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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

W indsong was a collection of stone and wood cottages clustered together on the mountains overlooking Galefell.

Solarius had only ever visited Windsong twice before, both times during the Midsummer season for some wedding he’d been forced to attend, and back then the landscape had been lush with evergreens, wildflowers, and the rugged peaks of lightly snow-capped mountains.

The weather had been warm with a cool breeze, a stark contrast to the bitter winter temperatures he and Narissa currently faced.

Now the mountains were banked in snow and the icy pines stood frozen against the biting wind.

Gilded lampposts burning bright with faerie fire illuminated the cobblestone path up to their assigned cottage, and to be honest, it was grander than he expected.

He took stock of the cozy two-story cottage—a balcony wrapped around the upper level, there was a stone patio off the side with furniture seated around a roaring fire pit, and through the many windows he could make out the glow of dozens of lanterns and candles.

A bough of holly stretched across the front entrance, and though it looked large and expansive from the outside, he knew there was only one bedroom.

Not that sharing a bed with his wife would be a problem, but after their little carriage interlude, it had been a struggle for Solarius to stay focused on anything else.

He’d lost track of the number of times he’d imagined Narissa writhing beneath him, but witnessing her do it on top of him was another kind of fantasy altogether.

She’d left him stricken and hard as a fucking rock, but stars above, it had been worth it to see her fall apart in his arms.

It was like watching decadence unfold—her flushed rosy cheeks, the breathy little sounds she made, the way she clung to him while she rode him, chasing her release.

His only regret was that it had been his fingers that brought her pleasure and not his cock.

Now, he was standing outside the cottage they would be sharing for the next fortnight, trying to wrap his head around the fact that his wife had blatantly lied to him.

There had been nothing more arousing than when Narissa was seated upon his lap, declaring all the things she hated about him while simultaneously being edged toward climax.

But then she’d started to cry, leaving streaks of saltwater drying down her face, and he’d known she wasn’t telling him the truth.

He had a small collection of pearls in a jar on top of his dresser, each of them a former tear belonging to Narissa, each of them also completely his fault.

He’d expected a pearl or two to fall in the carriage, but none had formed, which meant those tears weren’t connected to a genuine emotion.

Narissa was lying.

She didn’t hate him.

At least, not honestly.

He shoved his hands into his pockets, his gaze sliding over her.

Narissa was bundled into a furry coat that dusted the cold ground like frothy ocean foam.

Her nose was pink from the chill outside, but her swollen lips were from him.

Haphazard golden waves tumbled down her back, lightly sprinkled with falling snow, and her smile was brighter than the moon as she gazed up at their welcoming little cottage.

But that beautiful, beaming smile faltered when she looked over at him.

“Ready?” she asked, an air of indifference in her voice, and Solarius couldn’t read the emotion banking deep in her eyes.

She gripped the bronze key tightly in her gloved hand and while he debated sneaking into her mind through the bond, he thought better of it when she huffed out a breath of frozen air and went to unlock the door.

He followed her inside and was once again struck by Narissa’s beauty.

She twirled around in a small circle, admiring the splendor of the room.

A massive stone fireplace roared to life, surrounded by comfortable seating and fur-lined blankets.

Her heeled boots clicked against the hardwood floor and her eyes danced when they landed on tiny shimmery clear vases overflowing with soft flora positioned on nearly every surface.

But it was the way her coat slipped from her shoulders that gave him pause, the way wonder caused her deep pink lips to part on a gasp, how her delight in the natural made it impossible to tear his gaze away from her.

Narissa carefully removed her gloves, trailing her fingers along the back of a leather sofa.

She looked up, sighing in contentment when she caught sight of the chandelier that looked as though it was made from the lining of clouds—fused iridescent glass.

“It’s…” Her voice was strangely quiet.

“So much more than I expected.”

Solarius swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat and nodded.

“Yes. Quite.”

She glanced in his direction then, only to catch him staring at her, and scarlet stained her cheeks.

Her lips pressed together in a firm line, and then she forced a long, exaggerated yawn.

“Well,” she declared loudly, “I’m having difficulty keeping my eyes open.”

Not him.

Solarius was wired.

Currents of energy were running through him, filling him with a kind of torturous awareness.

He couldn’t silence his thoughts.

He couldn’t clear his mind.

He just kept replaying the image of Narissa on his lap, the one moment she’d been willing to give him, only to have it shattered by her lies.

He could have handled her hatred of him if it had at least been honest, but she was hiding the truth of her feelings from him.

And he was determined to find out why, because if there was one thing he simply could not tolerate, it was intentional deception.

He had enough exaggerations and falsehoods surrounding his family, he didn’t want it to leach into his personal affairs with his wife as well.

Solarius waited until the maid assigned to their cottage hauled in their luggage, then made her way to the servants’ quarters in the adjacent building.

Once the door closed soundly behind her, he faced his wife and asked, “Tired, Rissa love?”

The nickname did the trick.

Her eyes ignited, those pools of green burning away the frost and simmering like an ocean of fire.

“Yes.” She spoke through a clenched jaw, and he didn’t miss the way she held her gloves in fisted hands.

“I am.”

“Then perhaps we should retire for the evening?” he mused, shoving his hands into the pockets of his heavy overcoat.

He didn’t intend to imply any sort of innuendo or hidden meaning behind his words, but he much preferred her when she was feisty.

She spoke her mind then, she never held back.

So, if he poked her a bit to get a rise out of her, then so be it.

“Unless you’re afraid to sleep with me?” Solarius arched a singular brow and sauntered toward her.

“I’m not afraid.” Narissa stiffened, and he tucked his hands behind his back.

He approached her slowly, standing close enough so that if she wanted space between them, she would have to be the one to step back.

To step away.

Besides, he didn’t exactly tower over her by any means, but his height did offer him an excellent vantage point.

One glance downward and he was greeted by the swell of her perfectly splendid breasts.

Her delicious scent of sandalwood, salty sea air, and heady florals wafted over him, and he reached between them, tracing the delicate deep cut line of her gown with one finger.

She sucked in a sharp breath, her skin flushing beneath his intimate assessment.

Solarius wasn’t sure why she was acting so reserved.

Usually she met him head-on with a vicious smile and a sharp tongue.

Yet now she was almost apprehensive.

There was hesitance in the way she couldn’t quite meet his eyes, and it drove him mad.

He rather liked her when she was demanding and forceful, when she glared at him as though he was the last person in the world she wanted to see, when her verbal assaults left him desperate for more of her.

Unless, of course, it was all an act.

An exceptional performance for reasons still unknown to him.

He bent lower, brushing his lips along the lobe of her ear, taking great pleasure when she shivered against him.

Her hands moved between them, her fingers curling into the lapel of his coat.

“Let me kiss you, Rissa love,” he whispered, skating his lips up to the tip of her ear.

“Let me take you to bed.”

Another one of those tempting sounds slipped from between her lips and his cock throbbed to life.

She swayed into him and his hand slid around to the small of her back, dipping lower.

He pressed her firmly against him, so she would know the exact effect she had on him, and like a naughty midnight siren, she ground her hips into his bulging shaft.

“Let me taste you,” Solarius groaned.

He would absolutely beg again if necessary.

Anything to finally be able to feel her fully, with nothing between them but sweat and skin.

“Let me fill you.”

“Sol.” His name on her lips was hardly more than a strained whimper.

The bond flared to life, but Narissa’s fingers unfurled and she pressed her hands against the solid wall of his chest.

“I…I can’t.”

Solarius locked his jaw, inhaling deeply, then slowly recovered from his mate’s refusal.

Again, she was determined to deny him.

Not that he was owed intercourse or any other kind of intimacy with her, but stars be damned, certainly she had to at least feel something for him.

Even if her attraction toward him was strictly because of the bond, he told himself that would be enough, that he would find a way to manage a purely physical relationship.

If she didn’t want to give him her heart, he would accept that, but not without trying.

Not without begging.

“Tell me why.” He spoke every word with soothing tenderness.

He wanted to understand her reasoning, but more than that, he needed to know why she was continuously putting up a wall around herself, why she wasn’t allowing herself to get too close to him.

“If you’re nervous, I promise I’ll worship every inch of you to keep you calm. If you’re worried it might hurt, I promise we’ll go as slow as you need.”

Narissa shook her head, a familiar sheen glazing her eyes.

Fuck.

“It’s not that.” She sniffed once and a tear slid down her cheek.

“I’m just…”

Solarius caught the small pearl and shoved it into his pocket before it could hit the floor.

“What is it then, Rissa? Tell me. Please. Help me understand.”

Her chest shuddered and she wrapped her arms around herself, taking a step back.

Coldness expanded between them.

She gnawed on her bottom lip, her eyes darting all over the room, looking anywhere but at him.

“Rissa,” he urged.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them, they were filled with a vast and deep hurt that hollowed out his heart.

He’d never seen so much sorrow, so much agony, all of it kept safely hidden away by a facade of aversion.

“If I do this, if I share this part of me with you now…I’ll never forgive myself.”

Solarius stared at her.

That was not at all what he was expecting her to say.

“I don’t understand.” Again he stepped forward, and this time she quickly stepped back, not allowing him to get too close.

She threw her hands up between them, warding him off.

Her eyes continued to shine but no tears fell as she said, “I’m not enough for you, Sol. I wasn’t the first time, and I know?—”

“Wait a damn minute.” His blood ran cold, like someone shoved a dagger made of ice right into his chest.

“What do you mean, the first time ?”

Narissa’s lips parted, and a tiny frown crinkled her usually smooth brow.

She was twisting her gloves in her hands now, wrinkling the fine fabric.

Her gaze darted to the floor, but then she rolled her shoulders back and raised her chin.

“The first time we were intimate.”

Solarius’s mouth fell open, and then he snapped it shut.

His mind was reeling, unable to process the words she said, because they were an outright lie.

He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, trying to make sense of the scene unfolding before him, but a gnawing sense of unease, of growing disquiet, coursed through him.

“The most intimate we’ve ever been was when you were sprawled across my lap in the back of that carriage.” He jerked his thumb toward the door for emphasis, and with painstaking slowness, he closed the distance between them.

A sick, twisted sensation wrenched through his gut.

“So, I will ask again. What first time?”

Devastation etched into her pretty face and the flames flickering in the hearth cast her in a mask of shadow and light, haunting her with a chilling sort of beauty.

“The first time we had sex, Solarius.” Her voice was hoarse and scraping, raw with temper.

“Do you truly not remember?”

Shock slammed into him and that roiling knot of dread scalded the back of his throat.

“Narissa, I never…” He raised both of his hands and staggered backward.

Surely he had to be losing his mind, she was gravely mistaken.

He let his arms fall to his sides, dumbfounded by her declaration.

“We never had sex.”

“Yes, we did!” She threw her gloves at him, then stormed toward him like a little ball of sea-swept fury.

Fisting both of her hands on her hips, she glared at him, rage funneling down the bond.

“I gave myself to you, Sol!”

He grabbed her wrists and hauled her to him, if anything to keep her from attacking him.

“No. No, you didn’t. It wasn’t me.”

Solarius ignored the fact that her accusation stung his pride—it hurt beyond measure that she would confuse him with Calfair.

But he pulled her in, breathed her in, and the truth spilled from him like he’d consumed too much honeyed wine.

“Trust me, Narissa. I would have remembered if we slept together, because only an act of fate would be enough to pry me from between your legs.”

Narissa blushed furiously, and he shuffled her wrists to one hand, keeping her in place, then captured her chin with his free hand.

He lifted her face to his, lost himself in those eyes of hers.

“And it would have been my fucking honor to be your first.”

“ Your only,” he whispered into her mind.

“But, but it was you.” Her tears were falling freely now, tiny white and pink pearls bounced off the hardwood floor, tinkling like faerie bells.

“I saw you with my own eyes.”

“It wasn’t me, Narissa.” Solarius pressed a kiss to each one of her knuckles.

“I swear to the stars it wasn’t me.”

She was trembling now, violently shaking in his arms.

Her chest heaved, and she gasped for air like she couldn’t quite breathe.

Broken sobs and incoherent words escaped her, and he gathered her into his arms, tucked her head beneath his chin, keeping her in his fierce grip.

The scenario of that night replayed in her mind, a chaotic whirlwind of color and voices, of discordant music, and darkened corners.

Every image, every word bled before him, the wretched result of what happened when he left Narissa alone at House Galefell for less than a quarter of an hour.

Through her eyes, he witnessed the blurry, muddled memory of what she was forced to endure when he wasn’t there to protect her.

A venomous rage unlike anything he’d ever known surged through his veins, and with his wife breaking down in his arms, Solarius was only certain of one thing.

He was going to kill Calfair Skyhelm.