Page 32 of Kept to Kill
They smothered the fire, packed up and left, Mal taking a piss behind a tree as the others went on ahead.
As they left the coast, the winter became more pronounced. They weren’t quite out of the mountains yet and would have to ascend at least one or two large hills before the land began to flatten off.
He kept an eye out for any threats as he knew Quin would also be, but there was nothing and no one out here. Not that he was surprised. No one would venture this way until the thaw when spring arrived in a few weeks. The mountain paths would be impassable before then.
They trekked until the sun was high. Then, without warning, Lily stumbled in the snow and fell to her knees. Quin called a stop, offering her some water, and they rested. Mal scanned the vicinity, ensuring there was nothing waiting to pounce. He glanced back from where they’d come and could just see the sea on the horizon. They were making good time despite the woman needing rest. If they didn’t tarry, they’d make the mountain inn at the very edge of the ranges before nightfall.
The girl got to her feet and they carried on. The rest of the afternoon was spent descending, and it looked like the thaw had already begun when the snow began to fizzle out, making way for the first greens of the new season as well as the sounds of waterfalls and rising streams now that the winter’s ice had begun to melt.
Lily stumbled again, falling hard to the ground with a low cry, and before Mal knew it, he was helping her to her feet – gloved, of course – and shedidn’tpull away from him. He glared at her. Just because he’d stopped those sailors, it didn’t mean anything. He’d have to make her remember he was not her friend.
He let out a menacing snarl and let his fingers bite into her arm until she let out a noise of discomfort. He let her go abruptly so she stumbled again and he gestured at her to keep going. Quin gave him a questioning look but said nothing. Bastian, however, stepped in front of him in challenge.
‘Leave her be. She tires.’
Mal stepped closer and pushed Bastian hard in the chest, looking him up and down with a belittling snort of disdain that would not be misconstrued as anything other than what it was – not even to that idiot. Bastian’s face contorted in anger and he let out a growl as he attacked, not going for Mal’s face as he’d assumed he would but straight for his side with two quick punches that would more or less guarantee that he’d be pissing blood for the next few days. Mal backhanded him hard across his annoying face with a smile creasing his own, bruising Bastian’s cheek as well as insulting him by hitting him as he would a female.
Bastian let out a bellow of fury but was hauled away by Quin.
‘Enough!’ the Commander barked. ‘We need to make the first inn by nightfall unless you two fools want to spend another night out here freezing your bollocks off.’
Without waiting for answers or reactions to his words, he ushered Lily down the path with him. Mal gave her a smirk as she glanced back at them over her shoulder, trying to ignore the upset he saw in her eyes.
Bastian didn’t give him the satisfaction of rubbing his cheek. Instead he gave Mal a narrow look that promised a reckoning before turning to follow the others down the hill. Once the bastard was gone, Mal let himself press the area that Bastian had hit. He had to hand it to him, his Brother was a formidable fighter from the little he’d seen. Bastian was easy to underestimate with his drinking and his fucking jests at all hours of the day. Mal needed to remember that, he thought as he tried to quash the sudden and very tiny spark of admiration that appeared, but he found that he couldn’t quite extinguish it.
They arrived at a dilapidated inn just before sunset, all of them bone weary and in need of a hot meal. Thankfully the place was dead because who the fuck else would be traveling now? Once the large, aproned woman had discerned that they did indeed have coin, she hustled and bustled to get a hearty stew cooking over the great hearth in the tap room and, in her words, ‘give the rooms a bit of an airing’. Mal assumed she meant that no one had stayed here since the passes had become obstructed after the first heavy snows.
The woman was probably living on the dregs of her income. He’d have to keep an eye on her lest she get greedy and decide no one would miss them if they disappeared. Easy to poison the stew and let them die in their beds later before hauling their bodies back up into the hills a ways. She wouldn’t even have to cart them very far. When they were found in spring, it would be assumed that they’d succumbed to the elements in the mountains and their bodies had been dragged down the mountain by the flowing streams.
So he kept an eye on every ingredient she added to that pot as she chatted away to put them all at ease. He caught Quin doing the same, and finally she hurried off to sort out their accommodation for the night while they ate their supper in relative peace.
He watched Lily practically falling asleep in her stew and couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from her. What he wouldn’t give to touch her, he thought and felt his traitorous cock begin to harden. When was the last time a woman had affected him so? Gods, when had a man? His eyes found Bastian of their own accord, roving over his broad shoulders for a moment, and he immediately looked away from the idiot. His Brother got one or two lucky strikes in and Mal was suddenly lost?
He let out a growl and ignored both Lily and Bastian as they looked up at him. Finishing his food, he got up quietly and made his way up to the second level where the woman had disappeared.
She gave him a great smile and a look that lingered just a bit too long as she told him the room on the right was ready and if he needed anything, anything at all, then to ring the bell just inside the door. He nodded once and slipped into the room, shutting himself inside before sinking into one the chairs by the crackling fire and rubbing his face with a calloused hand. What was wrong with him?
He sat there for a long time, mulling over the past few days. Quin and Bastian came in, falling quickly asleep in the two beds behind him. He was exhausted, but sleep eluded him. Quietly, he got up and slipped from their room. The inn was silent and the lamps extinguished. The only light came from the fire in the hearth, but he didn’t even need that really. He’d mapped the place out as soon as they’d arrived here.
He got to Lily’s room and eased the door open silently. She hadn’t locked it. Stupid girl.
He stepped into the room, finding her predictably asleep on one of the beds and dead to the world. She’d removed her clothes and – he sniffed the air – washed with some of the lavender soap he’d noticed in their own room. He thought of her under the coverlet, divested of every shred of clothing. Unable to stop himself, he stepped stealthily closer.
Her eyes remained closed, the lids moving slightly as she dreamed. She was in a deep sleep, he thought as he loomed over her small form. He should leave, whispered the voice of a conscience he hadn’t heard in a very long time, but he snuffed it out as he took hold of the blanket and eased it off her.
She didn’t move an inch as he looked his fill. Her breasts were the first things he saw, larger than he’d thought, her nipples beading in the chill that still lingered in the unused room despite the heat of the newly built fire. Her slightly rounded hips and stomach, a testament to the time she’d sat in the tower room, led to a thatch of blonde curls that were fairer than the ones on her head, he noted. Her voluptuous thighs led to long legs that would be wound around him if he had his way.
He canted his head as he stared at her legs. He’d noticed before that there were long, shining scars. He’d not given them much thought before, but now that he could look at his leisure, he could see that they’d been made methodically, with a blade; lines and lines like a delicate tattoo. His brow creased as he noticed four that looked newly scabbed over. They’d been cut deep enough to bleed and scar, but not so hard as to carve into the muscle. His fists clenched. Had Vineri done that? He hadn’t noticed them when he’d seen her at the camp, but that meant nothing. He hadn’t really been looking at her properly then.
Unable to help himself, he put out a finger and traced the air just above one, playing a dangerous game with himself, he knew, as he let his hand drift closer and closer. One touch and he would be dead before he could even taste her. The gods and their sense of humor. Giving himself a mental shake, he straightened. What the fuck did he care what Vineri had done to her?
Tomorrow or the next day they’d come across what was left of the place where he had started out in this life. A part of him wanted to see it, if only to prove to himself that that cursed place held no sway over him. Regardless, he doubted he’d be good company while they were in this part of the land – if he ever was, he thought self-deprecatingly.
He looked down at her, his gaze cold now. Her eyes fluttered.
* * *
When she opened her eyes,she was sure she was going to see someone there, but there was no one. She shivered in the cool air and rose, padding quietly across the room to put a piece of wood on the fire before hopping back under the covers.
