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“You had things to do.” His words were flat.
“Well, yes. I couldn’t sit around for days and wait to be rescued. Besides, if I’d done that, you would have arrived and roared at me for not working harder to escape.”
Amusement flickered in his eyes. “Is that right?”
“Well…yes.” I sighed, dropping my nonchalant tone. “Asinia was hurt, Lorian. Do you think I would’ve wanted you to leave her?”
His jaw hardened in a way that told me he’d considered it. “No.”
And he’d lost time. But Asinia was healthy now.
“Cavis…” My throat tightened, and I forced the words out. “They killed him early. You wouldn’t have made it in time, even if you’d left Asinia. Even if you’d known exactly where I was. It was too late, Lorian.” The admission killed a part of me.
“I could have spared you some pain.”
I shook my head. “Once Cavis died, I didn’t see Eadric again. Cavis was supposed to stay alive, and I think Eadric fled because he knew Regner was on the way.”
He stiffened. “Who is Eadric?”
“Do you remember the man at the inn? The day you were flirting with that fae woman?”
“I wasn’t—” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Not amusing.” A slight frown appeared between his brows. “The man who approached you was the same one who just tortured you?I should have killed him at the inn. My instincts told me he was a threat.” Several sparks rose from his skin, crackling above us.
Time for a change of subject. “I heard your voice in my head, you know,” I told him.
He released my chin, his hand sliding to the back of my neck. His expression was still shuttered, his eyes hard. “Is that so?”
“Yes. I heard you saying that I couldn’t give up. That I had to survive. I had to escape. When I was in that cell…It was the lowest point of my life, Lorian. And even though you weren’t there, you kept me alive. You ensured I kept fighting.”
His breath shuddered out, and then his mouth was on mine and he was spinning me, urging me back toward the bed. I opened for him eagerly, twining my tongue with his, until he pulled his mouth away to press kisses down my neck.
“Need you,” he rumbled, and I nodded, lifting my arms so he could pull my tunic over my head. He froze.
I glanced down. His gaze had caught on a line of yellowed bruises along the right side of my rib cage. I wasn’t even sure when that had happened, but my ribs had only just stopped hurting over the past few days.
Lorian angled his head in that strange fae way of his. More sparks began to lift from his skin, the scent of lightning filling the air.
“If you set this inn on fire, I will be very upset,” I murmured.
His eyes had turned lifeless. The last time I’d seen him look like that was when we were beneath the king’s bedrooms. The day he’d learned the amulet he’d risked everything to find wasn’t there.
“Lorian,” I said, keeping my voice quiet, even. “I’m not hurt. But if you make me wait much longer without your hands on me, I won’t be happy.”
A hint of warmth returned to those frigid eyes.
He was with me. We were together. I just had to convince my mind that I wasn’t still in that cell. That I was free.
Lorian seemed to feel the same, because he pressed a heartbreakingly gentle kiss to my mouth.
“I missed you so much, I sometimes thought I’d die from the agony of it.”
My eyes stung. “I knew you were coming for me, Lorian. I freed myself, but I knew you were on the way.”
He leaned down and nuzzled my nose with his. “Seeing you hurt, imagining your pain, it makes me insane, Prisca.”
“I know. But I don’t want to think about it anymore. Make me forget.”
He finished stripping off our clothes. His hands were hot—likely from suppressing his power—and I shivered as he ran them up my legs, massaging the tension from my calves, stroking my sensitive inner thighs, sweeping up my hips. My breasts ached for him, and I arched my back until he cupped them, his mouth finding my nipples.
