Page 19 of Ravished By the Revenant

“Fine,” she says at last. “Here’s the deal. You don’t get to touch me, corner me, growl at me, or press any part of your undead anatomy against any part of my alive anatomy unless I ask. Explicitly. With words.”

“Agreed.”

She raises both silvery eyebrows at once. “That was fast.”

“It is an easy bargain.” I allow the smile to spread slowly, the one that used to make duchesses drop their fans. “Because the next time we are intimate, little intruder, it will be because you begged me for it.”

Clara laughs. “Beg. Me. For you.”

“On your knees, most likely.” I smirk. “Though I am flexible on positioning.”

“That will never happen,” she assures me with a wave of her hand. “I have never begged for anything in my life. I once waited forty minutes for a table at a restaurant out of pure spite rather than ask the hostess twice.”

“Mm.” I let my gaze travel down her body, slow and deliberate. The longer I look, the higher the flush climbs her throat. Her arms loosen from their defensive cross, her weight shifts, all of her going soft and languid against the doorframe like warm wax. Her body remembers my hands even while her mouth argues.

“Stop that,” she hisses.

“Stop what? I am standing. In my hallway.”

“Stop looking at me like—” Her stomach interrupts her with a rumble loud enough to echo. Schmetterling’s ears swivel toward it. Clara closes her eyes as if praying for the floor to open. “Not one word.”

“I would not dream of it.” I am already turning toward the stairs. “You require a proper meal. Salad and stolen strawberries cannot sustain a woman. I will prepare fish for you. Fish, and a salad, since you seem fond of eating my garden.”

“Fish.” She follows me, bare feet slapping against cold stone, then doubles back for her boots and hops after me while pulling one on. “Where are you getting fish? Is there a fish pantry? Please tell me there isn’t a seven-hundred-year-old fish pantry.”

“There is a lake.”

She stops mid-hop. “A lake?”

“On the grounds. Through the forest, past the orchard, perhaps half an hour’s walk. Stocked with trout, pike, and carp, though the carp are not worth the bones.” I descend the stairs, and her footsteps hurry after me. “The witch was thorough when designing the boundaries of my curse. I am imprisoned, but I am imprisoned with amenities.”

“I’m coming with you.”

I pause at the base of the stairs. “You wish to accompany me.”

“Yep.”

“To watch me fish,” I say slowly.

Her voice is deceptively bright. “Sure. Fishing. Love it. Very relaxing. All those… lures.”

I turn and look down at her. She meets my gaze with a face of such transparent innocence that I nearly laugh aloud. She thinks the lake’s edge might hold a gap in the curse. A gate the witch forgot. She thinks I cannot read her, this woman who broadcasts every scheme across her lovely face like a herald with a trumpet.

“You intend to search the treeline for an exit.”

“That’s—” She deflates. “Okay, yes, obviously, but I also want to see the lake.”

“By Saint George’s lance.” I drag a hand down my face. “You spent yesterday walking in circles through that forest and arriving back at my walls, and still you plot escape while your legs can barely hold you. You come apart in my arms, you tug at my piercings like you mean to keep them, and yet you cannot flee me fast enough. Do you have any notion how maddening you are?”

Clara’s mouth falls open. “Says the man who won’t let me leave and calls it hospitality.”

“Says the woman who moaned my⁠—”

“We’re getting fish,” she announces to the ceiling, the walls, and possibly God. Her cheeks have gone the color of my strawberries. “Fish. That’s what’s happening. Get your gear, Lord Broods-a-lot.”

I retrieve the rods from the storeroom off the kitchen, along with the wicker creel and the tin of hooks Konrad kept sorted by size until the day he died. Clara watches me gather it all with open curiosity.

“You made those?”