“Fuck you.” I batted his arm.
He grabbed my wrists in a blink, pulling me closer to him, ire flashing over his face. “Be sure you are ready for that response before you say it again.”
Like an animal stunned by headlights, I locked in place. Frozen.
“You almost died in my arms for the stupid thing you did.” He sat up.
“I saved your life.”
His hand covered my mouth, and he inclined toward me. “I need you, Druid.” A beat of my heart pumped before he spoke again. “I need you to be at your best. To break the spell on the cauldron. I trust you to carry it. Stavros will come for me first. I need you to run. Get it and the other treasures as far from Washington as possible.”
Tears stung the back of my lids. He had given up wanting it for himself. He trusted me to do the exact thing I had originally planned. I shook my head, his hand still over my lips.
“Yes, Fionna. You must,” he said firmly. “Get your daughter and run to Budapest, anywhere in the Eastern bloc. They are the only places safe from Stavros’s control when he becomes King.”
I pulled away from Lars’s hand. “No. I’m not going to let you die. We will kill him. Together.”
“You don’t get it. The more magic I use on him, the more he grows in power. It’s the law. There is only one King, and he is the rightful ruler.” He ran a hand over his messy hair. “Don’t worry. I am too egotistical to just give in. I will fight. To the death. However, if things go badly, I want you to do this for me. Do not hesitate or look back. Just run.”
My throat braided together, and I struggled to swallow, staring down at the weaving in the blanket.
His fingers slid up my jaw, tipping my head up. “Please.”
My lids fluttered with moisture, my head slowly moving up and down.
“I will.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lars
The dawn hadn’t even broken over the hills when we set out. We made the car ride mostly in silence, my attention on the rearview mirror. I sped down the narrow roads in my hurry to get to Finnich Glen.
Fionna stared out the window. The rolling hills and jagged peaks were lost in a canvas of darkness, the side of her face only highlighted by the glow of the dashboard.
I was serious when I told her to take the cauldron and run. Before Stavros, my main concern had been to remain King. I’d been thinking of myself, of the monster I might turn into, picking power over any other option. Now that it could all be taken from me because of some ancient law, not even the satisfaction I wasn’t going insane helped ease my mind.
Now I wanted Fionna to do the precise thing she was probably going to do in the first place: hide the treasures from the Unseelie King.
A knot formed in my throat at the thought. Technically, I was still King, but I could feel the end coming with every breath. Soon all I worked for would be gone.
My first thought, even before my kingdom, was my family at home. Ember. The dark dwellers. As soon as I could get service again, I had to prepare my compound for what was to come.
To show his dominance, Stavros would probably take over my house. I would never allow Marguerite, Nik, or Alki to be his slaves. Nor my men. He would definitely want to use Ember; she was too powerful for him to ignore. They all needed to get to the Seelie castle and fight him with the Queen or follow Fionna east and go into exile.
“I’m hungry.” Fionna crossed her legs, shifting in her seat, her face still turned toward the window.
“Well, I’m sure there’s a McDonald’s around the next corner.” I scoffed, staring out at vast emptiness, no streetlamps or civilization nearby.
She turned and gave me a derisive glance. “Funny.”
“I seem to be lately.”
She snorted, shaking her head, her ponytail brushing the headrest.
“You know I need food and coffee.”
“Don’t I know it.” I grinned, recalling her crankiness in the morning.
“Just warning you.”
“We have to obtain a powerful treasure before the rising King gets it and destroys the world, but I’m sure even he would understand I need to feed you first.” I glanced in my rearview mirror again, checking for any following cars, any sense of magic. Nothing but blackness draped behind us, like it had since we departed. Not that I was letting my guard down for a moment. “He’ll wait.”
She tried to fight the smile wobbling on her mouth. “Fine.”
“Oh, no. I am genuinely more afraid of your stomach than him.” I hit the GPS, finding the nearest town.
“No, really. You’re right. We have to get there.” She nodded.
“It can wait ten minutes.” I zeroed in on a village twenty miles ahead. Hopefully a bakery or grocery would be open by then.
Fionna faced me again, analyzing me. I could feel her gaze creep over my skin.
“What?”
She didn’t respond, just kept staring at me. Finally I had to glance over. Her expression commanded my hands to strangle the steering wheel. Emotion swirled in her eyes. Confusion, sadness, and hunger. But not for food.
“What is it?” I asked again.
She broke away, wagging her head. “Nothing.”
I can’t say what possessed me, but with one eye on the empty road, I reached out for her face, cupped the back of her head, and turned her back to look at me.
She briefly closed her eyes and leaned into my hand.
“Everything is going to be all right.”
“No, it won’t.” Her pupils reflected the liquid developing behind her lashes. “And don’t lie to me or pretend it will be.”
“Just get your daughter and the treasures to the eastern Europe countries. I know you can survive. You are so strong and will do what you have to do to protect Piper.”
“That’s not what I was talking about.” Her voice was low and hoarse. Her meaning shot into me like a dart gun, returning my hand to the steering wheel.
“Fionna,” I rumbled. My heart thumped in my chest, wanting her to touch me, to tell me what she really meant. However, it was futile. Whatever the significance of her statement, it was impossible, especially now.
She groaned, twisting to stare out the glass. “Now I wish you would call me by my last name.”
“I wish things were different.” I was never one to shy away from a tense subject. “But it is not.”
“Do you?”
“What?”
“Wish things were different?”
“It’s not.” I pressed my lips together. “No point even considering the idea.”
“Yes, there is.” She pressed on. “Just for one moment say we weren’t on the road to get the last treasure, and you weren’t being robbed of your throne from your uncle…what would you want to be doing right now?”
“I am not playing this game.”
“Yes, you are.” Her eyebrows condensed, leaning closer to me. “For once let yourself pretend in the possibility of ‘what if.’”
“Why?” I snarled, my voice rising. “What good does it do anyone?”
“It gives people hope. A reason to believe there is more than tragedy and sadness in this world.”
“It is foolish to believe anything else.”
“Why?” She matched my tone. “What would happen if you gave in? You’re a man who thinks of all possibilities and outcomes. Why can’t hope be one of them?”
My teeth ground.
“Tell me!”
I growled, snapping the wheel, pulling the car to a stop on the gravel in the parking lot. I whipped toward her, leaned over the console, and grasped her by the back of the neck.
“Because I once let myself hope and believed the rumors were wrong. When I found out the only thing I loved in the world was taken from me by her sister all because of me, because of what we created together...” My skin tightened along my cheekbones, the demon railing behind its cage, though it didn’t want blood. “It broke me.” I swallowed, the nearness of her mouth almost compelling me to do the actu
al thing she asked. “I won’t do it again.”
My fingers slid up the back of her neck, producing a jilted inhale from her. “And what I want to do? I could drown myself in the what-ifs. In all the possibilities…” I inclined even closer, her breath skimming my lips.
“What do you want to do, Lars?” she whispered.
I wanted to kiss her. Fuck her. Hard. Fierce. I wanted nothing more than to pull her into the backseat and thrust into her till our bodies gave out.
“I want what I can’t have.” My nails dug into the back of her head, her chest rapidly moving up and down. “Something I should never have wanted because it is far too dangerous for me to possess.”
Her parted lips were far too tempting, and I felt my willpower breaking down, crumbling to dust before my eyes. My eyes dropped to her mouth, my own aching to tug on her bottom lip. My tongue wanted to explore her mouth, her body.
“You’re talking about the frickin’ cauldron, aren’t you?” Her jaw locked, her head turning away from me, a wall building back up between us. “Figures.” She snorted, grabbing the door handle and slipped out of the car, marching toward the bakery where I parked, her ass wiggling with determination to get away from me.
I let out a ragged breath, almost grateful she had read my statement that way. I was about to cross the line, not even caring about the consequences.
“No, Druid. I was most certainly not talking about the cauldron,” I said to myself, getting out of the car.
The treasures I could handle. I wasn’t afraid of much, if anything. What I felt for the pint-size Druid? She terrified me.
I was trying to fight her, fight whatever I was feeling. But the fence I was walking on was crumbling before and behind me.
One more shove from her and I would fall.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Fionna
I stuffed the egg croissant in my mouth, downing it with a gulp of coffee. I kept my gaze pointed on the stormy morning eclipsing the landscape. Gray skies blocked all sunrays from touching the earth. The clouds grew darker and angrier as bolts of lightning danced across the sky before us.
Just like my mood.
At first I was pissed at him, but soon it turned to humiliation. I wasn’t a what-if type of person. I’d let those pipe dreams fade with my youth. But my need to hear him say a possibility existed, that there was hope, backfired in my face. How hard was it to say he wanted me? The phrase crossed my brain, making me cringe.
If I had left it as he asked, I’d be able to turn my face his way every once in a while. Now the dim, drizzly day was the most interesting thing in the world. I ate my breakfast without even tasting it, which irritated me more. I was just a frickin’ happy ray of sunshine.
Lars sighed again, his annoyance ramming up against mine. The tension in the vehicle divided the car into two different compartments, except I sensed every breath, every twitch of his muscles. The deep masculine scent of him skulked over the coffee aura, slinking up my nose and tormenting me.
Damn, he smelled good. The scent was hard to describe: creamy, rich, dark, a little sweet, and sexy. It was multilayered and complex. Similar to him. And it drew me to him like sheep to grass. That might not seem fierce, but it is if you were the pasture. Lars was lush green grass to me right now.
Why weren’t we there yet? Two hours felt like centuries. The tip of my fingers tapped impatiently on the top of my empty coffee container. From my peripheral, I watched Lars’s shoulders hunch up to his ears. I grinned smugly out the side window.
“Stop.”
I ignored him, tapping louder.
“Stop. It.”
“Stop what?” With my other hand, I started cracking my knuckles, popping each finger. Yes, I was taunting him, but I didn’t care.
“Fionna, I swear.” He curved the car into a small, empty unmarked lot next to a three-way intersection. We were out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but fields and hedges. Only one house sat directly on the corner. This early, the area was empty and still.
“What?” I cracked my thumb, the pop echoing off the metal, and finally rotated my head to him. “What will you do, Lars?”
He hit the brakes, gravel flying everywhere as he stopped the car. He barely turned off the engine before he jumped out of the car.
I tracked him in the rearview mirror, his back curled forward with fury. It should have scared me but it didn’t. His temper worked on me like a magnet. Similar to a ram, I grew excited to strike against him. Challenge him.
He yanked on my door, flinging it open, the door groaning with the exertion. He grabbed my arm, ripped the empty cup from my hand and chucked it on the car floor. He dragged me out of the Rover, shoving me up against the side, stealing air from my lungs.
“When I say stop, you stop,” he ordered, his green eyes burning into me. I knew we were no longer talking about the coffee cup or cracking my knuckles.
“No.” I lifted my chin.
A growl came from him. “Do not push me, Druid.”
“Why, because I won’t do as you say?” I shot back. “Sorry, Your Highness, but you don’t always get your way. I am no one’s subordinate.” I shoved at his chest. His olive complexion faded. “For your whole life everyone has done what you say, met every demand. Do you even know what it is to be challenged? To not get your way?”
“Yes.” He gripped my arms tighter, his presence over me growing more intense.
“When was that? When you were an infant?”
“Try right now.”
“And you hate it.” I nudged him, muttering a spell that made him slip over the gravel a few feet. I walked toward him, my shoulders rolled defensively. I sensed his contained anger slipping. Most people would stop, back off. I wasn’t most people. “And love it.”
“That is the problem.” He lowered his head, prowling back for me, a slight pressure circling my throat, pushing my back into a field gate, speeding up my pulse. Though I could easily break it, I didn’t.
Lightning cracked across the sky as though the weather felt our intensity, igniting the air with electricity.
“And what problem is that?” Drops of rain hit my head, slipping down my neck.
Lars stomped up to me, both of his hands gripping my face roughly. “Because every time you defy me,” he seethed. “I want to fuck you instead of kill you.”
My airways shut down, and my chest faltered under the rush of heat cascading down my body, especially between my thighs.
We stared at each other, his eyes flickering a deep green, as though he was barely holding on to the man. My gaze dropped down, taking in the way the rain plastered his shirt to his torso, defining every ripped ab underneath the cotton. My eyes kept going down. Shite. His jeans could barely hold him in. His excitement only sent mine soaring, my cheeks flushing with heat.
At my reaction, the force around my neck dropped away, but his fingers dug into my scalp, igniting fire down my spine like a line of burning hot wax. Desire
circled us in thick syrup, sticking to every inch of my skin and weighing down my lungs.
I knew what this was going to be. Merely sex. It had been so long. I may have been fine alone and being single, but I missed sex. I longed to lose myself and feel the desire to feel ecstasy along every nerve. Hopefully this would end whatever I was feeling. Get him out of my system. It worked for most of the guys before.
But this is a demon king. Stop now! My conscience screamed at me. He was my enemy in every way, but the wrongness of us only fueled my need to feel him.
“For once you are going to submit to me,” he growled in my ear. I wanted to contest his statement, battling the notion I would ever submit to a fae, but when he yanked my head back with one hand, his other pulling at my jean buttons, the words dwindled away.
Open to any car passing by, he unzipped my jeans, letting his fingers skim down my stomach. “Get the fuck out of my system, Druid.” He gritted his teeth in anger as he rubbed his hand over the fabric of my knickers.
> “Same, demon,” I seethed back, pushing into his hand; the need for him to touch me deeper clouded any thoughts. His eyes flashed as his hands grabbed my hips. He turned me around to face the fence. Lars placed my hands on the slippery rail of the metal fence and roughly tugged my trousers over my hips.
Rain poured down, slicking our clothes and hair with shivering cold, the precipitation only slightly easing the heat building inside. Cars rumbled in the far distance, heading down the lane. Inhabitants of the house across the street could look out their window and see us.
I only shivered in anticipation. Who would have thought I’d get an adrenaline rush from being watched or caught?
My breath was ragged as I curled my hands around the fence, arching my back. Rain and cold air slithered over my bare skin, feeling like more hands wanting to pleasure me. His fingers plunged into me, encouraging my body to respond. I gasped as he moved quicker, going deeper.
He made a deep noise as another shot of lightning cracked over us, the hairs on my arms standing up. The way he stroked me, I realized he had complete control of my body. I would let him dominate me, take what he wanted. Over and over again.
I heard his zipper, then I felt him drag himself along me. I cried out, swear words ripping through my teeth, one right after the other. The vehicles were progressing closer, the rain plummeting down on us, whipping my hair. He rolled my ponytail into his fist.
He bit at my ear, causing me to whimper. “Only once.”
I nodded. He could have said anything and I would have agreed. Druids didn’t go long without sex, but I had conditioned myself and had gotten used to denying my sexual need. Not many men I’d met had really tempted me.
Until now. Until him.
“Fuck me now,” I demanded. “Put me in my place, King.”
His chest vibrated, yanking my head back. He removed his fingers, the emptiness only brief, before I felt the tip of him. I clawed the chipped paint on the fence, pushing back into him. Then he thrust into me, forcing a loud cry from my lungs. Electricity zapped up my spine, dotting my vision and sparking along my skin.
The Fall Of The King (Lightness Saga Book 3) Page 22