Imperial (Insight #8)(45)
“Glory…I have not always given you that chance. I have not always made you feel safe enough to say anything you wish without judgment or ridicule.”
I nodded once, wanting to pull away so I could hide my tears, but his hold did not falter; instead, he caught them as they fell and wiped them away.
I drew in a jagged breath. “If you cannot feel them, then they matter not.”
“But I do—” I stopped him short. I knew he was going to tell me that I was his rush, that he felt a burning fever for me, but if he did I would be putty in his hands and unwillingly say the word that was my final death sentence.
Instead, I all but slammed my lips against his and forced them open so I could feel the warmth of his tongue and taste the sensation of mint. At first he nearly fought me as his warrior body tensed, but my kiss weakened him and his body relaxed as he pulled me forward on his lap and the warmth of our bodies were melded against each other.
I could hear heavy raindrops hitting the car, hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. I ignored it all. My kiss would dance between the two people I was. The bashful girl let her lips tremble, her soul pulse as innocently as it did the first time I kissed him; the sovereign, the woman that had held him countless times, pressed my legs against his sides and let my hands roam across his powerful chest.
When the rain began to pour into the windows, Vade moved us and manifested our souls far from this point.
Chapter Twelve
I expected a bed, somewhere beautiful and sensual. I expected the bed we had shared countless times, but that was not what I found.
My legs were still around him, my lips were against his, but he slowly let me fall as his kiss left my lips. I could still smell and hear the rain, but the salt of the ocean was gone.
We were standing in front of one of the most wonderful places in existence, at least in my opinion. It was bakery-slash-coffee shop and bar. Inside, the essence of every single dessert known to man was wafting along with the warm aroma of coffee in the air, and hopefully there was a soulful singer on the modest stage.
Escorts do not need food to survive like humans. Oddly, though, humans rarely consume food for nourishment alone. It’s the taste, the emotions within the taste, and the company with them whilst they divulge in these sensations that attract them to the pleasures of food.
Bread—hard, old, dry bread—and water were the only tastes I had known before Vade. So this first that we were now standing before was one of our more humorous and romantic ones.
My eyes grew sad. Instantly, he questioned them with that protective glare of his. “What happened?” he asked, softly lifting my chin so I would have to look at him.
I pulled away as I leaned against the brick wall behind me and stared at the raindrops that were falling just outside of the awning we were under.
“This feels like goodbye,” I said under my breath.
“Goodbye?” he gasped.
My eyes met his. “Yeah, goodbye. You are walking me through some of the most precious moments in my existence. You could only be doing that if you wanted to live them once more before I truly vanished from this existence.”
“No, Glory, no,” he said as his hand reached for my waist and pulled me against him. “I’ve thought of these moments constantly since you left. This is a celebration for me. This is me swearing to you that we are everything that we were when we first lived through these moments, and so much more.”
“These are the moments you thought of?” I asked in a shameful tone.
“What did you think of?” he asked curiously.
“The end.”
“The fight?” he questioned as his body tensed. “That is how you remembered me?”
Inside, I was kicking myself. It was a natural habit of mine to see the wrong in everything. “Yeah, every day. Every single day. I thought at first that you would still avenge me, still come for me, but the more I thought of that fight, the more time that passed, I understood that was the last fight.”
“That was not our last fight,” he said so quietly that I barely heard him. It shocked me because I assumed he would say something along the lines of we would never fight again. But he was too honest of a man to say such things.
He held my stare as he spoke and moved forward, pinning my body between his and the brick wall behind me. “You can’t always think of the bad things in life. You can’t dwell on them because then you will learn to expect them.”
“Will learn? I have learned. I don’t understand you sometimes. You are the King of Anger. You should have thought of it, too. Used that emotion to bring your wrath.”
“I am the King of Anger, which means I understand the emotion, that I know it is what we use it for, either a gift or a dagger. That fight crossed my mind, and when it did I was angry at myself for not being more clear, for not choosing my words differently.”
“Be clear now. Tell me why you waited so long. Why you waited until you had no choice but to come for me. Why did you shelve me like all of your other material things?”
“I didn’t shelve you.” His eyes reflected the appall that I made him feel. “I didn’t wait until I had no other choice.”
“Mazing was told that the Veil was thinned, that now any of the other kings or their line could reach The Fall with little effort and that you had to move me so I would not be found.”