“I’m angry with myself. I’ve been very stupid about this, about you. I’ve been thinking with my dick and that’s about it.”
At that, a smile tugged at the edges of her lips.
“Glad I amuse you,” he said.
“Your turn of phrase amuses me.”
She was a librarian. She would notice things like that. He felt his lips curve, then he sighed. “I want to do right by you here, Parisa. Tell me what you need from me. I’m not without a lot of experience.”
“Thirteen centuries’ worth,” she murmured.
“Yeah. And a few decades.”
She nodded. “Precisely. I’ve had a total of three decades of living and none of them here, none of them in this dimension.”
An hour or so ago he’d felt like a thin sheet of glass. That’s what he saw in Parisa now, only for her it wasn’t sexual as it had been for him. He thought he understood her better in this moment than he had all along.
He lifted off the edge of the table and moved a few feet away. The foyer was a large space, meant for mingling during large parties, the serving of cocktails, even dancing if anyone wanted to. There hadn’t been a dance here in over a hundred years. That’s how bad the war had gotten, the seemingly inexhaustible war.
He sat down on the floor as if he were sitting at a campfire, crossing his ankles then settling his forearms on his widespread knees. The ceremonial black tunic hung low and kept necessary things private. The cape and brass breastplate were back at the palace. Whatever.
She seemed surprised as she looked down at him. “What are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Giving you time and space and all my attention. No one is here to force you to do anything. Endelle might bluster and try to bully you, but common sense always wins with her in the end. Still, I think since Alison’s ascension she’s grown more capable of listening to reason. Not much more, but more. As for me, if I’m too possessive right now, I can’t take the full blame for that. Your scent clogs all my logic and most of my sensitivity.”
She released a deep sigh, so he knew he’d done the right thing for her. Space. Funny, it was the last thing he needed.
“So what happened?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
He glanced at his loosely clasped hands then met her gaze straight-on. Shit, he was going to ask the hard question, the one he’d never been able to answer. “I never knew what happened the day that Rith took you. Do you think you could talk about it? Tell me? Tell me how I screwed up?”
Her arms fell away from her chest. “How you screwed up?” The question didn’t seem to make sense to her.
“I was your guardian. I let some preternaturally powerful ass**le drag you off and I didn’t even notice, not for half a minute.”
She took a step toward him. “So you really didn’t see me disappear?”
Talking about it brought the memory sweeping back in a slow flood of horror. He told her what it had been like for him, how he’d been talking on his phone to Thorne while he kept track of her from his peripheral vision, and that only after a while had he realized that she was standing too still—not even the breeze moving through the grove touched the hem of her sundress.
He talked for a ridiculously long time about the day of her abduction, how the warriors had all gathered at the villa, how the grounds had been searched and every building turned upside down to make sure she wasn’t somewhere on the property. He talked about his sleeplessness. He talked about the limoncello.
He’d meant to get her talking, and now he couldn’t stop the flow of his own words if his life depended on it.
By then she was kneeling beside him, her fingertips touching the circles beneath his eyes. He met her eyes, wet with tears. She leaned close and kissed him on the lips.
He held very still. He wanted to drag her into his arms but he was probably always going to feel like that. He had enough sense to know that this wasn’t the time for his male aggression to be at the fore. He sighed and kept his hands clasped tightly together.
She sat as he sat, with her ankles crossed and drawn close, her knees spread. She slipped off her shoes and set them next to her. Her white flowered dress draped in folds over the empty cradle of her lap. She put a hand on his knee and drew a deep breath.
Then she began to talk.
“The house was lovely. Rith’s house. It was made entirely of mahogany. It was a replica of an old British Colonial house. You didn’t see it, did you?”
He shook his head. “Only you flying through the dome of mist.” Her hand was warm on his bare knee. “The rest of the warriors saw the house, but not me. Maybe you and I should go back, look around.”
She shook her head. “Maybe, but not yet.”
He wanted to ask her a dozen questions. They piled up on his tongue and tried to break through his front teeth but he held them back.
Her nails scraped gently at his skin. She probably wasn’t aware she was doing it. “The same day that he brought me to his house, he pierced my mind until I was screaming. When I first arrived, I didn’t know what I was doing in that beautiful home or even who he was. He told me I wouldn’t be hurt if I did as I was told, and that Greaves had asked him to house me for a week or so. Yes, he said a week or so. What then? I had thought. What would happen after a week?
“He left me sitting on a bench beneath a tamarind tree. It was the most beautiful garden. No one has ever had such a lovely prison, but it was like being punished by having an endless number of cotton balls thrown at you. They might not hurt, but after awhile the craziness sets in, the despair.
“So I sat under that tree. I waited for hours, not knowing what to do. Finally, I went in search of him. I found three female Burmese servants who only glanced at me. I tried to speak with them, to ask them what I was supposed to do and where Rith had gone. None of them would respond.
“I eventually found him in his study. He didn’t even seem angry when he saw me. But he took me into a back bedroom and he must have enthralled me again because when I woke up or came to consciousness, I was bound to a very comfortable recliner, like a La-Z-Boy.
“Then he entered my head. It was like whirling knives. I screamed and screamed until I was hoarse.
“When he withdrew, he spoke five words: You do as I say. That’s all he said to me during that first day. The lesson, however, was complete.
“Looking back, life was simple after that. When I didn’t do something exactly the way he wanted it done, he put his hands on my arms, then shot his mind into mine. The pain was brutal. But it always started with the hands. That’s … that’s why I recoiled when you reached out to me like you did earlier, at the palace. I wanted you to understand.”