Tainted Opal - Kaz Brekker x Reader

12 - So Close

Kaz and my gaze shifted from eachother to the single bed. Neither of us spoke until I found the silence too unbearable, I didn't like being stuck with my own thoughts.

"Why are you not wearing pants?" Out of all the possible sentences my flustered mind could string together, that was the one I said to the Barrel's favorite bastard.

Kaz stiffened and stared daggers at me. He simply turned around and limped back into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

Why did I say that?

Why is he here?

Why did this have to happen?

Why is he hot-

My spiraling thoughts were interrupted by the turning of a door knob. Kaz walked back out into the bedroom where I was still standing, frozen in place. He has replaced his attire with a dry, fully buttoned shirt and pants. His hair was still damp, but it was combed back like usual.

His gloves were back on. For some reason that minute detail caused my heart to drop. My intestines twisted up into uncomfortable knots and a pang of discomfort was dangerously close to my heart. Instead of focusing on this, I subconsciously decided to imagine Kaz drenched in steam, his unbuttoned shirt sticking to his toned muscles and his tight... were they boxers or shorts? Whatever they were, they were hugging to his thighs-

"It's rude to stare," Kaz rasped and I made contact with his stony eyes. I scrambled to explain myself, but I felt a little dizzy, like a dehydrated camel in a desert; in a place of false comfort in a situation of dire desperation.

"I was just surprised to see your hands... being bare," I retorted with a defensive tone, but my face was rosy and my heart pattered like heavy rain.

"They aren't bare anymore,"

"Yes, I see that,"

I open my mouth to speak once again, but I pressed my lips together into a crescent frown. Either Kaz is oblivious to my demolished confidence or he chose to revel in it. In fact, when I look up at him, I notice the ghost of a smile haunting his scarred lips.

His perfect lips.

"I can sleep on the floor," I suggest with quick speech, my tongue tumbling and twisting with my words. Kaz runs a gloved hand through his hair and leans his cane against the way by the dresser. He walks towards me with a limping leg, towering over my figure. Kaz had never seen me so vulnerable, not even the first night we met all those years ago. The memories flooding back like the sea eroding Ketterdam's edges.

"Do you know why I remembered you from all those years ago?" His voice was even lower now, and the rocky undertones resembled pebbles instead of jagged gravel.

"No," I lied; a compassionate skill the Barrel has mentored me on. I tried not to look at Kaz's lips, tried desperately not to agree to the urges surging through my mind. The fatal human psyche would be my downfall, I just knew it.

He took a gloved finger and brushed it over his lower lip, where a small scar split the right and left sides of the pink skin.

"Even after the cut healed, I was forced to recall the strange girl who had seen me vulnerable, who'd gotten the better of me." His pupils dilated as he craned his neck to look down at me, but his fingers were shuddering. Fear seemed to clog his senses as the shrinking space between us brought him back to some dark memory I was unaware of.

He stepped backwards and stumbled slightly without his cane. It was a very small reaction, but not one the notorious Kaz Brekker would let someone see, much less a client. He composed himself quickly, his threatening scowl returning.