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A slow breath escaped. The problem with living in the human world was that faeries and humans looked exactly the same. I bit my lip, considering his words. If he was a faerie, then he couldn’t lie. Which meant there was a good chance I wasn’t about to get ruthlessly butchered by a hidden faerie guardian.
If he was a human, he wasn’t a danger to me. I rubbed my hands together, searching the trees. “Why would you say that?”
He shrugged. His leather jacket spanned over broad shoulders. “You look as if you are about to race screaming down the street.”
A smile tugged at my lips. Despite humans’ and faeries’ similarities in appearance, there were precious few faeries in the human realm. This man was most likely human. I rested my hand on my griffin tattoo, ready to act just in case I was wrong. “Youarelurking creepily in the shadows.”
“The city lights wash out the stars.”
A genuine grin broke my face. “You’re stargazing?”
His head inclined. “Care to join me?”
He looked not much older than me. His head tilted back and my teeth sank deeper into my lip as I took in his windswept dark hair, his square jaw, and the thin shirt under the leather jacket that stretched across his muscled chest.
Damn.
I dropped my hand and slid onto the bench next to him. This was what I needed. A moment to forget everything faerie. To let my complicated life go, and to get lost in a conversation with a stranger.
A sexy stranger.
The lightest shadow of scruff on his face gave him just the right touch of dark allure. It made me want to reach out and run a hand over his cheek. Mark was handsome in a clean, city boy, kind of way. But he didn’t hold a candle to the man sitting next to me.
I cleared my throat and forced my attention to the heavens. “So, what’s so exciting up there?”
He kept his gaze on the night sky, the soft lights of the evening casting his chiseled features in sharp relief. “The stars are stories.” He pointed. “See that one there? The one that looks like a man?”
“You mean Orion?”
He shook his head. “That is a warrior, a giant in some tales, who was a famous hunter, eventually tricked into a watery grave.”
“I’m pretty sure it's Orion.”
His finger moved. “And that one is his faithful water hound that follows him in the stars as he did in life.”
I scoffed. “Water hound? What even is that?”
“And that one there. That one is Diarmuid and Grainne. A tale of star-crossed lovers.”
“Are you making these up?”
His head fell toward me, and I sucked in a sharp breath. There was an intensity in that gaze that washed over me like waves in a dark ocean. A shiver ran through me at the vastness there.
He turned his attention back to the sky. “Many different peoples cast their stories on the stars,” he said in a soft voice.
I shifted, my mouth suddenly dry. “I suppose that’s true.” I pulled my legs onto the bench, wrapping my arms around them, still trying to process what his gaze had done to me. “Go ahead. Tell me more about these lovers in the stars.”
“Only if you wish to hear it.”
I gave a wry smile. “Doesn’t everybody need to be told a tragic love story from a complete stranger from time to time?”
He nodded as if this were the wisest of answers. “Grainne, the daughter of the king, was the most beautiful woman in all the land. Men from all over the kingdom sought her hand, but none interested her.”
“Meaning none interested her father,” I said.
He arched an eyebrow at this.
I shrugged. “What? She's the king's daughter. I know how these things went back then.”
