Chapter 8
Varek stood at Cresswick's desk, sorting through the ledgers Drogga had stacked there. Supply manifests. Grain tallies. A half-finished letter to someone in the capital.
"Sixteen barrels of salt pork," Drogga said from the window seat, reading from his own stack. "Twenty-two of flour. Eight of—" He squinted. "I think this says lard, but the man's handwriting was terrible."
"Lard." Varek didn't look up. "We're not taking all of it. Six barrels of pork, ten of flour. Leave the rest for whoever comes to pick through the bones."
"Generous."
"We can't carry it all and I won't waste men guarding a supply wagon for an extra three days."
Drogga made a note on the margin of the ledger. His quill scratched against the paper, a sound that had always irritated Varek. His brother wrote like he was trying to kill the page.
"Ravens went out at dawn," Drogga said. "Targesh will know we're coming before we clear the river. I told him about the woman."
Varek's hand paused on the letter he'd been reading. "What did you tell him?"
"That you'd finally lost your mind and were bringing home a human." Drogga's grin was audible.
Varek set the letter down. It was addressed to a Lord Merrick, someone in the border council, and it detailed the exact routes Cresswick's mercenaries had used for their raids. Evidence. Proof of what they'd already known. He should feel satisfied.
Instead, he felt restless.
The pull had been a low hum since he'd found her in that pantry.
Background noise, like the sound of his own breathing.
He'd learned to work around it, to focus on the task in front of him while some deeper part of his mind tracked her location, her scent, the rhythm of her heartbeat three rooms away.
But since this morning—since she'd straddled his lap and pressed her chest against his and made that small, broken sound when he ground her against him—the hum had changed. Swelled. Grown into something with weight and texture.
He could feel her. Not just her location, but her state. The way she'd been uncertain when he left her, then curious, then still. And now—
Varek's hand flattened on the desk.
"—eight casks of wine, though most of it's that Valdaran swill that tastes like vinegar and regret. You want me to—" Drogga stopped. "Varek?"
Varek was already moving toward the door.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong."
He was down the corridor before Drogga could ask another question. His boots echoed against the stone, too loud, too slow. He wanted to run, but a war-leader didn't sprint through a conquered holding because his blood was telling him something had shifted in a woman across the holding.
But he walked faster than he usually would.
The servants' passage was empty. The kitchen was empty. He could smell her, though. That scent he'd been breathing since the pantry, the one that had nothing to do with soap or sweat or the borrowed nightgown.
The yard door stood open. Varek stepped through.
She stood in the center of the kitchen garden with her palm pressed flat against her chest and the sun turning her hair to copper fire.
Varek stopped in the doorway.
The nightgown was thin, and the light came through the linen and showed him everything.
The full sweep of her thighs. The shadow between them. The way her waist curved inward and then flared out into hips that could cradle a man, could bear the weight of him without breaking.
His mouth went dry.
She was built for him. Built for survival and softness and the kind of endurance that had nothing to do with muscle.
Mab turned at the sound of his boots on the packed earth. Her eyes went wide, then wider, and color rose in her throat.
"I felt you," Varek said.
"What?"
"I felt you," he said again.
He crossed the yard and stopped an arm's length from her. Close enough to see the pulse jumping in her throat. Close enough to smell the shift in her scent, the one that had pulled him out of Cresswick's study.
"I was thinking," she said.
"About what?"
The flush spread from her throat to her cheeks. She held his gaze anyway, which cost her. He could see the effort in the set of her jaw.
"About you."
Varek exhaled. The pressure behind his ribs eased, not because it was satisfied, but because it had found its target.
"I was thinking about what you said. In the hall. About what you wanted to do to me."
"And?"
"And I want you to do it." She looked up at him, and her eyes were clear. No fear. No hesitation. Just the steady burn of a woman who had made a decision. "I want you to touch me. I want to be awake for it. I want—"
He kissed her.
Slow, thorough, one hand at the nape of her neck and the other at the small of her back.
She opened for him without prompting. Her lips parted and her tongue met his, clumsy at first, then surer when he angled his head to give her room.
The tusks grazed the corner of her mouth and she made a small sound that went straight through him.
He'd kissed women before. He'd taken women to bed, shared pleasure, parted without regret. He knew the mechanics of desire, the way a body responded to touch, the sounds a woman made when she was enjoying herself.
This was different.
This was the pull wrapping around his spine and pulling tight.
Mine.