Chapter Twenty
If Briar had thought the siren and her grimsong would be the deadliest part of her evening, she had underestimated the force of Ethan’s fury.
They went back to the cottage, pulling the wooden shutters closed, locking the doors. Inside, the tearoom was cozy and dark.
Until it wasn’t.
Ethan sauntered toward Briar, eyes blazing. “You put yourself in danger,” he said with a lethal kind of softness that she already knew to ignore at her own peril. The treacherous sea was in his eyes. A storm brewed on the horizon outside the cottage in reply.
She swallowed as he bent closer, invading her space. She inched backward. “You’re welcome?”
Wrong thing to say.
He closed his hand around her throat, gently but inexorably, halting her escape. “You do not put yourself in danger. Not for me.”
Her body was a riot of conflicting feeling: weary from the battle but also oddly revitalized, as if she had drunk an entire carafe of coffee or eaten all of the rock candy in the jar.
She was aware of every single thing—the wind pushing the roses against the shutters, the thinness of her chemise, the soft touch of Ethan’s breath on her cheek, making her skin tingle all the way down to her knees.
The feeling of being prey to Ethan’s predator and liking it.
Loving it.
Stern, silent Ethan with his scars and tattoos and lethal black eyes that saw everything.
Every part of her, yearning and desperate.
His usual control was chipped, something more than fierceness in those eyes.
There was a growl in his throat. She was wet with only his fingers at her neck.
But she knew what it was to be touched by him now.
“Are you listening, little thorn?”
She nodded, or tried to.
“I don’t think you were.” His voice was quiet but hard. His accent thickened.
“I…”
“You. Don’t. Put. Yourself. In. Danger.”
Oh. That.
He waited, eyebrow raised. “Say it.”
She felt mutinous. So desperate for him to touch her. A little bit more cowed than she’d like. But also so tempted to push, just to see how serious he was.
“Don’t,” he said pleasantly, as if reading her mind. “I’d like to let you come tonight.” His mouth brushed her ear, a nip at her lobe, a devious smile against her skin. “You want to come again, don’t you, sweetheart? And again?”
She gasped when he pulled up her skirts, her thighs already parting for him. With the fingers of one hand still clasped around her throat, he plunged the others rhythmically in and out of her quim until she was quaking. Heat raced up and down her legs.
He slowed his ministrations until she whimpered. And still he gave no quarter, only tsked as if disappointed. “A shame.” His fingers stilled, palm against her bud adding pressure but nothing else. Sweat dampened the top of her spine. “And you’re so close, aren’t you?”
“Ethan, please.”
His grip on her throat was the only thing holding her up. She felt feverish. Feral. He stayed silent, demanding. A ship’s captain through and through. Orders had been given.
She swallowed again, whispering, “I don’t put myself in danger for you.”
“Good girl,” he said, as inevitable as the churn of a whirlpool.
And then his fingers stroked deep inside, dragged out to circle her bud, in that steady, patient pattern that made her toes curl. “Give me your pleasure,” he urged. “It’s mine.”
He kissed her, capturing her cries when she came, hard and fast as a lightning strike.
The bedroom was full of shadows and the heavy perfume of mint and the white roses swallowing the cottage.
The waves of her climax seemed endless, receding like the tide, only to crash over her again when Ethan fit his cock against her.
She pushed down to draw him in, too far gone to be embarrassed at her eagerness.
He swore, but it was low and soft, like a prayer.
“I knew you’d feel like this,” he said, then groaned. “Perfect.”
He slid into her only a little and with excruciating slowness. She bit his shoulder, impatient, demanding. He grinned softly, but the tendons in his neck were in sharp relief.
“Slowly,” he said.
“Faster,” she demanded instead. “More.”
She wriggled under him, but he was bigger, stronger, even more determined. His jaw clenched on a low groan. “Patience.”
She glowered at him, her blood on fire. “No.”
He chuckled, dark and tender. “I don’t want to hurt you, little thorn.”
He slid in a little deeper. There was an ache as her body strove to accommodate him. It wasn’t pain, exactly. She angled her hips and squeezed around him. More. She wanted more. She wanted all of him. But he was merciless, even in his care for her.
“You’re taking me so well,” he said, and she gasped, his words a spark that lit fires deep in her belly.
He kissed her deeply, still taking his time, still torturing them both.
His tongue touched hers and she felt it everywhere.
Her nipples tightened and he bent his head to suck one into his hot mouth.
A deep pull, the swirl of his tongue. Her quim fluttered.
He kissed her again, and she lifted her knees to take him deeper; every inch he slid into her made her gasp and whimper.
“You are perfect,” he said, breath ragged.
She dragged her fingers through his hair, gently. And that gentleness seemed to be his undoing. He stilled, eyes flaring. She stroked her thumb along his jawline, finding a new scar. He turned his head slightly, dangerously close to nuzzling her palm.
And then he drove into her like she was everything. Like she was home.
When he came, their gazes tangled and held.
She came again. And again.
When Briar woke the next morning, Ethan was gone and there was a man in her kitchen.
Singing a sea shanty.
Badly.
Briar blinked at him. “Matthias?”
Matthias, with his tousled blond hair and shining smile, sang like a wet, thoroughly disgruntled cat. “Good morning!”
“Is Petal all right?”
“Perfectly fine,” he assured her, and the instinctual panic receded. “Some of the crew have taken to bringing her flowers.”
“Of course they have.” She nodded through a yawn, thoroughly unsurprised.
He had a towel over one shoulder, jam on his shirt, and he was stirring batter in a heavy ceramic bowl.
Something delicious bubbled in a pot over the fire.
Rows of freshly baked eclairs watched her from the windowsill where they cooled.
She had only ever attempted them once. They took ages and were so fussy. “Matthias?”
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
“Your kitchen is enormous!” He beamed.
It really, really wasn’t. It was a cramped and smoky cottage kitchen with a single worktable, a long bench, and a cupboard for supplies, which was mostly stacked with canisters of dried flowers for tea.
The whitewashed walls were streaked with soot.
There was a stone by the hearth that stood up at an odd angle, just enough to stub a toe. Repeatedly.
“I’m used to a galley kitchen,” Matthia added when he caught her dubious expression. “Barely room enough for me, and it always smells like onions, no matter what I do.”
“Oh.” She really did not know what else to say. Except… “Matthias?”
“Yes, Miss Foxglove?”
“Why are you in my enormous kitchen baking… Is that a croquembouche? And raspberry-rose flummery?”
“It is. My specialty.” He grinned, tossing a blond curl off his forehead. His cheeks were flushed with the heat. Ethan was right—he did not look like an Iron Crow. “Dragon sent for me.”
“Because he wanted a pink flummery?”
He laughed. “No, he prefers the madeleines.”
“Duly noted.”
“He sent me to… Erm…”
“To…erm?” she repeated when he trailed off, looking deeply uncomfortable.
“To keep an eye on you.” He proceeded to flinch with his whole body.
“What are you doing now?” she asked when it looked like he was having some sort of fit.
He opened one eye. “If I told Anais that I was sent to watch her, she would stab me. Repeatedly. Until her arm got tired, and then she would kick me in the stones. A lot.”
“I’m not going to stab you,” Briar said wearily, dropping onto the end of the bench not currently stacked with cooling muffins. “Or kick you. Not before I’ve had my tea, anyway.”
“Your tea!” Matthias scrambled for the kettle, pouring the boiling water into a teapot already filled with leaves. The soothing aroma of tea and bergamot competed with the tart sweetness of strawberry compote bubbling away.
“What is Ethan afraid I’m going to do, exactly?
” Briar asked when he slid a cup toward her, along with the honey jar and a dish of cream.
She refused to feel any which way about Ethan leaving and setting another Iron Crow in his place.
He did not trust her. And he had told her she should not trust him.
The things they had done to each other in the darkness did not change that.
“Not you,” Matthias assured her, then paused, rather ruining the effect. “Well, not exactly. He needed to go find some supplies and said there were Keepers about. And Crows. Can’t trust a Crow, you know.”
“So I hear.”
“He didn’t want to leave you unguarded.”
“I see.”
“And he sent me because not only am I handsome”—he winked—“and more handsome than that satyr, don’t let him fool you—but also because Dragon said you don’t care for baking.”
Her teacup froze halfway to her mouth. “He said that?”
“He did. And I’ve always wanted to make petit fours and a croquembouche in an actual kitchen with actual ingredients instead of pickling vegetables and hoping butter will soften the hardtack. It never does. Nothing makes hardtack edible. Believe me.”
“I never told him I don’t enjoy baking,” she said softly. He was quite right, though. Baking was not her favorite, but it was a necessity. Especially as everything Petal baked turned to the consistency of a rock. Or soup. Painfully salty soup. With rocks.