His dark voice trails down her spine, lighting a path of desire that renders her breathless. "If only I were in a position of no consequence."
Alia's breath wavers when the pad of his thumb slowly glides across her bottom lip.
"Then I could give in...
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"Beware the fury of a patient man." - John Dryden
•
"I wasn't allowed to see you."
Alia looks away from one of the windows in Aeron's hotel room, the scenery an array of brick buildings containing businesses and apartments. The morning sun shines above, the warm rays caressing her profile. Her fingers fiddle with the sleeves of Valen's jumper, nerves crawling across her skin.
The room contains an en-suite near the door and a large bed to her left with dark blue pillows and bedsheets. The sheets are ruffled with the duvet almost thrown off the bed in urgency. It seems that her visit woke him, but Alia suspects it to have happened far before she even approached his door.
After a tour of GHQ, Valen walked her here, and that alone was enough to set the whole building on edge. His dominance seeped through every crevice of the tall hotel whilst his ears listened for any threat to her wellbeing. When he was satisfied with what he heard, he leaned down and kissed her — a brief, gentle kiss that had her yearning for more — before quietly telling her that he'd be nearby if she needed him.
Alia could feel his presence slip away from the building, and it had her hands balling into fists as they ached to reach for him. But then Aeron swung the door open, and her thoughts dwindled into nothing.
"What do you mean?" she asks, eyes finding his. He stands in the middle of the room, hair dishevelled, and dressed in a pair of black joggers and a grey t-shirt. One of the doors to the wardrobe to her right remains slightly ajar, and Alia has no doubt that Aeron scrambled to put something on before pulling the door open.
In Vasileís, he was always one to sleep in his underwear. She remembers how she used to tease him when he'd open his bedroom door to greet her in his unpresentable state. Just the memory of what their life used to be like has her eyes stinging, the familiar burn making her blink and turn her head away.
"Gamma Christian," he explains, "he forbid it. It's been a week since I arrived and not once did he allow me to search for you."
Alia frowns, remembering the golden vines that restrained her mate. If Aeron approached Valen and Alia's home whilst Valen was in the forest, she doesn't know what would have become of him. Her mate's motionless silence was horrific, and it made her heart ache greatly, but Alia knew that it meant nothing with regard to his primal tendencies.
When she'd asked Valen about it, he told her that all he could do was think, and it was like he was being haunted by the reality of what his memories meant for him. He could barely process his true identity, and it meant that everything around him was a blur. His body acted instinctively — primally — and he doesn't even remember seeing her in the forest, or even eating the meals she made for him. But when his mind cleared, and he found himself alone under the sun, all he could think about was returning to her. He needed her, and when he fell into her embrace, only then did he let himself feel.
