Rise of a Fallen Man (A Look in the Mirror #2)

Chapter 24

Salas

I told her to meet me here because I wanted to see her, and I had a feeling she wanted to see me, too, without the attention of the court. The dance had been way too short. It took everything I had to let go of her when the music ended.

But would she show up?

I couldn’t answer that question with certainty.

Ari knew what she wanted to be, and she built her life accordingly. I loved that about her, her unwavering sense of direction and her faith in her purpose.

She made decisions based on reason and consideration. But there was nothing reasonable about meeting a former whore in a former slave barrack, was there? She’d chosen a life partner already, and it wasn’t me.

But here I was, like a love-sick puppy, waiting against all odds for my princess to appear in the door.

It was dark in here, save for the sole candle I’d brought. The slaves had been long gone. The horses had been moved, too, since the princes of Tresed and the Western Islands had departed. But the faint smell of horses still lingered in the air. Personally, I found the scent warm and comforting. I liked horses, even if I would never ride one.

The wide door creaked open.

“Salas?” Ari walked in, and for a moment, I forgot how to breathe.

She wore a dark cloak over a simple flowery dress. Yet to me, she looked more regal than ever. My princess, who could never be mine.

“You came,” I exhaled.

“I did. When I shouldn’t have.” She adjusted her glasses, clutching the side of her cloak with her other hand.

She was nervous. She probably hadn’t slept well the night before, and today had been exhausting for everyone. I wished I could wrap her in a soft blanket and bring her to bed, then hold her while she slept peacefully.

Only I doubted she’d find peace any time soon. Something gnawed at her, more than the usual business and concerns of her occupation.

I took a step toward her. “You know one of the many things I love about you?”

She peered at me closely. “Tell me.”

“That you know what you want, and you go for it.”

“I do?”

I nodded firmly. “You wanted justice for me, and you worked on it. You knew you wanted me in your bed, and you got me. You want to make this world a better place for everyone, not just for the select few, and you’re doing everything to get into the position to make it happen. And right now, you want to come to me for a hug. Only for some reason, you’re hesitating.” I paused, giving her a chance to argue, but she didn’t say a word to contradict me. “Would a glass of white help you relax?”

She blinked, taking a look around.

“You have wine here?” She finally noticed the silver tray on the upturned barrel next to one of the stalls.

“It’s a good one.” I filled two glasses with a splash of wine each, then put the bottle back on the tray next to the candle and the wide lily pad I’d filled with raspberries on my way to the barracks. “I stole it from the queen’s palace.”

“You stole it?” She laughed.

It was a short, nervous burst of laughter that died quickly. But I loved hearing it, anyway.

“Well, it was served to the guests at the party. I figured that since I was an officially invited guest this time, it was for me too.” I handed a glass to her, then clinked it with mine. “To you, Princess.”

She barely touched her wine, glancing back at the tray with the candle and the berries.

“It almost looks like a date,” she muttered softly.

A date?

That wasn’t my intention. I’d found a quiet place for us to talk, since she’d looked at the ball like she desperately needed to talk to someone. And also, because I had something to tell her too.

While I watched Ari dance with the prince tonight, I realized I couldn’t stay in Egami for much longer.

I stayed because she needed me. I wanted to be here for her as someone she could trust, because just like big hugs and genuine kisses, trust was a rare commodity in the palace. After what happened yesterday, however, I realized I couldn’t trust myself around Ari. I couldn’t watch her going through life as a wife of another man, dancing with him, bearing his children, and growing old at his side.

If she came to me for help again, I couldn’t trust my well-intentioned hugs not to turn into something more. If she looked at me the way she did back in the hallway yesterday, I couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t end up coming on my hand again, or worse.

The problem was that in my mind, Ari belonged to me and only me. When in reality, she never was mine. I didn’t lure her here to convince her otherwise or to change anything. This wasn’t a date.

Yet as I set the glass back onto the tray, I heard myself asking, “What if it was our date? Like the one we planned, remember?”

She had to stop me right then and there. But she didn’t.

“There are no horses here.” She smiled with a glance down the aisle between the stalls. “Wasn’t I supposed to teach you how to ride a horse on our date?”

Oh, I could turn this into a real date so quickly, our heads would spin. The consequences would be dire for both of us, but I found it hard to care about the consequences right now.

“I planned to take you swimming,” I reminded her. “But I’m afraid that can’t happen, unless you don’t mind scandalizing the court by swimming naked in the lily pond with me.”

“Would you really go swimming naked?” She gave me a teasing smile. I loved it when she smiled carefree like that. “Where is your male modesty, sir?”

“If you wanted modesty, my sweet princess, you shouldn’t have looked for a date in the gladiators’ quarters. Or slaves’ barracks. Or a fun house.”

“All proved to be the right places for me to find my perfect date. If only I knew how to keep him.” The smile left her. “We can’t date, Salas, with or without swimming. I can’t court you, remember? I’m a married woman.”

As if that was the only reason why she and I could never date. Even imagining it seemed like a sin. Yet I came closer to her, anyway.

“Then, I will court you. In your old world, a man can court a woman, can’t he?”

I watched her carefully when speaking about her old world. She didn’t flinch. The dark memories she harbored wouldn’t ever go away, but she had brought the demons of her past under her control. My strong, beautiful princess.

“Yes, Salas. In that world, men court women. And in another life, I’d be so...so happy to be courted by you.”

Tears glistened behind her eyeglasses. Her tears undid me. Always.

“Please, let me hold you, Ari.”

Her wine glass fell onto the hay strewn floor, spilling the priceless wine.

She stepped into my arms like coming home. It was more than a hug. More than a date. Because Ari and I were more than all of it. Larger than life itself.

It didn’t matter who reached first and who followed, whose lips touched another’s mouth, or whose cloak fell off first. When we kissed, nothing else mattered.

I wanted to make her feel better. Whatever weight pressed down on her, I wished to lift it. I wanted to be the one who put a smile on her face. But when she pulled away, tears still glistened in her eyes. And the most devastating thing was that they were there because of me.

“I made you cry.”

“No.” She shook her head quickly. “You...” She drew in a long breath, then exhaled quickly. “You are my happy place, Salas. I go to you in my thoughts when I can’t come to you in person. You are with me, despite the guilt and the heartache. And I’m keeping you in my heart, despite it all.”

The guilt and the heartache...

That was what I caused for her. I wished to give her the world, but all I gave her were tears. My decision to leave grew even more solid with that realization. Not for me, but for her.

Ari’s life could never include me. Yet I’d been sticking around for one and only reason—it was so fucking hard to leave her.

I’d taken every chance to stay in Egami, but for what?

To hunt the seating area from the arena for the rare glimpses of her on the royal platform? For even rarer conversations, filled with dread of imminent parting? Because no matter how strong our bond was, no matter how passionate our encounters turned, they were always going to end with us parting.

“Sweetheart...” I brushed the tears off her cheeks with my thumbs, wishing I could erase all her sorrows just as easily. “It will be better soon, I promise.” With me gone, she wouldn’t have to go through all these emotions in the same maddening cycle over and over again. “I’m leaving Egami, Princess. It will be simpler that way.”

“You’re what? ” She gripped my arms as if I were walking away already. “But why?”

But she knew the reasons. And in her mind, I believed she agreed with them too. She had a smart, practical mind, my sweet princess.

“No...” she exhaled, pressing her forehead to my chest. “I know I can’t hold you. But how am I supposed to let you go?”

My heart was breaking, but at the end, it’d be easier for her without me standing between her and her duties.

Her body shuddered with her next breath. “When I’m with you, I never feel guilty. It only feels like a betrayal when you leave. I can’t keep watching you leave, Salas.”

The utter devastation on her face gutted me.

“Come with me,” I said. “Let’s leave together.”

I must’ve lost my mind. Where would I take her? What could I offer her? But as her eyes opened wider, I saw our future in them because I could give her something no one else could.

“I can make you happy, Ari. No other man can.”

Because no one knew her the way I did. No one loved her the way I loved. And no man could love her more than I did.

“Where would we go, Salas?” Her voice was soft. Her eyes lit with a dreamy expression.

“North, where it’s warm, even in winter.” Cold felt especially bitter when one was on the road, I knew it firsthand. “I’ll find a job easily this time. Thanks to you, my shameful past is more distant now. No one would hesitate to employ a former gladiator of Her Majesty.”

“We’ll live in a small house on a beach somewhere?” she joined in the fantasy with me. “You’ll make swords, and I’ll cook us potatoes for dinner in every way I know how.”

“I love potatoes.” I smiled. “Almost as much as a rabbit pie.”

She smiled, too, despite the tears that glistened on her eyelashes like dew drops.

“It’ll be a beautiful life,” she said with a wistful note in her voice so sorrowful that I instantly knew our future together was only a dream, just like that date we would never have. “I will kiss you whenever I want.”

I held on to the dream with everything I had. “And I will make love to you whenever and wherever we wish.”

She rose on her tiptoes, and I met her lips with mine. It was a desperate kiss, deep and hungry.

“I can’t come with you, Salas,” she whispered fervently, clutching the shirt on my chest. “I wish I could, because you are the only one who makes me truly happy. But many people would suffer if I left. I can’t... I’m... I’m not free.”

She would never go anywhere with me. Not because she’d hesitate to leave behind the luxurious life of a princess and not because of my past, but because Ari had a purpose and obligations, and no one could steer her away from them. Not even me.

She slid her palms up my chest.

“Let’s have this date, Salas,” she said softly. “Let me love you one more time, please. Just this once.”

Just this once.

The words sliced through me like a blade.

“This once,” I echoed, unbuttoning her dress so fast, I nearly ripped the buttons off.

I tugged her dress off her shoulders and freed her breasts. Cupping one, I rolled the nipple under my thumb, and she moaned, arching into my touch.

The sweet, sexy sounds she made sent a rush of desire through my body. My cock swelled with heat, straining to leap out of my pants. Sucking a breath through my teeth, I rocked my erection against her belly, my mind growing blank from lust.

Before Ari, being with a woman had always been methodical for me. Over the years, I’d worked out a system and used it, adjusting it slightly, depending on what worked best for each client.

But Ari wasn’t a client. She never had been. With her, I lost the ability of any logical thinking. There were no thoughts in my head, just feelings in my chest and sensations all over my body.

Tugging her dress lower, I kissed every sliver of her exposed skin. I placed a string of kisses along her collarbone, then between her breasts. I caressed each nipple on my way down, eliciting sweet, whimpering moans from her lips.

I trailed my kisses down her stomach as her muscles contracted and her skin pebbled with shivers of pleasure.

Worshiping every part of her body, I fell to my knees and tugged her skirts down her hips, taking her undergarments with them. I kissed the patch of dark hair between her thighs, drinking in her scent and committing to memory every sensation of loving her.

She raked her hands through my hair, gently stroking my skull with her fingers. I freed her leg from her dress and placed her thigh on my shoulder. She moaned, rocking her hips against my tongue as I dipped it inside her.

She was already wet, so wet for me, my princess. I reached as deep as I could with my tongue first, then replaced it with my finger, while leaking and sucking on her swollen clit. She moaned louder, her breathing turning erratic. Her fingers flexed in my hair.

Ari was lost to pleasure now, completely consumed by the need to orgasm, and I held the key to her climax quite literally in my hand.

“Salas.” She yanked my head away from her. “You...” she panted. “I want you with me... Inside me. Please?”

I rose to my feet, and she leaned against me, her body melting into mine.

“The clothes...” She tugged impatiently at my shirt, ripping it off over my head. “And these...” She unbuttoned my pants and shoved them down my hips.

Her frantic need for me rolled with a swell of heightened desire through my body. She wanted me, no one else. I didn’t help her with removing my clothes. There was something especially arousing in having her do it for me.

She let out a long breath, raking her fingers through my chest hair.

“I missed you, Salas. Every moment when you aren’t with me, I miss you.”

My heart ached as if a thick rusty chain tightened around it. I missed her too. Even now, when she was still in my arms, I already dreaded the years I had to spend away from her.

She deserved a royal bed, but all I could offer her right now was a half of a haystack in the corner. I spread my cloak over it and laid her on top of it.

“It’s not a royal bed, my princess.”

“I don’t care.” She wrapped her arms around me, pulling me closer. “I’ve spent many lonely, sleepless nights in a royal bed. I’d much rather be here with you.”

I watched her face as I entered her, slowly sliding into her slick heat until her hips cradled mine.

Her eyelids dropped half way. Her chest rose and fell with her deep breathing. She gripped my shoulders so tightly, her fingernails dug into my skin. The slight sting of pain made every nerve in my body stand on end. Heat rushed to my cock, urging me to move.

I pulled back, slowly dragging out her pleasure and mine. She inhaled, her body following mine, unwilling to separate. Shifting my hips forward, I angled them so that the top ridge on my cock pressed to her clit with my next thrust.

She gasped, and her expression melted into one of pure pleasure. A sweet, tender smile played on her lips.

“It’s so good, Salas... You feel so, so good...”

I tried to stretch it out for as long as I could. But she felt fantastic, so perfect, I knew I wouldn’t last long. When it came to her, I lost all control.

“I can’t, Ari, I—”

“Yes...” she whispered.

Pressing harder, I pumped faster. Her eyes opened wide as her thighs trembled. I waited just a little longer, just until she couldn’t speak and could no longer breathe. When her body stilled before her pleasure erupted, I let it go too.

Our bodies rocked together in a fantastic dance of bliss, perfectly in tune. And when we came down from the crest, we came down together.

I didn’t want to move away, but I shifted my weight off her.

“Stay.” She clung to me. “Please. Just a little longer.”

“I’m here.” I cradled her in my arms. “I’m not going anywhere. Not yet.”

She ran her hands up and down my back, my arms, and my sides, letting her fingers explore every dip and ridge of my body.

“I want to remember this moment, Salas. For as long as I live.”