Chapter Fifteen Garrick
Chapter Fifteen
Garrick
I silently watched from the shadows as the tempting, infuriating woman unclenched her fists and took a shuddering breath.
I had scared her, and badly, but she’d stood her ground. I wasn’t yet sure if it was a mark of great courage or great foolishness.
She eyed the dais that had once served as a doorway, and I tensed. I did not want to believe she had been sent to betray me,
but she should not have been able to open the ballroom’s glass door.
An untrained mage should not have been able to do many of the things she’d done since she’d arrived.
But she’d been terrified when she’d learned who I was, and true terror was hard to fake. Plus, she had no idea how to deal
with Etheri. She agreed to bargains too quickly, naively trusting that I had her best interest at heart.
Which made me want to live up to that trust, thrice-cursed fool that I was. When her chin had wobbled, I’d felt like the worst
kind of monster.
Especially after this morning.
She groaned quietly, as if her thoughts echoed mine, and the sound wrapped itself around my cock. No matter how much I tried
to forget it, I could still feel the soft heat of her body sprawled across mine, her lips on my skin.
And then her body under me, her thighs cradling my hips as she reached for me with desire in her eyes.
As soon as I’d returned to my room, I’d taken myself in hand to that exact memory and my release had been swift and brutal and oddly hollow.
But I had told her the truth: hope was dangerous, and she was so very fragile and human.
Even if she was as innocent of ulterior motives as she kept trying to appear, by keeping her here, I’d made her a target.
If I gave in and made her mine, then Feylan would stop at nothing to get her—and break her.
Which would break me.
After a long moment, she swept past the dais, giving it a wide berth, and disappeared into the greenery on the far side of
the clearing. “Watch her,” I told Grim. The jurhihoigli chuffed quietly and melted into the shadows.
And it was all I could do not to follow.