Prince of Air and Darkness

by M. A. Grant

  I can’t look away from his expectant face. He’s poised, waiting for me to say something, do something. His wears his boredom as armor, but I know it’s an illusion.

  “Why did you help me?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Cut the crap, Roark. I talked to my mom and know about the harvest. You really expect me to believe anyone else could have done that?”

  A hint of smug amusement breaks through his ennui at my angry compliment. “Fine. I may have had a hand in it.”

  “But why? You had no reason to.”

  A muscle in his jaw flexes. “I promised I would help. When something else came up, I believed it was more important. That was a mistake. I...I didn’t understand how much the delay would cost your family.”

  “I tried to tell you,” I point out.

  “I was busy.”

  Busy. Such a polite euphemism. Frustrated by his sanitized version of events, I snap. “Don’t dance around it. You were torturing an innocent—”

  “Stop saying that!” His eyes flash. “You don’t know who he was. You don’t know what he’s done or why we chose him. You’re a human. You have no right to justify or condemn decisions you know nothing about.”

  “Then explain it to me.” I take a step back to give us both some breathing room and throw my arms wide. “Let me try to understand.” When he only glares at me in response, I drop my arms and try again. “Trust goes both ways, Roark. You can’t demand it from me if you don’t intend to practice it yourself.”

  He grits his teeth. “Fine. We’re about to go to war. A war unlike anything we’ve fought before, one that could destroy our people. My brother Lugh brought us a Seelie gardener who had fallen out of Titania’s favor. He said he knew about Sláine, so we interrogated him.” His powerful, lean frame locks up and he gives me a look of disdain I haven’t seen since our first years living together. “And before you ask, yes, I bloodied my hands to get the information we needed out of him. We have no hope in this war unless we get my brother back. I would gladly do it again if it meant ensuring our survival.”

  “Gladly? I don’t understand how you can enjoy inflicting that kind of pain.”

  Though he tries to contain it, a bitter laugh cuts its way out of him. “You think I enjoy it? I cause pain, not to kill or maim, but to break down the barriers that keep me from getting the information I need. It’s evil, Smith. It’s evil, but it keeps my people safe, so I do it.”

  And because of that, he considers himself irredeemable. Maybe what he’s done makes that true.

  I don’t realize I’m rubbing the scars on my chest until he steps forward and pulls my hand away. He looks at my shirt for a long moment before he lets me go.

  “It’s not the same.” He lifts his hand and reaches out, fingers trembling. I don’t move, afraid I’ll scare him into recreating the distance that had been between us. I may not agree with his choices, but he’s standing here with me, trying to explain. That’s more than I hoped for.

  Cool fingertips press against my chest. He traces the scars left by Mab with unerring precision, though the fabric doesn’t give them away. It doesn’t matter; he’s tracing them by memory.

  “You are not the same,” he clarifies. “She didn’t understand that and treated you like one of us. She chased your power, regardless of the cost. We’re... We aren’t as fragile. We can suffer more and survive.” His lips twist in a wry smile. “Even if we wish that weren’t true.”

  It’s his final offer. An opportunity for me to walk away from the full darkness of his role and leave him to his suffering. It would be easier. But I’ve never taken the easy path. I will never understand his duties and how he shoulders them, but I don’t have to because they aren’t my burdens to bear. And it doesn’t mean I can’t be there to help carry him.

  He shudders when I clasp his face with my hands. I thread my fingers into his hair, spread my thumbs down to caress his jaw, holding him lightly in place so I can let my head fall forward until my forehead rests against his.

  There’s so much I could say, but there’s no point overcomplicating things. I keep it simple instead, an apology I know he’ll understand. “I should have trusted you.”

  He sighs and the tension in his body eases, his hand dropping back to his side. “I never meant to hurt you.”

  A tickle at my waist. He reaches for the hem of my shirt and skates his fingers over my bare skin.

  Breathing hurts. Not breathing hurts more. Every part of me fixates on the way he rests his hands on my hips, fingers hooked in the band of my jeans, thumbs moving up and down along the muscle of my pelvis. He traces that V so many times I don’t think any other part of me exists.

  “My watch broke,” he murmurs. He flushes a little, hiding his face. “That’s why I couldn’t make it to you in time.”

  His grip tightens when he takes a shaky breath. “You said you wanted the truth. I had a watch, one made with iron, that isn’t affected by the magick of the sídhe. But it broke and I didn’t know what day it was and your parents had to tell me. That’s when I found out what had happened and knew I had to find you.”

  I press my thumb gently against his throat, drawing his gaze back to mine. “How did it break?”

  He stills, so I release him long enough to reach down and take his hands in mine. His eyes darken when I press his fingers to my lips.

  “In a fight,” he whispers, a faint shiver running through him.

  “You got into a fight while you were gone? With someone other than me?”

  It earns me the barest crook of a smile. “Jealous, Smith?”

  I nip the tip of a finger and bask in a rush of heat when he sucks in a breath. “Tell me about the fight.”

  “We thought we got good information from the interrogation and used it to plan a rescue of Sláine. It went badly.”

  All the fights I’ve seen Roark in rush back with a vengeance. They haven’t been easy. I’ve seen him injured before, but he’s never classified anything we’ve faced as anything more than an annoyance or a bother. To say this fight went badly...

  “How badly?”

  His head tilts at the wobble in my voice. He steals his hands back. I protest until he wraps his arms around my waist and steps in closer. All my complaints drift away.

  “It was an ambush. My brother wasn’t even there,” he explains, voice calm, arms tightening around me when I start shaking. “My shoulder was wounded, but it’s healing now.”

  “Show me?”

  He takes two backward steps so he has the space to tug his dress shirt from his slacks. He fiddles with the buttons of his sleeves and I retreat until the edge of the mattress presses against the back of my legs. I sit, not sure if my legs will hold me when I see the damage he took from the fight.

  He loosens his tie, sliding the silk free of the knot and tossing the slender strip of fabric toward the desk. My blood burns and I’m mesmerized by the sure movements of his fingers. Want surges through me, but I don’t know for what. He starts to undo the first button, the one near his collar, when I figure it out and ask, “Can I—?”

  He hesitates, but only for a second. The air between us thickens and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth because I want this so badly. Want him to let me help him, even if the task is minor.

  Roark reads me with remarkable ease. He steps between my knees and waits. My hands shake enough that I can barely manage, but each button gets easier. And when I’m done, the black shirt hangs open, exposing him from the pale column of his throat to his ribs to the lightly ridged plane of his stomach. I lean forward, still fascinated by the contrast of his undeniable masculinity with the smooth skin all faerie possess. His fingers brush through my hair and I press an openmouthed kiss at the bottom of his ribs before reaching up and sliding the shirt from his shoulders.

  The bandage is almost unnoticeable. If he hadn’t already admitted its presence, I would have been surprised when its edges catch against the calluses of my pa
lm. Afraid I’ll rip it free, I lighten my touch on that shoulder. I stand and ease the sleeve down his arm so he doesn’t have to roll his shoulders to get the shirt to drop to the floor. He doesn’t say a word when I brush past him to put the shirt on my desk, or to close the door.

  “It’s not that bad,” he promises when I return.

  I ignore him and inspect the site for myself, skimming my fingers around the edges of the bandage. He sucks in a breath, but doesn’t draw away. “It’s okay,” he murmurs.

  I gave him those same words our first night together. They echo around us now and I return his shy smile. No longer afraid of his rejection, I kiss my way around the bandage, wishing he hadn’t felt such pain.

  He hums when I trace his collarbone with my tongue. His skin is the sweetness of newly fallen snow and the gentle bite of herbs and something baser than that, a taste I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of.

  “Finn,” he whispers, a broken paean that lights up all those dark places inside me.

  This time when he leans forward to kiss me, it’s not with the wild abandon that sent the ley line into a blaze. It starts as a chaste press of his lips to mine, a whisper of a promise, and grows. He coaxes my mouth open and the first brush of his tongue over my lower lip is enough to make me moan. Of course, that makes him smile and do it again. I wrap a hand around the back of his neck and hang on as he takes me apart. I admire the way his neck cords when he loses control over his kisses, and brush my thumb slowly over his pulse point when I want him to slow down. He kisses me until we’re both breathless and shaking and the hole left behind by the ley line doesn’t feel so empty anymore.

  “I should go,” he whispers when he pulls away the last time.

  “Or you could stay.”

  When the hell did every nerve in my body decide to connect to my scalp? His nails scratch over the short hair near the nape of my neck and I melt against him. His breath rasps against my ear and I nuzzle against him, trying to memorize his scent before he walks away for good.

  I know he will. There’s too much happening, too many moving parts demanding his attention. He can’t choose me on the eve of a civil war. He only came here to say goodbye.

  “Stay,” I urge once more, wishing he would.

  And am dumbfounded when he says, “Okay.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Roark

  Finn didn’t expect me to agree, but once he understands, he’s on me with a hunger that steals my breath. I tug at the hem of his shirt and he draws it up, his mouth never leaving mine. I follow the climbing fabric, splaying my fingers over his stomach, his ribs, his pecs. Finn is thick with functional muscle. It shifts and plays under my touch and I force myself to stop kissing him so I can look at him again.

  He seems to understand. He relaxes under my perusal, content to drag his gaze over my body while he waits for me to make a decision. He asked me to stay; my agreement doesn’t change the fact that he expects a reversal.

  Like hell. This is my last night with him and I’ll steal every moment of it I can. Sláine’s argument lurks in the back of my mind and I’m sure tomorrow, when I’m faced with Mother’s disappointment, I’ll try to dissect how he impacted my rebellion. But I’ll have time to mull that over. I only have Finn for tonight.

  He reaches for me, hooking me by the belt, and drags me closer until we’re flush. Cooler without the ley line, but still so warm against my skin. Hard everywhere. He kisses me, lips tracing the line of my jaw, my neck. He licks and nibbles his way down my chest and what little air is left in my lungs whooshes out when he falls into a graceful kneel in front of me. He undoes the belt buckle, the slacks, and when they gap open, he looks up at me with so much tenderness that something inside me breaks.

  “This okay?” he asks.

  I nod, afraid to speak. He smiles and slides my slacks and boxers down. We both laugh when he has to pause to take off my shoes and socks before he finishes freeing me from the rest of my clothes. I hold out a hand, ready to help him to his feet, but he kisses my hip and glances up at me with a grin before he wraps his lips around my cock.

  I moan at the wet heat, the familiar, insistent mouth that destroyed my world time and again during those first short nights we spent together. He wraps an arm around the backs of my legs while his other hand moves to stroke in time with the bob of his head. I hesitate before brushing his hair back. Finn manages to bring out a tenderness in me that’s never existed with anyone else. He hums in approval at my touch and arches up greedily. It changes the angle and slides me deeper into his mouth. A lick of fire uncurls in my belly and my hips jut forward on instinct.

  “Stop,” I beg, trying to pull back. By the time he relents, he’s pushed me far enough that even the air makes me shiver, precome welling at my tip.

  “But you’re close,” he argues. He hasn’t moved off the floor. His erection juts up proudly against the fly of his jeans, and I want so badly to taste him.

  There’s something I want more, though.

  I skirt around him and lie down on my back on the bed. He doesn’t stand, but his shoulders and arms flex as he watches, as if he’s holding himself back from joining me. “Finn, are you going to stay there all night?” I jerk my head in invitation.

  I swear to the Goddess, his pupils dilate until there’s no blue left. He hisses out a breath and he’s off the floor, skinning off his clothes with remarkable speed. A moment later, I’m covered with his body, pressed deeper into the mattress when he rests his weight forward on his hands, which dig in right above my shoulders. This kiss is wild, teeth scraping my lip, and he trembles against me.

  His words are little more than a rough growl in my ear. “I’ve never done this before.”

  I grin and run a hand through his hair, mesmerized by the way it falls back in place and how easily he allows me this intimacy. “It’s not difficult to figure out. But if you’d prefer my back—”

  “No, Roark, I mean, I’ve never done this.” He pauses and his next words ring with an anxious vulnerability. “With anyone.”

  How many times can he possibly remake the world? How many times can I survive the impact of the blast before I finally accept this is what he does? That Finn breaks me down to my barest parts and uses the best of those to put me back together. I’m in awe of him. I’m humbled that this good man considers me worthy of his attention.

  “I love you, Finn.”

  He pulls back and I pray I haven’t said the wrong thing. The worry vanishes the moment he caresses my face. It’s not disgust or fear or confusion in his eyes. I don’t know what it is, but it makes my heart start beating again. I wonder if he’s going to say those same words. He can’t say them back to me, not now, not when I’m so close to giving him the freedom he deserves.

  He tilts his head, inspecting me. Then he grins back, an easy expression, but the line of it is different somehow. “This might be a disaster.”

  “Everything we do is a disaster. Yet here we are.”

  “Here we are,” he repeats, brushing my lips with a teasing kiss. “Give me a sec.”

  He crushes me a little when he reaches for the drawer near his bed. I don’t mind. I crave the physical contact. It’s reassuring to know he wants this as badly as I do. He doesn’t view this as winning a political advantage or having a ribald story to share.

  “Now what?” he asks when he returns to me, lube and condom in hand.

  After settling a pillow beneath my hips, I snag the bottle from his hand and pop the cap. His eyes burn brightly when I finger myself, taking care to smear extra lube around my rim. I never imagined doing this to myself could make me harder, but Finn’s growing flush and slightly parted lips and the ragged breaths he takes make everything else disappear. It’s only sensation and want and a desire to please him.

  He steals the lube back. His slick fingers fumble against mine, while his tongue slides into my mouth, his erection heavy as it bumps into my stomach. We rub and strain and with every touch, my carefully built wall
s crumble.

  “Now, Finn. Please, please, now—”

  He rolls on the condom and I coax him to thrust into my slick hand before guiding him lower. His hand shakes when he takes his dick from me. He stares down, so focused on what he’s doing that he doesn’t realize he’s gripping my leg tighter and tighter. I’ll bruise. I don’t mind. Any reminder of this time with him is precious.

  I breathe out when he presses into me and he pauses, worry tightening the corners of his eyes.

  “Stop?” he asks.

  “Don’t you dare.” I reach up and dig my fingers into the solid muscle of his ass, trying to drag him forward. He doesn’t yield. He watches me, waiting for me to relax before he nudges his hips forward.

  Again and again, he teases his way inside. It’s not enough. I need more. I try to cant my hips up, but he’s so damn stubborn. Fine. I wrap my legs around him and pull. That gets through to him. He bites his lower lip and follows my lead, seating himself fully with a slow slide.

  He’s a beautiful sight, held frozen, muscles flexed, sweating and breathing shallowly.

  He leans into my hand when I cup his cheek and ask, “Okay?”

  “Want to make it last,” he mumbles.

  “I don’t care,” I say. “We have all night.”

  He pushes and my skin sparks and he kisses me, moaning incoherently into my mouth. Together, in every sense of the word. The trail of delicate hair on his stomach brushes the head of my cock with each of his thrusts. I drown in sensation. I wrap my legs tighter around his back so I can memorize the way his muscles move; it changes the angle, and that changes everything. A small, needy thing inside of me explodes and destroys all shreds of my control.

  I don’t know what I’m saying but the room echoes with grunts and groans and a storm of I love you and he shudders and pulses inside me and the lightning I’ve held back splits me open... Goddess, I’m home, I’m finally home and Finn is with me and he says my name like a benediction and it’s enough. Will always be enough, because he’ll finally be safe.