Page 103 of Flameborne: Fury
My heart flipped in my chest, but the pain sang right along with it. I nodded and let my hand drop back to my chest because my arm felt heavy as steel.
“Tell me,” I rasped. “Kgosi said you need to tell me.”
She closed her eyes and dropped her chin, her hair dangling down over my bare chest, but she nodded. “Just… promise me you’ll remember that I love you.”
I nodded and coughed again, opened my mouth to reassure her, but then Kgosi roared and covered us both in smoke and steam, and then, as the coughing and tears passed, Bren spoke the words that left me coated in horror.
I reeled, tumbling back through time with her as she haltingly, shakily told me her past.
And my heart died a little bit more every moment.
SOUNDTRACK:#1 Crushby Audiomachine
~ BREN ~
I lay nestled in the sweet hay of the barn loft. Dust motes drifted lazily through the beams of afternoon sunlight slanting in the wide-open doorway through which my father used to pitch the hay for the animals. Usually, Ruin and I had only stolen moments here. But my parents had taken the last of our summer goods to market and wouldn’t return until tomorrow, leaving me alone, in charge of the farm for the first time.
I’d rushed through the chores before he arrived, and now lay in his thick steel, sun-darkened arms. I couldn’t stop smiling. I hoped he’d stay the night with me.
“There’s that smile,” he said, his voice a low, ragged thing in the perfect late-summer warmth.
“I always smile,” I giggled, flushed with love, yet feeling shy at the same time. It was the strange effect he had on me. Every time he touched me, every time we joined, I feltpowerfulbecause of the need for me that blazed in him. Yet somehow, afterwards, so overwhelmed. So shy—yet desperate for more of him.
“It’s one of the things I love about you,” he agreed, his stubbled cheeks pulling up to show his dimples.
My breath stopped at the same moment my heart leaped into my throat.Love?
His eyes crinkled and he touched my face, dragging one calloused finger down from my temple to tuck hair behind my ear. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know it,” he said gruffly.
Then he changed my world.
“I love you, Brenny. You’re my girl. Thebestgirl a guy could have. How did I get so lucky?”
The smile that burst from me at those words… I almost wept. He was so strong. So perfect. So powerful. And he loved me?
“I love you, too,” I breathed, awed.
He nodded and winked. “I know. I tell my brothers about you all the time—how your eyes light up when I visit. And when we touch.” He continued to stroke my hair, then the side of my jaw, then down my body as he spoke, tracing a line around my bared nipple that had been in his mouth a few minutes earlier.
I loved that touch. It made my breath shallow and sent tingling pleasure through my body to pool heat between my legs.
His eyes darkened when I arched into his touch, seeking more from those fingers, catching his eyes to silently ask for more.
“Look at you,” he rasped, his gaze raking down my body to where he touched me, watching my skin pebble under his hand. “So ready for me. All the time.”
“I love you,” I said quickly,ecstaticthat I could use the word now. “I’ll always want you.”
My chest warmed when his smile grew. “Yes, you will,” he said in a low, guttural voice. Then his eyes danced as he rolled me to my back and touched me more firmly. “My brothers, they’re jealous of what we have, Brenny. It’s not normal, you know. Most girls are harder to convince. You’re a needy little filly—like my father’s young mare, always swishing her tail and looking at the stallion. Tempting him.”
“Stop,” I giggled, thrilled by the approval in his voice, but also nervous and unsure again. When he continued to smile, I laid a hand on his bare chest and appreciated the way his body had strengthened even further since he’d become a Furyknight.His new role with the dragons kept him away a lot—sometimes for weeks at a time. And it was so hard. I missed him desperately. But he always came back stronger. Surer. Better.
He awed me.
“She jumps out of the pasture sometimes to look for others.” Ruin’s voice graveled. He locked me in that piercing gaze and kept me there as he leaned down to take my nipple in his mouth and suck hard, sending a jolt of pleasure that bordered on pain to the lowest part of my belly.
My breath grew shallow. As he continued to suck, I arched into it until he pulled off sending a zing of pain to that sensitive spot behind my navel. Then he braced on his elbows over me, staring down at me with hooded eyes. The animal in him was coming alive again. It scared and thrilled me.
“Do you do that, Brenny?” he asked, his voice raw, and suddenly tinged with somethinghard?
