Page 74 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

“One can hardly blame them.”

Lachlan scoffed. “I can certainly blame a coward for being a coward.”

“No one wants their library burned to ashes,” she pointed out, even though the certainty with which he condemned them made her feel cherished. A dangerous feeling. “Not even you.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “One can always buy more books.”

She wasn’t sure if she was touched or deeply horrified. “Lachlan.”

“How many retractions?”

“Fourteen.”

He looked disgusted. “I wish I could say that was surprising. You’re well rid of them.”

“Yes, I know.” She had known it at the time as well. One might get a certain reputation for fussiness or haughtiness after so many refusals, but she was not about to tie herself to a man who only saw a pretty face or an unpaid assistant.

“The lovely Miss Cavendish,” he teased. “Breaking hearts.”

She shot him a mock glare. “The handsome Professor Thorn, breaking hearts and bones.”

“That is true.”

Handsome and lonely, she would wager. How surprising to find that that was the thing they had in common. Not just the University or books or the Tithe.

He came dangerously close to smirking. “You think I am handsome?”

“What?” She blurted out.

“Tsk-tsk,” he murmured. “Can’t take it back now, love.”

“As if you don’t know you’re handsome,” she muttered, blindly grabbing more books and fleeing back up the relative safety of the ladder. She paused. “This is a seven-hundred-year-old encyclopedia,” she realized. “It went missing two weeks ago from a witch college in the Shetlands.”

“Did it?”

“And this grimoire belongs to the Museum of Magic in London.”

“It did.”

Her mouth fell open. She was as scandalized as a London dowager spinster in Haven village when the nude moon swimming was in full swing.

“Lachlan Jareth Thorn, did you steal all of these books?”

Pippa was adorable when she was incensed.

And he might be a Fae king with a certain reputation for ferocity, but she could still eviscerate him for his book-related crimes. She could not give a fig about the other crimes.

Her eyes glowed, and the skin of her delicate collarbones beneath the red velvet ribbon was pink. A delectable pink that made him think of cakes and pastries and delectable sweets.

He had dreams about that ribbon and what he might be allowed to do with it.

A spark came off that damned iron cuff, but it winked out almost immediately. She was improving apace already. Her magic was strong, so strong that he was surprised the Order of the Iron Nail had not tried to recruit her. Or perhaps they had. She might look like a wisp made of mist and candlelight, but he had never met anyone more stubborn. More rooted, for all that everyone assumed a brisk wind might knock her down.

Pippa crossed her arms. “You are a thief! And I knew it. I just knew it, even if no one believed me!” She lifted her chin. He had the strongest urge to fall to his knees in front of her, to press his brow to hers, to feel her nails raking along his scalp. To kiss her again and again, to taste her fire. To burn. Finally, to burn.

He had not planned to give in to the urge, to the reckless need, the sharp teeth of desire that raked through him day by day, night by night. It was only that he thought of her pleasure and found himself at her feet.

Literally.