Chapter 37
Hanna
After a solid ten minutes of being crushed under a toad that weighed roughly the same as a small boulder, Ribbon finally rolled himself off the couch with a wet thwump and hopped toward the workbench, where he immediately started sniffing the chisels like he planned to eat them.
Savla groaned. “No. Absolutely not.”
Ribbon opened his mouth wide enough to fit a whole hammer.
“Ribbon!” I yelped, scrambling upright. “Sweetheart, those aren’t snacks!”
He paused, tongue half-lolling out, offended by the suggestion that anything he wanted wasn’t, in fact, edible.
Savla scrubbed a hand over his face “This is why he’s not allowed in here.”
“He followed us,” I said, trying not to laugh as Ribbon nudged a bottle of wood polish with his nose. “He’s protective.”
“He’s nosy,” he countered.
“Yes,” I agreed. “And protective.”
Ribbon croaked triumphantly and knocked over the polish bottle for emphasis. Savla lunged just in time to catch it and I snorted out a laugh.
He gave me a look that should have been terrifying, but only made my stomach flip. “Do you still want me to teach you how to carve?”
I sat up straight from where I was sitting. “Yes,” I gasped enthusiastically—probably too enthusiastically.
His eyes softened as he pulled a stool beside the main workbench and gestured for me to join him there. I slid onto the seat, heart fluttering as he stood behind me, resting one hand lightly on the back of my chair.
It wasn’t intimate. Not intentionally intimate, at least.
But Goddess Mother—it felt like the kind of touch that branded itself on skin.
“Here,” he murmured, selecting a block of wood with a grain like warm honey. “This is good for beginners. Soft enough to shape, but it won’t split too easily.”
He placed it gently in my palms and the wood was warm from his hands.
“What are we carving?” I asked.
“A leaf,” he said. “Simple lines. Something natural.”
“A leaf,” I repeated, smiling. “How poetic of you.”
He muttered something under his breath that sounded like, “Not poetic,” but the shy way he ducked his eyes betrayed him. He picked up a small carving knife and placed it on the bench in front of me. My pulse jumped.
“Oh, I get a knife,” I teased. “Big step.”
“You get a knife,” he confirmed dryly. “But only if you promise not to stab yourself.”
Ribbon croaked loudly.
Savla grunted. “Or Ribbon.”
“Or you?” I added with a smirk.
He leaned down, his lips grazing the shell of my ear in the tiniest breath of contact.
“You can try to stab me if you’d like,” he murmured. And then I forgot how to breathe.
He straightened like nothing happened, and guided my fingers to the handle of the knife, his palm brushing mine. Heat shot straight up my arm.
“Hold it like this,” he said softly, his hands covering mine to adjust my grip. “Don’t force it. Let the blade do the work.” His chest brushed my back as he leaned in.
The room shrank to just us, but then Ribbon croaked impatiently and hopped onto the workbench with a wet splat. Savla jerked, and the knife nearly slipped.
We both yelled, “No—!”
Ribbon froze, one webbed hand inches from the woodblock.
“Ribbon,” I whispered in my most soothing voice. “This is not for toads.”
He blinked and then sneezed directly onto the wood. Savla’s groan of despair was loud in the quiet room.
“Beautiful,” I said brightly, patting the wood dry with my sleeve. “Extra moisture for carving.”
“Hanna,” Savla muttered, “don’t encourage him.”
But he was smiling—really smiling. It was soft at the edges and slightly disbelieving. The kind of smile that made my chest feel like warm bread rising too fast.
I turned back to the blade. “Okay. Show me again?”
His hands came around mine once more. Slow, patient and completely trusting. Under his guidance, the knife slipped across the wood—clean, gently strokes revealing the first hint of a curve.
“There,” he murmured. “Good.”
Praise from him was dangerous. It was straight to my head... and other places. Ribbon hopped closer, decided that he needed attention, and smacked his giant head against Savla’s hip.
He wobbled, I wobbled and the knife wobbled.
Savla reflexively wrapped his arms around me from behind to steady me, his chest flush against my back, his breath catching in my ear. Everything inside me melted. And I was certain that he could smell how wet I was for him.
For a moment, neither of us moved. His arms stayed around me and I leaned back into him instinctively.
“Hanna,” he breathed, voice low enough to shiver along my spine. “You’re… distracting.”
“Me?” I squeaked. “I’m distracting? Ribbon’s been trying to eat your tools for twenty minutes.”
He huffed a laugh against my neck, sending a shiver across my skin and Ribbon croaked smugly. The knife slipped from my fingers and clattered onto the table. Savla gently took the wood block from my hands and set it aside.
Then he tugged me—soft and irresistible—until I was turned sideways on the stool, facing him. His hands settled on my hips and my knees brushed his thighs.
“We can carve later,” he murmured.
My breath hitched. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said, dipping his forehead to mine. “Much later.”
Ribbon made a long, dramatic exhale and hopped off the bench, offended we’d abandoned the lesson. Savla nudged his nose against mine—just barely. I melted against him.
He grunted, the sound low and painful as he leaned back, taking me in. It was as though a thousand tiny aches gnawed at my body. Everything all together—comfort, lust, love and inevitability, all swirling around inside of me.
Tonight was going to be different from everything else, I could already tell, and the anticipation was soaring inside of me. I’d been hoping for this for so long—hoping that he’d give in—that I hadn’t even allowed myself to imagine what would happen if he finally did.
My heart thumped slowly and loudly. My body was feverish.
He was staring at me, taking me in while I was already pressed against him, urgency rushing through me.
Then he reached forward, cupping my head and tugging me against him, harder.
I didn’t offer any resistance, coming freely into his arms. He used his thumb to tilt my jaw upward, his lips brushing against mine.
I felt him everywhere. His scent was making me delirious. The steady warmth of his skin, his finger, travelling to curve around my back.
And then our mouths were touching again. I felt as though we were made of the same body for one insane moment. As if he and I were only separated to exist in different bodies by something bigger than ourselves. Something mystical.
And maybe I was right, maybe that was what fated mates were.
But then his fangs were scraping at the corner of my mouth with the delicious drag of his rough stubble, our air and breath shared between us, and I forgot about all of that.
With our height difference, I could barely stretch to meet him, so my upper lip slid against his lower one.
He didn’t kiss me back at first, but there was a low groan in his chest, only loud enough for me to hear. A sound of pained longing, of wanting and of finally having.
“Hanna,” he sighed, and then he was there, his lips against mine. He flipped us so that I was on the worktable, and he was standing between my legs.
The rough swipe of his tongue against my lips, the loud breaths shared between us, and the heat of our mouths as we tasted each other, was everything I’d ever asked for. His fingers tugged at my scalp, tilting me so that we were kissing at new angles, our tongues stroking across each other.
He tasted as delicious as he smelled. I laughed against the seam of his mouth, giddy, ridiculously happy and he grunted.
“What?” before deepening the kiss, not allowing me to answer.
As if he couldn’t stand not kissing me now that he could. As if this was all that we needed in the world, and maybe it was.
But when he slid his hand under my top, the sear of pleasure, the rush of him touching my bare skin took us to another level, and I didn’t think I was ever going to recover from what we were doing. I wasn’t certain I’d ever come back from Savla Everlock touching me like I belonged to him.
I gripped his forearms and he sucked at my jaw, then my beck. I released a rough exhale before gasping. “Savla.”
I was so wet, I refused to think about it, and we hadn’t even done anything yet.
He’d barely kissed me. That couldn’t be normal, and I prayed that he wouldn’t know how pathetically desperate I was for him, but by the way his breath was chuffing out of him, how he took long, pulling, lungfuls of air through his nose, I figured he definitely knew.
I couldn’t bring myself to be embarrassed, though. Not when I was with him.
“More,” I gasped. And it came out slurred, like a crash of vowels and consonants that no one should be able to understand, but he did.
“Are you sure?” His voice rolled over my skin, made the thing pulsating inside me purr like it was being tamed by him.
I nodded, but I was also blurting. “Only if you want to. I—”
He cut me off with his lips against my temple, scooping me closer to him until my breasts were crushed against his chest.
“Hush, my Zoga. I have you,” he whispered, holding me close.
My brow furrowed with confusion at the word he’d never said to me before.
“What’s Zoga?” I asked, and he ran his tusk over my neck, shoulders and face, distracting me completely until I forgot the question. It was so nice, as if he was nuzzling me.
“My muse,” he murmured, at last, and it took me a long moment to realize he was answering the question. My breath caught in my chest. To be called this male’s muse. This artist’s muse. I’d never been so honored in my life.
My throat was too full to speak, but if I could, I would have told him how much it meant to me. How much he was a muse to me as well. But I couldn’t, so I settled for crushing my lips against his.
“You’re tiny,” he pulled away to tell me, and I blinked at him because never in my entire life had anyone ever looked at me and called me tiny before.
“Uhh,” I said, articulately, and his responding smile was sweet and gorgeous.
“You need to do what I tell you,” he murmured, his tone gentle and firm all at one, commanding in the exact way that I needed. It quelled my anxiety and loosened the bunched muscles in my arms and legs until I wasn’t so much clinging to him as I was letting him hold me. “So that I don’t hurt you.”
My body and heart bloomed for him, even as he licked his tongue across my throat to my shoulder, and I slumped against him.
“Tell me what you need.”
But I didn’t know, so I shook my head. His cool lips pressed against my heated cheeks.
“Do you need to be fucked?” he asked, as calm as anything, and the words out of his lips—his lips—which were so proper a few seconds ago, blew my mind.
I just blinked at him, and his laughter was a soft rumble against my throat. But then I caught his meaning, and I nodded, desperate, more instinct than anything else.
That was all I wanted. I was a hollow mess of a witch and he needed to fill me to the brim.