“Not now.” The troll, this one just as congested as Galfin Dunn, doesn’t even make eye contact.
“I’ve got clams too, dug fresh at low tide.” The scaled fey tries again, his large bulging eyes hopeful. “Make an excellent chowder. I’ll give you a sample.”
“I said bugger off.” The troll shoves the shellfish hawker hard. The man loses his balance, and ends up on his ass in a tide pool. His tray of wares lands upside down in the sandy muck.
“Hey,” I bark, stepping between the troll and the fey, rounding on the former. “What’s your damage, assbite?”
The creature glares at me. “What’s it to you, mortal?”
He says mortal like it’s a dirty word. And that pisses me off. So, I shove him, once, with all my might. He doesn’t budge, of course, he outweighs me by at least 500 pounds and his center of gravity is spread over two well planted feet. He laughs and several of the others join in.
I see red. That tears it, one dead troll coming right up.
“Nic!” Aiden grips me around the waist lifting my feet off the ground. “Don’t.”
“Let go of me,” I snarl. “I want to kill him.”
“If you do, they’ll kill us,” he whispers the warning low for my ears only.
I suck in great lungsful of sea air. What the hell is wrong with me?
“You okay?” Not waiting for an answer, Aiden releases me before crouching to collect the spilled shellfish.
The scaled fey blinks at him, taken aback, either by his handling of a fey royal or his assistance. Perhaps both.
“How much?” Aiden asks, righting the tray and depositing his handfuls onto the driftwood container.
“For what amount, milord?” The scaled creature scrambles up and takes the tray from his proffered grip.
“All of your inventory.” Aiden digs into Nahini’s saddlebags and extracts a small bundle of coins. “Will this cover it?”
“Yes, milord.” The fey nods eagerly. “That is more than enough. Thank ye, kindly.”
He tries to return some of the money but Aiden waves it away. “Keep it. Courtesy of Queen Nicneven of the Unseelie.”
The fey hands over the tray and then dips a reverent bow in my direction. “Thank you, milord. My queen, it is an honor to be in your presence.”
Behind me a troll snorts, but I ignore him, moving to Aiden.
“Just what,” I hiss at him out of the corner of my mouth, “Are you planning to do with this stuff?”
“I hadn’t gotten that far.” Aiden’s grip on the tray tightens. “I just didn’t like the way the trolls treated him. That was at least a day’s worth of merchandise for that man and they would have left it to rot in the sun.”
We turn back to where we left the trolls, only to see them on their knees, their heads ducked in reverence.
The creature standing before them has blue-gray skin and a shock of hair the color of seafoam. His face is ageless though his colorless irises are an ancient silver. His body is lean and spare, that of a swimmer, all smooth sleek muscle. His clothes are simple and elegant, loose white linen trousers and a blue gray tunic. Power thrums around him billowing like his cloak in the sea breeze.
He’s bone dry and there is no sign of the toll the magic took on him, but I recognize him at once as the figure from the balcony.
“Queen Nicneven,” His lips are a lighter blue than the rest of his skin and they part to reveal two rows of shark like teeth. His voice is straight out of merry old England too, but cultured, like that of the aristocracy. “I’d heard you came back...altered but I had no idea that meant mortal.”
Be careful. Aiden’s warning is unnecessary. I recognize a predator when I come face to face with one.
“King Wardon,” I hold his gaze, unwilling to back down, especially with my blood still thrumming with a tribal beat of death and lust. Still, I force myself to be polite. “Thank you for your hospitality. My traveling companion and I appreciate your assistance.”
Activity in the marketplace grinds to a stop, all the beings freezing in place to watch our exchange.
“The pleasure is mine.” He moves closer, not walking so much as gliding like an eel through the water. “May I ask what brings you into my territory? And so close to our transition to power?”
He extends an elbow, those silver eyes glittering. I read once that a sea snake’s venom is much deadlier than its land dwelling counterpart. Wardon’s fathomless gaze informs me that while I may have my Goodnight Kiss, he’s been playing this game much longer.
“It’s a long story,” I offer a cool smile though I place a hand on the proffered arm. “And it’s been a long journey to get here.”
Touching him is like dumping icy water over my raging hormones. I barely stifle a sigh of relief as they scurry into some dark corner for a time out.
“Indulge me over dinner then.” Wardon leads me up the sandstone steps that lead to the east facing tower, the one overlooking the sea. “I’ll leave you and your...companion to rest and recover for the day.” He claps his hands and two tiny winged fey appear. Wingtip to wingtip, they are no bigger than one of my hands. They look like stick insects with long noses and fingers, their bodies almost skeletal.
“My pixies will see you to your room.” Wardon raises my hand to his lips.
A kiss is never just a kiss, at least not when it comes to the kings and queens of Underhill. Lip to skin contact can be a fatal mistake. According to Nahini’s teachings, the Master of the Waves commands the Kiss of Madness. Unlike my victims who are tied to the Wild Hunt, those who suffer Wardon’s kiss lose the ability to distinguish reality from imagination. They hear words that aren’t said, see things that aren’t there and are often driven to taking their own lives.
I snatch the appendage away before his blue-gray lips make contact. His eerie eyes sparkle with victory at my retreat. His gaze tells me he wouldn’t have used his gift against me, but my flinch reveals my fear. A weakness.
I let him have it. Let him celebrate this minor victory. I am at his relative mercy and though we’ve just met, I get the feeling that the Seelie king wouldn’t react well to another defeat.
He’s immortal, I am not and we’re in his territory uninvited, surrounded by his people. There are times to advance and time to retreat and this is one of the latter.
The pixies tug at my hair and I turn my back on him and follow the creatures up the spiral staircase. The sky overhead is revealed through the glass domes, the sun as bright as it is outside. The view from up there must be incredible, but between fatigue and my innate sense of modesty, I hope we aren’t going to be housed in one of those transparent spaces.
Luckily our guides head into a room about halfway up. The walls are the same color as the sandstone exterior, the texture visibly rough. Curtains of woven seaweed billow back from the open window. Just before it there is a large bed, its frame hewn from driftwood, with a thick mattress atop it. Strings of seashells hang from the ceiling in one corner with a large white tub partially obscured by the makeshift partition and a blue green driftwood fire blazes in a sandstone pit beside it. The only other stick of furniture in the room is a large wardrobe on the opposite wall.
“Here we are,” one of the pixies squeaks, its voice thin and reedy as the other flits about the room. “The wardrobe will provide you with whatever you require. Let us know if you need anything. Someone will retrieve you for dinner.”
“Whatever we require?” I ask.
She flits up, a bit of sparkling dust falling on the floor beneath her. “Clothing, towels, extra blankets for the two of you.”
“The two of us?” I say as it suddenly dawns on me that Wardon had said room. As in singular. “Wait!”
But they have already departed.
“Did you pick up on Wardon’s pause around the word companion?” Aiden offers me an apologetic smile and sets down both the saddlebags and the tray he purchased from the scaled fey before turning to shut the door. “It’s just a small step away from consort. H
e knows who I am.”
“Do you think it’s safe to talk here?” I mean aloud and from the understanding light in his eyes, he knows it, too.
“I think so. Wardon likes his games but spying on you within his own walls doesn’t pose much of a challenge. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say he already knows exactly how we came to be here, who we’re looking for and probably what we ate for dinner last night.”
I crouch beside the tub, awed to find it made from half a clamshell. A giant clamshell, roughly the size of a Volkswagen bug. I run my hand over the smooth contours. “This is incredible.”
The sink on the wall behind it is also made of a clamshell albeit a much smaller one. There is a sandstone partition with a toilet that looks relatively standard, thank the gods.
“This is a strange blend of items from the modern mortal world and fey magic.” My hand finds the faucet and I turn it on, smiling to see water pouring into the clamshell tub. “How did he do this?”
“Chances are Wardon’s crossed the Veil, carried some things back and other’s he’s recreated from memory.”
I stand and glance about the space. “Does he really expect that we’ll sleep here today?”
“Sleeping isn’t why he provided us one room.” His gaze locks with mine. “Would you care for the first bath?”
HEARTBEAT. HEARTBEAT. Heartbeat. More than the thought of hot water brings my blood back up to temperature. It zips through my veins like quicksilver as I realize that not only are Aiden and I sharing a room, but that there is no door to separate us. No solid wood to come between us, to keep us from touching, kissing and doing everything else I’ve imagined doing with him.
Things I remember doing with him.
My lips part but no sound comes out. I’ve grown accustomed to his presence, comfortable with being close to him. His cedar and sage scent, the feel of his skin as he takes my hand. It’s as though out of the two of us, I’m the wild animal and he’s the one doing the taming, getting me used to him. I see the acknowledgment in his green eyes, along with the hunger. Usually, he keeps it on a tight leash but I can tell that he’s thinking the same thing I am.
This room is made for intimacy. For sex. It’s too easy to picture our naked bodies writhing together in the oversized tub, or on the massive bed. In the home of one of the most dangerous fey alive no less. I’m not thinking about Nahini, the lost souls of the Wild Hunt, the upcoming gauntlet or whatever Wardon wants from me. No, I am thinking about Aiden, about touching his naked body and having him do the same to mine.
The situation has forced us to make a giant leap ahead. One room, one bed, one bath. Nowhere to run or hide. His desire plain, his expression questioning. I watch as he licks his lips, his gaze seeming to drink me in.
My own body is sending me mixed signals. Fight or flight, wanting and fearing. Remembered passions from the stream and my past self, mix with a lifetime of denial. It’s a shock to realize how mistaken I’ve been. I’m not asexual, the way I once thought, at least not entirely. Aiden’s accepted me, made me trust, made me remember. Made me crave him in a way I never thought possible.
The feeling is exclusive to him, to Aiden. Wardon is exceptionally well made, if unusually colored. Alric too is a perfect physical specimen. But I hadn’t felt a flicker of attraction for either of them anymore than I ever had any of the boys at school.
“Gods, what is wrong with me?” I put a hand to my spinning head.
Aiden’s there in an instant. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s like I have zero control over my hormones.” I look at him, lean muscles on display and lick my lips.
He puts a hand to my forehead, checking for fever. “You’re burning up. Is that why you picked a fight with a troll in the middle of a clutch of them?” Without asking, he scoops me into his arms and carries me to the bed.
“A clutch?”
“A group of trolls.” He places me flat on my back and eases down beside me.
The heat radiating from his body has me frothing at the mouth. “Do you think the price for the magic I used here made me sick?”
“I’ve never heard that before.” His fingers move to my wrist. “Your pulse is racing.”
“Mmmm,” I breathe, my eyelids growing heavy as his scent envelopes me.
He tilts his head. “You said hormones. Are you...turned on, too?”
I stroke his forearm, loving the smooth glide of his tanned skin under my fingertips. “Like a damn lamp. It’s weird, I keep switching between extreme rage and extreme lust.”
His lips compress as though he’s fighting a losing battle with a smile. “I...uh...think I know what’s wrong with you.”
I struggle upright, needing to get closer to him. “Really? What?”
“Testosterone poisoning.”
I freeze seconds before I swung a leg over him. “Are you joking?” Sure, Aiden possesses a mischievous sense of humor that can sometimes border on diabolical, but now is hardly the time.
The expression on his face didn’t appear playful though. “I’m serious, Nic, though I could be wrong. But your...urges... seem in line with testosterone overload, at least the way I’ve experienced it.” He nods down to where my hands are balled up in the elegant bedspread.
I force my hands to relax and shake my head, burrowing deep into denial. “No, it can’t be.”
But Aiden’s focus turns inward. “That’s why Wardon was showing off. He wanted you to use magic, and have you off balance, dealing with the after effects of wielding your powers. He had no way of knowing what the consequences would be, but it was worth the risk if it gave him an advantage.”
Sitting still proves impossible. I leap to my feet and start to pace the room. Moments earlier it seemed spacious enough, but now it feels like the walls are closing in. “We need to get out of here. I need to get out of here.”
Aiden catches me and pulls me into an embrace. It’s not affection so much as restraint. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. We’ll figure something out.”
I lean into him, but he smells too damn good. My hands start roving over his back and my body flashes hot then cold. I’m too turned on, too overloaded. Growling in frustration, I shove away from him. “Gods, how do you deal with this? I can’t hold a thought. I want to...?” I want him to tear his clothes off, but I just barely stop myself from blurting it out.
“What do I do?”
He catches me again. “Without some sort of human hormone treatment? There are only two possibilities. You need a release. Either a fight or....” His gaze slides to the bed.
I back away from him, even as every molecule in my body stretches and prepares to sing the hallelujah chorus. “Oh, no. No. I’m not going there. Especially not here.”
He nods, his expression somber. “Then hit me.”
That draws me up short. “What?”
“You need an outlet to burn it off. Take it out on me.”
He’s serious. “I’m not going to beat you. That’s sick.”
Says the serial killer to the werewolf.
“It won’t have been the first time a woman has done so,” his tone is quiet.
I stare at him at a loss. “And are you going to hit me back?”
He glares at me. “Of course not. I’ll dodge, if that helps, restrain you if necessary, though I won’t be able to really hurt you without the wolf—” He chokes off, looking away as though ashamed.
Aiden had been forced to hurt me before, physically in order to save my life. The act had traumatized him and his wolf took control, threatening all those around us. And here he is, willing to risk it again, to let me hurt him in order to help me.
In that moment, with the golden seaside light streaming in on him, he’d never been more irresistible. Maybe the hormones are to blame, but I throw myself at him, knocking him onto the massive bed. I cover him like a blanket, my lips ravenous for his, needing him close, needing to feel him.
He doesn’t respond immediately, that iron will still in place. I
’m busy kissing my way down the side of his tanned throat when he murmurs my name and asks, “Are you sure this is what you want?”
I whip my shirt over my head in answer and drop it on the floor. “Just kiss me, Aiden. We’ll figure out the rest later.”
With a growl he rolls me under him, pinning me to the mattress beneath his delicious weight. Good man.
I lose myself in the taste of him, hot and hungry. He nibbles my bottom lip. I fist my hands in his hair. His tongue sweeps into my mouth as I claw down his back, loving every sensation. We crash into each other, one kiss after another like waves upon the beach outside. It’s too much, it’s not enough. I want to drown myself in the mysterious and alluring fathoms of Aiden.
His skin is hot to my touch, his body moving in a rhythm both foreign and familiar. My own responds to it, arching, aching, needing. His hand skims along my ribcage, settling over the lacy cup of my demi bra.
“I like this,” he toys with the lace. “Did you wear this just for me?”
“Yes.” While normally it would have stung my pride to admit that I’d dressed with him in mind, I’m beyond caring.
A soft growl rumbles in his chest. The sound is pure masculine satisfaction. “I’m trying to go slowly—”
“Don’t,” I gasp as I yank his shirt up, craving the contact. “I don’t need slow...I need...I need....”
His gaze is searching my features, for what, I have no idea. “You need slow. You crave release but this is new.”
I shake my head. “It’s not, I remember. From before. Those damn memories have been plaguing me for weeks.”
“It is new, for your body.” His clever fingers pluck at a nipple through the lace.
An involuntary cry escapes my lips as pleasure spirals down inside me. “More.”
He chuckles then rolls to one side. “As my lady commands. But slowly. I want to savor you and I need you to like this.”
My lips part but before I can argue, his hand glides beneath the fabric of my bra. Without the barrier the sensations are a thousand, a million times stronger. I make some sort of strangled sound and arch fully into his palm.
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