Page 14 of A Pact of Blood

Wrenching my gaze back to her face, I step back to make room. She was barely willing to speak to me—I’d better discard any lewder thoughts before they take hold.

Even if my dick has already risen to attention.

Aurelia slips into the narrow alcove where the passage ends. The moment she’s inside, I press the control to close the panel so our voices will be more muffled.

Then we’re alone. The old enchantment that illuminates the passages casts its glow over us, faint as moonlight.

I keep my gaze fixed on Aurelia’s face in the dimness. All the same, every particle of my body tingles with the awareness of her body: the ebb and flow of her breath, the silky rustle of her flimsy robe. Her coolly sweet scent fills my lungs.

I still have to speak quietly, but it’s easier with the snores muffled. Since I don’t know how much time we’ll have, I get straight to the point. “I’m sorry. Bastien and Lorenzo are being idiots. I understand why you had to stay. I have no idea how you managed to pull it off, but that just makes the whole thing more incredible. To have toppled Tarquin in front of the whole court?—”

Aurelia breaks in, her voice rough but steady. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Tarquin was ill. I had nothing to do with it.”

Of course she doesn’t feel she can admit her own crime. My fingers curl toward my palm against the urge to touch her cheek, to draw her closer, as if my embrace would make it easier to convince her.

Instead, I give her the confession I promised. “Shepherdess, you don’t have to pretend with me. Don’t you see—you pulled off what we always meant to. You put us to gods-damned shame, getting the job we’d given up on donein a matter of weeks. I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m in awe. If the others don’t want to believe it, it’s at least as much because of how much we failed as anything to do with you.”

Aurelia’s pause hangs in the air, her expression carefully blank. “What—what are you saying?”

Even with her, I have to gather myself before I lay it all out. Before I say the things I’ve never spoken about so baldly with anyone, even my co-conspirators.

“You know how we all felt about Tarquin and everything he stands for. When we were kids, after we’d been through a couple years of his treatment, we started plotting. How we could strike him down without getting caught and seeing our kingdoms razed in punishment. We picked the most powerful gifts we thought we could get away with concealing behind different ones—we came up with the best combination to work together and destroy him. When we were alone, it was almost all we talked about.”

When Aurelia speaks again, I think her voice has softened. “But—Bastien told me Pavel lashed out without warning?—”

I swallow down the surge of guilt that comes with the memory. “He did. We were supposed to wait until we’d all gotten a good handle on our new powers and then come up with a plan that’d look like an accident. But by the time Lorenzo had his dedication sacrifice, Pavel had already been waiting two and a half years. I’d been grappling with my gift for months and was still shaky with it…”

My shoulders slump with the weight of that admission. “Maybe if I’d gotten a grip on my power faster, Pavel would have felt more confident that we’d manage a coordinated effort. Maybe he wouldn’t have snapped. But he must have gotten impatient, and he thought he saw an opening—Idon’t know how he figured he’d explain the death if he succeeded—but he didn’t. You know the rest.”

“That was ten years ago,” Aurelia says in a tone I can’t read.

“Yes. We saw how well protected Tarquin was, how quickly his guards could detect any magic, and no amount of talking got us any closer to figuring out how to murder him without us and our countries going down with him, if we even managed to hurt him in the first place. So we… gave up. We’ve been stewing in that frustration, being utterly useless, all this time, and then—” I grimace. “Great God smite me, we tried torun away. We tried to convince you to come with us, when you were prepared to do exactly what we always wanted.”

I step toward her, unable to stop my hand from rising to graze her soft hair. “That would have been the biggest mistake we’d ever made. But you knew better. I can’t imagine how much pressure you were under, the danger you knew you were putting yourself in, but you didn’t take the easy way out like we would have. So I can’t ask for anything except your forgiveness, that we fucked up so badly without even realizing it—that we didn’t see just how incredible you actually are.”

Aurelia’s gaze drops, a flicker of pain crossing her face that snags in my heart with a sharp pang. “You’ve all seemed so angry with me.”

I bow my head toward her, close enough that her warmth emanates over me. “We were at first, when we didn’t understand why—and the others are finding it hard to believe that you could have arranged what happened. Lorenzo always takes things hard, and Bastien… He came up with the whole escape plan on his own, you know. I think his ego is wounded that you rejected it. But he cares about you that much. He has to come around.”

Her gaze jerks back to mine. “Hewanted to… I never would have thought—he’s always been so cautious?—”

I have to smile at the wonder in her voice. Bastien’s had quite an effect on her too, and I can’t feel jealous of that. “You’ve inspired a lot of surprising things in all of us, Shepherdess. I’ll keep working on them. I just needed you to know that you still have me, whatever you need, however I can help with every amazing thing you do next. Hopefully you’ll have all of us again before long.”

Her fingers brush my chest as they clutch at the front of my shirt. “Raul.”

There’s so much need in the way she says my name that I can’t rein in my own hunger any longer. I trace the line of her jaw to tip her chin up toward me and capture her mouth with mine.

The kiss is everything I’ve missed about her, fire and tenderness mingled together. When she leans into me to deepen the embrace, my groin aches.

No small part of my awe of this woman is for the urges she can stir inside me. The cleric who oversaw my sacrifice left enough flesh to avoid totally stunting my physical development, even if I’m completely impotent when it comes to fathering children. Still, it’s always taken a certain amount of will and concentrated focus to perform for the ladies I’ve seduced from their husbands.

I’m not sure how much I could say I was getting off onthemrather than the idea of carrying out some minor vengeance.

But Aurelia has never wanted a performance from me, only what I can honestly give. Whether it’s because of that or the endless challenge she presents or her formidable strength, or some combination of all that’s wonderful about her, her touch floods me with more genuine desire than any other woman has come close to.

As I trail my hand down her side, following the curve of her breast and waist, the thought of the other man sprawled in her bed sparks a different sort of heat. I can’t keep the growl out of my voice. “Has that prick of a husband even tried to satisfy you?”

Aurelia’s breath tickles over my neck with her answer. “I didn’t really give him the chance. I— There are ways to ‘cure’ a man of the idea that we haven’t coupled yet without needing to go through the entire act.”

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