Page 60 of Great Falls Rogue
“Remember this dream, Osprey?” Coal breathes the words against the back of my neck, his breath tickling my skin. “You think walking into my nightmares was a one-way passage? Let’s talk about facing this one first, shall we?”
13
Coal
Coal’s heart pounded against his ribs so hard that his bound arm throbbed with the beats, his muscles tight with a mix of fury and determination. Leaning into Lera, he brought his lips close to her soft neck, letting her feel his breath along her skin as he loomed over her. Larger and stronger and fully aware of the very thing that scared her spitless.
The fear leaking from her spiked as vividly as it had when Coal had cracked the belt in the air moments earlier, shamelessly recruiting her own terrors to his cause.Good.She needed to be terrified—needed to stop thinking of Coal as a friend and remember he was a too-experienced warrior who knew exactly how bad a routine patrol could turn. He’d kept his word to keep from disclosing Lera’s Protector’s Guild machinations to River, but that sure as hell didn’t mean Coal had any intention of standing by while Lera toyed with the suicide she was too brave and stubborn and inexperienced to see.
Worse, Coal had been making her more vulnerable these past weeks. In letting the strange misguided connection between them thrive unchecked, he’d opened the girl further to the assaults of his mind, cost her sleep and focus, and roused her own inner demons. That connection needed to end. Now. Tonight.
Still pressed against the wall, Lera flinched as a tremor ran the length of her spine. Her intoxicating scent filled Coal’s lungs as surely as the heat rolling off her body wrapped around his soul. Her silky auburn hair had started coming loose from its pins, loose tendrils falling against her neck, and he wanted to wrap them around his fingers, to bury his hands in her hair and release more of that heady lilac.Yes, damn the stars.He wanted her. Despite knowing the damage he was causing, Coal wanted the beautiful cadet anyway, and not just with his cock. The more time he spent in her presence, the richer the world around him felt. Around her, colors and tastes and sounds vibrated so vividly that sometimes Coal felt as though he stood on the edge of a greater world. One where he was whole.
The thought of something happening to Lera was so unbearable, Coal swore he felt it like spikes set against his soul.
Unfortunately for him, it all coalesced to one conclusion—Coal could protect Lera’s budding friendship or protect her life. Not both. Put that way, the course was clear. The best thing Coal could do was build up the cadet’s skills while slamming a healthy dose of reality into her. He’d already started on it the morning after she threw all caution and advice to the wind and went patrolling alone. And he would continue. Would wring her in training for every ounce of energy she had, lest that one unpracticed parry let through a foe’s sword.
Except that wasn’t enough, was it? Coal had been so busy demanding Lera respect the foes in the Academy’s forest, he’d overlooked the danger lurking right before her nose.Himself.
But he knew it now. Just as he knew that he could not stay away from Lera if she kept injecting herself into his life.
Which meant the girl had to stay away from him. Whatever pain Coal caused her now was nothing compared to what might happen if she continued the connection. If the darkness encroaching on Coal infected her any deeper.
“I’m not who you think I am, Leralynn,” Coal said into her ear, his voice a low rumble. “I’m not kind. Or nice. I’m a damaged unpredictable bastard you want to steer clear from.” Angling his body, Coal left an open path to the door, as clear an invite to get the hell out of his chamber as he could conjure. “Now would be a good time to start.”
Lera didn’t move. Too brave and stubborn for her own good, damn her.
Coal’s hand tightened on the leather, then he slapped it against his thigh hard enough to make the horrid sound of leather striking flesh, straight from Lera’s nightmares. Knowing what the bastard in Lera’s past had done to her, Coal wasn’t certain he could bring himself to hit the girl even once, which was the problem with peddling in threats and fear. He begged the stars he wouldn’t need to go further.
“Go,” Coal growled at her through clenched teeth and slapped his thigh again, eachwhap whap whapsounding through the room making Lera gasp. “I won’t give you another warning.”
Nothing.
“Go!”
Stars-damned nothing.
Fine.Coal swung, watching the belt sail through the air, the arc wide and slow enough that Lera could easily escape the blow with a single step.
Except she didn’t—she didn’t move at all.
Ice gripped Coal’s throat, his nostrils flaring to take in her scent—and the acrid, paralyzing terror spilling into it. It wasn’t just fear—Leralynn had a deadly chink in her armor the size of the Academy’s keep, a chink that sounded exactly like a cracking whip. The girl trembling against the wall wasn’t being stubborn and brave, wasn’t choosing to take a blow to make her point. She was…stars damn it, Leralynn was surrendering. Giving up.
The world slowed, reality slamming into Coal, wrapping everything that came before this point in cotton irrelevance.
He pulled the blow so hard, the leather flew across the room and wrapped around one of the bed’s four pillars. Grabbing Lera’s shoulder, he spun her around to face him, his broken arm screaming.
“You don’t stop fighting, Leralynn,” Coal hissed into her face, her glazed chocolate eyes and racing breaths spurring his own bounding pulse. Panic surged through Coal’s veins, bubbling from the same primal place inside him that drove him to stop Lera’s lone patrols and push her so hard in the ring. “You took on sixteen trained cadets andmeback to back. You are not going to let one crack of the belt turn you into a frozen rabbit. Do something. Anything. Just not this. Do you understand me?”
The trembling nod she gave Coal did nothing to convince him. Lera was a horrible liar.
He cursed. “This can get you killed, Lera. Dead.”
The glazed look in Lera’s eyes said she no longer heard him. And that frightened Coal as much as anything.
Running his hand along her face, he gripped her chin, the gesture feeling more intimate than he was prepared for. “You are at Great Falls Academy. In my bloody room. And I am much more of a threat than that fat lord doling out lashings. You don’t back down from me, and you sure as hell don’t bend the knee for him. You fight. And I will keep you here until you do.”
Twisting Leralynn back to face the wall, Coal put his forearm across her back. “Escape, Leralynn. Duck, hit me, use the wall. Do something.”
