"You’ve got the right of it...but I need to open the restaurant. If 'Shona gets in first, I'll never hear the end of things. I’ll make you breakfast when we get there."
When she squinted open her eyes, Tate’s face was inches from hers, their noses practically touching. Silva realized she'd taken over his pillow sometime in the night, cuddling closer and closer every time she shifted.
"You can’t be trusted, you tried to get me drunk at breakfast yesterday," she accused sleepily, earning herself a sharp-toothed grin.
"I'm starting to think it's not possible to do such a thing. We could make that into a tidy sideline," he mused, as Silva snuggled closer, wanting to feel the heat of his laughing, honeyed eyes. "A bitty little elf drinking grown orcs under the table...we'd win every wager."
She laughed as he rolled to his back and quickly reclaimed her spot against him, pressing her cheek to the solidtha-thumpof his heartbeat.
"I could be a full-time bar hustler," she smiled against his skin. "You could teach me how to hustle pool, too. I'd never need to worry about finding a better job or going back to school…”Or finding a husband and trying for years to have a baby. I’d not have to worry about being good enough or pretty enough or charming enough, or spending my whole life in a pretty glass prison.It was a wildly appealing thought, staying tucked away with him in this odd little town, living as close to a vagabond life as she could imagine. “…Nana would never be able to lecture me about getting married and carrying on the family legacy. Doesn't your family stress you out about stuff like that?"
It was an inappropriate question, nosy and far too personal, but the boundaries of appropriateness were blurred with Tate; he was at once a polite gentleman and an absolute rake, had taken liberties with her from the moment he’d given her that cheeky wink at dinner, but she had allowed him to take them. Silva felt an unshakable certainty that despite her submissiveness, he would have backed off immediately if she’d indicated she wanted him to do so at any point in the previous two days.
"The only legacy in my family is to get a baby on some poor, naive lass and then promptly abandon them both." She winced at the flatness of his words, but Tate's hand stayed buried in her hair, lightly scratching her scalp. "Don't worry, dove, it won't be you. I'd need to double down on the heritage to keep up the tradition…” His eyes squinted in contemplation as he scratched his way down her neck. “Maybe a nice, sheltered cervitaur girl with harpy blood...if you happen to know one who wants to have her life ruined, send her my way." He tugged her hair lightly, and she felt her hackles rise at the thought. "Or rather, don't. I can't say it's a legacy I'm interested in continuing."
"Would...is that even possible? Don't harpies lay eggs?" Her nose wrinkled as she tried to remember if she'd ever known any cervitaurs. She considered the harpy who worked at the salon where she got her nails done; the woman had long, hooked talons and beautiful iridescent black feathers around her neck and shoulders, but Silva had never seen her standing. "Would a half-cervitaur still lay an egg if she has bird bits on the bottom?"
“Sweet Mab, I don’t know...I hope not,” he laughed as Silva twisted up to see his glinting smile.
“Have you everbeenwith a cervitaur? Do you think she'd still lay an egg? This place is really big, I’ll bet you could fit an incubator if you took the pool table out.” Her giggles were buried against his skin as he glared down at her.
“It was an off-the-cuff comment, and I regret making it,” he sighed, as her shoulders shook with laughter. His talk of getting out of bed had stalled, and Silva pressed her cheek to his chest with a contented sigh, nosing his skin as his nails moved in soft circles over her back.
She wondered what his childhood had been like, if he'd gone to Elvish schools and lived in an Elvish community. Multi-species towns like Cambric Creek were far and few between, and even there she had gone to a private Elvish girls' school. It wouldn’t have mattered in any case—Tate looked distinctly different from other orcs, but he was clearly Orcish. His lovely green skin and short tusks would have set him a world apart in the Elvish community, she knew without question. She didn't need to wonder what her grandmother would say if she brought an Orcish boyfriend home for Austalendë, even one of mixed blood. She was to get along with her neighbors and be a leader in the community, volunteer at the Ladies’ Club, and be a gracious hostess at multi-species community events...but she was to marry an elf from a similar background as her, in the same social strata.
The right sort, as her grandmother would say. She was barely twenty-five, with another hundred and fifty years stretching before her, and her entire life was planned for her already.Freedomwas just a word in the common tongue dictionary.
"What's going to happen to me?" The words slipped out before she was able to control them; her internal anxieties bubbling to the surface and taking shape as a whisper against his smooth, pale green skin. For a long moment, he said nothing; only trailed a fingertip down her spine, making her shiver, before dragging it lightly back to her neck. When his fingers pushed back into her thick hair, Silva shuddered, leaning into his hand like a cat.
Her hope that he hadn’t heard her was dashed when Tate began to speak in a low voice, his lilting accent giving false cheer to his words.
“You’re going to go back to your life, little dove. You’ll meet and marry some perfect, purple-skinned prat with a respectable, white-collar job and an excellent credit score. You’ll kill yourself in the gym five days a week to keep this body because he’ll let you know the minute you don’t. You’ll pop out a squalling brat to satisfy your family, and then get right back to the gym before it ruins your figure...It won’t matter, because he’ll already be fucking his secretary, or the nanny, maybe both, but he’s like to do that regardless. By then you won’t care, because you’ll have your own pretty little doll of a daughter to fixate on, and you can pour all of your insecurities into her. You’re going to do all the things proper little elves are expected to do.”
Her eyes had gone wide as he spoke, goosebumps rising on her flesh once more, even though she was beneath the thick duvet. The air in her lungs had vanished, leaving her frozen and gasping, like a panicked fish, wheezing on a dock. She supposed his recitation of her future answered any questions she might have had about the depth of his Elvish background. Tate had perfectly described the lives of half the women at the club, at least two of her aunts, and most definitely her grandmother. The lump in her throat had the shape of her heart, and she struggled to swallow around it, left aching at the empty expanse of years that spread out before her, the prescribed script of her life.
She jumped when he spoke again, his hand skating down her spine once more.
“But then again, dove, the future isn’t written in stone, and your life is your own to shape. You don’t need to do any of those things, sweet Silva. And you’ll have an escape that none of your perfect friends with their pretend perfect lives have.”
He shifted her as he spoke until they were once more nose-to-nose on his pillow, flush to his warm skin. Silva felt the hard plane of him, leanly muscled arms and the smell of freedom encircling her. Her lips parted as his thumb lifted from the fluffy white sea of blankets to caress her chin, leaning in to feel the heat of his breath mingle with her own.
“I’ll have you.” Silva didn’t know where the words had come from, nor why she uttered them, but they were a whisper of air against his lips, and Tate’s mischief-filled, honey gold eyes danced.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he shrugged gracefully. “You know where to find me, and you’ll always have someplace to go...will you promise to come back and visit me, Silva of the nighttime?”
The rattle she felt in her bones at his innocently-spoken words, the frisson of electricity that shot through her veins when he kissed her—it was madness. She’d only just met him, after all, had fallen into his bed like an irresponsible student...but the thought of not seeing his laughing eyes and unsettling, too-wide smile again left her feeling hollow and empty, as empty as the thought of her predetermined life. She wasn’t supposed to trust the fae, wasn’t supposed to strike bargains or make promises, everyone with sense knew that, but his lips were still sweet as she whisperedyesinto his kiss.
She could always come back here, to his mischievous eyes and malevolent smile, to dagger teeth scraping her skin and the smell of freedom wrapping around her as she slept. Silva closed her eyes and pressed her face to his neck, breathing deeply, feeling as though the center of the heavy weight she carried with her every day had been cut away.
“You’re so lovely, dove...so beautiful I could spend the rest of my days making love to you…” she shivered as his hand moved down her body in a sweeping caress, wondering if they were about to do exactly that. “...but if you think that means you can bewitch me into staying in bed with you all day, you’re very much mistaken.”
She let out an undignified squeak when the duvet was thrown back and whipped away, leaving her naked and exposed in the chill air, Tate’s musical laughter echoing across the pressed tin tiles of the high ceiling. “Why can’t someone else do it?” she whined, clinging to the pillow, lest he wrench that away as well.
“If you listen to my staff, it’s because I’m an uptight control freak with trust issues...but I say it’s my building, my rules. Now up you get.”
Her eyes popped open at his words, just before he gripped her ankle and pulled her across the mattress as she squealed. She had thought he was a server, she realized, a bartender, albeit one who worked terribly long hours. The eclectic mix of old-world antiques and clean modern lines in this apartment matched the aesthetic of the bistro, where he’d seemed to have been every hour he hadn’t been with her in the past two days.You’re so stupid.She began to giggle as she rose from the bed, was nearly doubled over with her laughter when she joined him in the gleaming white shower and still tittered when his lips pressed to hers beneath the hot spray. It was only when he pressed into her that her manic laughter cut off on a high gasp that was nearly swallowed by the torrent of water gusting from the showerhead.
Her teeth were small and even and decidedly unsharp, but as she locked her legs around his slim waist, feeling the wet tiles at her back as he pumped into her, Silva dragged them over his skin, biting into his solid shoulder, trying to mark him as he’d marked her. There was nothing like his groan against her neck in her life at home, nor the way his hands tightened at her hips, hard enough to bruise her delicate lavender skin—only obligation and expectation and the suffocating sense that she’d never get to make a single decision for herself...but here she was free. As she convulsed around him, tightly gripping a handful of his long, wet hair, Silva wondered how long it would take until her resolve crumbled once she was home, sending her back to this place and his bed and his terrifying smile.
