by Imogen Sera
Everyone had disappeared in the time since, and Elsie mused that she’d never appreciated it like this—deserted and dark. There was a strange kind of beauty to the mountain, under the silvery light of the moon and the stillness that had blanketed the area before the inevitable storm. She paused in her tracks to marvel at it. She had never, ever seen mountains before being dumped on one, and being there was nothing like what she would have imagined. It was nice, though, in a strange way, if she could get past the smell and the unmistakable aura warning her to leave.
Tate had silently disappeared into the mouth of his cave and deposited what he held before returning to where she stood, motionless. Her attention had drifted across the great span, across the way to the smoking mountain, the one that terrified her and haunted her dreams.
Tate reached for what she was carrying and she offered it wordlessly. He turned to follow her gaze.
“It’s kind of pretty,” she said. “I kind of like it, despite...”
He was quiet for a minute. “Come on,” he said, nodding toward the entrance. “I’ll set up a place for you to sleep.”
She followed behind him quietly, but kept her gaze over her shoulder, watching the mountain as long as she could, until she was inside and it disappeared from view.
There was a large fire already inside, and Elsie was sure it was for her benefit. He seemed to be so worried about her in the cold after her fire had died the one time, and although it irked a little part of her that like to be self-sufficient, it also made her feel...cared for.
There were thick furs laid across the floor, across the fire from where Tate obviously slept. She spread her blankets across them and sat down on top of it, and was surprised that the result was mostly comfortable. It didn’t quite compare to the bed in the cabin, and would never have compared to her bed in the palace, but she thought that she could be very comfortable there, at least for a night or two.
A heavy silence had settled over them, and a sharp awareness pricked at the back of Elsie’s mind. He hadn’t touched her since she’d begged him to, several days before, and they’d carried on as if nothing had happened. There was less anger in her, though—more of a grim resignation, now.
He didn’t look as if he would speak, and so she didn’t, either. She laid down with her back to the fire, and to him, and pressed her eyes closed for a long time. Sleep finally found her, perhaps an hour later, and she welcomed the relief from thoughts of Tate.
•••••
Elsie shivered herself awake. She was far from the mouth of the cave, but the wind blew with such ferocity that whirling snow had piled up on the ground right next to her. The fire burned low and gave off little heat against the freezing wind, and she sat up and pulled her furs around her shoulders as she assessed it.
Tate’s sleeping mat was empty. She immediately felt panic, but tried to smother it. He was always busy, all hours of the day and night; she knew that. He wouldn’t have left without a reason, and despite everything, she trusted him to not abandon her.
A glance outside made her glad she had asked to stay with Tate. The snow would reach halfway up her legs already, and it hadn’t even begun when she’d fallen asleep. The wind blew so thick that she couldn’t see further than a few feet out into the night.
She could move further back into the cave, she supposed, but she eyed the inky blackness with a wary glance. She hadn’t forgotten the strange whispers that she’d heard from that direction, and being so far from the moon and the fire would leave her completely blind.
She was staring back into the darkness, considering what to do, when Tate appeared out of it.
She knew how pitiful she must look—sitting with her knees folded in front of her, a blanket around her shoulders and a violently chattering jaw. She tried to stop it, tried to smile or shrug or do anything that might make her seem less useless, but she found that all she could do was stare at him.
“Are you alright?” he asked, crossing to stand by where she sat.
She nodded.
“Just cold,” she said with a faint smile.
He looked out the entrance of the cave, then back the direction he’d just come from.
There was something in his face—a decision that he’d come to. His fingers brushed her arm lightly, but she felt it all the way through her core.
“Come back this way,” he said, nodding toward the darkness. “You’ll be further from the fire, but the cave curves back there, and you’ll be out of the wind, at least.”
She stood quietly and gathered all the furs that she could; he carried the remainder and guided her back. She was silent—too nervous to speak. She stood still until her little makeshift bed had been arranged again, and then she didn’t need any encouragement at all to fall into it and pull the blankets up and around her chin.
She was tucked in tightly, and the lack of wind and heavy weight of blankets on her had already thawed her partially. She was thoroughly surprised when Tate laid down next to her. He wrapped his arms around her, and guided her head to rest on his chest. He threaded his legs with hers and pulled her tightly against him.
She scarcely dared to speak; she scarcely dared to breathe. She wanted to delight in it, but found that she couldn’t—not when she didn’t understand his actions. She didn’t know if she was a thing worth fantasizing about for him, as he was for her, or even if she was a thing worth liking at all.
Soon, though, she could bear the silence no longer.
“How are you always so warm?” she wondered aloud. “Not that I’m complaining.”
His hot breath washed over her ear as he spoke, as goosebumps rose along her neck. “Something about breathing fire, I’m sure,” he murmured.
She was so desperately aware of him—of each breath he took, of the way he felt pressed against her. She could feel every inch of her, and where she touched him, she felt on fire.
She lay like that for a long while, until she was surprised to feel that his breathing evened and she was confident that he was asleep. She wiggled turned around in his arms, then, to study his face, and wasn’t prepared to see him gazing at her.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he already was.
“I don’t know what to do about you,” he murmured. “I thought that I could do this, I thought that I could keep this up until I needed to. But now you’re real, and you’re here, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
There was something so painful in his face that her chest ached. “I’m sorry,” she breathed, without knowing what she was apologizing for.
He shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. None of this is your fault.” He paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “The most selfish part of me is delighted that you’re here.”
“What about the rest of you?” she asked quietly.
“I wish you were still at home. I wish you were warm and safe and far from here.”
That stirred something in her. She stretched up until they were nose to nose and wound her arms around his neck. She smiled at him slowly, and then it morphed into a grin. “But the selfish part likes me here?”
Even in the dim light, his gaze was scorching. “Right here,” he agreed, and pulled her tighter against him.
When he leaned forward and closed the gap between their mouths, Elsie’s heart stuttered in her chest. She pressed her lips back against his; gently, softly, but insistently. This was where she wanted to be, this was what felt right, and she needed him to know that.
Her hands caressed the back of his neck as he kissed her.
The only other time that he had kissed her had been full of need—desperate and passionate and urgent. This was different; this was sweet and slow and unhurried, and she was confident that he wouldn’t slip away from her as soon as they stopped.
His tongue swept across her lips and then slipped into her mouth. She tried to ignore the way her nipples had hardened and pressed into him; she tried to ignore the way her heart thundered and her breath caught in her chest. This thing
between them was fragile, but growing. She didn’t want to push it into barely contained lust, as she’d done before, and not learn where this might go.
His hands came to rest on her cheeks. They were huge and warm and comforting, and they brushed her face so gently that she wasn’t sure if she was imagining them until she opened her eyes. She could see his expression, could see the way his face was twisted, and she wondered briefly why kissing her would make him so sad.
She trailed her lips to the corner of his mouth, and then up to his cheek, and lingered there for a minute. The stubble that covered his jaw was surprisingly soft under her lips. She took a deep breath and savored the earthy aroma of him; his chest shuddered under her. She kissed a line back to his ear, and pressed her lips softly against the spot where his neck met his jaw.
Her lips were on fire, and her skin, where his palms touched her. His hand moved to the back of her neck, and then down to the top of her spine, where he traced small circles with his fingers. She arched back into the touch, pulling her face away from his. He took the opportunity of her long neck bared before him and kissed down the length of it, pausing to swirl his tongue at the base of her throat.
She thought he might move lower, and she didn’t know if she would stop him. He didn’t, though; he inhaled deeply and pressed a kiss there, and then a kiss on her chin, and then pulled her head against his chest. She thought that maybe she’d forgotten how to breathe, how to think, how to do anything except want him.
“I don’t like how much I need you,” he breathed. “It’s going to make everything so much harder.”
She didn’t say anything, but she squeezed his shoulder where her hand lay.
Nineteen
Elsie awoke where she’d fallen asleep—against Tate’s shoulder, caught on a ledge between need and something more tender. He was looking at her; he’d been studying her as she slept. She was inordinately pleased that he was still there, and relieved when he leaned to kiss her forehead. He murmured something like good morning against her hair.
She smiled at him. She didn’t know if she could do anything but smile, right then.
“Do you want to know why you’re here?” he said suddenly. “Why Orin brought you here?”
She looked up at him, surprised. “Yes.”
He fixed his dark stare at her. “I had this dream,” he began, “a year ago, maybe two years ago. It’s hard for me to keep track of time up here.”
She nodded; she knew the feeling.
“I dreamed of a woman, which I suppose isn’t too surprising given my living situation.” He paused to grin briefly at her, before his face relaxed and he looked far away. “She was just sleeping—it would have been boring, I suppose, but she was the loveliest woman I’d ever seen. And it was one of those dreams where I woke up and I was surprised to find myself alone, it had been so vivid.”
Elsie nodded again. She knew that all too well—although for her it was a nightmare, not a pretty woman sleeping.
“It was so real,” he said, “that I spent half of the next day trying to figure out how to leave this place—how I would find her. I regained my senses before I made any rash decisions, of course, but...I couldn’t shake my thoughts of her. I went to sleep that night hoping that I would see her again, and I did. She was sleeping, again. She slept in my dreams every night for four nights before I finally got to see her while she wasn’t sleeping.
“The fifth night that I dreamed of her, she was sitting on a little stool in front of a mirror. She looked as if she’d been crying, but she watched herself with red eyes as she twisted her hair up. And then I watched her sit there for a long time.
“I was consumed with thoughts of her by then, and I continued to dream of her every night. Most of the time she slept, but some nights she would be reading or playing with her hair or laying awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling.
“I realized, eventually, that I recognized where she was. She was in my old home—not just that, but in my mother’s apartments.”
He paused and Elsie clasped his hand resting on her hip.
“I spoke to Ardan—Orin’s father—about it, because I found myself so distracted that I had trouble carrying out my duties. I told him everything about the dreams, and everything I knew about her. He told me that it was something that happened, sometimes, for those who followed the old ways—for those who chose not to live as humans. He told me that the woman I dreamed of was my mate.”
Elsie turned her face up to him sharply, but didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t believe him,” he continued. “I was lonely and I was miserable. I’d spent nearly a decade here without anyone. The tribe is here, but as you observed, I’m not one of them. It only made sense that my mind had conjured up the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen and put her in the place that I’d last been happy.”
“Do you still have those dreams?” Elsie asked, her voice tight.
“Sometimes,” he said, and his voice was thick. “I was sure that she wasn’t real. You can imagine my surprise, then, when she turned up in the middle of the camp, soaked and half dead.”
She remembered, then, what he’d said when she’d finally thawed out next to his fire, that first day.
It’s you.
You’re here.
She’d been too cold and exhausted and confused to question it then.
She didn’t know what to say—so she grasped at a question, still clutching his hand. “Why was Juliette here?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I still don’t entirely know why Orin took you, either. I assume it’s because you and she look alike? And if Orin and his brother had a basic description, they wouldn’t know which was you.”
“What does this mean?” she asked, still pressed against him.
“I don’t know,” he said, then leaned back and looked down at her face. “I adore you, El. I need you. It’s not fair that you’re here, but you are here, and...”
He trailed off, so she put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him down just slightly until she could reach him. “Why will I make everything harder?” she asked, remembering his words from the night before.
“Because you have to go,” he said, and he looked sad. “I haven’t figured out how, yet, but I will. You’ll be back home soon enough, and I’ll miss you every second.”
For the first time since she’d arrived, the prospect of home didn’t sound like the sweetest thing she’d ever heard. She furrowed her brow, but then laced her fingers behind his neck and pulled his mouth to hers, hard.
•••••
Elsie was frantic for him. Even if—especially if—she was going home, she needed Tate.
Underneath the many blankets, she wore her nightgown, recently washed but beginning to become threadbare. He didn’t seem to mind, especially when it slipped off one shoulder and settled halfway down her arm. He pressed his mouth against her neck, trailing hot kisses down it, punctuated by torturous licking. She breathed deeply as he followed the line of her nightgown against her chest, as he followed the scalloped edge with his lips and teeth and tongue. He kissed over her thundering heart, he licked across the exposed top of her breast, he nibbled around the band of her arm. And then he looked at her, on his side against her, and pulled it down slightly.
More of her breast was exposed, including a tiny sliver of her pink nipple. He noticed it, too, and smirked before licking and kissing his way back over to it. He paused there, and then flicked his tongue over the peaked bud, still hidden. He closed his mouth over her nipple, swirling his tongue over the fabric that was increasingly sodden. She moaned as silently as possible, and he looked so pleased with himself that she couldn’t even regret that he’d heard it.
She threaded her hand through his lovely, infuriating hair, her other hand braced on his shoulder. She needed something to cling to, she thought. She’d been with many men, countless men, but never before someone who focused so intently on bringing her pleasure.
He gave up all pretense�
��he pulled her nightgown down over her breast, and then closed his mouth around it and sucked. Her breath caught in her throat, her grip in his hair tightened, her hand squeezing his shoulder. He chuckled quietly at that, and the rumble tore through her, straight to her core, and the need that had been building since they’d shared the bed in the cabin tore through her, hard and fast. She craved him.
Her hips were moving of their own accord, searching, seeking friction, craving anything aside from the vast emptiness against her. She found she was pushing herself against his abdomen, shameless in her pursuit of more.
“Please,” she murmured, the word catching in her throat. “Please, I—I need...”
He stopped and grinned up at her, then pressed a chaste kiss to her peaked nipple. “Tell me what you want,” he said as he stood and took her face in his hands.
She looked up at him, the scorching heat in her belly and frustration at his stopping warring inside her. “You,” she growled. “I want you, I want this, I want...everything.”
The grin he shot her wasn’t his customary one—it was positively feral. He sat up on the end of the bed and gathered her in his lap, and leaned down to capture her lips in a searing kiss. As she clung to him and tangled her tongue with his, she didn’t even realize he’d pushed her nightgown from her shoulders, didn’t realize until the freezing air washed over every inch of her.
She didn’t care, just pressed herself against him, demanding more, demanding everything he would give. His hands rubbed along her back, down to her bottom, and he groaned into her mouth as he cupped her ass and pulled her closer to him. There was nothing between their chests, his magnificent torso was lovely under her peaked nipples; all that remained between them were his thin pants. She wanted them gone, wanted to see all of him, wanted to touch him everywhere. When she reached for the laces, though, he pulled his mouth away from hers.
