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“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” I tell her, my lips against her wet hair.
Clara looks up at me, her eyes wide with confusion. “What?”
“Charging in without telling me your plan,” I clarify. “Don’t do it again.”
Her brow furrows. “You weren’t going to let me leave. Sneaking out was the only way I could think of to extend the truce, or stop my uncle, whichever came first.”
“That wasn’t your responsibility,” I chide.
“It was!” she insists. “I told you not to stop using me.”
I tighten my arms around her. I need her to understand this. If she hears nothing else I say, she has to hear this. “Listen to me, Clara. You were never a tool. Even when I treated you like one- I was wrong. I’ve been wrong for a long time. The fact that I made you believe you had to half kill yourself just to make my plan succeed-” I have to loosen my grip on her, just a little, or I’m afraid I’ll hurt her. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for that, Clara.”
And how many more mistakes have I made, or almost made, because people have never been people to me, but pieces on a chessboard?
Raleigh, whose relationship with me has been strained since she was born. I could’ve bridged that gap a thousand times, but instead I kept her confined, stifled. I might not have planned to use her strategically like our father did. But because I didn’t know what to do with her… I let her do nothing.
Iris, who I trust implicitly, and who I thought trusted me in the same way, kept her love for Paul Zakharov a secret for god knows how long. Did she do that because she was afraid I would see that love as nothing more than an advantage?
Even Derrick, who I reminded at every turn that he only had what he had because it suited me- he bucked under my rule, wanted power he himself could benefit from. If I had done more to make him an ally instead of a pawn, would he have still turned on me?
Clara is quiet for a long moment, searching my face with eyes that are cannier than I ever gave her credit for. “If I was never a tool to you, then… what was I? What am I”
I hear the question the doesn’t ask. What are we?
“You’re everything,” I say simply, and kiss her unmarred cheek.
It’s not enough, not for either of us. Clara wraps her arms around my neck, and I lift her right off her feet and carry her into the bedroom at last.
When I lay her down, her towel is all askew, revealing one of her breasts. I duck down, grazing her nipple with my teeth, licking the soft swell of skin, sucking and biting until Clara is whimpering for mercy. My hands slide up her thighs and under the towel, loosening it more. Her skin prickles with goosebumps, like she’s coming to life under my slightest touch. I drag my palms higher and higher, up her stomach, over her breasts, peeling the towel away completely and baring her beautiful, sensuous body to me.
Clara meets my eyes. Her lips are parted- she’s already panting, already starved for more. I keep our gazes locked as I pull my shirt over my head, and see the exact moment she registers the bruise that’s bloomed over my stomach.
“Thomas…” she gasps, reaching out, but she stops her hand at the last moment. Afraid to hurt me more, maybe. I take her hand in mine and lay her palm flat against the bruise.
“Don’t ever hesitate to touch me,” I tell her. “I don’t care if it hurts or not, I want your hands on me.”
Clara’s dark eyes soften, and she nods her understanding. I strip off my pants, and then there’s nothing left between us.
I’ve had this woman more than once, but this time, I don’t want to think of what I’m about to do as sex, or fucking, or ravishing. I don’t want to take her for myself. I want to try to give back even half of what she’s given to me.
I want her to understand that I’m making love to her, here in a bed I hope will be ours after tonight.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I roll my hips against hers, running the length of my shaft up and down her clit. I press my lips to the very corner of her mouth, trail kisses up her jaw, nip at the skin of her neck. I return to the silky soft swell of her breasts, marveling at how I’ve neglected them up until this night. I pinch and roll her nipples between my fingers, turning her spine to liquid, her guttural moans to cries. And all the while I’m rocking against her, building up her pleasure at a torturously steady pace.
Clara tolerates this for all of two minutes before she starts moving with me, pressing her hips up into mine, deepening the pressure between us. Her body, soft a moment before, is coiling around the point where our bodies are almost joined. She’s close, so close.
I pull back, angle my hips- and only nudge at her entrance. Clara cries out at the burst of ecstasy and then deprivation. Her whole body is trembling under me, the muscles in her legs spasming with anticipation. I rock, pressing my tip a little deeper inside her. Clara throws her head back, her eyes squeezed shut, her knuckles white around fistfuls of bedsheet.
“Oh my god! Thomas- please!” she begs.
I push forward another inch. One of my hands squeezes her breast and toys with it in turn. Another inch, and Clara is almost sobbing for relief.
“Please, Thomas- please please please-”
I plunge into her, joining our bodies eternally.
Clara screams, her pleasure finally releasing. I pull all the way out, thrust in again. My pace is slow, measured, relentless. Each slap of our skin and crash of our hips drives me deeper, wilder. I want all of this woman, every last inch of her and every sound that she makes, every thought she has and feeling in her heart. I want her here, under me, around me, always.
