Page 42

Brynla

“You could have been a little nicer,” I whisper to my aunt as Andor disappears around the corner and down the hall. The sound of the bathroom door sliding shut follows.

“Nicer?” she says, her tone icy. “You should be thankful he’s still alive.

And that you are too, for that matter. What the blazes happened to you, Bryn?

Do you know how damn worried I was?” Her eyes are fire, her voice rising with each word.

She’d been playing it fairly cool so far, which worried me.

This was more the aunt I knew, the one with the temperament of an active volcano.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I had no choice.”

She shakes her head, her lips twisting as she seems to wrestle with it. “That’s not like you. You always have a choice. You always make a choice.”

“Sometimes you don’t,” I tell her. “I was kidnapped and blackmailed.”

Her eyes widen before her mouth flattens out into a smug smile. “And yet here you are, vouching for this man. Let me guess, you’re sleeping with him too.”

“I am not,” I say quickly, wishing my cheeks didn’t automatically burn at the assumption.

She studies me for a moment, her fingernails clicking against the teacup. “Fine. But you wish you were. That’s somehow worse. What do the Kolbecks have over you, Bryn?”

“They don’t have anything over me,” I tell her, unable to keep from glaring.

“And yet he started off blackmailing you. So they just changed their mind from the goodness of their hearts?”

“Andor did. The rest of them didn’t care for me to be part of their operation anyway. But Andor saw my potential.”

She lets out a derisive snort. “Your potential. They want your skills, and what Lemi is, and to take it for themselves. They want to use you, Bryn. And you’re acting as if it flatters you.”

I press my lips together, growing silent. My aunt and I argue often—our tempers come from my father’s side—but I can tell there’s nothing I can say right now that will make her see things any differently.

And she’s not wrong, either. I feel like the Brynla Aihr of a moon cycle ago would have cut ties with Andor already, perhaps violently, and never looked over her shoulder. I would have found some way to escape and made my way back here.

But I’m not that girl. In the month that I’ve been with Andor I’ve developed…feelings. Unwelcome feelings, feelings I know I should run from, feelings I could do a better job of ignoring. Yet still, they remain.

I like Andor.

I think I really like Andor.

More than that, I want Andor.

And my aunt can see that on my face, clear as day.

And with the way I behaved last night, Andor can see it too.

Ellestra sighs. “Bryn,” she says, the hard edge to her voice fading.

“I was worried sick about you. And to be honest, I was worried for me as well. I’m so relieved that you are here in front of me, alive and well, but I fear that you are only bringing greater danger into your life.

Into our life. You know that we can’t trust anyone other than ourselves, and especially not a member of a syndikat.

They’re all in the pockets and on the payrolls of the government.

Esland might be awful, but don’t think the other realms are any better.

No one is truly free under the thumb of their kings and queens. ”

“I’m worried too,” I admit. Then I give her a placating smile. “There. Does that make you feel any better?”

She chuckles dryly. “A little. Just as long as you know what’s at stake.”

“What’s at stake?” I repeat. “Everything is at stake. It always is. It was since the day I was born.”

Both of us fall silent at that. Eventually my aunt starts talking about what I’ve missed while I’ve been gone, what the neighbors have been complaining about, who the new family down the tunnel is, whether the café we always go to should be charging more for their cactus-blossom pastries.

While she talks, Lemi naps on his bed, and my mind is lulled elsewhere.

There’s only so much gossip I can take, and frankly, after being in Norland, the lives of the people here no longer interest me.

It’s not that they themselves are boring, but when you’ve finally been exposed to the world outside, you start to crave more from the people around you.

And I’m starting to crave Andor above all else.

As much as that scares me, tonight I just want…

I just want him.

I finish the cup of tea my aunt makes me and then I excuse myself to go check on Andor. My aunt’s brow is raised so high, you’d think it was making a go for the ceiling. I know exactly what she’s thinking at this point, and I don’t care. She already thought I was sleeping with him anyway.

Might as well make that a reality.

“I’m, uh, going to go for a walk,” my aunt says, clearing her throat awkwardly. “Give you two some privacy.” She walks to the door muttering under her breath, “I’m sure you’ll need it.”

I can’t help but smile to myself as I walk down the hall to the bathroom.

I’m no virgin. I’ve had my fun with men, though at this point I’m realizing they were really just boys.

But this feels different already. I feel both emboldened in going after what I want—Andor—and nervous, because…

well, it’s Andor. I know he won’t reject me, he’s made that clear, but it’s still him.

It’s us when there wasn’t really an us before.

Lines have already been crossed, but I feel this is the line you don’t get to return from. After this, everything changes.

And I want everything to change.

I think that’s all I ever wanted.

I slowly push open the sliding palm door to the bathroom and poke my head in.

“Are you decent?”

A pause and I hear him clear his throat. “Not even a little.”

The bathroom is spacious compared to the rest of the house, chosen because of the natural drainage holes in the corners in which all the water flows out and into the depths of the bedrock below.

A couple of torches are lit, shadows dancing on the black lava rock walls, and Andor is in the tub, his back to me so that all I see is the back of his head, his hair wet and sticking to the nape of his neck.

A shiver rolls through me as I step inside the room and shut the door behind me.

“Is everything all right?” he asks, turning his head slightly so that I see his profile, his strong nose and jaw illuminated from the glow of the torches. His voice is rough, enough to send another tickle down my spine.

“It could be,” I say softly, and begin to take off my clothing as I slowly walk around the bathtub, discarding my boots, then Andor’s shirt I had borrowed, then ripping out the laces of my stays, leaving them in my wake.

When I appear before him, I’m only in the gauzy skirt and am completely bare from the waist up.

His gaze goes to my breasts, a heated look that makes his eyes look like tarnished gold, breathing in sharply through his nose.

“Your aunt, she’s…” he stammers, licking his lips.

“She went out,” I tell him, my gaze dropping to his dick, already half-hard in the bathwater. I swallow at the sight, warmth pulsing through me. He’s impressive, that’s a given, but I never expected anything less from a man of his stature, or his nature.

We don’t say anything to each other. There’s nothing to say.

Our eyes, our bodies, already express the pent-up sexual frustration that we’ve both been feeling over the last month.

Somehow, though I’m shaking from nerves on the inside, I manage to loosen my skirt until it falls around my ankles and now there is nothing left to hide.

I was once his captive, then his thief, and now I am only his.

His stare turns to smoldering as it rests between my thighs, and I hold my head high, ignoring any shame I might feel about being completely nude in front of him.

I focus on the carnal tug of his lips, the unabashed way that he devours me with his eyes as I slowly come forward.

If I usually have insecurities with being seen this way, I don’t with him.

He makes me feel wanted, he makes me feel needed .

I step into the tub. Perhaps not my most graceful moment, but I manage to do so without falling over.

“Goddesses help me,” Andor says softly, roughly, his voice catching. He inches back in the tub to make room for me but there’s not a lot of room to be had.

“Help you with what?” I ask, lowering myself into the warm water so that I’m straddling him, his cock hard, thick and pushed down against his stomach.

He looks at me like he’s pleading for mercy, his brow furrowed with lines.

His jaw clenched as if he’s barely holding himself together.

I feel the same, like I’m about to come apart at the seams, and when he raises his arms out of the water, placing his large, strong hands on either side of my hips, I’m unsure if he’s holding me together or pulling me further apart.

“Help me to never let go of you,” he says, his voice hoarse as his fingertips dig into my skin, hard enough to bruise, and I start moving back and forth over him.

Even in the water, I’m slick with desire for him, sliding easily over the stiff length of his shaft, making his eyes flutter and roll back in his head.

I bite my lip and grind down on him, one hand on the edge of the tub bracing me, the other on his shoulder. My breasts swing near his face, full and heavy, and his gaze goes molten as he takes them in, then turns into an outright volcano as it drops down to where I’m spread over his length.

“Fuck,” he growls. “I want to come inside you.”

“You will,” I say playfully, my breath starting to hitch, not just from the delicious friction of my body sliding over his cock, getting me wetter by the second, but the fact that I’m doing this with Andor.

I feel decadent, allowing myself to take pleasure from him so brazenly, and at the same time I feel like my heart is exposed, like he’s pried my ribs open and is staring at everything I’ve tried so hard to protect.