Chapter 20 Playing the Rogue’s Wife #2
We rounded the corner, and Radven drew me closer to him as we approached a building with a wooden sign featuring a lamb and a loaf of bread.
Radven glanced up and down the street, then opened the door and pulled me inside.
The inn was much livelier than I had expected, given the size of Far Meadow and the relative emptiness of the streets outside.
It looked like everyone in the village was here—men laughing riotously over flagons of ale, women dancing in front of the large fireplace, people young and old digging into plates piled high with meat.
I even spotted a handful of children chasing a dog under one of the tables.
Radven threaded through the crowd like a pro, leading us to the bar at the very back where a man was filling more flagons from a large barrel.
“My wife and I would like a room for the night,” Radven said.
Wait—we were going to be sharing a room?! I looked at Radven sharply, but he ignored my glare.
“Of course, sir.” The innkeeper stepped closer, nodding. “We have one of our standard rooms available just above, but if you and your lovely wife would like a larger suite—”
“The smaller room is fine.” Radven pulled a few coins out of his pouch. “Cateline and I don’t need nothin’ fancy. We’re happy gettin’ cozy with each other.”
He was just teasing me now, and I let him know how I felt by stomping on his foot. He continued to ignore me, but the corner of his mouth tightened, and I knew he was fighting a smile.
He’s enjoying watching me squirm, I thought, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. I suspected the best way to handle that was to deny him the reaction he was obviously expecting from me. Two can play at this game.
“We’ll take our supper up there as well,” Radven told the innkeeper.
I saw my opening, and despite my agreement to leave all the talking to Radven, I leaned against him affectionately and told the innkeeper, “We’ve no interest in leaving our room tonight, you see. Dearest Elric and I have a few other things in mind.” I stroked my fake-husband’s chest.
Radven immediately dissolved into a coughing fit, and when I looked up into his face, I could see that he was desperately trying to cover up a laugh. I’d caught him off guard.
Good, I thought, pulling away from him with a satisfied smile.
Radven was still trying to pull himself together behind his fake coughs, so I leaned on the bar and watched the innkeeper as he stepped away to take care of our requests.
The innkeeper wasn’t bad to look at honestly, with dark, friendly eyes and a thick, dark beard that the hipsters back home would have killed for. He had sort of a rugged lumberjack thing going on, with the broad shoulders to suggest he would have handled an axe just fine.
And his backside isn’t bad, either, I noticed as he turned to tell a serving girl to prepare our room.
“You shouldn’t ogle other men while you’re with your husband.” Radven’s honey-smooth voice was in my ear, his lips brushing against my skin. “What will everyone think?” Apparently he’d recovered himself, but despite his sultry tones, his voice was still thick with repressed amusement.
“A girl can look, can’t she?” I replied lightly, enjoying the sense of power I felt by playing along and teasing him right back.
“Men check out other women all the time. But don’t worry, husband, I’m not going to fall in love with the innkeeper, no matter how luscious his beard is.
” I straightened, remembering a more pressing issue.
“By the way, what’s all this about us sharing a room? ”
“What did you expect?” He raised an eyebrow. “That we’d play a husband and wife only to come in here and request separate lodgings?”
“No, I just…” didn’t give this enough thought. And frankly, the idea of sharing a bed with Radven, no matter what the pretenses, brought up all sorts of tingling physical reactions that I knew spelled trouble.
“Don’t worry, butterfly,” he said, his usual wickedness shining through his colored contacts. “Your virtue is safe from me.” He leaned close once more. “Unless you don’t want it to be, of course.”
My entire body went hot, then cold, and I reached up to push him away, just to give myself space to think straight again. I was mid-shove when I glanced up and found the innkeeper staring right at us.
“My husband is handsome, isn’t he?” I blurted, quickly turning my shove into an awkward stroke. “I can’t keep my hands off him.”
Radven was grinning. “Now you see why we want our supper brought upstairs.”
“Of course, sir. Madam.” The innkeeper was clearly a professional, because he didn’t even blink at our ridiculous display of affection. “Sylvie will take you up to your room.”
Radven and I followed a girl about my age up a narrow, creaking flight of steps to the upper story of the inn. The sounds of revelry in the common room followed us, not at all muted by the layers of wood between the levels of the building.
“Here ye are,” the girl said. “Yer supper will be up shortly. Don’t hesitate to say so if we can get ye anything else.”
The room was, to my dismay, even smaller than I’d feared it would be.
The bed took up a good eighty percent of it, leaving barely enough room to even walk around the edges, and the only other piece of furniture was a rickety table wedged in the corner.
A single small window overlooked, I assumed, the street below.
Radven strolled right in, kicking off his boots and flopping back on the bed in a single, graceful motion.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Making myself comfortable,” he replied, propping his hands behind his head. “And you should, too.” One side of his mouth tilted up in a wicked grin. “Settle in, wife. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”