“Why is me kissing someone so funny?” I ducked under his cuffed hands and stepped back, crossing my arms.
That shut up his laughter. “Believe me, Alabath. I think more about you kissing someone than I care to admit.” My breath caught at the implication darkening his voice. “But next time you kiss a beautiful immortal, I’d like to be present.”
“Sure, next time.” Now that I was away from his warmth, our reality set back in—starting with the pressing need to get out of this camp. “Is there a key for the cuffs?”
Tol shook his head. “Sealed magically.”
A shiver danced down my spine. “Kakias didn’t—what did she do?—”
“Not here.” Shadows danced in his eyes. I was afraid to learn the cause of them, but he bent to press a kiss to my forehead, and a bit of the tension in my shoulders loosened. “Let’s go.”
Swallowing my questions and the agony burning through me at Tol’s pain, I locked my fingers around the chain between his wrists and tugged him after me. He smirked but followed obediently.
“What?” I asked, heat rising to my cheeks.
“Nothing,” he laughed.
“Come on.” I jerked the chain forward, and he obliged.
Under the cover of night, we fled into the trees to meet Sapphire, my heart pounding but a bit fuller with Tolek breathing beside me.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ophelia
Sapphire seemedto be walking at her slowest possible pace.
“Come on, girl.” I flicked the reins, but she only ambled across the dirt. Once she’d gotten us far enough away from Aird and Kakias’s camp that we weren’t worried about being followed, she’d slowed to a stroll that she showed no sign of picking up.
With only one horse, Tol was forced to sit behind me, his legs braced on either side of my own, squeezing me to him, his cuffed hands looped around me.
“So impatient.” Tol’s arms flexed around my waist, and everything within me tightened in response.
“I want to get out of the open,” I breathed.
He looked up at the tightly interwoven branches, then around at the packed trees, sweeping cypher branches forming curtains around the path. “Yes, we’re very exposed here.” His whisper was hot against my neck, his stubble brushing my shoulder. “Relax.”
I sank into the low tenor of his voice, but I knew what he was doing. He was distracting me from every pressure that chased us through this forest. From the threats of the queen, the deals of the fae, and the chains still around his wrists. The links brushed against my stomach as he shifted, a jolt of unexpected chill shooting through my body. I hissed, leaning back into him.
“Sorry,” he laughed, moving his locked wrists forward so they didn’t touch my skin. But then his hands rested just between my legs, and I wished for the cold sweep of his chains to calm the heat budding within me. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“I know a place,” I whispered, my voice barely audible.
Tol’s bare chest brushed my back as I pressed further into him. How he still smelled good despite his time captured was truly a mystery to me. The spicy citrus scent mixed with the feeling of his muscular arms wrapped around me and his torso cushioning my back didn’t help the desire flooding between my legs.
His Spirits-damned smirk radiated against my shoulder, like he knew exactly how my body reacted to him.
Angels, with how attuned he was to me, he probably did.
“I think you have something that belongs to me,” he muttered.
He didn’t so much as brush his lips against my neck, though my hair was thrown over one shoulder. Didn’t even dare twitch his hands where they rested at the hem of my skirt.
No, Tolek Vincienzo was a tease.
“What’s that?” I hummed.
Slowly, his hands drifted to the sheath on my thigh, brushing my skin next to the Vincienzo dagger and giving me goosebumps. “This?”
