“Scent markers. The last person who used this cabin was a cat, no one I recognize from Ash Valley, but there are traces of bear and wolf, too, along with something strange, like nothing I’ve ever encountered before.”
That was interesting. “Could it be someone from the Aerie?”
The bird shifters were notoriously reclusive and lived in a stronghold in the northwest that was said to be unreachable except by air. They’d stayed out of all Numina affairs for the last several hundred years, so if they’d emerged from hiding, it could portend an important power shift. Regardless, Thalia didn’t like the implications of an Animari hideout so deep in Eldritch territory.
Raff shrugged. “It’s possible. These other olfactory trails are old, though, barely discernable even for me. Only the cat is recent, but we already knew that from the smoking fireplace.”
“Do you think they’ll be back?”
“In this weather? Not likely. I think they knew the storm was coming and got out ahead of it.”
“Wish we’d done the same,” she muttered.
He glanced up from the small blaze he’d coaxed to life, narrowing his dark eyes. “Hey, it’s impossible to monitor the weather in a tunnel.”
“I’m not blaming you. It’s just that I’m worried about the situation at Daruvar.”
“Worry is a waste of energy. Focus on what you can change.” Saying that, Raff straightened from the hearth with effort.
Belatedly Thalia remembered his bad leg. Since he’d come here in wolf form, it hadn’t been as evident. As a human, he was limping.
“Does it hurt a lot?”
“Some,” he grunted.
“What can I do to help?”
“If you’re asking sincerely, fill that bucket with ice from outside and hang it on the hook on the fireplace. We can’t take a bath, but we can wash up a bit.”
“On it.” Normally, there would be five servants fighting to take over such mundane chores. It was novel to do it herself. “What else?”
Raff settled onto the nearest chair with a strangled groan. “Fuck me, that’s enough moving for a bit. Ah, see what’s in the tins, I suppose.”
“Two are potted meat. Two are mixed vegetables. One is fruit compote.”
“You have the veggies, then. I’ll take the meat. We can share the fruit.”
“Sounds good.”
There were no cooking facilities, so she opened the tins and heated them by setting them at the edge of the hearth. Carefully, Thalia pulled them free with the fire tongs and she was hungry enough that nothing else mattered; she raked the contents out with her fingertips and barely chewed the corn, beans, peas, and carrots. Raff was equally efficient with the meat, and she let him have most of the fruit.
“You sure?” he asked, offering the tin.
“You burned more energy shifting and you need the calories to mend that leg.”
“True enough.” He tipped his head back, his hair a dark tangle down his back as he swallowed.
For some reason, Thalia was riveted. She couldn’t look away from the movement of his throat, from the curls of his beard, and the way it framed his mouth, now slightly smeared with peach juice. It was impossible not to notice that he had gorgeous cheekbones and that the scar that peeked out from his beard looked as if it needed a soft touch, a vertical stroke, and then her fingers would be on his beard, on his lips—
She tore her gaze away with effort, conscious that her heart was pattering in her chest. I thought it was sheer arrogance when he said I’d want him eventually, but…now? Like this? There was nothing elegant or gentle about this man or their surroundings. She was used to candlelight and carefully orchestrated seduction, measured pleasures, and orgasms that left her lightly satiated.
This…would be something else entirely.
If she let it happen.
Briskly, Thalia rose to check on the ice bucket and found that it had not only melted, it was also warm enough to wash. “I’d give you some privacy, but there’s nowhere for me to go, except out into the cold.”
“I wouldn’t do that to my good wife,” Raff said.
His dark eyes twinkled as if he knew how little she considered herself to fill that role. In name only had never seemed so sad yet apropos. As he shucked his shirt and pants to sponge off the blood, that seemed wrong suddenly. No matter what, he’d shattered his leg coming to her aid, and it felt rather despicable to let him struggle when she was perfectly capable of helping.
“Let me.”
He glanced up in surprise when she plucked the rag from his hands. Thalia didn’t speak, conscious of rising heat in her cheeks. She washed away the red, rinsed the cloth, working on automatic, until he was clean. Though she tried to feign a certain clinical detachment, her hands trembled when she moved upward to clean the blood from his chest. The scrapes had already healed, but he still bore the signs of old injury on his skin. Without her volition, her hands lingered on the scar at his shoulder.
Suddenly, warm fingers wrapped around hers. “Are you bathing or seducing me? I’m not opposed, mind, but I need to know your intentions.”
“I wish I could answer that.” Flustered, she tried to pull back, but the wolf lord didn’t let go.
Instead, he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed each knuckle, one by one. The whisper-light rasp on his beard against her skin sent a shiver through her, a promise of illicit pleasures. Thalia imagined it chafing her thighs, his mouth moving lower, lower, and suddenly, she was all liquid heat, quivering and breathless. Longing never hit her like this, ferocious and relentless, but now she was squirming, legs pressed together.
“Lady Silver, you’re on your knees, caressing a naked man’s chest. How can you not know your own intentions?”
When he put it that way, everything clarified in her head. She raised her chin. “Then…I suppose I’m seducing you. Any objections?”
For a moment, Raff didn’t think he’d heard correctly. Teasing this woman
