Page 81 of The Girl in the Forest

To save him.

CHAPTER 23

Noa

We had five idyllic days before it ended. Days spent wandering through the secret wrinkle the King of the Forest created to comfort a lonely boy.

The pocket had its own seasons, separate from the rest of the world. Perpetual spring, early summer. Mild weather, the kind a boy would relish for his games of war.

Thick grass cushioned our feet. The air was a delight, filled with the scents of growing things, flowers, ripening fruit, loamy earth. We made leisurely, decadent love on a blanket beneath the stars. Swam in a pool where Grayson stood naked beneath the waterfall like an ancient god, rising. We picked wildflowers that didn’t wilt. Chased like children, laughing at our heady game. Grayson looked younger, happier. I pressed my palm against his heart and told him so.

There were nights when we held each other. When pleasure taunted me with each ending, because I immediately wanted more. He understood my body like no other. In return, I stroked the utter perfection of his physique as if I touched a priceless work of art.

He drove himself into me with mastery and passion. He would spread my legs, angle my body until ecstasy surged. The broad head of his cock would probe. I’d weaken beneath the pressure when he entered, gasp at the angle that brushed my clit and hit the nerves deep inside. Dirty words of praise and commands were hotly compelling. There were times when I forgot who I was until I’d hear his growling voice in my head. “Breathe, Bedisa.”

Bedisa was the name he’d started using only when he spoke to me intimately through our bond. It meant destiny. He was telling me I was not the Noa I feared I was. The secret knowledge passed down from alpha to alpha, with the initials condemning my mother and me.

A condemnation he refused to believe.

He said we’d come into each other’s lives because of destiny, but not a black destiny. Not a destin noir.

In return, I had no secret name for him, but I worshiped every part of his body. Learned how hard to grip his cock and where to flick my tongue. I cherished each seduction, doing to him what he did to me, arousing in incremental stages until he writhed on the bed. My orders had him grinning wickedly.

“Whatever you desire, Bedisa…”

The physical awareness we shared was so instinctive, it became an inexorable pull. We grew attuned to the subtle messages in a shudder, the press of teeth against a lower lip, the warmth in a place so sacred no one else could reach us there.

Even during daylight, when we were holding hands or exploring some secret bower, the need would skip through my body and he’d already be smiling. When he found my limits, he pushed me higher. When I yielded to his commands, my surrender was a victory.

He told me secrets he’d never revealed before, how when he’d first searched my mind for signs of my wolf, all he’d found was hard obsidian and an endless sky of stars.

He said he’d never felt anything like me before, called it lightning in a storm.

And he’d been restless with me—for me. Because I was fire frozen in ice.

His fire.

Then he’d cupped my face, traced the curve of my lips and murmured heartbreaking words that were now carved into my heart.

Somehow, he’d become essential to me. I could explain it with words like shelter, calm, protection. But those words were so distant from the reality that I could use them to describe a thousand other men.

What made him different? I couldn’t define it, but I would close my eyes and see what we could have had, if fate had not intervened… if a witch in a cave had not revealed what I could do, the chaos I could create…

I would burn the world down for him. And he might never forgive me for it.

Because the world had burned beneath the rage of the queens.

The kings had trampled the remains into the mud.

And the truth in that was a roaring in my ears.

I feared the day when he understood the truth, too, that what we felt might not be love, but it was certainly rage. We were the perfect lovers. We were passion. We could be destruction. The Dread Lord and the Faille. He wanted to save me. I wasn’t sure he could.

I remembered the battle revealed to me on a cave wall. Yes, failles had fallen. But before they fell, they brought about a devastation horrifying in its intensity.

And what was he capable of? Even more than me.

Because, above all, he was a dangerous man. He raged at his own fate with a tangible heat I mirrored. A striking match could not be more volatile. Separate, we were twin flames. Together, we would be annihilating. Selfishly and wholly consuming. And I was a selfish woman. I might take what I wanted and let the rest be damned.

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