His fingers tilted my chin, guiding me up into his stare. “It wasn’t the punch, Verena.”
The way my name left him was enough to press into my bones. His gaze dropped, shoulders shifting with a weight I almost felt across my own.
It wasn’t the punch. Of course it wasn’t. His body hadn’t staggered from the strike of my fist, but from what had snapped when I pushed away from him. He hadn’t shoved me off, hadn’t cared who was watching. He’d wrapped me in the steel of his arms and held until I was the one who let go.
My voice lodged somewhere in my throat, I couldn’t say the truth out loud, yet Ronan heard the words anyway. The bond made fools of our secrets that way.
He laughed under his breath, turning away, the rigid planes of his back tightening under the moonless dark.
“Ronan, you know we can’t—” I began, but the confession died on my lips.
In a breath, his hands were leveled beside my head, pinning me against the wall so that the world narrowed to the space between us. His eyes were stormwater. Dark, fathomless, and utterly not mine to meet. Heat coiled along my spine, my skin humming with it.
“Do you think I can’t smell you?” His voice dropped until the gravel was gone, and only hunger remained. “That sweet, dangerous wanting that I know is yours.” Every part of him leaned into me, until his lips ghosted over my mouth. “Do you think I don’t hear every filthy thing that crawls through that beautiful head of yours?”
The words slipped between us, an accusation braided with desire. For a sliver of a second, an impossible, vulnerable instant, I wanted to tell him everything. To hand him the mess of me and see if he could hold it without burning.
Instead, I swallowed it all.
Heat crept up my neck, my cheeks flaming, the intimacy still feeling too foreign. I slammed my shields into place, suppressing the need that had unfurled in my ribs, but the bond shrugged them aside. His smile softened then, eyes heavy.
“Please stop scenting me,” I said. But my want spoke louder than my sense, my body leaning back into him.
He moved with me, his mouth grazing the shell of my ear. A shiver charged through me as his breath trailed down my neck.
Boots crunched over stone nearby, a merciful interruption. Everyone in this camp was immortal, with ears sharp enough to indulge in every whisper if they lingered too long.
Ronan didn’t seem to care as he murmured, “With the aroma you’re radiating right now, I’d wager you don’t mind.” His arm dropped, skimming mine, bumps flaring in its wake.
I cleared my throat. “It’s just...”
The next words lodged under my tongue. I’m fated to death. I’ll end up destroying us both. The last man I’d trusted in such an affectionate way had become my tormentor. That memory tightened my chest. I let it sit, unspoken, as Ronan’s nose traced down the line of my jaw, lips brushing against the hollow of my throat. My breath hitched, and then, in the distance—
“Have you seen Verena?” Killian’s voice, muffled but far too close, lurking through the canvas walls.
Ronan froze, head snapping toward the veil, eyes burning like he could cut through it.
“I thought she was with you, doing patrol?” Ford answered.
Ronan’s fingers slipped lower, daring, curling along the inside of my thigh. The sound that escaped me was swallowed by the night.
“She was earlier. If you see her, tell her I need her.” Killian’s voice drifted off, footsteps fading.
The pause that followed was brutal.
Ronan turned back to me. “What is it, huh?” His voice roughened. “Is it still your false hatred that keeps your denial so sharp?” I hadn’t spoken, but my mind had. The bond tugged, the truth spilling down it while his mouth curved. “Do you know what it does to me,” he murmured, the vein in his throat pulsing, “to watch you and Killian?”
I pushed against his chest, but he only traced his thumb along my hip, grounding me to him. “There is nothing between me and Killian,” I snapped.
His smirk deepened. “I can smell him on you.”
Heat burned up my neck, shame and fury mixing into one. What exactly did he think he smelled? Lips curling, I bared my teeth. “Are you sure it isn’t your own jealousy?”
I reached for him, fingers outlining the scars etched across his chest. Some he could have healed, I realized. Others must have cut too deep to ever fade entirely. My eyes drifted lower, unbidden, to his thigh, where my blade had once found him. Then up, catching on the nick along his ear, the mark I’d left on my second attempt. The scar on his leg was hidden. But the mark on his ear could be seen faintly in the light.
“I keep them as reminders,” he said when he noticed. His hand lifted, knuckles trailing the curve in my hip. “Each mark. To remember I gave them a chance before ending them.”
Melodramatic bastard.
