Chapter 22 #2
Because she might be falling for him, but that didn’t give her the right to ruin his relationship with his parents or upend his entire life. In fact, it made her even more loath to hurt him.
“It’s too late now.” He didn’t sound sorry about that. Just matter-of-fact.
She pressed her lips tight, her remorse at causing him such trouble battling—and losing against—relief that she didn’t have to leave him. “The damage is already done, I suppose.”
To her surprise, he actually laughed. “That’s not why it’s too late, Gwen.”
He straightened, and she watched in the warm light of the lamp as the curve of his mouth flattened. Turned severe.
She blinked at him, bewildered at his sudden intensity. It thrummed within her, nearly tangible in its force.
“Fuck my reputation.” He held her gaze steadily, eyes hard and hot. “Fuck my colleagues and parents if they don’t see your worth. Fuck everything and everyone, Gwen, if that means keeping you safe and with me. I can live with scandal. If you got hurt, I couldn’t live with myself.”
At first, she didn’t even know how to parse such an unequivocal declaration of support and devotion. How could she know, when she’d never experienced anything like it before?
Then the words slowly sank in, and it felt like stepping into that long-awaited hot shower in winter again. Only this time, the warmth drenched her inside too. Soaked into every parched corner of her being and bloomed, expanded, until she should have glowed with all its joy and heat and might.
Her hands trembled as she lifted them to his face. “Hugh, I—”
The internal shaking intensified. Rattled her with its force.
Far too late, she realized what was happening. What was about to happen.
Hugh was speaking, his frantic voice barely audible over the tumult. “Gwen, honey—”
Her chest, her skull, her very soul seemed to crack wide open as power surged through her, and she cried out at the agonizing force. The vision began to unspool, familiar and cold.
Then Hugh was gone. An eyeblink later, so was she.
With jarring force, the general’s boot thudded into the helpless, still body of the young werewolf. As always, the uniformed man strode off then, whistling faintly.
Once the human had vanished into the distance, the fae turned crisply on his heel. Smiled benignly at Gwen. And for the first time, he stepped closer. So close, the reek of rotting roses nearly gagged her.
“We meet again.” Weak sunlight filtered through the smoke from the funeral pyres and glinted in his tarnished-silver hair. “Hello once more, little human.”
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t react, even when he reached out and flicked the end of her braid with his forefinger.
With all the nonchalance of a lazy emperor surveying his latest toy, his expression faintly bored, he fisted the end of her braid and wrapped it around his hand, jerking her head in his direction.
He circled his wrist and kept winding, again and again, until her neck strained and her hair should have ripped from its roots.
If this was a vision—it was, wasn’t it?—she shouldn’t feel anything. But the agony tore through her like a ripsaw regardless, and distant sobs echoed in her ears.
Still, she could do nothing. Could say nothing.
With a disapproving tut, he shook his head. Sighed. Released her.
“Fair warning, darling.” He tapped her nose with his forefinger. Firmly, as if she were a disobedient pet. “You evaded me by seconds in Hugh’s apartment, but that won’t happen twice.”
Then he snapped his quicksilver wings wide with a showman’s flourish and vanished into the smoke.
When Gwen swam back toward consciousness, no nausea greeted her return to physical reality. But coppery wetness dripped down her face, down her throat, and her skull could barely contain the sickening jackhammer of her headache.
She wept helplessly.
Something—someone—gently but insistently uncurled her fingers. Loosened her pain-tight fists, only to place something cool and round in her palm and close her grip around that instead.
Moment by moment, her headache eased. The rush of blood from her nose slowed, then ceased entirely. And at some point, Gwen dimly realized where she was, what had happened, and who held her.
Hugh. Of course. No wonder a sense of marrow-deep comfort had chased away the worst of her fear.
His hot hand atop hers kept the witch’s pomander clasped safely in her trembling grasp. His throat and chest rumbled with soothing murmurs as he rocked her in his arms. His secure hold reassured her that she was safe. For now, anyway.
When the physical effects of her vision had vanished, he eased away from her and propped her against the back of the sofa. With a warm, damp washcloth, he dabbed away the blood that crusted her face. Then, setting the cloth aside, he cradled her jaw in his strong hands.
“Gwen?” His voice was hushed. “How are you feeling?”
“Um…” She hiccupped and gingerly stretched. Her limbs felt a bit heavy but otherwise fine, and a tentative bounce of her head didn’t produce a single flicker of pain. “Surprisingly good?”
“Then the amulet and the charm worked as intended.” His slight smile didn’t erase the worry in his amber eyes. “Excellent.”
“Hugh, the fae saw me again. He told me I barely escaped him before, but it wouldn’t happen again. He…” As she remembered, more wetness spilled down her cheeks. “He hurt me.”
Hugh stilled. “How?”
“I don’t know.” She shuddered, sniffling. “It shouldn’t be possible, but—”
“No, honey.” The heat from his careful clasp of her face, from his sheltering body, abruptly ratcheted to sweltering. “What did he do to you?”
“Wound my braid around his fist. I thought—” Her breath hitched loudly. Once, then a second time. “I thought he’d tear out my hair, Hugh. Then he tapped me on the nose. Like he was disciplining a dog.”
Hugh’s nostrils flared with his deep inhalation. “I see.”
And so did she, once she’d blinked away the tears blurring her vision.
To her shock, literal smoke wafted gently from his lean frame, lazily curling toward the ceiling.
His irises weren’t melting amber, but fiery magma literally glowing with heat.
For all the gentleness of his hands on her face, the muscles and tendons in his arms stood taut and ready, poised for violence.
Their areas of skin-to-skin contact didn’t burn her. Maybe he had enough control over his body heat to prevent that. But she had the definite sense that other internal controls had already slipped from his grasp, at least for the present.
Right now, his calm didn’t stem from cool rationality or an intellectual regard for fairness. More from his sheer determination to murder whoever had hurt her and confidence in the eventual success of his plan to rend limbs, cleave skulls, and foment absolute mayhem.
She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if he forfeited his own life in some mad mission to avenge her pain and humiliation. Also, too much more smoke would set off a fire alarm.
So she redirected all his intensity in a different direction.
Lurching forward, she grabbed his shoulders, used the momentum of her larger body to push him down onto the sofa’s blood-dappled sheets, and plastered herself atop him. Then she kissed him with all the lust, all the desperate fear and gratitude, in her wide-open heart.