Ronan plunged his hands into her hair and forced her mouth to his as she pushed his jeans down past the head of his jutting c**k and her fingers closed around the length. He groaned against her lips. All he wanted was to sink into her velvet softness, to lose himself inside her and become one with her.
But a sound that didn’t belong had entered his awareness.
The hair on the back of Ronan’s neck rose and magick in the center of his stomach twinged. He stilled and she followed suit.
“What’s wrong?”
“The world ending?” he whispered. “You just might be prophetic. Get dressed, Bella.” He moved away, cursing under his breath, pulling his jeans up and reaching for his discarded sweater.
Bella quickly reassembled her clothing too—a true pity.
Sounds of tromping boots and masculine shouts filtered in from the corridor beyond their hotel room door. The Imperial Guard had found them.
“Ronan—” The rest of her sentence arrested in her throat, she looked at him with wide eyes.
He shrugged loosely. “So much for my spell. I told you there are magickal countermeasures for countermeasures.”
It was also possible the witch had turned them in on purpose. The old ones loved a little chaos to ease the boredom of their lives. That’s why they were hard to trust, even when you paid them well, which Ronan had a history of doing. Most of the fae weren’t inherently trustworthy. Anyone who’d read Grimm knew that.
He held out a hand to Bella. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.” The guards pounded mantled fists on the door. Ronan led Bella to the window. He unlocked it and eased it up, letting in cold morning air to freeze their skin. He helped her out onto the fire escape. There was no time even to grab their coats.
He scanned the alley below them, but it was clear that was not the best way to go. “This way.” He pulled her toward the sky.
“Up there? We’ll be trapped on top of the building.” She pulled back.
“I’m asking you to trust me, Bella. Do you?”
She took his hand.
They climbed. Behind them the door splintered open, kicked in from the boots of the guards.
They climbed faster.
The frozen metal of the railing seared his hand like fire and the clang, clang, clang of their shoes on the stairs sounded extra loud in the new snow of early morning. They reached the end and he helped her up onto the rooftop, just as the first shouts of the guards below them began to echo down the alley. They hadn’t yet figured out that their quarry had gone up instead of down, which bought them a bit of time, but not much.
As he pulled her across the top of the narrow roof, they passed a gargoyle hanging on the lip of the building that stared at them with a wise and bemused look on his old, pinched face.
Ronan said the words that would get them back to Priss’s, but no pocket appeared, just more cold, snowy rooftop. So Priss had canceled his quick escape and had been up to no good. The next time he saw her, he’d let her know how unhappy he was. Right now he had other concerns.
The buildings in downtown Piefferburg were old, built mostly in the 1600s and 1700s and restored and renovated over the centuries. That meant they’d been built very close together, since back then there’d been no automobiles. Still, they were far enough apart that they’d have to use magick to jump rooftop to rooftop, until he ran out of juice. Once they were far enough—or he tired too much to safely get them across—they’d descend.
Muttering in Old Maejian, he wove the spell they needed to bridge the buildings and hurried across. He aimed them in the direction they needed to go—toward the Boundary Lands.
He watched her float across the last gap between the roofs. The chill had painted her cheeks rosy, made her dark eyes sparkle. A smile had overtaken her features, bright and beautiful. Despite the cold temperatures and the danger they were in, being away from the confines of the Rose Tower suited her.
The pinched, severe expression she normally wore was gone.
If Ronan had his way, it would be gone forever.
He’d made a mistake thirty years ago, one that had affected them both in a negative way. He had every intention now of making it right. Fixing that wrong. He wanted Bella more than he’d ever wanted anyone in his life. She was his anchor, his hope, his love.
She was his and there was no one who could take her away from him. Not again. Not ever.
She came to a stop in front of him, her eyes still lighted and her smile still beaming. The light faltered a little as she saw the expression on his face and in his eyes. He knew how he looked. Hungry.
Determined. She tried to step back, but he caught her arms and dragged her up against him, his mouth coming down against hers hot and possessively.
She didn’t pull away. Making a little sound in the back of her throat, she pressed into him further. His c**k noticed it. Every part of his body did. His heart really noticed it.
“Bell,” he breathed out, breaking the kiss. He pressed her forehead to his chin and let out a long, slow breath. “We’ve wasted so much time on fear.”
“Maybe too much.”
He didn’t like the tone of her voice, or the tremble in it.
In the distance, the commander of the Guard yelled.
“We have to get down. I don’t have much power left.” His magick wasn’t limitless.
They left the last step of a nearby fire escape and their shoes sank into the ever-thickening layer of snow in an alley. Hearing the sounds of the Imperial Guard fanning out to search the area, he pulled her down the narrow alley and around the corner of a building, only to glimpse a force of Imperial Guards coming around the side of the same building, right for them.
They ducked back around and pressed up against the brick wall of the building behind them, both panting. The snow was coming down so heavily that it was covering their footprints. That was a stroke of luck.
“There!” Bella pointed at a vehicle some ways down the road. “If we can make it to that truck, we can hide beneath it.”
With his magick almost drained to the dregs, it was their only chance.
They reached the rusty old red truck and got beneath it from the side least likely to reveal marks in the snow. He pulled her beneath him, rolling her under the warm protection of his body. Their breathing was heavy with exertion and showing white against the cold air. He hoped the queen hadn’t become desperate and employed the Unseelie Court’s magickical bloodhounds. If she had, they were doomed.