The boots of the Imperial Guard tromped past them in two lines and Ronan stared down into Bella’s large brown eyes. They were beautiful eyes, flecked with caramel and amber. Her lips were parted and her breathing still came fast, probably more from fear than physical exertion.
As the boots stomped past them, he dropped his head and kissed her. She tasted even better when she was afraid and clinging to him. She was a strong woman and able to take care of herself, yet he liked it when she thought she needed him. He couldn’t help that caveman part of himself.
After all, he needed her.
Finally the sounds of the boots disappeared into the distance and he reluctantly broke the kiss. He didn’t let her go, though. This was a totally inappropriate situation for arousal, yet his body was primed for her, aching for the feel of her.
“Ronan, this isn’t the time.” But Ronan suspected her words lacked the rebuke she’d meant them to hold. Her facial muscles were slack and her lips rosy and swollen from his mouth. She looked warm, but he knew she had to be freezing.
He murmured one of the many spells he had memorized and wrapped magick around her body to keep the chill away. He didn’t have enough power to cloak both of them, but at least she would be comfortable . . . for a while.
They needed to get to their destination and soon. Luckily they weren’t far from the Boundary Lands and the place he’d hidden the object of power that the Phaendir wanted so badly. He rolled off her and helped her from beneath the truck.
Bella brushed the snow from her clothes. “Thanks for the magick, but you know it doesn’t mean anything.” A muscle worked in her jaw. “Neither have the kisses.” He pretended it wasn’t like a stake through the heart. “That’s okay, Bell. I fully expect you to push me away. Turnabout is fair play.”
“Hey.” Her spine snapped straight and she turned to pierce him with her gaze. “Don’t act like you and me are a foregone conclusion and I’m just playing at making you pay right now.” He contemplated her for a long moment. “I would never take anything for granted with you. But even you can’t deny the powerful pull between us.” He paused. “Can you?” She stared at him for a moment, her eyes going dark and her expression unreadable. Bella opened her mouth to say something, closed it, and then turned and walked away.
EIGHT
The Boundary Lands were everything Bella had imagined them to be. Covering their skeletons like hair and flesh, trees and plants wound their way through the bones of old structures built on the remnants of the very first settlement of Piefferburg. Crumbling walls and rotting wood combined with verdant lushness to create a place of more beauty than Bella thought her heart could hold.
Even in the dead of winter here, fae magick kept the plants from dying. Snow glistened on the furled heads of roses and drifted slowly to rest on wide green leaves. Yuletide was celebrated here by the wildling fae, and lights nestled here and there on trees, their limbs intertwined with red and green bulbs and sparkling ornaments.
After losing the guards, they’d walked to the edge of the city, steering clear of every person they encountered, and had found the boundary where all the wildling fae lived. Letting the foliage envelop them, they’d entered, and been unable to avoid a few of the inhabitants, but Bella felt like here it didn’t matter. This part of Piefferburg was different from the rest, set apart like a different world, and worked under its own set of laws. She was confident—for whatever illogical reason—that these fae wouldn’t turn them in to the Summer Queen.
He led her through a copse of birch trees, their shoes crunching over ice-laced fallen leaves. “We’re almost there.”
“You’re not going to pull me through a pocket again, are you?” He shook his head. “Priss is the only one capable of creating those.” He took her hand and guided her through a space between two monstrously tall birch trees. Beyond them lay a clearing with a large, aging brick structure.
Heavy lavender blooms dripped from the crumbling overhang of the building, tangled with long vines of red trumpeted flowers. She stared at the strange beauty of it—the juxtaposition of the vibrantly alive things and the dying building. By all rights the flowers shouldn’t be growing, not at Yuletide, but who knew how much magick the fae caring for them possessed?
Much of the magick of the Seelie Court nobles had been bred out, choked from eons of breeding within a small population to keep the Tuatha Dé bloodlines true. But the magick of some of the other fae, most especially the wildling fae in the Boundary Lands, raged savage and strong.
Snow began to fall, making her gasp. She turned her face up to it, letting the flakes drift onto her face, melt, and slip down her neck. For the first time in so long, sweet Danu, she felt alive. Out here, she felt freed from the confines of the court, the queen, and her bloodline.
A warm hand pulled her up against a solid chest. Ronan’s lips found hers and pressed. She opened her eyes and dissolved against him. For the first time since that fateful Yuletide ball, she just . . . allowed.
Cool melted snowflakes mixed with his hot tongue as it brushed hers. He pushed her against the crumbling stone wall. Fragrant blossoms that had no business growing in the dead of winter crushed beneath their weight, releasing sweet scent to the chilly air.
“I love you, Bella,” he whispered roughly against her lips in between kisses. “I never stopped.” Ronan slanted his mouth more firmly across her lips and plunged his tongue into her mouth as if to consume her. Something Bella had been holding clenched tightly in the center of her chest unraveled and released. Her muscles went loose as she threaded her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. Sweet pleasure suffused her, driving the chill from her bones and filling them with slow, warm honey.
He pulled her lower lip between his teeth, rasping it gently with his teeth, and her sex pulsed. Her fingers found the material of his coat and fisted. If he pushed her into this building right now and began to draw off her clothes, she would let him. She would . . .
“Hello.”
She jerked in surprise at the feminine voice and pulled away from Ronan enough to look in the direction from which it came. Not far away a woman dressed in long, white, gauzy gown stood half-hidden behind the trunk of a tree.
Bella blinked. “Hello.”
Ronan took a step backward. “Bella, please meet Aurora. She’s a lady of the birch.” Bella had heard of them. The ladies of the birch had their roots in Czechoslovakia. They were primarily light nature-based fae, females who helped guide human females toward their dreams. There weren’t many of them left. They’d largely been wiped out by the sickness. The wildings had been particularly susceptible for some reason, and owing to fae infertility they hadn’t regained much strength in numbers. Only the goblins had done that.