Page 102 of Taken By Shadows

“About which part?” He caressed the night with his words.

No. No. My core would never unknot after this night. “How can you see this as betrayal!” I flailed instead of answering him.

Kaed grunted. “You deliberately waited until you could leave without anyone stopping you.”

“I was coming back!” I rattled into the dark before he thrust me into the saddle.

“Maybe.” He shrugged as he put his foot in the stirrup and mounted.

I was not prepared for just how close he felt once he was seated.

His legs were aligned with mine, touching in too many places. My back was pressed to his chest, and I could feel his breathing. Heavy and steady. The opposite of mine; a moth’s wings fluttering at a flame. My backside was pressed right up against him and my core ignited at that. And all the thoughts of this morning rushed to my mind.

His lips. His skin. His scent. That hardness my fingers had ached to unlace and free.

And they were all pressed up to me now as he whispered into my ear. “I’m going to move you onto my legs. So Vega can carry us both comfortably.” His words were strangled as he measured them out. His tone had changed entirely. As if now that he had me in his arms like this and knew he’d won, he could bury the anger in his voice.

Through a heady haze, I realised he was asking. He was waiting. His hands hovered at my waist.

I nodded.

His hand clasped around my middle. Silver rings glinted as his long fingers nearly touched in the centre of me as he took hold.

And then he gripped. The pressure was firm. Restrained, but it commanded me to move.

He didn’t bruise me, but something in the way he touched me hinted that he could.

Lifting my weight up, he slid his legs under me, wrapping one arm around my middle. With a tug, I was pressed to him so I was flat against his chest. And my rear now sat directly on top of him.

As we departed, I tensed, but the cadence of Vega’s strides moved me on top of him anyway.

I thought the heat in me might burst into flames the entire ride home; I burned so fiercely from the contact.

I wished the night would swallow me entirely.

But it didn’t.

And it was a long ride back.

Chapter thirty-one

We didn’t speak.

I focused everything in me until I was a statue on his knee. It took everything in me not to ease back into him. I even kept my breaths shallow so as not to rub up against his chest as it pressed into me.

And Kaed did the same. He must have been cursing me for leaving in the first place. For forcing this upon him.

Each dip and step Vega made had me bouncing left, then right, on my hip. On him.

I needed this to end. Before I moved. Before I rocked back on him.

We were fully robed in night by the time the city walls came into view. Torches burned in the narrow windows of the wall and turrets, the stone glowing orange in the fires. Farther into the city, the fae lights twinkled, and I couldn’t help but admire the beauty of it.

And I relaxed a little at the sight of Viverna.

I was surprised at my own reaction. This wasn’t home. It wasn’t where I needed to be, to get to. But my body always seemed to know what I didn’t. My shoulders softened a little. Until I felt Kaed shift under me; it undid any sense of ease I’d just had. Did he think my movement, my unrestrained stirring, was for him?

Heat flooded my insides from where he pressed into me until it burned.