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“It wasn’t your fault,” he said quietly, angrily. “Noneof it. I don’t want you to punish yourself.”
“Because that’s your job, right?”
I’d meant to tease, to draw out his ceaseless good humour and the interminable filthy comments that I was convinced I’d find carved on his bones, they were layered that deep into the essence of him. Yet Ren didn’t offer even a smile in agreement, and his unnerving silence bred a bitter sense of unease and confusion in me as we approached the hunting lodge.
We checked it out together, ready to flee back into the shadows if I’d been wrong, but a thin patina of dust across the floors of the two deserted rooms told us that not only was no one here tonight, but it hadn’t been visited in a while. Maybe the Grachyovs had the servants clean it up when it was to be in use, for the air smelt faintly musty, a scent I didn’t recall from last time.
I dragged armfuls of furs and coats out of the cupboards and piled them on the floor in front of the fireplace, pleased to find it stocked with neat bundles of kindling and firewood that I could use Jiron’s teachings to light. Ren was rummaging around in the next room, a kind of kitchen slash butcher’s shed that held a large bench used for skinning and preparing the kills so they could be carried back to the main house. The bench was scrubbed clean and there was clearly no fresh food to be had, but when my lover appeared in the doorway with a bundle of dried herbs and a sack of potatoes that were only just starting to sprout, my stomach rumbled in anticipation.
“Fuck yes,” I said eagerly.
He seated himself opposite me, mirroring my cross-legged position, and tossed the small sack into my lap. I slid the knife from my boot and began to cut away the sprouts on the potatoes, letting Ren sort the herbs between his long, dextrous fingers, but found my attention frequently wandering from my own task.
It was the first time in many days that we weren’t wrapped up in thick furs, with the fire having warmed the room well enough to have allowed us to shed our outer clothing. I admired, not for the first time, the angular shape of Ren’s hips, the graceful line of his collarbone dipping beneath his shirt, and the way his long eyelashes fluttered against his tan skin.
“Mathias,” he murmured, not looking up. “If you cut yourself because you’re not paying attention, I shall have to shout at you again.”
I cleared my throat, lowering my gaze back down to what I was doing, only to find myself watching him again a few seconds later. His lips quirked in amusement, and I stared, enraptured, at the way his throat bobbed delicately as he swallowed.
Ren gathered up his hair in the loose approximation of a ponytail and then let it drop. It cascaded around his shoulders like ink, drawing my eye. “You know I love you, right?” he asked, catching me off guard. He raised his head and smiled at me. “I feel like I don’t say that enough.”
“I suppose you expect me to say it back?”
He snorted. “You’re inthatkind of mood, I see.”
I carefully set the knife down on the floor. Ren watched me intently.
“But you do love me, of course,” he taunted, drawing a circle in the air around his own face with a sprig of what looked like parsley. “What’s not to love?”
“Your narcissism,” I told him without hesitation. “Your irreverence. How your hair somehow ends up in my mouth while we sleep, every single fucking night.”
“If you’re just going to list my finest qualities…”
I dove on him, dried rosemary and thyme and fuck knew what else cascading around us as I knocked him onto his back on the pile of furs and slammed my mouth against his. My fingers found and undid the laces on his trousers by muscle memory alone and I dragged them down to his knees before he could say a word.
Then I rolled my tongue over the head of his cock and Ren went rigid.
“No,” he murmured, trying to push my face away. “Nat, you don’t need to-”
Shame and fury washed through me, heating my cheeks, and I pulled away before I could meet his gaze.
“I just don’t want you to feel like…” He couldn’t seem to finish.
“Is that why you haven’t touched me since he did?” I asked quietly, irritable resentment seeping into each word.
Ren scrambled up onto his knees so he could crawl closer, trying to tug me back to face him. I ignored his efforts.
“I haven’t touched you,mi cielo,” he whispered, “because I didn’t know if you wanted me to.”
“Because you think me broken?” I snarled. “Or because you think me ruined?”
Ren’s rapid inhale of breath made my insides twist. Because voicing the accusation was a shitty thing to do, but what was Isupposedto think? Two weeks ago I would have sworn that he didn’t care about such things, that I knew him well enough to be certain that he’d never think less of me for it, and yet…in all those days since Kolya had happened, my lover hadn’t once tried to instigate intimacy. Hadn’t made a single sexually suggestive comment or joke at my expense. Hadn’t touched me anywhere other than my hands or arms, as if we really were just two strangers travelling together.
And yet I needed him as close as physically possible.Closer.
“Never. Mathias,” Ren murmured, and as if he’d read my mind his fingers were trailing up under my shirt, across my abdomen and making me shiver. “I want you. Dios knows, I want you. But I was not going to push you before you were ready.”
This time I let him turn my face towards his. He grazed his lips across my mouth. “Are you? Ready?”
