Slaide stood, sighing, and offered Hazel his arm. “I guess we’d better be off. Wouldn’t want to keep His Majesty and the princeling waiting. Besides, if you keep looking at me like that, I might just forget we’re in public and take you here, for everyone to see.”
Hazel’s eyes grew wide at that. Slaide wondered if her body and mind protested as much as his did, tired of these moments being cut short just when they were gettinggood,but she accepted his offering and stood, allowing Slaide to pull her in close.
As they approached the archway leading back inside, they could see that Magnus had come down from his place of honor on the dais and was mingling with various lords. He hadn’t made it to the stage yet.
Slaide grabbed Hazel with a force that made her squeal, causing him to clamp a hand down over her mouth. He shuffled her over to the shadows and pushed her through a door. Only then did he remove his hand as he pressed her up against the room’s inner wall with the weight of his body.
“Slaide,” she panted, “What are you doing?” Her voice was not quite a whisper.
He pulled back momentarily, placing his hands above her on the wall. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but after what happened just now, I think I speak for both of us when I say we have unfinished business.” He searched her eyes for any indication he was wrong. “The princeling can wait.”
In the span of a breath, she had her hands on him. She grappled for his shirt, pulling him against her body and wrapping her arms around his neck. She kissed him greedily as though he was the very thing sustaining her; the only thing that could keep her alive. And he was glad for it.
Slaide pulled away again, his absence met with a groan of protest from a rather flustered Hazel. He smirked at her, savoring the way she looked when she was coming undone.
She reached for him again, and he stepped back, wagging his finger at her. All around him, the shadows lengthened, and began to move on their own.
Slaide put his hands in his pockets as his shadows leaked off of him and made their way toward her, crawling across the ground and up the wall. With a flick of his fingers, his shadows had her arms secured above her head. One shadow curled lazily about her neck, its tendril drifting daringly close to the slit in her dress. Only then did Slaide step back into her space.
He leaned in, placing delicate kisses up her neck and cupping one breast in his hand. He rolled his thumb over the fabric of her bodice, feeling her nipple peak beneath it. He groaned as she arched her back off the wall, as if needing to feel more of him.
He pulled back for a moment and whispered into her ear. “Hazel, if at any point you want me to stop, you know you can say so, right? Just say the word and these are gone in an instant,” he gestured to his shadows. “Don’t get me wrong, I want toruinyou, but the last thing I want to do is to hurt or scare you. Just say the word.”
“Don’t…” She breathed heavily.
He pulled away further, waiting for the rest. Waiting for the command to back off, for the moment when it all came crashing down that this was too much, too fast and most certainlynotthe right time.
“Don’t!” She hissed, “Don’t stop.”
So, he didn’t.
Slaide came unleashed. He released Hazel from the wall and spun her so she was facing away from him. Without hesitation, he undid the corset back of the dress’s bodice, his fingers moving furiously as he stifled the urge to rip the damned thing to shreds.
His hands grabbed desperately at the bodice as he kissed her, trying to pull it down. To access the woman before him without so much cumbersome fabric between them. But she stopped him from going any further.
“No,” she panted between kisses up the column of her neck. “Leave it on. We can’t stay in here all night.”
Slaide groaned his displeasure but made no more attempts to remove the dress. Instead, he pushed her to the wall again.
And then he dropped to his knees, immediately grappling with her skirts.
“What in the name of the gods are you doing?” She reached for him, but with a snap of his fingers, her wrists were snatched by his shadows again and kept at bay.
He looked up at her with a devilish smirk.
“Tell me, Hazel. How does it feel to bring a witch hunter to his knees?”
She gasped, her mouth parting, but no words escaped.
“That’s what I thought,” he growled, his expression growing dark. “Now, be a good witch and let meendyou the way you deserve.” His voice was smooth as silk.
Hazel folded. She didn’t balk when he uttered the word witch; didn’t protest such slander. She also didn’t resist when he found his way beneath her dress.
But before he could continue, the door crashed open.
And in the doorway stood Ezekiel Bertram.
“Hazel?” Zeke asked, his voice shaky with uncertainty.
