Chapter 22
She was too angry to silently and unobtrusively scale the side of the building and climb back through the window, so she used the normal entrance.
She was just past Hark’s door and on the way to her own room, when the creak of hinges halted her in her tracks, and the fury she had spent the walk back convincing herself to bury until morning came rising from that horrid, dark place within her.
‘Where have you been?’ His voice was husky, like he had burnt his throat on whisky. She stiffened where she stood, barely able to control the trembling coursing through her.
Not now.
If she began this with him now… Gods, the tavern was likely to burn between them.
‘That is none of your concern. I suggest you leave me alone, Stappen.’ Bitterness dripped from her tongue, and she surprised herself at the power contained in her words.
‘Excuse me?’
Oh gods.
She turned, her tangled curls whirling with the force of it. She took him in, eyes raking the length of his body as he stood in the doorway, one arm leaning casually against the doorframe as he watched her. His hair was tousled, and the top of his shirt unbuttoned. He looked…
Gods, she couldn’t afford to go there right now.
Pushing off the doorframe, he began to move towards her, his eyes widened, the icy blue of them dark in the low light of the torches.
‘What the fuck have you been doing?’ he growled.
Her feet shifted slightly, ready to intercept the attack that was coming, judging by the ferocity in his body. She wouldn’t step backwards; it was simply not in her.
She took his legs from under him as he grabbed her hands, leaving him wide eyed and held up only by the fact that he was pressed against the wall of the narrow corridor.
‘I’ve told you before that if you touch me—’
‘Where have you been?’ he persisted, his eyes still wide and scanning her. She looked down at herself, wondering what was causing his strange behaviour. It was evident immediately. She was covered in blood.
How had she forgotten it? She’d felt the hot splash of scarlet as she’d fought in the tavern, but the thought had fled her mind on the way back to the inn.
She’d been fuelled by so much anger and hatred for this wretched kingdom that she hadn’t thought to wash the blood from her hands or, if his look of horror was anything to go by, her face.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Reinhart—’
‘Don’t Reinhart me,’ she snapped, stamping her foot as she edged closer to him. ‘You’re a liar, and gods help you, Hark Stappen—’
‘What are you talking about?’ He grabbed her then, pulling her into his room and shutting the door. Had she not been so overwhelmed with rage and … and betrayal, she would have fought him.
‘The slaves!’
His face betrayed nothing, and that hurt her more.
He’d let her believe they were going to get them out.
He’d let her believe he was shocked to discover the shipments were actually slaves.
But he’d known all along. Worse, he had been stealing them himself, if what she’d overheard at the tavern was true.
‘You knew! You knew all along what was happening! You knew the shipments were slaves. You let Cyrus send us out here—’ She was shouting now, and she didn’t care how thin the walls were. Let them hear. Let them know what a bastard he was.
‘You don’t understand—’
‘I don’t understand? You’re right I don’t fucking understand! Your kingdom slaughtered my people, and now I find out that they’re trading slaves – which is illegal, may I add—’
‘Because everything you do is within the law?’ he interrupted. It was only now she noticed he still held her wrist.
She snatched her arm away, putting as much distance between them as she could in the cramped room.
‘I help people! You’re stealing slaves from under the king’s nose and doing … what with them? Gods help you—’
‘I’m helping them!’ he shouted, stepping towards her. ‘I’m helping them, you stupid girl! I don’t agree with it, either, and if you’d just waited for me to explain that to you instead of charging ahead and coming up with the wrong answer, again, then you would know that!’
She straightened, and her shoulders brushed the wall. He’d somehow backed her up against it with the force of the anger rolling off him. He looked dishevelled and furious, but she was the one who had the right to be angry, not him.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ she snapped back, forcing herself forwards and squaring her shoulders as he took a step back from her.
‘I don’t care if you’re saving them or not.
You let this go on for however long it already has.
So why didn’t you explain it, Hark? Why didn’t you tell me the truth? You know I would have helped!’
Gods, her voice was breaking, and she was fighting back the knot in her throat. Why was she so upset? He opened his mouth but said nothing.
‘I can’t talk to you.’ She choked back the emotion and shoved past him. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she exclaimed furiously as he reached his hand out to her.
She wanted to wake up from this horrible nightmare in her room at Castle Grey and find it had all been some terrible dream. She’d worked so hard to cut away the darkness from Hadalyn… How many of them were her own people? How many had been killed or suffered worse fates already?
The thought of it exhausted her, and knowing this was about to become a job far larger than anything she had taken on before, she almost buckled where she stood.
His hand was suddenly around her wrist, and when she made to yank hers away he tugged her back, his eyes dark and blazing as she met his gaze.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he seethed, his voice a growl in his throat.
Something swooped low in her stomach – challenge perhaps, or could it be something different?
He was looking at her so intently that even her iron will seemed to be on the verge of bending beneath him. ‘You’re staying here. With me.’
‘Like hells I am!’
He pulled her closer, until there was barely an inch between them.
She could see the brilliant blue of his eyes now, all ice and danger.
‘Do you think for one moment that, after waltzing back in here in the middle of the night looking like you’ve come from a slaughterhouse, I would consider letting you go?
I won’t subject my people to the likes of you.
’ His voice was lethally soft. Almost a whisper.
Her heart was fluttering now, the traitorous, wicked thing. It was rare for a man to manage to ignite something within her, and Hark Stappen certainly shouldn’t be capable of it.
Her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe around the knot inside her.
She wouldn’t crack before him; she wouldn’t allow it.
But he was watching her, with that goading look in his eyes that was driving her closer to the edge, where she was afraid she would come undone completely, and then he would see how broken and damaged she was deep within her soul.
She thought he might say something; she watched his lips purse as though he would curse her to the depths of hell. But then … then his eyes flared and the voice that escaped his lips was filled with something so deadly it sent a shiver down her spine.
‘Who hurt you?’
She stilled.
‘Reinhart,’ he growled between his teeth, ‘who was stupid enough to draw blood from you?’
She didn’t think she was breathing. He was so close. So close. And there was a cruelty in his eyes that sung of pain. She hadn’t known she was bleeding – gods, she was covered in everyone else’s blood so why distinguish her own?
But the brawl in the tavern just now had been more violent than usual. She’d taken a blow to the jaw that had sent her reeling backwards. She lifted a hand to her temple where Hark’s eyes had rested.
When her fingers came back sticky and warm, she swallowed against the sight of her own blood.
Stupid.
She’d lost control so thoroughly in the bar that she hadn’t noticed until now the nausea that accompanied the blow, or how it had been growing steadily since she’d left the tavern.
And Hark … he looked as if he were capable of setting the world on fire.
‘Why do you care?’ she managed.
Hark’s fingers tightened around her wrist and she resisted the urge to knee him between his legs. Chances were he’d likely hit her back harder.
‘I care because they know we travel together. An attack against you is an attack against me and my kingdom, and I won’t stand for it. Even if your inability to control yourself is what started the fight in the first place.’
Arrogant, self-righteous bastard.
‘Get. Off. Me,’ she said, but the fight had gone from her. It wasn’t anger burning a hole straight through her now, it was something different. Something hot and twisting and far too tempting.
She saw the challenge in his eyes before he could speak.
Felt the tension in his fingers as he closed the gap left between them.
His chest pressed against hers, the blood on her clothes swallowed up by the black of his shirt as he held her tight against him.
A grin split his lips. He ran his tongue across his teeth as his infernal smirk grew wider.
He was infuriating. Too wolfish and sharp by half, but nothing she knew she couldn’t take down if she needed to.
It wouldn’t matter, though, would it? Because there would be no taking him down – at least not in the way she had been trained to do.
‘Get off me,’ she repeated.
He pulled her even closer and purred, ‘Make me.’
Whatever was between them pulled taut and then snapped entirely.
And then she surged forwards as he bent down towards her, their lips crashing together as surely as anything else she’d ever known. He tasted of spice and smoke and whisky. Of danger and secrets and broken promises. She could get drunk on just the idea of it.
His hand tangled in her hair, pressing her ever closer as his tongue slipped between her lips and the world around them shattered. Her fingers moved at expert speed, undoing the buttons of his shirt as his arms reached beneath her bottom and he lifted her so she was against him.
‘I hate you,’ she gasped as he slammed her back into the wall, kissing her again as if she were nectar and his life depended on it. She didn’t know how he managed it, but within seconds her shirt was torn and her bare skin was melting beneath his touch.
‘Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart,’ he groaned, rocking against her and eliciting a noise from her that had him nipping at her lip.
Her own hands tore the shirt from his skin and, gods … she’d seen her fair share of men when she’d found one intriguing enough to take back to her rooms at Castle Grey, but Hark…
She didn’t think there was a word to describe this level of perfection. His skin was so tanned, so smooth across the solid planes of muscle that she couldn’t resist trailing her hands over his chest, down to his stomach, lower…
‘So wicked,’ he whispered, pinning her against the wall, the hard length of him pressing against her core and teasing her with delicious friction.
She rocked against him, revelling in the moan that spilled from his lips as she reached lower and lower.
He growled and then the room was spinning.
Spinning, spinning, spinning as he laid her on the bed, his hand trailing up the inside of her thigh as he gazed at her as though she were something to be admired. There was a ferocity in his eyes, something burning and raw and, gods, she thought she could watch him forever and never get bored.
All thought ceased when his fingers found the apex of her thighs.
She gasped, rolling her hips for more, more, more.
‘So impatient,’ Hark murmured. His fingers moved higher, sliding along the waistband of her trousers. He was toying with her, like a mountain cat playing with its prey.
She kissed him harder, sliding her hands behind his neck and up to tangle in his hair. The sound that rose from his throat had warmth gathering where she wanted his fingers.
‘Please,’ she managed to pant between breaths, rocking her hips against the hand that trailed along her waistband.
‘And here I was thinking you had no manners,’ he murmured.
‘Fuck you, Hark,’ she gasped.
Later, she might wonder what in the gods-damned world she was doing. Why she was writhing beneath Hark Stappen. How she had allowed something within her heart to grow to this without her knowing about it.
Later she might think what a fool she’d been.
Later could get fucked.
His hand slipped beneath the fabric, brushing against her and dragging a moan from her lips. She was almost embarrassed by how desperately she was ready for him; how she arched her spine at his touch as he circled around that sensitive spot, never quite pressing there.
She should touch him back – she wanted to – but then he found that sensitive bundle of nerves and she thought she might have lost all ability to do anything other than exist beneath his touch. She bucked her hips against his fingers. More. She needed more.
‘Please,’ she said again, tightening her fingers in his hair. Hark groaned again, and she felt him grin against her mouth as she kissed him between moans.
‘I might get used to you begging me, Reinhart. I think it might be my favourite thing you’ve ever said.’
‘If you don’t shut your mouth I’ll—’
‘You’ll what?’ And then he slid his fingers inside her and she cried out at the sensation.
She couldn’t control the way her hips moved then, desperate for him to give her more.
She couldn’t think around the feeling, couldn’t do anything but moan and beg and move against him as pressure built higher and higher.
His fingers moved in and out, driving that tightness in her core further and further until she was sure there was nothing left of her.
‘Perfect,’ Hark murmured, barely audible over the sound of her moans. And yet it was still enough for her to come undone.
Release shattered through her, sending her plunging off the edge of the thing they had built between them. She cried out, only for him to press his lips against hers, quieting the sound with his kiss.
When she finally found herself again, Hark was watching her, his shirt somehow back on as he blinked lazily. Her head pounded and her mouth was dry, and yet she had never felt so exquisite.
‘Sleep, Reinhart,’ he said, rolling over to lie beside her. ‘We’ve a long day tomorrow and that concussion is bound to render you entirely unpleasant.’
She’d hardly settled her breathing before sleep found her, enveloping her so thoroughly she wondered if Hark had managed to drug her.
She didn’t care.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow she would think of what this meant and why she was so easily persuaded to lie down and close her eyes next to him.
Tomorrow she’d sort through it all.