Poison, Lies, and No-Win Choices Page 6

  He shifted, cursing his erection aloud. It was unseemly that he was thinking about her this way. It was morally corrupt that he did...on some level, at any rate. Though he couldn’t reason himself to why it was—past his guilt, which wasn’t a moral issue but rather an emotional one—he was sure there was some path to the decision he wasn’t seeing.

  Matthew folded the note blindly, finding the creases he’d pushed to the edges of tearing without his eyes to guide him.

  He simply wanted to know she was well and comfortable. If he managed that, he’d leave her to her life and try to reassemble the wreckage of his own into something honorable again.

  “Hein?” the guard he’d summoned intoned.

  His heart ached that he was sinking to this. “I want you to make inquiries,” he ordered.

  “Of what type?”

  “Of Sirana Firloch.”

  * * * *

  Matthew knocked on the door, certain that he wouldn’t be welcome, but he had to see her. It opened, and her father stared at him, dark eyes narrowing in challenge. He waited to see what Matthew had to say, neither dismissing him nor inviting him in.

  “Good day, Firloch,” he intoned.

  The man bowed his head in response.

  “I came to...” What? What excuse could he have?

  “You wish to see her.” He didn’t question it.

  Matthew nodded. “If Sirana is of a mind to,” he conceded. “If you would allow—”

  “Stay here. I will ask her.” The door closed between them.

  His heart ached at that. Typically, people rushed to admit him. It was another sign of how ruined he was that he wasn’t trusted to enter their home.

  Time dragged along, every moment an agony in which he was certain the dismissal would come. He turned away, looking at the fall colors. The door opened behind him, and he turned back, his heart aching at her refusal to see him already.

  And she was there...still pale though not as markedly, her expression uncertain. She was beautiful, unblemished, but haunted no doubt.

  “Hein Matthew,” she greeted him with a bow of her head. Her eyes met his briefly, then darted away, her color deepening.

  He hooked his hands behind his back, a silent reminder not to touch her. “Sirana.”

  Silence fell between them for a moment.

  “Are you well?” he forced out, only one of a million questions he wanted to ask her.

  She nodded, her smile strained. “Well healed, I think.”

  But she wasn’t. The reports said she didn’t venture from home, that she never did. Her mother had only just started admitting a few lady visitors, none Sira’s age; no men entered the house, save her father, not even the lord’s business partners and allies. Her curtains were always drawn tight. It wasn’t right for a young lady to be so isolated. It wasn’t natural.

  She met his eyes again, a faint look of longing shining out. But longing for what? What did she want of him?

  When he didn’t answer, she turned...but not inside. Sira walked along the front of the house, toward the working buildings at the side. Matthew followed, at a loss to explain her actions.

  She entered one, stopping at the far end, not facing him.

  He waited at the door. “Sira?”

  “I’m...sorry that you’ve been so vilified in this. I never meant for it to happen. I tried to tell them what happened that night, but no one would allow me to speak. No one...”

  Her apology stunned him. “There was no need to make you endure it. The physical evidence was—”

  “Misleading.” She turned to him, her hands clasped, seemingly tortured. “Have you never questioned it? Hein Matthew, how could you accept this without even asking if you were guilty of what you claim to be?”

  “I hurt you.”

  “You did,” she conceded, “but not in the ways you believe. Not in the ways others believe of you.” Again, tears dotted her lashes.

  “I am about to use your refrain, I’m afraid. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “You should. I was clear enough the last time I told you. You didn’t... You didn’t rape me. Why is this so hard to comprehend? Of the two of us, who do you believe remembers the night, as it was?”

  “Neither,” he answered honestly. The doctors had told him as much, had said that her memories might have been reordered to fit her attempts to hide herself from the truth of it.

  She sighed. “Perhaps, but I cannot agree.”

  Her upset ate at him. “You wish to do this, don’t you? You wish someone would let you talk about it.” If she said yes, could he be the one she unburdened to? Would it help or hurt his sense of guilt?

  Sira nodded.

  Curiosity warred with terror. I did this, however oblivious to it I was at the time. It is my mess to wipe clean. “Then tell me. Tell me what really happened that night.” He doubted he’d get the whole truth, but it was worth it, if it eased her upset.

  She took a calming breath. “I did argue with them and send them away. I did try to help you. I know you remember a bit of both.”

  Newly-recovered memories of her bathing him and him climaxing to it played out in his mind. Matthew nodded grimly. “I remember it.”

  “I thought you were cognizant, so I offered to get your doctor. Not that I knew how to find the man without spending a night or more in a cell for it, but I offered.”

  He winced at her candor. With Matthew incapacitated, she was likely correct, on that point. The guards would have detained her, until some accounting could be made of the situation and her innocence proven...if that was possible.

  “You said you understood me. I offered to get help for you, to get you whatever you needed.” She paused, biting at her lower lip lightly.

  “And that was when I forced—”

  “You grabbed at my arms and pulled me down. Yes. I’ve told you as much.”

  His stomach rumbled in warning at the vision in his mind.

  “You only clamped down and left bruises when I tried to escape from beneath you.”

  “And you say I’m not guilty of—”

  “You are that far, but I’ve always said it.”

  Matthew motioned for her to continue, hoping she’d speed through the rest.

  “You laid kisses at my jawline. I was so shocked by your tenderness that I allowed you to, and—”

  “Tenderness?” he scoffed, well aware that he shouldn’t question her version, not without a doctor to handle her reaction to it.

  She took a step toward him. “You were.”

  “I was so tender, I left more bruises,” he noted, loathing himself for doing it, loathing himself almost as much for saying it.

  “The nips beneath my chin followed. Yes, they hurt, but the way... There was pleasure mixed with the pain. Had anyone bothered to ask it, I would have told them so.”

  His heart skittered, and he shook his head. That had to be in error.

  “You’re like everyone else,” Sira accused, seemingly hurt by his denial of her version.

  “No. Tell me. Please...” If it would give her ease, he would listen to her tale.

  “I didn’t protest it. I did push at you, but I didn’t refuse you.”

  “It’s no better,” he muttered. Why am I doing this? Why am I opening myself to how much a bastard I was to her? Drugs or no drugs, he had to face that he had committed these crimes against her.

  “You started raising my skirt, and I realized...”

  “Go on.”

  “I realized there would be no barrier between us, if you did.”

  “Then you didn’t want me. Sirana, you know what rape means, I’m sure,” he reasoned.

  “Will you let me tell the tale or not?” she challenged.

  Matthew opened his mouth to speak, then shut it, nodding. Perhaps this is my punishment.

  “I started to talk you out of it, and you kissed me.”

  “If it is the moment I remember, I ravaged your mouth. There was nothing kind in that moment.
Do not make it over so, I beg you.”

  “If you remember it, how is it that you don’t recall me responding in kind? Dear Goddess, have you no concept of what an appealing male you are, when you are intent?”

  Memories he’d dismissed played at his mind. He’d dreamed of them for weeks, waking hard and wanting, cursing himself for writing off his crimes against her so completely, damning himself for being aroused all over again by the act...without the drugs to blame it on.

  “You do remember,” she whispered.

  “I remember...something. It’s hard to make sense of it,” he qualified.

  “Then let me make sense of it.”

  For the first time, his sense of dread was overpowered by his need to know. “Please,” he invited her.

  “You did hurt me once more, a hurt you intended, in your state.”

  He braced himself for the truth of it, barely breathing in his tension.

  Sira continued. “You wanted to be in me so badly, you tried to force my legs apart to get there. Yes, it hurt. I won’t deny it, but you didn’t force them apart. You didn’t force your way in.”

  His breath left him on a dizzying rush. Goddess, but that was good to know. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can never tell you how sorry I am that I hurt you.”

  “You had no choice in the matter. And I allowed much of it. If I had screamed, Ma...Hein. If I had screamed, someone would have—”

  “Likely not...and you did scream. I remember it.” His misery returned that quickly.

  “You remember so little,” she whispered.

  He nodded, agreeing with her assessment. “Please...tell me.” Oh, how the tables had turned. Now, he was begging her for information, wanting to hear how he could have done her such damage and not have her damn him for it.

  “I scratched you.” She faltered, her face going crimson and her eyes pleading with him. “I...I was at a loss to break through the fog over your mind. I never meant to hurt you.”

  “I believe that.” Would that he had never meant to hurt her. “You scratched me,” he repeated numbly. “And did I... Did I do something in return?”

  Sira nodded. “You pulled away and looked at me with such longing... You said that you needed me. I didn’t know if you needed me, because the drug was driving you mad or...or if you actually saw something in me that you needed, but either way, it was a sentiment I couldn’t ignore.

  “I started undressing for you, meeting your passion, inviting it. By the time you entered me... Yes, it was rough. It hurt, but there was something more...something I fear I will never be able to name.”

  Matthew tried to digest that. “You could have ignored it. You could have continued to deny me,” he countered. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because you were driving me mad. Because I wanted...” She looked away, her throat working on what was surely a sob.

  “You wanted what?”

  A sad smile turned up her lips. “I wanted that passion to be personal to me. I know it was foolish to want...”

  His heart raced, though he couldn’t tell which of his chaotic emotions caused it to. “No. It wasn’t foolish, at all.”

  Tears pooled in her eyes, and she wiped them away in what appeared to be annoyance. “It was. I should have realized a man like you couldn’t possibly...” She took a calming breath. “Of course, it was foolish.”

  “That I couldn’t possibly be what?” he asked, his mind rebelling at the answer he wanted to hear.

  Sira didn’t answer him.

  “Couldn’t possibly want you?” he asked calmly.

  She stared at her white-knuckled, clasped hands. “Don’t lie to me about this,” she stated bitterly. “It’s not right, you know.”

  Matthew went to her, breaking his own counsel by raising a hand to her cheek. “How I wish we could start over,” he mused.

  “Then you don’t wish to.” Sira jerked in what was probably a silent sob.

  “Oh, I wish to.” He did. He’d wanted to, for varying reasons, since the morning he’d woken with her in his bed.

  Sira raised her head, her eyes assessing, seemingly shocked into silence.

  Matthew lowered his face to meet hers, stroking his lips along the line of hers. She sighed, her eyes closing.

  “I want so much to start over,” he breathed, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead to hers.

  “Then we should.”

  Matthew turned his head and dipped it down, seeking her agreement. Her lips parted to his, a slow, solemn kiss that grew deeper and hotter in moments. He released her, panting in the force of his arousal. If this was what he’d felt that night, his madness might be more attributable to her potency than his state.

  “Matthew,” she whispered, not quite a question.

  He captured her lips again, one hand settling on her shoulder and the other cupping her cheek. His cock hardened, aching to nest inside her again, a slower joining that they both could revel in.

  “Release her.”

  The voice came without warning, drawing Matthew out of his daze. He turned to find Sira’s father standing in the doorway, his hands fisted and his body tensed to fight.

  “I said, ‘release her’.”

  The choice was taken out of his hand when Sira nestled closer. Matthew wrapped an arm around her, mindful of the fact that he might have to leave her to block blows. He wouldn’t allow her to stay in the middle of a fight, if it came to that.

  Firloch’s eyes widened, and his fists loosened. “Sira?”

  “It is not what you think,” she stated, though her voice shook at the admission. “For well over three weeks, I have told you all that it’s not what you believe, what you want the evidence on hand to support.”

  He shot a look promising death at Matthew.

  “If I may?” Matthew asked, hoping to diffuse the situation. Firloch didn’t reply, so he continued. “Nothing excuses the pain I caused Sirana. I know that. I came here...looking for some way to accomplish that, pitiful as such an attempt was.”

  “And you think this is it?” he snapped.

  “I wouldn’t have thought we’d ever end up in such a situation, after the night of the Bride Ball. But not because I didn’t want to touch her,” he hastened to add. “I thought I had ruined any kind feelings Sira might have harbored for me.” He met her eyes, smiling at Sira’s blush. “Imagine my surprise to learn that, not only was I wrong about what transpired that night, I was wrong about your daughter’s capacity and caring.”

  “Where were you?” he challenged. “Where were you, when she could barely put one foot before the other? When she wouldn’t meet my eyes? When she couldn’t face the world outside of her bedroom? If you cared so much—”

  “I didn’t think I had the right to see her,” Matthew admitted, reliving his own days and nights of misery.

  “You didn’t, and you don’t.”

  Sira wrapped a hand in Matthew’s cloak. “I believe that is my decision,” she offered.

  For a moment, her father said nothing. He simply stared at her in disbelief. Then he recovered himself. “You cannot be serious.”

  “The choice to accept a position or trial position is my own,” she reminded him.

  Matthew kept his mouth shut. All three of them knew that her father could block such a move, if he appealed it to the king and Counselors...if the old man agreed with him. If it came to a challenge, Matthew wasn’t certain which side his father would lend his might to.

  Firloch stared at Matthew. “Is such an offer forthcoming?”

  Matthew didn’t hesitate. “If Sira would accept it.”

  Both men looked to her, and Matthew held to his mask of royalty as she paled. Was she going to refuse him?

  “A trial, for now,” she agreed. “I believe... I believe we need to get to know each other away from Bride Balls and drugs that affect us, before we commit to more.”

  “And what sort of contract would you be offering?” Firloch continued.

  Again, Matthew knew his
mind. “One that makes her my wife.”

  Sira seemed surprised by the proclamation.

  Chapter Seven

  Sira wrapped her arms around Matthew’s waist, pulling herself flush to him, licking her lips at the press of his cock to her belly through the layers of sleeping clothes. His mouth sought out hers again, making promises he’d yet to keep.

  It had been over a week, and their time together still consisted of nothing more than touching and kissing, talking and sleeping under the same sheets.

  She’d climaxed; Matthew had made certain of that. She’d come to his mouth and his hands, and he’d come to her hands, but he shied at every move toward sating himself in her. He shied even at both of them being completely nude at the same time.

  That had to change. If she was to be his wife, Sira was going to carry his heir, and no amount of fear on Matthew’s part was going to stand in the way of that.

  He reached for her sleeping gown, and she pushed his hands away, working at the tie on his lounging pants instead. Matthew groaned into her mouth, giving himself up to her. His pants loosened, Sira worked them down his hips to his thighs, urging him to his back on the mattress.

  Her mouth watered at the sight of him, and her heated body ached to feel him inside her again. She was healed; she knew she was. Sira had even tested it...carefully, with her fingers in the bath, at a time when Matthew was otherwise occupied.

  He reached for her dominant hand guiding it to his shaft in silent request. Sira started stroking him, smiling as his eyes slid shut and his hips rose to meet her. This could work.

  She shifted her weight, straddling his thighs, just below his jutting cock, far up on her knees so she wasn’t resting on him. Matthew’s eyes shot open, and his breathing hitched. Sira started stroking again, making no further move to mount him, and he relaxed.

  No doubt, he thought himself safe from temptation, because she was dressed for sleeping. What he didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that she’d removed her panties when she’d begged off for a toilet break earlier. She would taste his length, if she had to trick him to it; it was likely the only way she would.