Page 50 of Beyond the Cottage

A lantern lit the corridor. Ansel lay on his side, tightly curled in the fetal position. Tension bunched his muscles, but he was fast asleep.

What the hell was he doing there?Guardingher?

He let out a deep groan, followed by a child-like whimper, and Gretta’s fingers tightened around the door frame.

She should leave him to his nightmares. It wasn’t her problem if he’d never learned to sleep well.

Instead, she crouched beside him, calling herself every word for idiot. “Ansel, wake up.”

He flinched but didn’t open his eyes. Some of his shirt buttons were undone, exposing his visibly pounding heart.

“Wake up,” she said, shaking his shoulder.

His eyes flew open. He looked at her, but she could tell he wasn’t seeing.

“My turn,” he whispered.

“Your turn for what?”

“Oven.”

Gretta’s blood turned to slush. She knew exactly what he dreamed about—their last night in the cottage. The night the Eater had decided it was Ansel’s turn.

The cunt had wheezed it bluntly, without inflection. Some throat disease had damaged her voice, preventing her from singing the words that lured children, and she hadn’t eaten in a week. Desperate with hunger, the witch’s sights had turned to her captives.

The witch had dragged Ansel from their cage. He fought, kicking and biting, but his young, malnourished body had been too frail to take her on. She drove him toward the oven, grabbing the cleaver off the butcher block, squeezing the skimpy flesh on his arm.

In her hungry delirium, she forgot to lock the cage door on Gretta…

“Hey.” She shook him again, gentler this time. “She’s dead. You’ve got to snap out of it.”

His brows pinched together. “Gretta?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

He seemed to absorb her presence slowly, like she was some concept he couldn’t understand. Closing his unfocused eyes, he wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his head in her lap.

With a gasp, Gretta raised her arms. “Hey, no! Get off!”

His arms tightened, and he nuzzled her thigh. His breath became slow and even.

The asshole had fallen back asleep.

“Goddammit, Ansel,” she muttered. She ought to shove him off with a pithy reminder they weren’t friends anymore, but Gretta didn’t have it in her. Her own mind still churned out memories of that night, and she couldn’t leave anyone alone with that kind of misery. Not even him.

Sighing, she draped an arm on his shoulders—there was nowhere else to put it—and counted bricks on the opposite wall. She’d wait a few minutes, then sneak away to catch another hour or two of sleep.

Bright sunlight from the bedroom doorway nearly blinded Gretta, and she turned from it, wincing. Her face landed in a mess of dark hair.

Oh.Fuck.

Ansel lay half on top of her, quietly snoring into her neck. He had his arms crossed under her back and a thigh wedgedbetween her legs. Infinitely worse, one of Gretta’s hands had found its way into his hair.

The other cupped his ass.

She sucked in a breath, flinging her arms away. His big body lay like a cadaver, all pliant dead weight, and if it wasn’t for his light snore, she’d have wondered if he’d died in the night.

Something else indicated he was very much alive—the massive erection pressed against her hip. It dug into her like a gun barrel, iron-hard and a little intimidating.

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