But it wasn’t a lucionaga, and it wasn’t Ace.
Kajika stalked back toward the sash windows, and my heart throbbed. He’d come back.
You left.
“You told me to.”
You listened.
“I tried.” He punched the frame of the sash doors, and a dent appeared in the white-lacquered metal. “If you want me to leave, Lily, do not cry. I cannot stand to hear you cry.” He gripped the frame, and the W etched on his hand lit up, burning like a beacon in the dark night.
My palm flared. Instead of crushing the glow, I let my fingers fall open like flower petals.
He hung his head, turning his eyes down to his black boots. “You are right. I am selfish.”
My eyes snapped to his shadowy form.
“I want to keep you alive so damn much that I could kill Cruz with my bare hands.”
My breaths stilled in my lungs.
“I do not know if he told you, but he asked me to end his life.” His deep voice vibrated through the ripe air like a swarm of locusts. “I almost did. But I knew that if I fulfilled his request, I would lose you forever. I lost you anyway.” He turned his head toward me, and his long bangs glided over his eyes. “If I leave this time, Lily, I will not come back. I cannot come back. Not from this.” He pressed off the frame and straightened to his full, commanding height. “This is why I did not want to love again. Because love turns men into such fools.”
His words sank into my chest like raindrops.
I pressed one hand into the mattress and then the other. And then I was sitting. And then I was crossing the room, my silk slip whispering across the raised goosebumps on my thighs. I rested my hands where his had been and slid the door shut. And then I turned toward him and raised a hand to his neck, curling my fingers around his warm skin.
A thousand words coalesced inside my mind, but two rang louder than all the others: Don’t leave.
He pulled in air through his parted lips.
Don’t—
He slammed those lips into mine, subduing my brain. And then his hands caught my thighs and hoisted me up so our faces were leveled and my legs were wrapped around his waist. Hooking his arms under me, he broke the kiss and narrowed his eyes at the window.
I spun my head, certain we’d been caught, but it wasn’t the window Kajika was staring at. It was the curtain. The taupe crushed velvet swung closed. I turned back toward him.
Convenient little power of yours.
He grunted, then strode over to the bed, knocking his foot against the nightstand. Gottwa swear words erupted from his mouth.
I laughed.
He grimaced, but then a smile reached every corner of his face. I sobered up and gazed at the hunter.
I think this might be the first real smile I’ve witnessed.
He turned so serious again I wished the thought hadn’t passed between us. But then his expression softened, and he laid me down on the bed. Like a mountain cat, he stretched out over me, bracketing my head between his forearms. His mouth was so close to mine that I could taste his breath.
“If someone had told me two centuries ago that there would come a day when I would desire a faerie, I would have crushed their throat.”
My gentle, poetic hunter.
His face warped with the appearance of yet a new smile. He looked younger, less encumbered by the crushing weight of his past. “I like those words better than the ones you attributed to me earlier.”
I wrinkled my nose. I was angry. I didn’t mean them.
He nudged my still scrunched nose with his. “You were not wrong, though. I am selfish. I am ill-mannered. I can be cruel, and I have been stupid.” His lips touched mine with such tenderness that my pulse tripped. And then he was dragging his mouth down the side of my throat across my collarbone.
I’m sorry about the disco ball.
“You are forgiven.”
I loved it.
“Could have fooled me.” He propped himself up on one elbow. “I was expecting you to launch it at me.”
I thought about it.
“I know.”
Of course he knew. I was forever inside his head.
“You are inside my head,” he murmured, “and underneath my skin.”
I wish I could hear your thoughts.
Amusement flickered over his features. “You would get bored of my thoughts, Lily. They are always the same…always about you—about some part of your anatomy, your lips, your legs, your eyes, your hands.” He towed his long fingers over the top of my hand, up my wrist, up my arm, then back down. “I think about how soft your skin is, and how you smell as sweet as sap. I think about what makes your eyes shift to silver, because when you are happy, they become silver. And the rare times I do not think about your body, I am thinking about ways to spend more time with you without appearing as desperate as a pup.”
Emboldened by his confession, I reached for the hem of his t-shirt and rolled it up his back. He pressed himself to his knees and took it off. Muscles rippled underneath his burnished skin, and the whorls of trapped dust skittered in their tracks.
Seeing him bare-chested reminded of the day in the barn when Cat and I had interrupted his workout. How I’d gaped at that striking chest. And now I could touch it. I stroked his skin, felt the ridges of taut muscles, flattened my palms against his pecs. He didn’t move, letting me explore him with my fingertips. His dark nipples tightened, and his glorious skin pebbled.
You really are an impressive specimen, Kajika.
A corner of his mouth lifted. “You only think this because you have never seen an Unseelie in skin.”
I snapped my eyes back to his face.
“Is that not what I am, Lily? An Unseelie.” He spoke the word slowly, the consonants rolling off his tongue. For the first time, there was no sour inflection to his pronunciation.
My lips must’ve parted from shock, because a cocky grin curved his mouth. How many smiles had he graced me with in one night?
His thumb grazed my chin, slid down the center of my throat, dipped in the hollow of my collarbone, and moved to my shoulder. He hooked it around the thin strap of my slip and glided it off, then bent and pressed a kiss to where it had lain. And then he trailed his bristly jaw across and tugged the other strap down with his teeth. I rolled my head back and closed my eyes, a moan slipping through my lips.
Slowly, he lowered himself over me until every inch of our bodies was connected. As he moved against me, my slip slid up my thighs, and I shivered.
Kajika, I’ve never… I stuttered as his jeans chafed my sensitive skin.
He pulled his mouth off mine and rolled onto his side, keeping his palm on the bunched silk. “You have never what?”
I felt near the point of combustion. Um…done it.
His brow furrowed. “Lain with a man?” He dragged his calloused paw off the silk and down the length of my bare thigh. “Would you like me to stop?”
Heat surged into my cheeks, and lower. No. Losing my virginity had been high on my bucket list.
Still caressing my skin, he asked, “What is a bucket list?”
Things you want to do before dying.
His hand stopped moving. “You will not die.”
Everyone dies sometime.
He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, breathing in the oxygen that seemed to have thinned.
I turned onto my side and placed an open palm on his navel. Don’t be angry with me, Kajika.
He sighed, long and deep. Finally, he looked at me. “I know everyone has a beginning, a middle, and an end, Lily, but that does not mean I want to focus on the end.” He wrapped his fingers around mine, but didn’t move my hand off his stomach. “And I certainly do not want to make love to you because it is on some to-do list.”
I bit my lip.
“Were you planning on lying with just anyone?”
I blushed. Of course not.
He sighed again, and then he tugged on my hand until I lost my balance and f
ell on top of him.
His breath skated over my nose and chin. “Gejaiwe, I have wanted you for so many moons, ma mika.”
Mamika?
He gazed at me with the same wonder as a child beholding a night sky full of stars. “My beauty. Ma. Mika,” he repeated slowly.
No one had ever called me my-anything before. My eyelashes fluttered.
He dragged my palm over his beating heart. “This belongs to you now. Do not break it.”
Heat flared beneath my navel. Never.
He smiled.
Again.
And then he kissed me.
Again.
And then he made love to me.
Once.
And then again.
37
Terror
I woke up to pounding against my bedroom door and then a booming voice, “Lily! Open up!” followed by another voice telling my brother to leave me alone.
I jerked into a sitting position, blinking against the bright light spilling past the gawping curtain. The night rammed back into me, and I spun toward the other side of the bed. The pillow was creased but cold.
When had Kajika left? Had he even slept?
I scraped a hand over my pounding forehead, but then dropped that hand to my stomach that was burning with a brand new fire. My legs almost gave out when my feet connected with the rug. I crouched to retrieve my slip, and a string of curses spooled through my mind. Kajika had said it would hurt, and skies was he right. I pulled on the piece of black silk and limped toward my door. I unlocked it and drew it open a crack.
Ace craned his neck to look behind me. “The jet’s ready. We’re leaving.”
I sucked in a breath because I hadn’t checked the room for incriminating evidence of the night before. Thankfully, when I did turn, I didn’t find any stray sock or boxers.
“Did you have a wrestling match with your bedsheets?” he asked.
Cat’s fingers closed around her husband’s bicep. “Ace, let her get dressed,” she admonished him, but a smile tipped the corners of her mouth.
She knew.
If she knew, then my brother knew. A lucionaga must have seen him enter my room and report it.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
I didn’t sleep well, I signed, trying to make it look like I’d had a fitful night.
Ace shot me a look that set my entire face aglow. “Where’s the hunter?”
I flushed hotter.
“Obviously, he’s not here,” Cat said, trying to pull him away.
“He better not be.” Ace pulled his arm out of Cat’s grasp. “He’s not here, right, Lily?”
I shook my head, but wondered if he would believe me considering how red I’d become.
The front door clanked shut.
“I brought breakfast.” Kajika’s voice echoed down the short hallway.
“You see? I told you he wasn’t there,” Cat said.
My brother harrumphed. “Ever heard of room service, Kajika? Probably not.”
I didn’t get it…get him. Yesterday he and the hunter were all tight, and now he was out for blood.
“I went for a run and came upon a bakery that smelled pleasant.” Kajika appeared at the end of the hallway, a brown paper bag swinging from his fingers.
His expression was so perfectly blank that for a second I wondered if I’d imagined last night…or worse, if he was pretending like it had never happened.
His eyes flashed to mine, and for a moment I forgot about the throbbing between my legs. But then his gaze dropped to that place, and it became the only spot on my body I could feel.
“No, and no,” he said, and his words stilled my insecurities.
“No and no what?” Ace retorted.
“Lily asked if I had slept,” Kajika explained, his gaze drifting back to my face. “Is everything all right, Ace?”
My brother’s gaze slalomed between the hunter’s face and mine a couple times more. “Silas stopped by a half hour ago. They’re ready. We leave for Rowan as soon as Lily’s dressed.”
My heart came to a full stop.
The same way Cruz’s would soon.
The hunter’s Adam’s apple jostled in his throat. “A portal exists here? Why not head to that one?”
“The portal’s inside a slot machine. Not the most convenient place to hang around, especially at lunchtime on a weekend. I favor the boathouse. It’ll be empty.”
My hands started shaking. I pulled them through my hair but my fingers got trapped in the snarls. I forced them through. Instead of untangling anything, I ripped out a thick lock. I brought my fingers in front of my eyes and gaped at the number of golden strands coiled around. Silence clogged the hallway.
I combed my other hand through my hair, gently this time, barely tugging, and yet my fingers came back wrapped in more limp hair. The tremors raking my body grew so rough that I teetered on my feet. The room darkened then brightened then darkened. Kajika dropped the bakery bag and caught me before I collapsed from shock.
Ace yelled for the blond lucionaga. “Change of plans!” he barked in Faeli. “It’ll happen at the Flamingo. Get Lynn to clear the casino floor.”
“Lynn Vargas?” Matthias asked.
“No, Lynn Smith,” my brother roared. “Of course, Lynn Vargas.”
Matthias’s gold eyes went wide.
“Get to her office. It’s at the top of the Flamingo.” When the guard still hadn’t moved, Ace yelled, “Now!”
Matthias passed by me, but stopped halfway through my bedroom. “And if she isn’t there?”
My brother tugged at his own hair. Unlike me, none fell from his scalp. “If she’s not there, you figure out another way to clear the casino floor. Pull the fucking fire alarm, for all I care! And then tell Silas there’s been a change of plans. Tell him we’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
Matthias raced to the terrace, then shot into the sky.
Kajika smoothed my hair back. Or what was left of it anyway. I shuddered as I felt an air-conditioned breeze touch my exposed scalp.
I was scared.
Scared that I would begin to gray.
And scared of how the sight of me must disgust him.
“Ma mika.” His voice was so very soft.
Tears pooled in the corners of my eyes, and I turned my head, burrowing my face against his chest. I heard Cat speak quietly, her voice edged in panic. She mentioned Faith and Cass, surely trying to figure out what to do with them…how to explain the change of plans.
Don’t let them see me like this, I whispered into Kajika’s mind.
He tucked me harder against him. “I will keep you safe.”
From prying eyes, yes, but he couldn’t keep me safe from anything else.
His mouth dropped to my ear. “You promised not to break my heart,” he murmured. “I hold you to that promise.”
Even though my world was falling apart, I smiled thinly.
Ace insisted on flying me down to the Flamingo, but Kajika tightened his hold on me. I locked my arms around the hunter’s neck as he tore out of the apartment.
The world blurred around us, and air blew against my bare legs and arms. Cat ran beside us while my brother flew, casting illusion upon illusion, so no one would notice our mad dash through the human world.
38
Dile Poison
The casino had been cleared and the lights had been shut off, or maybe my sight was going. I inched my face off Kajika’s chest so I could look around. The effort angered the pounding that had started in my head when I’d woken up. It was as though my fire were flickering, its flames pulse-pulsing against my skull.
The only sources of light in the casino were the green glow of emergency lights and the conical beam that spilled from the ceiling and glinted off shiny chrome—the portal.
Kajika was walking now, carefully maneuvering around the blackjack tables toward the beam. Back in the day, the slot machine had been one of many, but times had changed, and the machines had all been updated with computer screens.
Except this one.
Management had tried to remove it but found they couldn’t. When they attempted to destroy it with explosives, and the portal shook in Neverra, faeries were sent to Vegas. The Flamingo changed ownership then—a faerie, Mart Vargas, bought it back for a monstrous sum of money, then Mart bequeathed it to her half-human, half-fae daughter, Lynn.
Lynn was the one who came up with the idea of framing the slot machine with velvet ropes and crafting a legend around it that humans lapped up…something about it being akin to a genie lamp. If you inserted a dime, then pulled the lever, and three bells lined up on the reel, your wish would come true. Humans fed the machine so many dimes it had jammed up more than once.
If only Lynn’s legend were real…
Matthias and Silas were standing next to a woman with cropped white hair—Lynn. I hadn’t seen her in ages. She wasn’t a fan of my father’s regime, so she had spent much of her adult life outside of Neverra. To think she had been just a couple years older than my brother. Earthly time had taken its toll on the faerie.
“Massin.” She bowed her head to my brother.
He nodded at her. “Lynn.” Then he turned toward Silas. “Is Cruz ready?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Tell him we’re in place. And come back once the venom takes effect.”
In other words, when Cruz’s heart stopped beating…
Silas gripped the lever of the slot machine firmly. His stamp flared, and then his body shrank and vanished through the cashback slot.
We waited in terrible silence for Silas to return. Lynn was trying to converse with my brother, but Ace kept palming his hair and saying, excuse me, what? At some point, Lynn stopped trying to make small talk.
He walked over to me and plucked one of my arms, prying it away from the hunter’s neck to inspect the warped pattern. I nestled closer to Kajika, absorbing the warmth of his skin, the steady beat of his heart. The sound vibrated across my cheek, echoed in my ears that were buzzing with white noise.
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