My chest lifted, my ribs expanding around the fear and hesitation inside me. “What are you looking at?” I asked Arthur.
He studied my thigh, running his hand along it so slowly I held my breath. “You’re just so young, Amara—too young.”
“I'm nineteen.”
“Precisely.” He dropped his hand, his head following. “I'm afraid what this will do to you.”
“I’ve been through worse.”
He laughed, but I couldn't really see his smile in the darkness. He could see me, though—his perfect vampire vision making him privilege to all the things I would never have showed him.
I bit my lip when his cool touch parted my legs at the knees, and he knelt between them, his bare hip brushing the inside of my thigh.
“Oh, God,” I said to myself.
“Just don't look.” He wiped his thumb over my eyelid. “Just close your eyes.”
“I…I can't,” I said, looking up at him, and I couldn't help it, I cried.
He clicked his tongue, sinking back. “Amara.”
“I'm okay. I'm…I'm okay.” I let my knees fall softly together.
“You’re not okay.”
I nodded. “I am.”
“We can do this another time if you’re not ready.”
I shook my head. “It needs to be now.”
He moistened his lips, breathing out through his nose, his eyes square with hesitation. “Okay. Just…just imagine I'm him.”
I nodded, tangling my fingers in my hair.
“Lift your hips,” he said, touching the rim of my underwear. “We won't get far with these in the way.”
I shut my eyes again, feeling the lace slip past my thighs, over my knees and away from my ankles. And we were naked. Together. My legs completely open; Arthur between them.
He slid his hands under my bottom and pulled me forward so the harder part of him brushed softly against the warmest part of me.
I looked into his eyes, seeing the fear and concern I was feeling, too. One movement, one millimetre and he’d be in me—and with just a few strokes, all this would be over. Providing I actually fell pregnant.
“I'm just going to check you first—make sure you’re wet.”
“Wai—?” My toes curled over and I jumped when he placed a cold finger just inside me, then pulled it away.
“You’re not ready. It’ll hurt if you’re dry.”
All I could feel was a flood of adrenaline in my arms, making them weak, unattached, disturbed by the tension and memory of his finger inside me, and as soon as that feeling reached my heart, I broke apart into a mess of short, hiccupping sobs.
Arthur’s whole body moved, as if his soul had just been dragged backward inside him. “I'm so sorry, Amara,” he said. “I never wanted to see you this way—to touch you this way.”
“I know, Arthur,” I said, wiping warm tears from my temples and ears. “But I can't lose him. I have to do this.”
He nodded, watching my trembling lip.
“Oh no.” The shaking in my chest spread to my gut, twisting it, making dinner inch up my throat. I covered my mouth with the back of my hand.
“You all right?”
“Mm. No.” I shook my head. “I think I'm gonna be sick.”
He moved back just in time for me to roll onto my side and blast the contents of my gut all over the training room floor. As I heaved and gasped, a shirt came over my shoulders, and I felt the air on my cheeks and jaw where my hair had been. Arthur held it back until I finished, reaching around to guide my spine against his chest after.
“Feel better?” He chuckled, wiping my mouth with something cool and cotton, then placed the square of fabric into my hand.
I nodded, swallowing the horrid, sour taste in my mouth. My stomach hurt, contracting and quivering. I wrapped my shaky arms across it. “I'm sorry, Arthur.”
“No need to be sorry, my dear.” He sat down under me then, turning my body a little so I no longer felt his nakedness against me, and stroked my hair, wiping a few vestiges of puke or saliva away with his thumb. “You know I care for you a great deal, don't you?”
I nodded into his chest.
“And you know I…I love David, too, Amara. But, I'm sorry—” His chest sunk. “I just can’t do this to you. I just can't have you this way.”
I looked up at him. “What are you saying?”
“I'm saying I…” He moistened his lips, his eyes focusing on something across the room.
“Arthur, please?” I sat up from him; he looked down at my naked chest and pulled his shirt to cover me, slowly buttoning it closed, staying quiet. “Arthur. Please say something—anything?”
“Perhaps we should just let Drake live.”
My world rocked, heat rising as anger inside me. “David will never allow that—not as long as he knows Drake wants to steal power from our unborn child.”
Arthur nodded. “I know this. But look at you—look what you've done to yourself.”
I looked over my shoulder at the stinky pile of vomit. “I can't lose him.”
“Then we will have to find some other way to kill Drake, my dear, because this friendship has been pushed to its limits, and neither of us can take this. I won't see you destroyed by my touching you, and I won't see my nephew die because I can't bring myself to hurt you this way.”
I wiped my face with his handkerchief, sitting back as he stood up and, in the dark and the quiet of our little world, pulled his jeans on, grabbed his jacket and walked to the door.
“I'm sorry, Amara.”
“Don't be sorry,” I said to the ground, swiping a tear off the tip of my nose. “It’s not your fault.”
He looked down at this pathetic heap and then at my mess. “I’ll send someone to clean that up.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Don't. I just…I just need some time to myself first.”
He bowed his head and left me, in the middle of the training hall, wearing nothing but his shirt and deep concern for the fate of my husband.
* * *
The moon’s shadows gave proof of time passing. By now, the men who sat in the parlour and drank Scotch after dinner would have retired, and all around the manor grounds, lights would be going out, maids shutting their doors on the day, and knights and guests would be laying their heads on their pillows. But I was here, huddled against the mirror on the wall, half naked, feeling numb, sick, cold and so, so alone.
I failed David. I couldn't give him the one thing he deserved—life.