Chapter Twenty-Three
Briar could not help but wonder if Ethan had ever known softness.
There were soft beds and soft hands and soft silks, but they were not the same thing.
Briar’s own mother was also not an easy woman, but Briar had Petal and she had flowers and hot tea and honeybees at the window.
What did Ethan have, so young on a ship as a cabin boy?
And then as a captain and the Dragon. He had fear and respect and envy, but not softness.
She began to gather the sea pinks and campion flowers and water mint that grew around them, the feverfew and the clovers and the daisies. She tucked some around his head like a crown.
“What are you doing, little thorn?” he asked.
She sprinkled petals over him. Tucked a foxglove into the scabbard with his favorite dagger.
Tiny forget-me-nots in his boots. More in his pockets when it occurred to her that she really, really did not want him to forget her.
When she was still not satisfied, she straddled him, feeling bold.
She picked a dandelion gone white and fluffy and held it up. “Make a wish,” she whispered.
“I don’t believe in—”
She frowned at him in disapproval. “Don’t argue with a green witch.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He blew on the dandelion, sending the fluffy seeds floating in every direction. Fireflies drifted closer, flashing green. A star fell behind him.
She found pineapple weed and wrapped a dandelion leaf around it. “Now try this.”
He arched a brow. “You want me to eat weeds?”
“Yes, please.” She was still straddling him. She never wanted to stop. He was all warm, padded muscle between her thighs.
“Is this how you poison your suitors?”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve noticed I don’t exactly have a line waiting at my front door.”
“I’ve said it before, Briar. Haven is full of idiots.”
She rolled her eyes at the blatant flattery, but it made her cheeks pink all the same. He brushed his thumb over her cheekbone. “You’re trying to distract me,” she accused, but her voice was softer than she liked.
He raised his eyebrows. “Is it working?”
Yes. “No.” She sent him a severe glance. “You refused to eat your peas as a boy, didn’t you?”
“I was the model of proper behavior.”
“Ha.”
“You wound me.”
“Ha again. Just try it.”
He crossed his arms behind his head, smirking dangerously. “Convince me, sweetheart.”
A thrill shot through her. She had a dangerous and powerful man between her thighs and was allowed to touch him. She was allowed to want him to have to catch his breath. To make him groan. To make him whimper with need. She wasn’t supposed to want these things. But she did. Desperately.
She wiggled, settling herself. He went very still.
Oh, this was going to be fun.
She bent her head and let her voice go soft in his ear. “Please, Ethan.”
His jaw tightened, breath catching. Just once. She felt like a queen. And she would quite like to make him her throne.
“What’s that gleam in your eye?” he asked, rough and deep. Knowing.
She kissed his cheek lightly, innocently. Which was not at all how she felt. Then she kissed his other cheek, his brow. The tip of his nose. The tension in him changed, ebbed.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“What I like.”
“You’re trying to undo me,” he said hoarsely when she kissed him again and scored her nails through the pelt of hair on his chest. She rocked closer, holding him in the cradle of her thighs.
She moaned at the pressure against her quim, the hardness of him.
He lifted his hips and she moaned again, threatening to lose control of the moment.
His hands flexed on her thighs. She kissed him again and again, soft, teasing.
Reverent even as her hips promised something darker, something deeper.
The combination made her squirm. Made him curse.
She eased away slightly, panting. The crushed flowers between them scented the air. “Convinced?”
His eyes flared greedily. “Not even close, sweetheart.”
She reared back, pouting.
“Unfair tactic,” he groaned. “I have fucking dreams about that mouth.”
She brightened. “You do?” She’d dreamt about him as well. The sharp line of his jaw, the way he scraped his teeth over her neck. The smell of the sea that clung to him. His fingers stroking into her.
He groaned again in defeat. “Give me the damn greens. Eating the damned lawn for you like a bloody goat.”
She was grinning as she whispered a spell to the leaves, one she had devised purely out of self-preservation when she was very little.
Her mother had not been a good cook. Ethan watched her mouth and she felt powerful.
She offered him the leaves and he took them, nipping at her fingertip. Heat bolted into her center.
He chewed, swallowed, his eyes on her. He blinked. “It tastes like cake,” he said, surprised.
“Green witch, remember?” He would have his birthday cake, even if she had to sneak it to him.
“I would have eaten all of my vegetables if I’d known you as a lad.”
“I do make a brisk business in winter spelling cabbages to taste like raspberry tarts.”
“I’d rather taste you,” he said, closing his fingers around her waist and tugging her forward.
She braced herself, palms on his chest. She could feel his heart beating.
“Sweeter than cake.” He gripped the back of her neck and brought her closer still, close enough to capture her mouth with his.
It was a slow, deep kiss, full of heat that lingered.
“Are you done torturing me, sweetheart?”
“Not even close.” She slid down his body, reaching for his buttons. His erection sprang free. He was hard, silky. For her. She licked him, swirling her tongue around the tip.
“Briar.” A soft warning. She licked him again, and then took as much of him into her mouth as she could. He groaned, breath stuttering. “That fucking mouth.”
The filthy encouragement made her wet, and she sucked him deeper. She used her tongue to stroke the underside, flicking and hollowing her cheeks until he bucked.
When her eyes drifted shut, his fist tightened in her hair. “Eyes on me, sweetheart.”
She looked up at him, suddenly feeling so needy that she had to squeeze her thighs together.
Her quim fluttered, swollen and aching. She sucked harder, deeper, watching him watch her.
His eyes glittered and he was every bit the Dragon that witches feared.
Her Dragon. At least for tonight. For now.
When she gripped the base of him, his curses were as reverent as her kisses had been.
A gleam in his eye was her only warning.
One moment she was moaning around the hot length of him, and the next he had flipped her onto her back and was pushing between her legs to loom over her. He used his mouth to devour her—her lips, her throat, her nipples. She felt it everywhere.
“You’re not trying to undo me,” he growled against her damp and flushed skin. “You’re trying to fucking break me. Aren’t you?”
He pulled her skirts up, baring her glistening quim. She squirmed, trying to get closer. He dragged his cock through her folds, then stopped.
“I asked you a question, little thorn.” She reached for him, but he pinned her wrists in the dandelions. “Answer me.”
“I need you,” she said, not even caring if it sounded like she was begging. “Please, Ethan.”
He transferred the hold on her wrist to one hand and slipped his fingers between her slick folds so lightly that she whimpered. “You’re playing with fire, little thorn. And there’s always a price.”
The price included slow, soft touches that threatened to steal her sanity.
A build to something that shimmered and sparkled and then a retreat, like the ocean he loved.
He brought her closer and closer, never quite giving her enough.
His kisses promised vengeance. She was a mess and he was so amused, almost condescending.
“What’s that, sweetheart? I can’t quite hear you.”
“You bastard,” she panted. It should not have made her toes curl, but it did.
His laugh was dark, soft. “Convince me,” he said again, all taunts even as the tendons in his neck stood out in stark relief. He was not unaffected. It made the desperation all that much sweeter. She still couldn’t touch him, with her hands trapped, her body pinned.
She writhed, dampness sliding her along the tip of his cock, just enough to torture them both. His fingers closed around her throat, firm but not squeezing. It anchored her further into her body and she came close to release right then and there.
“What do you say, little thorn?”
She met his hungry gaze with her own, pressing up against his grip.
“Convince me,” she dared him.
He went still. She had a moment to wonder if she had pushed him too far and that was part of the pleasure. A soft spinster made of flowers and the Crow that everyone whispered about.
“Open your legs for me.” She parted her knees, pressing further into the grass. “That’s it, sweetheart.” He surged into her and she gasped, rising to meet him. Her intimate muscles stretched to accommodate him; a twinge of discomfort and then it felt so good she was afraid she might start babbling.
They were frantic, lost to the sweat and the moans and the panting for breath.
The slide of their bodies, the way he thrust into her, murmuring soft, filthy things into her ear.
The way he came, hips stuttering and dragging her with him all because he demanded it. “Come with me, Briar. Come. Right now.”
And she did. Somehow he ordered it and she obeyed, promptly fluttering around him, gasping.
When he collapsed beside her in the grass, they were both gleaming with sweat.
“You really are a thief,” she murmured. “I think you just stole my virtue and I did not have it to begin with.”
A soft chuckle. He used a square of cloth from a pouch on his belt to clean her up. “Well, I am an Iron Crow. We steal things.”
“Magic, witch’s bones, maidenly virtues. Amulets that don’t belong to you,” she added pointedly.
“Next you’ll say I stole your heart?” he asked drily, getting to his feet to pull up his trousers.
It was a jest, a throwaway comment. And she took it as such.
Only the words still shimmered between them despite her determination.
“No,” she scoffed to drain those words of their power. “Not your heart.” Her hair had fallen out of its pins and tangled down her back. She was not a petal like her sister—she was a thorn. “Your ship.”
She held up the tin charm in the shape of a ship that she had stolen from his cross-belt, smug and preening.
Snapdragon preened just as hard next to her, teeth full of starlight.
Briar tossed Ethan her most wicked grin over her shoulder and took off at a run through the long grass, laughing.
Her hip did not even twinge. His dragon followed her without a backward glance.
She did not know if dragon familiars could chortle, but it certainly seemed like it.
“Traitor,” Ethan muttered.
Briar did not make it back to the cottage.
She was rushing down the path, still grinning, flushed with a heady mixture of pleasure and victory, when she caught her heel on the edge of a mound.
The old hillfort temple dated back centuries, all the way to when the Romans tried to take Lyonesse.
They’d never managed it. The witches had chanted day and night, sending storms and kelpies and phoenixes.
The temples had long ago been reduced to stone outlines and patches of grass that never grew quite right, but the old magic still lingered.
It was the same place where Petal used to dig holes to hide her rock candy the summer she decided she would become a pirate queen.
And the summer after that, when she stole all of the green ribbons from the hatmaker when he sneered at Briar’s limp.
The gold candlesticks from the vicar’s house when he insisted Petal should marry him to save her soul.
Petal had always been a thief, now that Briar really thought about it.
She had once hidden the last of the candied pineapple from Mrs. Aster and concealed it in her mouth.
She had refused to confess even with her cheeks comically stretched.
And Petal hated pineapple, no matter how fashionable it was.
Briar froze.
Dragon and swan circled her, dragging starlight, vigilant.
Her heart thumped loudly in her ears, drowning out the ever-present murmuration of the sea, the distant shriek of a kelpie, the toads croaking once more from the pond.
She knew where the moonstone was.
She wanted to shout at Ethan to hurry, hearing his footsteps.
But she was suddenly suspicious of the thistles, the blackberry hedge, the boulder to their left.
A Keeper or an Iron Crow or even a villager might well lurk in the shadows.
A rabbit in a burrow, a fox in a den, all could answer to a witch.
The very grass might tell her secrets despite its best intentions.
She did not think Charles was brave enough to follow her when Ethan was nearby, but she was not going to take any chances.
In the end, it did not matter.