He raised a brow. “What would I do with a tapestry?”
“The fabric holds the drafts at bay. It will keep the cottage warm at night.”
The brown in his eyes darkened. “I want other things to keep me warm at night.”
Images of them together, skin to skin as they were at the lake, warming each other with only the heat of their—
“I can carve candles that can light the cottage at night,” she rushed out in the hopes of chasing the idea of them intertwined out of her mind. “The candles are bright enough to work by.”
“My brothers and I work sunup to sundown. We have no need of candles, we’re already in bed when the moon is out.”
Osborn seemed so much closer than he had just a moment or two ago. The clean, crisp scent of the woods that surrounded the cottage filled her nose, and her arm felt warmed from the nearness of his big frame. Too near.
“Give me your hand,” he told her.
With a reluctance she didn’t want to show, she offered him want he wanted. His long fingers engulfed her hand, and he turned it over to examine her palm. He gently rubbed his thumb over a scratch at her wrist. The feel of it sent shivers down her arm.
“How’d you get this?” he asked.
“When I was wondering around in the woods, I fell and landed on a stick.”
His fingers glided along her palm, and she found it hard to breathe. “How about this abrasion to the heel of your hand. How did you get this?”
“I was trying to climb a tree for some fruit. The bark wasn’t very forgiving.”
He brought her palm to his lips, and placed a kiss to her injury. Except nothing on her body was in pain anymore. She’d never felt so…well.
“Your hands are soft. When you cup my cheek, it feels like the petals of a flower against my face.”
Those shivers he’d started with his thumb, they were now generated by his words alone. An awareness of him, of his strength and scent and beauty as a man, made her tremble. He placed her hand on his neck, and her thumb began to explore him in tiny circles. The way he encouraged her touch in his dream. Their dreams.
“You don’t have the hands of a woman who works to earn what she eats. You do not prepare the meals in your home, do you?”
Breena shook her head.
“Nor do you wash the clothes or even sweep the floor.”
An edge to his voice took her out of the soft haze his words had seduced her into. Osborn was trying to prove some point here. She just didn’t know what it was.
“You can’t cook. You don’t know how to do laundry or mending or take care of a house. How will you repay me for my training time?”
“You could teach me those things and then I could do them for you.”
“That would take more time and I’m not inclined to waste.”
“There’s got to be something I can do to get you to teach me,” she said, hating how her voice sounded so near a plea.
Osborn lifted a brow. “I wonder what that could be.”
Then his gaze dropped to her breasts.
Her breath hitched. Her nipples tightened, and pushed at the rough material of her loaned shirt. An inner warning told her Osborn’s actions were far more calculated than only desire. He was challenging her, trying to intimidate her, and make her wary so that she’d back off and not seek the killers who murdered her family. Breena would not be intimidated. She shrugged her shoulders, not realizing until afterward her movements would make her breasts push even more against her shirt.
His eyes narrowed at the changes of her body. He seemed to grow bigger, more tense, if such a thing were possible, right before her eyes. A ripple of want rushed through her. Breena longed for the feel of him. His touch chased everything from her mind but him, and the way he made her feel. Breena forgot to be afraid, to worry and to mourn what she couldn’t fully remember but knew was lost.
He reached out a hand and cupped her breast. Filling his palm, molding her to his liking. She gasped when his thumb slid over her nipple in a gentle caress.
“Why’d you come back for me?” she asked, needing to know the answer almost as much as she needed his hands on her.
“This,” he said, and he tugged the large shirt down, exposing her breast. He leaned down and took it into his mouth. Breena clutched his shoulders at the exquisite feel of his lips on her skin, the warmth of his mouth and the gentle graze of his teeth on her nipple. Her knees felt weak again, and she grasped him tighter, losing her fingers in his hair and rolling her head back to allow him more of herself.
“You taste so good,” he said against her skin, and he tugged on the other side of her shirt, giving him free rein to her other breast.
“You feel so good,” she echoed.
Osborn made a little growly sound, and he circled the tip of her nipple with his tongue. Warmth and wetness pooled between her legs. This was better…
“What’s better?” he asked.
Breena hadn’t realized she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. “This is better than in our dreams.”
He cupped her backside in his hand. “Because it’s real.”
Yes. Her imagination could never conjure up anything this frantic or exciting. Yet what would it mean for him? She didn’t know much in the ways between a man and a woman, but she’d observed enough to see a man pair himself off with a different maid of the castle every night.
“I’m nothing to him,” she’d heard one girl sob to another, “just a body.”
That’s what Breena would be to Osborn. A bartered body. Someone to steal a moment’s pleasure with to forget whatever pain made him so hard and mistrusting. Then she’d be forgotten.
She didn’t want this man to forget her.
Breena pushed Osborn away, her wayward senses protesting his leaving. After righting her shirt, she smoothed a hand over her hair. His unruly hair was now free of the leather binding, probably her doing.
His stare never left her face.
“Okay, Osborn. I’ll do it for your training.”
His face drained some in color, confirming her suspicion that he’d started the intimacy between them to shock her into changing her mind about facing battle. Then his eyes lowered once more, her nipples still tight points and clear against her shirt. His nose flared and he reached for her.
She quickly sidestepped his advance, fluffing the shirt away from her chest. “I will do the mending. I did mention that I could sew.”
YEARS AGO, ROLFE HAD made a vow to the King of Elden. To protect the king’s family with his own life if needed. And he would have faced any battle, raised any sword against any who threatened the Royal House, but this—
This wasn’t battle, and he didn’t face his demise. It was worse than any death. Any pain. Any suffering.
It was a living death. Unremitting agony. A soulless life. Others had gone mad from the threat of it. Rolfe’s own fright had kept him clinging to the shadows of the castle. As a guard he knew the best ways to go unnoticed, slipping around Elden, squirreling away food like a rodent. He’d become someone he didn’t recognize. A man who valued going undetected over honor. But what were honor and principles here? That had all died with the king and queen.
Maybe the depraved death the Blood Sorcerer offered would be simpler than this pitiful existence. It was easy enough to be caught. Catching the attention of one of the blood minions, maybe steal something in plain sight. He knew some of what happened to those who refused to give their allegiance to the Blood Sorcerer. Drained of blood, used as target practice and blood sport, or fed upon by something so hideous the screams started before the feeding even began. But the screams eventually ended.
That’s what Rolfe wanted. Needed. What came after the silence.
He’d failed. The king and queen were dead. The three princes vanished, even the sweet princess he’d tried to save now all gone. His heart constricted at the pain. His defeat.