Page 140 of The Nightmare Bride
Harlowe.Amryssa’s voice slid into my mind, wider and deeper and more...more, somehow.My sweet friend, my forever-sister. I’m here.
A joyous sob throbbed in my chest. “It’s her,” I cried. “I can hear her.”
Kai grinned.
I breathed my way through a spiky riot of emotion. First relief, then a pang of love so fierce I had to steady myself with a heaping dose of husbandly eye contact.
What do you need?Amryssa asked.
Nothing,I told her, still looking at Kai.I have everything I’ve ever wanted. But...I wouldn’t exactly hate it if you could stitch up this cut on my hand. It does hurt like a bitch.
Amryssa laughed. A moment later, warmth coursed into me. The line of fire on my palm faded to an ache, then a memory.
I marveled at my perfect, unharmed skin. The dagger went quiet, and I tucked it into the empty sheath at my belt.
“She’s not gone,” I said.
“I’m glad.” He pulled me close, tucking my head beneath his chin. “Now, where to? I’d take you to the liberators’ camp, but everyone there will be screaming. And not the sort of screaming that puts me in the mood.”
A breathy laugh gusted from my lips. “No, I have somewhere else. A place I’d like to show you.”
I offered him my hand, then looked around. Everything looked so different than when I’d been here as a child—the infected leaves pulsed purple while squiggles of shadow twined in the darkness. But I could superimpose the old onto the new. I still knew the way.
“Over here.” I tugged.
Kai followed. We floated through the night like ghosts, threading between glowing sheets of moss. Shadows groped for us, including one that looked like a squirrel with spider legs and a human mouth, but I kept my eyes up, and eventually, they retreated.
Fifteen minutes later, we reached a place I hadn’t set foot in for a decade.
It wasn’t a clearing, anymore, really. Moss and gnarled vines had taken over, dotted with glowing amethyst swamp lilies.
Amid it all, my old shack still stood, its woven-branch roof caved in one side, the other choked by climbing vines.
“Your old home,” Kai said softly.
“Yes.”
He released my hand and tried the warped plank door, getting it open after a few stiff shoves. He waited on the darkened threshold.
I paused. It was strange seeing him here, in this place that had given my loneliness life. And yet it felt like the last stitch knitting together my past and my present.
Inside lay my stool and table, now heaped with the detritus of the caved-in roof. There was the spindly rack I’d once dried plants on, half-collapsed. And the bed. Its horsehair mattress had retained a miraculous amount of volume, though the sheet had crumbled to rags.
Kai ran his hands down my arms. “Here?”
I nodded, and shivered, desire already peeling open inside me like a flower.
Violet light from the window shimmered along his cheek. I reached for him, but he returned my hands gently to my sides. “No. Let me.”
My breath turned hot and liquid. The nightmare screamed outside, but somehow that only added to the hungry chasminside me, spiking my heartrate, sharpening the burn that followed his touch.
He brushed my hair back and fastened his mouth against my neck, doing that thing with his tongue again. Oh goddess, my favorite thing.
I closed my eyes. Heat flickered at my core, sparking an ache between my thighs. And somehow, the nightmare made everything burn hotter.
Kai kissed a path down my neck, then up to my mouth. His tongue parted the seam of my lips, so tender I felt the echo of it in the base of my spine. He kissed me, unhurried, while he unhooked my dress and unlaced my corset. He pulled everything off, then lifted my chemise over my head and laid it on the mattress as impromptu bedding.
He peeled away my underthings and stepped back. His attention raked over me, carving a smoldering path down my naked body. “My beautiful wife.”
