The bright mid-morning sun hurts my eyes, and I squint, giving myself time to adjust from the dim interior of the inn. I want to go back inside, find somewhere dark and quiet, and not think about anything for a very long time.
Instead, I walk.
The fae … no,Cairn… falls into step slightly behind me, taking up that submissive posture again. The glamoured collar sits tight against his throat. To anyone watching, he’s just a fae following its mistress through town.
I know better.
I know what his mouth feels like on my skin. What his hands feel like on my body. What sounds he can draw from me when he puts his mind to it.
This is wrong. All of it is wrong. He isfae. He took me prisoner. He’s threatened to kill me more than once. The fact my body responded to him meansnothing. It’s biology.Instinct. The animal part of my brain reacting to stimulation.
It doesn’t mean I really wanted it.
Itcan’tmean that.
We leave the town behind without anyone stopping us, following the road as it passes the last of the farms and into the open countryside. The sun climbs higher. My feet ache in the new boots, and the heat between my thighs slowly fades, leaving behind an odd emptiness that feels worse.
I keep my eyes on the road ahead. I don’t want to look at him, or think about what happened in that room. I don’t want to think about the sounds I made, or replay the way my body arched into his touch like it had been waiting for exactly that. So, we walk in silence. He sets the pace, and I follow.
That’s how it works now. This is what my life has become.
When the road curves, he stops, and because I’m not payingattention to where he is, I almost walk into him.
“What—”
He’s moving off the road, and down the slight bank toward where a stream is running. I hesitate, then follow, because doing otherwise means risking him chasing me down. And I’ve been there before. I know how that ends.
He stops where the stream widens and slows, pooling into a deeper section where the current eddies against a rocky outcrop. The road isn’t visible from here, trees rising to shield it from any travelers passing by.
He crouches at the edge and cups crystal-clear water in his hands, drinking deeply. I do the same a few feet away, the cold making me gasp. When I next look up, Cairn is pulling his shirt over his head.
I blink.
His back is a map of scars. Old ones, silvered with age, crossing over each other in patterns. The muscles beneath them shift as he moves, dropping the shirt on the bank. He strips out of the pants, and wades into the water until it reaches his waist.
The cold doesn’t seem to bother him. He ducks under the surface and comes up with water streaming down his face, pushing his hair back with both hands. The motion pulls his shoulders taut, and water runs down his chest, tracing the lines of muscle and ridges of scar tissue.
His hands move over his arms, chest and neck washing away the gods know how many years of grime, and he dunks himself under water again … and again, throwing his head back every time he surfaces. His hair untangles a little more with each pass, hanging past his shoulders, black and heavy with water.
As the dirt washes away from his skin, dark lines appear. They flow around his arms, his shoulders, over his chest and down, disappearing beneath the waterline.
They’re not scars, though. They’re patterns, and?—
“If you’re going to stare, you could at least try to be less obvious about it.” There’s a cold note to his voice.
My face floods with heat, and my gaze snaps up to his face. He’s not looking at me, his attention on his hands, scrubbing at his forearms.
“I wasn’t?—”
“You were.” He glances up. “I know that look.”
“You couldn’t evenseeme.”
“And yet …”
The words bring up memories of the seamstress touching him, and the serving girl licking her lips.
Is that what I looked like just now?
