Page 71 of Dare

Then what … oh.

I imagined the demon horns she’d been invoking, and my rueful mouth slanted farther. She folded her lips inward to keep from laughing, but her involuntary chuckles came out anyway, the sound of her laughter striking me in a disturbing place.

Abruptly, I sobered. Her own chuckles faded as she beheld something in my expression.

Unable to weather that look, I proceeded with her arm. She grunted as I lodged the mixture under her flesh and pressed the wound closed. The poultice would take effect quickly and keep the incision from putrefying. Fortunately, the preventative wasn’t so deeply rooted that I needed to sear and cauterize the area.

Dressing the wound forced me to lean closer, my mouth tilting precariously near to that sunburned shoulder. Warmth brimmed from her skin, and she smelled too fucking good to tolerate. As my lips hovered, the palpitations in her neck accelerated, the visual causing my teeth to ache. I could sink my canines into her and make another mark, this one permanent.

My cock twitched. Withholding a growl, I wrapped a cloth around her arm. Drawing back, my eyes stumbled across hers, colliding with them like a pair of comets.

Who marked you? What did you do to get caged? Why did Summer brand you as a fool, when I can’t discern anything foolish about you?

What are you not telling me about this forest? Why do you really want to be here?

Why can’t I stop looking at you? Thinking about you? Talking with you?

Wanting you?

An unforgivable question tripped off my tongue. “What is your name?”

Never once during my interactions with Poet and Briar had I interrogated them about this. While hunting my quarry, I would have demanded this only to help with the search, and only if I’d anticipated the jester and princess offering the information willingly.

If there were other reasons I hadn’t wanted to know, hadn’t wanted to see her as anything other than a prisoner, I wasn’t about to analyze it. No matter how the prospect had enticed me, I had resisted finding out. She’d been my prey, nothing more than a target to snare.

At this juncture, I attributed my curiosity to convenience. I’d grown tired of addressing her indirectly. That was all.

Predictably, she wavered. For some reason, disappointment gnawed on my ribs, despite the fact that I’d solicited this reaction.

Yet miraculously, she answered. “Flare.”

Her reply struck me between the ribs. My respiration hitched, indicating how long I’d been holding my breath.

Only when I shook off these disturbances did I register her silence, the evident refusal to ask my name in return. Yet if she ever did ask, that possibility led to another pressing question.

Would I give it to her?

26

Flare

He left the roof as swiftly as he’d arrived. Beneath the bandage, my arm throbbed. In fact, my body ached everywhere as if I’d been crudely sewn together. But I didn’t mind, and it didn’t matter. The rainforest would hurt and heal me as often as necessary, because that was how I would learn its ways. That was how I’d find my key.

The prince was learning too, based on the poultice he’d wedged into my arm. At least, he had kept my mind off the scalpel knife. The cut had been excruciating, yet the feeling had dulled while I reminisced about the tidefarer and my family. The prince had concentrated on his task while listening to my story, his questions distracting me from the pain.

I didn’t want to think of him that way, like a healer instead of a torturer. Yet I had no clue what to make of his voice losing its cold edge or his attempt to know more about me.

I didn’t want to remember his whipcord body soaking in the grotto. I didn’t want to fixate on those muscled arms flexing, the lattice of his abdomen, the slopes of his hips. I didn’t want to remember how my pulse had sped up or my blood had warmed. I didn’t want to think about bathing naked with him or that his cock had lingered so near beneath the surface, the knowledge stoking my temperature. I didn’t want to remember any of the moments since then, how close we slept to each other or that his gaze covertly followed me as often as mine trailed him.

And I certainly didn’t want to replay the lightning rainstorm, when our bodies had slammed against one another like a pulse.

The bandage fit snugly around my arm. For the treatment, I’d need to repay him. A trade would make us even.

I would find something fit for a doctor-prince, just as I would find my key someplace within the ruins’ walls. I knew this, and felt this, and believed this. I had from the moment we stumbled upon this relic.

My eyes had been clinging to every crevice and shadow since we’d stepped inside. I’d ventured up here to search as well, before the prince had found me.

I smiled at the dozing saber-toothed feline, then tilted my head back. Closing my eyes, I inhaled the ripe perfume of florals.