Page 53 of My Fae Lady

“No problem is ever resolved in such a fit of passion. If anything, we’ve mucked it all up even worse than it was before.”

“And we should never do it again,” she said sternly, and then she uncovered her eyes and her chin tilted my way and her gaze turned vibrantly violet. Her lips formed a droll twist before blooming into a heart-stopping smile. “Never again . . . after one more round?”

“Definitely one more round,” I said as she tugged down the sheet. I rolled her back underneath me and slid between her thighs.

Just one more time. Then it would be out of our systems for good.

Twenty

Giselle

⊱❀⊰

I woke tucked tight against Sylvan, my head pillowed on his chest, my front plastered to his side. His arm held me close, and for just a moment I allowed myself to pretend that the night before hadn’t been a colossal mistake.

Then his breathing changed, and his hold went from lazy to tense. My moment of fantasy ended. Obviously, it had been a mistake, but the most pleasurable one I had ever made.

I rolled over and climbed out of the bed. House had moved my usual dressing gown to the post at the foot of this bed instead of my own, and I pulled it on without looking back at Sylvan. I wasn’t sure I could handle looking at him. Either he’d be a temptation, sprawled in that big bed wearing nothing more than a sheet, or he’d ruin even my memories of last night by saying something cutting.

Thankfully, he said nothing as I dressed and left, and House allowed me to change into a simple day dress and proceed to my workroom where a breakfast tray waited for me. Just like before Sylvan had shown up. No tricks, no refusals of any of my requests.

I set to work, ignoring the Seelie Scales that beckoned to me and instead focusing on the matter of House. The morning’s cooperation to last might not last long.

I didn’t know how many hours passed before my workroom door swung open and Sylvan strode inside.

“I think I’ve figured it out,” I told him, looking up from the pages of calculations I had made.

“You missed breakfast. And lunch.”

“I’ve been busy. And House is in a good mood today and sent me trays for both meals. Did it not feed you?”

Sylvan crossed his arms. “It fed me.”

“Then why are you cross?”

“I’m not cross,” he snapped.

I rolled my eyes. “Of course not.”

I wondered if Sylvan had started to feel the same restlessness that had overcome me at the prospect of returning to the way things had been before. If I succeeded in claiming the manor and he left, I’d be alone. Again. And maybe I had realized I didn’t like my solitude quite as much as I had thought.

Perhaps Sylvan was realizing the same, that if he regained control of House, he’d be no better off than when he’d been trapped in his ash tree—isolated. Alone.

I glanced at my calculations again and licked my lips. I saw a potential solution, but I wasn’t sure we could make it work. I wasn’t sure I wanted to make it work.

“What did you figure out?”

“Hmm?” Could we make it work?

“When I opened the door, you said you’d figured it out. What is ‘it’?”

“Oh. That. I’m operating completely on theoreticals at the moment, and I’d like to perform a few tests to confirm my conclusions first, but I think I know how House can ignore direct orders currently.”

I’d never really relied on orders to get what I wanted from House; it had always been eager to help me, so long as it had enough power. But the wild magic shouldn’t have been able to ignore a demand from its owner. Even with two conflicting claims, it shouldn’t have been able to act out the way it had been.

The problem, of course, was that I was Seelie and Sylvan was Unseelie.

“What sorts of tests?”