“I swear to the moon, you great big—”
“What’s that about hiding from Mab?” Percivale was nursing a bump on the back of his head. He squinted at them. “The Queen of Winter? Is she with the Titans, too?”
“No,” Nimue said, exasperated. “She’s infuriated by Arthur and Merlin flaunting the rules of the universe. Their hubris.”
“Ah.” The older knight nodded his head with unexpected empathy in his features. His eyes softened. “This must be unheard of for the fae.”
“It is. It’s one of the greatest sins.”
“Well. As much as I understand their plight, we can’t allow her to murder our king. Merlin won’t return for hours. Maybe even days. If what you say is true about reinforcements arriving to finish the job, Arthur isn’t safe here.”
“He isn’t,” Nimue confirmed.
“Then he should go with you, isn’t it?”
“Ye—wait, no.”
“Excellent!” Percivale flashed a quick grin. “We’ll gather the remaining knights and initiate the first steps of the battle plan. Arthur will remain in your company, safe from further fae attack.”
“That’s a great idea,” Galahad cut in.
“The best,” Lancelot agreed. “All in favor?”
“Now wait a minute, I never agreed—”
“Aye!” shouted each man, even a young fellow who didn’t appear old enough to shave, let alone vote in those matters. As Nimue’s protests fell on deaf ears, she caught a sly glance between Lancelot and Galahad.
Oh...is that what they’re playing at?
Two could play that game.
“I’ll certainly give him lodgings fit for a king of his stature.”
“This isn’t a proper bedroom,” Arthur said of the cramped little box with a bed the width of his arm’s length.
“It is,” Nimue insisted. “It is a room, and I’ve placed a bed within it.”
Arthur stared at her, turning red around the ears, a feature she was delighted to see had survived his many incarnations. “Fucking fae.”
Nimue smiled.
Contrasting her pleasant disposition, he growled, the feral inhuman noise rumbling through his throat. “You can’t be serious.”
My, he really is a dragon, isn’t he? “Do I lie?” The corner of her mouth involuntarily quirked. Anger made him adorable. A little sexy. Stop it, she chastised herself.
“You said lodgings fit for a king.”
“I never specified the type of king,” she said breezily, raising one hand to toss her hair back from her face with an exaggerated flip. He only scowled harder as she added, “You even have a view.”
“And no bedsheets.”
Petty as ever, Nimue glided to the door and lingered within its frame, one hand on the knob. “You’re from a future of slaughter and ruin. I would assume you’re accustomed to sleeping rough. My apologies, Dragon King, there are no slabs of jade and ruby for you to rest your weary hide.”
The heat of his stare burned through her, but she ignored it in favor of shutting the door behind her and leaving Arthur to his hellbox. She wondered if the heat would even matter to him if his draconic nature would make the intolerable atmosphere no different than a relaxing autumn afternoon.
He emerged in under an hour, shitless and perspiring to glower at her over the threshold of her office space, a startlingly contemporary room within a modernized reimagining of her old palace beneath the lake. By then, she’d already enjoyed a shower, pampered her skin, and slipped into a flowing silk robe, the deep blue against her skin patterned with faint silver fissures like black ice over dark stone. It was a favorite gift from Oberon, woven from the beansidhe of the Howling Isles and softer than anything made by mortal hands.
“Woman, you’ve done this on purpose.”
Nimue lifted her attention from the steaming mug of tea in her hands. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Don’t play innocent. You know exactly what I mean.” When Arthur crossed the floor to her in a few long strides, memories and instinct came bubbling to the surface.
In old times, he would have chased her down and pulled her against him, then she would have put up a feeble struggle and submitted, only to behave the faerie brat again the next day. Such had been their pattern, a rhythm spanning centuries. Once, she’d overheard Lancelot asking Arthur why he put up with her.
I like the challenge, the king had simply replied.
Ever since, she’d wondered if he realized she was present and eavesdropping. If he’d even care if she knew.
Ignoring Arthur’s approach, Nimue peered into the corridor beyond her private suite then shut the door again with a decisive click. Good. No one had visited. No one had left any notes for her, as was typical for her staff if they wanted to pass messages to her during moments of peace, they often pinned notes to the bulletin anchored in the wall opposite her door.
No notes and no panicked texts to her cell phone meant the night would pass with relative ease.
Unless Mab appeared.
Why am I panicking? Mab won’t visit this realm to do the deed herself. That’s too much like getting her hands dirty. She hates this realm anyway.
Arthur cleared his throat. “Is everything all right?”
“Why do you ask?”
His solemn expression turned vexed, apparent bewilderment in his features. “You twist your hair around your fingers when anxious. You’ve twirled the same ringlet twice in the last few minutes,” the king replied, stunning her that he’d even picked up something so mundane.
“Mm.” She glanced across the foyer toward the spacious open archway leading to her kitchen as an excuse to break eye-to-chest contact. His new body was especially attractive, and she loathed how easily the same old feelings of lust and desire surged. “Were they able to feed you before the attack?”
“Mom and Gala—Dad fed me.”
Nimue’s outlook toward him involuntarily softened. Sometimes, she wondered how much it fucked them up to endure an eternal cycle of death and rebirth. “Good.”
“Hey. I may not be the brightest man, but I did notice you ignored my question, Nimue. What’s wrong?”
“Perhaps not the smartest, but certainly the most inquisitive.” She preferred his righteous indignation regarding the room over genuine concern for her.
He grunted. “And you’re as capable of dancing around questions as ever. Do you plan to answer anything that I ask, or will this entire night be an exhibition of your brattiest moments?”
Nimue sighed. “Fine. Ask your questions if you must.”
“Will I be safe here?”
“You’re safer in my home than you would be anywhere else in this world when it comes to the Winter Court. I don’t imagine Titania would want to kill you. Perhaps talk you out of doing anything foolish to upset the balance of the world, and as a last resort, perhaps unravel the spell that brought you to this timeline—but she wouldn’t dare send assassins. Too dirty. Too rude.”
“I see. Then why have you been on edge since we arrived?”
It did not surprise her that the perceptive king noticed her restlessness, but she didn’t plan to confess the reason. Simply having him near to her after so long set her heart aflutter, and the memories crept in no matter how much she tried to force them out.
Damn him.
Most fae would have chosen to live closer to Central Park—or even within the park using magical enchantments to disguise their habitation—but Nimue found that the city itself had a little charm and that the magic of Central Park ebbed and flowed along leylines pulsing with power.
Humans had no idea they existed. Witches tried to harness them.
“Thrilled to have me to yourself a second night? Is that the reason for my banishment to the sweatbox you’ve called a guest room?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Nimue shot back. “You’re here a second night in a row for a single reason. I simply haven’t the inclination to waste magic on pampering you.”
“Oh
?” Arthur moved in uncomfortably close, herding her with three steps despite her desire not to give ground. “You could have protected me anywhere, Nimue. If this was about keeping me alive, you could have done it at the hall in the company of my men.”
When she pressed one hand against his powerful chest, he yielded enough for her to slip away. ”No fae would dare to trespass upon my home uninvited. You’ll be safe as long as you’re indoors.”
“And when I leave?”
“You’ll die,” she said curtly. “You’re a strong man, and you’re powerful, but you wouldn’t stand up against the wave of hell Queen Mab would send against you.”
“What about you?” Arthur eyed her suspiciously. “You disobeyed your queen. That’s treason in most courts. Hell, it’s treason in every court.”
“Yes.”
When she failed to elaborate, Arthur only raised one thick brow. She had the feeling he wasn’t going to let the matter go and that he wanted to know why she wasn’t afraid to venture beyond the sanctity of her home.
“Okay, and?”
“I will no doubt be disciplined accordingly, but not in the manner of which mortal kings and politicians would decree. Have no fears for my safety.”
An ounce of tension left his proud shoulders. The mention of her safety had been as much a jest as it had been a poke at his former ways of royal barbarism. At times he could be the gentlest, most noble of kings. The rest of the time, he spent as an imperious asshole who knew best and took the wisdom of his closest advisors with a grain of salt. Nimue doubted much had changed, even after an apparent hundred years of cooling his heels as a lost spirit trapped by an evil witch.
“Good,” Arthur said gently. “I can accept many things, but I don't want to endanger you.”
“Where was that when you were begging for my aid to take on the Titans?”
“Well.” And then Arthur flashed her a grin as wide and broad as his muscular shoulders. It was the kind of grin that weakened her knees and pooled heat at the bottom of her belly. “That’s different. I know you can take on a Titan. It’s different when you have half of a kingdom against you.”
Nimue moved into the kitchen and refilled her cup. “Tea, Arthur?”
“Price?”
“None. By the stars, I swear, you behave as if I’ve spent lifetimes tricking you into indentured servitude.”
“Years ago, things were different.”
Years ago, Arthur had never wondered what side Nimue served. He’d always known her to be a fae of her word, honest and cunning, but loyal to him and Merlin.
Now, he wasn’t so sure.
She came to save my ass. That counts for something.
Or it was exactly what she wanted him to think. So long of living in the future had driven him insane with paranoia.
“And what,” the enchantress asked, cold fire burning in her eyes, “is so different this time, Arthur?”
An awkward confrontation wasn’t how Arthur imagined their next meeting would go, but he worked with what he had if it meant he could wring a genuine reaction out of her that wasn’t practiced fae trickery and clever wordplay to conceal her thoughts.
All those years ago, the first time he saw her in the meadow, he never guessed one woman could make him as indecisive as Nimue did.
It wasn’t something he’d ever admitted to the other surviving knights of the future or even to Merlin, but he’d been aware and conscious throughout every day of his captivity in the witch’s cursed jewel. During those endless days, he’d wondered if Nimue was aware of his absence. He’d wondered if she’d moved on without him, and he’d spend eternity regretting the many things unspoken between them.
I should have married her.
Too bad he couldn’t go back into the past a few hundred years earlier, or even a century for that matter. If he could change any single thing from his initial reign, it would be the decision to marry the treacherous tartlet he’d made his queen.
Nimue would not have been accepted by the greater population of Camelot, but she would have been loyal to him in the end when it mattered.
Arthur shoved those dismal thoughts back to the void where they belonged. All the wishes in the world wouldn’t change the past, and if he did change it, the happiness known by those he loved most would no longer exist. Galahad would not have met Astrid. Lancelot would not be impossibly happy with a human wife who accepted him for who and what he was, and…
Dragons would not be irrevocably bound to our order now as friends and allies.
Sure, he’d forged a truce with Fafnir, the cruelest and foulest of all the dragons, but the likelihood of the peace enduring was slim even then. Eventually, some dragon resistant to change would have terrorized a village, the order would have become involved, and the whole violent affair would begin anew.
“Why are you staring at me?” Nimue sliced into his thoughts, jerking Arthur back to the present and what mattered. She hadn’t moved from where she stood behind the kitchen counter nursing a fragile teacup filled with fragrant tea. The magical aroma wafting toward him couldn’t have belonged to the mortal world.
“Admiring. Not staring. There’s a difference.” When warmth crept into her face, he grinned. “Is that a blush?”
“It’s—”
The inability to lie stole the breath from her lips. Her brow creased with consternation. “You asshole.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Anyway. You should get some rest. You have an early and long day tomorrow conquering the world and destroying Titans.” After setting the mug down with a subtle click of fine porcelain against a stone surface, Nimue tried to maneuver past him. Her hip grazed his body, and the silk rustled. Her scent, as intoxicating as ever, surrounded him with winter fir and cool wisteria. The smell of ozone and frigid water.
“Good night, Arthur.”
“Good night.”
Arthur waited less than a minute after her departure before he entered the bedroom behind her and slid onto the vacant space unclaimed by her body. A lull passed as vast as Merlin’s wisdom, long enough that he nearly started to count the seconds.
“What,” Nimue finally began, her voice relatively calm and even, “in the fuck are you doing?”
“Preparing to sleep.”
“I gave you a room.”
“You assigned me a death trap with a bed intended for a child.”
“You’re half-dragon. You wouldn’t have died.”
“Quarter, and you could have fooled me.”
Nimue broke first. Her body shuddered with laughter, then she rolled in the bed to face him. Her smile chased away the shadows in a darkened room lit only by the faint light gleaming from the moon beyond her window. “You’re incorrigible. Are you so used to having your way as king that a little thing so small as boundaries seemed an invitation to my bed?”
“I invited myself to your bed, not your body, Nimue. One would think it was the former, the way you’re behaving.”
She only had to say the words, and he’d be out of her room faster than a dragon’s last meal.
But she didn’t. Her contemplative gaze remained on his face. He took her silence as the acceptance it was meant to be.
“Arthur?”
“Yes?”
Her lips parted, but no words escaped. She searched his face, then her gaze traveled down to his chest and lingered over scars and the memories of great battles with Titans from a time he hoped would never exist.
“Good night.” Nimue turned her back to him again and pulled the blanket up to her shoulders.
Arthur did the same and submitted to the exhaustion crashing over him.
Seven
The distant ringing of a phone threatened to pull Arthur out of the best sleep of his life. He breathed in a lungful of violet-scented hair and autumn rain.
A soft body nestled close, familiar curves and long legs, a small foot with dainty toes gliding over his shins while their owner snuggled closer and exhaled a contently feminine si
gh.
Sleep held Arthur hostage a while longer, and he was its willing victim, reluctant to let go of a dream kinder than his lifetime of nightmares.
Until he realized there was morning sunlight slanting warm across his face. He squinted toward the window with its open shades, then peered down into the dark red head of a fae tucked intimately close. He had to lean back to see her face as she’d pressed her cheek to his chest. Both hands were clasped together beneath her chin, and her eyes remained closed. Long, cinnamon-hued lashes touched her freckled cheeks.
The long centuries hadn’t tarnished her beauty. Her features remained timeless. More than once, in his youth, he’d wondered if magic disguised her actual age or if what she presented to them was her true self.
Arthur wondered when he’d stopped caring.
The phone rang again following a brief lull that could only have been a caller hanging up to begin anew, potentially after reaching Nimue’s voicemail.
“Nim.”
“Mm.” One of her arms slid over his shoulders, and a drowsy, unintelligible murmur followed. He couldn’t decipher whether it was English or Faespeak, but he felt the emotion behind it long before her head raised and her lips skimmed his chin.
“Nim.” Fuck. Then her mouth was on his, and any chance he may have had of speaking common sense to her fled him. Her fingers tangled in his short curls, and she kissed him with the passion of a hundred years’ pent lust.
In an instant, his hardening cock strained against her thigh. Memories surged of their last evening together, tangled in sheets with twined limbs.
He’d told her he had an important task ahead of him that would change the Order’s fate forever.
He’d promised he would return.
Every time Arthur tried to lift his head, the intoxicating taste of her mouth pulled him back in. Every time he tried to find the strength to leave her, she shimmied against his dick, and he forgot how to think.
There was no possible way she was asleep.
King of Avalon: a Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (Rise of the Elder Gods Book 2) Page 6