Can't he see he already has me?
11
VALAS
It takes me a good ten minutes to pull myself together enough to leave the study.
Keira's taste still lingers on my tongue—sweet and salt and something uniquely her. Her scent has burrowed into my lungs, clinging to every breath I take. Even after I've splashed cold water on my face, changed my shirt, tried to compose myself into something resembling the respected healer I'm supposed to be, I can still feel her everywhere.
The ghost of her thighs trembling around my head. The broken sounds she made when she came apart. The way she looked at me after, dazed and satisfied and almost reverent.
I want more. Want to drag her to my bed and make her scream with just my mouth, no hands, just tongue and lips until she's hoarse and wrung out. Want to discover every other way I can unravel her, catalog each gasp and whimper.
But she'd needed to go to Amisra. Dinner and bath time and bedtime stories, all the evening rituals that anchor the little bird's world. So I'd helped her dress, fingers fumbling at laces for the first time in a decade, and watched her slip from my suite on unsteady legs.
The self-satisfied male part of me had preened at that. At the visible evidence of what I'd done to her.
Now I'm pacing my temporary room like a caged predator, debating whether I'll go to her later. Knock softly on her door after Amisra's asleep, see if she'll let me in. See if she wants more, or if that was enough for tonight.
See if she'll let me worship her properly, spread across clean sheets instead of cluttered parchment.
First, though, I need to check on Daryn.
The thought sobers me faster than ice water. I run a hand through my hair, retying the leather at my nape, and force myself to focus. My friend needs me. Has needed me for months, even if I've been too stubborn to admit I can't fix this.
His door is cracked when I reach it, golden lamplight spilling into the darkened hallway. I knock softly before pushing inside.
"Come to gloat about finally getting somewhere with my nanny?" Daryn's voice is weaker than it was even this morning, but the humor threading through it is pure him.
I pause in the doorway. "How did you?—"
"Please." He's propped against pillows, skin almost translucent in the lamplight. The hollows beneath his silver-blue eyes have deepened, shadows pooling there like bruises. "I can smell her scent on you. Either you finally made a move or you've taken up rolling in her laundry."
Heat crawls up my neck. "I didn't—we didn't—" I clear my throat. "Nothing like that."
"But something." He gestures weakly to the chair beside his bed. "Sit. Tell me everything or I'll die of curiosity before this illness finishes me off."
The joke lands wrong, humor curdling in my stomach. Because looking at him now—really looking, not through the desperate lens of a healer searching for solutions—I can see how close he is to the edge.
How little time we have left.
I sink into the chair, suddenly exhausted. "We kissed. And I..." The words stick. "She let me taste her." I run a hand over my face. "Fuck, I've never been so desperate for someone like I am with her."
"She finally let you in." Daryn's laugh is genuine, if breathless. "Gods, Val. No wonder you look like you've been blessed by the Mother herself."
"It wasn't—" I scrub a hand over my face. "I wanted to keep going. Wanted everything. But she needed to tend to Amisra and I needed to..." What? Pull myself together? Remember how to be a person instead of a creature of pure want?
"You needed to come see your dying friend." No humor now, just quiet acceptance.
The word—dying—hits like a blade between my ribs. "Don't."
"Why not?" He shifts against the pillows, wincing. "We both know it's true. Have known for months."
"I'm still looking for?—"
"Stop." Gentle but firm. "Val, please. Just stop."
I open my mouth to argue, to list the three new remedies I'm researching, the texts I've ordered from Orthani. But the look on his face silences me.
