Author's Note: Last update for the night! Enjoy, y'all! Hope y'all have a great day tomorrow, and I'll "see" y'all sooner rather than later tomorrow because I don't have a lot of classes tomorrow. So...I'll be posting midday instead of evening! (: TAH-TAH!
Chapter Twenty-Five
My feet don't seem to want to work properly, so I have to lean on Jace as we walk back to our room—or, as I stumble back to the room.
"This floor is unstable," I say.
"It's not the floor that's unstable."
"What?" I demand, glaring up at Jace as he practically drags me down the hall.
"Nothing," he mutters, rolling his eyes.
My ankle gets caught on something, and then I'm falling face-first towards the Oriental-rug-lined floor—if not for Jace's strong hands catching me at the waist easily. I laugh at the fluttery feeling of adrenaline coursing through me at my almost-fall.
"Woops!" I yell.
"Jesus, Clary. You are so drunk." He holds me for a moment, with my face close to the floor, and my legs tangled out, uselessly, behind me—not offering to move. "Are you gonna stand up any time soon? Or am I going to have to carry you?"
"Carry me, darling," I cry dramatically, in an imitation of Aline's voice. Then I laugh at my own cleverness.
I hear Jace sigh, and then I'm being lifted in the air, swung up easily into his arms, and cradled against his warm chest. I inhale the scent of his shirt deeply because he smells good—really good. I've never admitted that to myself before.
"Are you sniffing me?" Jace demands as he walks us to the door and manages to open it without dropping me.
"Yes," I mumble against the fabric. "You smell good."
Jace sighs again and suddenly deposits me on the couch, looking down at me with narrowed eyes. "Have you ever had wine before?"
I stare at him for a moment before grinning and saying, a little bashfully, "Noooo."
"That explains a lot, then." Jace runs a hand through his hair and starts towards the bedroom.
"Wait! Where…where are you going?" I demand, hopping up and running after him. I hug him from behind, tightly as I can. "Don't leave."
"I'm going to take a shower, Clary. I'm not leaving."
"But you are leaving. You're leaving the room."
"Well, I'd ask you to join me—"
"Okay," I say quickly.
"—but you're so drunk, I fully expect you to fall and crack open your head on the shower floor. Your shattered skull would be a real mood killer, you know." He tries to pry my hands from around his waist.
"Then just stay in here. With me."
"Clary—" he begins tiredly, turning around in my grasp so that I can see him, and he's opening his mouth to protest, a strange light in his eyes, when I go up to my tiptoes and kiss him.
He's unresponsive, at first. But I kiss him again, and again, short little pecks, lips pressing into lips softly, briefly. These teasing touches do it, and then he's kissing me back, the way I like and the way I know he must like, too—hard, unrelenting.
His hands are in my hair, holding my face to his, and I'm grabbing at his hips, pulling him over to the couch. And then, without warning, I shove him—hard—and he falls back into the seat with a surprising amount of grace considering he had fallen.
He looks up at me, his eyebrows arched in amusement and surprise, but I can see the dark desire simmering in his eyes. The want, the same want I feel brewing in my stomach, clenching my insides.
I crawl over him, my legs straddling him, and then I'm kissing him again. But he's hesitant now, or at least more in control of himself, and I huff, aggravated, against his lips before brushing my mouth over his cheek, down his jaw.
"Jace," I say.
"What?"
"Will you touch me again?" I grope for his hands and find them, bringing them up, sliding them under the silk of my dress, onto the bare skin of my legs.
"Like you did in the dinning room. Please?"
"Clary, you're drunk," Jace is saying.
I'm shaking my head. "Not that drunk."
"Yeah, you are. Or else, you wouldn't be doing this."
I attach my lips to his again, desperate for something—anything. This sudden urge has come, some ancient instinct, this need for him. I can't understand it or the way it makes me feel. It's powerful, overwhelming.
Our lips meld perfectly, hotly, Jace no longer fighting it because it feels so good. I like this feeling so much that I wonder why I don't do it all the time. I don't think Jace would mind. I should do this more, kissing. It's fun.
I run my hands down Jace's chest, and I sink into his lap a little because I'm slightly off balance and my head is heavy and fuzzy and exploding with colors. And that's when I feel him, pressing into me in just the right place, and my soft gasp fills the room.
"Oh!" I roll my hips down on his erection, making him breath roughly into my neck, his hands tightening on my waist. Everything in my stomach clenches, trembles, heat rushing through me, pooling between my thighs. "Oh. It's so hard," I whisper, a little in awe as I roll my hips again, experimentally, searchingly.
Jace lifts his head slightly, his dilated, lusty eyes finding mine. A half smirk tilts his lips, and that look makes me push myself down harder on his lap, which makes his face tighten in such a beautiful, tense way.
"That means you want me, doesn't it?" I ask quietly, running my hands back up his chest, over his shoulders, into his hair. I keep rotating my hips down against him, loving the friction that it creates between us.
"Yes," Jace says hotly into my throat, his teeth scraping down my skin, making me shiver, making me quake. I feel his hands traveling up, going to the top of my gown and yanking down the sleeves, hard, exposing more of my skin for his lips to sear across.
"You want to…want to take me?" I inquire, almost shyly, but mostly curious as I slowly undulate my hips over his, liking this slow burn between us, the way his lips skate across my skin leisurely, but not lacking in desire.
"Fuck yes," Jace growls softly against my pounding pulse.
His profanity makes the tightness in my stomach worse.
"Then…then—oh!" I moan sharply as he lifts his hips up, thrusting himself against me suddenly. "Then why don't you—take me?"
Jace's movement stop, and I groan in dissatisfaction as he pulls away from me, so our eyes can meet. His cheeks are flushed, his hair a mess from where I've been pulling through it, and his eyes are so wild yet sleepy that it makes the heat between my legs worsen to almost painful levels.
"Because you're not mine to take," Jace murmurs, his voice suddenly very serious.
I don't like that, so I lean in and whisper my lips over his. Ask him, "What if I told you I wanted you to…if I wanted you to take me right here on this couch—right now?"
Jace's fingers clench my hips, keeping me from circling my hips anymore, something I've been doing subconsciously as I spoke. He leans his face into my neck, his teeth nipping gently at my earlobe, and his breath is hot as he says, slowly, "I'd say… you were drunk and we aren't going to do anything until you're sober."
I jerk away from him, glaring. "But I'm not drunk. And it feels so good." I make sure to accentuate my statement with another press of my body down on his.
"Yeah, but the good feelings now aren't gonna outweigh the bad feelings of your regret in the morning." Jace grabs me tightly by the hips and lifts me up, off of him, giving me a stern look. "You might as well get over it, Clary. We aren't doing anything else."
I sigh and roll down suddenly, pulling him with me, twisting us until he's laying halfway on top of me and I'm getting to rest my incredibly heavy, aching head on the armrest of the couch.
He's got that tiny little smirk lifting one corner of his mouth as he gazes down at me with those pretty, hot and sinful eyes, and I reach up, running my hands over his neck, down his chest a bit.
"You're good, Jace," I say quietly, feeling suddenly sleepy. "You're a good boy. I know it. I can see a little bit of it, sometimes. Even though you try to hide it—I see…I see through you though."
"Do you?" he inquires with a little grin, his hand coming up to twirl a lock of my scarlet hair around his finger.
"Mm-hm." I nod slowly.
"Don't tell anyone, okay?"
I laugh and nod again, more heartily this time, before yawning. I smooth my hands up to his face, tracing his lips and the sharp line of his jaw with my searching fingers. "Your secret's safe with me."
"Good." He's watching his own hand brush gently through my hair, almost as if he's mesmerized by it.
"Jace?"
"Hm?"
"You seem different tonight…softer. Why?"
"I guess because you are. I think that a few seconds ago was the first time I've ever heard you laugh." Jace's eyes find mine, the desire now cooling and gentleness taking its place, not taking away from the warmth of his golden orbs one bit, though. "You have a pretty laugh. You should do it more often, you know."
"Well, I've never heard you laugh either," I accuse, shaking a finger at him. I think my words are slurring. Maybe they have been all night. That could be why Jace wasn't entirely taken by my attempts at seduction. Slurring was not sexy.
"I don't have much to laugh about."
"Me, either," I agree softly. "I think…I think our parents made us grow up too fast."
"Yeah," Jace mumbles, looking at my hair again as his fingers play with it.
"Did you have a good childhood, Jace? Tell me please. Be honest."
Jace's jaw tightens a bit, but his eyes never stray from my hair. "It was decent, I guess."
"Just decent?"
"Yeah. Just decent. Father didn't let me have much of a childhood, I guess. I was being preened to take over the Guardianship since the time I could talk."
"That's a shame," I murmur. My eyes are getting heavy, my vision blurred. There feels like there's grit under my eyelids, irritating. "A childhood should be great. That's the only true time of innocence. It should be…it should be enjoyed."
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry."
"What are you sorry for?"
"For your childhood. Or lack thereof."
My eyes are already shut. I realize this when I notice I'm only seeing black, only feeling Jace's hand reach up to smooth across my cheek.
"It's not your fault, Clary."
"I'm sorry I've been so awful to you."
"That is your fault."
"Ha-ha." I shift, trying to get comfortable in the darkness behind my eyelids. "I'm sleepy."
"Then go to sleep."
"But we'll stop talking. I haven't talked to anyone in a long time."
"We can talk again in the morning."
But we both know that's a lie.
In the morning, things will be back to the way they were, and suddenly, I don't want to fall asleep.
But I do anyway.
It's beyond me, just like everything else.
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