What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(62)
Something hard pressed against my belly, the length of him seeming impossible to even speculate on as I bit down on my bottom lip to stifle the shocked gasp that tried to escape. His fingers tightened, bunching the fabric of my dress up further as he squeezed an entire cheek of my ass in his grip. His hand was enormous, covering it entirely and using the grip to pull me tighter into his body as he shifted his hips to grind his erection into my belly.
I looked up into his face, where the lines that were usually taut with intensity and a hint of brutality, or playfully arrogant, were relaxed in sleep. Nothing remained in his expression of the man he projected in his waking hours, only a peaceful expression, giving him the illusion of being somehow…normal.
Of being less intimidating, less exceptional.
I swallowed down my nerves, slowly lifting my head away from his chest to put some distance between us. I must have rolled onto him in my sleep at some point, and I could just imagine his arrogance if he woke to discover me clinging to him like a leech. I lifted my leg off his waist, slowly pulling it back to twist my body off of his without disturbing him.
He moved, rolling me beneath him in a move so smooth and sudden that I squeaked as my back rested against the stone. His weight covered me, his dark eyes seeming to dance with shadows as he opened them suddenly. “Where are you running off to, my star?” he asked, squeezing my ass in his hand more intentionally as his lips tipped into a smirk that made me want to punch him in the mouth. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice your body wrapped around mine? That I wouldn’t feel you even in the depths of sleep?”
“I loathe you,” I mumbled, shifting my hips to try to rub his hand against the dirt beneath our bodies until he had no choice but to remove it. The motion rubbed me against him, my legs spread around where he’d slid his hips in between them when he’d rolled me.
“If this is what your hate feels like, then I can’t wait to feel your love,” he said, leaning forward until his nose touched the end of mine. He trailed it up, tracing a path over the arch until he touched his lips to my forehead. When he drew back, his eyes dropped to my mouth.
“Love?” I asked, the hushed sound hovering between us as he stared at my lips intently.
“Yes, Little One. Love. Did you believe I was aiming to earn your friendship with my hand on your ass and my cock nestled between your thighs?” he asked, grinding forward as if he could prove his point.
“Friends can fuck, Caelum. I would have thought you’d be completely aware of that, given all your sexual adventures,” I hissed, turning my head away from his. He was too close, his face lingering so near to mine that I thought he just might be able to hear the thoughts swirling in my head.
“There’s that jealousy again,” he teased, a growl of satisfaction rumbling through his chest. “Do friends get jealous of past lovers? Because I cannot promise I wouldn’t disembowel any man who has been inside you.”
“Well, fortunately there’s no need for that,” I said, a scowl taking over my face. “He’s already nothing more than snow.”
Caelum stilled, all the amusement falling off his face as he tipped his head to the side and stared down at me. “He tried to harm you after you were marked?”
“He was one of the Mist Guard they sent to hunt me down and run me through. A good way to prove his loyalty, I suppose.”
“He chose his duty over you,” Caelum said, leaning his face forward until he nuzzled into the sensitive skin at the hollow of my neck. His breath was warm as it wafted over my mark, the intimacy of it feeling familiar. “He was a fucking idiot.”
“Duty always comes first,” I said, echoing the words that had been beaten into me from a young age. Duty before family. Duty before love. Duty before everything.
Mine had been to bear the next Lord of Mistfell. I couldn’t help but wonder what duty Caelum had been saddled with. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn he was the perfect candidate for the Royal Army.
“Love should always come first. We’ve gotten lost as a whole if we’ve forgotten that. There was a time when people would have burned the world down for those they loved,” he said. My stomach rumbled beneath him, drawing a grin to his face as it interrupted the moment.
To have someone love me so completely that they not only chose me, but would have defied everyone and everything to have me—it seemed so impossible in our world. Brann had sacrificed everything to protect me, but even that had felt like there was an ulterior motive. As if there was something I didn’t know, that I couldn’t know, hanging between us that drove him to protect me.
Because if the most important thing to him was making sure the Fae didn’t capture me, why wouldn’t he have allowed the Mist Guard to kill me in the first place? It was the only guarantee.
“Come on,” Caelum said, removing his weight from me and holding out a hand to help me to my feet. “I’ll teach you how to set a couple of traps. We’ll wait for a little while and hopefully catch something before we need to get moving for the day.”
“Are we still trying to get to the Mountains of Rochpar?” I asked, thinking of the grueling travel through the coldest months. There was no chance we would make it before true winter came, and while I couldn’t deny that putting as much distance between us and the fallen Veil as possible would be to our advantage, freezing to death wasn’t appealing in the slightest either.