For the first time in his life, he knew what freedom was. Because she’d taken it away.
Raw desire coursed through the man’s flesh. It had resided within him all this time, but he’d pushed it down, tamed it at night, when her back was pressed to his front and his arms banded around her delicate frame. He’d contained his baser needs when she’d tempted him with her touches, her willingness to put her lips on his mangled skin. She stood before him now, a flurry of snowflakes dancing around her beautiful face, the abandoned lamp at her feet casting her in an ethereal glow. She’d asked him to kiss her, and while he was certain he’d so far refused her for a very good reason, he couldn’t remember what it was.
His body moved of its own accord, while his mind fought to understand what was making him cross the one boundary he’d built when it came to her. His chest pressed against hers, she tilted her head up, he greedily inhaled her wildflower breath. His cock swelled, throbbed painfully in rhythm with his own heartbeat, and then he was kissing her, his mouth devouring hers like he’d been starved since creation.
It felt foreign.
She wasn’t on the outside, witnessing him kissing her. She was inside him, in his mind and in his body. Dread rose in her chest while liquid pleasure coiled in her lower belly. The member that hung heavy below her pelvis felt sinfully good, forbiddenly so. It jerked against her thigh and gushed from the tip, leaving a stain on the front of her pants. On instinct, she rocked her hips forward, seeking friction, rubbing against…
The tongue she was tasting was her own.
This wasn’t right. She had to tear away, end the kiss. It was abhorrent, a perversion. She screamed at herself, she screamed inside her head and his, but nothing happened…. Nothing happened. The kiss went on, wildflowers and regret, pulling herself by the waist to rub herself against her own erection, shelived in two bodies… Did he even exist anymore if she’d taken over?
Did his will matter?
Did what he wanted matter at all?
“Please, please don’t…”
The soldier, again. He didn’t know what he was begging for, couldn’t voice it.
Release me.
Release me.
“Easy now. Take your time.”
Seraphina’s head jerked away from the pungent odor of smelling salts. Her hand shot up and grabbed onto Idris, but he’d already stoppered the vial and was putting it away. Still, the smell lingered, having punched straight through the back of her nose and into her brain.
“Sorry about that, but you weren’t waking on your own after I removed the Quietus Net.”
“Did it work?”
Idris had removed the restraints, and she was free to move around. She touched her temples with trembling fingers and found a bandage over her eyes, wrapping all around her head. The darkness was complete now. Without Saint Vivia’s relic, there were no shadows, and she felt disoriented, unable to calculate the distance between herself and the objects that surrounded her. A chill rushed up her spine, making her shudder and groan like a wounded animal.
“It didn’t work…”
“No, it did,” he said quickly. “You need to heal first.”
Seraphina’s fingers brushed over the front of the bandage and discovered rows of bone shards.
“I pinned an Anodyne Band for the pain. I could give you a few drops of laudanum–”
“No, no more.”
“Willow bark tea, then. But I’d rather you ate something first. Here, I cut some cheese and speck for you, and I’m not sure you’ll like what I did with the hardtack, but it’s what I saw other soldiers do, though I never tasted it myself.”
It was difficult to pay attention to him, but she tried her best. He placed something warm on her lap, and when she ran her hands over its sides, she realized it was an iron pan.
“Where did you–”
“There was a cooking kit in a burlap sack under the driver’s plank. I made an inventory of everything in the cart, and we’re well stocked on food, beer, cooking utensils and blankets. Lucky that soldier you asked stole a cart full of provisions.”
He laughed, and Seraphina smiled and nodded. She was confused, her head hurt, and there was a pressure behind her eyes that wouldn’t let up. Her stomach rumbled. After all the alcohol she’d ingested, she was so hungry that she was about to faint.
Idris took her right hand and guided it inside the pan, where she grasped a piece of cheese between her fingers.
“Don’t worry, I cleaned your hands,” he said. “They were covered in soot and dried blood.”
