Chapter 10 Sneaky When Wet
Sneaky When Wet
Ragnar
Ragnar watched Brioni flounce away from him and into the stall with Moar. She was a flouncer, it was how she almost always moved, but this time there was purpose to it, her face hidden away by her curls, her movements flamboyant as if they could make him forget what she said.
He couldn’t forget the despondent tone and the heavy words of her story, though, even if it was what she wanted. But Ragnar wasn’t going to ask for more because he had no idea how.
He rubbed the last of the healing salve on the veilhound’s small wound, ensured she was otherwise well, and stood.
All day Brioni had been too close, always in his line of sight if not brushing right up against Ragnar’s skin, and her cheerful voice and noises of surprise had grown from amusing to comforting to arousing.
Truly, the only reason he wished for the day to end was so that he would no longer have to control his urge to touch her, to strip her, to drive himself into her—not that her body could take him, nor would she actually allow it.
She was clearly only an instigator, intending to squirm herself out of the consequences that followed.
But the way her voice hushed and how her round face hollowed out when she spoke told him something new.
I understand, he wanted to say, but that wasn’t entirely true: he didn’t know the exact pain she pretended wasn’t pain at all.
But he did know what it was to be unwanted. To not belong. To be lonely.
“Brioni,” he finally said when he reached the stall she’d collapsed into alongside the dog, “you are…a mess.”
She laughed high and loud, everything forgotten, muddy paw prints all over her skirt and bodice and the uncovered skin of her chest.
Blazes take me, why is she even more tantalizing when she’s dirty?
Ragnar traded his arousal for annoyance, the two already intricately entwined, and eyed Moar. “What in the world did you get into? You’re certainly not coming upstairs like that.”
“There was a puddle out front,” Brioni said with a quickness. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to get so messy. I’ll take care of it. Come on, buddy.” She stood and patted her thigh, more dirt on her calves and probably up under her skirt too.
Ragnar tipped his head and watched her flounce to the back of the barn, imagining briefly what it might be like if she took her clothes off right there and exposed every filthy inch of her.
“Don’t worry: I won’t make it worse,” she called, snapping him out of the completely inappropriate reverie. “Finish your chores. I know how to work a water rune.”
As if it would be that easy to return to his work.
As if he wouldn’t see her smile every time he blinked or hear her bubbly laughter echo in the rafters.
Gods, she was only a few paces away, and yet he…
what, he missed her? Ragnar brought his bag of mending tools to the worktable, frustrated she wasn’t already there, being warm and annoying and inexplicably joyful in his presence.
He set himself to replacing the used curatives and making a list of what he would need to request from Kizros and the infirmary.
The teal drayk swooped down and landed on the table, nipping at his quill, another reminder of Brioni and how convincing she’d been all pouty-lipped and glassy-eyed.
He smirked, gaze drifting to the opening at the back of the barn.
The human would be just around the corner caring for Moar—caring for his dog, his friend, in a way no one else ever had.
In the last stall, the atteapir was curled up beside the injured veilhound, trying desperately to help despite the hound’s grumbled annoyance.
Ragnar sighed—both needed jobs that would earn them appropriate appreciation.
He’d procured that for the atteapir, but for the human?
What could he do? He was ill-equipped to offer her even a fraction of what she deserved, and he couldn’t find another demon’s home to place her in like the atteapir.
Gods, just the very thought made his blood boil.
That wasn’t his job anyway. Humans weren’t abandoned runts lost in the woods, even if Brioni sounded like she might have been discarded by her family and comparatively to demons she was rather small…
and she had been sort of found in the woods.
He resolved to put her out of his mind for as long as she was missing and continued cleaning up, but then another thought came to him: the water rune wasn’t working.
When he went to investigate, Brioni was predictably not fumbling with the faucet just behind the barn—apparently she’d discovered it didn’t work, and he would bet all three veilhound packs she had decided to flounce herself down to the pond despite his warning.
He heard the splashing and laughter before he saw her, a thing she wouldn’t do if some Dreadmoor monster was ripping her in half, so he slowed his steps as he emerged from the path.
Brioni’s dripping dress hung from a nearby branch, and it was probably clean of mud, but Ragnar only gave it a periphery glance, too struck by the moonlight dancing over her pale skin. So much fucking skin.
She stood only as deep as her knees, a body he never thought himself worthy of glimpsing on display in a white shift so sopping it had gone transparent.
The thin fabric clung to her every curve, to the generous swell of her backside, to the dip of her waist, to the arc of her back until her curls hung in the way, wet and dark.
She bent over, legs pressed together, soaking shift riding up as she plunged her arms into the water.
What he would give to knead his fingers into the soft-looking flesh of her thighs, slapping it, spreading it, sinking himself inside her.
He would turn her laughter into one of those surprised squeals then a primal cry, panting, screaming, begging…
By Illustra, what the fuck is wrong with me?
“Moar,” he barked, making himself known because lurking in the bushes was bad enough, but he couldn’t just slink away and leave her nearly naked and so vulnerable on the edge of the Veilwood either. “Come here!”
The dog had been happily diving at Brioni but snapped to attention at Ragnar’s words. Fur soaked and tongue hanging, he sprinted out of the pond and shook himself on the bank.
Ragnar held up an arm, but it did little to protect him from the shower.
He hardly cared, though, as Brioni turned to face him.
She moved quickly, but she didn’t duck down beneath the water or dart behind one of the large rocks lining the pond’s edge.
Instead, she took a deep breath and beamed at him with every one of her blunt teeth on display.
The tickling Ragnar had been feeling in his chest overwhelmed him then, more like a hand wrapping around his heart and squeezing against the next beat as if to tell him to stop and look and really see.
He didn’t recognize the expression she was giving him, and yet somehow he knew it was exactly how one looked when arriving home after a long day away.
The feeling was completely foreign for Ragnar, to be the object of someone’s excitement, a sought-after destination, a manifestation of home, and yet the sentiment washed over him like he had been chasing it all his life and finally found it in her, welcoming, warm, and so damn sweet.
Ragnar didn’t care to converse with other demons, but he outright avoided any conversation about soulbonding.
He could never bind to another, not since he lost his magic.
If he had been willing to listen, though, he would have had an inkling about how it felt when one’s other half appeared in their life.
But since he believed it was impossible, he chalked up the strange, new, and overwhelming feeling to finally laying eyes on Brioni’s breasts.
Her shift left nothing to the imagination, complementing the mounds of flesh so that they too were welcoming, warm, and if he could get his mouth around either of her pert nipples, surely they would taste sweet.
Gods, I’m a fucking monster.
“You too,” he grunted and looked away.
“Me too, what?”
“Out of the water and get dressed. And you”—he pointed back down the path as he eyed Moar—“get back to the barn and find a clean bed of straw to dry yourself off.”
Moar and Brioni whimpered in almost the same way, but it was only the dog that complied, trotting down the path and leaving a drippy trail as he went.
The human remained knee-deep in the pond, jutting out a hip and crossing her arms under her breasts as if she knew that put them on even more distinguished display. Strands of limp curls fell away from her face as she tipped her head and eyed him. “I’m not ready to get out yet.”
“Yes, you are,” he snapped, but only because he was ready. “I told you not to come out here alone.”
“No, you didn’t. And I had Moar with me anyway.”
He was immediately incensed yet simultaneously thrilled. And that was…a problem.
She uncrossed her arms and let her fingers skim the water. “I think I’ll stay a little longer.”
Ragnar’s body begged to rebel against the morality he still held onto in his mind—go after her, it said, catch her, show her what it means to be dragged away by a demon.
But she was just a fragile human who didn’t know what she was really saying, and the Veilwood was more dangerous than she could possibly understand. Thank all the gods his mouth was better behaved, like he wished she were—like he wished he could make her. “You will do no such thing. Get. Out. Now.”
She clicked her tongue and rolled the green rings of her eyes as she took a small step backward. “Make me.”
Not again. Those two words would be the death of one of them, if not both, but in the moment, they only killed the last of his restraint.