Page 25 of Dare

Potentially, the second, based on that raunchy little stunt when she’d hijacked the moment by smearing her tits and cunt against me. Then against the hilt of my knife. The slip and slide of her genitals across the handle had threatened my fucking grip on the weapon.

Telltale warmth still brimmed from the hilt, the residue of her body heat radiating against my palm. I should sanitize it. I should scrub it clean. I should come to my fucking senses. Instead, a slight floral essence wafted from the handle, an indication of how she smelled. Perhaps tasted.

My thumb stroked over the hilt before I registered my actions. Condemnation, I choked the weapon in my fingers. Another inch of pressure, and the object would crack.

She fought dirty. She knew how to fuck up her enemies.

The woman was fire. Never mind that her shallow pants and flaming irises had tested my endurance. She’d been whittling down those reserves for a while. But with all that heat rising from the beast’s flesh like toxic fumes, and with the pressure of her cunt rutting against my knife, I’d scarcely retained my composure.

What. The. Fuck.

What was wrong with me?

One goddamn enigma after another. And I fucking hated enigmas.

Not least of all, her lack of voice. I had speculated whether she’d been faking this, but enough people had confirmed otherwise by now. Despite our shared history—the memory she didn’t know about, from a time when she’d possessed working vocal cords—the woman had since lost her ability to speak.

And yet. Twice now, I’d understood her audibly. First, during our fight in Autumn’s forest, when she had screamed. Then in the quad, when it had sounded as if she’d spoken aloud. As though every whisper, growl, octave, and flick of her cursed pink tongue were accessible like a distinct frequency, the way certain fauna transmitted noises to one another ultrasonically.

How the fuck was that possible? There had to be an explanation.

Meanwhile, she must have concluded I was simply adept at reading lips. And she would be right. Occasionally, medical practice required that skill.

On to the next matter. All this time, I hadn’t taken notice of another pertinent detail until now. Only when she’d been trussed up, had I belatedly registered the slender stomach, which I’d traced with my blade. Her womb had a shrunken appearance that exceeded normal parameters. I knew what dosage had caused it, had seen it before in Autumn, when a born fool had been burned alive in the maple pasture not minutes after my arrival.

Such doses rendered prisoners infertile. Summer used this method to control its captive population.

For some reason, my knuckles curled. Although the preventatives came from Winter, an image of the beast being force-fed that treatment didn’t appeal to me.

As for the tattooed collar, I’d dealt with the guard who marked her. Considering the altercation I’d interrupted in the tower, the man’s punishment had been overdue. Despite the irony of all I’d done to her, witnessing his insolent hands on the beast had turned my vision red. Shaving the flesh from his knuckles had merely been a prelude. I’d given explicit orders for no one to go near my property. As a result, the guard now lacked any fingers to touch her with, much less other ligaments. I’d taken care of that shortly before polishing off the rest of him.

And while I didn’t care to offend Queen Giselle by torturing one of her subjects, I hardly gave a shit what Rhys thought. The guard’s wailing had been worth insulting the Crown.

The door flew open. Boot heels hammered into the room.

“Sire, there’s a problem,” Solstice reported.

That meant one of the captives was causing a disturbance. One rebellious little female came to mind.

I continued tracing my knife across the lantern’s sunburst. “Which one of them?”

“The mute one.”

Naturally. My hand stalled. I flicked my attentive gaze to the side, my silence commanding her to speak.

The First Knight’s words became airborne. “She’s escaped.”

Two words. Only two words.

Blood rushed to my head. Escaped. Again. For a second, every sensory perception dissipated like a vapor, and every rational thought broke down like scaffolding. But before the shock could immobilize me, it gave way to logic. This time, she had no weapon, nor allies like Poet and Briar to aid her flight. Most importantly, she was restrained.

Across the lantern, I sketched my blade over the fragile outline of the sun. Envisioning the ink around her neck, I thought of her pulse beating against the place where she swallowed.

My timbre came out dispassionately. “She won’t get far. Not restricted by those bindings.”

A pause. “She has no bindings, Sire.”

“What?”

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