Page 26 of The Court the Fae Forgot
There was so much to unravel in what he said, but it was all I could do to keep from being lost in that moment, too. It wasn’t his words that ensnared me, that stole my sanity until I was driven to the brink of madness. It was the way he looked at me then.
No one had ever looked at me the way he looked at me.
He looked at me like I was both the most beautiful and the most dangerous creature in the world.
He was a fae, a truly dangerous creature with evil intent, and yet the way he looked at me made me forget all of that.
Or, at least, almost forget.
“Come, Lost One. Admit to me you feel it too.”
His hands dug further into my hair as he pulled me even tighter against him. It was impossible to ignore the way he throbbed against my stomach now, his need as plain in his body as it was on his face. The hunger in his eyes was enough to make me starve, too.
Heat ignited within me at his every touch, but whatever survival instincts I had left managed to dig their claws into me, keeping me on the brink of the precipice this fae had brought me to.
“Stop calling me that. I told you, I’m not lost.”
“Then what else am I to call you?” he asked, dipping his head down until his lips met my shoulder. He placed the softest of kisses there before straightening up, fixing me with that dark, blackened gaze of his, and repeating the same on my other shoulder. My knees weakened, but his hands around me tightened, keeping me held firmly against him.
I was fully at his mercy.
My mouth went dry, my own name barely escaping in a gasp of air. “Aurra.”
“Aurra.” The sound of my name of his lips was intoxicating. He mulled over my name, rolling the sound of it over on his tongue as if savoring the taste of it. “A soft breeze. You’re more than a breeze, Aurra. You are a tempest. You are … My Storm.”
I swallowed. Hard.
My reaction pleased him. His nostrils flared as he drank in the scent of it, a devilish smile starting to pull on the outer corners of his lips.
“And what will you do with this storm then?” I asked, fighting still to tread water in his ever-deepening spell.
“I will do as all great forces do. I will try to temper it.”
“And if you fail? What then?” I asked, though the words were as faint as the breath I managed to draw with his body pressing so to mine. “You are the forest, you said, the Wildness. Even great trees bend to the wind and rain.”
The fae let out a deep sigh. It was not a defeated sound. It was, in fact, the opposite.
It was a challenge.
“I suppose we’ll just have to wait and find out which of us has more stamina—my wild forest, or your little breeze.”
There was no use in asking how he planned to do that.
Not when he was already showing me.
The eyes that had, until now, been locked with mine now dropped to drink in the rest of me. He took his time, his gaze tracing every line, every contour of my body. I was no stranger to the lingering looks of men, but the way he looked at me didn’t make me shiver in disgust.
Though it did make me shiver.
The feeling quaked through him, drawing out a deep, growl-like noise from somewhere deep inside his chest. His head bowed slightly, the horns curling like that crown from the top of his head silhouetted against him in the dying light.
Something quivered, dancing around the surface of the water behind him. It took me a moment to realize it was the dark fae’s wings, tucked close to his back but still so large that they had to fight against the current of the water. Their tips flitted like dark sails beneath the surface, glittering where the water gathered in drops across their shiny surface.
As if sensing my thoughts again, he suddenly moved to press his lips beneath my ear once more.
“You like my wings?”
“I—I’ve never seen anything like them.”
