Chapter Seventeen
It was some time before Sorcha could move from where she had landed.
And some time still after that before the wolf, panting, turned back into Aidan, in a flash of witchery that smelled like pine boughs.
He pulled a plaid from the pack he had insisted on carrying and wrapped it around his hips.
The sun gleamed on his muscular chest, the pelt of soft hair. “Are you all right?” he asked hoarsely.
She nodded. “Thanks to you.”
“You were the one who knew what to do.”
“And you were the one to do it,” she pointed out. “The Collector doesn’t stand a chance against us.”
They did not speak about what the Nightmare had shown them. It was enough that the sun was shining and she could feel Elderberry’s presence again.
Even if Sorcha planned to sleep very little for the foreseeable future.
“He knew the Red Cloak would come back,” Aidan said grimly. “And would try to free the bird.”
“And trigger the Nightmare spell. Oops.” He shot her a look. She grinned, mostly because her heart was hammering in her chest, pulse thumping in her ears. And her palms were sweaty.
And also because she would not let the Collector win. Not now, not ever.
If her hands were still trembling, that was nothing he ever needed to know about.
“The bloody bastard set a trap for both of us. Red Cloak and the wolf,” Aidan ground out.
“It looks that way.” Sorcha pushed to her feet. Her muscles felt as though she had swum around the whole of Lyonesse.
Aidan stared at her. “You’re not seriously going for a walk now?”
“Just over to the wall here,” she murmured. A sparrow called to her, encouraging her.
Aidan followed as if he were afraid she might fall over. “Are you picking blackberries?” he asked when she started digging through the brambles and the thickets along the wall.
“Yes. These look ripe enough, don’t you think?”
“You were nearly killed not ten minutes ago.”
She shrugged. “And now I’m hungry.” And she also wanted to be a little farther away from the tower and disintegrated Nightmare.
Just in case. She wasn’t sure if it had been merely discouraged or properly banished, and she was not keen to find out.
And her stomach was growling. She ate three berries at once.
“Don’t you find that kind of witchery makes you hungry?
I could have eaten a hundred loaves of bread after the curse breaking. ”
He looked the most flummoxed she had ever seen him. She popped a berry into her mouth. The sweet-tart juice hitting her tongue was soothing, familiar. Things couldn’t be all that bad if you were eating sun-warmed berries, now could they?
“So you set a trap for the Collector and then he set a trap for us,” she said.
“Aye,” Aidan said grimly.
“We’re definitely going to have to set a new trap.” She offered him a berry. “Something painful.”
“Are you certain you still want to do this?” She speared him with a narrowed gaze. He held up his hands. “Beg your pardon, Lady Sorcha.”
“Don’t even think about trying to talk me out of it.”
“Just as soon as you stop hurling yourself headfirst into danger.” He leaned against what was left of the stone wall where ivy tangled with the blackberry thicket.
She frowned. “You are very calm. It’s a bit annoying.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Were you always like this?”
“No.” That flat, dispassionate voice again. He crossed those strong, corded arms with their blue spirals. It was strange to be distracted by a man’s wrists.
But here she was. Eating blackberries after being besieged by nightmares and being distracted by a man’s hands.
It was strange to be distracted by blackberries.
Aidan had never thought one way or another about blackberries before.
He was thinking about them now. With some enthusiasm, it had to be said.
How could he not? Sorcha stood so near, the wind in her hair, her nimble fingers plucking berries and slipping them between her lips.
It was spectacularly difficult to think about anything else.
He kept track of the birds circling, of the wolf’s ear pricking inside his skull, listening for danger. Of the lingering lemon-balm perfume of baneful magic. Of anything that might compromise Sorcha’s safety.
And he was thinking about her lips, about the gleam of blackberry juice when her tongue darted out to catch a stray droplet.
About the taste of her, the sounds of her pleasure in his ears.
A soft growl rumbled through his chest. She was delighted at the evidence of his wolf; he could hear it in her heartbeat.
But he only felt concern. His wolf could be unpredictable.
It was like that sometimes, when you were not born to the Pack.
She’d said she was not scared of him, and he believed her.
But he also knew things about himself that she did not.
Things the Nightmare knew.
And he knew enough about her to know she would go charging into danger at every opportunity.
Had Freya been anyone else, been capable of less, he would have challenged her for the right to Sorcha’s secret. The Red Cloak.
Every time he thought of it, a shiver scraped down his spine. The way the ogre had advanced on her. The way the spectators had cheered, thirsty for blood and broken bones.
The way she had marched in here alone.
And then set the stables on fire.
Fuck.
This woman.
And then the lightning bird, her gasps as the Nightmare circled, draining her.
“Are you trying to think up lies to tell me?” Sorcha demanded.
She never asked where she could demand. Never suggested where she could just do it herself. Fuck, he loved that about her.
“Aidan? You’ve gone a bit pale.”
“I’m fine.”
She wiped her berry-stained fingers on her dress, already streaked with dirt. “Don’t bother lying to me, Coventry. You have a tell.”
He couldn’t help a smile. He knew for a fact he did not have a tell. He had spent long, hard hours making sure of it. Sweated blood over it. “Do I?”
“Aye,” she said, mimicking his accent. Atrociously. It was adorable. “Spill your secrets or I’ll lock you in the stall with Nimue.”
He gave an exaggerated shudder. Her green eyes gleamed with humor and mischief.
It amazed him that she had been through an abduction, a curse breaking, and a Nightmare in the last few days alone, and her fire was not dimmed.
If anything, having another chance to take on the Collector seemed to revitalize her.
She was not a witch to be wrapped up in down feathers.
He imagined that any suitor who offered her a diamond would be summarily dismissed and that diamond sold to buy oats and raw entrails for her beasties.
Not that there would be any suitors for some time.
Not when she was betrothed to him.
He tried to fight the swell of smug satisfaction. His wolf did not try at all.
“Aidan! Honestly, have you gone daft? That won’t save you either, you know.”
Here he was waxing poetic in his mind and she was simmering to plant him a facer.
He grinned. He had to. “You have a tell as well, Lady Sorcha.” He nodded to her clenched fist.
She lifted her chin. “That’s not a tell. That’s a promise.”
“Duly noted.”
He kept his eyes on her, the freckles on her nose, her slightly crooked incisor.
Her thick auburn curls that he wanted to wrap around his own fist. She tilted her head, her blood warming the skin of her cheeks pink.
She might not know what he was thinking, but the connection between them, the mark of his teeth on her neck, lent her an instinct. “What?”
“You have a little berry juice,” he said quietly. “Right there.”
He brushed his thumb over her lower lip.
When her tongue darted out to touch the spot, she flicked it against his thumb.
His hold tightened, faintly. A reflex. She didn’t blink, did not look away, even as the wolf closed the distance between them.
He saw the burn of his eyes turning gold reflected in hers.
And then it was only the taste of her and tart blackberries when he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, before running his tongue over it.
He licked into her mouth in a deep kiss.
Her eyelids fluttered. She gripped his arms and opened her mouth to him, stroking her tongue along his, taking as much as she gave, giving as much as he took.
He smelled her arousal, heard the tiny catch of her breath. “Delicious,” he said quietly.
And then he stepped back, letting the sunlight between their bodies again. A pity. But necessary. His wolf howled, denied. He felt it in his teeth.
Sorcha brushed the sharp tip of his incisor, much as he had brushed her lips. She was a tempting feast and he was dangerous. He caught her wrist. She watched him searchingly. She was far more perceptive than anyone gave her credit for. And restrained, he realized, when she dropped her arm.
“Tell me the plan,” she said.
Apparently the plan involved sitting under an oak tree at the top of the next hill and eating pears and scones with a bottle of lemonade Aidan had slipped into the pack.
He laid the small feast out on a napkin, to which Sorcha added more pilfered blackberries.
Aidan cut the pear with a knife he produced from somewhere on his person.
He cut the fruit with easy grace, handing them to her.
Pear juice dripped down her wrist and he caught her gaze.
She knew they were both imagining him licking it off.
But he didn’t.
He was a curator again, responsibility and restraint. Mind over body.
It should have frustrated her, but she liked this version of him too.
It was the only version she had known since the summer solstice.
The careful, clever curator who had kissed her in the moonlight one night.
And the Lycan had kissed her in the sunlight.
She wondered if he worried that she would prefer one over the other.
She wouldn’t. Didn’t. She liked them both. She could never choose between them.