“Unless you get some icy dick?” Dayton laughs.
“Hey! You have no idea how uncomfortable this is.” I smack his chest and raise myself up to look up at him.
Bad idea.
In the candlelight, he doesn’t even look fae; he looks like something more, a sculpted god made of shadow and light. Burnished golden hair, piercing eyes, full parted lips.
“Think of a time when you desperately craved something, craved it so badly your whole body ached,” I say. “But you knew you could never have it. You’d just have to live with this feeling until it consumed you. Can you imagine that?”
“Yes, Rosalina, I can.” His grip tightens on my arm. “I can very much imagine that.”
I shut my eyes and it floods into my mind: a vision so vibrant and real it doesn’t even feel like my own. Dayton closing the distance between us, devouring me with an open-mouthed kiss. Our flimsy clothes are ripped off when we break away for air. There’s no foreplay, no touching, no time for any of it. He takes me, fast and urgent, in a desperate, animal way. His hard cock stretches my inner walls, pounding faster and harder with every stroke. Our hands claw at each other, hair pulled, lips bitten. Until … until I explode around him, and he fills me deep with what I so desperately crave.
“Day.” A whimper slides out of me before I can stop it. Wetness pools between my legs, my whole body rippling from my imagination.
Except it’s not just my imagination. We’ve been together twice. I almost wish we never had, that I never knew what it felt like. Wish I didn’t know his kisses taste like sunlight and his body inside mine feels like being tossed in a glorious storm.
One of his hands cups my face, and the other lightly grazes my back. I open my eyes, his face right before mine. Has he bent closer?
“You should go,” I whisper.
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
“There’s nothing you can do to help.”
A strange mix of sadness and anger crosses his features. “Look, I might not be able to help you the way one of your mates could, but I can’t leave you. Don’t ask me to.”
What about Wrenley? I want to ask the question. But at the thought of her, anger surges through me, and I snag his arm, holding it hard enough to bruise. “Then don’t.”
“I’ll stay.”
“I guess your presence is sort of distracting.” I need him tostay, but it can’t be in the way that I want. Not when he has a mate. “Will you tell me a story?”
“If you eat your dinner.” He hands me the tray.
Grumpily, I take it and dip a slice of bread spiced with dill into the soup. The broth has a vinegary taste to it, but it’s refreshing. While I eat, Dayton recalls a story of the time his family took a ship to the Moon Coral Isles. Memories come alive from his words: diving to watch the fish with his brothers, creating animals out of sand with Delphie, and bonfires on the beach roasting beets and pineapple.
His deep voice is so soothing, and it’s not often that I get to hear him speak this freely about his family with such a happy cadence. He takes my bowl when I’m finished. I can’t help but lay my head on his chest as he starts a new story of the time his fathers and brothers pranked him by placing him in a small schooner when he was asleep and letting it drift out with the tide.
“Joke’s on them.” He smirks. “Woke up in the middle of the sea, but it was the first time I met a siren. We had a lot of fun before she brought me home. Which also reminds me of the time Fare and I first met a selkie.”
“I want to hear that,” I murmur, lips moving against the salt-kissed taste of his skin. “Just remember to leave before sunset.” There are no windows in the room to tell the time, but it can’t be past late afternoon yet.
“Of course,” Dayton says and continues with the story.
His presence has eased my discomfort for now, and I find myself drifting off to the soothing sound of his voice.
“It’s okay, Baby. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Another moan ripples through me, pain clenching in my stomach, body burning. My eyes flutter open. My head is on Dayton’s chest, his arms draped around me.
“I must have fallen asleep,” I croak.
“So did I,” Dayton says, handing me a glass of water from the tray. “Woke up to you, uh, writhing.”
I take a sip, heat flushing my cheeks. Mywilde courtshipis back with a vengeance.
“Look, you really should go. I can manage.”
