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As she slid into her pants, she asked, “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“The thing is, I have a feeling you won’t like it.”
“Tell me anyway.” He picked up his dark shirt and pulled it on over his head, tucking the tails into his leathers.
“Well, it was a simple choice really, since I don’t have the power in my fae form to fly. Once I made my purchases, I’d shift to my wraith-form and fly everything in, hidden behind my enthrallment shield of course. It took a few trips. I’m not very strong as a wraith.”
Her wraith form.
He shrugged into his sleeveless leather battle coat.
Sweet Goddess, he’d almost forgotten and he quickly created another box in which he crammed ‘Lorelei’s flying wraith-form’.
He seemed to set that part of her reality aside most of the time, that she was part wraith and had the potential to bind him to her and to form a dangerous Invictus wraith-pair. Then he remembered what Gerrod had once told him that her blood-rose status would cancel out that kind of pairing. Because she was a blood rose, despite the fact that she was a wraith, she could never bind him into an Invictus wraith-pair.
The realm-folk who ended up bound to wraiths, usually through kidnapping, lost their identity in the process and essentially became slaves to the Invictus imperative of killing other realm-folk and serving the whims of Margetta. The ancient fae, as she was known, had created the process a long time ago with the help of her scientific husband, Gustav.
“And you’re sure no one saw you in your wraith-form?” If she’d ever been seen, she would have been hunted down. Though there were innocent wraiths around, no one trusted them.
“I used the layered enthrallment that Rosamunde taught me just to be sure.” She looked away from him, her eyes pinched, a familiar look for her. “You don’t know how much my wraith-form frightens me.”
“Do you fear becoming Invictus?”
She met his gaze. “More than anything in the world. But I think I’d kill myself first before I ever let that happen.”
He nodded. They’d just made love and now they spoke of the horrors of their world and Lorelei’s deepest fears. He couldn’t remember ever experiencing this level of sharing with another realm-woman, except of course with Kristen, who had led him deep into betrayal.
He felt uneasy as he turned toward the entrance to the den. A scattering of snow lined the opening. His coat had probably dragged it in when he’d eased through in his levitated state.
But it was time to go and he started to shift to levitated flight, when her hand caught the inside of his elbow. “Hey,” she said softly.
Once more, he turned toward her. She leaned up and kissed him on the lips. “Thank you for this.” She gestured with a dip of her head toward the furs. “It was amazing.”
“Yes, it was.” Possibly even extraordinary, but he couldn’t tell her that. He already felt way too much.
He’d known her such a short time, yet it seemed longer, months, even years, longer.
Remembering that she’d fed him from her vein as well, he added, “Thank you for sharing your life-force with me.”
She once more put a hand between her breasts, her brows rising. “And thank you. Honestly, Seth, I swear I feel better than ever because you’ve fed from me.”
One more reminder that she was his blood rose.
At that, he turned toward her fully and pulled her into his arms. “I don’t know what this time together is supposed to be, or mean, or how it will end, but this I will say, thank you so much for alleviating centuries of chronic blood -starvation.”
She nodded several times, but looked serious all over again. “Seth, I’m worried.”
“In what way.” He rubbed her arms, wanting to comfort her.
“This is all happening so fast, this thing between us. It scares me. Does it bother you?”
“Yes.” Understatement. “I’m afraid you’ll get hurt. I’m not exactly boyfriend material.”
“And I have a little baggage of my own.” She huffed a sigh, but her lips curved. “Ah, well, if all we get out of this is some great sex, that’s still a lot of pluses if you add them up, give or take a few deadly encounters with my mother and her army.”
He chuckled again, marveling once more how easily she could make him laugh, then pulled her tight against his chest once more. “I’ll try not to hurt you.”
