Maisie’s lips twitched like she was trying to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. “That’s what the agency said.”
I wanted to ask what had brought her so far away from her home, but I forced the curiosity away; there would be time for that later. If I pushed her now and she’d close up tighter, and I’d learned long ago that some things only opened when you stopped reaching for them.
The truck rumbled to life, and we rolled out past the last of the timber buildings onto the road that wound through the woods toward my orchard.
And that was when her scent truly began its work on me.
Trapped in the cab, it had nowhere to go. It pooled around me, thick and sweet, deepening every time she shifted on the bench or pushed a loose strand of hair off her face. My nostrils flared, the ring clinking against my lip, and a heat coiled low and dark in my gut and pulled tight.
I kept my eyes on the road. It didn’t help. I could hear her breathing. I could hear the small sounds she made adjusting the bag in her lap, and each one dragged my focus back to her like a hook behind my sternum.
The wanting wasn’t gentle.
It was the oldest thing in me, older than the orchard, older than the rebellion, a low animal drive I’d thought the arena had burned out of me for good. I wanted to pull the truck off the road into the soft dark under the trees.
I wanted to lift her out of that seat and settle her across my thighs and bury my face in the curve of her throat and just breathe until the scent of her was the only thing in my whole ruined world.
I wanted to rut.
The need of it sat behind my teeth, raw and unspeakable, and I clamped my jaw down against the growl that wanted out.
I held onto the steering wheel so hard that I feared I would leave imprints.
Whatever this problem was, I would solve it.
Maisie might not have known it yet, but she was mine.
And I wasn’t letting go.
2
MAISIE
If I letmyself look over at the giant bull of a man for more than exactly three seconds, I'd never stop staring. He was at least seven feet tall and seemed about ready to burst out of the minotaur sized truck that was currently making me feel fun-sized, and not in the good way.
I counted the seconds the way I used to count the steps from the front door to my car when I needed to keep my hands from shaking. One: the slab of his forearm where he'd rolled the flannel to the elbow, dark red skin laced with thin silver lines. Two: the gold ring hanging from his nose, catching the light. Three: the way his hands swallowed the steering wheel whole, knuckles gone pale like the thing had personally offended him.
I snapped my gaze back to the window.
My skin felt too aware of him, prickling and warm along the side closest to where he sat, like I'd been standing too near a fire and only just noticed. It was annoying.
It was also the first thing I'd felt in weeks that wasn't nausea or dread, so I let myself have it for exactly one more second and then made myself stop.
"Here we are," Kazan's voice rumbled over my skin as he brought the truck to a halt in front of a huge cottage. "It's not much, but it's home."
Not much? You could fit three of my childhood home inside of it.
The thing rose out of a clearing in those wild, unplanned trees, all dark timber logs stacked thick as my torso, a roof that pitched up high enough to make me crane my neck. Smoke curled from a stone chimney wide enough to walk through.
Everything about it was scaled for him, forthem, for a species that measured doorways in horns instead of heads. I was going to spend the rest of my life reaching for cabinets I couldn't touch and climbing into chairs like a toddler. The thought should have been daunting. Instead, a hysterical little laugh tried to climb up my throat, and I swallowed it down before it could embarrass me.
I still couldn't quite believe I was here, that I'd really gone through with it.
When I'd gotten up the courage to whisper the broad strokes of my plan to Chloe last month, she'd been stuck between excitement at the opportunity I was seizing for myself and dread at the thought that I would chicken out at the last minute.
Again.
James always said I wasn't brave.
