“Before what?” he asked, staring at me with his kind, brown eyes.
“Before I became what I am now. Back when I was… better.” When I was spirited and bold, when I could have given him all of me, instead of just the broken bits.
“You’re hurting now, but you’ll heal,” he said with more confidence than I felt. “And besides, some of us have to learn things the hard way.”
I snorted bitterly. “Sounds like something to be etched on my gravestone.”
“On the bright side, maybe now you’ll know what to look for in a partner and who to avoid. All that glitters is not gold, pretty fae.”
He tugged on the tail of my braid, and I gazed up at him, wanting to kiss him so badly, knowing it would be a mistake.
“Well,” I said, caught up in my feelings yet again.
“Well,” he said with an upward tick of his lips. “I guess this is goodnight.”
“Thank you for walking me home.”
“Any time. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yes, see you tomorrow.”
How easy it would have been to call himDaddy, but I bit my tongue, turned the handle, and went inside my room, shutting the door softly behind me. I listened to him breathe on the other side, wanting to tear down the physical barrier between us, wrap my arms around him and never let go. I waited until I heard his footsteps retreating, echoing a sense of loss in the pit of my stomach. There was a bottle of Mind Eraser in the chiller, but I ignored it in favor of a long, hot shower.
I’d wallowed enough. It was time for me to get my shit together.
Chapter ten
Hiero
“You thought it wasa good idea to hire your fuck buddy?” Enid asked the next time she was at Church during one of Skylar's shifts. It was Tusks and Tails night, and Enid was tending bar alongside me, not because she needed the money but because she wanted to get out of the house. Two mates and a litter of pups in addition to her clan responsibilities meant that tending bar at Church was more like a night off.
I cringed at her question. My sister had never been one to mince words. “We’re not fucking. Not anymore,” I informed her.
“Not for the last five days, huh?” she snarked.
I shot her a withering look and said, “We’re friends.”
“Uh huh. I always stare at my friends like I want to throw them over my shoulder and carry them back to my den.”
Apparently, the attention I’d been paying to the handsome fae hadn’t gone unnoticed. Having Skylar at the bar was definitely a distraction, though not an unwelcome one.
“Am I that obvious?” I asked.
“You couldn’t bemoreobvious, Hiero.”
We might not be fucking, but my fascination with Skylar hadn’t diminished in the slightest, especially after he’d opened up to me about his past. His upbringing had been rough, and he didn’t have many people down in Emrallt Valley he could count on, only his tattoo artist friend Monica and his ex, the latter being a useless piece of shit as far as I could tell.
I also knew he had an eye for fashion and enjoyed dressing up for the occasion. One of his indulgences were the silk garments he wore, the creations of a fae designer with the singular name Oleander. The only way to launder his fine silks was to hang them up outside overnight and allow the morning dew to cleanse the delicate fabric while spiders restitched the webbing, using the sticky threads to trap their prey. Skylar told me that if you weren’t diligent in offering the spiders their blood meals upon parting, they would shred the clothing to bits.
He was wearing one of those garments tonight, a skin-tight number that matched his eyes. The shimmering singlet showed off his bare shoulders and plunged to his waist in the back, allowing his wings the space to breathe, though he kept them folded up while he was working. Across his chest, the points of his nipples pushed against the fabric, a tantalizing tease. I’d made the mistake earlier of asking how he was meantto use the bathroom, and he’d told me there were hidden slits for that purpose and “other things too.” The last bit he’d said with a saucy wink. Now, it was all I could think about, tugging the luxurious fabric aside to get at his shell-pink hole, licking him like he was a field of sweet clover and sinking into that silken heat.
He’d look good with a collar, I thought absently, something lightweight and elegant, to highlight the long line of his neck, with a drop pendant jewel that matched his eyes. Amethyst, perhaps? But that was the sort of gift reserved for a much deeper commitment, and Skylar and I werejust friends.
“We should make a wager,” Enid was saying. I’d somehow forgotten we were in the middle of a sibling heart-to-heart, Enid’s version of it anyway.
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I asked.
“I’ll bet you a night of babysitting that you don’t last another week before you bed him again.”
