“You should have stayed resting,” I scold him, pulling him toward the bed and lifting the covers with my free hand. “In.”
“I got tired of the cold.” He gives me another crooked smile before he lowers himself to the edge of the bed.
“Well, you should have thought of that before you created a freezing landscape.”
“I liked it,” he mumbles as he slides into the bed, boots and all. “Did you see the wolves? They were some of the last…”
His voice fades as his head hits the pillow and, before I can answer, his eyes are closed, his breathing even.
I reach under the bedsheets to tug off his boots and straighten his tunic, only for his arms to wrap around me and pull me down to his chest.
“I think there might be a little bit of wolf in me,” he murmurs as he slides his hands across the back of the sash, keeping my dress tied together, and nuzzles the corner of my lips.
I scowl down at him, trying not to lie too heavily on his chest. “You should sleep.”
“Fuck sleeping.”
He pulls me closer, the desire in his eyes heating my body, as his hands stroke up my back to tangle in my hair.
I respond by dropping a kiss to his lips. It’s a light touch, even though I want more.
“You’re in control, Caera,” he says, his voice husky when I break the contact. “As much or as little as you want.”
He continues to stroke my back up to my neck, his fingertips grazing the skin beneath my earlobes.
I’m still nestled mostly beside him and now I slip my legs to either side of his hips, straddling him, a position that could mean power but doesn’t feel that way.
I want him to survive. I want to give him vengeance—even though that vengeance is, at its heart, against me. I want hisbody. I want to let go of my fears, worries, and my control. Just once.
“I want everything,” I say.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
He gives me a lazy smile. “Okay, then.”
His fingertips stroke the side of my neck, the skin above my breasts, my shoulders, then my back, following the shape of my spine.
I lower my head to his, my lips exploring his jaw, his neck, his shoulders—as far as I can while he’s dressed.
Both of us learning the shape of each other’s bodies.
He wraps his arms around me so that he can sit up beneath me and I can slip his tunic off his head. When he rests back down, I undo the sash keeping my dress in place and let it fall to the sides, exposing the space between my breasts and my pelvis.
I’m not wearing a bra or underpants. I cut through them in the Underworld and this dress is all I took from the closet there.
His palm glides all the way up the center of my chest from my stomach to my jaw.
I notice the calluses on his palms. Hands that possibly worked hard before he became the keeper. Or maybewould haveworked hard if he’d had the time he deserved.
I welcome their rough texture. Welcome the heat they bring to my body as he explores the curve at my waist, tugging the material aside so that it cups my breasts, still not exposing them.
I trace the muscles of his chest, my fingers flexing against his skin as I memorize his form.This form. The one that might be truest to who he would have been.
Then I shrug off the dress.
He’s seen me fully naked before, but his lips part as if he’s seeing all of me for the first time, his gray-blue eyes drinking me in.
I drop my mouth to his, inhaling the scent of snow and apples, filling my head with a fragrance that might once have existed, but I’m certain it doesn’t anymore.
