Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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"This can't possibly be pleasant to you," Wren said, lying flat on his back, arms crossed over his chest in the dark.
The decision to live out a day as he used to in order to facilitate his memories returning was awkward and confusing, especially when Wren had insisted upon the same sleeping arrangements they'd had before. Anything to get his damn memories back and make this make sense.
Without his mage robes, he felt near naked lying in a bed anywhere near Talamayas Sol, but it was too hot to be wearing anything but the thin, skin-tight shirt the Sols had offered him. Sweat ran his skin, but he kept the thin white sheet over his lower half so the vampire wasn't tempted. They'd offered him shorts too, but he'd be damned if they thought he was wearing the equivalent of grey tighty-whitey boxers around a fiend like Talamayas.
A few candles lit the eastern wall of the storeroom they occupied, so Wren could see Talamayas, but the place was dim at best, buried in shelves, papers, and bins of scrolls. When Wren turned, Talamayas was on his side, his hands tucked under his face, and his red eyes open just a sliver to watch him. His dark hair made his forehead look like it had teeth, and the long black tail of it wriggled over his side and fell down between them.
"It is most pleasant," Talamayas said, unmoving as he kept to the furthest edge of the small bed to give Wren space. If one could call this stale graham cracker covered in poorly fitted sheets a bed. For supposed rulers of their people, their normal accommodations were quite shabby.
"Is that why you're refusing to lose consciousness, the enjoyment of staring at me while you're half dead? Certainly not fearing I'll kill you as soon as your eyes close," Wren taunted, but it fell short of its mark as Talamayas continued on with that tepid smile.
"You're not the type to kill a man in his sleep, before or after losing your memories. There would be no satisfaction in ending me unless I knew it was you," Talamayas said practically, and Wren hated that the vampire was right. That didn't mean he knew him though, only that he understood a grand mage's desire for true vengeance.
"You are not touching me," Wren said, having expected the man to do something after the way he'd demanded Wren fuck him in the hall. Anything really. For Talamayas Sol to sit still, it took a myriad of chains and spell bindings. The man didn't do calm nor stationary, and Wren knew he would relish devouring his mouth again. And Wren couldn't even say he wouldn't like it.
"My touch would make you uncomfortable," Talamayas said simply, like it made sense for him to consider Wren's feelings when doing anything. "I don't want you to leave, so I am happy to just sleep near your side. The caress of your magic against my body is enough comfort for me. I know you don't understand right now, but those nights when I didn't know where you were or what they were doing to you were the worst. I would have given anything to trade places, suffer anything in your place, even die if you might be spared."
