Instead, I pushed the blankets aside and stood, compelled to investigate against my better nature.
The air in the room cooled my overheated skin, raising goosebumps along my arms. I crossed to the door on unsteady legs, my hand hovering over the latch for a long moment before I finally pulled it open.
I began moving down the stairs, slowly, cautiously. My hand gripped the stone wall for balance as I descended, each step careful, deliberate, my heart pounding so hard I was certain they would hear it even over their own sounds.
The noises grew louder as I moved lower, more distinct now, no longer muffled by stone and distance. A rhythmic percussion—flesh against flesh—punctuated by ragged breathing and low, broken curses that made something clench deep in my belly.
And beneath it all, woven through the air like smoke, came their scents.
Thane’s hit me first—warm leather and cedar, clean sweat and hearth embers, all the comfort notes that had made my body ease earlier now sharpened with something raw and masculine that I didn’t have a name for. It wrapped around me, sinking into my lungs, and I drew a deeper breath without meaning to.
Malric’s followed—cold steel and winter rain, smoky pine, darker and more dangerous, threaded with an edge that made my pulse spike and my stomach flip. Where Thane’s scent offered comfort, Malric’s demanded something I wasn’t sure I could give.
Together, they saturated the air, mingling and intensifying until I could taste them on my tongue.
A sharp cry—Thane’s voice, I thought, though I’d never heard him sound like that. Raw. Desperate. Beautiful in its abandon.
Then Malric’s voice, rough and commanding, words I couldn’t quite make out but that sent shivers down my spine anyway.
I should turn back. I knew I should turn back.
I kept going.
The staircase opened onto the lower level, and I stopped at the edge of the landing, my breath caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat.
They were there.
In the bare stone chamber where they’d first entered, illuminated by the faint magical light that always seemed to emanate from the tower’s walls. My mind struggled to process what I was seeing, the images fragmenting and reassembling in ways that didn’t quite make sense.
Malric. Thane. Together.
Malric had Thane pressed against the wall, his body a solid line behind him, one hand braced beside Thane’s head, the other gripping his hip hard enough that I could see the tension in his fingers. Thane’s hands were flat against the stone, his head thrown back against Malric’s shoulder, his mouth open on gasping breaths that formed words I couldn’t hear.
They were moving together, Malric’s hips driving forward in a rhythm that made Thane cry out, the sound echoing off the stone walls and straight into my chest.
I had never seen anything like this.
The books had described it in flowery, vague language that gave me impressions but no real understanding. This was visceral. Real. The muscles in Malric’s back flexing with each thrust, the sweat gleaming on Thane’s skin, the way their bodies fit together as if they’d been made for this.
Heat flooded through me, so sudden and intense that my knees weakened.
My hand flew to the wall for support, and the movement—or perhaps the sound of my sharp inhale—drew their attention.
Malric’s head whipped around, his eyes pinning me in place, dark and fierce and utterly unapologetic.
Thane’s gaze followed a heartbeat later, storm-bright and glazed with pleasure that didn’t fade even as awareness flickered across his face.
For a frozen moment, none of us moved.
My scent spiked, the sweetness that had been subtle before now blooming sharp and undeniable—silver blossom and warm honey flooding the chamber, announcing my presence, my reaction, everything I couldn’t control.
Something changed in Malric’s expression. His nostrils flared. His grip on Thane tightened.
Thane made a sound low in his throat, his eyes darkening further as my scent reached him.
Pain lanced through my stomach.
Sharp. Sudden. Cramping so hard that I doubled over with a gasp, one arm wrapping around my middle as the other hand scrabbled at the wall for purchase. The heat that had been building all evening suddenly intensified, no longer a low warmth but a blazing need that burned like it might consume me from the inside out.
