Page 83 of FoolSilver
She flattened her palms to my chest, then curled her fingers into the fabric. I knew what she wanted: to tear the tunic from me and press herself skin to skin, just as I was fighting the very same urge to strip her bare and carry her to the bed and bury myself balls deep in her.
It was more than a struggle. A century’s discipline and more was all that held me, and even that had worn thin and bright as drawn wire. Max had very nearly undone it already, and she had done nothing yet but simply want me back.
She pushed my tunic up and stopped halfway, hands going still against my ribs. Drew a breath and held it, gathering courage the way I’d watched her do before a fight. She had that valor. And yet here, with no enemy in the room, she faltered. Whatever had put fear into a woman who’d ridden a dragon into a monster swarm, I wanted to find it and gentle it out of her.
“Before this goes any further,” she said, “there’s something you have to know. And after I tell you, if you still want me?—”
“Nothing could stop me from wanting you,” I said. “There is nothing you could say or have done that would make me want you any less.”
I cupped her breast in my palm, its soft weight filling my hand, its taut peak pressing into the center. My cock throbbed hard enough to hurt. My instinct demanded I take her now—now, before whatever she feared could rise up and steal her nerve.
I didn’t. I leaned in instead and brushed the lightest kiss across her full lips, barely a touch, only enough to steady her, to tell her without words that she was safe to speak.
“I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you,” I murmured against her lips. “I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you—half-starved and dressed up as some unwashed boy. Even then.”
She flushed. Her lips parted, her midnight eyes went bright, and the shine in them gathered into tears she tried to blink back.
She didn’t know yet. She couldn’t. But the magic in me had known her on sight, the way a star knows its own light—before thought, before reason. She was mine even then.
It’d taken me a while to come out of the shock of it—that after all these long centuries, I had a true mate at all.
And that she had crossed the dark and come to me.
There would be a moment to tell her. Not this one. This one belonged to her.
Chapter 33
Max
“I’m a piece of shit, Aelindor.”
The Fae prince laughed, low in his chest, and his thumb brushed the tight peak of my nipple. The jolt went straight to my core and stoked the lust already running thick through every part of me. I needed him to stop so I could think straight. My body had other plans. It leaned into his hand, and I felt the wet heat pulse between my thighs.
“That’s quite an opening, Max,” he purred.
“I’m serious, sir.” I added thesirto make him take me seriously, though maybe not too seriously. If the same lust was fogging him, maybe the confession could slip past him while he was distracted.
Cunning,the demon murmured in approval.Didn’t think you had it in you.
I loosened my grip on his tunic. I’d been half a second from dragging it off him. Now I made myself wait, my fate sitting squarely in the Fae prince’s hands.
I was a two-faced bitch who didn’t deserve him. But it wasn’t in me to let him go.
The smart play would have been to keep my mouth shut until Missy was safe—give nothing away while I still needed his support. But I couldn’t use him like that. Not even for my little sister, and getting her out was the most important thing in the world.
“I haven’t been true to you,” I said, as fast as I could before my nerve gave out. “To all four of you. All three.” Drakken didn’t count. “I made a bargain with Nikolai. My blood, for—” I swallowed. “He drinks from me. Once a week. I go to his penthouse, and I won’t stop—because I gave my word. And because—” The truth tasted strange on my tongue. “Because I want to. So if you need me to be only yours, I can’t be. I already belong to him a little. I won’t lie to you about that.” A breath. “I’m not a good woman. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Max,” Aelindor said softly. “I know about your arrangement.”
My lips parted. I’d braced for the fallout: the disappointment, the cold shoulder, the door. I’d expected him to loathe me for it and throw me out.
Aelindor didn’t pull back. If anything, he kept exploring, learning the curve of my waist, my hips, my thighs, as if he had all the time in the world and meant to spend every second of it on me. His hands knew exactly what they were doing. I knew I wasn’t his first, though he’d be mine. He’d done all this with others, long ago, and yet somehow it still felt new. Like neither of us had done this before.
“But do you know the details?” My face went hot enough to light the room. “It wasn’t only the blood. Nikolai gave me—” I forced it out. “Oral. His mouth. On me.”
Aelindor arched a brow. “Was it good? Does he need to improve?”
What?I blinked. Surely, I’d misheard him.
