“You do?” she asked quietly.
Dravka remembered the others in the room. He sensed their presence though he never lifted his gaze from her.
“We all do,” he told her, his voice gruff, “in one way or another.”
Valerie blinked.
Every last being in that room was a lost soul. But maybe they’d all found one another for a reason.
“What is your name?” Valerie asked, her eyes large and wide and beautiful.
Dravka had the strangest thought, as he rubbed at his aching chest, that he wanted to make those sad eyes happy. That he would do anything to see her happy. And he’d only just met her.
“Dravka,” he rasped, his name floating between them. “My name is Dravka.”
Chapter Fifteen
When Valerie returned to the brothel later that night, she was alone and found she didn’t want to be.
Madame Allegria had gone straight to her penthouse in the Downtown District, preferring to live among the bustling nightlife rather than the quietness of the Garden District. Which gave Valerie leave to do whatever she pleased that night.
Once inside, she went straight up to the Cluster, her feet retracing the steps she’d taken thousands of times during her five years there. A cold ache had lodged itself in her chest, one she hadn’t been able to shake, one she hadn’t felt since she’d found her mother dead in her bed, her eyes open and unseeing, gone to a place that Valerie could not follow.
She thought of her mother that night as she walked to the Cluster, as she walked towards Dravka.
The sitting room was empty when she pushed it open, though slivers of light were peeking out from Tavak and Ravu’s doors. And Dravka’s.
She walked to that door and knocked once before pushing it open.
His scent hit her hard, as it always did. Greedily dragging it into her lungs, Valerie stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
Dravka had been standing at the window, the one that faced the front of the brothel. Had he watched her come inside? He turned to regard her. He’d left her room earlier, after their kiss, tense and angry. He carried an amount of that tension now, in his shoulders, in the lines of his face.
But when he saw her, he approached her without question and hesitation. It was dark in the room, only the flickering sconce on the wall was lit, casting long shadows across them. She walked into his arms, which came around her, and she pressed her face into the strong wall of his bare chest. His skin felt velvety soft underneath her lips.
“I was waiting for you to get home,” he told her, his voice husky and deep in her ears.
Always watching out for me,she thought, longing going through her at his words. For a moment, she got lost in a daydream of him saying those words to her, in a life that was their own and no one else’s.
Her lips were pressed into his chest, his warmth heating them. Her core squeezed with aching want. Unconsciously, she remembered the sad desperation in Celine’s voice—spoken in her beautiful night conservatory, in her beautiful house surrounded by beautiful things—when she told Valerie that she loved her husband, in her own way, whatever that meant.
Was that her own future? Desperately trying to convince herself that she loved someone she didn’t?
Her lips moved of their own accord.
When her tongue flicked out, Dravka froze, a rough sound escaping his throat. His hand grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her away until he could meet her gaze. In the darkness, those eyes were watchful and careful. She held them, her lips parted, her heart beginning to throb in her throat.
His nostrils flared and then she was leaning forward again, holding his eyes as she kissed his chest again.
A sharp exhale escaped him, his swallow echoing in the quiet room. Her hands stroked over him, gliding down his muscled back, feeling the sharp slabs and ridges of strength there. When her fingers reached the waistband of his pants, he sucked in a breath, snagging her grip away.
But she wouldn’t be deterred. Determination thrummed through her, determination he no doubt read in her eyes. She went onto the tips of her toes, dragging her mouth up until she was kissing his neck. Then she nibbled at the column with her teeth before soothing the bites with her tongue.
“Val,” he growled, his hands coming to grip her hips. She wanted to forget that Gabriel’s hands had ever been on her. “What are you doing?”
She felt his cock rising against her, more quickly than she’d thought possible. Thickening and heating against her belly. She could feel it through the thin material of her teal-colored dress, the one with the neckline that plunged to her navel, revealing the valley of her breasts. She wanted his fingers to stroke her there. She wanted his mouth to kiss her there.
Valerie didn’t answer his question. She stepped into him until he stepped back…and then the backs of his knees were hitting the edge of his bed. She pushed him down onto it until he was sprawled.
