I pulled my hand off of him. My eyes warned him the touching privileges weren’t reciprocated.
He didn’t get mad. He smirked at me, a knowing look on his face that instantly made me feel hot and bothered in a way I didn’t want.
“A hissing little cat,” Loren said. “You are right to be mad, but I still would have done it and I won’t let my duty interfere with your taming.” He stepped around me, chuckling as my shoulders tightened up, unhappy that he was at my back. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of turning around. “You will come to me when you are ready, and I will have you on your knees, kitten.”
These arrogant Fae took without asking and then Loren expected me to beg? My libido wasn’t going to bring me to my knees. Falin had told me the lust went both ways and I had barely done any teasing of my Marks yet. If I fanned the flames of their desire for me, it wouldn’t be me doing all the begging.
I kept my back to Loren, not giving him the satisfaction of turning around and seeing my reaction to his taunt. “Do you really think a hard cock is going to turn my brain into an accessory?” I said, keeping my tone indifferent.
Loren walked back around my other side and stood in front of me. Point won for me. His velvety browns had heated into dark chocolate and I was left with no doubt that he was picturing me kneeling and naked.
I smiled a little of my satisfaction.
“Kitten, you’re looking at this all wrong,” he said, still smiling faintly at me. “Curiosity will be your undoing. Your other Marks are going to chase you around, trying to seduce you, but not me. I’ll wait for when you get tired of running and you are ready to play. Take your time. Think about what you want. I’m here for your pleasure.”
He cupped a now full arousal in front of me, outlining impressive inches as he pulled the material of his leathers tighter against the cock he was using to tease me. Of course, I looked. All the Fae males I had been with intimately were sizeable. Loren was no different.
Except he wanted me to come to him, crawl on my knees and ask to be ravished. What made Loren so confident?
“You’re right. I have six Marks already,” I said and nothing else, but my eyes trailed over the rest of him.
Geezus, he was bear big everywhere. Dain was the only one that came close to him in overall muscular build, but Loren was a little less sculpted, more bulk and weight that would feel protective or dominating, depending on his mood. I very much wanted to be under him to learn how it felt to be surrounded by that power, big arms wrapped around me.
“I have a reputation,” Loren reminded me as I checked him out.
I looked back up at his face and rolled my eyes. “Whatever, Don Juan.”
Loren without a shirt would be centrefold ripped, abdominals like big, smooth rocks and pectorals that were slabs of hard earned perfection. I could lie back and enjoy the view while he thrust into my body, slow and lazy like the honeybear I named him as he fucked me all afternoon.
“Kitten, you aren’t going to remember the names of any other lovers when I’m done,” he teased.
I tried to glower at him. Angry, I was supposed to be mad. He was being stupid. Why was he so damn hot?
“I don’t even like you,” I lied.
“Kheelan knows you completed the Claim,” Loren said, suddenly serious again.
“Really? And I didn’t even get a thank you card,” I snarked to hide my embarrassment. I didn’t want to discuss how I had completed the Claim to keep Kheelan safe. This wasn’t a safe topic around Loren.
“We need to head back to your brothers before they come looking for you,” Loren said, suddenly changing the subject. He turned and started walking back towards the main path.
I sighed and followed, refusing his hand to step over a log. My libido was disappointed. I was horny. And Loren had been completely clueless. If he had kissed me again a few moments ago, I would have fallen easily into his arms.
“Kheelan will be spelling your brothers asleep to talk to you tonight,” Loren informed me as I pushed past him. I needed some exertion to work off my unspent lust.
“Nobody is using magic on my brothers,” I retorted.
“It’s safer for them,” Loren explained. “What would Jackson have done if he saw me ripping your glamour out of your chest? The magic I used would have flayed a human if he had taken one step in our circle.”
“Is Kheelan planning on attacking me as well?” I bitterly queried, dodging some low lying branches and tripping on a root.
Strong hands caught me. I fought a moan. Now was not the time.
“I only followed orders. Kheelan can’t harm you with the Claim activated. He’s your protector, kitten.”
I shivered as Loren’s cool magic surrounded me again as he pulled me up. Did he have any idea how on edge I was with arousal?
“Let go,” I demanded.
Loren released me.
“Kheelan said you can lie. If trading one captor for another is Kheelan’s idea of protecting me, then I’m better off on my own. He can give me back my original disguise and take back this one.”
“Were you really so much better off in a cage?” Loren said. “You tend to find the most efficient ways to be captured. I didn’t feel your presence in Faerie more than a few seconds before you were knocked out.”
He felt the moment I entered Faerie? I touched my neck, hesitantly, wondering if all of my Marks could connect to me. No, there was only one Fae I really wanted to know if he could trace me and I wasn’t going to ask Loren.
“I had already freed myself and my brothers from the wagon prison when you arrived, and I did that without Kheelan. Our escape was going swimmingly until some assholes started shooting arrows at Fae like fish in a barrel. I thought you had better aim but one nearly got my brother in the butt.”
“We weren’t the only ones armed, kitten.”
“Just admit it wasn’t a rescue,” I insisted, finally ducking around another tree branch and coming out to a crude path.
“You might not have needed rescue,” Loren actually admitted. I turned around and looked at him in disbelief. The Fae warrior was saying the helpless, female Halfling could take care of herself? “You needed saving from yourself,” he added, walking on and taking over the lead.
I pivoted with a little growl. That had been a total set up.
“Kitten, your purr is getting so much better. We’ll have to work on stroking next. Where do you like to be pet?”
“I’ll settle for a pat on the head while the wise Fae males make all the decisions for me,” I muttered.
There was a little hitch to Loren’s gait that said my blow had landed.
“Tonight,” he said. “Kheelan has a lot to say. You’re going to be wishing all you got was that pat on the head.”
“Maybe, I don’t want to hear what Kheelan has to say. What about you? Why did you steal my glamour?”
I didn’t think he would answer, or if anything else, fob me off with another Fae talkaround. When he finally spoke, it was quiet and thoughtful and drew all of my focus. My feet followed each of his steps, one foot marching after the other as I followed him as if attached by an invisible chain and listened.
“You are blessed. Whether by luck or hard work, your life is envious. There was laughter and love and belonging when I found you at your home. You had your brothers to worry over you alone in the woods and your mother to care about your fears. Your home is built on family. There was plenty of food and comforts. Nothing could harm you with your Marks close by and watching. Why you would ever throw it all away to endanger yourself and your human brothers to come here, I dare not ask. As much as you complain that I don’t explain things, you too, have held back. I can only presume that there is something in Faerie worth risking all your happiness, and all I can offer is to fulfill my promise as one of your Marks to protect you. If you want me to tell you why I stripped you of that difficult glamour, then you are asking me to show you all the monsters lurking in the corners, waiting to eat a sweet, little H
alfling.”
He had thrown my words back at me in the end. I hated the dark and his speech revealed that he had probably learned about my fear while eavesdropping on my conversation with my mother and the twins after I left him behind in the woods. He must have been glamoured, something like Eloden tended to do to accompany me to work without detection at the lab. Loren had to be competent with glamour if Kheelan tasked him to redo it for me.
I was stuck in Faerie, a court of nightmares from my experiences so far, and I had myself to blame. Loren made sure I would survive it, but now I couldn’t leave without Kheelan’s help to change my glamour back, a double-edged sword I resented. It cut my enemies as well as myself.
“You think my life is perfect?” I finally said.
“Blessed. Perfection isn’t for living,” he replied.
Chapter 9:
Silence reigned for a couple minutes after Loren declared my life blessed. I was bitter enough that I needed time to process his perspective. I supposed that from the outside my life did look envious, especially to a Fae stuck with a crazy king and a friend as rough around the edges as Kheelan. Comparing who’s life had been shittiest wasn’t a game either of us wanted to win.
Loren needed his eyes opened to my imperfect life. Living could be its own torture.
“My mother is dying,” I said to break the silence, letting bitter anger bleed through my voice. Confession was difficult. Would Loren care or had he seen enough dying in his career as a healer to be apathetic?
“Ah,” he simply replied. There was a world of understanding in that tone, showing me I had misjudged him.
I had to ask. After coming all this way seeking my father for answers, I had someone else that might know a simple cure.
“Can you heal her?” I said.
Although I had told myself I wasn’t going to incur more debts to the Fae, curing my mother was the big exception. This was one favour I would gladly repay a hundred times over.
“I don’t know,” he answered me. It was the first time I heard his confidence rattled. “My magic is strongest in Faerie and even then, most glamors fade with the sun.”
Disappointment brought the tears to my eyes that I hadn’t let myself cry earlier.
“I would still try if you wish it,” he said.
I reached out and grabbed a hold of his leather jerkin. He stopped.
“Yes,” I said, desperately hoping. “Loren, I came here to find my father to ask him if there was anything he could do for my mother. I figured if he had loved her once-”
“No,” Loren interrupted, sounding horrified. “You came here seeking your sire? Kheelan will forbid it.”
Loren had offered to help my mother. I tried to be polite. “Kheelan should understand daddy issues. I’ll explain-”
“No,” Loren interrupted again, firmer. “Dark Elves are dangerous.”
I scoffed, stumbling after Loren as he started forward and I was tugged by my grip on his jerkin. “Light Fae are too bright. Dark Fae are too black. Wouldn’t Dark Elves be just right?” I joked, thinking of porridge and Goldilocks.
“What are you talking about?” Loren asked, clearly confused. I quickly told him about the fabled just right porridge.
“This isn’t some children’s tale and I’m not some lazy bear fattened on porridge and sleeping on a soft bed,” Loren said, disparaging my comparison.
“I thought you were more Winnie the Pooh,” I lied, figuring if he didn’t know Goldilocks then this insult wouldn’t be obvious, either, as long as I didn’t explain. That was a bear that knew how to get into trouble.
“Don’t you know any famous grizzlies in your stories?” Loren complained. I guess Winnie’s name was childish.
“I would call you Eeyore, but Kheelan deserves it more,” I replied. Tigger was mine because this kitten thing was getting old.
“If we’re going to stick to your porridge analogy, then it would be better said that Light Fae kill Dark Fae and Dark Fae kill Light Fae and Dark Elves kill everyone,” Loren said.
I stumbled over nothing but my own shock at that bloodthirsty statement. Was he saying my father was evil? I would have thought that label would be reserved for the monstrous Dark Fae. The way he put it, the Dark and Light Fae seemed to be on even ground. Weren’t Dark Elves really just another type of Dark Fae anyway?
“Well, I haven’t killed anyone,” I retorted, then ran smack into Loren’s back, squashing my nose. “Ouch, fu-”
“There are two dozen Light Fae that would still be breathing if it wasn’t for you entering Faerie,” Kheelan said from in front of us.
The water I had drank earlier felt like a frozen boulder in my stomach. Kheelan was still a jerk and a few weeks hadn’t changed that part of his personality. The Light Fae had tried to enslave me, which was only a step above the kidnapping and threatening to cut my head off in the morning that happened last time.
“Perhaps, your friends shouldn’t eat so much porridge so they could run faster,” I said to Kheelan’s confusion and Loren’s snort of laughter.
“Evie-baby,” Matthew said, reaching behind Loren to grab my wrist by my hoodie sleeve and tug me into his arms. I got picked up before I could protest and for once, I shut up and hugged Matthew back quietly. Jackson’s solid warmth cradled me from behind as he joined the hug and sandwiched me.
“No more flying tricks,” Jackson whispered into my ear. I could hear his guilt.
I leaned my head back into him. “Nobody could have predicted Thor was a grumpy fairy,” I whispered back.
Blue eyes iced over as they flicked between the twins and me.
“We have food. You must be starving since you’ve spent most of the last three days unconscious,” Matthew said.
“What?” I said in disbelief. “Three days?”
“You collapsed outside of the portal and the first guy we asked for help slapped us in cuffs,” Jackson said.
He grabbed me from Matthew and carried me princess-style to the small fire they had lit, sitting down on a log with me on his lap. I didn’t try to escape, used to Jackson’s cuddles, especially if he was anxious about something.
Matthew took a seat beside him, picking up my feet and putting them in his lap. He brushed off his hands and then grabbed something wrapped in a cloth and handed it to me. “It’s a flatbread,” he said.
I took it, grateful that the twins had come along, although it was mixed with worry. Being with my Marks was another type of imprisonment as much as the Light Fae enslavement from which they had saved me. My hope was that Kheelan and Loren had no use for me here and would gladly let us go free if we promised to head home. My other Marks would not be so easy to persuade, but that was a problem I would deal with if they tracked me down. I just had to secure Loren’s promise to come back for my mother.
I was going to keep on running.
Loren and Kheelan were still where we left them standing, having a heated conversation in Fae. I guess Kheelan really was upset that we had taken so long. My brothers seemed fine with it, however, so I told myself I didn’t care. The more bother we were for them, then the more likely they were to try to get rid of us. Freedom might be a few good insults away.
Matthew handed me a cup with steaming tea to rinse down the flatbread. I sipped gratefully. The bread tasted a bit like an arrowroot cookie, but thicker. Tea was a perfect accompaniment. I quickly ate and drank, feeling my hunger growling.
“Did the big guy do anything to you?” Jackson asked once I stopped tearing into the flatbread so ravenously. He kept his voice down.
Didn’t sound like Jackson found out I had lied about knowing Loren yet.
“Nope, I’m fine,” I lied. “We stopped to work on my glamour so it will be easier to travel without being subject to random kidnappings and arrest. I guess the Dark Elf thing isn’t tolerated on this side of Faerie.”
“Dain is Dark Fae,” Matthew pointed out.
“Dain isn’t here,” I said, instead of trying to explain what Loren had told m
e about Dark Elves being everyone’s enemy. I stuffed the rest of the flatbread into my mouth so I was too full to talk, dusting off my hands of the crumbs in the cloth.
“Won’t Dain track you down like those two?” Jackson asked.
The twins were only asking what I had been thinking. Where was Dain? It had been three days I was missing and both Eloden and Falin had been sent after me before I left for Faerie. Surely, they would have guessed or thought to check here for me.
“I don’t know,” I honestly answered. “I didn’t tell any of them.”
“We did,” Matthew and Jackson answered together, and I remembered the texting.
“I told you that we’re taking some time apart,” I said.
Leaving Dain full of arrows and telling him goodbye had been a divorce. The kids weren’t ready to hear that mommy and daddy weren’t getting back together. Would Dain even care what happened to me?
“You need to tell us about Dain,” Jackson said.
I knew he was right, but now really wasn’t the time. “Later,” I promised.
Unlike the Fae, I meant to keep my word and explain things. My brothers deserved to know what was going on if they were going to be helping me.
Matthew leaned over so the three of us were in a close tete-a-tete. “Then at least answer this question. Do you trust these guys?”
I didn’t even want to say it out loud in case they had super Fae hearing. Orin could read my very mind, but I hoped he was the only one with that power. I shook my head and watched Matthew’s eyes darken. Jackson’s grip on me tightened.
“Tonight,” Jackson whispered.
I shook my head again. There was no way after what Loren told me. Kheelan and I were going to have a talk tonight and I would force Kheelan to fix my glamour so the twins and I could go our separate ways, although I would keep that part to myself.
Falling Into Faerie After Page 14