Page 102 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“You would be the best of them,” he whispered. “They would love you. Your kindness would heal the pixies of Saoghal – I know it.”

He had to be drunk. There was no way he was admitting all of this. I pinched my arm, convinced it would bring me out of the dream, but I remained there, naked across his rippling body.

His thumb continued to drag over my lip, back and forth, as his eyes refused to lift from the flesh that was growing swollen at his tender touch. “You would be capable of saving my people, Olivia.” His words brushed over the very same skin his finger traced. “Just like you saved me.”

I frowned as my body shook, a new type of ache within me that demanded I fight for this male, for a King of Saoghal who had somehow derailed my entire life and centered it on him.

My finger found the delicate muscle of his wing once more, where I started to drag. And it felt like the right time to admit what I had known for so very long, what I had harboured in my heart but wore on my face in his presence. “Raegan, I–”

“Stop that,” he chuckled, referencing my trembling hand that with every graze against his feathers was causing him to stiffen beneath me. “We’re going to get no rest if you keep touching me like that.”

Lost in the lust that flared in his eyes, I laughed. “Like what?”

I looked just as evil as my finger dragged once more, tip to base of that glistening wing.

“I will take them away,” he purred, his grin wicked.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

He laughed, and I relented, because I truly did not want him to hide away the most beautiful part of him. So with a roll of my eyes and a new sort of exhaustion that came from baring one’s soul, I curled myself into his side and awaited the mass of his arm to hug me close to him.

And we truly did just rest.

45

____________________

I rose with the sun.

Not the heat that melted across the world and slipped through the windows all around me. But with Raegan, who was lying next to me, watching as I slowly woke out of my sleep.

Groaning, I rolled on to my back, only to be met with the sight of two semi-moons carved into the stone ceiling high above me. Blinking several times, my desire to question such an oddity was interrupted when I felt the heavy, ever-present gaze of a King on my face.

“How long have you been staring at me?”

“Hmm,” he purred through a sleepy smile, “when did you fall asleep?”

With a nervous chuckle, I shoved at his shoulder. “Very funny.”

His smirk suggested that he, too, thought he was quite funny. But there was something in the air, something between us, that brought about a lightness to the room. It was as if oxygen itself had changed, becoming easier to accept and quicker to satisfy my body. Everything was right and all I wanted to do was roll back onto my side and curl myself into Raegan.

But he was the King of Talamh, and sleeping long past the rising sun seemed unlikely as he placed a kiss on my cheek and lifted himself from his bed.

I watched him, just as he had watched me, while he stretched. He twisted side to side, freeing knots along his spine and across his permanently-stiff shoulders. Then it was a low, gravelly groan as he stretched over one side, then the other. All the while, I couldn’t look away from him.

I was probably being creepy. Yet when he caught me staring, all he did was flush a light-pink across his cheeks and walk back over to his bed.

Raegan braced one hand near my head and leaned over, his eyes sweeping from left to right across my face. He had the sweetest, warmest smile across his lips, something that I wanted to see every morning for the rest of my life. His eyes twinkled, a happiness and a comfort within them that at last revealed everything Raegan had bottled up. Everything he wanted to say was in that look, and I found myself accepting it all, wordlessly.

He reached forward, his blond hair slipping off of his shoulder, and tucked some of my hair behind my ear.

He gave himself one more look.

One more look.

Then he leaned into me, pressed a kiss to my brow, and murmured, “When you go to Rory today, Olivia, do not return.”

Raegan turned and walked out.