Chapter 33 Five months for you
Ravial sat motionless on the edge of the vast bed and watched his little lamb tend to him like he was something precious instead of the monster he was.
Moments earlier, the instant Leitana had seen the blood on his knuckles, her heart had plummeted. Still wrapped only in that damp towel, she had bolted from the room in a panic to fetch Rosa. Rosa had paled at the sight of the young woman streaked with crimson, but the moment Leitana gasped, “The master….he bleeding!” relief had flashed across the housekeeper’s face. She had scrambled for the first-aid kit and thrust it into Leitana’s hands.
When Leitana hurried back, Ravial had not moved an inch. Five full minutes, and he still stood rooted to the same spot on the tiled floor, staring at his bleeding hand as though it belonged to someone else. Blood dripped steadily, plink, plink, onto the marble. He could not believe it: she had touched him. Her skin on his. No fire. No searing rejection from Heaven.
Leitana’s eyes had gone wide with fresh alarm, but she did not hesitate. She marched straight to him, grabbed his uninjured hand, and tugged. Of course she could not have moved him an inch if he had not allowed it; he was twice her size. Yet he let her lead him like a docile beast to the bed and sat obediently while she knelt between his thighs.
She opened the kit with shaking fingers, pouting in that adorable, furious way of hers.
“Why yu just stand there like statue, bleeding all over? Yu no feel pain?” she scolded, dabbing antiseptic-soaked cotton against the deepest cut. Her lower lip jutted out. “Yu no tell anyone yu wounded… not good.”
Ravial said nothing. He barely heard the words. His blindfolded gaze traced every inch of exposed skin: the delicate slope of her shoulders, the towel barely clinging to her curves, the tiny droplets still sliding down the valley between her breasts. Again and again his stare returned to the small, gentle hand touching him, touching him without burning him the way his own hands had burned when he touched her.
He lifted his left hand, slow and tentative, desperate to cup her cheek, to feel her warmth under his own initiative. Halfway there, terror gripped him. What if he reached first and Heaven punished them both? What if he hurt her?The hand fell back to his thigh, trembling.
So he sat in silence and let her work, let her wrap gauze around knuckles that could have healed with a thought. He had kept the wound open on purpose, not to hide his nature (that thought never crossed his mind), but because he craved her touch more than he had ever craved anything in ten thousand years.
When the bandage was tied, Leitana smoothed her palm over it, exhaled in relief, and finally looked up.
Whatever she had been about to say died the instant she felt the weight of his stare. Heat flooded her cheeks, her throat, the tops of her breasts. She realised she had been absent-mindedly stroking the bandage and yanked her hand away, accidentally smearing a streak of his blood across her neck.
“Bleeding stop,” she mumbled, eyes skittering everywhere but his face. “So… yu fine now.”
From the corner of her eye she saw his uninjured hand rise again, slow, hesitant, exactly as it had moments ago. Closer. Closer. Her pulse thundered in her ears. Then, just like before, he began to lower it.
Before he could retreat, Leitana’s own hand shot out and closed around his wrist.
They both froze.
For a full minute the room held only the sound of their breathing.
Then, trembling, she guided his palm to her cheek herself.
“Touch,” she whispered, voice barely audible.
Ravial swallowed hard enough that his throat clicked.
She nodded, tears glistening. “Yu can touch mi…”
She never finished the sentence.
His bandaged hand rose to join the other. Both palms framed her face completely, thumbs trembling against the corners of her mouth. Then he lunged, claiming her lips in a kiss that tasted of reverence and starvation.
“Umph…” A startled gasp escaped her. For one heartbeat her hands pushed against his chest; the next, they melted, fingers curling into his shirt.
He pulled back only inches, forehead resting against hers, breathing her in. Their faces were so close he could map every detail: the faint scar on her brow, the tiny cluster of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the delicate birthmark near her jaw, imperfections that were perfection to him.
Her chest rose and fell in frantic rhythm. Slowly, nervously, she licked her lips.
A low, broken groan rumbled from Ravial’s chest. His entire body shuddered.
Leitana raised trembling hands and laid them over his, pressing his palms harder against her cheeks as if afraid he would vanish.
He laughed once, soft, helpless, nothing like the Devil’s usual sound and brushed a tender kiss to the tip of her nose.
“What are you doing to me, little lamb?” he rasped.
“Mi no do nothing,” she breathed, voice cracking.
His thumbs traced the freckles dusting her cheeks like constellations made for him alone. One hand slid to cradle the back of her head, fingers threading through damp hair; the other continued its worship, brow, cheekbones, the curve of her lower lip.
“Five months,” he said, voice raw and deeper than sin.
Leitana’s breath hitched.
“Five months, they say.” He pressed the words into her skin like a vow carved in fire. “I will make every sunrise, every day, every second so bright you will carry them with you forever.”
Tears spilled over her lashes, sliding over his thumbs.
“Yu will do that… for mi?” she whispered.
Ravial’s smile was small, devastating, and utterly genuine that he failed to notice it. “Yes, my little lamb. I would burn the world to give you perfect days.”
Then he kissed her again, slower, deeper, pouring centuries of hunger and something far more dangerous into every brush of lips.
Leitana wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back with everything she had left, welcoming the warmth, embracing the death that was already walking toward her.
Neith
er of them yet understood just how little time the clock was willing to give.