“I slept so well.” She let go of his hand and stretched out like a cat. Her back arched off the bed, the curves of her body outlined by the faint golden light on her skin. When she lay back down she turned towards him and gave him a wicked smile that had dangerous effects below his waist.
Tease.
He grinned back and leaned over her, bringing his lips almost to hers. He heard her breath catch as she waited for the kiss, but instead of letting their lips touch he slid a hand over her stomach and around her waist. Kiernan smiled down at her as he ran his fingers over her skin, resting his hand on the delicate bend of her waist.
“Last night was more than good. A better word might be… incredible.” He pulled her hips sharply towards him and a small gasp escaped her. He felt the movement of air against his lips, but other than his hand their bodies weren’t quite touching. It was making her start to fidget, and he loved the desperate little movements she made to get closer.
She squirmed and shifted forward, trying to kiss him, but he evaded her and smiled while shaking his head slowly. Two could play at the teasing game, and her frustrated little growl gave him a huge sense of satisfaction. Her blue eyes caught his and she pushed her hands into his hair, her nails trailing across his scalp, and dammit, it almost made him crack.
Her touch sent chills down his back, and made heat rise in his stomach. He wanted to make this linger, to drag out each of these precious little touches with the only person he’d been able to be himself around in two thousand years. Looking down the narrow gap between them, his eyes trailed down her body. Fae’s breathing was picking up, her pulse jumping at her throat, and he tilted his head against her touch. Then her fingertips moved to the back of his neck, and she pulled his mouth to hers, and he caved. Their lips touched first, then her chest met his, and then their legs were intertwined as he let his body press hers into the bed.
If he’d thought for even a moment that last night had been a one-time event, he had been wrong.
“Kiernan…” Fae breathed his name against his ear and he could feel his hold on his control slipping. His hand was at her hip and his fingertips were toying at the edge of her pants, their breaths were coming in gasps again and he wanted her. By the gods, he wanted her so much that his cock ached, but he wanted – he needed – her to know what having her in his bed meant to him. He needed her to know that he knew how precious it was that she let him have his hand on her skin, and how lucky he was for her to want it there.
He felt a growl rumble in his chest and then he pushed himself up and off her. The glow in her skin had faded, but she still looked unreal lying in his bed.
“You’re making it very difficult to be a gentleman right now,” he grumbled.
She trailed one hand down his stomach, and her fingertips dipped under the waistband of his pants. Every inch of him wanted to feel her hand wrap around the steel of his cock. He wanted to push her thighs apart and drive himself inside her, hear those little gasps and murmurs that she’d made the night before. He wanted to drown in those little sounds, but he couldn’t, not yet. Supporting himself on one arm he took her hand away from his pants like he had the night before, and brought it to his lips to kiss her knuckles.
“Kiernan… It’s okay. I swear.” The edge of frustration in her voice made him groan.
If he admitted to her just how much he wanted her he knew there wouldn’t be any more waiting, there’d be no patience, no reason. They’d be naked in an instant and fucking a moment later, and it would be amazing, but it wouldn’t be right. Kiernan let go of her hand and sat up next to her, and she kicked her legs in frustration with a little tantrum. He stifled the smile that almost took over his mouth and looked up at the ceiling, leaning his head back against the headboard as he tried to convince his cock to give up. Fae whined and looked over at him. “Why on earth are you fighting me on this?”
Because I’m a complete fucking idiot, he thought as he stared at her stretched out on his bed. He trained his eyes back on the ceiling and forced a deep breath.
“Because I just - I don’t even know how - why this happened, Fae. I don’t know what I could have possibly done to deserve –” he waved his hand in the air and then at her, “ – this.” He gritted his teeth and focused on bringing his pulse down and trying to regain some control over his body.
His brain knew this was right, but his body really disagreed with him. Fae huffed and pushed herself up, crossing her legs to sit next to him. He wanted to go into one of his closets, find his coat, and make her wear that, because having her next to him in nothing but a sports bra and those yoga pants wasn’t helping him calm down. It was just making his balls ache.
“Fine. You really want to know?” Fae had tried to run her hands through her hair and found it in knots, so she started working on them with her fingers as she shot him an exasperated look.
“Yes. I do.” Kiernan locked eyes with her to keep his gaze from wandering south, and she tilted her head and sighed to herself before she spoke.
“You said you watched me in your observation glass, because of who I am, right?” Fae asked, and he nodded. “Well, same thing, that’s why I wanted to kiss you.”
“Because I watched you?” Kiernan knew he looked confused, and she just rolled her eyes.
“No, idiot. It’s because of who you are. At least, who you’ve proven yourself to be these last few weeks.” Fae mumbled the words while she messed with her hair, but he wasn’t letting her off that easy.
“You made me explain myself, it’s your turn, Glowworm.” Kiernan grinned at her and she smiled a little before she started talking.
Fae tore through a few more knots in her hair, biting her lower lip for a minute while she had some kind of internal debate about what to say. He wanted to push her, to press her for an answer, but that would just make her refuse to tell him because she was feisty, and defiant, and wouldn’t do a damn thing if she didn’t have to.
Hadn’t he said he loved her defiance?
Maybe he really was an idiot, because now was a terrible time for her to dig her heels in when he was so close to learning what on earth had made her kiss him.
“It’s a lot of things, Kiernan.” Her voice was quiet, and he froze against the headboard, not wanting to stop whatever she was about to say. A blush crept across her cheeks, and then she started talking again, “You’re just so – so relaxed. You just accept me, and all my stuff, and somehow you make me feel normal. I have never, ever felt normal around anyone. There’s always this huge space between me and them, this gap that I can’t cross for anything… and that’s not there with you. You know exactly who I am, my whole history. All of it. But you don’t treat me any differently.” She had started to braid her hair, having given up on unknotting it, and she stared at the ends of her hair instead of him.
“I don’t think I can explain to you how incredible that is, how incredible that feels. To be treated like a person instead of a freak, or a thing that can be used and bartered and sold.” Her shoulders caved forward while she spoke. It all made her look so small, and it reminded him of how young she’d been when Eltera froze her life.
“I wouldn’t -” Kiernan started to explain that he’d never hurt her, or let someone take her, or let her be sold, but she shook her head and he stopped.
“I thought you were a liar. That first day, the day you took me out of the snow, I was convinced you were a liar. It didn’t matter that you held back, that you didn’t pick up a weapon when you had the chance, that you didn’t take advantage when you had me on the ground. You’re Laochra, and that meant you were a liar.” He tried to suppress the flinch that her words caused, but it was difficult because it hurt to hear those words from her lips. “When you apologized, when you swore never to hurt me again, when you touched those little bruises on my wrists with so much shame – I thought it was an excellent act. I kept waiting for you to change, to spring some trap on me when my guard was down.”
“You were waiting on the darkness to s
how itself again.” Kiernan said what she was obviously dancing around, and it felt like a knife to the gut to think of the fear she’d felt just being around him. He wanted to leave, to disappear, and let her feel safe again. He was about to stand up, fighting the ache in his chest, when she looked up and her blue eyes stopped him.
“I was… for a bit. Even when I had fun talking to you, even when you were kind, or funny, I was terrified it was just a really, really good act. I’ve never had someone be around me, in a position of power, and not take advantage, Kiernan.” She finished the braid, and with nothing to tie it off she just stared at the end, twisting it in her fingers. “You made a promise to me, but I wasn’t ready to hear it. The words didn’t mean anything to me, no matter how earnest you were, no matter how much it sounded like the truth. It wasn’t the words that did it at all, it was everything you’ve done since the promise.”
“Every time you protected me, and every time you let me fight my own battles. Every thing in your life you shared with me, every time you joked with me, laughed with me, like it was the most natural thing in the world to you. Every single time you fought with me and didn’t treat me like I was fragile, but actually pushed me, challenged me. It was because of every moment that you could have touched me, that you could have tried something, or honestly, just laid a claim to me – and you didn’t. That’s when I started to think that this could be real, that you could be real, and I wanted it. I wanted to have something real for once in my life.” She shrugged, and he could see tears in her eyes when she looked up at him again. “I wanted you.”
Kiernan’s heart was racing, he wanted to speak but he was afraid to break whatever had come over her. Her eyes stayed on his for a long moment, their ethereal blue all the more vibrant as she held back the tears he could see brimming. “Fae…” He whispered, and she broke the eye contact and let go of her hair, letting her hands fall back into her lap.
“It wasn’t a light decision, Kiernan. I didn’t kiss you because I thought I had to, or because I just thought it would be fun – although it really was.” She glanced up at him and offered a small smile before she stared at the bed again. “I kissed you because I wanted you, I still want you.”
“I know, I just -”
“It’s okay, I get it. You want to handle this differently, but I’m just woefully unprepared to deal with this – with you. You have to understand, I was never the type of girl who dreamed of a family one day. That was all my sisters, they were hunting boys in the village as soon as they had breasts. While they were off flirting, my father was teaching me everything that he knew about nature and the worship of Eltera, about caring for the earth, about plants for healing. I believed that was my future, following in his footsteps and caring for people in our village and in others. I never even thought I’d find someone who would be okay with that, especially since my father really wasn’t allowed to teach a female those things.”
She shrugged to herself and said, “and then Eltera took me, and I felt like I belonged with her, with all of my new sisters, and I never even thought about having more, about having someone in my life, because I was perfectly happy.” Fae stopped talking and swallowed, her fingers pulling at the sheet in a nervous pattern.
Kiernan’s stomach took a dive and he suddenly felt sick because he knew what event had happened next in her life, and he wanted to stop the conversation and return to the things she had said that had given him hope, but she started talking again.
She spoke so quietly that if they hadn’t been silent he might not have heard her. “Then all those potential choices were taken away from me, and it didn’t matter.”
It hurt him to see her in pain, and he wanted to grab her and hug her and swear to her that it would never be like that again, but he wasn’t even sure his touch was still welcome right now. After all, he was Laochra. He had been on the battlefield the day her life was torn apart, and he’d done nothing to stop it. In fact, he didn’t even really remember that day.
He wasn’t sure it would have been possible to feel sicker, but he did.
Fae took a breath suddenly and his eyes moved back to her, but her gaze stayed down. There were tiny drops on the sheet she had pulled into her lap. “After all that? After this life I’ve lived? I didn’t think I had that as an option, I didn’t think anyone would think I was worthy of that. Ever. And no one ever has.”
Kiernan’s jaw clenched tight, and part of him wanted to find the people who had made her feel this way, the ones that were still alive anyway, and beat them into the ground. He would prove to her she was worth more than anything else on earth, no matter what he had to do. She rolled a shoulder and glanced up at him before continuing.
“I focused on protecting as many people as I could, and not caring about myself. It was easier if I didn’t care what happened. Easier to feel good about myself if I was shielding someone weaker, because at least I had a purpose. But then you tried to protect me. You cared enough to try. You came and got me out of the snow, took me away from those guards, and Butler, and that house. And I can’t stop thinking about the girls I left there. I keep having nightmares about them, about what’s happening to them – but I can’t go back. I feel horrible, but I don’t want to go back.” She sighed, “I couldn’t help them anyway, and you –”
His eyes widened and she flinched as if her words hurt her.
“You’re so kind to me, and it’s been so long since anyone treated me like this. You bought me clothes, and insisted that I eat, and you still understood all of my paranoid concerns. You didn’t push me to do anything, you agreed with every idea I had – you even let me try to drive your car.” A smile flitted over her lips and the relief from it made him let out a quick laugh at the memory of her almost crashing his Land Rover into the building. Her eyes lifted and met his and he could see they were shining, but her smile didn’t slip this time. “You took care of me, but you didn’t treat me like I was breakable… and you’re a good person, Kiernan.” That made him pause, a few weeks of being good hardly made up for lifetimes of wrong.
“Fae, I’m not –” Kiernan stopped when she reached forward and grabbed his hand.
“Our circumstances aren’t what I’m talking about. We’ve had two thousand years of bad circumstances. I’m talking about who you are at your core. I’m talking about the person who starts gardens, and gives kids scholarships, and helps people load their cars at the store. The kind of person that risks his life, and everything he’s known, to save one of the only people in the world he should have never, ever saved.” She shifted her legs underneath her and kneeled so she sat a little higher than him. Their fingers were intertwined and they squeezed each other’s hands. “That’s the guy I decided to kiss last night, the guy who I really wish would relax his gentlemanly qualities for a few minutes – or for an hour or two.” They both laughed and she leaned closer to him. “That’s what you’ve done to deserve this, Kiernan, and I’m trying to deserve you too.”
Kiernan leaned forward and kissed her, and she kissed him back, but it was like a seal on their conversation and not a kiss that stoked the fire between them. The kiss was an agreement that they had both laid it all out on the table and they were both still there, still in it, and he had no plans of going anywhere, because as much as he made her feel normal, Fae made him feel human.
“You know, I’m really trying to deserve you too, to deserve all of this, because I feel the same way. Which is why I’m taking you to dinner, and maybe a movie. That’s what the mortals do these days.”
“A date?” Fae brushed a hand under one of her eyes, before she sat back on her heels and smiled at him.
“Yes, Glowworm, a date.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ráj Manor, Caledon, Ontario
The heir to the manor had arrived with absolutely no notice the evening before. Nikola’s only son, Marik, had shown up in a hired limousine that almost hadn’t made it up the main drive through the falling snow. He hadn’t called ahead and hadn’t war
ned anyone.
Butler had carefully planned how the introductions would go with Marik. He had spent the last two weeks working out how to make it as perfect as possible, to show the new master of the house that Butler was indispensable.
Things had not gone to plan.
When Marik had walked through the front door he had unfortunately been seen by one of the guards who hadn’t worked at the manor the last time Nikola’s son had visited – so the idiot actually asked Marik who he was. Apparently, Marik had laughed. Then he had looked in on the parlor where the contractor’s men were still finishing repairs, and when he went to walk up the stairs Annika had almost run into him carrying a basket of laundry. Thankfully, he had sidestepped her without incident and headed up the stairs.
Annika would have earned more than a few cane stripes if she had upset the new master of the house. It was only after that disastrous arrival that Butler had been able to respond to the message over the radio that the man who had come through the front door was, in fact, the heir, the new master, Marik.
The expletives Butler had streamed from his mouth as he’d rushed from the guards’ quarters towards the front of the house were harsh enough to peel paint. He found Marik with his feet propped up on his father’s pristine desk, smoking a black cigarette, and flicking ash directly onto the smoothly polished wood.
Marik had grinned and acknowledged Butler, but as soon as Butler had launched into his rehearsed welcome speech Marik had stopped him with a raised hand. He had refused to listen to any business talk and just wanted to know where the twins were, and which bedroom he could use. Butler had begrudgingly shown him both and promptly had the door slammed in his face.
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