“Ilryth, wait,” I say, despite my better judgment. Not knowing what I’m going to say next.
He halts at the corner of my bed. “Yes?”
Those eyes of his…I could get lost in them forever. I could subsist on their intensity alone. Perhaps—
The words “used woman” echo through my mind in Charles’s voice.
No. I’m not going to allow Charles to dictate my own inner voice any longer. I’ve given him too much power over that across the years. So much so that it’s hard to even tell what is in my own voice, and what he planted within me.
There are only a few weeks left for me to live. How do I want to spend it? Not cowering in fear. Not wishing I had done something differently.
I put to rest my internal struggle—let that be the only thing getting sleep tonight. I cross the gap between me and Ilryth and grab his face with both hands, kissing him with a fierceness I didn’t know I still possessed.
CHAPTER30
Ilryth doesn’t pull away.The opposite. He grabs me by the hips and draws me to him with force. A dozen bodiless voices sing through my mind at once as our mouths meet in glorious harmony.
I break away, forcing myself to stop. My lips quiver, yearning for him still. Trembling with passion that I’m barely containing.Touch me, my whole being screams. I wonder if he can somehow hear it, because his palms dig into the meat of my hips.
“Tell me we shouldn’t do this.” My fingers trail down the muscle of his neck. They finally,finallytrace over the markings inked into his skin. At long last, I permit myself to touch them and I fear I might never want to stop.
“We shouldn’t do this,” he obliges, but doesn’t sound convincing in the slightest.
“Tell me this will end in disaster,” I demand, knowing full well it’s true. That’s a fact I came to terms with long, long ago.
“Itmost certainlywill end in disaster,” he affirms with all the confidence of someone who’s thought about this as much as I have. Yet, his arms tighten around me. The pads of his fingers dig wells into my flesh. “I do not expect my heart to survive meeting you unscathed. Though, I’ve known that for years.”
“Years?” I whisper.
“Years. Ever since I first laid eyes on you. Even if I refused to admit it. You ensnared me. Inexplicably and effortlessly became the object of my every desire.”
“But, you… I wasn’t… How? Why me?”
One hand releases me to caress my cheek. He pushes a wayward strand of hair away from my face as gently as someone would shoo a butterfly. One hand touches me with tenderness. The other is still wrapped around me, gripping me so tightly his muscles tremble, as if forcibly restraining himself from taking me here and now.
I crave him with a ferocity I’ve never known before. I want him to move slowly, to cherish my mind and heart. To be gentle with all my tender wounds. Yet, at the same time, I want him to unleash himself upon me, to ravage me and leave me breathless.
“Why does the sun rise, Victoria? Why do the tides swell or the fish swim in groups? Some things simplyare. They are forces of nature and it would be an affront to the divine beauty of this world to question them. I do not want to question.”
“You care for me even though you know I was somehow involved with another?” I dare to ask. I wish I didn’t have to. But I do.I should tell him I was married… He has a right to know, doesn’t he? But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe knowing I was serious with another is enough. Maybe it won’t matter soon when I forget everything related to Charles…
“I am not threatened by a man you tried to expunge from your memories.” He has an almost arrogant smirk. That confidence, the ease by which he remains so unthreatened, couldn’t be more attractive. “History is just that, Victoria, history. The only bearing it has on the present is what it taught you and what you choose to carry forward. I wouldn’t change the woman you are now for the whole of the seas.”
I close my eyes, pressing my cheek into his hand. His thumb strokes gently, as light and tender as the markings he draws across my flesh. “Ilryth, tell me we can’t do this.”
“I already told you we shouldn’t.” His fingers curl slightly against me, as if beckoning once more. With one taste, I heard a song of passion, of pleasure, of all the goodness in the world that had previously been forbidden to me. And I want more.
“Tell me wecan’t.”
“You know it is forbidden for me to even be touching you.” It’s not my imagination, he is drawing me closer. Both of his hands are pulling me down.
“Then we can’t.”
“I never said that.” He leans in ever so slightly, eyes consuming mine. “It might be forbidden, but we certainly still can.”
“I don’t want to hurt you like that…” I press my eyes closed. My heart will also be left in tatters if we do this. But I have only a little bit of time to endure it. He has years.
Yet, despite knowing all this, I’m not pulling away. For all the reasons we shouldn’t…I can come up with one, singular reason why we should that trumps all others:I don’t want to stop.I am selfish, and cruel, and needy.
