Chapter 20
Owen
Gareth called me what Landers Ridge had called me three years ago, only he did it with wine in his hand.
Tillson who let it burn. Tillson who ran.
Tillson who sold his own. Then he added the new piece for the table: the rejected rogue the Luna was still opening her legs for.
I sat at the far end with stitches in my side and her smell in my head and I watched Reilly’s face.
She did not flinch. She defended the contract.
Not me. The watch. The page. The bounds.
That was the thing that got me up out of the chair.
She told me to sit. I sat. I did it because twelve Hillsford wolves were in the room and Huntington was counting doors and Edward was one sentence away from getting himself killed.
I sat and I looked at Gareth’s throat and I thought about the yard and the cabin and her mouth last night after the pantry, and I thought about the fact that she would sell arithmetic while she was wet under the table.
When she told me to go, I went.
The path had a Hillsford man in the trees.
I smelled him. I did not stop. If Gareth wanted a report that I had walked to the cabin he already had the dinner.
I barred the door. I stood in the lamp and opened my belt because I was hard enough to hurt and I was not going to give Gareth the extra gift of coming in my pants on the walk down.
I didn’t get my hand around it.
The knock was hers. Ten minutes, maybe less. I opened the door and she came in with the dress from dinner and her eyes wrecked and she shoved me back and the stitches screamed and I did not care.
I barred the door. She was already on my mouth—not a kiss, teeth, her fist in my shirt.
The shirt tore. I tore the dress at the shoulder because I could not find a lacing I wanted to respect.
She said, “I will not choose you in that room,” and I had her against the table and my hand under the dress and two fingers in her, soaked, dripping, furious.
“Say it while I’m inside you,” I said.
She opened my pants. I shoved the dress up.
I lifted her onto the table and dragged her underwear aside and pushed into her in one thrust. Tight.
Wet. She bit my shoulder to keep from making a noise Gareth’s man could sell.
I fucked her like the dinner. Hard. Mean.
The table knocked the wall. Her tits came loose from the dress.
I sucked one and did not bite the throat. I told her again.
“Say it.”
“I will not choose you in that hall.” She said it on a thrust. “I will not choose you in front of him. I defended the page. That’s what I can defend.”
“Again.”
“I will not choose you in that room.”
I put my hand on her clit and rubbed while I drove into her and she came like it was a fight, clenching, swearing, nails in my back above the stitches. I didn’t stop. I held her hips and slammed in until she came again, messier, and then I felt the knot fatten and catch.
She didn’t say don’t.
First time since the first night.
I shoved. The swell locked. She cried out into my shirt and I came into the lock, pumping, buried, the stitch line on fire, the claim sitting in my teeth.
She came on the knot with her legs shaking and her mouth open on my chest. For three breaths we stayed like that, tied, my come going nowhere, her cunt squeezing, the rite and the dinner and Gareth’s voice all in the same lock.
Then she panicked.
“Out. Owen. Out.”
Pulling a knot early hurts. I did it anyway.
I forced it free and she hissed and I hissed and I came the rest of the way across her stomach and the bunched dress, messy, still jerking, my forehead on the table beside her head.
Come leaked out of her onto the wood. Come on her belly.
The table slick. Mean. We stayed there breathing like we had been in a real fight.
Neither of us left.
She laughed once, ugly, at the ceiling. “I let it in.”
“I know.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“You didn’t say don’t.”
“I’m saying it now.”
I was still standing between her legs with my pants at my thighs and my cock wet and the stitches wet.
I put my mouth on her breast over the shack bite and she grabbed my hair.
I licked down and put my mouth on her cunt because I could taste myself in her and I wanted that more than I wanted sense.
She twitched, too much, and then she pulled me in.
I licked her through the mess until she came on my tongue, smaller, wrecked, her fist on the back of my head.
I stood up. She didn’t get off the table. I didn’t put myself away. We looked at each other.
“He has a man on the path,” I said.
“I know.”
“He smelled you in the hall.”
“I know.”
“You defended the contract.”
“Yes.”
“Not me.”
“Yes.” Her voice was hoarse. “If I claimed you at that table he would have written the wedding off and started the other thing. The thing with twelve men and our grain. I am not choosing a knot in front of Gareth Hills. I chose it on this table for three breaths and I took it back. That is as far as I go tonight.”
I wanted to put it back in her. I wanted the lock again.
I wanted her to say the other words. I put my cock against her wet slit and rubbed there and did not push in.
She let me. She was slick with both of us.
I came a second time against her, weaker, painting the inside of her thigh, and she watched it happen like it was part of the argument.
She slid off the table. The dress was ruined.
She took it off and stood in the cabin in underwear shoved aside and boots and the marks from my hands.
I sat on the bench because the side was done pretending it was fine.
She came with me. She straddled my thighs, careful of the thread, and put my fingers in her and used them, riding my hand, forehead on my good shoulder, until she came again silent. Then she stayed there.
Neither of us left.
Gareth’s man could wait. Huntington could count. The rite could stand. She was on my lap with my come in her and on her and I had knotted her for the first time since she had thrown me out of a yard, and she had made me pull it out, and she was still here.
“I can live on scraps,” I said, and she put her hand over my mouth.
“Don’t.”
I kissed her palm. Not her mouth. She left the hand there a second, then took it away and put her face in my neck.
We sat until the lamp guttered. I got hard again against her and she shook her head and I nodded and we stayed still. The bond was ugly and fed and not finished. The hall up the hill had Hillsford in it. The path had a witness.
She did not go up.
I did not ask her to say anything about the hall again. She had said it while I was inside her. That was going to sit in me longer than Gareth’s report.
When we finally moved it was only to the bench on our sides, her back to my chest, my arm around her waist under her breasts, my stitches screaming, her wet against my thigh. Not a night we had agreed to. A night we took anyway.
“Tomorrow he walks the cut,” she said into the dark.
“I’ll be on it.”
“He’ll come here.”
“Then he’ll smell what he already named.”
She didn’t argue. Her body went heavy against me, not quite sleep. I lay awake and felt the ghost of the knot and the tear of pulling it out and the dinner table and her voice saying she would not choose me in that room.
She had chosen the table.
For three breaths.
I put my mouth on her shoulder and did not bite, and I did not say scraps, and I did not get up to check the path.
If Gareth wanted the cabin he could have the smell.
He already had the sentence. He did not have her throat and he did not have the rite undone and he had still driven her down the path in a torn dress ten minutes after she told me to leave the hall.
That was not a claim.
It was not nothing.
I held her through the dark and my side soaked the cloth and I did not let go.