Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
B eans growls for me to get inside. I put my head down in contrition, but I’m trying to hide my smirk at the fact I’m about to be reprimanded like a naughty child by Daddy Beans . The mirth is completely extinguished by yet another unwanted thought of Tovi tonight.
“The man will no longer be a problem, I assume?” his deep voice asks stiffly.
“Correct. Nor will he beat his young wife anymore,” I reply, looking up into his eyes. I stay there for as long as I can before the revulsion gains traction, and I look away. I'm frustrated that it looks like weakness when I do that.
Bitty pouts. “We could have gone together,” they say, earning themselves a glare from Beans.
“You’re part of a team Mika. We should have discussed and planned this together,” Beans is saying as I glance at Riley, who is looking at everything but me.
Once an assassin, always an assassin.
I walk toward the washroom to clean my face and rinse my mouth as I reply with exasperation, “Agreed. But then murder would have been on four sets of hands instead of one, and if we delayed, we risked him blabbing to people who believed his story.”
Bitty had already debriefed the other two on our slightly successful day. We learned of the new royal gardens on the edge of the castle, which are in view of the western part of Castle City. We plan to go there tomorrow— today . The first glow of sunrise has reached our window.
“I’m going to get a couple of hours of sleep before we head out,” I say through a yawn, unlacing my boots.
“Sleep as long as you like. Bitty and I will go out today. Rain is predicted, and I can wear a jacket and scarf to hide my Nemorisborn features,” Beans says, the last words trailing off as I slip into sleep.
“Kill her,” the older woman instructs while pointing at a snowolf pup wriggling with excitement in front of them.
Fear shoots into the heart of the little blonde girl. Tears fill her eyes before spilling down flushed, pale-skinned cheeks. She doesn’t protest or beg. She knows it would be futile.
In the blink of an eye, the pup is dead, mutilated beyond recognition.
With the almost unrecognizable body of Anerea in front of her, the little girl looks at her hands, covered in blood.
“No!” she screams in confusion. “I didn’t do that to her!” She stands on shaky legs. “I didn’t kill her like that, did I?” she asks in disbelief.
Uncontrollable sobs escape her throat, as she struggles to understand, while confusion and fear bloom to a painful crescendo. “This isn’t what happened,” she pleads to no one.
Jaena approaches with vicious precision, reaching to take the knife from the little girl’s blood-stained hands. She lets her.
Briefly, for a tiny, soul-crushing moment, she thinks the older woman will cuddle her this time, comfort her instead of scolding her for crying. But Jaena stabs the 7-rev-old girl in the abdomen.
“Do not cry for the dead,” the older woman says as she slices the little girl’s throat. “I will not cry for you.”
Jaena continues to mutilate her beside Anerea’s desecrated body while she screams in agony, the little girl knowing she deserves every bit of it.
I fling myself to a sitting position, a knife in my hand as I look around, the remnants of a scream in my throat.
“What happened?” I ask Riley, breathless as I will my rage to get back into its cage. The memory-twisted nightmare coats the back of my tongue with bile.
“I’ll assume your thrashing and scream means it wasn’t a good dream then?” he asks, peering at me from the floor. Shirtless and sweaty.
“No, not a good dream. What are you doing?” I return the knife to the place between the wall and the bed.
“Trying to keep some semblance of fitness while being confined to a room.” He grunts, resuming the push-ups I must have interrupted. “There’s breakfast on the table.”
I get up and shove some ham and pea egg-slice into my mouth before going to the washroom to clean away the nightmare still fresh on my skin. The nighthouse may look dilapidated from the outside, but the running water and stone basins make it lush compared to everywhere else we have stayed. I suppose when they have to entertain high-paying clients with discretion, an inconspicuous outside and lush inside makes sense.
Fresh as a daisy, I exit the washroom to find Riley looking out the bedroom windows, still topless.
“Sorry if I took too long in there.”
Without a word, he turns around and walks straight past me.
“You’re angry at me again,” I accuse him .
He sighs, pausing in the doorway. “No. But worrying about you constantly is exhausting, Firecat.”
“Well, stop.”
“We can’t all just turn off our feelings like the Silent Assassin,” he bites back, immediately growling and looking at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m feeling like a caged animal, but I shouldn’t have lashed out.”
Riley turns and leans against the doorway, his brows creased and sweat glistening over his naked chest. Distracting me. Causing my rage to start raking its claws from my throat downward, splitting me open.
I turn my back to him. “ Go away. Go away. Go away. ”
“Go where?” Riley asks, annoyance in his voice.
Realizing I’ve spoken the words aloud, I groan. “Not you.” I grimace and scratch my eyebrow. “I was talking to my rage building up.”
Riley remains silent. I turn around to see if he heard me.
He heard me, because his face clearly says, “keep the crazy away from me.” I steel my shoulders and look him dead in the eye, waiting for the moment I will need to look away. But it doesn’t come because he shakes his head and backs into the washroom. My rage drops like a hot stone into my stomach, turning it to acid.
After changing into clean clothes, I set out my weapons and begin to sharpen them one by one—except for my hatchets which still don’t need sharpening . Riley eventually comes out of the washroom and joins me at the small table in the corner of the room.
“I didn’t…I didn’t realize that I…e nraged you,” Riley says quietly, not taking his eyes off his hands in front of him at the table.
“I never said you did.” Riley opens his mouth with a look of protest as I continue. “ My rage. Mine. It’s inside of me always, constantly trying to break free. Sometimes, it’s only fluttering. Other times, it’s clawing my insides.” I do not want to mention that I had likened it to a firecat long before he gave me the nickname.
His brows shoot up, and he finally looks at me. I hold his eye, wanting to show I’m not ashamed, despite knowing it’s quite the opposite. His eyes search mine. As if summoned, my rage begins to flap about, my heartbeat increasing. But the need to look away doesn’t come.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“So many reasons, Firecat. If I list every single one, do you think you would hate me a little less?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my eyes, willing away the tears beginning to sting. Worried I might be unsuccessful, I gather my now sharpened weapons. “For the record Riley,” I say, as I carry them to our bed. “I try to hate you. I really try.” I grunt, pulling my bag out from under the bed, putting my knives in it, and shoving it back under. “But I can’t,” I say, the last words a whisper, and then my breath hitches.
He’s standing right beside me. Looking at me like no one ever has before. I’ve had men and women leer, I’ve had them look at me appreciatively, or even possessively. But this is something else.
“Why do you look at me like that?” I ask as I try to maneuver around him. His hand juts out to capture me at the hip before I can pass.
“Like what?” his deep voice asks, caressing my skin in such a way that I have to resist the urge to shiver in response.
I put my hands on his chest, applying pressure to push him away, as I try to sidestep him again. “Like you want to kiss me.”
The hand gripping my hip pulls me closer while the other pulls my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “Maybe because I do want to kiss you, Firecat!” he growls.
“Kiss someone else.”
“I have thought of kissing no one else but you for moons.”
I let out an angry snort, accompanied by an ugly laugh. “A lie or a waste.”
“It is neither. We haven’t had a chance to talk about the windcaves,” he says with his familiar smirk. The smirk that confuses me on so many levels. Exciting me beyond measure and devastating in its reminder that this is all a game.
I step back this time, trying to create distance between us. The lines are blurring and getting dangerous, and my rage is giving its warning. “Nothing to talk about. It was a mistake, or it would have been if anything had happened.”
In the blink of an eye, Riley steps forward, his hand on my hip moving to my lower back and the other down my leg. He uses both as leverage as he turns and sits heavily on the bed, pulling me to him. One of my legs kneels on the bed beside him, and my other stands directly between his knees.
“So, if I kissed you now, like I kissed you in those caves, you’d tell me to stop?” he all but whispers.
His hand has left my leg and grabs my neck, a thumb caressing my throat. The sound I make couldn’t be confused for anything but the breathless moan that it is, and he chuckles.
“And if I told you to stop?” I ask, out of breath, trying—and failing—not to lean into his hand.
His thumb leaves my throat and traces the line of my bottom lip. “I’d stop. So, tell me. Tell me to stop.”
I can hear his smirk as he speaks, which widens into a grin when I glare at him. I open my mouth to reply, but he puts his thumb into my mouth, running it along the top of my bottom teeth. He bites his lip, and it’s not until he breaks eye contact to look at my mouth that I realize how long I held his eye.
“Are you going to headbutt me?” He moves his thumb further into my mouth, my tongue licking it involuntarily, causing him to hitch his breath.
Wanting some control back, I suck on his thumb. I can play this game too. Can’t I?
But he’s better at this than me, and when I bite down on his thumb enough to cause him a tiny bit of pain, I am straddling him entirely. Too focused on the hand at my mouth, I hadn’t realized his other hand had moved down to the back of my leg where it was an easy adjustment for him to lift me into straddling his lap.
“Is that what you meant when you said you’d bite me, Firecat? If I’d known that, there’s a lot more I could have put in your mouth.” His thumb slips out of my mouth, and he leans back on the bed with that arm. Devouring me.Looking smug.
My hands scrunch his tunic into my fists, one at his shoulder and the other low between us. Some part of my brain remembered to keep us separated slightly, and my eyes flick down to see just how close we have gotten. My eyes flick further than my hand, straight down to the strain against the crotch of his pants.
He sees my line of sight and laughs, letting go of me to adjust himself and giving me a wink.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing has happened here, not even a kiss. But I know my own arousal rivals his, surely soaking my underwear by now.
I need him, need his touch. I need to taste him. I pull him roughly to an upright seated position again. My hand lowers slightly to grip the edge of his pants between us. Both of his hands grip my hips now, and he grinds me into him, despite the space I tried to keep.
I put my mouth on his and he opens it to kiss me. Instead, I suck his bottom lip into my mouth and bite it until he growls, and I lean back with my own smirk. The scent of him is overwhelming my every thought and sense. That fresh mint and pine mixed with him . Riley.
Obviously sick of waiting for me to kiss him, he fists a hand into my hair and pulls me toward his mouth, a rough kiss of lips and teeth.He tastes better than I remember, better than my dreams of him. I hook my arm around his neck for leverage so I can kiss him deeper as he grinds me against him again. His moan reverberates through my skull and down to my core, and I am addicted. I need to hear him make that sound again. Hear him lose control because of me.
I had forgotten— thoroughly forgotten—what an enormous cock Riley had in his pants. I am reminded as I trace the thick outline of it between us, gripping it to hear him moan again. It would be proportional to the size of him, of course, but my mouth dries at the thought of him fitting it anywhere inside me.
I’m scraping my teeth along his neck as I use the heel of my hand to rub his entire length, giving the area where his balls would be a slight squeeze before sliding back up and using my thumb to rub the head.
Riley’s thunderous heartbeat and uneven breathing are not enough, so I move faster and harder. His fingers dig into my skin where he holds my hips as he kisses me with such wild abandon that a groan sounds from the back of my throat.I’m grinding against the back of my own hand, needing the friction and pressure for myself.
All at once, my hand is removed from between us. Riley interlocks my fingers in his. “When you make me come, I want to be inside you,” he finishes with a pant as he tries to kiss me again.
“That won’t be happening, I told you I don’t want to fuck you.”
He laughs as he kisses my jaw, then dips down to lick the column of my neck. “Then why are you touching me like this, Firecat?” he asks, voice husky.
I know exactly what to say to get the power back. “Just scratching an itch.”
He grinds me down into him, causing me to suck in a breath of pleasure. “Nothing else?”
“What else could there be, Prince Aurelius ?”
A look flashes across his face as his grip loosens, and the way he dodges my kiss with a smirk lets me know that I hit my mark.
And I despise myself for it. This was what I wanted, to keep him from getting too close. It’s all a game, all supposed to be fun. So why do I feel so shitty about it?
He growls, standing up quickly and setting me on the ground. I look up at him questioningly, but he’s looking toward the door.
“Perfect timing,” he bites out, as I hear Beans’ booming laughter in the halls. “This situation cannot be hidden.”
I look down and see the very obvious outline of his cock straining against his pants and resist the urge to touch it. I turn, making a beeline to sit at the table before they arrive, assuming he’s behind me.
But Riley is reclined casually on the bed, the corner of our blanket bunched across his lap. It looks effortless, like he’s relaxing, and not hiding a raging erection.