Page 75 of A Darkness So Sweet

“This is where it goes.”

“Maybe so, but it doesn’t want to go there.”

Birger lifted it over her head, far out of her reach, but she still jumped trying to get to it. Maybe if she stretched just a little higher, she could grab it out of his hands and take off with the poor thing. The longer she was in the garden, the more she’d learned to listen to the plants talking. Birger was a good teacher when it came to using her magic, but he was terrible when it came to listening to the plants.

“Why doesn’t it want to go there?” he challenged. “This is a good place for parsley. The wisps gather here more than anywhere else. The soil is good. There’s nothing wrong with this spot. You’re just giving in to a picky plant. You can’t do that so much when they don’t know where they need to go.”

“They know exactly where the best place for them is,” she grunted. “This soil is too acidic!”

“It’ll do just fine here. It just has preferences like you do. If you let them all tell you where they want to be planted, they’ll be clustered around each other and none of them will grow.” Birger gave her a glare. “You’re letting the magic make choices for you.”

“No, I’m listening to them, which you are not very good at. Give it here.”

He grunted, then gave her his back as he planted the parsley where he had originally wanted to. “And here I was thinking that human women were meek. You’re worse than the squirrels up there. Always nattering about nothing.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Maia hadn’t ever been told that she talked too much. She was always the quiet girl in the corner, praying no one would look at her, and when they did, she would hop to do whatever they wanted. Knowing that here she was more than that? It filled a hollow deep inside of her that had wanted to be the opinionated woman who lived in her head.

Biting her lips, she grinned as she returned to her plot of the garden, pausing only when a shadow fell across her neat row of holes that were ready for more plants to sink their roots into the soft earth.

Looking up, her lips parted in surprise. “Ragnar?”

“We’re needed.” He stared down at her with troubled eyes, and she could sense something had happened.

She hadn’t felt another earthquake, though. Were her people attacking right now? Maia didn’t know if she wanted to be in the middle of a battle between the trolls and the humans, especially not when it was so easy for someone like her to get lost in the midst.

He grabbed her arm, hauling her up to her feet and nodding at Birger. The other troll said nothing as he watched them leave, but anxiety churned more and more in her belly as Ragnar drew her away from the garden. He wasn’t leading her toward home, though. He was leading her into the forest.

Were they leaving?

“Ragnar?” she asked, breathless already as she tried to keep up. “Where are we going?”

He didn’t reply. Not until they were so far into the strangely colored forest that she knew she wouldn’t have been able to get back if she tried. There were no footprints to follow, and certainly no path. He’d walked between the trees like he knew them by heart, and perhaps he did.

But finally he stopped, whirling on her and stalking back in her direction. She stumbled away, slamming her back into a tree as he loomed above her.

“Ragnar?” she tried again.

She couldn’t read that expression on his face. He looked angry, and normally she knew why he was. But he’d taken her out of the garden, hurried her away from Birger and the job he’d given her, only to bring them right into the middle of the woods where no one would find them.

Maia watched with wide eyes as he sank to his knees before her. He was breathing hard, but she didn’t think it was because he was tired. Instead, his gaze slid down her neck, her chest, to the core between her legs that instantly burned with desire. The feeling of his gaze was like a physical caress long before he actually touched her, those claws gliding up her thighs, catching on the fabric of her skirt and drawing it up.

“Wife,” he said, his voice a low guttural groan. “I have need of you.”

Her breath caught. “You do?”

“I don’t know if we'll return alive from where I need to bring you, so I wish to taste you one more time.” And then he leaned closer, pressing his nose against her lower belly, breathing in deeply. “I wish to do more than that if you’ll allow it.”

If she would...

Oh.

Oh.

She could make him wait, but she didn’t want to. She’d been burning for him for so long, and even if it was wrong, she wanted this troll. Maia wanted to feel him between her thighs, to hold on to that broad, strong back and cry out with pleasure like he’d made her do already. She wanted to hear his moans of desire and know what it was like when he seated himself fully in her.

Even if that was terrifying. Even if she had questions whether or not they would fit. She wanted to try.

Tangling her fingers in his hair, she gave the locks a tug. “Consume me, husband.”

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