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Oh no. No, no, no, no.
He could smell my arousal—this could not be happening. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my thighs together, willing myself to think of anything else. Anything but the whisper of Bael’s voice behind me—“Do you want more, little monster?”—while Scion knelt at my feet, promising my pleasurable destruction.
“Fuck,” Bael hissed, sounding angrier than I’d often heard him. “What are you trying to do to me?”
I jumped and sat up, my breathing uneven. “I should go. Or you should. This can’t work.”
He made no move to shy away from me, and I knew I shouldn’t have been surprised. Like most Fae, Bael wasn’t all that straightforward when it came to expressing his feelings, but he’d been downright direct about how difficult it was to be around me, which likely meant it was ten times worse than I’d thought. I needed to be the voice of reason for both of us.
I tried to pull away, tugging at his fingers still curled almost entirely around my upper thigh. “I want you to let go.”
Instead, he reached around with his other arm and wrapped it around my waist, pulling me into his lap. “At least try and sound convincing,” he purred. “We both know you’re a better liar than that.”
I shivered. We were almost nose to nose, and I could feel every breath, every quiver of movement, every inch of how hard he was against me. Worse, he was right—so right, it was almost painful. After the party in the field and what had happened mere hours ago in the woods, I should have been satisfied, but I was far from it. I had to imagine it was far, far worse for him. At least I’d had some relief. “Fine, maybe I don’t want that, but this is still becoming more dangerous by the hour. You know you can’t touch me like this.”
He leaned his head forward a quarter of an inch to whisper in my ear. “I can’t fuck you and mark you and share your blood because that would be a completed bond…but any one of those things individually?” He paused, and the tension nearly lit me ablaze. “Who knows? I have to believe there’s some way around it.”
My heartbeat sped up, pounding against my ribs. He could not possibly be serious. “You won’t risk it.”
“Wouldn’t I?” The hand on my leg moved even higher, and I gasped when the inside of his thumb grazed the bare flesh of my thigh, mere inches from my core.
I let out an involuntary moan. He was barely touching me, but it was the anticipation that had wetness pooling between my thighs and my nipples hardening to tight buds in quivering need of his fingers finally brushing against them. I shifted on his lap and, in doing so, only brought his hand closer to my center. Our eyes met as his long fingers brushed against me. Awareness sparked in his eyes, and I beheld the moment he realized I wore nothing beneath the nightgown. His gaze flashed golden, and a predator stared back at me, hungry and wanting.
“It’s not in my nature to be this restrained,” he growled, yanking me harder against his chest. “What if I told you I don’t care anymore? What if all I want is you?”
By Aisling, I should be terrified, but instead, a shiver of excitement traveled down my spine. “I know that you wouldn’t risk your own life. Or your family’s lives.”
“You have no idea what I would do.”
No, he was wrong. I knew exactly what he might do, and I had the uneasy feeling that if we let this continue much longer, we would find ourselves intimately familiar with the parameters of his family curse, and while I could not say that I would be heartbroken to lose most of them…that was not true of all.
“This is dangerous,” I said distractedly, my voice trailing off a bit at the end. “You’ll die.”
I trembled slightly as I pushed up on my knees and reached down to pull the nightgown over my head. I was, indeed, wearing nothing beneath it, and I watched as his eyes dilated, then trailed over me in an appreciative way that made me feel as if he were running warm hands all down my body rather than just looking.
“You are not making a very good case for my family’s lives, little monster,” he said with a harsh laugh. “Or mine, for that matter. I might die to touch you, but at least I would die happily.”
Heat burned up my chest and neck, blooming over my face. No one had ever said anything like that about me, ever, and it was hard to imagine he could be serious, if only for the fact that he couldn’t be lying.
I took a deep breath, and somehow feeling more vulnerable even than I had in the woods, I said, “Just hold me?”
He looked slightly taken aback but immediately tugged his shirt off and then opened his arms for me to lie against his chest.
I sighed, relaxing as soon as I hit that almost too-warm skin. This was what I’d wanted. What was more terrifying by far to want than sex was comfort.
Which, I supposed, was hardly surprising. For me, who’d grown up in the Fae court where sex was abundant but comfort was negligible. Even I, who’d been treated as a pariah most of my life, was never short of offers for a night, a week, perhaps a few months in the case of those like Caliban. My face might have afforded me that, but I could not remember the last time anyone held me like this. Perhaps when I was a child or maybe the occasional hug from my sister.
“Say something,” I said as Bael tugged the blanket up around me.
“I was just thinking that I’m a larger monster than I thought for not realizing you would be exhausted.” He shook his head. “I truly cannot think straight lately. It’s…alarming.”
I yawned. “Is that an effect of the mating?”
He stiffened. “You said it?”
I tilted my head to look up at him. “What?”
“You have not been mentioning the bond.”
