Page 87 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“What are you talking about?”

“Us, Raegan! You said it was the ceadan bond, that all I feel for you can be whittled down into such a tiny thing–”

He shook his head. “I did not mean that. That is not what I meant.”

“Then what?” I pleaded. “Please. You have left me confused time and time again and I cannot figure it out! I need you to tell me. Tell me, what is it that–”

“I cannot think!” Raegan roared, his pacing renewed as he ran a hand through the base of his hair. “You walk into a room and I cannot think. It is as if my tongue has been ripped from my mouth and my body has been taken over by another. Everything about me simply numbs when you share the same air as me.” Then he prowled closer, his movements abrupt and intentional, forcing my feet backwards until my back slammed against the nearest wall. He continued towards me until his chest grazed my chest, his head angled in the strangest of ways as he drew in a large breath.

“I cannot think when you look at me like that, Olivia,” he snarled. “I cannot think when all I can smell on you is how desperately you want me.”

As if to prove his own point, he wrapped an arm around my waist and yanked my body against his. I didn’t have enough time to correct the noise that came out of my mouth, instead forcing us both to witness the soft moan as I felt the stiff length of him grind against my waist.

His voice, drunk on lust and lazy, slithered into my ear, “I cannot think when you whimper at my mere touch.”

A haze had fallen over me, all of my senses disappearing as he rotated his hips ever so slightly, sliding the risen hardness of him against me. I couldn’t even remember what we were arguing about.

“I cannot think when all I can focus on is how desperately I want you.”

Just as he rubbed against me again, this time his hand moved along my front, his fingers soon dragging against the insides of my thighs. Like I was put on this earth only to obey every subtle command from him, one of my legs hitched up against the wall and allowed his fingers access to the concealed curve of me.

“But you claim it is just the ceadan bond.”

Raegan made a guttural noise, evidence of a frustration at the resurfaced conversation. It should have stirred some sort of terror in me, but instead it flashed my body with heat at the exact moment that his fingers — through the heaviness of fabric — pushed against me. Moaning once more, I angled my hips for a better, more torturous swipe of his fingers.

“Not the ceadan bond,” he muttered, his whole body crowding mine as his lips found my neck. “I have wanted you since the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

“You are just saying that–”

“I prayed,” he began, his breathing dull and his eyes fluttering, “I prayed, morn and eve. I prayed to every god, begging them to bring the sun to Choilltean.” He managed to still his wandering eyes long enough to look at me, a certain level of desperation within them that made me draw in a sharp breath. “You arrived, radiant and powerful in your kindness and your goodness, your hair like sunlight and a pair of eyes that can see right through me, and I knew that the gods had not completely forsaken me.”

“Raegan–”

“So you ask me what it is? What I feel?” There was a tear in the fox-King’s eye as he stopped blinking altogether, even his chest slowing in its rise and fall. “I want nothing more than to be with you, Olivia. I want it more than I wish to breathe, I want it more than I wish for a heart that beats. But that is the issue – because I have known my whole life that nothing must rise above my duty. I must care for nothing more than I care for my kingdom.” His face pinched as he let out a low groan, shifting awkwardly over his feet. “The gods have been cruel to us, my sweet human. If I could remove myself from you, I would.”

“Don’t say that–”

“I mean it,” he coughed out, his throat growing hoarser with every word as he took an abrupt step back, reality crashing down on the both of us. “I wish it was just me that suffered as a consequence of my title.”

“You will tempt the gods with talk like that.”

Raegan let out a spluttered version of his infamous, snarky laugh before his eyes moved to the ceiling above us. “If they are listening then I pray they hear my pleas. I pray they shift the skies and shake the lands until this little life that you and I pretend we can have, can be our reality.”

He took one last look at me, his eyes hooded with a new sort of sadness, before he brushed my hair behind my ear. “You ask me what tonight is? Tonight is for you, Olivia. Fill my kingdom with your beautiful laughter and your magnificent smile. Let us worry about the rest later.”

All I could do was nod at him, the rest of me petrified into a strange stillness born of his admission that I never thought he would offer.

He stepped towards me and pressed a soft kiss to my brow before turning and leaving, this time for good.

Maybe the trick to understanding Raegan was in accepting that he was not meant to be understood but accepted. Fox-slyness, many masks, snide smirk and all. He was not a book that I could open and read, that I could learn in a linear way, but one that traded in truths and vulnerability.

If that was what Raegan needed from me, then I could do that. Because I, too, was not so easy to understand, and he had accepted that the moment we met.

And maybe, just maybe, I needed to stop listening to everyone else. Everyone else, who didn’t know Raegan.

The real Raegan.

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