Page 29 of The Girl in the Forest

Every joint had locked in place.

I was a bitter scarecrow in a field of dead ash.

But his body pressed against mine until I fit every ridge and dip. I was… him. Form against form. Mirror-images. The runes on my arm lit up the way they had the night of our ritual. When I’d felt like his lover… consort to the dread lord.

He broke what tethered me to the past, the person I’d been.

In the space of a single heartbeat, I became something new, leaning into him, reveling in the freedom. Inhibitions dropped away. I luxuriated in the relief. Soaked up whatever he gave me.

He was the ice melting on summer-scorched skin, and I craved the sensation. The cooling trickle across my breasts, the taut nipples. Down to the clenched muscles in my stomach.

My head fell back. My body throbbed with every breath. Only I wasn’t breathing. I was panting. Sucking the air in through parted lips, hissing it out as every part of me pulsed—the way an orgasm pulses through a woman lost beneath her lover’s mouth.

A soft cry trembled on my lips. He was ecstasy, consuming me… with just his hands around my wrists. His body anchored to mine.

“You’re a prick, Gray,” Mace snarled. “Putting her through this.”

“You’d do the same thing.”

“Not torture her. Take her. Get it over with, because sure as fuck, this frenzy of yours is dangerous.”

What they said made little sense, and the following silence probably meant an argument through the pack bond that turned nasty. The Alpha of Sentinel Falls and his second. Did Mace know he was second to a dread lord?

Well, of course he did. Packs had their own form of politics and rivalries and secrets. Mace would be a good secret-keeper, and a dread lord would have his hands full making judgments and throwing wolves into dungeons to remind them who held the power.

Odd, those thoughts, flying off like a Ferris wheel that broke free from the struts. The way my mind spun was maddening. My focus hit a limit at five seconds before jumping to something new. My muscles stretched and cramped. I wondered what the “this” was that Grayson was putting me through.

But… the heat was dampening. I dared to breathe in and did it without choking. Through slitted eyes, I gazed at the graying smoke, the last glowing embers at the branch-tips where pine needles looked like burning incense sticks.

Grayson’s fingers wrapped around my wrists, a heated brand against my skin. The harsh rumble of his wolf was more vibration than sound in his chest.

But when he stroked his thumb against the wolf rune, there was nothing. No hint of life, not even when the dread lord stroked his own sigil—the part of himself the magic required. The cost I hadn’t considered.

When he lifted me like a child, I silenced an inner sob. Turned pliant, weary while he carried me away from the path, the smoldering wall and cindered bushes. We could go anywhere and I wouldn’t care.

But I should pay attention, since a nagging part of me refused to slip into the numbness again.

Stars glimmered overhead, looking down while I stared upward. And I wondered, is this what you wished for? What the queens wished for? Relief?

Did the dread lords ever provide it?

Grayson’s stride was bold. He’d changed during the months I’d been away, but his scent was the same, rolling over me. Rain-washed pine and spice mixed with the smoke from fires I’d started. My breathing ratcheted.

The ghost of grief brushed through me, over wishes that would never come true.

I wondered what was next for me.

Wrenching in a tortured breath did little to cool my throat, even with the misty air. My parched lips were cracked and tinged with blood. Then I was flat on my stomach in the mud while Grayson plunged my hands into rushing water colder than a glacier.

My fingers clenched around nothing. The skin on my palms tightened. The stream became a flowing river of moon-shot silver, while my body crushed reeds that looked black.

But Grayson’s body was a heavy weight on my back, and my pulse quickened. Mud oozed beneath my chin, over my cheek and between my breasts, but what alarmed me more was the weight of his hips. The flex of his fingers around my wrists while he restrained me. I noticed the lift of his chest each time he breathed, and the intimacy in our positions. He’d splayed his legs around mine, his body aroused by the contact.

His hard erection pressed against my thighs, and even with our clothes on, all I had to do was lift my hips…

I tried lifting my head instead, but he was right there, his arms, shoulders caging, enclosing… comforting.

I hated admitting that.

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