CHAPTER25
I’m lostin the kiss for what must be a shameful amount of time. His tongue slips into my mouth, grazing against mine. It begs permission. He sings to me without words and my body rises in harmony, soaring high above the rafters and the castle spires overhead.
His hands frame my face, holding me in place against him. They provide me structure so my world doesn’t rattle apart with how good this moment feels. Hunter’s Hamlet, the title of forge maiden, they fall away like shackles I didn’t know were wrapped around me so tightly that I hadn’t been able to take a full breath in my entire life.
Be with him, Floriane.
Just be, Floriane.
I push him back and his hands slide down, skimming over the curves of my chest. The touch is barely there and yet every muscle in my core shudders with delight. Take me, make me, break me, my body silently demands of him as he collects my thighs in his palms. I move to his whim, straddling him as he kneads the muscle of my rear.
We slip apart and come together, again and again, until he finally pulls away as breathless as I am.
“We should go,” he whispers across my lips.
“But—”
“They’re waiting for us,” he reminds me.
I straighten away, reality slowly filling in the gaps that pleasure had created. “They’re going to suspect something.”
“They already have.”
“What have they said?” I ease away so he can stand. Never have I been so focused on the way a man rises to his feet, the long, strong line of his back. The pert roundness of his rear that I focus on for far, far too long.
“Nothing, yet. But they will.”
“How do you know they suspect something then?”
“They’re my covenant, they are all bound to me as I am to them.” He pauses briefly, hands on his nightshirt. His eyes dart to mine and I can sense a brief moment of hesitation. One that ends with him pulling it over his head. “See.”
“Oh.” That’s all I can muster.
I know what he’s trying to show me—the markings that are similar to mine across his body. There’s one by his elbow. One underneath his left pectoral. One indented into the V shape that disappears into the front of his trousers, leaving me jealous of some black ink. But, if I’m honest, my focus only grazes on the markings and, instead, lingers on the indents of his lean muscles—the deep shadows hammered by struggle and famine. Scars accent his flesh, white and deep, crisscrossing over his perfect form.
“The other marks.” I manage to find words despite the sight of him leaving me nearly breathless. “Are you bloodsworn with all the others, too?” I saw similar marks on his covenant.
“They have sworn their oaths to me, marking our blood…but it is not quite the same as a bloodsworn. The bond of a bloodsworn is different, deeper.” Ruvan pauses midway to collecting his shirt, instead standing before me. I lean back slightly, trying to take him all in. I don’t know what I’ve done to earn such a display but I don’t want to risk doing anything that could end it. “This scar is from the first time I went to the old castle. This one is from before the long night, when Tempost was a city of desperate people.”
“And desperation breeds stupidity,” I echo my mother’s words softly.
“Too true.” He wears a bitter smile. “This one is from when I first awoke. And this is from when I was clumsier with weapons…” He lists off all his scars, one by one, until he reaches his forearm. Unlike the other scars, the skin is still gnarled and greenish. Festering. “You know this one.”
“It still looks so poorly.”
“It might always.” He pauses. “Does it disgust you?”
“I don’t think anything on you could disgust me.”
He’s as surprised as I am. Ruvan’s lips part slightly before smirking. “You’re certain of that? Your eyes held a lot of disgust for me when you first arrived.”
I shake my head and huff. “What do my eyes hold now?”
“They hold…” He trails off, pausing, thinking. My breath grows shallow as I wait for what he’s about to say—what I can feel but have yet to put words to myself. “Not disgust.”
“Will you be all right?” I ask, slightly shifting the conversation away from that place of breathless tension.
“I have no choice.”
