“You stayed anyway. In my bed. Second time now.” His expression, still relaxed from the tonic but carrying an edge of something rawer underneath. “That’s not fair.”
I finally looked at him properly. His hair was mussed from where he’d been lying down, silver strands falling across his forehead in a way that made him look younger. More vulnerable. The control he wore like armour had been stripped away, leaving only this. Whateverthiswas.
“What’s not fair?”
He didn’t answer. Just shifted closer, and before I could process what was happening, his arms came around me. Strong despite the injuries, insistent despite the tonic dragging at his system.
“Varyth, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
But he was already tugging me down, pulling me against the solid heat of him with a determination that suggested the pain tonic had obliterated his sense of self-preservation along with his filter.
I tried to resist. Tried to maintain some kind of distance. But he was surprisingly strong when he wanted to be, and my body—my treacherous, stupid body—remembered the last time I’d been this close. Remembered safety and warmth and the way his heartbeat had lulled me into the first nightmare-free sleep I’d had in months.
He buried his face in my hair, breathing deep like he was trying to inhale my entire existence.
“Not fair,” he murmured against my scalp, the words vibrating through me. “Second time you’ve been in my bed and I can’t...”
He trailed off, but his nose dragged down from my hair to my temple, following some invisible path that made my breath catch. Lower, along my cheekbone, until his face was pressed against my neck and his breath was warm against the sensitive skin of my throat.
“Really not fair,” he breathed, and dragged his nose up the column of my throat like he was trying to memorise the scent of me.
Every nerve ending I possessed went into immediate crisis mode.
“You’re high,” I managed. “The tonic?—”
“Fucking tonic.” But he didn’t pull away. If anything, he pressed closer, one hand coming up to tangle in my hair, holding me in place. “Know what’s worse? Being sober around you. At least like this I can admit it.”
“Admit what?”
His lips brushed my pulse point—not a kiss, just contact—and the sound that escaped me was absolutely mortifying.
“That I think about you,” he said against my skin. “All the fucking time. Think about how you look when you’re angry, when you’re fighting, when you’re with your children and you think no one’s watching.” His hand tightened in my hair. “Think about what it felt like waking up with you in my arms, and how you looked at me like I’d committed some unforgivable sin just by existing in the same space.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.” His voice was rough, raw, stripped of everything except honesty and too much pain medication. “And I understood. Because you loved him. Love him. And I’m just...” He exhaled against my throat. “I’m just the bastard who keeps pulling you into his bed when you’d rather be anywhere else.”
My heart cracked straight down the middle.
“That’s not—” I started, but the words tangled in my throat. Because what could I say? That he was wrong? That I didn’t wake up hating myself for finding comfort in his arms? That some traitorous part of me hadn’t spent the entire day trying not to think about the way his heartbeat had felt beneath my cheek?
I’d be lying.
And I was so fucking tired of lying.
His breathing had started to even out, the tonic finally winning its war against his consciousness. But his arms didn’t loosen, and his face stayed pressed against my neck, and I could feel every word he’d just shattered me with branding itself into my skin.
“Varyth,” I whispered.
No response. Just the steady rise and fall of his chest, the warm puff of his breath against my throat.
He was out.
And I was trapped in his bed, in his arms, with every word he’d just said echoing through my skull like accusations I didn’t have a defence for.
Fuck.
I should move. Should extract myself and retreat to the safety of my own chambers before this could become even more complicated than it already was.
