Chapter Four #3
He laughed. “So it is.”
I broke free, ignoring the odd tingling going through my fingers and up my arm. “You can stop the carriage here.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. You have no food, water, or proper clothing. You’d never make it.” Alisdair pounded the roof of the carriage. “I will bring you back to Lyrica, and you will tell your lies. As agreed.”
The carriage jolted, nearly throwing me off the seat again, because we were turning. We were going home.
A happy noise burst from my throat—warped from a stolen voice, but still real and true. I couldn’t contain my happiness. Beaming, I said, “As agreed.”
Relaxing for the first time in over a week, I sank back into the cushion, settling in for a long silent ride.
After a spell, I closed the curtain myself. It made it easier to stare at him without him noticing.
He wasn’t what I was expecting in so many ways.
His anger at discovering Emiana’s father hit her seemed genuine, but with the same breath he’d sworn to slaughter his Lyrican spies for relaying incorrect information.
How did one who disregards life as casually as he did turn around and threaten someone else for their treatment of women?
Was he more than what I’d been raised to believe? Was there a side to him that wanted his war to end, peace to reign, and the violence to stop?
He shifted and his tunic fell open, flicking my gaze to his hard, shadow-dusted chest. All those men who came back from the battlefield speaking of yellowed eyes, a foaming maw, fur and scales where none should be, and a face so hideous it made you weep—I cursed them all as kakkas for telling such terrible lies.
Alisdair was dawn breaking over the horizon.
A rare flower blooming under a midnight moon.
Rainbow eels dancing in a clear, placid lake.
No matter who you were or what you were doing, you simply had to stop, stare, and bask in the sight of him.
Although, sunrises and rainbow eels were bright, joyous sights. Alisdair was different.
There was something dark and feral about his beauty.
More like the inherent fear clinging to your shivering spine when you ventured deep into a dark cave glistening with silk worms. To be in that wondrous, quiet space was beautiful, but you’d never shake the sense that something was lurking in the dark—waiting.
Even so, it did not make him any less gorgeous. I said I wanted to stop thinking of Kirwan as handsome. My wish was granted for all faemen were the hideous, bloated hindquarters of a skletmacca compared to Shadowsoul.
“So soon?” he said, startling me. He breathed deep. “Already you’re on the edge of begging.”
It took my last blissful, ignorant second to realize what he was talking about, and what he was scenting.
My face lit on fire. “I can assure you, Shadowsoul. One way or another, if that thing comes near me, it will be bitten off.”
“Oh? Shall we make another bargain? You do so enjoy those.”
“What kind of—?”
He ripped his tunic clean off his body.
“What are you doing!” My scream was two octaves louder than it needed to be. I couldn’t help it. Of all the things I anticipated he’d do—and slaughtering me and drinking the blood from my corpse was high on the list—I never expected him to do that.
“Nothing that should concern you.” Those claws moved down and found his waistband.
“You do not want me. You do not ache for me. Your arousal does not hang heavy in the air, betraying your flushed skin and quivering lips.” He sliced through his pants, his claws a knife through butter— No, a blade through fabric, revealing him from top to tail.
My jaw clenched tight, clamping down on a high-pitched squeak before it left my lips. The remains of his trousers hit the carriage floor, leaving nothing behind but every bare, breath-stealing inch of him.
Roaring sounded in my ears. Bright lights blinded me—impossible for we were in a darkened carriage, but I was blinded all the same. I had no experience of being alone with a naked man, and this was the worst of all men to be alone with.
Losing one’s maidenhood was a risky prospect for girls from the Galley.
All a devious suitor had to do was lie and say they paid me for our evening together, and just like that, I was branded a war wife for the rest of my life.
Of course, I could say they were lying, but the word of a poor woman from the Gutter didn’t amount to much.
Two of my childhood friends had been caught in that very trap. After months and years fighting it, and starving, they both now lived in the homes of the noblemen who tricked them—circumstances left them little choice.
I swore that would never be me. No sweet words, muscled arms, charming grin, or promise of forever would tempt me to bed a man I didn’t trust absolutely. No man was that handsome. No man was that alluring. No man... was Alisdair Shadowsoul.
There wasn’t an ounce of fat on sculpted thighs, or indeed anywhere else. All of him was lean, hard muscle. Inky-black runes covered him from neck to shin, finding a home on every part of his body—including the part I was doing everything in my power not to look at.
“Resist me, little bird.” His words washed over me—spell-binding. Head-scrambling. “Deny what your body screams for even now, and I will not give it to you.”
That was hardly a bargain. I would’ve laughed at the absurdity, if I could’ve done anything at all.
My gaze glued to the hand traveling back up his leg. Before my eyes, his claws shrunk, reducing to the size of an average faeman. The sight so baffled me, I hung on too long and didn’t look away before he gripped his length. Looking me straight in the eyes, he started pumping.
A low, deep hiss leaked through my gritted teeth. I was choking too hard on my groan to let that through—though my body betrayed me all the same.
I had no one to compare him to and still my mind supplied, Huge. Big. Powerful. All that and more described the massive, smooth cock rolling over his palm. Alisdair widened his legs and mine snapped shut—knees knocking together hard.
It wasn’t just the sight of his muscles clenching, toes curling, or lips parting.
It was the unabashed shame of him. The pure truth that he didn’t care.
Trapped in a carriage with a forced wife who hated and bargained to leave him at the earliest opportunity, he stretched bare and bold before me with no hesitation. No nervousness. No fear of rejection.
I’d never been so free and confident in all nineteen of my years.
My inner voice shouted for me to look away, but I couldn’t. Shadowsoul wouldn’t let me.
A mad statement, but true all the same. His heated gaze trapped me. His body held me in thrall. I could look nowhere but where he wanted me to.
Slow, firm, steady strokes milked his length, teasing the tiniest bead of seed to the tip. A strange noise filled the carriage. It took me a minute to realize it was my fingernails ripping through the seat cushion.
“Who are you putting on a show for?” he barked, making me jump. “No one can see you but me.”
My lips parted to ask what he meant, but I knew.
My hand pried off the cushion, taking a handful of goose feathers with me. I was still dressed in that obscene wedding gown with voluminous skirts. They were as cumbersome to put on and cut up as they were to lift.
They bunched up around my face—tickling my chin and nose. I couldn’t see my own hand traveling down, but he could. Alisdair furiously picked up the pace when my fingers slipped inside—an impossible speed that I couldn’t hope to match, but tried.
My fingers worked my toothless pussy, spreading lightning-charged heat zinging through my body. I felt hot and cold at the same time. Chilled but feverish. Disgusted but dirtily lustful like I’d never been before. So this was why sex was worth the risk—huh.
“Legs open,” Shadowsoul ordered. “Feet on the seat.”
My lips peeled back from my teeth—only partially because I was moaning. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
He stalked over, a coiled serpent narrowing in on his prey. My head fell back as he leaned over me, like a lover waiting to receive a kiss, or a caged animal readying to bite.
“No, I don’t tell you,” he whispered. “You tell me. You beg me down on those soft, supple knees—spilling the name you once cursed from your lips. Harder, faster, deeper, more.” Fingers trailed a slow goose pimple-popping trail down my forearm, giving me a chance to stop him—daring me to.
“You teach me all the ways to make your nipples hard, your pussy wet, and heart race.”
Alisdair was so close, I could count every one of his lashes.
He brought his hand down beside my head, overwhelming me with his heady scent of cedar, pine, and something exclusively him.
I didn’t fight it when his palm cupped the back of my hand.
Nor did I stop him slipping two fingers past my folds to join mine.
“Tell me your secrets, little bird.” He pushed in deeper than I’d ever gone and spread his fingers—spread me—wide.
“Ah,” I moaned, eyes rolling back in my head.
“Sing.”
Sing. That’s what Mama used to do when I was young and she was well. She’d sing sweet, happy, beautiful songs to me, and a man whose laugh I only remembered in my dreams—Papa.
Mama didn’t become a war wife out of desperation, starvation, or boredom.
She did it to be with my father. Son of a wealthy nobleman, his father forced a respectable, wealthy bride on him the minute Papa was of age.
No one cared that he wanted to be with his true love.
The girl he loved since she first set foot in his home, clinging to the skirts of their new housekeeper.
When Father was called up to fight, Mama seized her chance to be with him. Possibly her last chance if the All Mother called him home off the battlefield. She went to war with him. They were together, they were happy, and they had me.