Page 65 of Bull Moon Rising

“Missing it?”

Oh gods. My face heats. “I mean…no…”

“Liar.” He grins, his expression practically feral as he releases my hand and takes another step forward. I automatically take a step back, and stumble over roots, only to find myself with my back against the nearest tree. His hand goes to my waist, and then he flicks open my belt and slides his hand into my pants.

Sucking in a breath at the feel of his warm fingers against my skin, I flick my gaze up to him. “What are you doing?”

“Making you feel better.” The heat in his eyes is playful, even as he cups the back of my neck with his other hand and draws a teasing circle around my clit. The pose makes me gaze up at him, and when I brace ahand on his chest, I can see a smile curving his mouth. “You sounded sad that I haven’t touched you lately. I’m making it up to you.”

“You—you don’t—I wasn’t—”

“Shhh. I know, little bird.” He strokes against my clit, and my knees almost buckle. “I have you.”

My lips part, and anything I want to say, to protest, disappears from my mind as he keeps touching me. His fingers dance through my folds, slicking them with my juices, and when he dips a finger into the heat of my channel, my body makes a wet squelch. I jerk, startled and embarrassed.

Hawk only hums with pleasure. “Feel how wet you are, Aspeth? When the moon is upon me, the more I touch you, the more slick your body will create so you can take me. You’re going to be twice as wet as this, so wet that it runs down your thighs and soaks the bed. It’s all so I can stretch you to take my knot, and it’ll make you feel so good.” He eases his finger into me again, his thumb moving to rub my clit as he does, and then starts a slow, regular motion, pumping into me with his hand. His gaze is locked on mine as I curl my hands in his shirt, clinging to him as he pushes me toward a climax.

When I come, it’s with a muffled cry, my face pressed against his chest as he keeps fingering me. Pleasure bursts through my mind and sweeps down my legs, and then it rolls through me, leaving me sated and weak-kneed. “Oh. That was…nice.”

“It was, aye.” He rubs his muzzle against my ear, as if drinking in my scent.

“I wasn’t begging for you to touch me,” I tell him primly. “I just thought that we were supposed to be spending our time here in the woods getting to know each other. Our time alone, that is.”

“Oh, we are.” He chuckles, amused at my prissiness. “I’m getting to know which touches make you squeal, and that you talk about Old Prell in your sleep.”

I wriggle until I free his possessive hand from my body and slip away from him, flushed with embarrassment. “I do not.”

He licks his fingers clean of my taste with lascivious strokes of his tongue that make me think all kinds of naughty things. “You do, and it’s charming. Last night you were discovering bowls in your sleep.”

“Last night” was actually “last day,” since we’ve been sleeping in the daytime, but I don’t correct him. I’m a little too mortified that he’s right. I do have vague dreams of unearthing glowing bowls from a big pile of rocks. “What kinds of bowls?”

Hawk chuckles, his expression amused and full of affection as he gazes at me. “I don’t know. You kept saying it was a secret.”

Normally I’d be fixated on the soft expression my new husband is giving me, but all I can think about is that I’m talking about secrets in my sleep. Is real life bleeding over into my dreams? Have I mentioned anything about my father and his hold? His need for artifacts? I need to distract Hawk from this line of thought so he doesn’t pay too much attention if I do so again. “You know, Prellian bowls were a very important part of mealtimes. They had different-sized bowls and different colors of bowls depending on what was being served and at what time. It was considered poor manners to serve anything in a large bowl at the first meal of the day, for example. It implied you were greedy. If a wife wanted to get on her husband’s bad side, she’d keep increasing the size of a bowl, a subtle insult.”

The Taurian chuckles, shaking his head at me. “That’s one of the things I like about you, Aspeth—when you get cornered, you start teaching history lessons about Old Prell. By the time you get to be a guild master, I’ll be as much of an expert as you are, because you’ll have told me so much.”

His words make me pause. “You truly think I’ll get there?”

“If anyone will, it’s you.” He smiles.

I want to preen at his approval.

The afternoon whenwe start our fifth day in the woods begins with a drizzling rain, and my boots squish with every step I take. It’s the breaking point. The cloak I wear is wet. The socks on my feet are soaked. Everything is covered in mud and damp and cold and I’ve had enough.

“This is ridiculous,” I exclaim, parking my feet at the edge of the stream before we can tie ourselves together for yet another water hike. Iturn around to glare at Magpie and Hawk. “Why are we doing this to ourselves?”

Gwenna, Lark, and Mereden look just as miserable as I am. Even Kipp looks a little weary. The big shell of his house hangs lower on his shoulders than it should, a sign that even someone with his expertise can grow tired of this nonsense.

“You know why,” Hawk says, voice harsh. For a moment, I regret I didn’t ask him to go easy on me because I’m his wife. He’s just as hard on me—if not harder than anyone else.

Next to him, Magpie winces and holds her head. She’s looking just as sorry as the rest of us, her clothes wet and muddy, her eyes hollowed out. She acts as if she has a headache, too.

“We’re going to be in tunnels,” I feel the need to point out. “Not—this!” I extend my hands, gesturing at the rain pattering down on us, and then indicate the mud at my feet. “There’s no rain in the Everbelow! There’s no bugs! There—”

“Spiders,” Hawk says immediately. “There are spiders.”

I pause. “They’re just spiders.”

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