“Are you all right?” He sounded almost breathless.
She nodded, feeling her temperature rise. Her skin flushed as sweat gathered on her hairline. “Yes,” she breathed.
He kept going.
“Your heart is racing …”
She nodded. She knew. Looping her arms around his neck, she pulled him closer. She pressed her mouth to the scar on his chest, tasting him.
He spoke her name like an incantation. It made the warm ache between her legs sharpen and grow until she was more ache than girl.
Gideon continued, moving against her. Deeper, harder, insistent.
She was losing control.
“Gideon …”
“Do you want to stop?”
“No. No.” A laugh escaped her. “Please don’t stop.”
Her arms tightened. The hand cupping her breast fell away as his arm curled around her waist, pulling her into him, focusing completely on this task. When she arched against him one last time, something broke. The blood roared in her ears. The world beyond them disappeared.
Lost in the shattering, she called out his name.
He sighed.
“Rune.”
She clung to him, waiting for the world to settle back into place. Wondering if it would forever be off its orbit now.
He kissed her shoulder, her throat.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered when they stopped, staring up at him.
“Didn’t know …？”
“That it would be like that.”
He pushed himself onto his forearms, brow furrowing as he searched her face. As if she’d just told him he hadn’t satisfied her.
“Like what?”
Rune smiled, tenderly cupping his face.
“Powerful,” she whispered, kissing the crease between his brows away. “Like two souls fusing into one.”
Like a kind of magic.
“Oh,” he said, and grinned.
Grinned.
Rune had never seen Gideon Sharpe grin in her whole life. Were there other ways to make him light up like that?
She wanted to find out.
* * *
IT WAS ONLY LATER, after Gideon fell asleep with Rune cocooned in his arms, that she lay awake, her whole body buzzing with a frightening realization.
I’m in love with him.
Instead of getting Gideon Sharpe out of her system tonight, Rune had gone and gotten herself addicted.
The hunted had fallen for the hunter.
FORTY-NINE
GIDEON
GIDEON WOKE TO THE sound of the floorboards creaking. He opened his eyes, letting his sight adjust to the darkness, and saw Rune’s silhouette picking up her underclothes from the floor.
He sat up, watching her pull them on, thinking of her only hours before. The way she arched against his hand, his mouth. The soft sounds she made when he did something she liked.
His body tightened with desire.
Gideon had been exceptionally thorough tonight. He could therefore say, without a doubt, that Rune Winters had no casting scars anywhere on her body.
He could also say, without a doubt, that he wanted to do what they’d done again.
And again.
And again.
His chest knotted. This feeling she stirred in him—not desire, but something deeper—scared him a little. It felt like a tethering. Like he’d given her a piece of himself tonight, maybe long before tonight, and in doing so, handed her power over him.
The last time he’d done that with someone …
Gideon smothered the thought.
“Had your fill of me?” he asked while she gathered the rest of her clothes.
Rune froze like a mouse sighted by a hawk.
“What? No, I …” Her voice sounded strange. Unsteady.
Gideon moved to the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing,” she said, hugging the bundle of leathers. Gideon lit the lamp on the bedside table and got out of bed. “It’s just that I should go home. The servants will worry.”
But Gideon knew that Rune regularly attended the parties of other aristocrats. Parties that often ended at dawn. The servants of Wintersea House would be used to their mistress coming home at all hours of the night.
In the lamplight, he saw the shine of tears in her eyes.
Standing now, Gideon stayed where he was, wondering if he’d caused this. Had he misunderstood, somehow? Maybe she’d wanted none of it.
“You’re afraid of something,” he said. “Tell me what it is.”
She bit down on her lip.
Gideon wanted to close the gap between them, take her face in his hands, and tell her he’d protect her. But he held himself still.
“You,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of you.”