ALLERIA
I’m still sittingon the table when the entrance flap settles back into place behind Cairn, holding my tunic closed with one fist. I can feel the cold air against my skin … skin that’s still flushed, still sensitive, and still wet from his mouth.
My hands won’t stop shaking. No matter how much I try, I can’t get the fasteners to catch properly, and every time I look down, I see the marks he left on my breasts and have to start over.
My body won’t calm down. The ache between my thighs hasn’t faded. I press my legs together, and that just makes it worse, sending a jolt of sensation through me that makes my breath catch.
I finally get the fastenings closed, and slide off the table. My legs hold,barely.
Therin’s face keeps swimming up in my memory. The way he looked at me, sprawled across the table with my tunic hanging open and Cairn’s hand down my pants. The amusement in his voice.
Well, this is new.
And I keep seeing Cairn’s face in that moment. The way his head snapped up, his fingers still moving between my thighs. His pupils were blown wide, his breathing ragged. When he told Therin to get out, his voice came out as a snarl, strained in a way I’ve never heard before.
He didn’t step back immediately either. He stayed where he was, between my thighs, his hand still pressed against me, and for a moment I thought he was going to ignore Therin entirely, and finish what he’d started.
But he didn’t. He pulled away, told me to stay here, and walked out without looking back.
That was hours ago. The light through the shelter walls has faded from gold to silver to black, and he hasn’t returned. No one has been into the shelter, except for Serath, who slipped in at some point with a bowl of broth and bread, and left without a word.
I should eat. IknowI should. But the thought of swallowing anything makes my stomach churn, so the broth sits there cooling while I stare at nothing.
I can still feel him. My body won’t let me forget the ghost of his mouth on my throat and breasts. The pressure of his fingers sliding between my thighs … and the sound that came out of me when he touched me there.
I was so close. I wassoclose my back arched off the table, my body wound so tight I could barely breathe?—
The Hell-Thorn of the Wild Hunt spread me across his table and put his hands on me, and I didn’t fight. I didn’t eventry. I arched into his touch and begged for more.
And he knew I would.
The knowledge makes me want to claw my own skin off.
I was so close, and if Therin hadn’t walked in, I would have let him finish.
This is how I hid. This is how I survived. I became the thing they couldn’t resist.
He was showing me that I’m no different from the women who owned him. That despite everything—the collar around my neck, the days of kneeling at his feet, knowing what he is and what he’s done—he canstillmake me want him.
It was a demonstration of his power. His control.
Except … he didn’tlookcontrolled when Therin interrupted. He looked like a man who’d lost himself in something he hadn’t expected to find.
Thousands of human noblewomen. And not one of them thought to ask what I was called.
But what would they have done if they’d known who he was? Would they have put him to death? Or would they react the same way I did under his touch?
Because even knowing he’s killed thousands, that he led the charge at Therison Vale, that he's older than my kingdom … That he’s the Lord of the Wild Hunt … Istillwrithed on his fingers.
I curl onto my side and pull the blanket over my head, but sleep doesn’t come. Every time I close my eyes, I’m back on the table, his weight on me, his mouth trailing down my throat, and his hand sliding beneath my pants. I feel myself getting wet again at the memory, and the shame of it burns through me.
The night crawls past. I drift in that weird space between waking and dreaming, never quite settling into either, and slowly the night outside the shelter lightens to early morning.
Dawn. Or close to it, anyway.
My body aches from lying still for so long. My eyes are gritty, and my mouth is dry. The broth Serath brought is still sitting on the table, a skin formed across the top of it. I should have eaten it.
But it’s just one decision in a long line of many I shouldn’t have made.
