Page 75 of A Hunt Bound in Blood
“I feel alive with a good book and a glass of wine,” she said with a smile.
I arched an eyebrow. “Do you feel more alive with a book or with my tongue between your legs?”
Pink infused her face, and her spicy desire filled the air, the first strong emotion I’d sensed from her since we’d left the cavern. I grinned, satisfied at rendering her speechless, then wobbled when my own arousal made my knees weak. One night had definitely not been enough.
Last night, we’d been too exhausted by the time we’d stopped to talk about our expectations or do anything other than pass out on our new blankets. But I hadn’t missed how Glory had edged closer to me before falling asleep, curling her body into mine. I’d sacrificed feeling in my arms by holding her tightly, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to roll her away once she’d fallen asleep. When I’d woken today to find her loose limbs draped over me, I’d had a fleeting glimpse of what a future might look like if my priorities were different and every decision I made from this point on stood opposed to what I currently had planned.
It was a vision I’d never entertained before, and I’d leaned into it for a long while, exploring it the way I would a new prize at the end of a hunt. When the glimpse had faded, as intangible as fog, I’d let my longing go with a faint pinch in my chest. We were walking into more inevitable danger, and this close to achieving our goals, I couldn’t let myself be distracted by a future that could never belong to me.
“All right,” I conceded, “that wasn’t fair. But what if we compare reading to soaring over a waterfall? You can’t tell me sitting with Mage Tersey’s journals in your quiet apartment gets your heart racing in nearly the same way.”
She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes skywards in thought. “You know… I can honestly say you’re wrong about that. On a regular basis, no, I’ll admit, there are no heart-lurching revelations in what I read. But the day I discovered Tersey’s journal and learned he’d created a whole puzzle-laden trail leading to this amulet? That was a rush. I don’t think I slept at all that night. A research find like that, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Nothing else compares.”
“What about actually digging up the amulet? You don’t think that’ll be more exciting than stumbling across the mention of it in some book?”
“We wouldn’t have a chance of finding the amulet if I hadn’t come across it in some book,” she returned.
“Touché.”
She grinned, and my heart warmed at the flavour of her satisfaction and the brightness in her eyes. “Admit it, princeling, you’re beat. Passion is passion, no matter where you find it. And for me, I find it in a comfortable chair with a stack of stinky parchment. I’ll leave the globe-trotting and battles with dragons to you.”
Why did she have to go and mention passion? At the mere sound of the word—at the thought of her sitting in that comfortable chair, maybe wearing some slinky nightdress, her legs spread, me on my knees between them—my breeches grew tight and it became an effort not to press her against the rocky wall and show her exactly what kind of passion guided my thoughts.
I cleared my throat and brushed a cobweb out of her hair after she walked through the sticky remains dangling from the ceiling. My fingertip caught on her brow, and the passing contact was enough to send sparks through my blood. I yanked my hand away and adjusted the position of my pack on my shoulder.
Glory dipped her head and reached once more for the map. Our conversation fell silent, but in the space between us, I tasted her increasingly familiar, increasingly tantalizing lust. The woman was driving me as mad as the dead mage.
“We should discuss the next clue at some point,” she said, her voice strained. “Most of it is burned, but I’m hoping I might be able to interpret a word or two to give us an idea of where we’re going.”
“Right, yes, that would be good. Is there anything useful on the map?”
“I’m still trying to decipher some of these lines. Tersey might have been a creative engineer, but he was no cartographer.”
We walked a long time, the light from the enchanted lantern I held bobbing with each step, and eventually my stomach grumbled loudly enough that Glory came to a stop and looked at me over her shoulder.
She opened her mouth to say something—possibly to suggest we stop for the first time since packing up this morning—but before she uttered a syllable, the mountain trembled. I dropped the lantern and threw myself at her, taking us both to the ground and covering our heads as tiny stones rattled down the walls and clattered over my back.
Accompanying the tremor was a roar that shook my bones and turned my steaming blood into shards of ice.
“Was that—” Glory whispered.
“A dragon,” I confirmed grimly.
The mountain settled, but I waited a moment to get up. I told myself I wanted to make sure it was safe for Glory before I moved, but I knew it was more that I wasn’t sure my legs could hold my weight with my heart galloping the way it was. Visions of the mountain caving in and crushing the woman beneath me had stolen my breath, and I needed to wait for my pulse to slow.
There was also the not-small consideration that the feel of her body beneath mine had set my already fractured thoughts in a strikingly different direction. Her heartbeat had quickened, her pupils had dilated, her breath had grown rapid and shallow. Everything was a fear response—the acerbic flavour prickled the back of my throat—but it was so similar to her body’s reaction during our night together that I struggled to separate the two.
Her gaze landed on mine and, in another breath, the scent in the air changed. I sipped on it and let it drift across my palate, savouring the nuances that came from knowing the person behind the emotion.
And from that person knowing me.
A shudder ran through me as I appreciated exactly what that meant. This buttoned-up librarian had peered behind my reputation, behind the veneer I wore of the charming playboy explorer, to the demon I was underneath, and she still wanted me. Despite every attempt to keep my distance since we’d started out from The Wandering Mare, and as much as I’d tried to resent it, I’d attached myself to this mage, forming the kind of connection I’d always sought to avoid. The wise move would be to put space between us as quickly as possible, but that look in her eyes—like she could truly see me—was as addictive as the soft whimpers I’d pulled from her lips when I’d thrust inside her.
What that meant for me, I had no idea, but hells did I want to find out—even as I accepted that indulging in this particular curiosity might destroy me.
I was unaware that I’d moved closer until the heat of her breath fanned across my cheek. I bent my head and brushed my lips across her neck, placing a gentle kiss against her still-surging pulse. Her skin was soft, warm, and smelled faintly of fresh-dug earth. I brushed a stray hair from her face and pushed myself to my knees, then to my feet, helping her up as I went.
Glory swatted the dirt off her leathers and looked up at the ceiling that suddenly felt so much lower than it had before. “Do you think it knows we’re here?”