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His sword arm went slack. All traces of adrenaline evaporated from his body. He opened and closed his mouth several times before he could form words. “How am I supposed to keep fighting after you say something like that?”
Tenah brought her flame whip around for another swipe.
In a reckless move, Renton dropped his blade and caught her fiery wrist. He tugged her against him. Her flames dissolved, leaving behind a line of smoke in the air. Still, she wasn’t done fighting. Using his arm for leverage, she swung her body around his side and popped her boot into the back of his knee.
Renton buckled. He wrapped his arms around her and brought her down into the dirt with him. “You cunning woman.”
Tenah didn’t try to wriggle away. In fact, she seemed oblivious to where their bodies met as she pushed up to sit fully on his hips. This did nothing to tame the longing low in his gut. His muscles tightened, and his hands curled around the back of her thighs, securing her in place.
He liked her thighs. He liked her weight on him too.
“You lit me on fire,” he said.
She frowned down at him. “You’re not even out of breath. You let me win.”
A drop of sweat trailed down her neck and between her breasts. He wanted to lean up and run his tongue along her glistening skin. He wanted to trace his fingers slowly up her curves and sink them into her hair. He wanted to claim her mouth. He wanted to sink into her and make her scream his name.
He shouldn’t want any of those things. Desires were a nuisance. Something he only indulged out of boredom. Heshouldbe long gone, chasing down his demonic employer to assure he couldn’t come back to hurt Aeyis or hunting the Chaos lord.
But the urge to drag Tenah’s body along the length of him, unashamed that she had to be feeling what she was doing to him in this position, seemed to be winning out.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She flushed but didn’t pull away as her gaze drifted to his sword laid out in the dirt. “Why do you carry two of them? Seems cumbersome.”
He regretfully withdrew a hand from her thigh to rest over his scarred heart where the shard threaded strings of pain through his body. The last thing he wanted was for Tenah to witness him experiencing a full attack from it, writhing in pain or paralyzed for hours.
“The smaller blade I earned in Mire’s training camps. It was given to me by a chieftain when I made my first kill without a weapon.” He paused, expecting her to ask what he’d killed or how he’d gone about it because she liked to prod at things like that. Renton didn’t much care to recite how he’d popped the creature’s eyes and snapped its neck.
“And the one on your back?”
“Belonged to my father. You might think it cumbersome, but it’s the only piece of him I have left. The blade is too heavy for me to wield the way I like, but it penetrates tougher beasts like no other.”
Tenah slid off of him, her mouth pressed in a firm line. “You must hate when I touch you.”
Renton pushed up onto an elbow. “When have I ever said that?”
She lowered her head, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “You despise Corrupt. You hunt them.”
He winced as her words struck true. Hedidhate them. He’d hated them for as long as he could remember. Camps had drilled it in him to cut off all emotional ties to the shadow harboring the curse of darkness.
And the desert… That day had proved just how dangerous Corrupt could become.
Yet, here he was, fantasizing about kissing one. He should turn her over to the High Court. But something inside of him refused to categorize her in any manner except an innocent woman, defiled by the magic of someone that was supposed to love her. He’d met Tenah before Chaos had taken root, and that was muddling his brain. He was beginning to question if the others he’d hunted had merely been victims too.
“I can’t deny that hatred. It’s been festering in me since I was too weak to fight back. But believe me when I say that I don’t think it’s possible for me to ever dislike your touch.”
A truth that shouldn’t have slipped out.
Tenah fell silent, and Renton couldn’t stop himself from fishing out the paper he’d taken from her. “I wish you wouldn’t start down this path.”
Hesitantly, she accepted it. She smoothed the crinkled paper on her lap, written proof of recorded insight into Chaos. Possibly how to control it if the shopkeeper hadn’t been spewing lies. “Because you’d have to kill me?”
“Because I care about your well-being. Nothing can be solved through that darkness.”
She squirmed a bit, perched on her legs folded beneath her. “So why do you carry a sliver of it?”
Renton went deathly still. “What?”
