Chapter 124: The First Slip
Elias sucked in a sharp breath and lifted one hand to his cheek.
That had hit his tooth.
The brief, clean burst of pain told him it was not his imagination. Apparently biting a lollipop in front of a woman as a psychological weapon carried occupational hazards. He held still for a second, letting the ache settle, then pulled the candy from his mouth.
Without any sha at all, he held it out to Liora.
"Here."
Liora lowered her eyes to the lollipop.
The candy had lost its neat roundness. Its surface shone wetly beneath the library lights, slick with the trace of soone else’s mouth. Thin threads of gloss clung to the sugar, catching in the faint ridges where Elias’s teeth had cracked it. By any normal standard, this was the sort of thing only soone with real intimacy would tolerate. Soone with no claim on him should have felt revulsion first.
Liora did not.
She looked at the candy and felt no disgust at all.
Worse than that, sothing inside her stirred.
Her hand moved before she allowed it to. The motion was small, controlled, nearly invisible to anyone watching from the next table, but she noticed it the mont it happened.
She stopped.
Elias had just used her apology to make a ga out of her. She had co to retrieve him, and in less than five minutes he had made her bend down in public, marked her mouth with cheap sugar, and told her with that bright, hateful smile that he still refused to forgive her.
How could she trust him again so quickly?
She was about to withdraw her hand as if she had never reached for it when Elias slid the plastic stick into her fingers anyway.
Then he pointed at her.
"Don’t throw it away."
The words sounded like a threat.
They also sounded, inconveniently, like permission.
He had given her an excuse she could not refuse. If she put the lollipop in her mouth now, it would not be because she wanted to. It would be because Elias had ordered her not to waste it. The distinction was thin enough to be useless, but Liora accepted it anyway.
Under his shaless, watchful stare, she brought the candy to her lips.
The taste was not unpleasant. There was no sourness from him, no trace of anything that should have made her recoil. Only artificial strawberry, bright and cheap, sharp at the edges and sweet after that. The sugar touched her tongue, and a faint chill moved through her chest.
Elias’s eyes curved again.
Liora’s throat worked once.
He had seen through her.
She kept her expression level. "Can we go back now?"
Elias gave a small nod, as if he had won whatever he ca here to win. "Let’s go."
He stood. The distance between them closed for a second, and Liora saw his mouth clearly.
His lips were glossy from the candy, pinker than usual and wet enough to look as if he had put sothing on them. He had not. It was only sugar. Strawberry sugar, if the color was anything to trust.
Which ant the taste would probably be the sa.
They left the library together, passing through the turnstiles and into the open campus air. Westbridge’s stone paths were bright under the afternoon sun, and students moved around them with the loose confidence of people who knew they were protected by money, status, or soone else’s na. Elias walked beside her for half a dozen steps before he tipped his face up with a smile.
"Try it and find out."
Liora’s heart gave a hard, traitorous beat.
She removed the lollipop from her mouth and said calmly, "Try what?"
"Who knows?" Elias clasped his hands behind his back and drifted ahead of her with an almost childish bounce to his step. His laugh reached her over one shoulder, lazy and delighted. "What were you thinking about?"
Liora watched him walk ahead.
The corner of her mouth lifted by a fraction.
So he really had seen through her.
Had she been staring at his lips for that long?
By the ti they reached the car, Liora had put her face back in order.
The driver opened the door with the practiced discretion of soone who had learned not to look too closely at the people who paid his salary. Elias slid into the back seat first, then turned his head toward Liora as she settled beside him.
He studied her for a beat. "Aren’t you going to coax a little more?"
Liora opened her wallet without a word.
She counted out ten bills and placed them in his hand.
The gesture was clean, direct, and so deadpan that it almost beca an answer by itself. Her face said, Is this enough?
Elias blinked at the money.
"Not enough."
Liora took out her phone.
A mont later, Elias’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked the notification and saw the transfer.
Ten thousand dollars.
He stared at the number and thought, with a calm that did not flatter him, that he was getting greedier by the day. Once upon a ti, ten thousand dollars landing in his account for doing almost nothing would have made him feel sothing stronger than mild satisfaction.
That did not stop him from accepting it imdiately.
He turned his face toward Liora and blew her an exaggerated kiss through the air.
"Mua."
The delivery was so lazy it bordered on insulting.
Liora laughed.
That was exactly the kind of attitude that made her feel at ease.
There were arrangents built on appetite alone. Clean, temporary things, because everyone involved understood the rules. A person wanted, took, paid, and left. No one dragged love into it. No one pretended it had to beco sothing with a future and a na and a set of obligations that wrapped around the throat.
Even those arrangents carried risk. People could slip. Desire could mutate into attachnt. A body could beco habit, then hunger, then weakness.
But that would not happen with Elias.
Anyone else might fall.
Elias would not.
As long as she controlled herself, they could keep going like this forever. An arrangent without sincerity. A ga without a final act.
The car carried them back to the Blackwood residence.
When they arrived, Liora did not follow him upstairs. She returned to her own room instead, leaving Elias in the care of the house staff and the polished corridors of Serena’s territory.
Elias did not mind.
Liora had been more cautious in front of the staff since Serena’s suspicion. That was sensible. He appreciated sensible won. They were still a disaster, obviously, but at least they occasionally used their brains while ruining his life.
He did not go to Serena at once.
Instead, he turned to a nearby staff mber and asked, "Do we have masks in the house?"
The staff mber hesitated only because the question was unexpected. "Yes, sir. Did you need one?"
"Give a pack." Elias held out his hand with a straight face. "I’m afraid Serena might infect ."
The staff mber stared at him.
For a mont, she looked like she was reconsidering every clause of her employnt.
Still, this was the Blackwood residence. The staff did not survive here by comnting on the personal habits of the family’s favorite disaster. She disappeared and returned with a sealed pack of disposable masks.
Elias put one on before entering Serena’s room.
The mont he stepped inside, he caught the flash of disbelief on Serena’s face.
It lasted less than a second.
Then her expression darkened.
Elias ignored it. "You should be grateful I ca back to take care of you at all. What else do you want? If you’re unhappy, what are you going to do about it?"
He stopped himself before finishing the sentence.
The unfinished implication sat in the room anyway.
Serena’s fever-bright eyes narrowed.
For the next few days, Elias took care of her with the mask on.
He brought her water. He handed over dicine. He checked the humidifier, adjusted the curtains, and perford every basic sickroom task with an air of martyrdom so exaggerated that even the house staff learned to leave quickly after dropping things off. Every so often, he argued with Serena as if provoking a bedridden woman was part of the prescription.
It worked better than it should have.
Serena would glare, snap back, cough, sweat through the anger, and end up sleeping harder afterward. The private doctor would never have prescribed emotional irritation as a fever treatnt, but Elias’s thod seed to drag the illness out of her by force.
By the third day, Serena’s fever had already broken.
The doctor confird it that morning, though her temper made a stronger case than any thermoter could have. When she finally recovered enough to move properly, she got out of bed and returned the favor.
Thoroughly.
By the end of it, Serena was drenched in sweat and looked clearer than she had in days, not cured by revenge exactly, but certainly restored by it. The last of the feverish fog had burned away, leaving her eyes bright and her breathing steady. If illness had made her weaker, revenge put her back together.
Elias, anwhile, lay flat on the bed like soone who had been pulled from deep water.
His chest rose and fell hard. His limbs had gone loose against the sheets, and the mask was still on his face.
The mask had sohow ended up back over his mouth.
Serena had put it there with a cold smile, and Elias, being Elias, had let her. Worse, he had laughed against it, as if the whole thing were another insult he had decided to enjoy.
Since he liked wearing one so much, Serena had made sure he kept it on.
The act had been petty. It had also been satisfying enough that Serena did not pretend otherwise.
Elias stayed like that for a long while before he ca back to himself. When he finally moved, he lifted one weak hand and pulled the mask down.
His lips were wet and bright, marked by the damp heat trapped beneath the mask. The material itself had gone soft beyond saving.
Serena stood beside the bed and looked down at him with a cold smile.
"So you like wearing masks?"
Elias let out a faint laugh. His voice had gone hoarse, wrecked at the edges from use. "It’s because I was wearing one."
The relationship between them had already reached this point. He no longer needed to swallow every sound and pretend he was unaffected. He had been loud enough to make Serena’s fingers tighten more than once, and the mory of it still hung in the room.
Serena’s expression paused.
His words were a provocation. The mask had made it harder for him to keep himself composed, which was why she had managed to reduce him to this state. That was what he was implying, and he knew exactly where to place the needle.
Serena’s smile lifted.
Then she got back on the bed.
Three hours later, Elias was finally satisfied.
He had been starved for days. Serena had fed him properly at last.
Her favorability had climbed to 55% over those three days. A ten-percent rise, given the circumstances, was almost easy.
Elias was exhausted enough that even satisfaction felt heavy. He closed his eyes and fell asleep almost at once.
The room went dark around them.
Beside him, Serena turned her head and watched him in the low light.
Her gaze settled on his mouth.
That was the one place she had never kissed.
Not because there was anything ugly about it. The opposite was true. On his face, his mouth was the most tempting part, especially in bed, when every ti it opened, the sound that ca out could strip the room down to instinct.
Serena watched him sleep.
[Serena Blackwood favorability increased. Current: 60%.]
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