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A drunkard bumped shoulders with me and didn’t even turn around to apologize. His eyes were half mast, on the voluptuous companion he had found. More specifically, on her bare bosom, hanging out unabashedly for all to see.
I glanced down at my own modest bosom, wishing they might magically grow. I doubted it. It didn’t help they drowned in the plain green cloak I wore, but it was the only thing I had with a hood large enough that would hide my hair. If someone were to pull it down, if my white-blonde hair was revealed, my identity would be plain.
I couldn’t let that happen. It would be a scandal.
I was a good girl. This place was full of depravity, it was difficult to focus on just one thing. Was it the men and women coupling against the walls, the sounds of their pleasure pinching at my cheeks and making me turn red? Was it the wine being poured and passed around, spilled due to excess? The smoke that filled the room, that took everything in me not to cough the second the sage-like scent tickled my nose?
I didn’t belong here. And yet, I needed to be.
The low murmurs that had nothing to do with who I was, what my bloodline looked like, was the silence I needed to drown in. I needed the freedom of anonymity the way I needed breath. I needed it all.
“And what’s something like you doing in a place like this?”
I whirled around, my heart pounding against my chest. I thought I could look unimportant, unnoticeable, and yet, it was foolish to believe I would blend in when most here were in such a state of undress —
Matthyw.
His sparkling blue eyes, so filled with mischief and danger, caused my breath to vanish. I hadn’t seen him in six years, since he was sent away. I had been twelve then, and he…he looked exactly as he always did.
Fatally beautiful, short blonde hair slicked back from his heavily angled face. Blue eyes that saw more than what was presented before him. A taut body, long and lean, a head taller than me. Hands that used to hold mine when I was a child, offering comfort. They were rough, callused, but still warm.
I hated him. He was cruel and bitter and everything a brother shouldn’t be.
Then again, my father adopted him out of pity and raised him as a brutal fighter, a defender of our pack.
Of me.
But Matthyw wasn’t my brother.
What he was doing in a human village was beyond me, though I wasn’t surprised to find him at one of Gardenia’s brothels. He had a wicked reputation despite being married, one I could only guess at. Perhaps that was why he wasn’t kept on academy grounds. Or perhaps wherever he went, the stench of blood followed.
“You smell too innocent for such a vile place,” he continued, his slow drawl enough to scrape against my skin in a way I didn’t want to allow myself to settle on. “Do you need an escort outside? I would hate for something so pure to be corrupted.”
I opened my mouth to tell him I could take care of myself, but I stopped myself. We might not have seen each other in a long time, but I was certain if I spoke a word, if I even breathed a certain way, he would recognize me. And I couldn’t have him recognize me. If word got back to my father I was here…
And Matthyw would certainly tell. Anything to get me in trouble.
Instead, I pressed my lips together and turned away from him, prepared to lose myself in the gyrating crowd. I couldn’t let myself get too close to him…
But something coiled around my wrist like a serpent, and I nearly flinched at the spark of contact.
I hadn’t been touched…ever.
Matthyw forced me to face him once more, head cocked like a predator. Some things never changed, even with time. His slicked back blond tresses had some sort of residue; it was hard to decipher from the dim lighting in the room and the shadows across the walls. It could have been dirt, since he had a penchant for the outdoors. It could have been blood, since he had a penchant for violence as well.
“Where are you going?” he whispered in that silky seductive voice I had heard him use so many times with others. My body throbbed, and I hated myself for it, hatedhimfor it.
I didn’t want to think about him using that voice onme. I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
“Surely you came here for a reason,” he continued, sidling up behind me. “Perhaps I can take you there myself. Perhaps we travel in the same direction.”
His hands cupped my shoulders and his chin scraped the lower part of my neck. It took everything in me not to close my eyes and melt into him. It wasn’t as though he knew it was me. If he did, I highly doubt he’d be standing so close, touching me so intimately.
Then again, there had been times I could swear —
No.
Absolutely not.
