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“And why is that?” she asked innocently as I righted her, having reached the nearest chair.
I wasn’t going to answer that question at the moment. I pulled her across my knees, resting my hand on the small of her back. She looked at me over her shoulder, smiling, and I wanted to kiss her more than I wanted anything else.
But I couldn’t lie to us both anymore if I kissed her.
Instead, I raised my hand and slapped her across her perfect ass. She laughed at first, rolling back and forth across my lap. My cock hardened, so much that she must have felt it like a bar against her stomach. I wanted, more than anything, to pull up her skirt and see the shape of her perfect ass, to watch her skin redden as she was marked by my palm.
But she wasn’t mine to undress any more than she was mine to kiss. I went on spanking that perfect ass until she had stopped laughing and was kicking in earnest, though I was sure she’d have started purring if I had just dipped my hand between her thighs. I could smell the honeyed scent of her arousal through her clothes, and my cock tightened as if I was about to come through my clothes. Gods, I wanted her like I had never wanted any woman in all my life.
“We have work to do,” I said roughly. “If Zehr’s better… there’s no reason we can’t all reassemble.”
I rose to my feet, steadying her.
Her face was flushed pink, and she gave me an expression I couldn’t quite read. Coy, perhaps. Self-satisfied, almost certainly. It made me want to pull her over my lap all over again, and it made me want to kiss her, until she didn’t look so self-possessed and amused.
She grinned. “Right. Work.”
Like every time with Honor, I couldn’t shake the feeling she had somehow won.
CHAPTER26
Branok
As we flew toward Honor,we passed Scourge moving rapidly across the land. It looked as if they were fleeing back to their bone kingdom.
The destruction of the tunnels must be working. Worms of caved-in land crisscrossed the countryside occasionally, marking where the tunnels had once passed. I wasn’t entirely sure the dragon knights still worked forus—at least, not exclusively—but they had gone to work tracking down and detonating tunnels in the north. And Caldren had set his people to work detonating the tunnels in the south as well.
We could track the Scourge to their hiding places and kill them all.
We landed on the roof of the castle. It was Lynx’s least favorite castle, for reasons I remembered well, but his face was blank as he walked toward me. He held out his arms to Hanna, and she leapt from my back. He caught her easily and set her on her feet, giving her a smile.
“Your days with us may be numbered,” I reminded her as the three of us headed for the doors that led inside.
She rolled her eyes. “I know, I know, don’t complain to my sister. I should relish the days I spent doingactualspy work and pretend I’m fine with going back to school.”
Lynx and I didn’t want Honor to worry about her. With Kallus’s ships still patrolling our shores, Scourge running wild and Joachim on the loose, there might come a time where we couldn’t keep Hanna safe. But I’d enjoyed having an adoring sidekick while Lynx and I collected information, and I was pretty sure Lynx had enjoyed her presence too. I missed Alina, but Hanna made a very satisfactory little sister.
Honor ran through the doors, followed by Damyn and Talisyn. Hanna’s face lit up with joy when she saw her sister, and the two of them hugged each other hard, both of them trying to lift each other’s feet off the floor.
Even Damyn had to smile, although tension seemed to crackle around him. When Damyn—who was usually so level-headed and patient—seemed angry, even I wanted to say I was sorry. And I hadn’t been here to piss him off.
Honor turned to me, hugged me tight, then demanded in a hiss, “Why did you bring my sister here?”
“I had to,” I murmured into her ear.
“It’s dangerous here.”
“There’s danger everywhere, and she’s your sister, so she’s not exactly good at avoiding it,” I reminded her. “I’m glad to see you too. Bringing her along was the best I could do to protect her.”
She chewed her lower lip. It made me feel an almost irresistible impulse to kiss her and a definitely irresistible impulse to annoy her, so I pinched her lower lip between my fingers. “What did you do to piss off Damyn?”
“I’m sure he’ll fill you in.”
So she was the cause of his discontent.
Damyn said, “We need to form a plan. Since Honor has taken it on herself to become the Lady of the Scourge, we need to move fast to stop the curse. Maybe if we can end the curse, she won’t become completely… taken by the Scourge.”
“Damyn,” Honor said impatiently, and he gave her back a cool look that was just as impatient as her heated words.
