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“Kiss me forever, or I’ll suffocate under the weight of my need for you, Raven,” I whispered to him when I snatched a few breaths.

“Would that I could, little bug. Fuck, you make this harder and harder every day.” I heard the pain, the anguish, the need that sliced within me mirrored in his voice. “But I would have you choose me.”

“Fine. I choose you, Raven. I want you. I want you so fucking bad all I can think of is how you’ll feel inside of me.”

I was beyond caring that there was a slight desperation in my voice.

“Soon, Sóna. Fuck. I promise you. Very soon.” He exhaled. “I want you, too. I choose you too. And I’ll always choose you. Forever.”

“Then, why won’t you fuck me?”

“I made an oath, Sóna.”

“Fuck your oath. Fuck me, or I’ll find someone else to do it.”

I felt the malignant twist of his lips into a toothy grin. “Oh, sweet little bug, please do. I would love nothing more than to crown you in a diadem of their ribs and bathe you in their blood so I can lick it off.”

“You’d have to touch me to do that.”

“I encourage you to test my limits, little bug. You’ll find that there is no depravity, devilry, nor debauchery I wouldn’t commit or participate in for you. Gladly. Without hesitation.”

Why did that make my heart race almost as much as when he finger-fucked me? Why did that make my pussy clench with desire?

He slowly lowered my ass to the bed and placed a tender kiss to my forehead. “Now, get dressed. Dinner will be up to us soon. I’ll have you dine by the window to watch the Fae sun set on the horizon of the wood this evening.”

“Romantic.”

“I prefer to balance my hedonism with all of the four food groups,” he drolled as I pulled the chemise down and spread it across my suddenly feverish body.

“And what food groups would that be?”

“The sound of your pleasure, the sound of your pain, the sound of your laughter, and the sound of your brutality.” He counted them out on his black-swathed fingers.

“That doesn’t sound like a very balanced diet,” I quipped back and finished getting dressed.

I made my way over to the window, where he had drawn over a table and two chairs, the window opened wide. It was a sweet little romantic table for two with a hauntingly beautiful scene beyond the wall.

“From this window, you can almost see where Lon di Lughae and Doire-na-Tuan are. If you were to fly straight into the sun from the palace, you would first reach Doire-na-Tuan and beyond the moors of their lands is Lon di Lughae.” He smiled down at me as he mapped out the manors that lay before us.

“And your court? Where were your lands?” I settled into the chair he pulled out for me, and he set to working a cream from the pot he’d brought with him into the long strands preparing them for the braid he promised.

“Directly opposite. If you turned around and flew with Lon di Lughae at your back, you’d first encounter Dealramh Léas, and once you cleared their fields and meadows, you would eventually come to Breacadh an Lae. It’s still there. Or was the last time I visited a few years ago. Ghosts haunt its halls where there was once the laughter of children and vines are starting to reclaim it, but it’s still there. I suspect that the Ard Rí would not allow it to fall into ruin. He’d want to keep it as a monument to those who would disobey him.”

I reached behind me, wrapping my hand around his tree trunk of a thigh to give him some sort of respite from the pain of the memories. “Why do you still serve him, Raven?”

He sighed deep and began slowly drawing a comb through the base of one section of my hair, taking care to isolate knots so he didn’t yank at my scalp. “A sense of duty? Punishing myself? Some hope that we could somehow erase the pain of the past? Oaths? I don’t know which answer is correct, if any of them are.”

“Do you think he will ever free me?”

“I kiss you finally, and you’re suddenly ready to run away from me?” He teased, taking up a new section of my hair. “I don’t know, Sóna. To be honest, I don’t truly understand what has happened between the two of you. I was there, in the room, and I still don’t understand it. I’ve known the man since we were both children, and I have never seen him act like that with someone. He’s capricious, malicious, and vicious like the rest of us, but the way you gall him . . . I’ve never seen anything like it. He goes out of his way to strike at you.” His hands had stilled on my hair as if he was trying to pick through his own thoughts. “I do not like to ask this, little bug, but it has needled at me all this time. What did you do to him?”

I bristled under the question. It felt like he was blaming me for what was happening. It felt unfair, and I wanted to hate him for it, but the chilled effervescence he had left within me from his kiss refused to allow me to let go of the sweetness he’d imbued me with. “I don’t know. I went somewhere else while it was happening. I kept thinking of the last time I had sucked a dick. And I remember tasting someone else on him, and I wanted to be somewhere else.”

“Someone else?”

“His dick tasted of pussy.”

“Are you . . . familiar with that taste?” He was edging around the question like it might bite him if he did not approach it with care.