Chapter 10 Prey
Chapter ten
Prey
Hunter’s heart skipped. Years had not dulled her.
If anything, time had honed her beauty into something sharper, more dangerous.
Her skin glowed in the early daylight. The curves he remembered—had tried, and failed, to forget—were still there, perhaps a fraction softer, perhaps more human. “Majesty,” he said, looking away.
“Look at me,” she commanded.
His eyes were dragged back of their own accord.
Liora, naked before him, slowly crossed the room.
She used every inch of herself the way a swordsman uses his blade: deliberate, controlled, knowing exactly where to cut.
The sway of her hips, the length of her stride, the tilt of her chin—each movement was a calculated strike against his resolve.
She stopped when there was only the width of a breath between them.
“You remember,” she sighed, pressing the length of her body against his fully clothed front.
His nightshirt did little to dull the heat of her skin. “How you once worshiped me?”
God, he did. The memory was a physical ache in his chest. He remembered the nights he’d spent guarding her door, listening to her breathe, wishing he were the silk sheets against her skin.
He remembered the way she’d looked at him earlier—like he was a tool to be discarded—and how much it had shattered him.
But now? Now she was looking at him like he was the only man in the world.
Her hands slid up his chest, over the scars and the hard planes of muscle.
.. He should push her away. He should remember the girl he’d promised to protect.
But Liora smelled like sin and salvation, and his body was betraying him, hardening with a traitorous, desperate need.
He trembled, caught between instinct and conscience.
“Liora,” he said, voice barely a whisper. “I won’t...”
“Won’t what?” she asked, letting her lips brush his jaw without quite becoming a kiss.
“Won’t kiss me? Won’t fuck me?” She rocked her hips against him, just enough pressure to make him suck in a breath, but not enough to give him relief.
“You will. You will find her,” she said, her words a soft rasp against his ear.
“You will kill her, and you will leave her bones in the woods. And when you return…” She let her hand slide lower, palm cupping him through the cloth, squeezing just enough to make his knees weaken.
“…then,” she continued, “I will give myself to you fully. No more stolen moments. No more half-measures. You and I, together, on this throne. A king at my side, at last.”
“King,” he echoed, dazed. The word hit some deep, gnawing hunger in him that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the way he had always stood just outside the circle of true power.
He had never really considered it before.
He only wanted Liora. But this new thought woke something deep inside of him that he didn’t know was there.
“Say it,” she urged, drawing back a fraction so she could see his face. “Tell me I’m beautiful.”
He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “You’re… beautiful,” he said, the word coming out strangled.
“Again,” she said.
“You’re beautiful,” he repeated, breathless. His hands, which had been hovering uselessly at his sides, rose of their own accord to rest on her waist.
“Tell me,” she said, grinding her hips against him in a slow, tantalizing rhythm, “that there is no one more powerful than I am.”
“There is no one more powerful than you,” he said, the confession ripped from him like a prayer. “No one.”
She smiled, eyes half-lidded. Praise always did more for her than any caress. “Good,” she said, and rewarded him by rolling her body once more along his, enough to make him bite back a groan.
He was trembling now with the effort of not grabbing her, not taking, not begging. He wanted to sink into her, to lose himself, to forget that he’d said no a moment ago.
She could feel his restraint fraying. She pulled away.
The sudden absence of her warmth made him stagger a fraction, like a man leaning on a wall that was no longer there. “Majesty—” he began, reaching for her.
She stepped back, out of reach, lips curving in a small, cruel smile. “No,” she said. “Not yet.”
He stared, pupils blown wide. “You said—”
“I said when Snow White is dead,” she corrected. “Then you will have me. Then we will speak of marriage, of crowns, of you sitting beside me as king. Until then…” Her gaze flicked meaningfully downward. “…you may keep yourself hungry,” she finished. “Hunger makes men do such… impressive things.”
He stood there, chest rising and falling, straining against his own skin. The ache between his legs pulsed in time with the ache in his chest. “You are a cruel woman,” he said thickly.
“You like it,” she replied. “You always have.” She bent to pick up her robe, taking her time, knowing his eyes were on every inch of bare flesh as she straightened and shrugged back into the silk.
“Go, Hunter,” she said, her voice more cool and queenly now that the bait was set.
“Follow the trail. She cannot have gotten far on that horse, not if the poison still drags at her limbs. Bring me proof when it’s done. ”
He swallowed hard. His body screamed to stay, to push her back against the wall, to take what she had dangled in front of him like a treat before a starving dog.
But the part of him she had always known how to use—the part that craved her approval, her touch, her promise—won out.
“I’ll ride at once,” he said, voice rough.
“Good man,” she purred. “Don’t keep me waiting.”
He left her chambers turned on, frustrated, and utterly controlled by her promise, heart twisted by unrequited love and the hope—always just out of reach—of finally claiming his reward.
By the time Snow White slid from Grimm’s back, her legs felt like they belonged to someone else.
They had been riding for what felt like days, but in truth it had scarcely been two hours since she’d thrown herself out of the tower window and into the forest. The poison from the comb still clung to her nerves, a fog that made her limbs heavy and her thoughts hazy.
Every few minutes her vision blurred; every few steps her knees trembled.
“We have to stop,” she whispered, stroking Grimm’s damp neck.
“Just for a little. Just until my head stops spinning.” He snorted softly, his sides heaving with exertion.
They had run hard to put distance between themselves and the castle.
Snow White knew it was unfair to ask more of him for the moment; neither of them was physically fit enough for such a grand adventure.
They had come to a small clearing where the trees parted enough to show a strip of sky.
The grass here was patchy but soft. A fallen log, half-swallowed by moss, lay near the edge of the clearing.
Beyond, the forest pressed in again, dark and dense.
Snow White slid down, boots squelching slightly in the damp earth.
Her muscles protested. Her ribs still ached with every breath, the bruises from the corset laces lighting whenever she twisted.
She led Grimm to a low-hanging branch and looped his reins over it, giving him enough slack to lower his head and graze on the sparse grass.
She patted his neck. “Don’t go far,” she sighed. “I won’t be long.”
In truth, she intended only to sit for a moment.
Just long enough to let her heart stop galloping and her legs remember how to stand.
She sank down with her back against the tree, cloak pulling around her.
The bark was rough through the thin fabric.
The ground was cool and damp. It felt solid, at least—more solid than anything had since the comb’s teeth had bitten her scalp.
Her eyes drifted closed. “I’ll just… rest,” she told herself.
“Only until the sky lightens a bit. Then we’ll go. ”
But sleep pulled her in as her eyelids turned heavy.
She didn’t feel herself slide fully onto her side.
She didn’t notice the way her cloak fell open, baring a pale length of leg where her chemise had torn on a branch.
She didn’t see the way the moon, slipping between clouds, painted her skin in soft silver.
She didn’t hear the hoofbeats. Hunter had ridden hard from the castle, following what traces he could: broken twigs, disturbed underbrush, the faint, almost invisible marks of a horse’s passage.
Snow and rain had since softened some tracks, but Grimm’s large hoofprints were easy enough for a trained hunter to spot.
His body still ached with longing. Liora’s touch burned on his skin; the press of her hips, the promise in her voice, the way she’d pulled away just as he’d been ready to break.
His arousal, denied and then harnessed, throbbed faintly with every stride of his horse.
He told himself he was here because of duty, because of the oath he’d taken, because of the bargain her words had fashioned.
He did not dwell on the part of him that still felt loyal to King Wilhelm’s memory.
The trees thinned. He pulled his horse back to a walk as they neared the edge of a small clearing.
The early morning sky was still dark, the horizon only just beginning to gray.
Mist clung to the undergrowth. He saw the stallion first—Grimm’s dark shape, head down, ears flicking as he tore at the sparse grass.