“Nothing.” I didn’t want to voice the fact that I was afraid of what the council would do. Not to Dathal. Not when it was obvious he didn’t give a fuck about their rules and regulations. Would he think I was a coward? I hated the thought of that more than I feared the council’s reaction.
As usual, I didn’t need to say the words for him to read me easily.
“You think your council will react badly to this new development?”
I grimaced and rolled onto my back. “I can’t imagine they’re going to be happy.”
“I wish I could take you home with me,” he muttered, frowning. “We’d get rid of the final link and then your magic would be free.” He dipped his head, trailing kisses along the base of my throat. “With no one to make you feel like that was a bad thing.”
As wonderful as that sounded, and even if I believed it was anything other than the heat of the moment making him say it, we both knew it was impossible.
The high court would never let me through the gateway.
Probably not even to visit, definitely not for any length of time.
I didn’t point any of that out though.
Instead, I propped my head on my hand and smiled at him. “I’m glad you came to see me.”
He grinned back, running his fingers along my hip. “Me too.”
My cock stirred as his hand dipped lower, but it was a poor effort at best. That orgasm had totally wiped me out. “How come you’ve got to go back so soon, though?” I thought back to everything Max had said and wondered if they’d had a breakthrough with the investigation.
Dathal sighed but kept stroking his fingers over my skin. “We have things to look into at the fae prison. Max wants us to check if any witches were incarcerated there and subsequently released recently. And if any of them would’ve interacted with Melhak. Then we need to cross reference anything we discover there with the information we got out of Melhak when we interrogated him.”
That was way more detail than I was expecting him to share with me. “Should you be discussing all this with me?”
“You asked me a question.” He frowned. “Why would I not answer?”
“Because I’m not exactly part of the investigation. I’m not sure CI Thornton or Lady Sarhin would be keen on me knowing too much.”
Dathal scoffed. “I don’t care about any of that. I don’t work for your police, and Lady Sarhin is through the gateway. As long as I produce results, she won’t care about anything else.”
All too soon, my eyes began to get heavy. I didn’t want to go to sleep, knowing he had to leave in the morning, but it was inevitable. Dathal shifted to the edge of the bed and sat up.
I reached out a hand to grab his arm. “Stay.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder, forehead furrowed. “I’m not going anywhere. Except to the bathroom to get something to clean up your mess.” He nodded at the drying come on my belly, then reached between my legs and rubbed over my hole.
I groaned as he slipped two fingers back inside, and he smirked.
“Our mess,” he murmured, leaning in for a kiss before getting up and heading to the bathroom to clean us both up like he’d promised.
Despite being so tired I could’ve fallen asleep in seconds, I shifted onto my side as Dathal slid back under the covers. “Tell me about the Fae Realm.”
His smile softened, eyes warm as he settled his head on the pillow facing me. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” I couldn’t imagine a place where magic was the norm rather than something only a portion of the population possessed. And as much as I’d love to see it in person, my chances of being invited into the Fae Realm were slim to none, considering my history.
So this was the next best thing.
I lay in my bed, Dathal’s hand finding mine under the quilt, and I listened to him weave a magical picture of his home and the people who lived there. We talked for hours, the sky outside my bedroom window changing from a late summer evening to the pitch black of night. I finally succumbed to sleep in the early hours, dawn on the horizon.
When I woke up hours later, Dathal was gone.
I smoothed a hand over the quilt, the mark on my wrist catching my eye. The skin almost looked bare.
The harsh light of day brought with it the realisation that I was going to have to talk to David again.
