Chapter 29, The Pull of the Tide
Skarde
The villa was silent, save for the low, rhythmic hum of the thermal core and the occasional whistle of the wind against the reinforced glass.
Wren was sitting in one of the high backed velvet chairs by the hearth, her silhouette small against the massive obsidian fireplace.
She had not moved for twenty minutes, just staring into the dying embers.
I should have gone to my office. Instead, I found myself in the kitchenette, the amber liquid in my glass catching the dim light.
I did not even want the whiskey, but I needed something to do with my hands while I watched the firelight catch the copper strands in her hair.
The air in the room felt thick, charged with the kind of static that precedes a mountain storm.
Every time I breathed, Varg surged, his nose pressed against the cage of my ribs.
I walked into the living area, my footsteps muffled by the thick rugs. I set the whiskey glass down on the stone side table with a muffled thud. Wren did not startle, but I saw her shoulders tense. She knew exactly where I was.
“The fire is almost out,” I said, my voice sounding like gravel.
“I like the shadows,” she whispered. She finally looked up, her emerald eyes catching the orange glow of the coals. She was watching me closely, specifically the way my chest was moving. I realized then that I was flaring my nostrils, drawing in the air with a hunger I could not hide.
“Why do you keep doing that?” she asked softly.
Wren
“Doing what?” Skarde asked. He moved into the light, and I felt my pulse jump. He was a wall of hard edges and controlled power, and right now, he looked restless.
“The way you breathe,” I said, my voice steady despite the heat climbing my neck. “You have been doing it since the border. Like you are looking for something in the air that is not there.”
He did not answer with words. He walked toward me and leaned down, bracing one hand on the high back of my chair and the other on the armrest.
He did not touch me, but he caged me in.
I was trapped between the soft velvet and the heat of his body.
He was so close I could see the deep, electric violet of his eyes darkening, the pupils expanding until the color was just a thin, vibrant ring.
He tilted his head, his face inches from my neck. I heard him take a long, slow breath, a deep, searching inhale that made my skin prickle.
“At first,” he began, his voice dropping into a raspy, slow drawl that vibrated through the chair, “you smelled like the Lake District. Chilled water. Wild mint. Like the air over the water right after a heavy frost.”
I froze. The air left my lungs in a sharp hitch. “You can smell me?” I breathed, the words barely a whisper. “But I am a Null. I do not have a scent.”
“You do,” he interrupted, moving closer, his nose ghosting against the sensitive skin behind my ear.
I could not help it; my head tilted back against the velvet, exposing my throat.
It was not an act of submission. It was a demand for more.
“The High-Ridge didn’t know what they had, Wren. Their senses were too coarse to catch a trace as fine as yours.”
“And now?” I breathed, my heart hammering so hard I was sure he could feel it through the floor.
Why is he doing this? He is an Alpha with a mountain at his feet, so why is he caging me in like I am something precious? Like I am something he has been hunting for?
He inhaled again, his eyes closing for a fraction of a second as if he were savoring the air itself.
“Now,” he rumbled, the words coming out even slower, thicker with a primal necessity, “it is changing into the smell of a storm just before the lightning hits. Cold rain on slicked stone.” He paused, his breath hot against my skin. “And something deep. Like mountain honey. It is addicting.”
I shifted in the chair, my knees brushing his thighs. I could not stand up because he was blocking my path, but I leaned forward, drawn in by the magnetic pull of him. If he could find a storm in me, I wanted to find what was hiding in him.
I should pull away. I should be terrified. But his heat is the only thing making me feel alive.
I did not hesitate. I tilted my head, mimicking his movement, and leaned my face toward the open collar of his shirt. I drew in a breath, long and deep, my nose nearly touching the warm skin of his throat.
I heard his breath catch, a sharp, ragged hitch in his chest.
He did not smell like the men from the Lake District, who carried the scent of crushed pine needles and lake mist.
Skarde smelled like iron and cedar, like the high altitude wind that scours the peaks.
But beneath that, there was something darker, like sun warmed stone and a hint of wild musk. It was heavy and intoxicating.
“And you,” I whispered against his skin. “You smell like the top of the world. Like power.”
The words were a dare, and the effect was instantaneous. Skarde went rigid, a low, barely audible vibration starting deep in his chest, a sound that felt more like a purr than a growl. The hand on the armrest of my chair tightened until the wood groaned.
He did not move away. Instead, he leaned in that final, impossible inch, his lips hovering just a hair’s breadth from the shell of my ear.
“You have no idea what you are doing to me,” he rasped, his breath a hot, steady plume that made my skin break into shivers.
Slowly, as if he were fighting a losing battle with himself, his thumb ghosted over the line of my jaw.
It was a slow, deliberate trail of fire that ended at the corner of my mouth.
He caught my lower lip with the pad of his thumb, tugging it down just slightly.
My lips parted instinctively as a jolt of pure heat shot straight to my core.
I looked up, my vision swimming, and found his violet eyes fixed on my mouth. They were dark, hungry, and filled with a longing that made my knees feel like water.
He wants me? No. That is impossible. Why would someone like him ever look at someone like me and see anything but a duty to be settled?
“I want to see who you become when that fire finally breaks through,” he whispered, his voice dropping to a rough, strained register. “And I want to be the one who feels you burn.”
For a long beat, the world narrowed down to the space between us. I wanted him to close the gap. I wanted to know what it felt like to be consumed. That’s an insane thing to feel!
But then, with a sharp, forced exhale, he finally pushed back.
He straightened his spine, stepping just far enough to the side to break the cage he had built around me.
The sudden loss of his heat felt like a sudden frost and a quiet sigh left my lips as I sat there, my chest heaving, trying to remember how to breathe.
I finally stood, my movements shaky. I had to walk past him to get to the stairs, and as I brushed by, the air seemed to hum with leftover static.
When I reached the landing, I looked back. He was still standing there in the shadows of the hearth, a dark, solitary figure watching me.