“What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” she complained. “Just a splinter.”
“Let me see,” he said.
Cordelia frowned up at him. “It’s fine.”
“Let me see,” he insisted, coming closer.
She leaned back against a weight-bearing pole, still solid, and reluctantly held her hand out. He smiled down and with tender precision gripped the protruding end of the splinter, pulling it swiftly out. Cordelia cursed again.
“There,” he said, laughing. “All better.”
Cordelia cut her eyes away. His nearness made her unsteady on her feet. She was grateful for the pole.
Gordon leaned an arm against it and looked down, the heat of his breath on her skin, his eyes searching.
A thrill rolled through her, sparking and blooded, eating her control. She touched a finger to the tattooed woman on his arm. “Who is this?”
“Marzanna.”
“Your band?”
A wisp of hair fell into his face. She itched to stroke it. “It was named after her. She’s the Slavic goddess of winter. Mybabci—my great-grandmother—was from Poland. She would tell me stories about dragons and vampires and ghosts who roamed the streets of Warsaw. She used to tell me about the spring festivals where they would throw an effigy of the goddess into the river to symbolize the end of winter.”
Emboldened, she reached for the snake twisting around his other arm and ran her fingers across its scales. “Any special significance for this one?” she asked, turning her eyes up to his.
Gordon shivered beneath her touch. His jaw clenched. “Snakes are the keepers of the underworld,” he said, eyes tracing down the slope of her nose, across the pout of her lips. “They’resynonymous in many cultures with birth, death, and resurrection.”
Her fingers danced lightly up the side of his neck along the great, curling horns of the ram’s skull. All the words backed up in her throat.
Gordon closed his eyes, arm trembling. When he opened them again, they blazed with hunger.
She put her mouth to his, feeling the softness of his lips fall between her own, his body pressing along hers, hands gripping her hips, his tongue a sweet intrusion as she yielded to him. Her insides exploded in a rush of desire, mind swept deliciously blank. Gordon filled her senses—his deep, earthy scent, the power in his body, the hardness of him straining against her. Her fingers curled in the loose strands of his hair, and she pushed herself against the pillar of his chest.
She forgot entirely about haunted houses and family secrets and men who hide their cruelty behind a practiced smile.
Until the slam of the barn door jolted them apart.
They both turned to see it bounce open again.
“Stay here,” he told her as he went to investigate.
She feared the bear he mentioned was back.
He looked out, listening intently, then stepped into the chickweed. Cordelia held her breath. A moment later, he poked his head back in and motioned for her to join him.
She followed him into the sticky afternoon. There was no bear. No wind. The leaves on the trees were as stiff as if they’d been carved from jade, the air lifeless and secretive.
Gordon rubbed the back of his neck. “Not sure what that was.”
In the barn, she’d felt consumed by him, carnal and rapacious behind the screen of decaying wood. Now, under the brazen sun, she felt forward, a fallen woman, serpent-tongued. Even if she wanted to recapture the moment—and certainly something in her did—she wasn’t sure how.
Cordelia cleared her throat. “I guess we should be getting back. Eustace is probably wondering about me.”
He stepped away from her, and the heat between them cooled like slowly hardening lava. “Right. After you.”
As they walked back, Gordon fell farther and farther behind. When Cordelia reached the porch steps, he wasn’t with her at all.
