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So I held his gaze and whispered, “Good boy.”
The flash in his eyes made me whimper, although I’d swear it was simply the shock of the vines extending so I was suddenly jerked eye level with Eli. My arms were overhead now, and my legs were spread wider than was strictly comfortable.
At some point he’d obviously dropped his trousers because in a blink, he was sheathed inside me.
My body was still clenching from my last orgasm, gripping him. I tried to move, but I was suspended in the air by vines. I had no purchase. The best I could do was lean my chest against his shirt.
“Take it off.”
“The shirt or the restraint? Say the word and--”
“Shirt.” I trembled that even when he was in control, even though I had the same fae magic and could end these restrictions as easily as he applied them, my beloved still required my consent.
He stayed buried deep inside me as he unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it to the floor. A beautifully challenging expression on his face made me want to taunt him again, but I knew that look. He was in control. I was restrained, and his hips stayed motionless.
“Please . . .”
He chuckled, and I let out a small animal noise at the perfection. We fit like he’d been custom made for my body.
More vines grew, creating a tether line to somewhere, and with those vines, he moved me toward him, then backwards, controlling every thrust with the fae-wrought vines—which left his hands free.
“I love you, Geneviève.”
5
GENEVIÈVE
For the next few months, life continued on with a remarkable normalcy. I was more satisfied by married life than I’d dreamed ever possible. My magic was steady, and I was learning new hexes from Iggy. No one at all had tried to kill me in half a year now. It was almost enough to make me think that thedraugrhad vacated the city, and that Chester no longer wished for my death. Almost. I wasn’t foolish, but I was being lulled into a safety that I’d never known, and it was beginning to make me anxious.
So I began to patrol more often, and my friends stopped asking for my schedule constantly. Eli still worried, but to be honest, I worried when we were apart, too. Not practical worries, but the randomness that comes of love—what if the increased tourism meant that there were robberies, or muggings, or mass shooting, or a car jumped a curb, or the bar caught fire, or . . . panic worries. I wasn’t used to the intensity of such things, but overall, I told him where I was, and he told me where he was.
And we coped.
I texted Eli: “Patrolling. Meet at bar soon?”
“Want company?” He texted back.
“After patrol.” I smiled. I always wanted his company, but this was just another routine patrol. No threats. No jobs. I honestly felt a little useless of late.
I tucked my phone away and glanced around the shadowed row of mausoleums. All the cemeteries in New Orleans were closed at night, so the only beings I typically encountered were the random angry, biting, recently arisendraugr.Since my wedding, fewerdraugrwere rising. I secretly wondered if there were reasons for this shift, but my attempts to ask my grandmother went nowhere fast.
There were still a few strays to behead, but it was rarely more than a moment’s effort with such young ones. I still made my rounds at the various cemeteries a few times a week. I used the grid I’d been mastering to check the city on the other nights, but sometimes there was a part of me that grumbled if I was too long away from the soil that housed the dead.
I couldn’t decide if it was necromancy or mydraugrside.
Being great-granddaughter of the queen, as well as wife to the heir of the fae throne, seemed to inspire obedience. At least, so far, it did. Even the over-eager tourists had backed off after the wedding—in part due to the New Orleans Police Department arresting those who were too close to my home with Eli and in part because Eli and I were, apparently, boring.
But what they thought was boring, I thought was a vacation of the sort I’d never known. Life had, dare I say it, becomepeaceful. Tonight, the moon was only half-full, but there were lights that kept the majority of the shadows at bay. Summer was here, sticky and buggy, but it meant fewer tourists.Thatpart was lovely.
I was relaxed enough that I’d begun debating a week’s escape inElphame—well, a week New Orleans’ time. That was longer over there, as the times didn’t align equally. It was the equivalent of a week’s absence to those who were here in this world.
But my focus for the night was on closer matters. I had a date with my husband in about two hours, so all-in-all, it was as close to the picket-fence happily-ever-after as I ever even dared to dream of reaching. I had a partner who made me feel loved, respected, and thoroughly sated. I had friends, family, a career.
If I were the skipping sort, I’d be skipping through the tulips . . . errr,graves.
“Geneviève Crowe?”
I looked around. The caller had said my name in a way that sounded familiar, chastising and somehow accusatory. It was a skill to say my birth name in that way that made me think I ought to apologize. As a child I’d thought only my mother could do that, but Mama Lauren was safely on the estate of my great-times-great-grandmother Beatrice—who didn’t bother with nuance. No one else ought to be speaking to me in that particular disappointed-parent tone.
