I will. And I do.
As soon as I led him up here, I insisted he remove the glamour. I love his wild parts, the attributes that remind me that it’s an entirely different species of man who’s splitting me apart and making me scream. When he first entered me tonight, inch by inch in a way that no matter how wet I am is never not painful, I looked to his pointed ears, ran a fingertip over his fang, and I came instantly.
He laughed, tweaking my nipple to extend the aftershocks, and crooned, “Insatiable.”
It doesn’t bruise when he says it. Not like when men have said it to me before. Or when I’ve thought it about myself. Lachlan makes me feel as though my appetites for food, for sex, forlife, are perfectly normal. That I should have whatever I want, whenever I want. Like I could drink the world, and he’d be right beside me to refill my cup.
An enveloping, radiant heat sweeps through me that has nothing to do with the pleasure the beautiful knight moving beneath me has wrought and has more to do with?—
“The Knight Departs!” I scream.
“What was that?” Lachlan, buried to the hilt, stills my hips, chuckling softly. “Did I break you? Is there too much pleasure flooding your brain?”
“No, no!” I smack my palm against his rock-hard pectoral, a different kind of excitement coursing through me. “The painting! In the south gallery at Stillwater. I can’t believe I never … Always knew there was a reason I was … Maybe there’s some kind of …”
Lachlan sits up, heavy-lidded and grinning, but does not yet pull out. “Charlotte.” It’s soft, fond, maybe a touch exasperated.He brushes my hair back from my face and cups my cheeks. “What are you babbling about, little queen?”
I take a deep breath, inadvertently tightening my core, and Lachlan sinks a groan of pleasure against my collarbone. “You’re killing me, sweetheart.”
“The old sketchbook I was looking through earlier. The ring reacted to it. And there were iterations of the same pose over and over again. I knew they looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out what they were until just now. They’re from a painting calledThe Knight Departs. I think … I think my Granny Maggie was the artist. And I think it might be an ode to her time in the Otherworld with Sabre. Maybe there’s a clue about where she hid the fragment. We need to go there. Right now.”
“Right now?” His smile is incredulous. “May I finish first?”
I glance down between us, marveling at the way we fit together. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world for a human woman and a faerie man to be fused, one being, one body.
I lean in and bite his jaw. “Allow me, Sir Cathal.”
He wraps his arms around me, fingers splayed on my ribs, and lets me control the pace. I curl my hands around his nape, fisting his hair as leverage while I drag myself up and down his cock. Our faces are so close I can see every muscle twitch, feel every hitched breath upon my lips.
It’s a blissful eternity and yet no time at all before he’s the one throwing his head back and screamingmyname—“Charlotte.Charlotte. CHARLOTTE!”—into the cozy silence of the cottage.
We clean ourselves up, get dressed, then use the obscura compass to return to Stillwater Hall.
Where this entire topsy-turvy Season started.
Chapter
Forty-Six
Lachlan and I argue the moment our feet touch the silvered grass in the woods behind my aunt and uncle’s estate.
I want to break into the manor immediately, search the painting for clues, give us as much time as possible to find the Bannrhorn fragment.
Lachlan believes it would be more prudent to wait until morning, when we can approach the household as visitors, not burglars. What if someone calls the constable?
But, I counter, if this was Lachlan’s plan the whole time, why had we not just stayed up at the cottage? I can think of a hundred more creative ways to test the durability of my old bed.
He whisper-shouts that I am like a dog with a bone and he didn’t think he was going to be able to talk me out of it. He looks angry, but also, dare I say, a little smitten. Like maybe he, too, is questioning how quickly we need to return to a world where our fates are destined to diverge.
Something flutters behind my ribs, and I relent.
Anyway, he isn’t entirely wrong. If one of the staff were to come upon us in the gallery, I shudder to think what Lachlan might be forced to do to keep them quiet.
Plus, I need some time to think up a story. In the excitement over my epiphany, I’d quite forgotten that as far as the Fitzroys are concerned, I’ve been gone for two years. To break into the main house raving about horned faeries and ancient relics and wild hunts with a strange, tall man by my side might get me thrown into an asylum. And that would have a very adverse effect upon our timeline.
Instead, we stay at an inn in North Umberton. I had no idea how tired I truly was, because as soon as my adrenaline wears off, I nearly fall asleep at the counter while Lachlan pays for a room with the false coin Sabre provided us.
The next morning, we walk through the market stalls in search of breakfast before we make our way to Stillwater. Lachlan purchases me a bag of late-season cherries and a minced meat hand pie.
