I stepped back, putting at least three feet between us, purely because I had to catch my breath, had to beat the dragon back down again. Leave it up to the beast, and I would have torn off her clothes right here and fucked her into tomorrow. Trying to reestablish my own control, I had to look away from her, so I turned to face the far wall. The stone was wet, gray-green with lichen, and absolutely unremarkable. I stared at it for a long moment and breathed through my nose.
She got to her feet without help.
“Again,” I said.
We went again and again after that. She was breathing hard now, her cheeks flushed with cold and effort, and there was a strand of white hair plastered to the side of her jaw. The tunic was untucked on one side, and the wind hadn’t stopped. It had never once fucking stopped.
We must know! We must know who took from her what was ours to take.
I stopped moving as the need to know the truth of who had taken her maidenhead completely overcame me once again. She pulled up short, obviously thrown off by my sudden stillness. Her guard stayed up, though. Where I was concerned, her guard was always up.
“Who was the man who first bedded you? I want a fucking answer.”
Because she always refused to give me an answer, I wasn’t certain why I thought this time might be different. Perhaps it was simply wishful thinking.
“This again?”
“I’m tired of asking.”
“I’m tired of refusing to answer.”
Her chin came up a fraction. And there it was: that particular economy of motion, the way she took up exactly as much space as she needed and not a breath more.
“You will give me a name this time.”
“Frederick.”
I frowned even as surprise echoed through me that she’d finally relented and given me the man’s name. “Frederick?”
She nodded. “Frederick.”
I racked my brain as I tried to put a face to a name, but I couldn’t recall a Frederick in my employ. Certainly, there was no Frederick among my guard. Perhaps a servant then? Someone who tended the gardens or the kitchen? “Who the fuck is Frederick?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea.” I felt my eyes narrowing as a blast of angry heat ignited from within me. She shrugged again. “You asked me for a name, and I gave you one.”
My eyes narrowed further. “You are exhausting my patience.”
“And you are exhausting mine.”
I couldn’t explain fully what happened then. But something within me snapped, something that had been building up over these weeks that would now no longer be denied. I didn’t know if it was impacted by the dragon’s own impatience or if it was purely my own, but there was something surging inside me that hadn’t been there earlier.
I crossed the yard in four strides. She saw me coming, but she didn’t step back. Her chin came up further instead, her violet eyes level with my own and completely steady, and something about that made the heat in my chest worse.
“My patience has reached its end,” I growled as I stopped close enough to see the flutter of her pulse at her throat. She didn’t back down.
“Then stop fucking asking me.”
“You think this is a game.”
“No.” Her tone was flat, almost quiet. “You have told me, in plain language, that you don’t care about me, so why does it matter who fucked me?”
The question hung in the cold air between us, but there was no good answer to it. That was the trap, and she’d walked me into it without even appearing to try. What was more, she was right; I had said it. I’d said those exact words deliberately because I’d wanted them to be true.
“It’s a matter of—”
“—you ordering me?” The corner of her mouth moved into something that wasn’t quite a smile, but it was close.
“Yes, that’s precisely the point of it.”
