BXBX NOVEL Chapter 153 - Not Much Better
Lena ate most of the food that Samuel had brought for her. Less because she was hungry and more because she hoped that it meant that he would stop worrying about the fact that she hadn't been eating. Everyone acted differently when they were overly stressed and for the princess that resulted in her not eating.
She had nothing against food, to her when there was too much going on it just became an unnecessary time sink that she could cut out in order to focus on other things. Besides, she ate enough during other times around the stressful one she didn't really think it affected her all that much when she had moments such as these.
Even though she wasn't currently feeling the affects of it, she was sure it probably benefitted her in some way other than getting Samuel to stop fussing about it. She didn't exactly mean it in a negative way, she was just never thrilled about people trying to push towards doing such things when she didn't have the ability to make her do it herself.
Somehow though, she found herself humoring him where she wouldn't with other people. Even her family had a hard time coaxing her into eating or doing basic things when such a heavy mood hit her. Samuel though had not only gotten her to eat, he somehow ended up occupying her bed with her as well. She might've been one to occasionally steal someone else's bed, but she wasn't much used to sharing beds with others. Even when her and Leo were younger they each had their own bed and room.
She glanced over at him knowing that by now he had fallen asleep by the way his chest was rising and falling peacefully. The light had been shut off again, but her eyes were still well enough adjusted to the dark that she could see everything fairly clearly still. It was odd for her but she was the one who had asked him to stay when he thought it might've been better to give her space for the last few hours of the night after she had eaten.
While she hadn't expected it, she couldn't blame him for falling asleep. If he had been worrying so much about her while she had shut herself away, it meant he probably hadn't sleep much either which would result in him being exhausted as well.
Lena wasn't in much of a mood to sleep as she rolled on to her other side so that her back was facing Samuel. She had a feeling that the moment she closed her eyes or tried to sleep that the nightmares she was holding off would end up coming back to haunt her due to everything that had happened. Even if the outcome of the situation had been different, it was too close to what she had gone through in the past to not trigger such thoughts.
She wouldn't do anything serious about Jovani though, at least not until he gave her a good reason to. Mostly that was because there were reasons she needed to keep him around and partly because Samuel had bothered about it because he didn't think that he really was that horrible of a person even if he did make some pretty heavy mistakes.
"Why aren't you sleeping yet?" Lena made a noise of discontentment when she felt two arms wrap around her waist and Samuel shift so that his chest was resting against her back. The princess could tell by his tone of voice that he was half asleep and perhaps not fully aware or didn't care about what he was doing.
"I'm not sleeping yet because I'm not feeling tired." She answered plainly as she tried to shift into a slightly more comfortable position. Sharing a bed with someone thing, having said person intent on invading personal spacing by moving into such close proximity to each other. She didn't exactly know how extract herself however and didn't feel like arguing with him enough to get him to stop what he was doing.
"You should sleep. You need it before you get back to other things tomorrow." he half mumbled as he rested his face against the back of her head. The feeling of his breath against her hair made the hair on the back of her neck and arms stand on end. This was a feeling that she wasn't used to.
"Just go back to sleep. You need the rest more than I do. I'll be fine tomorrow regardless of how much sleep I get." The princess told him as she tried to shift his arm slightly on to have him wrap it tighter around her. What kind of amusing joke was fate trying to play on her by having her end up with someone who was so clingy and the exact opposite of her own personality at the same time?
Samuel said something else that she couldn't quite understand, however by the fact that he wasn't moving anymore and was being quiet beyond the feeling of his breath against her, she assumed this meant that he had fallen back asleep. She sighed inaudible. It would be a long time before she would consider sharing the same bed with him again after this. She would need time to adjust to this type of situation.
She didn't even know how she would be able to set up boundaries over this type of thing. She wasn't a very touchy person after what her uncle had done. Family was one thing, but strangers she hadn't been around much was something different. She knew that Samuel was completely harmless in his intentions and interactions with her, but her body reacted automatically and made her want to push back against it.
Although him touching her wasn't much better than others, she tried to not be so heavily against it since he wasn't technically doing anything wrong. His intentions were gentle compared to other people, she just didn't know how long it would take her to get over her aversion to such things. The current situation however was probably one step towards that even if she wasn't all that thrilled.
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