I WOKE TO the crackle of a dying fire and the scent of cedar smoke woven with something unmistakably him. For one disoriented moment, I thought the forest had been a dream; the thing that looked like a beast, Icarus’s fists, my own frantic flight through black-thorn corridors of pine. But then I felt the ache along my shoulder where bark had scoured skin, and I remembered the tub—stem and moon-light, his hands gentling the tremor from my bones, her fingers shaking creating ripples, then his eyes, his gaze looking into my eyes, dark and menacing, and he was leaning forward and I could not resist him.
We were there together, I was drenched all over him, and he was soaking me in. Taking me.
I laid on my side, half-swaddled in an oversized linen shirt that smelled of salt and Wolves and midn
