“I can think of far better uses for your mouth, Soren,” I said, watching as his brow rose in surprise. He huffed a soft laugh, wrapping a hand around my waist and guiding me to the alcove that rested on one of the stairway landings.
I giggled as he tucked me into the wall, leaning his height over me and smiling down at me. “Is that so? I would love to hear what these uses might entail.”
He raised his hand to my face, catching my bottom lip with his thumb and tugging it down to reveal my teeth and tongue. “It doesn’t involve my mouth,” I said, grabbing him by the wrist. I guided his hand down over the front of my throat and through the line of my cleavage, drawing a path over the fabric that covered my stomach.
Lower.
Lower.
“Ahem.” A male voice interrupted the moment, and I dropped my head back onto the stone wall in irritation.
I’d been so close to sneaking away.
“A little busy,” Soren said, not even bothering to tear his eyes from mine. But I’d already released his hand, pressing my palms flat into the stone behind me
“I see that,” Etan said, and his form appeared as he stepped out of the shadows at the top of the stairs, seemingly having taken another stairwell to head us off before we could reach my rooms. “Given thatyou have your filthy hands all over my soon-to-be wife, I thought it prudent that I interrupt your little seduction.”
Soren backed away a few steps, raising his hands as if he were innocent. “I’m not sure who you think is doing the seducing here, but I can assure you it wasn’t me,” he said with a laugh, throwing me entirely under the carriage to be trampled on by the Summer Court Fae, whose eyes were no longer filled with warmth.
They’d cooled considerably, hardening like molten lava as I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t be pathetic. It doesn’t suit you,” I snarked at Soren, watching as his gaze bounced between me and Etan as he tried to make sense of the situation.
“Is it true? Are you betrothed to marry him?” he asked, raising a brow as if marriage mattered to any of the Fae. It was nothing to them, a business agreement meant to uphold political alliances until a mate bond came and ruined them all anyway.
“It isn’t not true,” I said, injecting exasperation into every word.
Soren grinned, shaking his head as he backed away. Etan glared at him as he made his way to the stairs that would take him back down to the entryway, and the probability of finding another toy to play with. “Let me know if you two figure out what this is. I’m happy to join in whatever capacity you like.”
I quirked a brow, my interest piqued. Glancing at Etan, I found his own features still twisted into a scowl, and him uninterested in the blatant offer of the other man.
Dammit.
Thatcould have been fun.
Soren disappeared down the stairs, leaving me to push off the stone wall and make my way toward my room. Etan filled the space Soren had vacated, pressing his hands at my waist and pushing me back once again. He too towered over me, leaning into my space as he glared down at me. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, and I’d have been lying if I said my gaze didn’t wander to the tension in his forearms where he’d rolled up his tunic sleeves.
The muscles bulged there, and the stupid, unrelenting desire to drag my tongue over them was unwelcome.
“A girl has needs, Etan,” I snapped, forcing myself to glare. “He was available to tend to them. It’s not that serious.” I wouldnotadmit that Etan would have likely been my first choice for a bed partner if he hadn’t come with all sorts of complications.
I didn’t do those.
“If only you were spoken for and had a man who was capable of meeting those needs for you,” he snapped back.
“I’m not interested in that offer. I wanted him because I could forget his name by morning,” I said, watching the way Etan’s jaw clenched. I was playing with literal fire, his eyes blazing as he pressed his torso into my chest and pinned me into the wall. My words weren’t entirely untrue, letting me speak them. I might have been interested in Etan, but this kind of possessiveness was exactly why I would not be interested in his offer.
“Do not tempt me, Sunfire. I swear to fucking Gods, I will cut off his cock and feed it to the Cwn Annwn before I allow him to touch you with it,” Etan snarled.
“Well, that would be a waste of a perfectly good cock,” I teased, grinning up at him in an attempt to ease some of the tension that didn’t serve me.
It didn’t work.
“Fallon.”
“Oh, first names. I must be in trouble,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I don’t do complicated, Etan, and you, my lovely soon-to-be husband, are the very definition of complicated. I have to tolerate you beyond fucking you, and at this point in time, I’ve yet to determine if that’s possible, even without knowing how you feel inside me. We do not need to add the layer of sex to this dynamic.”
Etan growled, a warning rumbling in his chest as I touched my hands to it and pressed up onto my tippy-toes. The motion put us even closer, my breath wafting over his throat and his lips brushing the tip of my nose. He tilted his head down, putting his mouth so close to mine that I could practically taste him. He slid a hand beneath the curtain of my dark hair, grasping a handful of it and holding me still. “Let me tell you how this is actually going to go, Sunfire,” he murmured, trailing his nose over my jaw as he turned my head with his grip on my hair. His lips trailed over the side of my neck, lighting a path on fire as he moved. “I am going to fuck you until no one doubts who owns you, not even you. It is only a matter of time before you beg me for it, and while we wait for you to come to your senses and stop resisting whatever this attraction is between us, just know one hard truth.” He pressed the hard length of his cock into my belly as he snipped at my throat.
