Page 105 of The Wolf Queen’s Curse

It’s clear from our conversations that Doyle is in awe of Jesse’s intellect. He’s been happy to turn over all the finances and the Pack management to him, because he trusts him. That was his first mistake.

What matters most for us is how the Albions play into this.

Did Jesse want Bishop dead? If so, to what end?

Or did he want Bishop humiliated? To prove Doyle can’t trust Bishop if he breaks his vows—like his wedding one—so readily. Better to send Bishop and the Albions away, letting Jesse keep doing whatever he likes with the Cambrians.

Bishop is going to need to sleep on this and make decisions tomorrow.

We’re in bed. Rufus and Julius have both moved into Ann’s bedchamber, and under other circumstances, I might have joked about that. But tonight they’re there to guard her and one another, as well as being only a connecting door away from Bishop and me. I’ve also warded both hall doors and all our windows.

We won’t stay in this house another night—we’ll need to make an excuse to Doyle tomorrow—but we can’t leave now. I don’t think we’re in danger tonight. The possibility of anyone getting to Bishop has passed. Rufus still insists on staying up to guard us as we sleep, and Julius plans to take a shift later.

It’s only once everything is calm that I see the scratches on Bishop’s neck and one wrist. I have a moment of alarm before he assures me they’re from the hunt. The neck scratch from Rufus, inflicted in a bit of roughhousing. The wrist one from…? Well, he doesn’t remember exactly. I cast healing spells as I remove his shirt and wipe off the dirt and find more shallow scrapes.

I work in silence, gently washing with the damp cloth and whispering spells. He doesn’t need the healing. The marks will be gone in a couple of days. I don’t care. I clean where there is no dirt to clean, and I heal where there is no injury to heal. It’s time to be with him, in quiet connection, as the house falls silent around us.

I’m wiping the damp cloth along his arm when he tucks a lock of fallen hair behind my ear. He’s taken out the pins already, piled them neatly on the table, every movement as slow and deliberate as my own. When he tucks that lock back, I look at him and his fingers move to my chin, tilting it up in a kiss. A short kiss at first, but then a longer one, as gentle as his touch, and he pulls me into his arms.

Bishop undresses me slowly as we kiss, and when we slide into the bed, the pace never changes. Unhurried. Deliberate. Gentle. There’s no rising tide of lust that needs to be sated. We’re both too tired and shaken for that, mired in worries and thoughts and fears of what is to come, the grief that we haven’t found the allies we hoped for.

We kiss and we touch, fingers stroking and making no effort to go anyplace in particular, and it is like drifting along in the gentlest current in a warm river. Every touch feels like a gift, something neither of us expected tonight and all the more precious for it.

That touching and kissing is enough to have our soft sighs and moans sharpening, and then I’m under him and he’s in me, and he takes it just as slow as we kiss and whisper words of love and of promise, that we can get through this together, that I’m here, at his side and at his back, and that he’s at mine, always together, always looking out for one another. Even our climax is quiet and yet so exquisite, exactly the release we both needed, and he’s still inside me when we drift off to sleep.

THIRTY-SEVEN

We wake to someone in our room, leaning over our bed. Julius barely jumps out of the way of Bishop’s flying fist.

“I knocked,” Julius says. “You were both sound asleep.”

Bishop grumbles and then notices that in swinging at his cousin, he dislodged the sheets. He yanks them decorously over me and scowls at Julius, who throws up his hands.

“Cordelia is lovely,” Julius says, “but I’m not trying to catch a glimpse of her naked. Even if she weren’t your mate, I believe I have more consideration than that.”

“No, you would never try to catch a glimpse of a naked woman, and certainly did not drag me to a bathing house in Bath because you’d found a peephole.”

“I was twelve. Also, I was roundly reprimanded for it.” Julius looks at me. “Rufus cuffed me hard enough to make me see stars. He said it was a violation of the ladies’ privacy, and he’d better never catch me doing it again.”

“I like Rufus,” I say.

“Well, you might like him less if I tell you what he did next.”

I arch my brows.

Julius continues, “He took me to a brothel and paid a woman to undress so I could look my fill.”

“Is that truly supposed to make me like him less? The woman was paid and willing. You got to see what you wanted to see. It was a very wise solution.” I glance at Bishop. “Was she pretty?”

“I wouldn’t know. I was eleven and had no idea why Julius would want to see ladies without their clothing.”

I pat his hand. “Well, I hope when you were old enough, Rufus did the same for you.”

“He offered,” Julius says. “But Bishop said he didn’t see the point of paying to look and do nothing about it, so he waited until he felt old enough to follow through.”

I glance at Bishop. “You did say you don’t see the point of merely looking.”

“Because he lacks imagination,” Julius says.