30. Ella

Chapter 30

Ella

Ella stood on the porch of Kellen’s bedroom in his childhood home, her hand resting on her throat, where the ghost of Miya’s blistering touch haunted her skin. She took deep breaths and gazed out into the rich twilight to remind her body that Miya was no longer there. Below her, the castle grounds were vast and sprawling, the manicured gardens dappled with streaks of silver moonlight sliding across the variegated blooms. Ella’s gown billowed gently in the cool breeze, the fabric whispering against the stone beneath her feet. The stars twinkled above her, seeming to stare back at her as she stared up at them. Her face unconsciously lifted to meet the heavens, craving for her limbs to disintegrate into something ethereal and buoyant so she could stretch herself through the ether and touch the sky, feel the stars between her fingers, become one with the night.

As she stood there, she felt the weight of what she’d experienced tonight crash down over her.

Nothing about this evening had been easy for her. None of it had come as naturally as Ella wanted Kellen to believe it did, not that she trusted he’d bought her pretense that she was unaffected by their charade. Somehow, the hardest part of the evening wasn’t Kellen’s fake treatment of her, the nasty vilification of her impact on the school, or even Miya’s assault at the end. It had been the speech she’d hurled at Miya to provoke her into attacking. Those words had emerged from a place deep inside Ella she didn’t visit often, the vestiges of pain lingering in her core from the years of torment she endured at her mother’s hands. Giving life to that pain, to the anger simmering under the surface that she worked constantly to subdue for the sake of living, left her winded from exhaustion, made her long to curl up in a ball and sleep her life away, if only to never experience that pain again.

But that pain was a part of her. Not the total sum of her being, but a crumb of her history that shouldn’t be ignored. It didn’t need to be something she feared or pushed away. Acknowledging it didn’t make her any less strong or any less capable of helping others face their own pain.

Something she told the twins often that she needed to start repeating to herself.

Ella sensed movement behind her before seeing it and spun around to find Kellen approaching. He’d sent the twins into the house to collect whatever belongings of theirs they wished to keep before they returned to Delmarth. Now that Miya was gone, the house belonged to Kellen, not that he planned to do anything with it. He’d said that their home would remain the cottage, and he would leave this meaningless opulence that none of them felt an attachment towards to rot along with their mother’s reputation. Ella agreed that there was no greater justice for the twins than that.

“I couldn’t find you,” Kellen said as he advanced towards her.

“Sorry. I just needed a moment alone.” She’d drifted up the staircase and stumbled upon Kellen’s room, at first not realizing that it belonged to him. The space was depressingly nondescript, no character lining the walls, lacking decoration or anything that would indicate a personality had graced this bedchamber. She felt everything he must have felt living here, the unrelenting isolation and darkness, and found comfort inside a room that seemed to understand the burden she carried inside. She wondered if maybe the reemergence of her own pain had been seduced by the misery saturating the furniture and drew her to the room before she knew it was Kellen’s.

“Can I join you?” he asked with caution, sensing her mood. If she said no, she trusted him to leave her here to continue wallowing.

Ella nodded, beckoning him forward with a wave of her hand. Kellen shrugged off his suit jacket on his journey over to her and draped it around her shoulders. The heat of his dragon fire coated the fabric and warmed her fatigued muscles, a soft moan escaping her mouth before she had time to damper it.

“Thank you,” she stammered, hugging the material closer. She inspected his expression and found it incomprehensible. “Are you okay?”

“More okay than I’ve felt in a long time,” he answered, the light she searched his eyes for constantly returning to his emerald gaze, setting his whole body ablaze with joy. “Tonight could not have gone better once you took control. My plan was a disaster waiting to fail. I should’ve let you lead from the start.”

Ella beamed. “I’m going to need to hear you say that a million more times, please.” His eyes warmed.

“I think I can manage that,” he quipped, the corner of his mouth curling up, revealing one dimple. “Maybe this is why Aros signed the order. Because he knew this would be the outcome.” Ella frowned.

“I’m not giving him that credit,” she grumbled under her breath.

“You’re right,” Kellen concurred. “The only person who deserves credit for tonight’s success is you.”

He stepped closer, careening behind her, and stretched out his arms on either side of her to grasp the railing, effectively trapping her beneath him, her back to his front. Kellen dropped his face into the crook of her neck and inhaled the scent of cherries scattered across her skin from her moisturizer.

“In one evening, you managed to do what I’ve struggled my whole life to accomplish,” he whispered. Ella gasped when she felt his fingers tickle her sides, sliding up and down her curves in unhurried strokes. Kellen brushed his mouth against her cheek. “I am forever indebted to you, Noella Rose.”

Ella closed her eyes, her breaths purling in hysterical pants, as he pressed a whisper of a kiss to her skin, to the heat besieging her flesh, setting her blood and bones aflame. Hunger and desire ravaged through her system, overpowering her senses, the need to feel his lips on hers too uncontrollable, her strength depleted from an evening of wearing a fake mask. All she wanted now was to stop fighting herself and succumb to her heart’s truest desire. She was twisting in his arms before she could stop herself.

Her hands flew up, snaking into his hair, and yanked his head down, his mouth crashing into hers.

Kissing Kellen for the first time reminded Ella of how addicts describe their first fix of a drug, which hooks them for life. He tasted like relief and euphoria, if euphoria took the form of two plump lips, which cajoled hers to respond with equal fervor, inundating her with a rush of ecstasy and a beautiful escape. Ella’s back arched to bring herself closer, desperate to eliminate the distance she’d placed between them, both in a physical and metaphorical sense, this kiss her ultimate surrender.

She swallowed the gasp Kellen loosed as though it were liquor being poured down her throat, greedy to imbibe more of his passion, eager for the feeling to fill her body to capacity, wanting to drown in his need for her.

“Noella,” Kellen whispered into her mouth, a half-groan, half-sob.

Her fingers tugged at his curls, dragging her lips back to his, applying even more pressure than before.

Kellen claimed her mouth a second time, laying siege to every part of her. All her usual instincts veered towards yearning for him rather than oxygen to breathe, her top priority now acquiring her next fix of the intoxicating drug that was Kellen Kilic. Her back dug into the railing as his hips pinioned her beneath him, her blonde hair torrenting off the rim of the rail and floating along the current of the wind. She felt his fingernails scrape her scalp when he pulled at her hair, angling her head back so she had no option but to bear the brunt of his osculation, consumed by the intensity of his desire. His tongue nudged her lips, begging them to part. When she obliged, their tongues skirmished in the middle of the shared space between them, tangling together in a sensual dance. Kellen kissed her like a man starving, like he hadn’t gotten essential nutrients in weeks and she was his last chance of survival. He devoured her, not just her mouth, but her soul as well.

He claimed her with just one kiss. She conceded everything to him in that moment, resigning from their battle of wills to create a new game of dominance—who could make the other moan louder.

“If I don’t touch you, I think I might burst,” he snarled before Kellen’s fingers scraped down her dress to find the slit in the skirt, using the opening to hike the fabric up, revealing her lace, black thong to the night. He gave her throat special attention, nothing like how he’d kissed her there earlier in front of the crowd, the small licks and nips he crafted into a pathway up her neck composed of gentle care and devotion. Ella’s head fell back. If it weren’t for the railing behind her and Kellen’s hand threaded in her hair, while his other hand brazenly explored the apex of her thighs, she would have plummeted off the edge of the patio. Her hips twitched forward when Kellen’s finger made contact with her clit through the lace, discovering the evidence of her arousal.

“Kellen,” she groaned. Stars bleared across her vision, both the stars hitched above and stars produced from the incredible experience of him touching her in reality, not just in her dreams. She didn’t even know what she was asking for when she moaned, “Please.”

“Oh no, baby,” he laughed, kissing her jaw, ravishing her skin in everything he’d been holding back from giving her. “You took your sweet fucking time with me, and now it’s my turn to deliver the same torment.”

“Okay, we’re ready—” The sound of Laya dropping something metal clattered behind them. “OH!”

Ella shoved Kellen back and fixed her dress. Horror struck her gut and nearly smashed her to her knees when she found Laya and Jarion both in the doorway of the bedroom. The twins analyzed the overlay of red that had consumed Ella’s skin and the muddle of Kellen’s hair, mature enough to put two pieces of data together and make sense of their meaning. It brought her some comfort, though it didn’t eliminate her self-disgust, that Laya’s face brightened at their entanglement, clearly thrilled.

“Sorry!” Laya squeaked with a wide grin, covering her hands over her eyes. “We didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Do you guys have everything?” Kellen asked them, his voice huskier than usual. The twins nodded. “Great. Go wait in the car. We’ll be down in a second.” Kellen tossed Jarion the keys to open the car.

Laya gathered what she’d dropped and rushed out the door.

Jarion loitered there, face unreadable for a moment, then offered them a gleaming smile and said, “I approve,” before he walked away.

Kellen swiveled around, a smile splitting his cheeks apart, to find Ella burying her face in her hands.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” she stammered, shaking her head over and over. “What am I doing? ”

How could she have allowed this to happen?

She was their school counselor, and they’d just caught her making out aggressively with their brother, their guardian. She’d spent the entire night—the last several weeks, it suddenly occurred to her, dismay clogging her throat— blurring the professional boundaries between herself, the twins, and Kellen, boundaries that if she didn’t cement in place now would make her therapeutic relationship with the kids ineffective due to her overlapping relationship with Kellen. She wasn’t the twins’ sister, or their mother. She wasn’t their family, yet she’d blurred the lines so much that she now dangerously felt like she was, willing to sacrifice her own life for their freedom.

Allowing herself to feel this way about Kellen, no matter how right it had felt in the moment, was a violation of how she’d been trained to do this job, an encroachment on her morals that she couldn’t allow to continue.

Don’t do this, that female voice in her head warned, but Ella’s mind was made up.

“What’s wrong?” Kellen asked, reaching out a hand to touch her. She whipped around to dodge it.

“Your siblings just caught us,” she whisper-shrieked, raising her face out of her hands. Kellen blinked at her.

“So?”

“SO?” she repeated, her eyes bugging out. “SO, I just broke so many ethical codes. Kissing the legal guardian of the students I counsel? That can never happen again.”

“Oh, it absolutely will happen again.” Kellen grabbed her shoulders and steered her body to face him. “Many, many more times.”

“Kellen,” she hissed.

“ Noella ,” he hissed back.

“Not here.” Kellen drew his head away from her.

“Oh.” The panic dissolved inside his eyes. “So you’re saying not here . But somewhere else—”

“Kellen, stop.” She lay her hand on his chest, over the heart of his that was writhing.

“Promise me that wasn’t the last time I will taste your lips, Noella Rose.” A sob itched her throat.

“I can’t promise you that,” she whimpered, her heart screaming for her to stop while her mind took control of the moment. “I can’t be kissing you one minute and counseling Jarion and Laya the next. It’s wrong.”

“Your human rules don’t mean anything in Cavale.”

“They mean something to ME, Kellen!” she cried. “They mean something to me . I was taught a certain way to do this job, and that certainly didn’t include making out with the parent of the students I counsel. I’m sorry I’ve let this go on for so long. I’m sorry I entertained it in the first place. I know this is my fault. I take full responsibility for my part in this. I got caught up in your family, in wanting to be part of something—”

“You are part of it,” he asserted.

“No, I’m not!” she shouted inspite of the way her heart wept at his declaration. “I’m not, Kellen. I’m not Jarion and Laya’s mother. I’m their school counselor, and I need to go back to acting like I am. In order for me to do that, I need to put up the boundaries I should have put up between us a long time ago. I’m sorry, but I can’t do this with you anymore. If we can’t go back to being just friends, then I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

“Stop trying to run from this.” Kellen took two steps closer. “You’ve been pushing me away ever since I told you how I felt about you. What we have is real. It means more than any arbitrary ethical code you could throw at me. I won’t let you put these stupid ethics above what we have.”

“Stop invalidating what’s important to me just because it doesn’t matter in Cavale!” Ella bawled.

“Stop pretending that we aren’t important too!” His hands began to shake. “I am yours , Noella Rose. Don’t you see? I am completely enamored of you. I am lost in you, found by you. We belong to each other. No amount of distance you place between us will ever change the fact that I now own your heart, as you own every broken shard of mine. I don’t ever plan on giving up ownership, just as I hope you never give up ownership of me.” Ella melted when Kellen cupped her face and paused to see if she’d pull away, to give her the chance to say no, even if it killed him to separate from her.

Then, when she remained still and ever so slightly lifted her chin, he dove down and kissed her again. She started to move her mouth against his, nearly giving in before her right mind returned to her.

“No!” she hollered, shoving him back. “ No,” she repeated sternly, wiping her mouth with her wrist. “You’re not hearing me, Kellen. If you can’t even acknowledge that my feelings matter just as much as yours, then there’s no point entertaining this anymore.” Ella shook his jacket off her shoulders.

She thrusted it into his hands, then strode out of his bedroom, covering her hand over her mouth to keep herself from weeping. She pushed the tears inward, refused to let them leak, refused to let him see how much it was killing her to place this distance back between them when they’d finally closed it.

Laya and Jarion flinched when Ella slid into the car and they sensed the change in her demeanor.

“Ms. Rose?” Laya squeaked, placing her hand on Ella’s shoulder. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Laya,” she assured, plucking Laya’s hand off her—not meaning to be cruel, but she needed to put those boundaries up even with the twins, even as she saw the hurt flash in Laya’s eyes and felt the look puncture her soul.

Kellen climbed into the car a few minutes later, plumes of rage seething off his tense shoulders.

No one spoke a word the whole ride home.

Ella kept her body angled away from Kellen and stared out the window, not that she saw anything through the glass between the film of tears covering her eyes. Ella felt Kellen’s eyes flit to her several times during the car ride, but she refused to rip her gaze off the window to acknowledge him. She kept her hands underneath her ass on the seat so she wouldn’t be tempted to reach for him and seek forgiveness in the warmth of his body. She knew in spite of how she’d just eviscerated him with words and dismissed their connection that if she touched him right now, if she sought out that amnesty, he would give it to her immediately and forget everything that had just happened.

Kellen deserved better than that too. Kellen deserved someone who would stay, who could give him all of her. Kellen deserved someone who wasn’t going to leave him at the end of the school year.

Maybe one day he would understand.

He’d think back on this time in his life, and he would thank her for setting him free, so he could find his own happiness, his Cavalisha, and she would be a distant memory of a fleeing dalliance. That thought made the threatened tears trickle down her cheeks, because in her heart, a truth even her mind couldn’t deny, she knew she would spend the rest of her life mourning the loss of him, that no man, human or Primordial, would ever compare, even when he eventually moved on from her.

Jarion and Laya crawled out of the car silently when Kellen parked in front of the faculty housing. They didn’t even say goodnight to Kellen or Ella before linking their arms and heading off for the Varmin sector.

Kellen’s eyes burned into Ella, waiting, hoping, but she declined to meet them and reached for the door.

“I’ve got it,” Kellen grumbled, holding it for her. In spite of everything, he still held the door for her. She didn’t thank him because she knew, if she tried to speak, the words that would come out wouldn’t be thank you, but I’m sorry, please forgive me, I need you more than I need to breathe.

Kellen and Ella wandered down the hallway together to their dorms. It took them both twice the amount of time it would normally take to complete the stretch of corridor. Both of their steps were small, dreading the moment they reached their apartments and would have to separate.

Ella exhaled a tattered breath, reaching for the door handle to her apartment. Suddenly, Kellen’s fingers skated down her arm to enclose around the fingers of hers folded around the knob.

“You’re really going to go into your apartment right now?” His voice tickled her ears.

“Yes,” she answered, not looking at him. She felt him rather than saw him step closer, his warmth and bulk dangling over her shoulders.

His fingers hitched tendrils of her blonde hair behind her ear, tracing the shell. Ella’s eyes fluttered to a close.

“Alone?” he whispered roughly. Ella finally mustered the strength to raise her head to look at him.

“Alone,” she asserted in as strong a voice as she could create under the circumstances. Kellen’s jaw clenched.

“Fine.” His lips brushed her ear. “I’ll leave you with one thought before I go.” Ella held her breath waiting to hear what he would say. “Let me make myself abundantly clear, since you don’t seem to be getting it. The moment you kissed me, the moment you began this insatiable obsession, you claimed every part of my being. My body, my soul, my heart, everything. There is not a single piece of me that doesn’t belong to you. You can go into your apartment right now, but know you’re taking my heart in there with you. It’s not mine anymore. It’s yours.” His lips swept down to press a soft, aching kiss to the corner of her mouth. Ella mewled, squeezing her eyes shut. “This is not over between us, Noella. It never will be.” All too soon, his lips vanished from her skin.

You’ve made a horrible mistake, the female voice in her head hissed at her. Go to him. Make this right.

By the time Ella spun around to react, to take it all back, Kellen was gone.