GODKISSED BRIDE DELETED SCENE
FROM STEEL HEART IRON CLAWS

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BASTEN’S DREAM

Note: This was a scene I included in an early draft of Steel Heart Iron Claws (The Godkissed Bride Book Three) but ultimately decided to cut. As much as I love an extra spicy book, Basten’s anger and frustration after losing his memories of Sabine felt more important to focus on than sex. So, I’m happy that I can bring it to you now!

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Moonlight draws a silver beam between the tent flaps as I toss on the thin blanket I’m supposed to call a mattress. Most of the travel party turned in for the night long ago, and only a few late-night stragglers laugh around the dwindling fire. It’s times like these I wish I could shut off my godkiss. The last thing I want to fall asleep to is soldiers one-upping each other with tales of their latest exploits.

Not long ago, I would have been right there with them. Drinking ale til dawn, boasting that I could beat any of them in a fight. But now, all I can fixate on is the void in my head.

Frustrated, I unbuckle my wrist guard and unwrap the bandage beneath. The cuts I made there are still raw as I run the pad of my thumb over them, tracing the letters.

“Sabine,” I murmur to the empty tent as if saying her name could bring back her memory.

But what does it bring? Fuck-all.

I toss to my other side with a groan. All I have of her now, besides these scars, is the night. A pathetic hope that in my dreams, she’s still there, in a place so deep that Iyre’s touch couldn’t root it out.

Sure enough, when I finally drift into an uneasy half-sleep, I find myself far from the traveling camp and back in Duren’s arena. The sunbaked sand warms the toughened bare soles of my feet. I’m dressed once more in the Immortal Vale costume I wore in the Everlast, with its heavy wooden shield across my chest as a breastplate and horned battle helmet shading my eyes.

I rip off the helmet for better visibility and turn in a careful circle, muscles coiled for whatever danger might come. This is a dream, after all. Hell, it could be a two-hundred-pound mouse.

My heart pounds steadily as I take in the arena. The stands, normally filled with deafening crowds, are empty now. The axes and scythes that littered the ground during the Everlast are gone. Golden flags whip in the wind high overhead. The air smells charged like spent gunpowder. Sand blows around my ankles, biting like flies.

I hear the barely-there scrape of soft feet just behind me.

A jolt of raw energy crashes through me as I whirl, ready with a punch, my entire body thrumming with fierce intensity. But a second before my fist connects, the delicate scent of violets blows over me. It’s all I can do to pull my punch, jerking my hand back as though away from a flame.

The sudden movement reopens the barely healed cuts on my arm, leaving blood to ooze from the letters carved into my skin.

A woman with shoulder-length hair as smooth as silk and warm as honey runs away from me, toward the arena entrance. I can’t see her face. Only her back. She’s wearing an Immortal Woudix costume from the Everlast. Steel bars forged into the shape of a ribcage protect her torso. A black cloak whips around her shoulders. Skull-shaped armor protects her knees. Like me, she’s barefoot.

She’s running into the sun, which burns my eyes. I lift a hand to block out the rays, desperate for a better look at her.

Desperate to see her face.

“Wait!” I shout.

My feet tear across the sand after her. She turns to peek over her shoulder as she runs, but her flowing hair blocks any view of her features. 

“You always said you’d catch me, Basten. So, catch me.”

My pulse quickens, driving a feverish energy through me that has me sprinting faster after her. The air is thick with the smell of blood dripping down my arm, but beneath it is the familiar scent of violets that’s driven me mad, night after night. I’m so tired of breathing in a damn shirt—I’d do anything to press my face to her skin and breath the scent straight from the source.

“Sabine, wait! I need to see you!” As I catch up and reach out to grab her arm, she pivots and darts the other way.

I slam to a stop, arms braced on my knees. A frustrated growl rumbles in my chest. And yet as irritated as I am by this game of hers—this frustratingly elusive dream version of her—I can’t deny the excitement burning through my veins. It’s the pure, intoxicating rush of the hunt.

So, there’s a cold twist to my smile as I sprint after her again. My little violet wants to play cat-and-mouse, does she? I’m only too happy to oblige. The chase has always thrilled me. Left my throat dry. Tightened my balls and cock until they ache.

And damn, do they ache.

Arms pumping, I close the distance between us. Without weapons, this is an even more primal version of the Everlast. When I catch her, it will be with nothing but my hands around her perfectly tight waist, wrestling her to the ground until I pin her wrists to the sand, straddling her with my big thighs, so that I can finally see that face that’s been haunting me.

You’ve done this before, a voice whispers.

As I run, the certainty slams into me like a brick. This thrill of chasing Sabine isn’t new. Deep down in that void, I know that I’ve been here before, feeling this same heady rush of determination to put my hands on her. Claim her. The fleeting memory teases me like an early morning chill, felt but never seen. 
 

You were in the forest, following the scent of her damp horse. She’d ridden in the stream to hide hooftracks, and you were shocked by her cleverness.

Yes. Finally, it’s coming back to me. 

My sense-memory returns first: The snarl of a nearby wildcat. The flash of her creamy bare skin streaked with mud. The smell of her sweet sweat between her breasts.

The flashes of memory give me strength until my thighs burn as I tear across the sand. Ahead, Sabine darts with all the effortless grace of a fawn, her Immortal Woudix cape whipping behind her like she’s made of shadow. She’s closing in on the pit in the arena’s center that staff use to bring in contenders. Now, it’s open like a maw, only darkness within.

I’m close—so damn close.

I reach out a hand toward her billowing black cape. Almost there. I know that once I catch it, I’ll have caught the black void.

I’ll have her back in my head.

“Sabine!” I yell.

She stops short at the edge of the pit, her toes curling over the edge, and whips around to suddenly face me as I close the distance between us.

The damn wind blows her loose hair to mask her face—except for a small smile.

“On second thought, maybe I’ll catch you this time.” She grabs me by the biceps, pulls in a sharp breath as our bodies connect, and then takes a step backward toward the pit.

There’s no way I can rebalance us. Like an overturned bottle, we tip straight into the black pit. I can feel myself falling, falling, falling…and every instinct screams at me to wrap Sabine in my arms and twist so that I’ll take the brunt of the punishing fall—

—but we only crash into soft hay.

The haystack is so thick that we sink into it like clouds, flecks of straw tangling in our hair and sticking to our clothes. It smells fresh and barn-like, but beneath the intense smell, I can pick up on the other scents in the arena basement: dank cells, iron chains, the musty smell of fur.

I wrestle myself to my knees, tossing up my head to find myself looking straight into the glowing amber eyes of a tiger.

Fucking gods.

“It’s behind bars.” Sabine’s voice is breathy, oddly distant. “It can’t hurt you.”

She’s beneath me on the hay, prostrate on her back, her silken hair tangled, and her big cerulean eyes gazing up at me as fiercely as the tiger’s.

Truth be told? Fuck the tiger. What tiger? There’s only her.

Not even the gods could tear their eyes away from her. It’s as though a godkissed artist sculpted her out of the finest marble. Her warm, pale skin radiates a softness that begs to be touched. High, delicate cheekbones give her an ethereal grace, with lips so full and blushing that it’s all I can do not to claim them immediately.

My entire body relaxes as if a crushing weight has been lifted. Seeing her face is like gulping down a flagon of ale after days in the desert.

By the fucking gods—I remember now. 

My senses pore over her, driven to know every detail about her from the sound of her heartbeat to the taste of her perfumed skin on the air. I remember her. I remember every damn freckle, every curl of her hair, every fleck of gold in her eyes. This is a face I’ve memorized so deeply that even Iyre couldn’t rob me of it.

“I know fated mates are a myth,” I murmur, transfixed, “but you make me want to fucking believe.”
Her lips part, and before she can respond, I claim them.

All thoughts vanish as my body completely takes over. There may be a tiger pacing just on the other side of the bars, but screw it. Immortal Vale himself could be on the other side of those bars watching us, and I’d still kiss Sabine as though we were the last two people on earth.

A moan escapes her lips, and I’m done for.

“Basten,” she murmurs, gazing up at me with lust-crossed eyes. “I missed you. I missed this.”

The weight of my hips drives her deeper into the hay, as I curl a hand around the back of her neck. My other hand spears through her silken hair.

“Little violet.” My lips hunt for her ear, then blaze a trail across her cheek, then down the graceful length of her long neck. “You have no idea how lost I’ve been without you. I’ve been staring into a black void, knowing you’re there but seeing nothing. I’ve never felt this kind of hell: forgetting you. And now that I remember, I’ll never fucking forget again.”

One of her legs winds around mine as she opens herself to me, and my cock strains against my trousers. Suddenly, I’ve never had a greater opponent in my life than her damn Woudix costume with its confounding buttons. 

A desperate man, I claw at the buttons in the front of her trousers. Her breath is hot against my neck, driving me into a blind obsession to feel our bodies connect. She shifts her hips, and I finally manage to thrust my hand down her waistband, fingers threading through the soft, short curls at the apex of her legs, and then as I plunge one finger inside her—

Fucking heaven.

“Gods. Fuck. Nothing will ever be as sweet.” My fingers work against her slickness, the salty-sweet scent of her arousal leaving me reeling more than any ale ever could. Sinful thoughts tear through my head of all the things I want to do to this perfect woman. Kiss her, touch her, fuck her—and that’s only the beginning.

“I remember it all,” I breathe against her neck while my thumb skims over her plump lips, pressing down until I feel the edge of her teeth. “How much I burned for you at the inn, sharing that damn bed that was too small for the both of us. Having you in the cave behind the waterfall, the river’s smell still fresh on your bare skin. Desecrating Solene’s altar with our sex. I remember trading an entire kingdom for you.”

Her thighs tighten around my hips, and with a sly slant of her eyes, she swings me around until my back is pressed into the hay and she’s straddling me. She takes both my wrists to pin lightly over my head with one hand, while the other loosens my trousers.

The tiger, still pacing behind the bars, lets out a low growl as she bends to whisper in my ear.
“I want you to remember this, too, Basten—until your dying breath.” 

She lifts her hips and then sinks down on my rock-hard cock. Pleasure blasts hard and heavy through my body until it’s all I can do to keep breathing. I jerk my hands, desperate to squeeze her perfect curves, but she shakes her head as her hand still shackles my wrists. With a rasp of her tongue over her lips, she begins to rock her hips.

She’s slippery as oil, hot as candlewax. With every roll of her hips, my world lurches to a halt, only to restart again with a tremor, like planets colliding. Bits of hay poke through my Vale costume, itching at my skin until I’m writhing with need.

“You think I could ever forget such pleasure, little violet? Not a fucking chance. Not even if Iyre carved me up like a Midtane ham. Because you’re a part of me. The only way she could separate us is through death itself.” 

“You mock death?”

My eyes rake down the metal ribs of her Woudix costume. “You may be dressed as Woudix, but you’re a giver of life, not an ender.”

Her hand grips my shoulder as she rides my cock faster. Her body is so perfectly sweet that I don’t know how long I can last. All I want to do is praise her. Worship her. Bow to her. Like a damn accolyte, I’m overcome with a powerful desire to give her everything I have.

My tattered heart.

My come, hot and spurting into her.

I’d even give her the blood in my veins if she asked it of me.

I groan, “I’m getting close—”

I come hard, slamming into her, pumping faster than I ever thought possible. Sabine tosses her head back, panting as her sweet cunt milks every last drop from me. As my body rocks with the aftershocks, I manage to snag her by the back of the neck and drag her mouth down to meet mine. I cling to her, afraid to let go.

Terrified that the minute she turns her back to me, I’ll forget that beautiful face again.

Sabine’s body quakes with her own climax, her thighs tightening around mine as control is lost, and with a final shudder, she collapses at my side.

The two of us stare at the gaping hole overhead, where drifts of sand shimmer down like falling stars.
Finally, Sabine rolls toward me, gently taking my bleeding forearm, tenderly examining the wounds torn open by our exertions. The letters of her name are unintelligible now beneath smeared blood. Before I can stop her, she suddenly places the flat of her tongue at the base of my forearm and licks, hungry and languorous, up the length of my forearm.

It’s so damn filthy that my balls tighten again. A groan cuts across my teeth at the sear of her hot tongue on my skin. She pulls back enough that I can see the blood staining her bottom lip, like wine. 

Take it, I think. Take my blood. 

My essence. 

Every damn drop in my veins—

But instead, she delicately traces the now-visible word carved into my skin with the pad of her index finger.

“Sabine,” she reads. Her eyes are big and round, almost mournful as she dips her mouth kiss-close to mine and whispers in a barely audible breath, “Remember me. Remember us.”

I jolt up, disoriented, the reek of blood thick in the air. For one long, suffocating second, I don’t know where I am. 

There’s no hay. No tiger pacing in the dark. No Sabine.

Only a gray-and-white cat licking the bleeding wound on my forearm.

“Hey! Get the fuck away!” 

My shout chases the stray cat out of the camping tent, but it’s some time before my churning mind finds a steady rhythm with my pounding heart.

I’m in the traveling party to Old Coros, I remind myself. Camped out in Lenmoor Forest. It was just a gods-damn dream.

My pulse hammers in my ears as I scramble to gather up the bandage, wiping away the rest of the blood with my shirt sleeve. A visceral, pounding need grips me hard enough that I can barely draw a breath.
Already, I can feel the dream slipping away.

“Fuck,” I growl. “No, no, no. I remember you, Sabine. Your eyes. Your skin. Your laugh…throaty and…and teasing. I remember you running from me…asking me to catch you, and then…then…FUCK!”
My breath comes in ragged, uneven gasps as panic sets in. I clutch at the fleeting threads of the dream, mind racing to summon back her face, the curve of her smile, the warmth of her touch, but it’s like trying to grasp smoke. It slips through my fingers and dissipates up toward the stars. 

The edges of her image blur, growing fainter, and with each passing second, it feels like the dream is being swallowed by the void. 

A nauseating pit yawns open in my stomach.

I claw over to my knapsack, tearing through my belongings for my shirt that holds a scrap of her scent, but by the time I find the damn piece of clothing, I can’t even recall why I wanted it.

I only stare at the shirt in my hand, wondering if I’ve gone mad.

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