Page 27 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 12

“You’re falling for their charms.”

I had sneaked down to the stables as soon as I could, to see that Poll had been looked after and so I could give him and my horse, Arden, a treat. But at that accusation I spun around and saw Kris looming in the doorway, his expression like a thundercloud. I snorted when I saw it, my jaw tightening as I shook my head.

“That’s what you saw, did you, Kris?”

“We could’ve taken the man in wolf form. No one would have blamed us for attacking a wolf first, asking questions later. We could’ve eradicated one of the heathen bastards.” He moved closer, putting his hands on my shoulders. “One less warg to paw at you.”

“And one less knight to serve my father. Everyone knows the wargs have blue eyes and natural wolves have yellow, and that’s disregarding the fact that we haven’t seen a wolf in those parts since before my grandfather’s days.” I jerked myself free from his grip and then cut the apple into two, offering one half to Arden, the other to Poll. “You’d have been hung from the keep gates, Kris, and if you don’t know that by now…”

I let out a sigh, everything in me feeling wound too hard, too tight.

“And you know this for a fact?” he said, his voice perilously close to a sneer and that’s when I laughed outright.

I snatched up a crop from where it’d been left on one of the hay bales, sweeping it back and forth, the sound of it cutting through the air all too familiar.

“The same way I know this will leave wide welts that sting like a bastard, but are easier to bear when sitting down the next day, and that a birch branch produces much thinner marks, but ones that bruise far deeper, making doing anything other than lie on your stomach agony.” I said, watching him pale. “You don’t know your duke, not really. He needs you to carry out his patrols, drive back the pesky wargen raiders across the border and protect his keep. You don’t know what it’s like to exist in his sphere when he doesn’t need you. If you harm the princes, you’ll find out. You’ll find out very fast.”

I watched his hand stray to his sword, and I just laughed.

“You think you’ll be able to fight your way free? Please tell me you have a plan that involves something other than the storyline of one of the old tales of chivalry.”

“We can ride out to the monastery,” he replied, hand leaving the hilt and reaching for me. “If we’re married before the gods themselves, none may sunder that bond.”

“Death can,” I said grimly.

“We ride there, meet with the fathers and have them marry us, then…” I frowned as I watched him struggle to put it all together. “Then we ride for the port town of Fleaseton. We can book passage on a ship off to…”

“Think on it,” I urged him. “Don’t consult with the priests. We can’t risk one of them speaking to Father.”

“But what he wants is unjust in the eyes of the gods…”

His voice faded away just then as I watched his lips move, his expression growing more and more earnest and that was the very first time I saw Kris in a different light. He was still just as golden and beautiful. It made sense he’d place too much faith in the old stories, because he was born to be a knight-errant of old. He would have been perfect travelling from village to village, the people swarming to his side due to his appearance of goodness and light. They would’ve brought him their problems and he would have seen them to rights, just as he was trying to do now. But the stories from the olden times were missing something crucial.

What if the solution the knight came up with wasn’t the right one? What if he made things worse? What if the poor bloody peasants lost their livelihoods or their lives from his actions? Did he just swan on to the next village, looking for another opportunity to exercise his noblesse oblige?

But right when I began to question Kris, question this plan, question his ability to get us out of here and away from this ridiculous marriage, and with those doubts came a very small voice inside me questioned whether I should resist marrying the wargen at all. As if sensing my reluctance, Kris surged forward, driving out every thought and feeling from my mind.

He’d never touched me in the past. No one did except the bloody wargen, so when his hands went to my face, something sang inside me and when he moved closer so I could feel the heat of his body, I wanted to warm my hands on it like one would a fire. And so I did. I reached out, placing my hands on his chest, earning me a grunt of approval, one that got louder as I wrapped my arms around him, those small embers inside me catching alight.

Kris was strong, vital and utterly male, my nose was full of the crisp scent of his skin, my hands glorying in the hard and unyielding feel of his body. One of his hands slipped down to my lower back, tugging me closer so I could feel just how hard he was.

“I shouldn’t do this…” he whispered, “but I find I can’t bloody help myself. My whole body burns for you, Lady Darcy. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat… All I do is think of you and those blasted—”

I’m not sure why I did it, stretching up on my tiptoes to brush my lips against his. It’d never occurred to me before because I’d been taught thoroughly that a man kisses and a woman is kissed. But I’d heard the maids talking about a whole other world in comparison to the one Linnea and Father had laid out for me. One where women felt pleasure, revelled in their exploration of a man’s flesh, snatched kisses between drying sheets on the clothesline or behind the alehouse and, right now, I wanted to know who had it right.

For too many moments I thought I’d done the wrong thing. Kris froze perfectly still, his lips no longer soft and yielding, becoming instead as hard as stone. I pulled away then, feeling a rush of shame so complete, I feared I would never do something so foolish again. Shame was what I felt when his hand went around my wrist, stopping me from going any further. His thumb pressed into my skin in a way that reminded me much too much of my father, one that had me trying to jerk free, but when I did, he came with me.

“You feel it too,” he said in complete wonder and that’s when I found out just what I’d unleashed.

Thankfully, he wasn’t in armour right now as Kris scooped me up in his arms, forcing my legs to go around his waist as he moved to press my back against a stall. I heard the whinny of horses, the stamp of their feet, smelled the sweet scent of the hay and him. His mouth crushed mine in a way that was almost painful, as if our skulls ground against each other but somehow that ferocity roused an answering one in me. We kissed hungrily, messily, like dogs wolfing down stolen meat, tearing at each other's lips with our teeth, and even more surprisingly, our tongues tangling. The rapid thrust of his into my mouth, the way he plunged himself inside me reminded me of what else I knew.

I’d seen people fuck. I’d spent too much time going places I shouldn’t to be able to avoid it. I’d seen servants at it in a quiet corner, her panting out some strange kind of pleasure/pain, him driving himself hard into her over and over and, for the first time, I wondered exactly how that might feel. My fingers clawed at his jerkin, needing to get to the man underneath when he rocked his hips forward. He chuckled when I went still, then a gasp escaped my lips.

“Mm…” He made a sound of complete male satisfaction. “Of course, you’re not just the most beautiful woman I’ve ever had the chance to lay eyes on, but you’re passionate as well.” I couldn’t reply to that, his hips moving, rubbing against something I didn’t understand, a great blossom of pleasure unfurling inside me with every movement. “But you’re untouched, aren’t you?”

His voice hardened, his movements slowed and even as I clawed at him for more, he stared down at me with a harshly judgemental look that felt like it had no place here. He wouldn’t move, his expression growing more and more forbidding until finally his words bled through the haze hanging over me.

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