Page 49 of The Hunter

“You can’t say you never wanted to do this!” Lacey called as Cole walked away.

“Can’t say that I have. Enjoy climbing your spider tree!”

She chuckled.

Raising her a little higher, Telok tipped his head down and met her gaze.

Lacey grinned up at him. “Hi.”

He chittered. Somehow, despite having a fully grown human female dangling from his arm, he felt light enough to float away on the breeze. This was foolish, and yet it was utterly endearing. He’d witnessed this side of her, this playfulness and energy, but she’d never engaged him with it. And…he was enjoying it. Immensely.

He began swaying, making Lacey once again swing upon his arm. She laughed and kicked her feet, adding to the momentum created by his motions.

By the Eight, he adored the sound of her laughter.

“Scarhide, Lacey, you must come,” Garahk shouted from ahead.

Both Telok and Lacey went still, turning their heads toward the thornskull, who stood farther up the incline.

“Ohhh, we’re in trouble now,” Lacey whispered.

Telok huffed through his nostrils. Once again, he’d lapsed in his duties and succumbed to distraction with Lacey. That realization should’ve come with shame, irritation, and a heavy, insidious sense of failure. But he felt none of it.

Instead, he felt warm. Felt content.

“No trouble,” he whispered back in English before switching to vrix and raising his voice. “You go, Garahk. We are coming.”

Garahk’s chitter was deep, his eyes narrowing in mirth. “Be swift, or I will send Ayali to carry you along.”

As Garahk strode on, Telok’s attention returned to Lacey. His mandibles drooped. “No more fun.”

“Nope.” She stuck her plump bottom lip out.

Clenching his jaw against the sudden, wild urge to nip at that lip, he lowered his arm until her feet touched the ground.

She released him and stepped aside. “Guess we better catch up.”

Telok retrieved her spear and waterskin, thrusting the latter toward her along with the stopper that had been clutched in his upper left hand all this time. “Drink.”

“Okay, okay.” She rolled those strange but lovely human eyes as she took the waterskin and stopper from him and drank.

He watched her throat work as she swallowed, and he didn’t miss it as another drop of sweat trickled down her neck toward her breasts.

Prying his gaze away from the temptation that was Lacey, he swept his gaze over their surroundings. He needed to remain vigilant, yet all the while, he felt an almost physical pull to look back at her.

“Can you put this back in my pack?” she asked.

Telok traded her spear for the waterskin, which he returned to her bag.

Another urge crept up on him, subtler than the last but no easier to resist. He could simply take her away. Take her somewhere quiet, somewhere secluded, somewhere he could claim her beyond the sight and hearing of their companions. And for a short time, he and Lacey could exist as though they were the only ones in all the Tangle.

She would be his and his alone.

His fingers were uncharacteristically clumsy as he tied her bag shut. The threads of his being were getting pulled in two different directions, threatening to come undone—duty and honor on one side, desire and instinct on the other.

He paused with his hands on her bag, with her scent filling his lungs, with heat pulsing under his hide and instinct shouting in the back of his mind. If he did take her away and make his claim, no one would ever find them. Not if he didn’t want them to.

He could rut her and feed the beast that had been roaring inside him since the moment he’d first seen her. Could finally ease the pain in his stem, finally fulfill the yearning in his hearts. He could make Lacey his mate in truth.