Page 109 of The Puppeteer and the Poisoned Pawn

There is no concept of time. No rational thought. It’s just us and this mind-blowing orgasm hanging over the edge of his grasp.

“Do you think you deserve to come on my fingers, sweetheart?”

My answer is distorted by his other hand. But the answer is yes.Fuck. Yes.But he doesn’t answer, so I start begging, pleading, floundering against his fingers and cock. Dignity? Gone. But Greystone grants my request, and it’s as if my body was clamping around this implosion, waiting for his words to set it free. The hormones scream through my bloodstream. I burst around his fingers, clenching tightly while the climax tumbles over my body.

“I’m going to come in you. Would you like that, pet?”

I can only nod as the last waves of my orgasm curl my toes.

Greystone growls under his breath, finishing with a final thrust. We lie back down on the grass in a quiet regression of heavy breathing, and me grinning to myself.

33. Together Again

“Ah, the sweet scent of intercourse.”

I flinch at the intrusive voice flowing through the meadow. And as the man next to me rises to his feet to glare at the trespasser, I can tell by his stance that Dessin has come back.

But his shoulders relax as he realizes who it is. Niles’s head pokes out of the trees, waving nervously at us. I sigh with a grin.

“Can we come to hang out yet, or do we have to keep pretending like this isn’t mating season?” Niles shouts.

Chekiss’s voice is muffled. But I can tell he’s scolding Niles.

I snicker, and Dessin rolls his eyes, then looks at me. “Is it brain damage, or did I actually miss him?”

“Come on,” I call to Niles.

The group walks out of the evergreen trees, all hanging their heads in slight embarrassment… except for Niles. He’s not walking, he’sstrutting.

“It’s true… he’s really alive,” Ruth says to Warrose.

Warrose just stares ahead, jaw clenched and hazel eyes clear of any emotion. His steps are heavy, like a warrior returning home after a long battle. One where he had to make hard choices. One where he had to become someone he wasn’t proud of.

I look back at Dessin, who darts his gaze away from his old friend, clearly not ready to address whatever is sitting between them.

“Skylenna finally looks like a woman again!” Niles does a little fist pump. “The old butcher’s wife wasn’t working.”

I smirk as Chekiss swats his good arm. “Be nice.”

“We have food on the fire if you’re hungry,” Dessin addresses the group.

“I’ve already fed them,” Warrose clips.

Niles makes an O with his lips as he looks back and forth between the two men. He catches my eye, and I shake my head.Don’t get involved, Niles.

Ruth takes a step toward me, with the elegant stance of a ballerina, failing to meet my eyes. She’s wearing dirty brown trousers and a white tunic that’s two sizes too big for her thin frame. I glance over the elfin features of her face. The upward pointed nose. The long curly lashes. The glowing olive skin. Yet, looking past her beauty, there’s a hurt that wallows under the surface. Her brown eyes no longer sparkle with optimism. They wilt with a weight she hides well.

You. Aren’t. My. Sister.

The words I wounded her with at Dessin’s funeral boom in my ears. I hit her hard and fast, and even though she knew I was suffering, that I was speaking from a place of pain, it didn’t stop her from second-guessing everything. Ruth abandoned her life for me. For our family. She has stuck by me through it all. And I discredited that with one horrible statement.

I don’t have it in me to address the damage I had done when I was mourning the death of the men I love. I didn’t have room then for the guilt that wrapped itself firmly around my heart. But I have room now.

“Ruth.”

She meets my eyes.

“I didn’t mean it,” I breathe.

---