Chapter 20 Huntsman #2
Still hovering in the doorway, still unbelievably shirtless, my mate sighed, folding his arms across his chest. “I don’t know. The damned thing’s been following me around in my dreams for a couple of weeks now. Even when he was back in Cahlish.”
I looked back at Fisher, raising an eyebrow. “You know, the fake annoyance isn’t necessary anymore. I know you love him, and so does he.”
Onyx went to town, licking my wrist. His pink tongue rasped against my skin. Fisher watched him at work, shaking his head. “I’d say we tolerate each other at best,” he argued.
“I’ve seen you with him when you think I’m not looking. And why would he already be here with you, in this, what, this dream space, if he didn’t love you?”
Kingfisher spent another drawn out moment studying the ceiling again. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s just been waiting here for you.”
“Fisher.” Onyx jumped up, putting his paws up onto my shoulders, and started rubbing the top of his head against my jaw. “Just accept it. My fox is your fox, too.”
He didn’t say anything, just growled, making a face as he kicked the cottage door closed.
The simple act of him crossing the room to stand by the fire had me holding my breath.
How could you fall in love with someone because of something so simple as crossing a room?
Was it because of the way his skin was dotted with goose bumps now?
Was it the way the muscles clenched in his jaw as he stooped down to tend to the pot that was bubbling over the fire?
Or the small lines that formed between his brow when he was concentrating?
Or the way he caught me watching him and gazed at me over the top of his shoulder, smirking?
Holy shit. I was so fucked. Every single thing this male did made me want him. Made me want to scream. Made me want to—
“Haven’t you learned your lesson yet, Osha?
” Fisher rose from the fireplace and slowly paced across the threadbare rug toward me.
He stood before me, his powerful thighs at my eye level.
I looked up at him, trying not to get caught up in the fact that I had to bypass the wall of muscle that made up his stomach and his chest before I could reach his eyes.
It was a miracle that I found them at all.
His smirk had gone from slightly amused to deeply interested.
“Your heart’s racing, Saeris Fane. Why might that be? ”
It was, too. Now that I couldn’t control whether my heart even had to beat or not, the fact that it got away from me so often when I was around him seemed to entertain my mate even more than it already had.
“You look so pleased with yourself,” I said. But I was blushing. Hard.
“Oh, really? Let . . . me . . . see.” His eyes were full of sin.
Moving very slowly, he reached up and dipped his thumb into his mouth, sucking on it.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he lowered his hand and brought his thumb to my mouth, rubbing it across my bottom lip, wetting it with his own saliva.
“The most unique, most beautiful creature in the entire realm, on her knees in front of me, looking up at me like she’s feeling feral and might just like to fuck me?
Yes,” he said, “I’d say I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself. ”
My nerve endings buzzed with electricity.
This male.
This. Fucking. Male.
Was this what life was going to be like now?
Falling more and more in love with him? Just wanting him, and needing him more than anything else I had ever needed?
I hoped with every fiber of my being that it would be, because this felt .
. . whew. I didn’t even know how to describe what it felt like to have this male looking down at me, like he was feeling everything I was feeling.
Like he was feeling feral and wanted me, too.
Onyx saw a moth and darted from my lap, pouncing after it, forgetting me for the moment.
I reached out for Fisher, wrapping my hand around his ankle, just needing to feel his skin against mine.
His pant legs were wet. The tops of his feet were cold.
He studied the point where I held him, smiling softly as a tendril of black ink swirled down my fingers and pooled on his skin, twisting and turning as it chased around his ankle and then disappeared underneath the cuff of his wet pants.
I looked up at my mate in amazement. “What the hell was that? Did I just give you a tattoo?”
He smiled, arching a dark brow at me. “Looked like it.”
“I thought . . . wait, so that doesn’t only happen when we’re having sex?”
Fisher chuckled as he tugged the bottom of his pants up as high as they would go over his muscled calf, revealing half of what appeared to be ornate inkwork of a dagger. He nodded approvingly, shooting me a wink. “Nice.”
“Fisher! Is this going to happen every time we touch each other?”
The bastard was trying not to grin. There was really no need for him to be so godsdamned smug right now.
He stroked his fingers along my jaw, curling his index finger and using it to lift my chin higher, so that my gaze met his.
“No, it won’t happen every time, Osha.” His smile grew in size, despite his visible efforts to leash it.
“It’ll only happen when you’re thinking”—he ran his tongue over his bottom lip—“very bad thoughts.”
After everything we’d done with and to each other, how was it that he could still make me blush like a little girl? Why did I want to hide from the suggestive, raw lust on his face? “I wasn’t thinking anything!” I protested. “I just touched your ankle!”
“Hey, it’s okay. Some people have a thing for feet. And mine aren’t as hairy as most people’s.”
The wicked glint in his eyes let me know that he was teasing me and loving it, but I couldn’t let it stand. “I do not have a thing for feet!”
“It’s okay, Saeris. Really. I can understand how touching any part of me would drive you to distraction.”
“Gods!” I tried to slap his leg, but he darted out of my reach, flashing sharp canines as he laughed. “You can stop being so arrogant, too!”
I was both vampire and Fae. I had excellent vision now, but all I saw was a blur of shadow and light as Fisher sped forward and took me by the throat again. His fingers pressed into the side of my neck ever so slightly as he rubbed his thumb back and forth over my jawline.
He was all seriousness now, his smile gone. “I’m not arrogant. I’m fucking proud. I hear how your pulse quickens when you touch my body, and it makes me feel fucking invincible. You can hear my pulse do the same when I touch you, can’t you?”
Holy fuck.
He was trying to kill me, I swore it. “I—”
His grip around my throat tightened a fraction. “Stop protesting. Own it.”
“All right. Yes. I can. I do.” Fuck. He had me breathless and back to front for him, and he knew it.
His eyes simmered with desire as he crouched barefoot in front of me and cupped my face again with his uninjured hand.
“I don’t know what this is right now,” he said, gesturing to the cottage around us, “but it feels like a gift. We’re alone.
It feels safe. It’s snowing out there. We have the fire, and food is cooking, and the fox is chasing insects.
This is all I need, Saeris. Something simple.
And you. I’m claiming you, Osha. Come on. You’re coming with me.”
The bedroom was nowhere near as luxurious as his room at Cahlish.
The bed barely looked wide enough to fit the both of us, but that didn’t matter.
There were plenty of sacrifices I would willingly make to spend time naked with this male, and a decent-sized bed was the least of them.
He was already half naked from his wood chopping adventure earlier, which meant that most of the undressing needed to happen on my end.
Kingfisher took care of that.
He’d used his shadows to divest me of my clothes in the past, but not now. He used his hands, and he damned well savored the task. He flinched every once in a while, his broken hand causing issues, but he wouldn’t abandon his mission, no matter how hard I objected.
When he pulled my shirt over my head and then leaned into me, he wrapped my braided hair around his good fist and pulled my head back so that my mouth tipped up to meet his.
“If you think a broken hand is going to stop me from fucking you properly, Osha, then please . . .” He spoke against my mouth, his lips brushing mine, his breath fanning over my face. “Let me disabuse you of that notion.”
He fell on me with a snarl that made the air rush out of my lungs.
He lifted me off my feet and slammed me up against the cottage’s wall.
A portrait of a very dour-looking Fae female wearing a black high-necked dress fell to the ground, its frame splintering at Fisher’s feet as he pushed his way between my legs and settled himself between my thighs.
“I could spend the rest of eternity right here and die happy,” he rumbled. “I could fuck you and feast on you until the ages turned and the suns all died and burned out in the skies, and I still wouldn’t have had enough of you.”
He hiked me higher up the wall, bowing himself over me so that he could kiss the hollow of my throat.
I hissed through my teeth when the heat of his tongue met my skin, trailing upward toward my ear.
When he caught my earlobe between his teeth and tugged, my back arched away from the wall and I was suddenly very, very aware of how hard he was between my legs.
Could this kind of thing happen in a dreamscape? Was it even possible? It certainly felt like it. If Fisher could chop wood, and he could hold me and kiss me here, then it stood to reason that he could fuck me here, too.
Thank the gods, I chanted in my head. Thank the fucking gods.
Don’t thank them, came Fisher’s low, resonant reply. Thank me. I’m the one who’s about to make you scream.