30. Rowan

Chapter 3 0

Rowan

K ai's lips are on my mouth, his hands in my hair, his fingers tangling in the strands. Pulling me closer. His tongue delves into my mouth, stroking and weaving with mine with an insistence that sends jolts of need right to my core.

He slides his hands from my hair and skims them down my neck and over my shoulders, leaving trails of tingling sensation in their wake. The touch is charged with power, igniting every nerve ending until I am burning with need. I arch into him, desperate to be closer, to feel more of him against me.

A low growl rumbles in his chest and he hauls me tighter against him, one hand splaying across my lower back to anchor me to him. The taste of him is intoxicating. Perfect. And so intense that it makes the cellar around us utterly irrelevant.

It’s exactly what I asked for.

And it's a lie.

I push away, my hands on his chest. My own chest heaves, my breaths quick and still desperate as I fight for control of my body, which is very much against its change of circumstance. My sex in particular clenches in protest of the friction it was first promised then denied. But for once, my brain takes its role of protecting my heart seriously, a nd the hard learned lessons with the triad are paying dividends.

“What’s wrong?” Kai asks.

“A great many things,” I say, climbing off his lap to straighten my clothes.

“Did I hurt you?”

“Not yet. At least not yet this time.” I take another full breath to order my body to get control of itself. "And I am going to keep it that way.”

Kai tilts up his chin. “I thought you wanted to not be here. That’s how you put it.”

“And yet here we are.” I hold out my hands to show off the cellar. “We need to be getting out of here, not building an illusion that here isn’t real.”

“We will. But not without Logan’s help. Do you not think I’d have gotten us free if I could by now?”

“Why did you kiss me?” I ask. “In the workshop. Why did you kiss me?”

Kai sighs, stands and walks over to one of the two closed doors trapping us in here. He is already walking better than he had. “This will go a lot more efficiently if you just tell me what you want, Ainsley.”

So I’m back to being Ainsley. It hurts, but I embrace the pain. Because at least it’s real. “I want to have a fighting chance of knowing where I stand with the three of you. Of making some kind of educated decisions. I want the truth.”

Kai’s jaw works.

“What are you thinking, Grayson?” I ask.

“Whether a worse time for truths has ever existed. I’m not sure you’ve been following today’s festivities, but we are about to be interrogated.”

“To find out some stupid codeword that will get the Spire to turn over money. My word is banana. I’m about to be beaten for the sake of keeping bananas a secret.” I clench my fists, not caring whether revealing that was worth appeasing my frustration. “But let’s chat about someth ing Mercer there isn’t going to give two shits about. Do you and your friends have some kind of game going, like if one of you kisses a woman, the other two have to try and top that with her? Is there a scoring system? A time limit?”

“What?”

“Which part do you need to hear again?”

Kai shuts his eyes then opens them, shaking his head as if disappointed that the trick didn’t make me disappear. “I have four fathers,” he declares finally.

It’s my turn to look at him blankly. “Is that statement a test of my gullibility? Or just a random declaration that you think somehow answers my question?”

Kai’s hands work at his sides, opening and closing. Then he is suddenly in motion, busy taking off his cloak to wring excess water out of it. His shirt is next. “I have four fathers. They are all in an equal partnership with my mother, in a syrup sweet epic union that makes the rest of the universe envy their love and compatibility and everything else that’s a synonym for perfection.”

I don’t say anything because I think, absurd as this is, Kai is actually telling me the truth. And it's difficult enough for him that he has to be doing something while speaking. The amount of water he’s rung out from the fabric is already making a decent size puddle on the floor.

“Kyrian and Logan are like brothers to me. We don’t need to play games with women or compete for them, because there is no reason there has to be a separation in that way.”

“I see,” I say slowly, then cringe because I’m lying now. I don’t really see. If anything, I’m only more confused. Fortunately Kai isn’t done talking.

“You asked me why I kissed you in the workshop. But that’s not the question you really want answered, is it?”

I cross my arms over my chest. “Please enlighten me as to my own thoughts and desires. Frankly, I’ve no notion of how I’ve made it as far in life as I did without your wisdom.”

He ignores the jab. “It’s obvious why I kissed you. I kissed you because I wa nted to. I wanted to taste your lips on mine, to imagine for a moment what it might feel like to forget everything else and just be with you. To give into a pull that’s been plaguing me since I’d first laid eyes on you in formation, standing there with the other enchanters but as unlike the rest of them as I am unlike the combat cadets.” He pulls his wrung out shirt back on, his hands going to his breeches before thinking better of it—or remembering the leg shackles—and wringing the fabric out one fistfull at a time. “I walked away because I knew I would hurt you. It was too late to undo the kiss, but I could at least minimize the injury going forward.”

“Why did you imagine you’d hurt me?”

Kai slaps his palm against the door. “Not imagine, Ainsley. I didn't imagine. I said I knew. I know. You wanted the truth, and that is the truth. I. Will. Hurt. You.”

“Ah. That clairvoyance again. Must be nice to have that.”

“I’ve hurt every single person who’s cared about me. My perfect parents, who’d given me every perfect opportunity, every chance, every second chance? I can barely stand to be in the same room with them. And yes, they’ve tried everything. But I’ve managed to successfully sabotage each and every one of their attempts to turn me into a responsible being. So, the perfect people that they are, they sent me to another estate. A fresh start. The family who took me in had young children, who took a naive childish liking to me no matter what I did. You know how I repaid that kindness? I paralyzed my little foster sister. That’s how.”

Horror drains blood from my face.

Kai takes a step toward me, every line of his lithe body emanating menace. “So, when I tell you that I will hurt you, that is one truth coming out of my mouth that you can be sure of.”

I shake my head, my thoughts racing but not quite clicking into place. Not yet. “No. There is more to what you’ve said. I know there is more.”

“There is.” Kai agrees without humor. He is nearly on top of me now and I step back, and back again, until my back hits the wall. Kai braces his arms on it, one on either side of my head, trapping me. Menace rippl es over him like a wave of magic, his shadows pouring into the space between us. Stealing the light from the already dim cellar. “And it’s all darker than you can imagine. Are you getting the picture, Ainsley? Are you glad you got to see the true me you wanted that glimpse of, here and now?”

A door slams upstairs and footsteps echo, getting louder as they descend toward us.

“We are about to have company,” Kai growls into my face, his breath hot against me for a moment before he shoves away from the wall and turns to stand between me and the door. “Truth time is over.”