I don’t let go of him, even once it’s done. Maurice takes his hand from our cocks and rests his cheek against my shoulder, the embrace so gentle that I can hardly reconcile it with all the things he was saying to me before.
But there was gentleness in that too, wasn’t there? In what he wants to take from me. In what he wants togive.
My eyes are closed when I turn my head, but Maurice knows what I want. He kisses me, teasing brushes of our lips, and then lowers me back to the ground again, settling over my body.
“We should go back,” he says, a while later. It is still dark—we still have a few hours—and, recklessly, part of me wants to remain until the sun comes up. Maurice sighs when I don’t move, nuzzling his face against my chest.
“I know,” I reply when I feel he is going to remind me, again. “I know, just…”
“I know.”
It makes little sense that we both should feel this way. Maurice has not been by my side for long, and what we have is something I would hardly dare call a friendship.
Yet, I know what Ifeel. What I feel is that I do not wish to let him go.
He remains lying on top of me for a few more minutes before he climbs gracefully to his feet. I push up onto my elbows to watch as he tucks himself back in, then retrieves his shirt, shrugging into it without apparently paying mind to the grass stains all up the back. I grimace. Mine will not have fared any better; being white, in fact, means I’m sure those stains will last.
Once dressed again, though certainly not presentable, Maurice walks back over to me and holds out a hand to help me get to my feet. He helps me straighten up my clothes, too, always close and never quite getting in the way.
“Come on,” he says once we’re both dressed and takes my hand to lead me back to the clan house.
We don’t talk the entire way, and we enter via the side entrance when we arrive because I do not want anyone to break through this bubble we’ve created. Of course it cannot last. I need to change, so I lead the way to the hall where both our rooms are located and, once there, Maurice pauses, looking at me.
“Will you be here tomorrow night?” I ask though I am certain I know the answer. “Before you leave, I mean, will you say goodbye?”
The smile he wears is soft and false, and it hurts in a way I can’t quite define. “We both know that’s not the best idea, don’t we?”
“Yes.”
He kisses my cheek, pressing close for just a second before he steps back. “I’ll be here tonight,” he says, “since I have to pack my things anyway. If you need anything…”
I won’t. I am safe here, and anything else… I won’t.
“Goodbye, Maurice,” I say, and he takes a deep breath, stepping back and neatly out of my reach.
“Goodbye, Njáll.”
Chapter Nineteen
Maurice
Ittakeseverythinginme to leave the clan house and head to the Wild Hunt’s base the next night, and at the time, I write it off as a fluke. It has been a long time since I have slept with someone I have a more emotional connection with, and I dolikeNjáll, despite my initial reluctance to be assigned to him.
But a week later, I still do not feel fully settled.
It makes little sense! I work alone. I always have, except for some outlying cases that have required two or three hunters to subdue. So being alone now should be no trouble.
Only it is. I wake a few times per day, thinking that I should be somewhere else, should be ensuring someone else’s safety. The hunt I am on is—not fruitless, not exactly, but it is tiring having to chase down all these fae the Huntsman has me after, to toss them back through the veil one by one.
I do not know how the others are faring. Vlad is the only one of us who remains in London, with Grant, of course, by his side. Asher is somewhere in Wales, though it is beyond me what he is investigating. Jeremiah and Paxton were in the east of England last I checked, but Jeremiah has always been efficient with his jobs, and I do not for a second think Paxton slows him down.
I frown as I realise. Only Asher and I still work alone. Rook and Saide came into the Huntsman’s clutches as a pair, I am certain, but after that, he picked us off solo. Jeremiah, me, Moreau, Vlad, Asher… There are likely others, too, hunters I have never met.
Jeremiah has Paxton now, as though the Huntsman chose a hunter for him to keep. And the Huntsman himself has always remained close by Moreau’s side, though I am not certain if Moreau knows justhowclose. Vlad found himself a turn, one the Huntsman has allowed to survive, and I…
It would not work with Njáll. He is, first and foremost, the clan’s crai. He might talk about his unsuitability for that role, but he is wrong—he will grow into it with time, and truthfully, I agree with Vasile. Njáll will be a better leader than he could have ever hoped for.
He would not want to hunt fae, I don’t think, as I wander through the ruins of a castle long since abandoned. I am no necromancer, but I fancy I hear the spirits calling to me, ghosts of bloody battles fought centuries before even I was born.
