What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(33)
But he was right; we needed food and water, and the unfortunate reality was, if anyone saw my neck, I’d be doomed. I couldn’t move through villages the way he could without drawing attention to myself.
He touched a finger to his lips when he stepped back into view, waving a hand for me to follow. I hauled my filthy cloak up over my head, keeping the Mark that I had yet to see hidden, and stepped into the clearing in the woods.
Hurrying quickly, in spite of the pain climbing up my legs with every step, we made our way around the edge of the village. Brann led me to an empty barn tucked away at the back of the clearing, hauling the door open a crack that was just wide enough for us to slip through.
A single horse stood in a stall to the left, chewing his hay loudly, but the rest seemed to be empty. “We passed a little pub a few buildings down. I’ll see if I can get us food in exchange for doing some work in the morning.”
“We can’t be here in the morning,” I protested. “If they see me—”
“Nobody will need to see you. You’ll be tucked inside the woods by the time the sun rises.” He nodded at me one last time and slipped back out the door without another word.
I spun in the space, twiddling my fingers as I looked around and tried to decide what to do. It felt wrong not to be moving, as if my body knew if it wanted to keep breathing, it needed to keep walking.
Ignoring what my body knew, I sank down on a pile of straw at the side of the barn aisle, easing the weight off my feet with a groan of satisfaction. They throbbed, swollen inside my boots, but I didn’t dare take them off, in case I needed to make a quick getaway.
Dropping my head back, I stared up at the rafters supporting the ceiling. The straw beneath me was warm, almost too warm, given the cloak wrapped around my shoulders. But it was all that concealed the Fae Mark.
“I’m really trying very hard not to frighten you,” a deep, amused voice said, and I froze solid in fear. “You’ve made that quite difficult staring at the ceiling.”
I sat up slowly, holding the cloak cinched tight at my neck as my fear spiked. Only the knowledge that quick, hasty movements could make me more likely to be discovered by others kept me from running.
The rugged, dirty hands held out in front of the man who’d spoken seemed massive, cracked with callouses and worn in the way that only hard work could achieve.
Suppressing a shudder as my heart lurched into my throat, I set a hand down in the straw and pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the prickle of each stalk as it sank into my already wounded hands—courtesy of the twilight berry bushes. He gazed at me with dark eyes, peering out from a breathtakingly handsome face surrounded by short ash-blond hair. His bottom lip was thick and lush as he curled his mouth into an appeasing smile, and his frame was tall, shoulders broad enough that I knew I didn’t want him getting anywhere near me.
My breath caught.
His tall body was packed with the kind of muscle I wouldn’t stand a chance of escaping once he caught me. “I don’t want any trouble,” I said, swallowing past the icy dread working its way through my body.
“No trouble,” he agreed, nodding his head. I raked my eyes over his face, feeling small even on the other side of the barn, as he seemed to be nearly a foot taller than me. I pursed my lips as I glanced toward the door where we’d come in. It was the sole exit, and the stranger followed the path of my gaze with dark eyes that seemed to track everything.
“There’s no need for that, Little One,” he said, the deep chuckle of his voice resonating through the air. It struck me in the chest, drawing my eyes back to his and that intense too-dark stare. “I promise I have no interest in hurting you.”
He reached into the pocket of his cloak, and I did the only logical thing, when presented with a man who radiated a predatory grace that would mean the end of me.
I spun, sprinting for the door at the side of the barn.
“Fuck,” the man grunted, abandoning whatever he’d been reaching for in his cloak to chase me. His long legs ate up the distance between us quickly, closing in before I ever got close to the barn door. I couldn’t scream for help, not when doing so would mean people discovering me, and the potential fallout could mean taking a sword to the heart or unintentionally slaughtering an entire village full of innocent people.
A strong arm wrapped around my waist, yanking me back into a very male body as the other hand covered my mouth. His skin against my face smelled of the first frost of the season, as if he’d been clearing ice away from the flora in a garden to preserve the plants just a bit longer. “Shh,” he murmured softly, the spearmint of his breath caressing my cheek.
I thrashed in his grip as he lifted me off my feet easily, twisting my body from side to side and kicking my legs frantically. His hand slipped while he carried me further into the barn as if I weighed nothing, and the tips of his fingers pressed against the seam of my lips.
I bit down with all the strength in my jaw, not relenting when the coppery-sweet taste of blood filled my mouth. When any normal person would have shouted, or at least tried to get me to release his appendage from the vice-like grip of my teeth, he only chuckled in my ear and dragged me back to the pile of straw where I’d thought to relax.
“Careful, love. I just might like that.”
I mumbled against his skin, wincing when he tore his finger free without care for the way my bite tore his flesh open further. My teeth clamped together, the vibration of the impact radiating through my jaw. “Put me down!” I said furiously, my voice carrying through the otherwise empty barn.