she didn’t try to carry any extra load. With weapons, some canned and dehydrated food, clothing and the camping supplies, both hers and Quentin’s packs had been significant weights to haul around in the air.
The cabin was nestled in a hollow of land and surrounded by trees that would provide some protection from the most severe weather. It was a rough building, not much more than a single room, with a fieldstone fireplace and wood-framed bunk beds, but there was already plenty of firewood stored in a lean-to. There was also a clear running stream for fresh water, and a cleaning station for fresh game or fish.
She tossed Quentin’s pack into a corner, built a fire in the hearth, and as the warmth began to fill the space, she shook her sleeping bag out on the bottom bunk and threw herself on it with a sigh. She guessed it was early evening, around five thirty. Back in New York, it would be approaching midnight. Here, darkness was beginning to spill into the corners of the land, covering the secretive pockets where shy creatures hid. Tonight was going to be cold. It might even snow.
She closed her eyes and drifted. All her drifting thoughts swirled back to Quentin.
Coming upon him shirtless as he ate lunch had been a shock. Maybe it wouldn’t have been if it were high summer. She hadn’t expected the sight of his broad, bare shoulders in the winter landscape, and she had coasted for a few minutes just so that she could stare.
Last night, his face had turned to stone when she spoke the truth as she saw it, and this morning his temper had been so foul, she couldn’t fly away fast enough. She wasn’t sure what she had said that had struck him so hard, but she figured if they really weren’t going to kill each other, the best thing that could happen for the both of them was to get a little space from each other and regroup.
Taking the day to be by herself and surrounded by nature, not by concrete and asphalt, had worked wonders on her own temperament, and when she had talked to him at midday it had seemed to help him as well. He’d been calmer, if not exactly cheerful.
And half-naked.
Win-win.
She stretched, her shoulder muscles aching pleasantly, and toed off her boots. Then she sat up, stripped off her clothes and shapeshifted into the harpy again. Once she had changed, she went outside to splash off in the stream. The harpy loved it, but the biting cold water carried melted snow off the mountains and it was much too frigid for her to enjoy in her human form. The cabin didn’t have running water, nor was there any way to heat up large quantities of water, so this was the closest she was going to get to a bath tonight.
After she finished, she went back in the warm cabin and shapeshifted into her human form. She pulled on fresh underwear, then dressed in the same clothes she had on earlier, enjoying the peace and quiet of having the cabin to herself while she tried to make up her mind about whether or not she would try to seduce Quentin.
Hate sex still sounded awfully good. Biting him while they rolled around on the floor and screwed each other like crazed monkeys … She could take that gorgeous penis of his into her body, lock her legs around him, pump his rocket engine and not let go until they both shot to the moon. Mmmm. Yeah.
But they had already almost gone beyond that point into some other strange place. It was still an angry place that mingled sex and violence together, as they dared each other to do things they would never consider doing.
Except.
It would be truly magnificent to get him,
The problem was, neither one of them were submissive types. They were both dominant personalities.
Hell, Aryal didn’t even fit very well into a normal BDSM definition. She had explored clubs for a short time, intrigued, but the bottom line was, the lifestyle was much too intricate and stylized for her. She had neither the interest nor the patience to learn all the codes of conduct. She wondered if Quentin had.
Giving up total control to someone else either called for a radical kind of trust and immense self-control, or it called for a certain kind of suicidal craziness.
She didn’t trust Quentin, and she was certain he didn’t trust her.
That only left the other option. She threw herself on the bottom bunk again, stretched her arms over her head and laughed.
The cabin door opened. Quentin walked in, bringing the scents of the forest in along with him. Fresh cold air gusted through the room.
He looked around the cabin and took everything in with one quick, assessing glance. Only then did he look at her, eyes narrowed. He shut the door behind him.
Inane words ghosted through her head.
There you are, so you made it. About time you showed up.
Feel like taking off your shirt again?
She asked, “What are you going to fix us for supper?”
He glowered at her, so apparently his mood had returned to normal. “I fixed supper last night, and you didn’t stay around to eat any of it.”
“That was then.” She yawned. “This is now.”
“You could have fixed something for supper yourself by now,” he pointed out.
“No, I couldn’t. I did a lot today, and I only just got clean.” She put her arms behind her head, watching him under lowered eyelids as he hefted his pack from the corner where she had tossed it and set it on the cabin’s only table. “The bathroom’s all yours.”
His head lifted, and he looked around the cabin again, then at her with his eyebrows raised. She smiled and pointed to the door, and he laughed.
The sound was even more shocking than the sight of his bare chest had been earlier.
Listen to us, she thought. I crack a joke, he laughs. We are actually being halfway civil to each other.
The concept was so strange, she felt as though they were screwing around with some kind of law of physics.
After he dug through the pack, he set containers of food on the table. They both had a few cans of beef stew left, along with some energy bars, and a few dehydrated meals that Aryal would rather be near death’s door before she would touch. After contemplating the selection, he shook his head. “Screw it. This is good enough for now. I’ll hunt tomorrow.”
She grunted and pushed off the bunk. “I’ll heat up a few cans of stew.”
She took two cans from him, and two from her pack. While he disappeared outside, she opened up the cans and set them close to the fire. He came back shortly afterward, with his hair damp and his tanned skin ruddy from washing. He watched her stir the stew and, using the sleeve of her sweater, rotate the cans so that they heated from all sides.
The silence grew weighted. More words occurred to her, things she imagined another female might say.
About last night, I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings. If I did, I’m sorry. Are you okay?
But the thing was, she wasn’t sorry for what she had said. She had spoken the truth as she saw it. And she didn’t think she had any power to hurt Quentin’s feelings. For that to happen, he would have to hold her in some regard so that her opinion mattered to him. At the most, she had irritated and infuriated him.
As far as asking if he was okay … She glanced sideways at his unrevealing expression. The strong bones of his face were accentuated in the firelight. The tiny mark she had made on his lower lip had long since healed. He looked as he so often did, self-contained and remote, a citadel with a door of hammered gold guarded by an intricate, magical lock.
What would it take to unlock that door? Some kind of incantation written in a language she didn’t know.
She felt the same impulse to needle him that she always did when she saw that expression. For once she held it back. Instead she carried the hot cans over to the table, two at a time.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
She ate her own stew thoughtfully without replying. A second thanks in one day. He might be okay, but he was still acting a little off. If she took herself out of the equation, what was left?
She asked, “Do you know any of the Elves that Ferion sent to guard the passageway?”
