08 A Little Hatred: Book One (The Age of Madness)

He had ridden to her rescue. With five thousand armed men. Men she had paid for, but even so. She had never thought she might need rescuing. She had never dreamed he might be the man to do it. It was as if she had never really seen him before. She had known she could laugh with him. But she had never imagined she might be able to trust him. To rely on him. She had been braced for rejection and disappointment. Sympathy and support she had no idea what to do with.

‘Shit,’ he said, finally letting go of her fingers, leaving them strangely tingling. ‘I’m terrible at this. Is there something you need? Is there anything I can … Do you want to be alone? Do you want me to go?’ He turned towards the tent flap.

She caught his wrist. It was trembling. His wrist and her hand both.

Then she was kissing him.

It was not elegant. He stumbled back in surprise, blundered into a pole in the middle of the tent and for a moment, she thought he might bring the whole thing flapping down around them. Their chins knocked painfully. Then their noses. She tried to twist her head to one side and he went the same way, then they both went the other.

She caught his head, gripped it with both hands, teeth scraping, ugly grunting, undignified slurping. Awkward and fierce and urgent, as if they were running out of time. Nothing like the neat routines they used to go through in Sworbreck’s office, with all the polite back and forth of a formal dance, a dignified game in which they both kept their cards close. Now everything was on the table and it felt deadly serious, her heart thudding in her ears just as it had the day of the uprising.

She saw his bed behind a curtain, brass gleaming in the shadows, and she pushed him towards it. He blundered into a stove, still trying to kiss her, nearly fell right over it, then got tangled with the curtain until she tore it out of the way. How many people knew she was in here? How many might guess what was happening? She didn’t care.

All the elaborate precautions she used to follow. The carefully laid alibis, the changes of carriage, the blinds lowered in Sworbreck’s bloody office. Against her father finding out. Against his parents finding out. Against her ending up carrying a bastard. She had been so formidably organised. So overpoweringly sensible. Romance totted up and tallied in Zuri’s book like a manufactory’s accounts.

Now all she could think of was how easily she could have died in Valbeck. Beaten to death. Starved to death. Burned to death. Ripped apart by her own machines. Manners, and propriety, and reputation, and good sense … none of that seemed to matter beside the necessity to tear off this sack of a dress and have his skin against hers. Her face was wet. She might have been crying. She didn’t care.

She twisted around so he could get at the fastenings. ‘Get this thing off me.’

‘Doing my best,’ he muttered, fumbling at her collar. ‘Fucking … damn it!’ A ripping of stitches, a tap and rattle as buttons bounced away and she tore her arms free of the sleeves, dragged it down, wriggled out of it like a snake wriggling from its unwanted skin. She kicked it away, cheap petticoats and all, making the canvas wall of the tent flap and rustle.

There had been times, in Sworbreck’s office, when she had not got as far as taking her hat off before they were done. Now she stood stark naked. Uncovered, unguarded. His hands were on her waist. Fingertips scarcely brushing her skin. As if he hardly dared touch her. She could hear his breath. Slid her fingers between his, wrapped his hands around her, guiding them, up onto her chest, down between her legs. She had her tongue between her teeth, biting, almost painful.

In the overwritten romances her mother pretended not to read, the prince would always ride to the heroine’s rescue and whisk her from danger in the nick of time, and she would fall into his bed, swooning with gratitude, so pathetically predictable. Savine had always felt nothing but contempt for reading that nonsense, and here she was actually doing it. She didn’t care.

He paused a moment, ragged breath tickling her ear. ‘Are you sure you want to—’

‘Yes, I’m fucking sure.’ She reached behind to twist her fingers in his hair, twist his head down so she could kiss him over her shoulder, suck at his tongue. Clumsy, hungry, mouth-crushing kisses while her other hand struggled with his belt buckle behind her back, digging at it, twisting at it, finally dragging it clinking free. He gave a little gasp as she pulled his trousers open, found his cock, started to rub it, wrist painfully twisted.

‘Damn it,’ he gasped, fumbling with the buttons on his jacket. ‘Bloody … uniforms.’