Текст книги "Alien god"
Автор книги: Ursa Dox
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 29 страниц)
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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Wylfrael
I have made a gross miscalculation.
It was a brief spark of a thought, quickly extinguished in a tide of hungering sensation.
Curse this woman.
Curse her challenging eyes, now half-closed in a feverish daze. Curse her succulent skin, the fragrant waft of her scent, the little panting sounds she made that went straight to my groin. She’d gone pliable in my hold, under the stroking of my tongue and grazing of my teeth, her pride and daring melting away like the last snows of spring.
I cursed myself, too. Cursed my body for not withstanding this, for not maintaining the cool distance I so badly needed. My cock was hard and urgent and aching, leaving me feeling as out of control as an untried youth.
“I’ll just... I’ll just slip out, then,” Ashken said gruffly from very near to us. I froze, and Torrance’s arm went rigid in my grasp. I hadn’t noticed Ashken getting so close. I was entirely beguiled by Torrance and her ridiculously breakable, absurdly kissable wrist, lost to everything else.
I wanted to drop her arm, like it was something repellant I’d found in my hold quite by mistake. But that wouldn’t exactly look like the act of a loving husband. Instead, I carefully detached my mouth from her skin and lowered her arm. She tugged slightly, but I didn’t let go, instead sliding my grip until I held her hand. She inhaled sharply when my fingers settled around hers.
Oh, no, my little bride. I’m not letting you go that easily.
“It’s alright, Ashken. We are finished here. Aiko and Shoshen have already started bringing everything to my chamber in the Eve Tower. We will go meet them there.”
“Everything? What’s everything?” Torrance asked, her breath shaky.
“You’ll see.”
I pulled my weak-limbed, panting bride out of the library, then upstairs to the closest tunnel leading to the Eve Tower. Neither of us said a word the entire way. As I held her hand, I tried desperately not to notice how small and warm it was, how delicate her fingers, fingers so short I doubted they’d even reach all the way around my –
No.
That was the only internal response I could manage. No.
No, Wylfrael, do not go any further, for that way lies madness you will never claw your way back from.
I could not let this become anything other than exactly what it was – a fake marriage. An arrangement. A deal with a desperate woman who hated me, and whom I was not particularly fond of, either.
But when I’d sucked her pretty skin, she had not looked at me like she’d hated me. She’d looked at me, with those cursedly beautiful snow and honey eyes, like I was on the verge of making her come undone.
A weakness of the body, then. Just like mine. Disobeying all common sense in the face of nonsensical, animal attraction.
I would have to retain tighter control. Not let her goad me into any more ridiculous challenges that would leave me panting and needy as a virgin seeing his first naked female.
She wasn’t even naked, for the sky’s sake!
Luckily, Aiko and Shoshen’s arguing helped dampen the fires burning in my loins. Their words filtered down the stairs as we ascended to my bedroom.
“No, put it over there, Shoshen! We’ll need to make room for the rest!” Aiko said, rather sensibly, I thought, considering the amount of fabric and clothing I’d bought. Lots of clothing will be good. Many layers to cover up my bride, make her shapeless. Maybe then I won’t be plagued by the memory of sucking her skin like an idiot.
“Oh, my lord! Torrance! Hello!” Aiko flattened her ears when we entered. Shoshen did the same as he straightened and turned towards us from where he’d been bent over the large crystal chest of new clothing and fabric. I’d carried two chests back with me on my flight, and Hoshta had promised to send the rest of the order through the mountains by sled, so we’d receive it in a few days.
“We’ve only brought the one up so far, my lord. We’re about to go back for the other,” Shoshen said.
“Very good then. We’ll be here.”
Aiko and Shoshen walked by us to leave. On the way by, under her breath, Aiko whispered excitedly, “Torrance, you’ll never believe how lovely the fabrics are. Silk and fur in nearly every colour! Be sure to tell me which you’d like for your wedding clothes!”
Aiko wouldn’t have noticed, but I felt the jerk of Torrance’s hand in mine at the mention of wedding clothes.
“Yes, of course. Thank you,” Torrance said weakly.
“They don’t call you Lady Torrance?” I asked with a raised brow as the siblings left and disappeared down the stairs.
“It doesn’t feel right,” Torrance said simply, offering no other explanation.
“Fair enough,” I muttered. I didn’t particularly care what the Sionnachans called me. Whether they used a title like “lord” or not was immaterial to me. But such things obviously bothered my bride. She didn’t want authority here, or power. Well, she didn’t want power over anyone but me, I supposed. Her little stunt back in the library proved that well enough.
I realized I was still holding her hand. I released her and stepped away brusquely.
“Go stand over there,” I said striding to the chest and wrenching it open. Unlike last time at Hoshta’s, I had not limited myself to plain fabrics. Piles of silk slipped over each other, luscious pink, deep-lake blue, rich cream, and sublime silver-black – the colour of sky between stars.
I pulled the pink from the chest. I turned to find Torrance not standing like I’d asked, but sitting in a crystal-backed chair by the hearth, watching me with a tight expression.
“What is all this?”
“I thought it would be obvious by now,” I said dryly, holding up the pink silk. “Now that you’re to be my wife, you’ll need a new wardrobe.”
She didn’t look pleased by this. Rather stupidly, I wondered if perhaps she did not favour pink and I should get her something else before I remembered that the colours she liked did not matter. What mattered was that the insolent woman listened to me.
“I don’t need all that. Send it back.”
“No.”
Her mouth fell open, a wet little circle that made dark urges lance through me. I wanted to trace that pink circle with my fingers, dip my thumb inside. I wanted to stuff it full of the silk in my hands, to watch her moan around the fabric.
I wanted to put one hand on the top of her head, the other beneath her chin, and shut her mouth for her like snapping closed a box.
I didn’t do any of those things. I just stared down at the silk. But the deep pink colour only reminded me of the inside of her mouth.
Fine! Not the pink, then. For Sionnach’s sake...
I tossed it down, instead going for the pearlescent black. It slid over my skin like water, impossibly smooth and deliciously cool. I gathered it all up, then stormed over to my betrothed who watched me haughtily from her place in the chair.
“Stand up,” I said gruffly, fisting the silk.
“No.”
Her word was a sharp declaration, and I could not help but notice the way it had echoed mine from a moment ago.
“No?”
“No,” she said again. “I was raised to believe that a woman doesn’t have to obey her husband.”
“Believe it or not,” I said tightly, “I was raised the same way.”
With scorching relief, I was glad my parents, whom I’d loved dearly, were dead. It was a terrible thought, one that never would have entered my mind before now.
“Fine,” I bit out when she didn’t respond. “Sit there like a petulant child if you must.”
“I’m not a petulant child! I was walking up and down stairs all day and I’m exhausted!” Torrance snapped as I knelt in front of the chair.
“I was also raised to believe that if something is physically difficult, it means you need to do it more,” I said. “You need to exercise. Strengthen your limbs. Your kind is weak.”
Weak, terrifyingly weak. Like I could break you with a glance.
“Excuse me,” she hissed. “I’m a scientist, not an athlete. Forgive me for getting fatigued by climbing about eighty million stairs in one day.”
“Eighty million? Really? Is that your best, most scientific estimate?”
Fury flashed in her eyes, and I could tell she was about to send some scathing retort my way. I ignored her, draping the black silk around her shoulders, seeing how the colour suited her oddly ever-changing human complexion.
The touch of the silk on her skin had a de-escalating effect I wouldn’t have believed considering how angry she’d looked a moment ago. But rage was now replaced with confusion, as she looked down at my hands, and the fabric, like she hadn’t noticed me bring it over here in the first place.
I watched her face carefully as her expression softened.
“You like it,” I murmured, feeling, absurdly, like I’d been victorious somehow. There was a hateful sort of satisfaction in the fact that I’d chosen something to her taste. That I’d brought her something she wanted, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
Grudgingly, I had to say that she was not the only one who liked it. The dull grey tunic she had on was now hidden, her narrow shoulders awash in slippery, shimmering black. It made her skin glow, made her eyes deeper, her hair colour richer. Like this, in my crystal chair, drenched in the colour of deepest night, she did not look like some frail human prisoner. She looked like a captured queen. Trapped, but radiant all the same.
“Doesn’t matter if I like it. I don’t need it,” she said, hardening her features as she turned her visage up to me. “I don’t need any of this. A few extra outfits would be useful, but entire chests of fabric for one person? With more on the way? It’s too much.”
I held myself in check with icy will, not willing to acknowledge how much the rejection of the silk was bothering me.
“You still do not understand,” I said, keeping my tone cold and detached. “This is merely one of many things you will be expected to accept in your role. You will be outfitted as befits your new station as the wife to a stone sky god.”
“Do all stone sky brides have to deal with this?” she asked tartly, like she’d sucked on something sour.
“I do not care what other stone sky brides do,” I hissed, control over my impatience cracking. “I only care about mine.”
Mine. The word had come out vicious. It startled Torrance, her defiance shifting to wariness.
“And sleeping in this room with you?” she said slowly. I stared at her mouth as she spoke. “That’s just one more thing I’ll have to accept, I suppose, considering you didn’t even bother to tell me.”
“Of course, you’ll sleep in this room,” I snapped. The silk was beginning to slide downwards. I let it go until it pooled around Torrance’s hips. “No newly mated stone sky god would sleep away from his bride. I’m surprised you would have expected otherwise. Is it different among humans?”
“Well, no, it’s not, but-”
“But what? I feel I have been very clear on the terms of this arrangement, Torrance. You must convince everyone, everyone, that you are my true mate. If you can’t even do that here among the Sionnachans, you will never make it past the keener eyes of other stone sky gods.”
Ah, there it was. That flare of pride I was growing to recognize in her.
“I can do it.”
“Good,” I said. “Now stand up so Aiko can drape you properly and get your measurements when she comes back. They won’t be much longer.”
It looked like I’d put acid under her tongue, but she did it all the same.
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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Torrance
Less than one full day into our arrangement and I felt like things were already going way off the rails. I thought I’d have more control now. But somehow, even though I was now more free than I’d ever been on this planet, I felt the walls closing in.
And all of those walls were named Wylfrael.
I stared numbly ahead, keeping a phony smile plastered on my face as Wylfrael and Aiko brought out bolt after bolt of fabric in every imaginable texture and colour. Aiko fluttered to-and-fro as Wylfrael growled orders at her about which colour or type of fabric to wrap around me next. Every time Aiko asked if I liked something, I gave perfunctory responses about how much I loved whatever she was holding, even though I could barely tell one item from another by this point. There was just too much of it. The chests were gigantic, enough fabric to clothe an entire army of fake human brides. And there was more coming.
“Torrance?”
“What? Oh,” I said, focusing on Aiko, who was speaking to me. “Yes. It’s lovely.”
“I... I know. You already said that about this one.”
“Oh.” My cheeks got hot. I didn’t mind blowing Wylfrael off, but I didn’t want Aiko to think I was being rude or not listening to her. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
It wasn’t Aiko who answered, but Wylfrael, who loomed directly behind me.
“She asked about your wedding clothing.”
My wedding clothing.
“Oh, that. A white gown,” I said.
Shit. I regretted my response instantly. If I’d had more presence of mind, I would have made something up, told them I wanted to wear a bright green jumpsuit, anything to keep this from feeling so alarmingly real. But it was too late now, and Aiko had already turned her bushy tail around to go dig through what was left in the second chest.
“Ah, yes, this one,” she said, straightening, her arms overflowing with material. “This one is just gorgeous.”
Aiko was right. It was silk the ethereal colour of moonlight on snow. Distressingly perfect. So lovely it made my chest hurt. Aiko wasted no time, immediately draping the softly shimmering material around me as I tried desperately not to give in to the sudden, unexpected urge to weep.
“Oh, my lord, come around here and see how beautiful she is.”
No, don’t. I didn’t want him to see my face now. To notice that my mask had slipped, that I was already failing.
Wylfrael breathed in tightly before taking crisp, controlled strides around to my front. He stood behind Aiko, who was currently holding the material up against me, his hands clasped behind his back.
I almost wanted to laugh through my tears. If I thought I was failing in representing my half of our happy couple, then Wylfrael was doing even worse than me. He didn’t look like he was on the verge of tears, like I did. He looked like he felt nothing. Apart from a twitch of tension in his cheek when he saw the unshed tears in my eyes, he showed absolutely no emotion. It was only when Aiko twisted back to look at him questioningly that he finally spoke, uttering five short, commanding words before he turned and swept out of the room, leaving us both staring in his wake.
“She will wear this one.”
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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Torrance
Wylfrael didn’t come back for a long time. So long that panic began to claw at me, panic that he’d gone back on our deal, that the whole thing was called off. That I’d go back to being shut away in the room at the top of the Dawn Tower, no chance of finding my friends or freedom.
When Aiko brought me dinner, she seemed surprised not to find Wylfrael with me, two plates on her tray. So, they don’t know where he is, either.
I’d beamed at her and thanked her for the food, as if everything was fine in Torrance and Wylfrael land. Eventually, she left, and I hoped she hadn’t gotten suspicious about Wylfrael’s absence.
Him being gone gave me a lot of time to pick away at my food and stare at the room I’d been left alone in. This chamber was magnificent, easily three times the size of the already large one I’d slept in until now. The Eve Tower was carved out of a silver-white tree, which made the walls of this room glisten like fire-licked platinum. The bed was outrageously huge, standing high on a silver frame, and I noted with both embarrassment and appreciation that Aiko had made good on her word and had supplied a stool for me to get in and out of it. Good thing, too, because I could already tell I wouldn’t be able to haul myself up there like I had the other bed. On either side of the bed stood gigantic green crystal armoires. The one on the left was mine now, and it was already stuffed with garments Wylfrael had purchased for me, just waiting to be tailored to my puny human frame by Aiko. When Aiko got to work on the rest of the fabrics he’d bought, sewing them into actual clothes, I had no idea where they were all going to go.
The floor gleamed silver, just like the walls, the only colourful tile in the massive pool of a tub carved into the floor near the towering fireplace. A green desk and chair were also near the fire, with what looked like sewing supplies, which I quickly remembered were actually Sionnachan writing supplies.
I was seated at a large, oval-shaped table, slowly eating my food, when my gaze finally came to rest on the empty chair across from me.
Bastard.
How dare he just disappear like this? After he had made such a big deal about a newly mated god not being away from his bride at night, too! It was late, I was exhausted and ready to fall (or climb, really) into bed, and my supposedly devoted husband was nowhere to be found.
I retreated into rage, grinding my teeth and glaring at the other chair. Anger was easier than acknowledging the teeny, tiny, absolutely minuscule possibility that I was maybe just a little bit hurt he hadn’t shown up. That he could just walk out of the room, leave this world entirely, if he wanted to, like I didn’t even exist.
No, screw that. I was not going to sit there and feel sorry for myself because the alien devil of a man I’d made a deal with was being a moody prick. I wasn’t going to wait for him, whenever he deigned to return, like I had nothing better to do. I had all kinds of more important tasks I could complete. Like...
Well, what I really wanted to do was lie down, but I absolutely refused to do that right now, especially in his bed. I’d been jarred out of sleep by his presence too many times already.
I got out of the chair and brushed my teeth. While I scrubbed savagely at my molars, I decided I’d get out of here. If Wylfrael could jet off somewhere without warning, then so could I. I was too tired to go outside and hike through snow without Wylfrael doing his whole psychic snowplough thing, so I figured I’d explore the rest of the Eve Tower since that hadn’t been covered on our tour.
I left the bathroom and walked through the main bedroom to the door. I paused, though, the armoire catching my eye. For a second, I considered pulling all the clothing out and dumping it onto the big fire rock that crackled in the fireplace. But even in my anger, I knew I wouldn’t do it. Even though I didn’t want the items, even though they’d come to represent how little power I really had in this bargain, they were too beautiful to destroy. Some Sionnachan had put their time and care into the clothing, and I couldn’t burn that. Plus, Aiko had been so excited during our measuring session, like she was getting to play with a real-life dress-up doll, and I didn’t want to imagine the disappointment she would try to hide if she came in tomorrow and found only ashes left of all the clothing.
It would have made Wylfrael furious, of course, which at this point was quite an alluring idea. But ultimately, I decided to go in the complete opposite direction of burning the clothes.
I’d wear them.
If he’s going to completely suck at playing husband, I’m going to give 110% at being his wife. So that there’s no way he can find fault in my performance.
I stomped over to the armoire, a wicked smile on my lips as I yanked it open. I hurried out of my human clothing, leaving it on the floor. I ended up discarding my bra and panties, too, since I’d need to wash them tonight anyway. I stood naked before the armoire, perusing its contents, my eyes and my hands running over fur and leather and silk.
I settled on a crimson silk robe. It was far too big, but it had a belt which helped tighten the garment at my waist. The sleeves I wouldn’t be able to help until Aiko tailored them, so I rolled them up past my elbows as best I could. As I walked, the silk flaps of the robe trailed behind me like a river of shining blood.
In this luxurious red robe, walking through this quiet castle in the dark of night, I felt like some lost woman in a Gothic story. Like I should be creeping through the halls holding a candle up in the darkness.
I actually wished for a candle as I left the room and went up the stairs. There were no firestone lanterns in this passageway, and as I ascended, I fought the feeling that I was walking into nothing.
Wylfrael’s room was quite near the top of the tower, so there wasn’t too much left to explore up here. I poked my nose in a couple of rooms that, thankfully, were lit by fires. One was something like a study, another was a large, lovely bedroom.
I continued upward to the last room – the highest point in the Eve Tower. I pushed the door open and held my breath, surprised by the hushed darkness that met my eyes after the light of the other rooms.
I blinked furiously, trying to adjust my gaze to the lack of light, feeling dread prickle, like I’d found something I shouldn’t have. Was this something horrible? Was it a dungeon, a torture chamber?
No, I told myself bitterly, if it were, you would have been thrown in here as soon as you arrived.
Slowly, my eyes did adjust. I wondered if the crystal was carved to be thinner up here, because the barest amount of starlight was filtering through the translucent silvery walls. I couldn’t tell exactly what I was looking at as I entered, even as my eyes adjusted. There was nothing in the room except a huge tubular thing in the centre, jutting straight up from the floor, with a domed top. The tube was easily large enough for a person to stand in, and as I walked around it, I found one part of the tube was open, as if that was exactly what you were supposed to do.
After examining it as closely as I could and finding nothing in there that would indicate danger – no hidden spikes about to jump out and skewer an unsuspecting human – I cautiously stepped inside.
Nothing happened. I turned in a circle, frowning. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d been expecting, but the fact there was what seemed to be a completely useless, empty tube taking up an entire room by itself was weird.
This doesn’t seem Sionnachan, I thought with a small shiver. This tube wasn’t carved from crystal or stone. It didn’t have the rustic feel of Sionnachan furniture, either. It almost looked like it was made of perfectly shaped glass – transparent except for the occasional whorl of smoky silver running through it.
“It doesn’t work when the roof is closed.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of Wylfrael’s voice. I spun in the tube until I found him, a nebulous shadow lit by tiny stars, looming in the doorway.
“What? What the hell? What are you doing here?” I stammered, startled.
“I live here,” he responded dryly. The sarcastic edge to his tone made me feel like I was going to explode.
“You know what I mean!” I seethed, storming out of the tube towards him. “Where were you? You just took off! I was doing what I was supposed to do, and you, what? Just decided you needed a break from the wedding planning?” Wylfrael didn’t answer, silent, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. His lack of response made my anger burn brighter.
“Aiko was confused by your absence, you know” I ranted. “She brought two plates of food to our chamber and didn’t understand why you weren’t with me. A newly mated god leaving behind his bride. Looks very legit.” I crossed my arms, a reflection of his pose. All the extra rolled-up silk bunched around my elbows.
“Do you want to know how it works?”
I blinked, my arms falling to my sides. “Do I want to... What? What are you talking about?”
“The starfinder. You were standing in it a moment ago. I assume you were curious.”
“Right now, I’m more curious about why you completely disregarded your end of our bargain this afternoon. What was it you said earlier? If you can’t fake it in front of the Sionnachans, you’ll never be able to do it in front of the other stone sky gods?”
Still, he didn’t fucking answer. Instead, he pushed off from the doorframe and strode into the room, a shadow taking shape.
I wanted to shout, to make him respond, make him justify himself to me. You fucking left me here!
But that was just too pathetic. If he could be cool and detached, then that was just fine. I’d be that way too.
Wylfrael had lost his vest at some point during whatever the hell it was that he’d been doing. His markings cast a dim blue glow over everything, including me, as he approached. His gaze glowed, too, the colour of clear Canadian skies in winter, so beautiful it made my ribs constrict. His gaze was intense on me, more penetrating than his detached tone of voice would have had me believe. His eyes dipped to my neck, my collarbones, my chest. I realized, nipples growing taut in the cool air of the fireless room, that my robe had started sliding down one shoulder, exposing cleavage. I thought about grasping the material and pulling it closed, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to make myself small. To hide myself and acknowledge I was vulnerable. Instead, I raised my chin, heart pounding.
Wylfrael didn’t say anything else and he didn’t touch me, though, for half a hammering heartbeat, I’d thought he was going to. He walked around me, his movements creating a brush of air on my exposed skin that made me shiver. He went past the tube thing in the centre of the room to the wall across from me, grasping something on the wall – a lever? – that I hadn’t noticed before.
He cranked the lever, and I gasped, my head turning wildly.
The entire room was peeling apart. Cold air rushed in, but I barely felt it through the shock. The top of the tower split, more than a dozen pieces opening until they came to rest in a flat ring, jutting outwards like the petals of a frozen flower.
We were no longer in a room but on a roof.
The view was incredible. It wasn’t obscured the way it was in the tunnels. From here, I could see the dark stretch of forest, the jagged wall of mountains, and, God, the stars.
Light pollution apparently wasn’t a thing on Sionnach. I tilted my head back, dizzy and humbled at the glorious spray of light overhead.
“Amazing,” I breathed. I’d almost completely forgotten Wylfrael was there until he answered me.
“You were here for more than thirty days before I got here. You never once looked at the stars?”
I shook my head, still looking upward. “We were inside the ship at night. I studied them on the computers, using human data and maps, but I never got to...”
To stargaze. The way I’d done since I was a child, looking ever upward, awe-struck and aching to know more. My dad’s house in Northern Ontario was in a rural area, and the stars were almost as bright as these ones now.
I thought of my first telescope, the one Dad had bought me when I was twelve. He’d run a small hardware store in Thunder Bay, and though he worked incredibly hard, money was always tight on his single income. I’d relied on scholarships and income from part-time jobs to go to university. Even at twelve, I knew that the gift had taken him all year, if not more, to save for. Though I’d wanted it desperately, I’d tried to tell him to take it back, that it was too much. Nothing’s too much for my star girl, he’d said with that gruff, almost shy smile of his, like he was embarrassed by the simple act of being happy.
My dad loved everything to do with the Earth. Hiking and fishing, snow and dirt and trees. My obsession with space had always perplexed him, but he’d honoured it anyway, with trips to the Toronto Science Centre and, when we could afford it, visits to the Cosmodôme in Montréal. And then, on my twelfth birthday, with the telescope, painstakingly wrapped but still somehow looking like a mess, a giant tube of crumpled, starry wrapping paper held together with about two hundred strips of clear tape. It had been a monumental gift – a message in layers of sparkly stars. Telling me that even if he didn’t understand the things I loved, he loved me, and that was enough. I thought of that telescope gathering dust in my childhood home, no one to take care of it, no one to claim it, and grief struck me like a blow.
I breathed in sharply, reeling, cold burning my lungs. Wylfrael was at my side in an instant. He pulled the flaps of my robe closed so forcefully I thought that he might rip the fabric.
“You’re too cold. We’ll come back another time. When you’re more appropriately dressed.” There was something in those last words, something about the way his fingers lingered at the base of my throat, that distracted me from the pain of the past and dragged me back into the shattered present.
“I’m fine,” I said, though my teeth were chattering now. “Show me the starfinder.”
I wouldn’t leave until he showed me what it was. For some reason, I needed this. More than I felt like I needed air.
I thought he’d argue with me, but he didn’t. Instead, he grasped my shoulders and spun me, walking me back into the tube. It was tight with both of us in here, and Wylfrael’s bulk crowded against my back. His heat curled powerfully around me, warming my back and expanding in the tube until it almost felt downright cozy in there. Cozy. With a moody alien god I’m about to fake marry... Good grief.
“How did you know I was up here?” I asked. I couldn’t see him like this. I stared straight ahead, through the transparent tube.
“It wasn’t exactly difficult to find you,” he replied. “You left a trail of open doors up the stairs in your wake.”
“Oh.” Subtle, Torrance.
Wylfrael’s hands were still on my shoulders, solid and heavy and so warm I had to fight the urge to nuzzle into him like a kitten.
“Besides,” he added, his hands smoothing inwards over my silk-clad shoulders until they came to rest nearer my neck. “Even if you hadn’t, I’d have just followed your scent.”
“My scent?!” I gasped. “Are you serious?”
He had a sense of smell that strong? Did he have a single physical ability that was merely mediocre?
“Of course I am,” he said, bending, his words stirring my loose hair. “Especially when you wear something as flimsy as this.”
“You’re the one who got it for me, so don’t you dare complain about the clothing!” I said, temper rising. “Especially after you disappeared the way you did! You still haven’t explained that to me, by the way. Why you left.”
