Page 43 of Stolen Threadwitch Bride
With a shaky exhale, I placed my hands in his.
“Thank you for letting me do this for you.” He lifted my fingers. “Stars above, do you have to be so short?” I caught a glimpse of one long canine as he flashed a grin. Then he had hold of my waist and was placing me on the table like he’d sat me on the stag a so many times before. “That’s better.”
“I’m so sorry my height issucha challenge for you,” I muttered, with a mocking scowl. Despite the glibness, my heart wasn’t only beating hard, but also fast. The proximity. The gentle waft of his woody, smoky scent cut through with sharp rhubarb. The way he stood between my legs, just pressing against my thigh as he resumed his grip on my hands.
It was suddenly all very dangerous.
Most dangerous, the fact I didn’t mind it.
The fae light glistened on his violet-blue-black hair as he bowed his head. Was he going to bite my fingers? Gods knew why, but I didn’t pull away even as that thought made my breath hitch.
But no teeth. Instead, his lips brushed over the tip of my index finger in a kiss that was feather light and yet hummed through every part of me: my throat, my chest, my inner thighs, all the way to my toes.
My mouth dropped open with a small “Oh.”
A flicker of a smile crossed his mouth before it landed on my next finger. His dark gaze collided with mine as he moved to the next, and heat crept across every inch of my flesh, pooling at my core. With each kiss, that thrumming in my body rose, my nipples tightened, and the dark flavour of night built on my tongue, sparked with starlight and rhubarb.
If he’d asked me to strip bare, to bend over the table and let him fuck me, to marry him, toanythingat that moment, I’d have agreed in an instant.
But all I could do was stare at his progress, my chest heaving as I tried to contain… everything.
The magic, the thrumming resonance that threatened to shatter me, the burning, burning heat that must’ve made my cheeks as red as the jewels in their glass phials.
When he reached my thumb, the pad dragged across his lower lip and I couldn’t have said whether it was him pressing it against his flesh or if I did.
I didn’t care.
By the time he moved to my right hand, starting with the thumb, I was swaying. When he whispered, “It is so,” against the very tip of my little finger, I almost swooned as a kick of pure energy throbbed through me.
Chest heaving, cheeks flushed, he caught me. “Are you all right?” He searched my face, concern in his gaze.
“Yes,” I breathed. My fingertips tingled. “Just… that was…”
“Sorry, I’ve never done that before, I didn’t realise it would be so”—he swallowed and wet his lips—“heady.”
“That’s one word for it.” I huffed and tried to hop down from the table, but I had to catch myself on the edge, face going numb as the world tipped.
“Hmm”—his grip closed on my shoulders—“maybe not the best idea.”
Then the tipping swung even further out of control and when I blinked, I was in his arms, clutching my head.
“I feel drunk.” I squeezed my eyes shut, but that did nothing against the spinning.
“Some rest and a sweet drink will restore your energy.”
But unlike those nights when Rose and I had flirted our way to too many free drinks, I didn’tfeeltired—something inside me sparked bright and lively. The new magic—his boon.
Still, no one had told my head that, because it lolled forward and back, and my eyelids fluttered and dipped like sleep wanted to claim me anyway.
The next thing I knew, I was being placed in my bed, a dark shape over me. But for some reason it didn’t frighten me. The shape resolved into a face… one I knew.
“Lysander,” I slurred. I might’ve smiled.
“It’s me.” He pulled the blankets over me and brushed hair off my face. He tipped something sweet and floral into my mouth—elderflower cordial. Behind him, the ceiling wheeled round and round and round as I drank.
But I burrowed into the covers and the pillow, the softness so glorious I could’ve melted into it. There was a distant hum of pleasure. Was that me?
“Sleep now, my evening star.”
