Page 75 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

The first crate of samples arrived on the fourth day, and after dinner, Caspian, Gail, and Terlo sat in the lounge of Terlo’s apartment as they tried the wares together. That night, they stayed in Terlo’s guest room, Caspian’s fingers clumsy and drunk as he tried to undo his cravat (he was attempting to look like a gentleman, he’d told her that afternoon as she’d laughed at him). Nore reached forward to undo it herself. She felt the liquid heat of his gaze on her face as her fingers unknotted the silk. Afterward, he caught her hands in his and held them tight, but like every other night, he made no move to cross the space between them as they lay side by side.

Nore felt her patience and her sanity wearing thin in equal measure as the days slipped away—and she needed time to prepare if they were going, if she was supplying wares.

And Caspian’s gazes did not stop searing. She lay next to him, hateful and frustrated and desperate night after night, remembering the feeling of his body pressed against hers—remembering the taste of his betrayal on her tongue.

“Do you mind if I go out?” Caspian asked one afternoon. “I’m tired of watching you pace.”

Nore looked up from her aforementioned pacing. He’d spent most of the day by the window, reading a book of Lochan history he’d borrowed from Terlo.

“Where will you go?” Nore asked. She’d let him out of her sight already, so she didn’t fear he would run. But if he left, she would be alone with her thoughts. Alone with the energy that fizzled just under her skin.

“I imagine it would be nice, to get some new clothes for the festival,” Caspian said, considering.

“If we get invited to the festival,” Nore said mournfully.

Caspian’s mouth tugged into a smirk. “You’ve never been one for moping, Finch,” he said, lacing up his boots. He paused, his head tilting to one side. “Or for not getting your way.”

“That’s unfair,” Nore said.

“Perhaps.” Caspian put on his coat and hesitated for a moment, like there was something else he had to do—perhaps he, too, was lost in the familiarity of it. Perhaps he, too, knew that years ago, this would’ve been the moment before his departure, for work or a show or a class, in which he’d lean down and kiss her.

“Don’t stay away too long,” Nore said, leaning into the chair he’d left behind.

“Ah, no reason to hurry back,” Caspian said, smiling—but it didn’t reach his eyes. Nore wondered if he had just caught himself in a memory, just as she had. “I’m sure you’ll appreciate the solitude.”

“Any time away from you is the sweetest comfort, Khari,” Nore said. But she watched him go with an uneasy feeling that didn’t quite make sense to her bruised heart.

She paced. She read a few sentences of Caspian’s book, set it down, and picked it up again. She wrote down questions in her notebook like, Who decided Gail should be a spy? and Why hasn’t she married? and Why does the artifact matter? before she crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the fire. She considered wandering the streets herself. She wrote a letter to Kota, crumpled it, and tossed it into the ashes with her page of questions. She paced again.

Nearly an hour after Caspian’s departure, Nore knew she could not continue to torture herself. She ran a bath to force herself to relax and scented it with oils. The bathing room was thick with fragrant steam of clean Idistran moss and salt and the scent of those little flowers they’d seen growing all along the coast. The water was nearly too hot when Nore lowered herself into it, but that was more of a distraction than anything else.

Nore sighed, leaning her head back, staring at the ceiling. It had been so long since she’d had true privacy, without the threat of Caspian listening to her from the next room over.

Perhaps, Nore thought, it was a good time to sort through some of the frustration. It was just exhaustion. Just familiarity. Just proximity, exacerbated by the fact there was no escape—if Gail knew that Caspian didn’t trust her, that she didn’t trust Caspian, then this whole thing would fall apart.

She pushed that aside as she closed her eyes, letting the water envelop her. She tried to call forth something, anything. The feeling of her last lover’s hands on her skin, tracing the lines of her throat, fingers digging into her hips. She couldn’t recall his face anymore.

Her hand strayed between her thighs—and she thought of Caspian. In the end, she always thought of Caspian.

The silk of his hair between her fingers. The knot of his cravat that night at Terlo’s and how she had to stand between his legs to loosen it. The strong line of his shoulders every night, half a bed’s width away—and what they used to feel like under her grip. The intricate dance of his brain and how he always seemed to have the right answer for everything. The thrill of knowledge when he shared some secret part of himself with her. New memories of him: how he had grown into himself, more comfortable and confident, true skill to back up that cockiness he’d always had. His body against hers the other night, breath tracing down her spine, his hands unflinching on her scars.

His hands. His hands. His devastating mouth and the fullness of his lower lip between her teeth. The gleam of his eyes, half-lidded. The way he used to look at her as she surged up over him, as she took his lip between her teeth, as she took him into her body night after night.

Nore was so close to the edge that she could taste the pleasure on her tongue. She remembered all of it, every single moment, every single word he whispered into her skin, every time she crashed around him—

“Finch?”

She froze, clamping a hand over her mouth to stifle any sound she was already making. Her heart pounded in her chest.

He rapped on the closed bathroom door—Caspian didn’t care about his own modesty, which she suspected he did to taunt her, but he did respect her boundaries—and said her name again. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, breathless and aching, nearly painful with desire. She swallowed it all down and hurried out of the bath. Nore wrapped a towel tight around herself and threw the door open.

Caspian blinked at her: the unruly hair piled on top of her head, the wild flush in her cheeks, which had probably spread all the way down to her chest, the damp rivulets slipping down her shoulders, her collarbones, her thighs.

A slow smile spread across Caspian’s lips. He leaned against the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, and she did not look at the way his forearms flexed when he did that. She had the sinking feeling he knew exactly what she’d been doing.

“Not washing your hair this afternoon?” he asked. His gaze raked over her, taking her in. Perhaps even daring her.