Chapter 35
“Talk to me, little witch.” Fox’s mental voice is commanding, intimate. “I know you can hear me.”
Oh, Gods. I can hear him, but I don’t know what to do.
I won’t answer. I can’t. I’m afraid to even think too loudly when my thoughts might betray me. I focus on my breathing, on not tripping over roots and stones, on watching where I’m going as I weave in and out of the trees.
Fox’s tone shifts entirely. The confusion and frustration disappear, leaving something like satisfaction behind. "I don’t understand why we’re running, but I don’t care. I don’t understand half of what you do, but I’m going to follow you anyway because you’re mine.”
“I’m not!” I think indignantly.
“You are, and if you need me to prove that, then fine. I will as soon as I catch you, little witch. I’m going to claim you and fuck you so hard that your pussy will be imprinted with my cock.”
My chest constricts, my lungs fighting for air as heat floods my face and my pulse pounds in my core. I bite the inside of my cheek, fighting myself not to turn back.
A whimper escapes my throat before I can stop it, and I hear Fox laugh. “You like that?”
“No,” I lie.
“Don’t lie,” he scoffs, seeing through me immediately. “I know you, Aurelia. You’re just as hungry as I am. You love the idea that I might take you hard on the ground like an animal.”
My lungs burn as I gasp for air, doubling over with my hands braced against my knees. Each breath comes ragged and harsh. When I finally straighten, I can only manage a slow walk, my legs trembling beneath me.
For some reason, Fox doesn’t immediately grab me. I’m sure he could if he wanted to, but he keeps his distance. I feel his gaze hot against my skin, tracking my every movement.
“That’s not the problem,” I finally answer. “Sex was never our problem.”
“Then what’s the problem, little witch?” His reply is instant, and the feeling of his eyes on the back of my neck intensifies.
He's toying with me, and somehow that knowledge makes my heart race even faster and my core grow wet with anticipation.
I keep walking, keeping my eyes trained in front of me as I maneuver around moss-covered rocks and gnarled tree roots, squinting in the growing darkness. I don’t know how to answer the question, but strangely, I find it easier to communicate my feelings mind-to-mind than to speak them out loud.
“I’m sick of being the one who has to chase you.”
“...do you realize the irony of that?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Explain it to me,” he demands. I’m sure if I turned back right now I’d be able to see the tight muscle ticking in his jaw.
“I always came to you. I always had to initiate everything.”
“Of course you did,” he says as if it’s obvious; as if he’s surprised I even have to ask about it. “I couldn’t show up at your fucking door, no matter how much I wanted to.”
My heartbeat speeds up in a way that has nothing to do with running. “Why?”
He makes an audible sound of frustration, and my shoulders stiffen. He’s closer behind me than I realized—probably no more than twenty paces back—but he’s still not reaching out to grab me, or close the distance between us. I keep my back turned, as I wait for him to reply.
“If I pursued you at all, knowing that I could never care about you or you’d get hurt, I would be willingly endangering you.
The only way I could justify any of this to myself was by making sure it was always your choice, but don’t for one second think that I wasn’t lying awake every night for two fucking years hoping you’d knock. ”
My chest constricts and I suck in a startled breath, but I still don’t turn back. “But you didn’t want more.”
“Of course I did, but I couldn’t risk you like that.”
“No, not then. Now. Just now you told me you like how things are.”
“I do,” he replies, with clear confusion.
“Meaning you like our relationship the way it is. Casual.”
He growls loudly enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “This isn’t fucking casual. It never has been.”
I bite back a whimper. “It wasn’t? What about when I came to your room and you weren’t there?”
“When?” he demands, sharply.
“I don’t know, there was that night I fell asleep in your room and there was another time before that. My birthday last year. I knocked on your door and you weren’t there.”
He pauses for a second, as if thinking. “It was the full moon. I was out running. You thought I was, what? Finding some woman at the pub?”
“Don’t act like it’s so impossible. You could have. Women look at you all the time, and you never promised me anything.”
He lets out a bitter laugh.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I retort.
“I’m not. It’s just…all of this. As if there could be any other women, when all I ever think about is you.
I thought you knew that. I thought it was fucking obvious that I was possibly the most selfish man imaginable, because I truly believed that if I loved you then you would get hurt, and yet, I’ve loved you for two fucking years, and it didn’t even matter. ”
“Two years?” I echo, more confused than ever.
“That’s why I realized I must not be bound anymore—that it must have broken when I was sent to Dyaspora—because I’ve loved you for two fucking years, and nothing bad ever happened.
Unless you count all the agony it caused me to pretend I didn’t care.
And now, it turns out I did a better job pushing you away than I thought I did, because you think all I want is to fuck you.
There’s nothing to do but laugh, because if I think about it too hard I’m going to have to throw myself on my own sword. ”
My breath catches in my throat. I’m stunned into silence, partly because he wasn’t lying all those weeks ago when he said he finds it easier to talk mind-to-mind, but that realization is nothing to the words that keep ringing through my head: Two years.
I stop walking, coming to a halt in the center of a ring of dark trees. The sun has fully disappeared, and I can barely see anything in front of me.
I feel Fox walk up behind me. He gets close enough to touch me, but doesn’t, the warmth of his skin radiating against my back as we stand inches apart, but completely separate.
“You know, as fucked as all this is, there’s one thing that keeps me from thinking it was entirely pointless.”
“What?”
“You don’t have to just believe me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t have to just believe that you’re everything to me. You can have proof.”
“How?”
He snorts a laugh that ruffles the hair hanging down my back. “We’re speaking mind-to-mind. What do you think that means, little witch?”
My spine goes rigid. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Don’t fucking lie.”
Fox closes the distance between us, just to prove he can. I can feel him breathing, looming over me. He reaches out, drawing one finger down the length of my spine. I gasp in surprise, then feel another sensation—the familiar tug between my shoulder blades as my wings unfurl without my permission.
A tremor runs through me as his hand travels up my spine, pausing at my shoulder before finding the sensitive spot where my wings connect. His touch lingers there, then continues its journey until his fingers encircle my throat—not threatening, but possessive, his palm warm against my racing pulse.
He bends over, to graze his lips along the shell of my ear. “Caught you.”
I let out a long breath and melt backwards into Fox, unable to hold myself back anymore. His fingers tighten on my throat for the briefest second, then he spins me to face him instead.
I blink when I see his white feathers shining in the moonlight. His wings are out too.
Fox crashes his mouth down on mine, kissing me hungrily, like he's starving for me.
I rise up on my toes to try and meet his mouth, but I can't reach him the way I want to.
I grip his shoulders, trying to pull him down to my level instead.
He follows my lead and ends up sinking to his knees on the ground, kneeling before me while I remain standing.
He presses his face into my chest and breathes in my scent. “Pine and cranberry,” he says in his head.
“What?”
“That’s what you smell like. I’d know it anywhere.”
Fox grips the fabric of my short dress in both hands.
Instead of tugging it over my head, he pulls it down, past my hips.
I shimmy to get my arms out, and soon the dress is pooling at my feet.
“I haven't bothered to wear a corset in weeks, so I’m nearly naked without the dress. My bare breasts are right at Fox’s eye level. ”
“Don't ever wear a corset again,” Fox says, leaning forward to take my nipple in his mouth.
I yelp in surprise. “Did I say that out loud?”
Fox doesn't take his mouth off my breast, his tongue drawing delicious circles as he answers me. "In a manner of speaking. You'll figure it out, and in the meantime I'm happy to hear all your thoughts about what underwear you will or won't be wearing."
I giggle, but the sound dies in my throat, turning into a moan instead. He rolls my other nipple between his fingers, and my insides tighten, as if an invisible string connecting my nipple to my core has suddenly pulled tight.
I writhe against his mouth, my pulse throbbing between my legs. I feel painfully empty inside, desperate for him to fill me. This teasing is torture when all I want is for him to take me roughly, pound into me hard and fast until I fall apart around him.
Fox stops licking my nipple, but leaves his mouth around my breast as he looks up at me. I wonder if I projected those thoughts into his mind as well.
From the hot look in his gaze, I think I already know the answer.
Fox grips my upper arms and tugs me down to the ground in front of him. He spins me around, pushing me forward, until I'm kneeling on the ground, my face mere inches from touching the cold earth.