Anana hadn’t said a word since Lucien pulled her onto his horse. The warmth of his arm around her waist clung to her like a ghost, even though it had long fallen away.
She could still feel him every brush of his cold breath against her neck, cold and deliberate. Every subtle shift of his muscles behind her. Her heartbeat thudded wildly, an unrelenting rhythm in her chest. Her body leaned slightly into him, more than she should have allowed. But she didn’t pull away.
Not yet.
Lucien didn’t speak either. But his silence wasn’t empty.
It was calculated. A silence that weighed heavier than words.
They rode deeper into the woods, where the air was laced with pine and shrouded in mist, and the trees grew thick enough to silence the world.
They hadn’t gone much farther when the forest seeme
