I tried to lift my head, but it was too much. Everything burned. Suddenly, I felt her.
Aniyah straddled me, her body flush against mine. Warm, solid, real. I barely registered the way she pulled her top over her head and shimmied closer until all I could feel was her skin against mine.
“Then I guess we’re going to find out,” she whispered.
Her hands found mine, guiding them up along her sides, letting me touch. Her skin was satin over steel, hot and electrifying. My cock jumped hard, painfully eager despite the pain that still curled in my stomach. She smiled like she felt it, like she wanted that reaction.
“What do you need?” she murmured, her voice wrapping around my senses, encompassing me in her presence.
I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. All I knew was her.
“You,” I said, raw and shaking. “I only ever need you.”
She giggled, and it sounded like salvation. Her lips brushed my neck, teasing fire into my bloodstream.
“Perfect,” she breathed, her breath dancing over my ear. “Then that’s what you’ll get.”
She rocked against me gently, her heat seeping through every barrier of pain, turning agony into pressure, pressure into need. It was blinding, the way pleasure began to overwhelm the torment. Her body was somehow pulling my magic back into alignment.
She was remaking me from the inside out, and I let her. I let her take me apart because if this was what it meant to be hers...
There was no place I’d rather be.
* Song: Fever by ENHYPEN
22
ALIC
What the hell is taking them so long?
I’d already paced the hallway twice, checking for any other point of entry. You never knew with supes; some could phase through walls, while others shimmered into existence without a sound. I’d seen it. You couldn’t assume you were safe just because a door was shut.
That was what was driving me mad. That door. With Aniyah just behind it, out of my line of sight, anything could be happening, and I’d be the last to know.
Then there was Rasmus.
Yeah, I’d met the guy a few times. Never paid him much mind as long as the computers and security system worked, but ever since he stepped into that room, my brain was playing the same damn question on repeat.How the fuck did he know about the bomb?
Everything in me was screaming to watch him closely. Out of everyone in there, he was the dangerous one, but when I actuallylooked at him, sized him up, I knew I could take him down in a heartbeat. So, why did he set off every internal alarm I had?
That voice in my head, the one that wore my failures like medals, started its poisonous whispers again.
Maybe it’s because he mentionedher.
Rotten memories crawled into my mind, sickening and slow. Mia’s soft, warm laugh rattled around my skull like it had nowhere else to go. The snide fairy council’s voices followed, always there to remind me I was never enough. Placed by her side tofail. Never wanted.
That seemed to be an inescapable theme of my life.
My fairy mother didn’t even look at me after I was born, just handed me off and disappeared. I was her one-night mistake with a troll she’d probably glamoured herself to forget. And the trolls? They didn’t want me either. I looked too much likethem—bright-colored eyes, delicate features, and smooth speech patterns. I was too fairy to be a troll, too troll to be fairy.
When the Faerie realm collapsed, I’d hoped things might be different here—a new world, a new start—but as soon as we crossed over, the old patterns followed like shadows. The fairies hoarded the realm’s wealth, leaving scraps for the rest of the creatures from Faerie. Humans flinched when they saw us. Jobs dried up. Doors slammed shut.
That was when I found the Syndicate.
They didn’t care what you looked like or where you came from. They didn’t care that I’d been guarding a disgraced princess who ended up dead while I was a few doors down, drinking, bitchingabout her. That I’d spent that night cursing her, blaming her for everything I hadn’t achieved.
Mia.
