“Fine.” He pushed off the wall. “But when the time comes, I’m not asking permission.”
“You won’t need to.”
When the time came, I would be first in line. Percy could have what was left.
Solomon’s jaw tightened, the scar on his face going white with tension, but he nodded. We both knew I was right about the timing. We both hated it.
“The compound in her tea,” Solomon said, shifting back to intel. “The way it targeted her memories was precise. Everything from the past week, gone. Everything else is intact.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know yet.” His pale eyes met mine, and the uncertainty there unsettled me. Solomon always knew. “Could be medical, experimental. Maybe human science I’m not familiar with.” He paused. “Or it could be something else entirely. I need more time to dig.”
“What do we tell her?” Percy asked. “About the week?”
The week.The word sat between the three of us, loaded with everything it contained.
I let myself remember. A punishment and a pleasure all at once.
Seven days ago, we found her by chance. We’d been in this town for a year, running the fire station as cover, monitoring this realm for information. A boring assignment made bearable by the fact that human firefighting turned out to be the most satisfying work I’d done in centuries. No politics, no backstabbing council members. Just fire and people who needed saving.
Then the annual Lantern Festival forced us into the town square, and her scent hit me across the crowded space with the force of a fist to the sternum.
Mate. Mine. OURS.
The bond announced itself without subtlety or warning, and definitely without any consideration for the fact that I was a king from another realm and she was a human woman who’d been invisible to us for months despite living on the opposite end of town.
Solomon went rigid beside me. His nostrils flared, his pupils blew wide.
Then Percival, who dropped his cider.
One week. Seven days of finding excuses to be near her. Seven nights of lying awake, hard and aching, thinking about the way she smiled at me when I said something that made her laugh.
She didn’t know what we were. Didn’t understand why three firefighters kept coming back to her shop every day. She thought we were odd. Friendly, but odd.
And she smiled at us anyway. That fucking smile.
My wolf paced beneath my skin, restless with wanting. Even now, standing in the dark staring at her window, my body remembered things my mind was trying not to replay.
But the memories came anyway.
Her back against her kitchen wall. My hands pinning her wrists above her head. The way her breath caught when I pressed my thigh between hers, and the sound she made when I finally kissed her.
It wasn’t soft or gentle. I didn’t have it in me when it came to her.
I’d kissed her with five centuries of emptiness behind it, and she’d kissed me back with equal desperation. Her teeth caught my bottom lip while her hips rolled against my thigh, searching for friction, and the noise that came out of her throat made my cock twitch in my pants.
“More.” She’d gasped it against my mouth. “Lucian, please.”
I’d almost taken her right there. Would have dropped to my knees, shoved her dress up, and buried my face between her thighs until she screamed my name.
Instead, I’d pulled back. Breathing hard, forehead pressed to hers.
“We should stop.” The words were a lie.
“We should.” She hadn’t moved away. Her pulse was racing under my fingers where I held her wrists. “But I don’t want to.”
Fuck. Neither did I.
