“The last time I saw you, Seven, you were tying a red ribbon around my wrist. You said you’d never loved anyone like you loved me and you wanted to show the world by escorting me to the Yule Ball. We would have been the first leprechaun/pixie couple to ever attend. I saved for months for my dress and waited for you in the sleighyourented, smiling while the photographer took my picture, growing more and more suspicious as time trickled by. And then…” My tone hardens, even as I swallow back tears. I will not cry in front of him or give him the satisfaction of knowing how much his betrayal hurt me. “You didn’t come. No call. No text. No message at all. Just the knowledge that it had all been a cruel, sick joke. So excuse me if I’d rather not remember the name you called me while you were setting me up for the fall.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Seven says through a tight jaw.
“It was exactly like that.” Getting it out like this is good for my soul. Freeing. And I’ve done it all without screaming or crying. Is that a look of shame on his face?
“It wasn’t a joke—”
“No? I assure you everyone laughed. It’s no secret that leprechauns consider themselves the superior race. I should have known better back then. I was too open and too trusting. I’m not that girl anymore.”
“I liked that girl.”
“Just not enough to be seen with her in public.”
His face is unreadable. “There were extenuating circumstances.”
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this. What extenuating circumstances? Why exactly did you leave me sitting in a sleigh for an hour only to be pulled into a dance where everyone would see you’d stood me up? Where your own father confirmed the ruse and rubbed salt in the wound?”
He hesitates, spreads his hands, and heaves an exasperated sigh. The expression that passes across his face is one I’ve seen before but can’t immediately interpret. “I can’t tell you. It’s…” He seems to be searching for the right word. “Confidential.”
“Confidential?” I gape at him. “Let me get this straight. Something happened that kept you from meeting me at the Yule Ball—the one thatyouinvited me to and insisted I attend—and these same ‘circumstances’ meant you were unable to text, call, or send a living soul to tell me you couldn’t make it? And the same ‘circumstances’ must have been why you didn’t apologize afterward or even talk to me the next day or the next weeks, or likeeverin the past sixteen years. That is one hell of a confidential circumstance, buddy.”
He folds his arms and his eyes narrow. “I wanted to explain later, but as we established earlier today, you were busy. Very busy.”
Oh no, he did not go there! My vision turns red, and my inner warrior reaches for the sharpest spear she can find and aims it right at his vulnerable underbelly. “Yes, I was. And it wasfabulousby the way. Earth-shattering. Human men are sexual machines. Far better than it would have ever been withyou.”
He raises an eyebrow, and I can tell the barb stings. He’d wanted me then. We’d wanted to be each other’s firsts. Instead, I’d lost my virginity to a human.
I got Arden out of it. What did he have?
I open my mouth to say something about the relative size of leprechaun dick, but I’m silenced when I inexplicably trip. My feet fly out from under me, and I land in his arms, flush against his chest. Our faces are close. I can see every gold fleck in his mossy green eyes.
“How do you know it wouldn’t be better with me?” he asks in a voice as smooth as hot caramel. “Maybe you should give me a shot. Then you could make a fair comparison.”
I shove him away. “Ew, I’m not having sex with you. If you were expecting me to pay you back for rescuing me with my body, you should have saved your money.”
I try to stalk off, but a gust of gale-force wind catches my wings and blows me back into his arms.
“Two things, Sophead,” he says through a crooked smile that oozes charm. “First, I paid for your rescue because I couldn’t stand the thought of you being locked up in one of those FIRE dungeons they like to call a rehabilitation center. I don’t expect any reimbursement.”
“Yeah, right. I’m sure it was out of the goodness of your heart—”
“Second, if I wanted to have sex with you, I could.” His voice drops into a husky timbre, the type that would bring most women to their knees. His words send a chill through me, and I realize what he’s done.
“You made me slip just now.” I glare at him and try to shove him away, but he’s caged me against him.
“Yes.”
“And the wind—”
The corner of his mouth tugs higher.
I plant both palms on his chest, willfully ignoring the hard blocks of muscle there as I push him away. I turn to leave, but a small tree falls behind me and splashes into the water. I have to throw myself into his arms again to keep from being struck.
“You just uprooted a perfectly healthy tree!”
“It’s a sapling. I’ll replant it.” His gaze drifts to my lips. “Kiss me, Sophia. Let me remind you what you missed that night.”
Kiss him?Over my dead body. Fury heats my cheeks.
