Kira took one look at the unconscious Dark Fae on my couch and sighed. “Oh hell, Lily, what have you done?”
It took Kira the better part of the day to heal Liam. She took one look at the wicked blade she’d pulled from his gut and determined it was Fae made. I wasn’t sure what the hell that meant. I’d lost track of how many bad guys there were in this scenario. Were some of the Fae who fled with their halfling children still out there on Earth? I just didn’t know. Mara had done something to encapsulate our blue, fated, mate lightshow, but I think Kira had sensed it. We’d all gone to school together and she was pretty cool.
When Elle went to pay her extra for her silence, she’d shrugged it off. “Just get him out the second he wakes,” she said and left.
It took me two hours to convince Elle I was okay on my own with him, that he wouldn’t hurt me. Truthfully, I had no idea, but my gut told me he wouldn’t. That day when he’d shoved me in the closet rather than kill me, it spoke volumes.
“I’ll check on you first thing in the morning,” Elle said and left.
Now the sun was setting and I found myself just sitting there staring at his face. He was majorly hot—for a Dark Fae who was hell-bent on seeing my people wiped out of course. His full lips and fair skin reminded me of the Winter Court Fae, but his light hair … that was not of our world. Only normies had blond hair; we had yellow hair, and orange and black and brown and every color of the rainbow, but the blond of a normie was unique to our world. Not a lot of Winter Fae made it before the world fell, but there were a few. Maybe I could pretend just for a little while that he was Winter Court and not a Son of Darkness halfling…
As I was staring at him, he started to stir and I popped up onto my knees, grabbing a glass of water.
He tried to sit up and winced, falling backward against my couch. “Relax, here, have some water.” I held the cup to his lips and reached my other hand under his head. His eyes found mine as he drank the cool liquid and they flared with intensity. After I set the water down, he looked out the living room window. I had the curtain peeled back about six inches, just enough to let in a little moonlight. You could see a swath of the river, and that seemed to be what held his gaze.
“This place … it’s beautiful. Magical.” His voice was rough.
I’d been brewing over an idea for the past six hours, and if I didn’t get the nerve up to say it, I probably never would. “What if I appealed to the elders to allow your people to live here too? Then we wouldn’t need to fight over the crystals, and we could all live together in har—” He reached out and grasped my wrist, hard.
“Don’t ever let them in here. They’ll burn it to the ground.”
My face fell. “But you’re—”
“I’m different,” he stated. “They have no intention of ever setting foot here again. They want to create—” He seemed to realize who he was speaking to and cut his words off, dropping my wrist. Grasping the edges of the couch, he tried to sit up, and blood promptly soaked his shirt. “I need to check on my men.” He winced as he tried to stand.
My eyes bugged at the sight of the blood. I planted two hands on his chest. When my palms met his rock-hard muscle, I shoved him back onto the couch. “You need to heal!” I growled.
As he fell backward, he reached out and grasped my upper arms to stabilize himself. He weighed a bajillion pounds, and as he fell, I fell with him, trying to adjust my body so that I didn’t reinjure him. Splitting my legs open, I straddled him, and landing right on his lap, my pink hair fanned around us and I looked down at him. He looked up at me with a molten gaze and his wings … rippled with orange glowing magic.
“I risked my life to save you,” I growled, “the least you can do is stay the night to heal.”
His hands fell away from my arms and trailed down my back slowly. Goosebumps broke out on my skin as his fingers caressed my wings. Touching another Fae’s wings was an intimate thing … and the way he did it, with such delicacy, had heat building in my core. The blue light pulsed then, sharp and fast between us both, lighting up his features.
“What is the blue light?” he asked, looking up at me, our faces a mere three inches away from each other.
I’d never wanted someone to kiss me so badly and I’d never felt so wrong about it.
The blue light. How the fuck did you explain that to a guy who didn’t grow up in this world? You didn’t.
I panicked, spouting the first lie I could think of. “It means … we’re both Fae. The same race.”
He frowned. “I’ve met Fae before and it’s never happened.”
Why was I still sitting on him? Why were his hands still stroking my wings?
I gulped.
“It means…” Without another thought, I leaned forward and captured his mouth in a kiss. Opening my legs, I settled my hips onto him, getting closer as his breath hitched, sucking in mine. When my lips crashed onto his, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would he throw me across the room? Pick up this dagger and try to kill me?
His mouth opened, deepening the kiss as his hands slipped down the back of my wings to cup my ass. When our tongues touched, a warm buzz tingled all the way down my throat to my belly. Even with my eyes closed, I could see the blue light dancing beneath us. It was back alive and brighter than ever. He sucked my bottom lip into his mouth and I moaned, causing him to grab my ass. I let my fingers trail down his hard chest, feeling the taut muscles there when he grasped both sides of my face and wrenched me back.
“We can’t,” he growled. It was like someone had poured ice water over me. I pulled myself back and nodded as my cheeks reddened.
What the full-on fucking fuck am I doing?
His shirt was soaked with blood. I was going to kill him grinding on him like that. Stupid idiot. He was a damn Dark Fae. Halfling.Monster. And I was making out with him over some blue light? Backing up, he barely removed his hands from my ass to let me go. Once I was off of the couch and my mind had cleared, I nodded.
“You need rest,” I told him, although my body really, really, wanted him to needotherthings. What the hell was I doing?
