Page 22 of Winter's Scorching Kisses
Mathar untied the leather straps, yanked the furs off, brought them inside the tent, and rolled out the furs. Then he strode over to Adorra and carried her into the tent and laid her out on the furs.
Taking a second, he gazed down at her. Unlike Jasmine, Adorra was a great beauty. Her cheeks were flushed, her crimson lips pouting and ready to be kissed, and her chest well endowed for a man’s hands. And he found his palms itching to test the weight of her breasts.
Mathar heaved a sigh.
She might be a great beauty, but she was off limits. A human was not the woman for him, no matter how beautiful she might be. It might be for Dryden, but he wasn’t sure he’d want a human running around with their strange ways. This whole wedding Jasmine wanted was so foreign an idea.
When two ice giants wanted to spend their life together, they just did. There was no need for a ceremony and witnesses to their commitment to spend the rest of their lives together. It seemed useless.
With one last glance at Adorra, he left her alone in the tent, pushing through the flaps of the tent.
When she woke, her head would be groggy, and he didn’t want to have her screaming her head off like a lunatic when she realized he’d taken her from her life at the manor. Because with the berry juice still in her system all she’d be able to do was scream. She wouldn’t be able to form words until she was free and clear of the berry juice pumping through her system.
Adorra slowly woke. At first, she couldn’t move her body and panic set in. She struggled against herself as she tried to get one of her limps to work. She couldn’t move! She continued to struggle, but it was getting her nowhere.
Gradually, she calmed. If fighting her way through her inability to move wasn’t working, then she would relax and see what happened.
After a few minutes, Adorra raised a hand to her head and felt relief wash through her that she was able to move. She must not have slept very well last night. The last thing she remembered was collapsing on her bed with exhaustion. With a groan, she rolled over, and her hands grabbed onto her soft covers. She brought them up to her face, caressing her cheek with their softness.
Then she stopped.
Her eyes opened as she glanced at the covers clasped in her hand.
“These aren’t mine.” She whispered. She stared dumbly at the furs she clutched tight in her grasp as her mind tried desperately to catch up with what her eyes were seeing.
Slowly, her thumb rubbed the furs, disheveling the small brown hairs. Dropping the fur like it’d burned her, her heart rate spiked as she glanced around the foreign looking tent. She wasn’t sure what to make of this. It was a situation unlike any other.
“Am I dreaming?” Adorra asked no one in particular. If it was a dream, it was like nothing she’d ever dreamt about before.
Darting up to her feet, her head spun, and her vision went fuzzy around the edges. Adorra dropped to the ground in a rustle of fabric. She rested her head in her hands until the inside of the tent ceased spinning around in a blur of brown.
Everything felt so real. Adorra glanced down and found her dress from last night still on her body. This couldn’t be a dream. She’d never felt so much in a dream. Or seen such prominent colors. Which meant there was only one other possibility left.
She’d been kidnapped.
Maybe it was for a ransom. She’d make sure it was paid if that was what her kidnapper wanted. Or maybe it was Edmund’s killer returned to off her. In which case, she had to wonder why they hadn’t killed her yet. Perhaps they wished to prolong her torture.
Her lips fell in a flat line. In which case they would get an unpleasant surprise. She was in no mood for being an easy captive. She had spirit, and she would use it.
Adorra froze as she heard someone outside the tent rustling around. She wasn’t sure who had done this, but she did wonder if it was Keir. It hadn’t been too long ago that she’d been trying to find him and digging out any information about him that she could. He might have grown a spine and come back to get rid of her and her persistent digging.
She gritted her teeth. If it was him, she planned on turning the tides and figuring out what he knew about the disappearance of Jasmine. Her heart puttered in her chest at the same time that hope blossomed in her heart. This could be her chance to find answers about Jasmine.
Steeling herself, she rose to her feet and sucked in a few calming breaths while pressing her hands to her corset. Here went nothing.
She approached the tent opening with sure steps. She reached out a hand, ready to push open the fur flaps when they were suddenly pushed inwards, and an ice giant strode through the opening.
Adorra halted in her steps, and then let out a piercing scream. Her mind needed time to process, and this was the first thing it thought of doing.
The ice giant raised his hands to his ears and let out a growl, which sounded like a curse despite the fact that it wasn’t in her language. His obsidian eyes fell on her as his lips turned down in a frown.
Then he pummeled her to the ground but cushioned the back of her head with a hand so she wouldn’t crack her head against the hard ground. But she was less than thankful. A cracked head would be much better than having an ice giant laying on top of her.
Her hands came up, and she pummeled his face with closed fits. She wasn’t hitting delicately either. She may not have had any formal training on how to defend herself, but she was aiming to hurt him. She hurled a fist through the air and punched him in the side of the neck.
“Cease your squirming!” He hollered directly in her face.
Adorra paused for one brief second, shocked by his outburst in her language before self-preservation kicked back in. Aiming her head, she attempted to crack the front of her head against his, but he pulled back and dodged the attempt.
