Page 33 of The Iron Dagger
It would have to wait until tonight, after Hara had gone to her bed.
He almost groaned in frustration. She was bound to be shaken and disturbed by his display of brutality. With all her gentle talk of healing and maintaining balance, he didn’t imagine she was pleased with him right now. He had to get himself under control, otherwise he’d find himself grabbing hold of her willowy frame and doing something stupid.
Just as he’d managed to suppress these mad desires, he felt himself being backed against the closed door.
Hara’s arms were circling his waist. Then her hot mouth bloomed out of the darkness and embraced his lips desperately. Pain and pleasure mingled as she pressed against his split lip, but he barely noticed.
He was stunned for a moment as her mouth moved over his, all thoughts blissfully screeching to a halt at the feel of her. Then, in a rush of triumphant heat, his body took over as he clenched her against his chest, one hand snaking to her lower back and the other clutching the hair at the base of her skull. He tipped her head back, opening her throat and mouth to him.
She tasted of sex and heat and woman, a peppery intoxication feeding his desire and making him drunk. He could hold her like this for an age, wrapped and snared, if it wasn’t for the sudden pounding at the door.
“Here, what’s all this noise I heard downstairs? I don’t abide brawls in my establishment,” boomed an angry voice. Gideon groaned in frustration. Couldn’t the damned innkeeper have waited ten minutes? Didn’t he have guests to console?
At the sound of the voice, Hara hesitated. She broke the kiss, breathing rapidly and loosening her hands from gripping the back of his shirt. He held her fast, whispering, “Don’t answer him. Come to bed.”
“He might have a key. And you’re injured . . .”
“Nothing feels better than a fuck after a fight under normal circumstances,” he said. Perhaps her kiss made him reckless, for he couldn’t stop the next words from coming out in a rough whisper. “But I’ve been aching for you for days, Hara.”
His words were drowned by more booming thuds on the wood of the door. With a harsh breath, he released Hara and swung around, straightening his lopsided shirt and running his fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to tame it. Hitching a mild-mannered expression on his face, which he hoped wasn’t too marred by his bleeding lip, he opened the door.
“Good evening,” he said to the scowling, squat innkeeper. The man made a noise of exasperation.
“I draw the line at spilt blood. Now I’ve got a load of scrubbing to do, so you’d best have a good reason for laying blows on my guests before I kick the both of you out.”
Scrubbing indeed. The grime coating the floors would surely not suffer from a little blood.
“They threatened my wife,” said Gideon, hastily coming up with a plausible story. He tried to ignore the satisfied possession that roared through his veins at the words. “I had every right to protect her.”
“Hmph,” said the man, glancing over Gideon’s shoulder to Hara. “Hedgewitch, are you? You’re inviting trouble flaunting that around here.”
“Noted,” said Hara softly. Gideon felt incredibly foolish, forgetting how deeply the prejudice against magic-folk ran in the north, especially in a backwater such as this.
“You’re not welcome here tonight. I don’t trust witches in the best of times, even less when they start brawls. Out,” barked the innkeeper.
“Surely we can make some sort of arrangement?” Gideon said, producing some coins from his money pouch. It was getting rather light, indeed.
The innkeeper snatched the coins and grabbed Gideon by the collar. “Get out. I’ll take the coins as payment for my trouble.”
Gideon considered introducing his fist to the innkeeper’s jaw, but one glance at Hara’s face was enough to convince him that would not be wise. Not unless he wanted the town magistrate and a torch-wielding mob after him next.
“Come on,” he murmured to her, and they quickly exited the room.
When they emerged from the inn, it was to find Ruteger waiting untethered in the yard with their bags packed. Night had already fallen, and their surroundings were dim with starlight as their breaths rose steaming in the frigid air. Gideon took the reins, and without a word, Hara followed him onto the road.
They walked in silence for a while, and Gideon’s heart returned to a more reasonable rhythm. He frankly did not care where they were going, for his head was still back at the inn, pressed against that door and feeling the burn of pleasure as Hara’s mouth ensnared his. It had lasted for entirely too brief a moment, and so he tried to commit every second down to memory. He hoped that she hadn’t heard his confession that he’d craved her for days.
A sort of frenzy had begun to churn under his skin since this journey began, and perhaps even before that. Gideon felt as though the mildest slight could turn him loose, and he craved a reason. He craved release. He craved bloodshed. Hecraved.
Though he felt no qualms about violence, he had a great deal of self control which he was particularly proud of. He would say he was slow to anger. Usually. But it felt good to launch his fists at those men, to feel the sting of their blows against him in return. It felt good, and it unnerved him that it should. This was not the way he comported himself. Only an unlucky few got the privilege to trade blows with Gideon Falk. He did not doleout his wrath so cheaply to be wasted on a couple of ignorant soldiers. They hadn’t earned it properly.
So what was the matter with him? The lack of control made Gideon restless and irritable.
A hill on the side of the road gave way to a clearing with a small copse of trees in the center, and they wearily made their way to it. In little time they gathered kindling, and Hara impressed him by producing a few weak sparks from her fingertips to make a fire. Hara let Seraphine roam, and silently, they ate the bread from their packs and the mushrooms they gathered.
Gideon could not seem to stop himself from staring at her, noticing every tilt of her head and flutter of her lashes. Fighting for her made her his in a way that he could not explain. Before they took this journey he vowed that he would protect her, but now it was a promise sealed with blood. He wanted more than anything to have an excuse to touch her, but the fervor that took hold of her at the inn seemed to have diminished.
Then Hara spoke. “Come, let me take a look at your cuts.”
