Page 25 of The Rat King
Cloaking myself with my power, I took a step closer. Then another. When I was so close I could hear her breathing, I splayed a hand across the bricks she leaned against and then edged it toward hers, which was also splayed wide, gripping onto the wall as if it could save her. If I moved a centimeter, our fingers would touch and there was something thrilling about the prospect. Like a fool, I couldn’t resist. Gently, I brushed the tip of her finger with my own. She jumped.
“Who’s there?” she asked, voice a gurgled cry as she white knuckled the strap of her backpack and gripped her cloak closed at her neck. Her head darted back and forth down the alleyway, only to find it empty. Then she gave a knowing look to the moon. “Shit,” she whispered.
The witch scurried down the alleyway, and I kept pace with her. When she reached the end, her head whipped both ways, and she rushed out into the street. Few travelers were roaming the roads, and no one paid the lone woman any mind as they were all off on their own mission to take advantage of the reprieve.
Where was she going? I got my answer whenever her attention shifted to the inn at the end of the street, standing a little off from the others. Had she stolen coin or was she planning to barter with the innkeeper at this hour?
She scurried down the street, keeping close to the right side, looked both ways again and crossed. The handle of the wooden slat door didn’t give as she rattled it. She reached for the metal knocker and knocked three times. The witch flicked her gaze anxiously up and down the street when the door finally creaked open and an aging woman with a wrinkled face and a grisly scar similar to my own ran across her nose. She said something to the innkeeper, then shifted her backpack around to the front and began digging inside. Pulling out what looked to be a silver bangle, she offered it to the woman, and gave her a pleading look before saying more things I couldn’t hear.
I had a few hours before I turned, and this just wouldn’t do. The innkeeper looked as if she were considering the trade, so I stepped out of the shadows, caught her attention, and gave a quick shake of my head that said,Do not let her in. The woman’s face screwed up into a look of distress and she worried her hands. When the witch understood her trade was being rejected, her shoulders lowered. The innkeeper shut the door with a click, and she lowered her eyes to the handle, which she must hear being locked from the other side.
Then she squared her shoulders and looked past the end of the row of buildings to the open field and the forest beyond. As she made her way through the field, her hands skimmed over the tops of the swaying wheat stalks and she hummed a tune I didn’t recognize. Probably something from her plane. It was a nice melody, and she had a soothing voice. I wondered if she even realized she was humming, or this was something she did when she was nervous. She definitely didn’t realize she was being followed. Yet.
The squelching of my boot sinking into a puddle of mud shattered the silent evening. Not even crickets chirped at this hour, and there was no way she hadn’t heard it. She froze and so did I. As if the wind sensed I had caught her, it kicked up, blowing at her back, toward the tree line, urging her forward.
She spun, and her cloak blew out around her, whipping back toward the trees in a gust. Her arms flew behind her as she tried to get a hold of the billowing garment and as she did, I studied her. The fabric hugged over every contour and dip, almost indecently. I’d never seen a woman wear such a thing. It left little to the imagination, only heightening my desire to chase her into a sharp-edged impulse. Seven months had passed, and our every interaction was still clear as when it had happened in my mind. I wanted her no less than I had the night of her wedding.
“Leave me alone,” she cried, and ran for the tree line. As I followed her, the image of that inch of warm skin along her waist that her outfit exposed warmed my mind. I wanted to run my fingers along it and lift the edge to see what was underneath. To see if she’d let me. She wasn’t like the other witches, so I had no idea what to expect from her. It wasn’t just the way she looked or her clothes. Or the way she painted her face, which was done with painstaking care. Her shocking pink lips, the black lines that swept up on her eyes alluding to the secrets hidden there. The quick mind and passionate soul I sensed lying in wait, needing a man like me to stoke it to life. Goddess, I was eager for the task.
“I know you’re out there, Nighval,” she said, brazenly stopping to scan the trees behind her, so sure in her rightness.
Hearing her call my name while her voice was laced with fear and a little of that edge she always had snapped whatever restraint I was clinging to. I dropped my magical cloak and let her see just how close I was. Her hand shot to her mouth, and she turned and sprinted through the forest. Her legs were long, but not nearly long enough to speed her away. I let her stay just enough ahead that I could give chase. Her boot caught on a twig, and she went down with a thud, the air bursting from her lungs as she hit the ground.
Get up, I mentally decreed. She did and as she shot a look back at me over her shoulder, I realized what she hid within her eyes. Anticipation.
“Run,” I said in a half growl, half whisper. When her body surged forward, things inside me that had long lay dormant came to life in a powerful burst. It was those things now controlling every forest eating step I took as I chased after her. Quickly, I overtook her, seizing her by the waist. I spun her, so she was facing me, hooked my thumbs in the straps of her pack and with a flick, I dropped it to the forest floor. I stepped forward, and she took a step back, scrambling over her pack. I took another step and another until her back hit a tree and she inhaled sharply.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly as her hands went to my chest and instead of shoving me away, they ran up a few inches until her fingertips grazed my collar bones.
Her eyes flicked from mine to my lips, even as her own parted. “Oh my God,” she breathed.
What I wouldn’t give to know exactly what was in her head at that moment. Except I had a feeling I knew because it was the same thing in my own. Before I could stop myself, I grasped her lower jaw. I tilted her head up, angling mine down over hers. Her hands went to my wrists, but she did not pull them away, so I pressed my lips to hers. My heart was beating so loud, if there were sounds of the forest, I couldn’t hear them. The only sensation I had was of her soft lips yielding beneath mine. Her mouth parted.
And then she kissed me back. The witch was kissing me back. Mybrother’swife was kissing me back. But I didn’t care. I deepened the kiss.
She moaned as our tongues brushed against each other, and I lost control. Her greedy hands went back to my chest and then up and around my neck as I pulled her body into mine, crushing her between me and the tree. I snaked my hand inside her cloak to her waist, to her hip, needing to feel her. A rush of warmth flooded through me, and my blood altered its course, surging between my hips. When I pressed myself into her, my cock was rock hard. She whimpered when she felt it, responding by tilting her hips to meet it. I almost staggered back when she raised her knee to the outside of my thigh. I knew what she wanted, and I gave it to her. I grabbed the crook of her knee and used it to pull us closer together as I ground into her, all the while I took from her mouth what I wanted.
Goddess, she tasted like cinnamon and honey. And a thousand dreams. She was moaning into my mouth as if she felt the same forbidden draw sparking between us. Because we shouldn’t be doing this. But I had always been a man who made my own rules, and I was going to take whatever this witch was willing to give me under the light of the full moon.
The word moon, the implication of it, snapped me out of the moment for a heartbeat. I ripped my mouth away from hers and shot my gaze to the damnable cosmic body that had long since crested overhead. I was nearly out of time, and I was going to need a long time to do the things that I wanted to do to this woman. It would be another month until I got the chance if I could find some way to get her away from my brother.
“Why’d you stop?” she asked, breathless. But she tracked the direction of my eyes, which were pointed to the heavens. Like a cold bucket of water had doused her flame, she blanched, dropping her leg. My hands fell, and hers went to her sides before they hugged her cloak around her, overlapping the seam like that could protect her.
“I have to get you back,” I heard myself say. I moved my fingers in the familiar pattern and a second later, we were standing in her bedroom. Her body was stiff with tension and as she scanned the room settling on her pack, a little of it eased, but was immediately regained when her eyes landed on Xavier.
“I found your bride,” I said, giving my brother a look that I knew didn’t hide the disdain I felt at whatever he did that had driven the woman away. He had seven months with her and though she had married him, their relationship seemed to be stalled. I didn’t feel guilty for taking the opportunity, and I wouldn’t feel guilty when I came back on the next full moon to see what else the witch would offer me. And not because of the curse. Because when she leaned her hips into mine, she wantedme. That was an aphrodisiac like no other.
I gave her one last look before I was moving my hands, and I was back in my study. And back in the clutches of the curse.
Chapter 18
Avery
OhGod.OhGod.Oh God. What did I do? I had been ready to do Goddess knows what with my husband’s brother, the exiled former king. The man who terrified me like no other. The man who stalked me all night then chased me through a fucking forest, pinned me up against a tree, and seemed all too ready to plunder his spoils instead of returning me to his brother.
It was the reason he followed me instead of just catching me and taking me back immediately. Because I knew it was him in that alleyway. I’d felt his presence like a lunar eclipse, creating a creeping shadow over me as I stole away in the night. A man like him would make a game of hunting me. And I loved it.
He was probably the reason the innkeeper didn’t let me in. Now that my head was clearing, I could remember her eyes flicking off somewhere behind me before she adamantly told me she had no room, despite the vacancy sign clearly displayed next to the door. He must have given her a look, a message demanding that I be turned away so he could have his little game. A shiver worked its way down my spine. I didn’t know what magic he used to lower my inhibitions because considering sleeping with him was something I would never do.
