Page 39 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

Her lips parted just slightly, breath catching as the tips of her ears turned a lovely rosy color. Her thumb brushed my hand, a fleeting caress that might’ve been a trick of my mind, before she snatched her hand back. Then Lunette sprang to her feet with such force that her chair clattered to the floor with a resounding crash.

Muffin growl-hissed, jumping down from his perch and landing on the bed, ready to fight whatever had flustered his lady.

“Time to clean up and get ready for another healing,” she said briskly, shattering the moment so abruptly that my disappointment was a physical sensation—like tripping over my own feet.

“I can help,” I said automatically. Moving would help me tuck everything I’d just learned away into a nice, safe, quiet corner of my mind. It might also distract me from the battle over my attraction to her that I was currently losing.

“No, you need to rest,” she muttered under her breath, but fondly. “Straining yourself now will only make my healing work harder.”

I waited until she was distracted with the washing up and slipped outside. The air was cold enough to clear my head. And with clarity came the realization that my previous suspicions about her being an Assembly agent or a Gelidian sympathizer were absurdly wrong. Lunette was exactly who she appeared to be: a healer with too much kindness and too little safety.

When I returned inside, she was humming again while finishing the cleaning. It was a soft sound, perfectly on key, so gentle it wrapped around the darker corners inside me and pressed them into stillness. Absolutely lovely. I wondered if she even realized she was doing it.

Once I’d mistaken her singing for death calling me. Now I knew how wrong I’d been. It was the sound of truly living. I also realized how right I’d been in my prediction—she was the most enchanting person I’d ever beheld.

And not just because of her physical beauty, though that was undeniable.

She gave so much, risked so much, all while asking for nothing in return. Her humor was as sharp as any blade. Her patience, endless. I couldn’t wait to learn what else there was to this moon-born goddess.

Back inside and ready to tuck in for the night, I stubbornly lowered myself to the floor, but she immediately rounded on me. “Bed. Now.”

“But you—”

“No. Bed. We’ll share.”

I had commanders with less authority in their voices. Something in me obeyed instinctively before my mind caught up. Moving ungracefully, I swallowed the unmanly yelps pain tried to force from me.

Reluctantly, I scooted onto the mattress, pressing myself tightly into the corner to give her room. This was going to be…intimate. Too intimate because there wasn’t enough space to form a physical barrier of pillows between us. My pulse quickened with a nervous flutter.

This night might turn out to be torture.

She lingered at the edge of the room, putting out the candles one by one, wiping her hands on her apron almost compulsively. She’s nervous too. The realization that I wasn’t alone in this eased the ache in my ribs.

In a moment of utter idiocy, I asked, “You’re going to sleep in your dress?”

She looked down as if noticing her own body for the first time. “Well… I have been these past few nights.”

Heat crawled up my neck. “I’ve already taken so much of your generosity—and now your comfort. Please, Lunette. Make yourself comfortable.”

She looked down at her dress again. “Okay…”

She crossed to a different trunk and pulled out a bundle of cloth before hesitating, glancing at me from beneath her lashes. “I’m just going to…uh…”

I slapped a pillow over my face. “Safe now,” I said into the stuffing. Gods preserve me.

Fabric rustled. The trunk shut. My entire body strained with the desire to look—agony in its purest form.

“All right,” she finally said, voice light. “Ready.”

I lowered the pillow.

And promptly forgot how to breathe.

The men’s trousers she wore were a sleek second skin, hugging the curves of her hips and thighs as if they’d been tailored to destroy me. On top, she wore a long-sleeved shirt that tightened just beneath her breasts, lifting them up to kiss the low neckline. She was… She was—

I swallowed hard, fighting the blood surging to my groin. How my cock could stand at full mast with how I’d been feeling, I didn’t know, but it seemed eager to prove that it could.

Unaware of my current dilemma, she turned to grab another pillow from the trunk. And the trousers pulled tight over the curve of her backside in a way that shattered my self-control outright. I was promptly straining at the seams of my borrowed trousers like a stag in rut.