He has been here in the wood for thousands of days, each one a scratched tally on his wall. Can I suppress whatever it is I feel for him for a few moments of bliss pressed against the side of the confessional?
Yes, I can.
“Kiss me.”
Ransom catches my lips with his own, sliding his mouth against mine and darting his tongue between my teeth. I mold myself against him, but there is too much fabric between us. Too much space. I want to feel him. Touch him.
I reach for his rumpled shirt when he deepens the kiss, drawing out another gasp. His teeth nick the delicate skin of my lip. I trail a finger up the sculpted planes of his stomach. Every inch of him burns.
Ransom breaks the kiss, catches my fingers in his own, and presses them behind my back.
“So greedy, Thorn.” His eyes are dark with lust and desire, and they stay trained on me while his fingers come to stroke my throat. They stay fixed on me when he pulls at my collar, exposing the pale skin, the salient bone. He leans closer, nips at the skin.
I suck in a breath, hips rocking forward.
“What if Bram comes back?” My voice is breathless.
Ransom growls into my throat. “What if he does? Are you going to stop me?”
I shiver. “No.”
“Good.”
When his mouth slides back over mine, desire replaces fear. Takes the place of guilt, anger, and my own deafening silence like an infection. Ransom tastes like every dark thought I have ever had. Deep and unholy. My fingers pull at his hair, his own trailing my collarbone, down along the small mounds of my breasts. I feel clumsy and yet wholly new. A freshly birthed calf blinking in the morning sunshine. Everything is bright and beautiful and mine for the taking. Not because I am kissing Ransom, but because there is danger dancing between us.
The true, sweet danger of having something finally worth losing.
And so, I do exactly that. I take it.
Hands outstretched, I push Ransom against the opposite wall, his hair falling messily into his eyes. He grins, a hungry thing, and there is a flash of something else there, a darkness humming just below his skin.
“Good girl.” His eyes shadow with something like black hellebore. “I like a woman who knows what she wants.”
And I know whathewants. Control, power. The need tohaveme.
I sink my lips into his, and he lets out a deep-throated groan. The gin on his breath is bitter but tastes like heaven. Nightshade berries and oleander.
Ransom’s hands curl up my spine, where the laces of my bodice are tied tight. He works to loosen them, andIthrandril, I want this, don’t I? This aching, throbbing need to get lost in another living soul. But deep down, my heart hungers for something different. Something I cannot name. Solidity, where Ransom feels like a plume of smoke. Here one instant and gone another.
I freeze. The desire heating my core wars with quick-spreading resignation. I pull away, breath coming hot and wicked fast.
“Ransom, I can’t.”
His hands drop from my back, and he shovels hair from his sweaty face.
“Why not?”
I rush to retie my laces, heat flushing my neck. “I got caught up. I—I can’t. I’m sorry.”
His face twists, hurt pooling in the color of his eyes. “You’re sorry? Ithrandril above, Adelaide, I thought—”
“I know.” Confusion courses through my veins. The sweat on my brow cools and sends a chill down my spine. “I just—I can’t. Everything is happening so fast, and to add this—” I gesture to his chest, where I know his heart is beating.Alive. “I can’t add this to all of it, not yet.”
He nods, though the disappointment is rutted in the contours of his face. “Sure, that’s fine.” Ransom stoops and retrieves his jacket off the floor, straightening the collar of his shirt, rebuttoning buttons I don’t even remember undoing.
My face flushes. “Ransom, I’m—”
He brushes past me. “I said it was fine.”
