Like how she tasted when I licked her tattoo last night, as sweet as spun sugar. It took all of my decades of well-honed self-control to not hold her down and keep going until we were both sated.
I shake my head, trying to dislodge the image so I don’t grow half hard again.
Clearly, it’s been too fucking long since I was with a woman.
Remember where you were, I tell myself.Kneeling down on a pile of her dirty, discarded laundry.
There, that helps.
Meryn Sturmfrost is abad idea, regardless of how she tastes. Especially now that Siegrid is aware of our wolves’ mate bond and wants to use it against Meryn.
The beautiful woman at my side stares at me from atop her lithe brown direwolf, Ephyse. Noemi’s pale skin is as white as the snowy landscape around us, but her hair is a fiery slash against the quickly passing scenery.
Thankfully, we’re riding too hard and fast to talk out loud. Since Noemi is a Phylax, our wolves can’t speak to each other mind to mind.
I’m glad for the silence. Noemi has always been fucking nosy.
By the time we stop for the night to make camp, Noemi is clearly bursting with held-in conversation. I make her wait, scouting with Cratos up the road just to be certain we won’t have any unwelcome company. Noemi pitches our simple tents and gets the fire going.
Back at the site, she hands me a stick of cured meat and sets a rabbit Ephyse killed over the fire. My ass barely hits the ground before Noemi turns around, emerald eyes blazing with mischief, and sets right in.
“So Cratos has a mate,” she says delicately, but her glance at me is sharp and amused.
“He does,” I say shortly, ending the conversation.
“How’s that all been for you?” Noemi is intent on pushing this, it seems. Typical. “With, you know, the rider.”
“Complicated.”
Noemi’s full lips tilt upward in a playful smile, and she nudges my boot with hers. “Complicated, huh? You and I certainly know something about that.”
I knock my foot back against hers hard, and she almost topples over, laughing.
“Fine,” she says. “I’ll stop asking about it. For now.”
Ominous.
I sigh, guilt setting in. It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, and I’m conscious that I’m being a sullen asshole. She doesn’t deserve that.
“Look, there’s not much to tell,” I say, relenting. “There’s nothing going on between me and the queen, if that’s what you’re dancing around.”
My tongue on her soft skin. Her hazel eyes meeting mine, wide and glazed over with an expression I wanted to read into too much. Her hands, weaving into my hair, tugging me toward her…
Her messy. Fucking. Rooms.
There’s nothing going on, and there never will be.
My mind darts back to the power she showcased, the shadows whipping around her like a violent, glorious whirlwind. The terror she inflicted in others and the fascination it unfurled in me. Even now the memory makes my blood run hot.
My vicious instincts meeting her total lack of control… it’s a spark meeting the match that could burn down the kingdom.
“Mm-hmm.” Noemi’s brows are raised, her expression disbelieving. She turns and pokes at the fire again.
She knows me too well.
We grew up together in my great-aunt’s household. Siegrid dumped me with her Aunt Gertrude the moment her body was healed enough from birth to head back to the front. The Phylax soldier who sired me was dead before I was born.
Gertie collected wards, and Noemi was one of several who came in and out of the house over the years—but she was the only one who stayed for good. Her father didn’t want her, and her mother was a wartime casualty by the time she was six.
