Well, if heinsisted.She turned her face into his silk-clad chest, closing her eyes tightly, and inhaled, savoring the moment.Who could blame her?
He flexed, his body gathering and wings whooshing.Her feet left the ground, her breath whistling out in a panicked wheeze.Azul nuzzled her hair.“I’ve got you, Arantxa.I won’t let you fall.You can trust me to keep you safe.”
For the first time in what felt like days, she let go of the horrible dread and tension, trusting him despite herself.
Though she told herself she had no reason for it, she believed him.
~35~
The Prince
“Keep your eyesclosed,” Azul advised, sounding infinitely more gentle than he had only moments before.
“I don’t want to see how far I am away from the ground anyway,” she replied.
His chuckle reverberated musically through the chest under her tightly pressed cheek, the muscles there flexing with his wingbeats in a most alluring fashion.She’d like to see him without a shirt doing this.Okay, fine, she’d like to see him totally naked doing just about anything.
“I can’t believe you lied to me about the wings,” she said with a fair amount of petulance.
“I didn’t lie,” he replied.“As you’ve no doubt astutely surmised by now, I cannot lie.”
“Because you’re fae.”
“Because I’m fae.”
“And not any kind of part blood fae, either.You’re the high octane, pure, all the way deal.”
He laughed again, full-throated, with all the velvet of his beautiful tenor singing voice.“I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes.”
“What in the seven hells were you doing in the human realms marrying a mortal woman then?”she demanded, forgetting and opening her eyes to glare at him.With a yip of pain, she closed them again instantly, stars dancing burning points against her retinas.
“Told you,” he said on a sigh.“A moment longer and we’ll be inside.You can ask all the questions you like.But I warn you, the geas I spoke of is still in effect.”
“Who could put a geas on a prince of Amethyst?”
“Another question I cannot answer.”
The light blazing against her eyelids dimmed, a blessed shrouding dimness falling around them.And—praise be to the seven heavens—her feet touched solid ground.
“We’re there, but it’s still too bright for you.Keep your eyes closed a moment longer.Can you stand?”
“Been doing it all my life, save a few months there at the beginning.”Unfortunately, when she tried to put weight on them, her legs buckled.
With a soft curse, Azul swept her up in his arms and carried her into a deeper dimness that made her sigh in relieved delight.It definitely wasn’t because some hitherto unknown sappy, romantic place deep inside thrilled to him carrying her.“Must you always be stubborn?”
“You ask that like you don’t know me at all.”She risked squinting her eyes open, relieved to find herself in a place of normal human brightness.Correction: a palace.Azul currently carried her through a spectacular hall lined with what appeared to be pure amethyst.Ahead of them, purple light blazed with headache-inducing intensity, but as they progressed, golden shades descended over the arched windows, reducing the hall to a comforting lavender glow.
“Just how powerful are you?”she asked, trying not to stare too much.If he’d been enticing before, he fully entranced her now.She’d be worried, but it wasn’t as if she could run away.Dying in his arms would be a far better fate than the acid pit from the fifth hell, so she wasn’t going to overthink it.A skill she’d refined over the years.
“It depends,” he answered with a quick glance at her and away.
“Prevarication isn’t lying?”
“You ask that like you don’t know me,” he retorted.“When you’re unable to lie, dancing around the fuzzy gray borders of the truth is all you have.”He carried her into a grand bedchamber and laid her on a bed the size of a small lake.
“Why, Azul,” she cooed, fluttering her lashes, “if you wanted to seduce me you could just say so.”
He cocked a brow at her, his wings half-mantled for balance as he crouched, pulling off one of her boots, then the other.“Oh yes, because half-dead humans are irresistible.”
