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Kolya crushed his lips against mine, his tongue spearing into my mouth with demanding, explorative strokes.
I stiffened at the unwelcome intrusion. He hummed his displeasure when I failed to respond to his efforts, drawing away from me after several uncomfortable seconds. I fought the urge to wipe my mouth on my sleeve.
“You’re going to need to work on that,” he said coldly.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “You just...caught me by surprise.”
His gaze darkened, and terror coiled low in my gut at the bitter reminder that he held my lover’s survival in his hands. Without letting myself think about it I leaned forward, and it was Kolya’s turn to be surprised as I reignited the kiss and gave as good as I fucking got.
I’d thought I could get through the whole thing by imagining it to be Ren’s mouth, but the differences between them were too stark. Soft lips, hot breath, keen tongue – everything should have felt the same, but it wasn’thim.Smoked herring instead of saffron and citrus. Head tilted the wrong way. Hesitation when there should have been resolve, fierceness in place of warmth; he didn’t take when he should have taken or yield when he should have yielded. Butfuck,I didn’t…couldn’tlet myself pull away, fuelling the kiss with a desperation I could only hope he’d misinterpret as passion.
In short, I kissed Kolya like Ren’s life depended on it.
He groaned into my mouth, a noise of want and desire. One of his hands twisted in my hair, keeping me locked against him, while the other slid down between us. Realising what was coming, I held myself still as he palmed my cock through my trousers and began to rub against it.
Shame burned through me as the friction ignited a response, and I closed my eyes as if that was all it would take to remove his tongue from my mouth and his hand from between my legs.
And yet it did.
“Blyat,Natty,” Kolya panted against my lips, his voice hoarse with lust. “You feel so fucking good.” He took a deep breath as though to steady himself. “Fine. Take me to your southern dalliance so we can get this over with.”
-
“Hurry,” I hissed as Kolya started to lag behind once more. He shot me a look and I cast my eyes down, already sick of this fake deference shit.“Pleasehurry.”
He sighed, yet obligingly hastened his pace. “It’s dark. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
I really didn’t give a shit, either about hurting myself or what the prick did or didn’t want, but I nodded anyway. “I won’t.”
And of course, it was in that moment that an unseen tree branch scratched across my forehead, thin enough to have escaped any snow that may have otherwise clung to it and given it visibility in the dark. I brushed it away impatiently, only for Kolya to snag my wrist and tug me back towards him.
“You always were reckless,” he murmured, stroking a finger across the cut above my eye. Colour sparked in the darkness, briefly lighting up the closest trees. “Even Quarehian captivity couldn’t take that from you, huh?”
I didn’t answer.
“Do you remember that time you fell through a hole in the ice while trying to prove you could cross the lake in spring?” Kolya asked. He’d been doing that for the last half hour, bringing up shared memories in a shameless attempt to remind me of how much of our lives we’d spent in each other’s company. As if that meant a Blessed thing when he’d murdered dozens of people, tried to kill his sister, and come close to destroying our efforts at reuniting the continent in peace.
“Mmm,” I said noncommittedly. Irememberedbeing chased across the lake by Pavel Sluchevsky and his friends while Kolya stood there and laughed as if he hadn’t just heard them threatening to bury me under three feet of snow. Letting them do it might have been preferable to nearly drowning in frigid water when the ice gave way beneath me, but the benefit of hindsight and all. Besides, giving them such an easy win wasn’t my style.
I decided to change the subject before he somehow managed to transform that memory intolook how good I’ve always been to youpropaganda too. Sure, Kolya and the others had dragged me out of the lake and gotten my shivering ass back to the castle, but only because they’d have been in deep shit with the king if I’d died. Somehow that wasn’t quite cutting it as proof of love, or whatever fucked up thing he thought he felt for me.
“You’re using your Touch more these days?” I asked.
“I didn’t have a choice.” Kolya’s tone turned bitter. “When my horse went lame before I reached the border, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to Mazekhstam before you and your whore told everyone what had happened. I wasn’t about to hang around in the south any longer than I had to. So I fled to Temar, found the most remote shithole I could,” – he flung his arms out, gesturing around us – “and offered my magic in exchange for food and shelter, having to sell myself just to eat.”
Sell himself?Like what he was demanding from me?
“But that’s over now,” he cooed as he stroked my hair from my face, his fickle mood settling once more. “Once we deliver Aratorre to his king, we’ll have the money to start over. I’ll even let you choose where.”
Retorts burned so vehemently on my tongue that I had to physically bite it, everything from denying Welzes’ claim to declaring that the only place I would be settling down with him would be as two corpses in the fucking ground.
“I’d really like that, Kolya.” My accompanying smile was sickeningly sweet.
The prince chuckled and didn’t protest when I began to move on once more, frustration at how long this was taking burning me up from the inside. We walked in silence for a few more minutes, and when I spotted the clearing I’d left Ren in, my breath caught.
“He’s just over there!”
“I know you’re only pretending,” Kolya said casually before I could drag him closer, and my heart dropped to my stomach.
