Page 28 of Mated to the Mad Marquess

They ate together in charged silence, shooting one another fleeting glares. He brought his second glass of wine to his lips and sipped. She poked half-heartedly at her food.

Her foot hooked around the leg of his chair. The sudden movement startled him. She jerked it forward, toppling Malcolm backward in his seat. He landed on the floor with a crash, overturning his plate. Hrafn leapt over the table, shattering glass, knocking over the cart of refreshments. She landed gracefully, boots planted beside his head. Tea and wine followed her down, dripping in rivulets over the wooden edge.

Malcolm grabbed for her leg, but she was quick. She kicked him in the chest, sending him sprawling. Rubbing at the ache her boot print left in his sternum, he surged to his feet. Hrafn leapt up, wings beating at the air, pushing her higher.

Using the table as leverage, Malcolm vaulted after her. Snagging her by her legs, he used his greater weight to haul her down onto the floor. They rolled and wrestled over the cold tiles. She threw an elbow into his gut. He jerked on her braids.

“You’re my prisoner. I’m your lord. You’ll go where I tell you to,” he rumbled.

“You’re smiling,” she fired back. “All your commands would mean more if you weren’t grinning like a fool.”

Stars above, he hadn’t meant to make his enjoyment so plain, but he was in fact having the time of his life. This was better than fighting giants or catching bounties or chasing pretty girls in long skirts. Hrafn’s tight, lean muscles snapped and coiled in well-trained blows. Her reflexes were fast as lightning strikes, and she didn’t pull her punches.

Trapping her under the weight of his body, he caught her next swing, pinning her arm to his side. Hrafn head-butted him in the chin, disorienting him. Then she bucked her hips and sent him rolling off of her, onto his back. Propelling herself to her feet with a flex of her great wings, she made another attempt to get airborne. Malcolm scrambled up, knees smarting. He charged after her and caught her midflight at the archway of the great hall. The flap of her wings created a gale that nearly knocked him off his feet, but he held her around the waist and didn’t let go.

Hrafn tried knocking him loose by ramming him into a row of chairs. Malcolm caught the corner of the nearest empty table with his legs, and he used the leverage to jerk her down toward the ground. She landed on the balls of her feet and twisted free of him. Her wings snapped straight, striking him in the neck and shoulder. Her fist flew toward his cheek in a fluid combo. He lifted his arm to block it, falling for the feint. She dropped the punch, plucking a glistening blade out of her tall boot, and slashed.

Malcolm’s breath caught. He looked down. He felt no pain and saw no blood. Then his belt parted and the fall front of his trousers dropped open. Malcolm caught his pants as they slipped around his hips.

“Did you open my trousers for inspection?” he grunted. “Or to trip me?”

Her response was a breathy laugh that quickened his pulse.

“Both, then,” he guessed.

He lunged for her. Letting his trousers slip down his thighs, he grappled her to the ground. They exchanged modest blows, but neither landed them with any real effect—their proximity didn’t allow for it. He managed to pin her wriggling body under his weight, wrenching the knife from her fingers. When he had command of it, he made a swipe of his own, straight down the fastenings of her leather pants.

They could both fall over their clothes now.

She hooked her hands behind his neck, pulling him forward. Then she bowed her back and flipped them, claiming the dominant position, straddling his abdomen. With her boot, she trapped his hand that still clutched her blade, pressing it into the tile floor. Her eyes found his, and they shared several heavy breaths, both winded.

Her wings unfurled, black as night and equally glorious. Not a threat display. It reminded him of their first encounter, and he paused his next assault. There was deeper meaning in the gesture. Meaning he hadn’t understood then but was beginning to understand now.

It was an invitation.

Her hand went to his chest. She pressed it flat over his heart and her breathing stuttered, feathers ruffled as her wings dropped behind her.

“So that’s what that is,” she said, his heart kicking against her palm. “The bond. It pulses in my chest. But I see now. I can feel it. That pulse, it’s your heart. Your heart beating beside mine.” She brought her nose closer to his, her braids spilling around her face. Her cheeks were flushed. “Do you feel it?”

Yes. Gods yes, there was only that thumping pulse. Only her and the bond and all the points at which his body touched hers. Everything else fell away.

“I know you don’t want to be in a cage, but you can’t leave here. You can’t be seen. Raven, if anyone saw you . . .” He shook his head. “I would be every kind of evil thing I had to be to keep anything from happening to you. Don’t push me there.”

Malcolm dropped the knife. Hrafn released his wrist, lifting her foot and tucking it under her. He grabbed for her hair, only this time, instead of grappling with her, he pulled her lips to his. They kissed with the same bruising passion they’d fought with. Her tongue flicked between his lips, and he opened for her, matching caress for caress, exploring and claiming and being claimed.

Her sigh heated his skin, and her wings fluttered, a sign of her arousal as compelling as the delicious sounds humming through her throat.

Her wings came around them like a silken cocoon, sheathing them in ebony. Her breath blew against his cheek in hot pulls. He nibbled her lip, squeezing her wriggling body to his chest. Holding her was like trying to trap lightning in a barrel. She pulsed with an energy that fell somewhere between violence and passion with no equal measure.

His fingers roved down her back and over the rounded curves of her ass. Her leathers were different. Something hand-stitched and buttery soft. Newly made. High quality.

Was this the finest clothing she had? He suspected it was. Something she didn’t wear for just any occasion certainly. Had she put them on that morning just for him?

I came back because I had unfinished business,she’d said. Was her business more than the monster? Washethat unfinished business?

She kicked off her boots. As he raked his fingers down her trousers, he refrained from damaging them further. The linen drawers beneath he had no sympathy for. He ripped seams without a care, eager to see more bronze skin flushed with her arousal. He found the fastenings at her back next, loosening the fitted cotton that worked as a barrier between her flesh and the armor she’d bloodied earlier.

She wore no underthings to conceal her small breasts. Her nipples, the same fawn color as her eyes, hardened to pebbles, and every hair on his arm stood to attention. He rolled his thumbs over the textured skin that circled the peak of each breast, and her back arched into his touch. The dark plaits of her hair spilled over her shoulders, lush rivers of woven night long enough to brush over his abdomen.

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