I watched her. I wished to know how she was feeling, but I didn’t release my tendrils. I didn’t want to force this connection on her, and she wasn’t in the position to grant me the permission yet.
Her eyelids fluttered open. She gazed up at the ceiling laid with yellow, white, and gray mosaic. She blinked, then rolled her head on the pillow and found me. Her face lit up with the warmest of smiles.
“Timur…” She reached for my face. As her fingers touched my skin, she marveled. “You’re real? You’re here?”
“I’m real,” I echoed. “I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
She drew in a long breath, resting her warm little hand against my cheek.
“You are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” she murmured, her eyes shining with wonder.
Beautiful?
No one had ever called me that before. Definitely not in the past ten years. Yet Elaine looked at my face, the face of a monster, and somehow saw beauty in it.
She reached up for a kiss, and I gave it to her without thinking. I’d always give her whatever she wanted.
Lust raged in my groin, but I held it back by focusing on the warmth spreading through my chest. It came from the familiarity of her lips on mine, of her body pressed to mine, and of her arms holding me close. She was here, with me, safe, and peace descended upon me.
We lay like that, just kissing with no words necessary to pass between us. She pressed closer to me, and I cupped her backside with my hand.
With a moan, she trapped my cock between her thighs. I groaned from the spike of arousal burning through my body.
She jerked back from me, alarm flashing in her eyes.
“Timur, it’s happening again.”
I caressed the side of her face, pushing away a few strands of her hair still damp from the bath.
“Are you sure it’s still from that tea?” I asked gently.
She exhaled, relaxing a little. Her gaze shifted over my shoulders as she seemed to focus inside her for a moment.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s hard to tell. But…I want you.”
“You have me, sweetheart. You’ll always have me.”
I slid down her body, my mouth watering for her taste already, but she took my head in her hands and turned my face up toward her.
Her eyes were pleading.
“No. Don’t. I…” She released a shaky breath. “Can you please not touch me the way they did? At least for a little while?”
My heart felt like it had shattered to pieces. Rage flared with a puff of smoke from my nostrils. The regret of killing Mazra and her ilk too quickly burned through me.
But I stilled my anger and gentled my voice.
“Of course,” I said, rising back to her eye level.
“Thank you.” She kissed me passionately and freely, and I knew no one but me had kissed her in Ashgate.
She pressed herself to me again, rubbing against the ridge of my hard cock.
“Fuck me,” she moaned. “Please. I need you…”
Hooking an arm under her knee, I rolled her to her back.
Not one of Mazra’s people had done to Elaine what I was about to do, I was sure of it. I was the only fae with a cock in Nerifir. I was the only fae who’d ever been inside her, and I had always made sure she enjoyed it every single fucking time.
