He kisses me, long and deep, moving against my hand just as I move against his, until we find a rhythm that has us both moaning into each other’s mouths.
He’s right. I’m wet. I’m warm.
But so is he. The color blooming beneath his skin, blush pink breaking through the frigid pallor. Blue veins flush darker, his lips bitten red. He drags my mouth back to his, kisses me hard, then trails his mouth down along my jaw, my chin, his fist tightening in my hair as he pulls my head back just enough to bare the column of my throat.
“Neve,” he groans, lips pressed to my neck. “I can feel your heat building. I can smell you. It’s so fucking sweet.”
His thumb presses against my swollen nerve, and I whimper.
“Let go,” he murmurs. “For once, let go. I want to feel the heat of you running over my skin.”
I groan, gripping his cock tighter, working from the thick base to the swollen tip in long, lavish strokes, refusing to be outdone.
“I want the same,” I breathe. “All of you.”
His mouth seals to my neck. I feel the scrape of his teeth just before his body jerks as he releases, and at the same time his fingers plunge deeper inside me, his thumb strumming me in a way that shatters whatever control I had left.
I come undone above him.
I collapse forward, his head buried against my chest, my hands tangling in his hair, gripping at the roots just to stay upright through the aftershocks of it. He eases his fingers out of me, his hands moving to rest on my hips, his breath heavy, lifting me with every deep exhale.
The barn settles around us. Our breathing slowly steadies. Snow whispers against the roof outside.
When the tension finally unravels, when we’ve sated ourselves in something neither of us could ignore, what’s left isn’t relief.
It’s uncertainty.
The sharp awareness of the line we’ve just crossed.
I’m about to speak, something close towhat happens nowalready on my tongue when he breathes against my skin.
“If this is how you show gratitude to your master,” he says lightly, “a simple thank you would have sufficed.”
My stomach churns. Disgust rises fast, burning its way up my throat.
He chuckles, his hands still rubbing my hips as I lean back and slap him hard in the face.
He turns from the impact, though he probably barely felt it. “Neve. I was joking.”
No, he wasn’t.
He doesn’t joke.
“There was truth in it, and you know it.”
I shove away his hands and lift myself off him, rising onto unsteady feet, smoothing my nightgown with hands that still tremble. Behind me, I hear the muted clink of metal as he re-buckles his pants.
He grumbles, irritation edging his voice. “In a moment of stupidity, I said something stupid. You don’t need to storm off.”
I snap around, eyes narrowing. “No. In a moment of comfort, you said something cruel, and whether you are a Fae lord or a lowly human like me, you do not deserve my company.”
He goes silent.
He rises from the hay only to his knees as I climb down the ladder. I land in the mud, the hem of my nightgown darkening with filth, but it’s the least of my concerns.
I don’t look back.
I hurry from the barn, pull the door shut behind me, and slip back into my little house. My father snores softly in his room as I pass, oblivious to everything I’ve just done.
