Saber-toothed Smile
Saber-toothed Smile
“Out of the carriage,” I repeated, my hand falling from his mouth.
Ruven flashed me a grin. “Don’t worry. It’s dark, we’re not going that fast, and our driver has been paid a great deal to ignore anything happening behind her for this trip. She probably assumed that would be sex or murder, but escape still counts.” He nudged me with one knee as he bundled up his clothing and tucked it under his arm. “Cloak?”
Right. The cloak. I shoved myself back onto the rear-facing bench, banging my tailbone as I did, and grabbed for the black cloth. Ruven had it out of my hand before I’d even finished passing it towards him, whipping it around himself and getting into a crouch in the same motion.
“Come on,” he said, jerking his head towards the door.
I clambered down, palms sweating. Jumping out of a moving carriage was almost the same as getting thrown from a trotting horse, and the last time that had happened, I’d— I’d—
Before I could fall into a blind panic, Ruven grabbed the handle to the carriage door. “Now!” he snapped, flinging it open.
I moved—a reaction, not an action, my body responding to the way Ruven’s muscles bunched against my back. The world whipped past in a kaleidoscopic blur. Sharp lines of buildings and organic shapes of branches tilted and crossed, my mind struggling to understand the sudden shifts in light and space as I fell through the air.
My confusion helped. Rather than being tense, I hit the ground in a loose tumble, rolling over one shoulder and scraping the heel of my hand against rough stone. Ruven’s dark form flew over me, the man landing in a skidding crouch that should have taken the skin off the bottom of his feet, but instead made a sound like wood grinding across stone.
“Up!” he said in a hiss, grabbing me by the upper arm while I was still trying to figure out where all my body parts were. Ruven half-hauled me upright, taking off before I had my feet properly under me and keeping me from falling by hooking his arm around my ribs.
I staggered into a run, my feet hurting from the first smack against the cobbles. The thin leather shoes they’d put me in for the sale did nothing to protect my feet from the impact of running on stone.
Ruven’s feet made sharp clopping sounds on the stone, like a barefoot horse trotting on a road. Hooves , I thought, dazed, and the thought felt more right than the sight of his boots had. Ruven had hooves. That was weird, right? None of the fae I’d seen had possessed hooves, though I’d only seen a handful—
Ruven nearly yanked me off my feet whipping around a corner. My teeth snapped together and I stumbled, needing the support of his arm to keep upright. God, what the fuck, what the fuck —
Pain sang up my calves. A stitch burned in my side. “No one’s even chasing us,” I gasped out, managing to make the second turn without tripping. “Ruven, why—”
A man’s shout cut me off, far closer than I wanted to hear. Adrenaline spiked in my veins. All my skin went cold as my heartrate jumped into the stratosphere.
“Looks like they’re quick on the uptake!” Ruven said, in a determinedly-cheerful sotto voice, panting out the words.
Pain shot up my leg as I stepped on something sharp, a shard slicing deep into my foot. I cried out, a high, helpless sound, and stumbled, unable to put weight on the ball of my left foot without shooting pain. Ruven hissed a curse and hoisted me up in a bridal carry, darting for a half-open door. The door slammed closed behind us, yanked shut by a fucking tail snaking out from under Ruven’s billowing cloak.
We skidded into some hapless person’s bedroom. I didn’t get a chance to look around; Ruven dropped us to the floor and dragged me under the bed with him, hauling me backwards. He tossed the cloak over me and wrapped his hand around my mouth as footsteps rang through the hallway.
A female voice lilted through the air, the words too indistinct to make out. “It’s just the door. Probably the wind,” another woman called, sounding distracted. Her footsteps passed by the open door of the bedroom, coming to a halt before she could have reached the door. “Wait. What is that?” she asked, sounding like she was talking to herself. Fabric rustled; a moment later, I heard the sounds of her kneeling and a wet scrape. “What?” she asked again, the word barely intelligible. “Blood?”
That had to be glass in my foot. How much of a blood trail had I left? One drop? A dozen?
I did my best to breathe silently, my foot in throbbing agony, lungs burning. From outside, I heard the sound of pounding feet. Ruven buried his nose in my hair and breathed through his mouth, his hot breath dampening my scalp.
“How strange,” the woman in the hallway murmured. She got to her feet, fabric rustling, and walked back towards us.
Her footsteps paused at the doorway. I held my breath, squeezing my eyes shut. Did she know we were in here? Was I about to die like some girl in a horror movie, listening to the footsteps of the monster while hiding under a bed with a stranger?
The silence stretched. My lungs screamed for air; my hands shook and tears started gathering on my lashes.
“Xana?” someone called from deeper in the house.
“Coming,” the woman called back. She paused a moment longer—and shut the bedroom door.
I almost collapsed in relief, my whole body shuddering as I panted for breath. Ruven exhaled slowly, relaxing down alongside me. A strong, serpentine length curled around my calf—his tail.
We listened to the woman’s footsteps retreating down the hallway. Silence descended on us, a turgid one laden with anxiety and careful breathing. My vigilance slid away from the hallway to the man behind me, until all at once, my awareness of Ruven took up every fraction of my focus. His naked body was molded to mine as if he belonged there: bare thighs framing mine, powerful arm wrapped across my chest, heartbeat thudding against my spine.
He nuzzled closer with a sigh, his body going softer and tail tightening against me. My heart beat faster, terror and adrenaline transmuting everything to sparkling heat.
“Ruven?” I whispered. He didn’t say anything, arching closer. One warm hand slid under the collar of my shirt to massage the taut muscle of my shoulder. “Ruven,” I whispered again, more insistently. “We can’t stay here. I don’t want to be the monster under someone’s bed.”
Ruven shuddered, a tight motion, and for one heartbeat, his grip on me tightened. But a moment later, he let go of me and tugged his tail off of my leg.
“You’re right,” he said, sounding shaky. “You’re right.” Ruven rested his forehead against my hair, breathing carefully. “Don’t… scream, alright? When you see me.” He took a careful breath. “Don’t scream.”
My skin chilled. Hooves, tail… what was he?
Devil, beast, monster… it didn’t matter, in the end. Screaming while in a stranger’s house was stupid in the extreme. Ruven clearly didn’t want to hurt me, and I was his bondservant. He owned my obedience.
“I won’t scream,” I whispered.
He nodded against my hair, then scooched me forward. I went without protest. My body had plenty of things to say about the abuse, but I did my best to ignore it, keeping my pain vocalizations to soft panting as I climbed out from under the bed.
I turned in time to see Ruven emerge, holding the cloak across his groin with his hand fisted in the dark cloth. He looked up, saw me staring, and flashed me a reckless smile that did nothing to hide his discomfort.
He had saber teeth, sitting on either side of his jaw, sharp ivory lengths unmarked by chips or scratches. Four sharp, black horns jutted out of his scalp, two right above his brows and two further back, curling like an antelope’s. My wide eyes fell down along the black markings marching up his throat like herringbone to where they fell back across his shoulders, curling around his torso in a second pair of ribs.
Ruven tucked his legs up, as if trying to look comfortable. He had lifted ankles, fetlocks growing at his heels and dark leg hair thickening to fur on three-toed, hoofed feet reminiscent of the ancient ancestors of horses. A long, black-skinned tail, splitting into a deep fork at the end, curled across his powerful legs like he could block them from sight.
He had nice fucking thighs. As in, thighs built for fucking, the kind you see on rugby players and men who spend hours a day practicing with a broadsword. Not that I noticed, of course. There was no reason to look at Ruven’s bare thighs, especially not when we were hiding in a stranger’s bedroom.
I swallowed and dragged my eyes back up to his. Ruven licked his lips, flashing a forked tongue. His saber teeth leaned forward, then flexed backwards, tucking out of the way along his jaw.
Not like a saber-toothed cat , I thought, still staring at him with my mouth parted and eyes too wide. Like one of those Chinese water deer.
Maybe the weirdest thing about it was that it wasn’t weird at all. I’d recognized Ruven when he’d been fae and when he’d been human, and I recognized him now that he was some sort of freaky tiefling with rock-hard abs and movie-star charisma.
“What are you?” I whispered.
The corner of his mouth flipped up. “Your soulmate.”
I gave him a look . “More than that,” I said, keeping my voice down.
“True, though I’d rather get out of here before getting into the details,” he said, his smile growing wry. “For what it’s worth, I’m still fae, just strange—what we call ‘wildling.’ Touched by wild magic. A great deal of it, actually.” Ruven cracked his neck, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. All his strangeness melted away, replaced by the version of himself he’d shown in the carriage.
Seeing him as a fae beauty again, I found to my surprise that I preferred the monster to the man. He was still Ruven, but he seemed less himself in some ineffable way. It was a bit like biting into a chocolate chip cookie to discover it was some low-calorie concoction. The cookie was still discernible as a chocolate chip cookie, but it was definitely a disappointing experience compared to the real deal.
Blessedly, the bedroom had a window to escape out of, and while my leather slippers didn’t do much for arch support, they’d served well to keep the blood from splattering everywhere while Ruven had been carrying me. Somehow, he’d managed to keep hold of his bundle of clothing, too, and dressed himself in most of it with efficient movements. The silver brocade of the doublet got sacrificed; Ruven grew sharp black claws and tore it into strips. Those got wrapped around my feet and lower legs, one as a bandage and the other so I didn’t look so asymmetrical.
I still had the glass in my foot, but at least I wasn’t going to bleed everywhere, and I had more padding on the soles of my feet. Ruven helped me out of the window and followed with a great deal more grace; I made it one limping step before he growled and picked me up.
He carried me through a warren of dark streets, moving without apparent effort, his pointed ears turning, an animal’s taut wariness in his every step. It took almost an hour for us to make our way through the city, hiding from patrols and ordinary city-folk, before Ruven slipped into a dank back alley and set me on the ground. Without speaking, he pointed to a narrow set of witch’s stairs, the kind where each half of the stair is offset so it’s nearly as steep as a ladder, then traced his finger up until he pointed at a wall with peeling green paint.
I swallowed and nodded. The best I could do was hobble, panting from the shooting pain every time I had to put weight on my right foot. By the time I got to the door, I was soaked through with sweat and swaying from the exhaustion and pain, but at least Ruven didn’t make me wait. He splayed his hand on the wall and a dark crack appeared, cutting out the shape of a door with small finger-holes. It opened easily, moving with the silence of well-greased hinges, revealing only darkness beyond.
Ruven picked me up again, flashed me a smile, and stepped into the black rectangle of shadow.