weeks.Do you think they’d care if I didn’t show up to teach today?”
“It would probably make the sisters suspicious, if that’s what you want.”
He sighs again and then turns over slightly, looking over his shoulder to meet my eyes.“There you are.And you didn’t run away.Good boy.”
While I didn’t run away, I don’t deserve his praise.Not now.
“How are you feeling?”I ask, running my fingers through his hair.“Other than wanting to sleep for weeks?”
He mulls that over, dark gray eyes flicking over my face.“Disappointed.With myself.The ritual should have worked.We did everything right.It should have expelled the horseman.”
Truth wants to bubble to the surface, this incessant need to be honest with him, but I manage to swallow it down.I can’t ruin this, not yet.
“We will try again,” I assure him.
He turns around, the covers being pulled off me as he does, and I’m pressed against the wall.Both our cocks are hard as they push against each other.“You seem different,” he says to me, putting his arm around me, his hand possessive at the back of my neck.
“How so?”I whisper, unable to look away from his penetrating gaze.
“Happier, perhaps?Though I’d never go as far as to describe you as happy.That’s too pedantic a word.You seem”—he sucks at his teeth in thought—“a little less burdened.Which surprises me.Because I feel burdened in knowing the horseman is still with us.I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”
“I think I’m getting used to it,” I admit carefully.
His eyes narrow imperceptibly.
“You think you can hide under that brooding exterior, keep your secrets under that beard, but I know you, Brom.I can read you like a book.I know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?”I challenge, my pulse quickening.
He searches my eyes for a long moment.
“That you’re in love with me.”He says this so simply that I can’t help but laugh.“Don’t laugh,” he chides me.“You know it’s true.I’m not saying you do love me, but rather you think you do.”
“You have quite the way of getting to the point,” I manage to say.I’m grateful he didn’t say what I thought he was going to, but even so, I’m not sure how to deal with this.I don’t know what my feelings for Crane are.One minute I hate him, the next I envy him, the next I feel safe with him, and in the next I love him.On top of it all I deeply desire him in a way that makes me mad, both angry and driven to insanity.But none of it is a conscious choice.I succumb to him like I succumb to breathing oxygen.
“Don’t feel pressured to refute me,” he says.“Let me go on dreaming.”
But I heard what he said last night to Kat.I heard what he said to me.
I love him.I love both of you, want both of you,needboth of you.I think I’ll die otherwise.
Crane melted my heart last night whether I wanted him to or not.
As I said, whatever my feelings for him are, I don’t have a choice in the matter.
“Were you jealous of me with Kat last night?”he then asks, the look in his eyes growing dark with lust.
“Yes,” I say, and the image of his cock inside her makes my stomach twist in knots.“Were you jealous of me with her?”
