I was hot everywhere. So hot. The lazy pressure in the lowest part of my stomach had turned into a fiery burden that needed put out. He came up from my throat to kiss me hard, and I swayed into his mouth, pressing my hips against him.
Sparks fired under my skin as he kissed me for so long I didn’t know where I ended and he began. Wherever his hands went, my nerve endings sizzled like rain on hot stone.
And when my movements got desperate, my hands pulling at the buttons on his jerkin, my legs wrapping around his, urging him to press hard against me, with a rough, angry sound, he pulled back, though his hands still settled like two flames on the sides of my thighs.
I sucked in some air, his heated gaze fixated on me. The sounds of our breaths filled the air for a few moments. My head light, my vision still clouded with a mindless haze.
His words were quiet and rough. “Who are you?”
A reminiscent smile bloomed inside me. I leaned in, brushing my lips against his. “Name’s Calamity,” I whispered, repeating the same thing I said to him close to a year ago. With our lips already touching, it was too hard to resist—he captured my top lip in between his own. I slipped my tongue into his mouth and groaned when he sucked on it gently.
And then he pulled back, his hands leaving me completely. “Fuck. Fuck,” he hissed. He turned around, his back tense, resting his hands on the back of his neck as if he was walking something off.
I sat there for a moment, feeling empty without his hands on me. Slipping off the crates, I took a step in his direction but stopped when, “Calamity, don’t,” was bit out at me.
But then I only took another step, and another and another.
He turned around abruptly. “Do you not understand English? Is that what it’s been all this time?” The words were supposed to be sharp, but they only came out sounding tired and rough.
“I’ve only neglected to learn some words,” I said, standing directly in front him. “Like ‘don’t.’ I’ve no idea what that means.”
Amusement flitted across his face like he didn’t want to find it funny, but he did.
As we stood there, the social divide growing between us, large and assuming, I didn’t want this to end, not yet. I just wanted a little more, so that once I found my blacksmith, I could be content with this, me and Weston, parting ways, forgetting each other. Finding closure.
When Weston’s expression suddenly hardened, his eyes narrowing, I realized that sometime while he’d been kissing me, the walls in my mind came down. I forced them back up quickly.
“A blacksmith, huh?” His indifferent tone didn’t match the dark way he was looking at me.
I bit my lip, nodding as I stepped closer to him, running my finger across the brand on his arm. “You killed your father,” I said quietly, tracing the T.
“Never really did like the bastard.”
A laugh climbed up my throat. It wasn’t funny—it was seriously disturbing. But the way he said it, was like it’d been a simple decision to make.
“I don’t think repenting will help in this situation,” I said thoughtfully, imagining him sitting beside Father Mathews and admitting all of his sins. They would be there for a year. No, two.
“No?” he asked, his eyes flickering with amusement. “Don’t think there’s any hope left for me?”
Shaking my head, I leaned fully against him, chest to stomach, my eyes on his. “I don’t believe so. But since I know you won’t, I shall repent for you.”
My heart kicked up a notch as I shall repent for you . . . settled in the air around us like the filthiest phrase ever said. It morphed into a heaviness filled with expectation. My breaths turned shallow when his hands came up to my face, his thumb skimming across my cheek, before his lips caught mine, pushing me back with the force as he took a step with me.
On a groan, his hands cupped my backside, pulling me off my feet and up against him. My back hit the wall, the heat of his body pressing tightly against me. Finally.
It was more ragged, rougher, wilder than the kiss before. But it was the worst sort of kiss: the kind that you wonder if it never stopped, where it would have gone. How differently your day could have looked if you were given a chance to find out.
Unfortunately, I never did.
With a ragged breath, Weston pulled back, saying, “I heard congratulations are in order.”
I blinked out of the haze, bemused about what he meant, but then the familiar chuckle behind Weston’s head, made me realize he wasn’t talking to me.
Maxim.
“I thought the only cause for celebration would be my head on a pike,” Maxim returned.
Weston slid me down his body until my toes touched the ground. “Pledging is the same, is it not?”