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She let out a small, frightened sob. That was Rune’s voice. Were those his hands? Or Edvin’s, ready to strangle the life out of her for good?
The hands left her face, moving down her neck, shoulders, arms. They were seeking but gentle, roving over the whole of her body with quick efficiency. “Elma, are youhurt,” came the voice again. “If he hurt you…”
Elma blinked, squeezing her eyes closed and opening them again. She could see more clearly now, though details were blurry. Rune was kneeling over her, lit by the dying fire, his face half in shadow. But even in shadow, his crumpled expression opened a chasm in her chest. She had never seen him look like that.Frightened.
His hands found her face again, rough but warm.
“Elma,” he murmured, “You’re safe. You’re safe.” It sounded as much a reassurance as a prayer on his lips.
“Rune…” Elma croaked. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something dark, thick, and red pooling across the floor. With the gradual return of air to her lungs came clearer thoughts, and all at once, it hit her. “You killed him.”
Rune said nothing. They stared at one another, breathless, both pale with fear. Elma could not bring herself to lookaway. Rune, the man who should have killed her. The man she had thought betrayed her. Instead, Rune’s own countryman lay dead, his blood spreading across the floor.
Elma felt achingly, blindingly alive. She had felt death coming, hadknownit was on its way to claim her. But here she lay, her lungs heaving and heart hammering. Suddenly aching to see him, the man who’d saved her life yet again, Elma drew herself up to her elbows until her nose was only inches away from Rune’s. His blue eyes were bright like a fresh lake freeze, his lips slightly parted. In that breathless moment, she almost felt like his heart was beating in tandem with hers.
She glanced at Edvin’s body where it lay nearby. His gut where Rune had opened it, his head several feet away. The confusion on his frozen expression, the sheer shock of it, made Elma’s breath catch in her throat.
“You killed him,” she murmured again.
And when she turned her gaze back to her assassin, the relief in his eyes nearly drowned her.
“He deserved it,” Rune breathed.
For a moment they were frozen in time, gazing at one another in mirrored wonder, as if discovering each other at long last. And then they collided.
Twenty-One
Elma reached for Rune at the same moment he pulled her into his arms, crushing his lips to hers. He smelled of blood and leather and salt.
No… he wasbetter.
Rune was real, solid, and true. Elma had accepted death, yet here was this beautiful, deadly creature returning her to life. He offered the release that Elma desperately needed. And with every sweep of his tongue, every frantic bite at her lips, he began to fill a deep, dry well within her.
Kissing him was like the first mild breeze after a long winter. It was a dam breaking, a glacial river pouring forth over her landscape. With teeth and tongues, hands grasping desperately, her body on fire, she yielded gladly to him.
And he surrendered in kind, allowing her to pull him closer. To thread her fingers in the hair at his nape. To bury her teeth in his bottom lip until she tasted blood.
With every kiss, every hungry sound he made deep in his throat, Elma returned to life. Her world crackled with desire and the taste of him. She could not have enough.
Not enough skin, not enough stifled moans, hands on herbody, hands in her hair. She wanted him. There was blood on the floor, a body within reach, but… sheneededhim. Now. She had wanted him since, perhaps, the moment she first saw his shape in the darkness of her carriage, death come to claim her.
Too soon, he broke the kiss, pressing his forehead to hers, his hair tickling her nose. Their hot breaths and a thousand unsaid words tangled between them.
But words would come later. Elma saw two possible moments extending outward from this one — Rune moving away from her, standing, helping her to her feet. And one where he didn’t. She wasn’t ready to stop the rising flood inside her; she needed the white-hot moment of release, and she needed it fromhim.
Twisting her fingers in her assassin’s hair, Elma held him firmly at the nape, her lips brushing his as she spoke. “I need you to make me come.”
Rune’s gaze caught hers, and the hazy lust she saw there almost brought her to the brink.
“Now,” she said, her skin on fire, her thighs tightening with an unspent ache.
He did not hesitate. One arm wrapped tightly around her, he lowered her almost roughly to the cold floor and crawled over her, his hands braced on either side of her. His body was too far away; there was too much distance between them.
Elma’s hips lifted up to meet him, and he exhaled a shaky breath.
“Is it blood that makes you want me?” he murmured breathlessly, pulling the neckline of her undergarment down until her hardened nipple was exposed. Slowly, almost rapturously, he lowered his head until he covered her breast with his hot mouth, licking circles around her nipple.
She drew up her leg to frame his hips and bucked beneath him, gasping, one hand still buried in his hair. Her desire was heavy and eager between her thighs, pulsating with every sweep of his tongue. The burning ache flared as his teeth grazed her nipple, and she knew he was playing with her now. He would be her undoing, one way or another.
