Honour's Knight by Rachel Bach Page A

It was a pretty big slug, even for me. There’d been enough whiskey left in the bottle to fill my glass almost to the brim, and it took me four swallows to get the whole thing down. The whiskey burned my throat as it went, and by the time I’d drunk the glass dry, I could feel the fire all the way to my toes.
    I lowered my empty glass with a deep breath, blinking against the sudden spinning feeling that always followed a serious shot. I was still recovering when I heard the cook’s sigh very close, and then his hand reached out to take the empty glass from me. “What was that about?”
    The sound of his accented voice speaking softly in the dark sent my whole body rigid. “Solidarity,” I choked out at last. “Now you’re not drinking alone.”
    His hand stilled on the rim of the glass. I held my breath, terrified he was about to try and make me explain something I didn’t understand myself. How did you explain to a man whose name you couldn’t even keep in your head that the idea of him drinking alone was so awful you felt morally compelled to butt in? Fortunately, I didn’t have to, because the cook didn’t say anything else. He just sat there with his hand resting on the edge of my empty tumbler. And then, slowly, his fingers slid down the glass to touch mine.
    It was such a small thing. His fingertips couldn’t have been brushing more than a square inch of my skin, but we might have been tangled naked considering the effect it had on me. All at once, my heart was pounding, putting my whole body right back on edge, but not for a fight this time. What his touch brought was lust, pure and strong and completely inexplicable. How I could want a man I couldn’t even look at without feeling sick I had no idea, but my body didn’t care about the details. All it cared about was touching more of him.
    The full cup of whiskey must have been hitting my brain right then, because I flipped my hand over to grab his without a thought, dropping the glass in the process. He caught it instantly, snatching the glass out of the air with his free hand. It was the most amazing catch I’d ever seen. Any other time I’d have made him do it again. Now, though, I barely noticed. My entire focus was locked on the place where our skin touched.
    Maybe it was the drink, but his fingers were noticeably warmer than mine. His whole body was. I could actually feel the heat of him radiating across the few inches that separated us, and I desperately wanted to get closer, to wrap myself around that warmth. But I wasn’t that far gone just yet, so I settled for pulling his hand toward me so I could study his fingers, the only part of his body it seemed I could look at directly without feeling nauseous.
    The cook took a sharp breath as I pulled him closer, but he didn’t resist, just let me move him as I liked until his hand was sitting in my lap. It was a pretty tame touch, but by the time I’d gotten him where I wanted him, my own breaths had shrunk to pants. I kept expecting the cook to ask me what I was doing, which would have been a good question, because I didn’t know myself. My body was moving on autopilot, touching his with a familiarity I couldn’t begin to explain. But though I was acting like a total freak show, taking his booze uninvited and grabbing his hand like it was my property, the cook wasn’t trying to escape. He was actually leaning closer, his body inching toward mine until I felt his forehead land on my shoulder.
    I went completely still. My nightshirt was thin enough that I could feel the heat of the cook’s skin where he rested against me and the soft pressure of his breath as he inhaled deeply, like he was trying to breathe me in. At the same time, the hand I was holding tightened on mine, his long, elegant fingers closing over my palm and gripping until I could have sworn I felt him begin to shake. Drunks are usually relaxed, but the cook was so close now I could feel the tension in his body, almost like he was