Before I could even ask his intentions, he strolled to my unmade bed and toed off his boots.
“W-what are you doing?” I asked, frozen by the doorway.
“Going to bed.”
“But you’re in my room.”
He glanced around the space. “I am. There happens to be a bed in here.”
Panic, nervousness, and excitement bloomed all at once. “But you also have a bed in your room,” I pointed out, trying to understand. Aside from our meeting with Aric, I’d spent almost no time with Harthon ever since we’d returned to the Citadel. And until tonight, he’d seemed rather keen to forget that our lips ever brushed during our trip to Josenne.
Now he wanted to stay with me in bed?
“I do. But if I stay in that bed, I can’t make sure that you don’t walk up to that tower and out of that window in another dream.”
Oh.It wasn’t as if he’d intended to kiss me again and…and do what people did after kissing.Find some sense, Etarla.
“You could just put a guard at my door.”
His mouth twitched. “If I cut off your path to the tower, you could end up going out of the window inthisroom. Again.”
As unlikely as that was to happen, I couldn’t completely rule it out, not after what had just happened. I sighed and slowly approached the bed, recognizing that he was determined to stay. Arguing further would make a bigger deal out of it than it was. We’d slept together in the woods before. This was the same.
Except that we were alone.
In a bed.
He was naked from the waist up.
And he’d just kissed me.Skies, my lips were still swollen, my body still buzzing.
He stretched out on one side, and I gingerly crawled in, giving him my back and trying to leave space between us. With his size, it was difficult, and I was nearly rolling off the mattress’s edge. My muscles turned rigid as I tried to keep myself still. He drew the blankets over me, then reached for my waist and gently tugged me back.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re beginning to sound rather repetitive,” he observed as my back came flush with his front, his bare skin searing me through my thin clothes. “But to answer your question, I’m helping you get comfortable.”
Cocooned in his heat and his presence, Iwascomfortable, as I always seemed to be when we lay together. I’d forgotten how good it felt, to have him at my back, to know he was with me. Unable to help myself, my mind drifted back to our moment in the tower. To the moment when I’d almost died, the way he’d held me with such panic, and the wicked things he did with his lips and tongue.
Carella.He’d called me that only once before, though I didn’t knowwhat it meant.
I opened my mouth to ask when he spoke. “At those justice hearings, I have to act a certain way. I planned to check in with you when it was over, but my cabinet hounded me.”
He said it as if he thought I might fear him now. He was frightening, yes, but I understood why he’d acted the way he did. If anything, his choices had reaffirmed my confidence that he was the right leader to bring through the Domus. “You have a reputation to uphold. You may have been harsh and indifferent, but people got what they deserved.”
“In no small part thanks to you. That woman was going to prison or facing punishment. You changed her life,” Harthon said, his fingers brushing over the fabric at my waist.
He gave me too much credit. “You already suspected the man. If I weren’t there, you or Ana would have found the truth. As it was, I only asked about her hair.”
I wasn’t saying it to be kind. It was the truth. Harthon was shrewd.
“You cleverly unraveled his lie and sought the truth, and you didn’t allow the fear of judgment to keep you quiet. That’s something few can do.”
“Youdo it.”
“I try.”
He did more thantry.It was almost like he doubted himself, like he doubted his ability to be sogoodto his people.
