Page 81 of The Blight of Hollowmire

He has just bested five armed men by himself and somehow his first thought is… me? I’ve never come first in all my life, and he hasn’t even bothered to wipe the sweat from his brow before ensuring my safety. That, more than the fight, more than anything else, finally shatters what little remains of my composure.

Before I can stop myself—before I can consider the consequences or think better of it, I cross the distance between us and kiss him as though the answer to all of life’s great questions lies behind his lips.

When I pull away, the silence that settles between us is just shy of awkward—neither one of us sure of how to respond or react because suddenly, everything has changed. My heart thunders in my chest, skin alight with awareness, and all the while Renard stares at me with those wide, impossibly blue eyes.

Gods. This is a disaster.

Not because I regret kissing him—that would be patently absurd—but because it occurs to me I’d much rather spend the day kissing him than head toward Valehar, burdened with things like responsibilities and a rapidly approaching apocalypse.

No longer is our destination a vague location waiting somewhere down the road—it is a place capable of taking him from me. The curse no longer threatens nameless strangers or distant kingdoms but reaches, in my imagination at least, toward someone whose loss now feels unbearable. Every danger, every uncertainty is all the more frightening now, simply because I have something precious enough to lose.

“I should probably apologize,” I begin, but Renard closes his eyes and lets out a rough, helpless groan that sends a shiver through me. He stares at me like he’s seeing me anew—not as a traveling companion or a debt of honor, but as a woman he wants with equal fervor.

“Renard?” I hedge.

Something in him seems to snap, and he moves like a hound after a hare—his mouth crashing against mine with a deep, primal growl.

Oh.

One hand slides into my hair and fists against my scalp, while the other settles firmly against my waist and yanks me closer with a possessiveness that sends a flood of arousal between my legs.

“Gods, Vireth,” he rasps against my lips. “What have you done to me?”

My name is a raw scrape of sound, and the desperation in it—the longing that it clothes—makes my desire burn and my pulse flutter. My lips quirk up in a smile—I cannot help it. There’s a dark pleasure winding through me with the knowledge that I am the cause of this surrender. After weeks of watching him deny himself every ill-advised want, I have finally become the thing capable of unraveling him.

Deep within my chest, the Blight Mother stirs in response, lifting her vast attention toward the feelings blooming between us, and something ancient seems to unfurl beneath my ribs. It feels like a satisfyingly slow uncoiling of something that’s been tightly wound in my belly for what feels like an age.

Renard's attention is fixed upon me with an intensity that leaves me feeling wonderfully, dangerously unsteady, and standing beneath the trees with his shattered restraint and his unburied longing, it’s hard for me to remember whatever reasons I had for keeping him at arm’s length.

He kisses me with devotion and desperation, his lips claiming mine in a manner that leaves no room for doubt that they belong to him now. Tentatively, I suck at his plump lower lip and test its plushness between my fangs, and his sharp inhale gives me the space to slip my tongue into his mouth.

Oh, hells. If I thought he smelled good—all apples and leather and sun-warmed wheat—he tastes like something reserved for the table of the gods. Sweetness, saltiness, and something similar to the tang of his blood… a fae could get addicted to a taste like this.

My hands sink into his gold and silver hair at first, but can’t manage to stay there for long—too eager to explore the body that has haunted my dreams and fantasies every night of late. When they track down his back to grip his firm ass, he groans low in his throat and the sound threatens to make me combust.

“Vireth,” he murmurs, pulling back to drop kisses down the line of my jaw and column of my throat.

“Mm?” The sound comes out a most undignified whimper, which he answers with another low, dark chuckle.

Please don’t say we should stop. Please.

“How far we go with this is entirely in your hands,” he says, nearly choking on the last words since my clever fingers have traveled to the front of his abdomen and are working their way down to the front of his breeches and impressive erection.

“Are you asking for my permission?” I tease, unable to help myself.

“I have dreamed of touching you—tasting you—taking you—in a thousand different ways. I assure you, I will not be the one to end this until I have learned the map of your body’s pleasure and committed it to memory. You will need to be the one to say no, but on my honor, I will obey.”

“Obey?”

“Your every whim,” he says, reaching up to palm my breasts through my thin sleeping shift. The soft, worn fabric is almost as good as bare skin, and I moan when my nipples harden into aching points, begging for attention.

“That’s quite an offer,” I whisper. “Perhaps I have many whims.”

“I am but your humble servant,” he rasps, his breath fanning the sensitive skin below my ear. “You have but to name them, my lady.”

My lady. I know the term is an honorific for humans, but this is the first time Renard has used it with me. Something sickly sweet twists within my ribs, and I decide to keep this small pleasure tucked just inside my breast—just for me.

His warm, broad hands sweep across my body in smooth strokes, touching, teasing, driving me to madness with their gentleness.