She’s watching me watch them. Her expression says she knows exactly what I was thinking.
Busted. And not even sorry about it.
Except it looks like she was almost thinking the same thing.
I clear my throat. “Drink?”
I’m a gods damn Wild Court guardian, staring at the woman my line swore to protect, and I’m fucking tongue-tied.
It might be way too bold to tell her I’ve been hard as a rock for hours and need some kind of relief.
“Ah,” Ash looks around the grove before settling back to me. “I’m actually going to find a place to relieve myself.”
She is so damn cute. Her cheeks blush a little.
“There’s a pee spot over there.” I point through the trees. “Outhouses.”
“Well at least I don’t have to pee on a plant.”
“True. In the woods here the plant might bite you back.”
“Comforting.”
“I’m a comfort-giving kind of guy.”
I turn my body when she walks by, as though she is my sun and I orbit around her.
Which I do.
I watch her disappear between the trees before turning back to the fire and the dancing and the laughter.
Then down at my dick.
Fuck.
Holding her like that for that long—her weight against me, her scent in my lungs, her laugh vibrating through my spine—and not being able to bury myself inside her?
I need to get this out of my system before I do something stupid. Like follow her to that outhouse and take her against a tree.
I growl and stomp off toward the tree line. In the opposite direction of her. Finn and Kieran huddle near the fire, heads bent together in deep discussion.
Well if they don’t see me then Ash can’t ask where I went and honestly I just need a moment.
Once out of the circle of trees, the forest closes in on me.
I let it.
The Dark Forest knows Wild Court blood. It parts for me the way it doesn’t for the others—branches shifting, roots flattening,the undergrowth exhaling to make room. Not welcoming. Never welcoming. But acknowledging. The way an old wolf acknowledges another predator passing through its territory.
I’ve missed this. Being recognized by something older than the courts. Something that doesn’t care about politics or prophecy or the fact that I’m currently aching enough to hammer nails.
I thrash deeper into the trees, grumbling, because I’m so hard I might hurt myself with my own dick. And now is not the time. We’re in a death forest. We have enemies on every side. Ash is?—
Ash is back there laughing like she used to. Letting me carry her. Letting me touch her.
That’s the problem. That’s exactly the fucking problem.
Groaning, I stumble toward a small clearing to the right. Not hidden—nothing is truly hidden in the Dark Forest. But private enough. The moss here glows faint blue-green, and the air smells like wet earth and something ancient. Sacred, almost.
