I shoved it down in my irritation.
“You’re so pretty until you speak,” I said, smiling at him sweetly. “Do try not to ruin it.”
He chuckled as I took a seat next to him, my cheeks flushing at the smirk that claimed his lips. He sank his white teeth into his bottom lip as he studied me intently, like a predator stalking his prey.
“Why is it that you blush when you compliment me? Shouldn’t it be my face that turns pink?” he asked, grasping my hand in my crossed arms and tugging as if he wanted me to sit closer to him. I resisted.
“Only you would take it as a compliment when someone tells you that you’re prettier when you’re silent,” I returned with a scoff, refusing to answer his question. Caelum didn’t need to know that I found him far more than pretty, that something I didn’t understand compelled me toward him. He seemed larger than life. He terrified me, but he also appealed to me, turning my insides liquid and me into someone he could play with and mold into whatever he wanted.
“I’ve heard worse,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and quirking a brow at me. “I wonder how much you’ll blush when I tell you that you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” Everything in me stilled, and I turned my face away from his to hide the deep red stain to my cheeks. Even knowing it was a lie or an exaggeration, or both, I couldn’t stop the flush that lit my face on fire. “Like that then.”
It should be criminal to be so handsome that he threatened to make me lose my senses while his mouth tormented me so easily. I recovered as quickly as I could, clearing my throat. “Perhaps it is you who should be worried, Caelum the Marked,” I said, twisting my lips into a saccharine smile as he watched me. I fought back a shiver as the cold from the ground seeped into me, even with my dress as a barrier.
I knew without asking that there could be no fire to keep us warm tonight, not without a hiding place to shield the light from all manner of predators or the beings hunting us. I shuddered just thinking of what might find us, uncertain if I preferred death by fang to death by freezing or blade.
“Are you planning to gut me while I sleep, my star?” he asked, as he laid himself out on the ground. Even with his cloak still wrapped around my shoulders, he didn’t seem bothered by the cold dirt beneath him. Stretching his arms over his head and cocking a knee so the bottom of his boot pressed into the ground, he bent his elbows and used his forearms as a pillow. “Perhaps burn me with the fire that smolders inside of you, waiting to ignite?”
“I need you alive for now, but that doesn’t mean I need you to have all of your appendages functioning. I’ve kind of always wondered how a man would scream if I cut off his prized flesh between his legs,” I said, wrinkling my nose. My only hesitation in doing it to Lord Byron, aside from the obvious death sentence it would bring, had been that I would need to touch it in order for that to happen.
I would pass on that any chance I got.
“There’s my girl,” he said, pursing his lips in a move that only drew attention to them. All I wanted was to lean forward and sink my teeth into the plump, tempting flesh, to draw blood in a way that felt so unlike me. I’d enjoyed being able to protect myself in the past, but I’d never thought of myself as being particularly violent.
Not until the Fae Mark took everything I thought I knew about myself and changed me, twisting me into the bitter, rage-filled woman I felt myself growing into more and more, every hour that passed. The darkness lurking inside of me seemed overwhelming in the moments when I overreacted to Caelum’s ridiculous commentary and his desire to irritate me.
He pushed me, challenged me, but there was nothing that he’d done to deserve my ire. He’d even saved my life. So what was it about the stupidly handsome man that kept me in a constant state of vacillating between wanting to fight with him and wanting to kiss him?
“I’m not your anything,” I said, laying myself on the ground next to him. I kept my distance, ensuring that no parts of our bodies touched. I wouldn’t allow myself to show how cold I was, gritting my teeth as I fought back the chattering that wanted to overtake my jaw.
“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Caelum retorted with a chuckle, turning his body toward mine. He scooted forward, inching across the grass, dirt, and dead, dried leaves beneath us. They crackled, the sound grating on me as I stared up at the last, bare hint of light in the sky above us. Shortly enough, there would only be the moon and stars shining in the dark sky.
Something slid over my wrist, and I squeaked as quietly as I could and shoved it off. The flesh of a male arm against my hand drew a relieved sigh from me, the lack of scales or slime reassuring against the initial instinct that I’d attracted something far more menacing.
Though some nights in Lord Byron’s library had made me question if there was anything more menacing than a man when he didn’t get what he wanted.
“What are you doing?” I asked, flinching back as he wrapped that arm around me more tightly and pulled me into his chest. He was somehow warm, his body heat radiating into me as I pressed my freezing hands against his stomach.
“You’re going to freeze,” he said, acting as if it was obvious. The shadows hid the expression on his face, masking it from my view except for the faintest trace of his bone structure. He grabbed hold of his cloak where it was wrapped around me, unclasping it from around my throat and shifting it to cover us both as he slid his other arm underneath my neck and offered it to me as a pillow. “Get some sleep, Little One. I’ll take first watch.”
I nodded, and I would have sworn that my mind wouldn’t allow itself to fall asleep with a stranger so near. I’d never just been held in my life, never lain with a man at my side. For all that I’d experienced in terms of physical affection, between the abuse of Lord Byron’s hands on my skin and the hurried moments of passion I’d had with Loris, had I ever really known anything of true intimacy?
I could think of nothing more intimate than the feeling of Caelum’s breath rustling my hair, and his rhythmic heartbeat thumping against my face softly as I curled closer into him.
For warmth, I assured myself as he shifted his body, and I felt his gaze on my face as my eyes drifted closed. The softness of his lips brushed against my forehead, sending a tingle through the back of my neck in response as my exhaustion claimed me.
Most definitely for warmth.
16
We were on our way once again after Caelum caught a quick breakfast of wild hare. He’d managed to trap it while I was still sleeping. He’d never woke me in the night to take watch, and I didn’t know if it was because he had fallen asleep, as well, or because he’d been afraid I might in fact take his balls off while he slumbered.