From one of the park levels, an avian draws out its mating call. The song brings another thought to my mind. “Have you brought other Fae here? Other males or females?”
He feigns a pout. “I could inquire likewise.”
“Go right ahead. I’ve got me some stories.”
“Mutinous human. I’d rather not hear tales of your exploits, unless you’d prefer me to fuck you again, ravenously and enviously?”
“That a trick question?”
He laughs, the sound a wind chime flittering into the night. “I’ve warmed a myriad of beds and a myriad of bodies, but I’ve never brought another Fae here.” His nose grazes mine. “This is ours.”
My shoulders relax. This tower and its wildlife park are ours.
But they aren’t ours. Not forever.
Cerulean cups my jaw and scours my features. “Such upheaval on that precious face. What can I do to remove it? Hmm?”
As an offering, he grinds his hips between my thighs. I sigh, remembering that he’s still lodged inside me. And still…
I gasp. “You’re hard.”
His smirk deepens. “I’m a Fae.”
He can last this long? Now that’s plain unfair. Seems mortals got cheated there, but I’m not gonna complain. Nevertheless, I’m too sore for a victory lap.
“I’m a human,” I remind him.
An intimate chuckle rumbles from his torso. Cerulean drags his fingers down to my belly, which gurgles under his palm. “That human is hungry.”
“Which is your fault, by the way. You kept me busy, and my appetite waits for nobody.”
“Then do not move.”
He holds my gaze while sliding out his cock. It’s an evocative moment, each of us concentrating on the movement, as if it warrants the same attention as when he first thrust into me. The beginning and ending of our first time together.
Immediately, I feel the void of him. Miffed, I wiggle atop the pillow moss, searching for a comfortable spot. Cerulean backs up, enjoying the sight before he turns, offering an unobstructed view of his perky ass. Below my navel, all the good parts clench. Fables have mercy, that’s one magical tush. The indentations contract as he voyages down a path and vanishes into the shrubbery.
I could hoot. I’ve just watched a buck-naked Fae saunter into the green.
Leaning on my palms, I crane my head and close my eyes. The park reverberates around me, leaves knocking together, grass shivering. From the underbrush, the resident canary tweets its lullaby, and the antelope grunts. Without a stitch of clothing, I feel a mightier kinship with this setting. Feral, wild—a native overgrowth of limbs and arms, the Middle Moon’s sheen leaking through the canopy and landing on my skin.
I shouldn’t be able to hear him approach, but I do. His agile feet skate through the lawn, then halt close by. My flesh pebbles as his sharp intake tickles my ear. “Look at you, my mutinous one. Untamed, uninhibited, uncovered.”
“You know it,” I boast, then yip as a pair of arms link beneath my knees and scoop me up. Cerulean sinks to the ground, depositing me on the grass. He lounges against the boulder and urges me to recline between his legs, which sprawl around my body. Once my back fits comfortably into his chest, his upturned palm offers a cluster of morsels with thin, lemon-colored rinds, the curvy shapes reminiscent of miniature figs. With his other arm, he drags one of the bulbs across my lips. “Do you trust me?”
“Don’t let it get to your head,” I caution. “The orgasm hasn’t worn off yet.”
Another chuckle shapes his words. “Open your mouth.”
I make a show of it, parting my lips and curling out my tongue. He places the fruity lump atop the flat, and I whisk it into my mouth. Vanilla, pear, and a dash of ginger bursts from the chewy flesh.
I swallow and moan. “That tastes—”
“Like you,” he says into my ear.
Hot. Damn. This Fae is going to be the death of me.
Cerulean continues to feed me the plump treats. Before giving me the last one, he says, “This won’t replace a hearty meal, but it will tide you over until later. There’s a fetching solarium where we can dine. Or if you’d like, I shall raid the kitchen and bring the fare here. It would be the utmost pleasure, introducing you to the delicacies of my culture.”
“Bring? You conjured food at the tower.”
“Yes, but I’d hate for you to accuse me of being lazy.”
“Now that you mention it, aside from the exotic or ghoulish snacks I’ve seen, a lot of what I’ve tasted is the same as back home. The platters in Moth’s cottage and in my chamber mostly included things I knew.”
“I chose what would satisfy your mortal cravings and quell your skepticism, but that isn’t the extent of this world. Elves prefer bitter cuisine, dragons spicy dishes and tropical fruits, and Faeries a blend of salty, sour, and sweet. It’s true we favor mortal cakes, honey, and dairy. And your crops—grapes, nectarines, apricots. Sublime.” He kisses my shoulder. “But we Fae have our own fare. Once you’ve sampled our dumplings, you’ll never be the same.”
“Let nobody say I’m not a hearty eater.”
He nuzzles me. “Perfect, because I do so favor a human with an appetite.”
His excitement does me in. A meal with Cerulean. Such a simple thing, among a thousand simple things we haven’t experienced. How many can we cram into the next few hours before sunrise, when this game begins again?
I snuggle into him. Wouldn’t mind if an animal wandered through here. Maybe the creature would assume Cerulean and I are mates.
Mates. How did this happen if Faeries only bond with their own kind? The thought chafes, pulling my mouth downward.
He’s mine.
But no, he’s not. Not anymore than I’m his.
Yet we spend the next hour talking, whispering, and chortling. We lie on our sides, my digits tracing circles over his arm, his fingers skimming my cheeks. We share bits about our cultures—the music, traditions, and yeah, the food. We talk about little things and bigger things, filling in the gaps for each other.
Cerulean props his cheek in his palm. “What are you pondering?”
“That you never answered my question about your age. How old were you when we met?”
“Just over a thousand. The equivalent of eleven human years.”
But that doesn’t make sense. Between then and now, he couldn’t have gained these many inches so quickly, not if it takes eons for Faeries to develop physically.
Cerulean gauges my logic. “Something happened that night to Puck, Elixir, and me. It should have taken us another millennium to look as we do now, but when we escaped, our bodies matured at a rapid pace over the next nine years. Increasingly, we thought and felt less like striplings. Yet once we grew to our physical prime, the process slowed, then halted altogether.
“As to why it happened, we scarcely know. Perhaps it’s because we were appointed Solitary rulers, thus nature wished for us to look and feel the part. It’s a mystery we’ve yet to unravel.”
His braided cord of hair falls over my chest, my tits cradling the feather. I fondle the quill and study its pigment. “You didn’t have dark lips when I met you.”
“Rather unfortunate, isn’t it?” he quips. “For if I had, I would have claimed even more of your attention. I’m quite fond of the way you ogle my mouth. But no, the blue came later.”
“Vain Fae. I know what you said before, but did you ever come close to seeking me out? In spite of everything you had on your shoulders?”
“I craved it desperately. But I had my obligations, only a smattering of them magnanimous.”
Spite creeps into my words. “Is that humility, I hear?”
“You might say you’re rubbing off on me. You’ve made inspiring arguments to that end.”
“You’re not forgiven.”
“No, I didn’t expect it would be that easy. Still, I could have rationed slivers of time to search for you. The problem was I dreaded our reunion—discovering you had changed, or we both ha
d changed, to the point where we wouldn’t feel the same connection. It’s not farfetched, given how young we were. I’d never been afraid of looking for you, but I was afraid of finding you.
“Hence, I let it go. I believed I’d never see you again and convinced myself it was better that way—safer for you, too. After that, the only things that gave me solace were Moth, this park, and my wild family.”
“So have I changed?”
“Yes and no. Have I?”
“Yes.”
He laughs. “Yet you’re still in my arms. How devious of me.”
“I’m a glutton for punishment.”
And I’ve got an inexplicable link with him. I’m not sure how to start that conversation, and I’m even less sure I want to know his reaction, and if I’ll be able to handle it.
Also, I’m still puzzling over why the mask’s enchantment didn’t work on him and if he’s questioning that, too. I’m still harping on whether he’d care about me as much if I weren’t the girl from his past, and if I’d care about him the same way.
“When did you know?” he broaches, and I confess about the Horizon and the blue feather, omitting the part about our bond.
“What about you?” I ask, sketching the plait of hair attached to the quill.
Cerulean brushes his fingers through my white locks. “You know when I knew. You saw the transformation as we danced. You saw my reaction to your mask.”
Yeah, I did. “You were horrified.”
“That loose plume was all it took. It kindled a memory of you as a girl, wearing a visor of mismatched, haphazardly assembled feathers. At once, I was undone. I feared it wasn’t true, and I feared it was true. After what I’ve done to you, I couldn’t fathom what you thought of me. Mostly, I feared my kin would see the evidence on my face and target you for that.”
“I wasn’t planning on telling you there. That’s not why I went.”
“Strictly speaking, I suspected you would infiltrate the revels, intent on spying despite having the tower’s haven to yourself. I found the notion enticing. Perhaps my anticipation rendered the enchanted mask ineffective—yes, Lark, I surmised the art of enchantment. Moth’s handiwork, no doubt.”
“I caught her in a rare, generous mood,” I say.
“The way the revelers treated you…I wanted to rip them to shreds. I wanted to attack my own kin,” Cerulean admits. “That was yet another impulse I couldn’t justify to myself. As a precaution, I played along to confirm the act for everyone. Though I confess, I enjoyed seeing what you’re made of. I liked feeling you hunt me down, and I liked prolonging your quest, if only to tease and frustrate you. It felt very much like a mating dance.”
My lips mash together, preventing the truth from spilling out. “So…”
“Although I didn’t know you were that girl, I began to speculate as much. With every interaction, my suspicions increased, yet I didn’t allow myself to accept that.”
“Neither did I.”
We tally the hints and snippets along the way. Then Cerulean tells me the humans who captured him wanted to cut out his tongue, to safeguard themselves against riddles, but he couldn’t talk anyway. Every time he thought about trying, he feared a bellow would surface and didn’t want anybody to steal his ability to speak. So he pretended to be a mute. That’s why he didn’t talk to me until the end.
Afterward, Cerulean destroyed his childhood mask, intending to bury his feelings—loving me, missing me. It’s dramatic, but I tell him I did the same thing when I was little, believing he was killed by the villagers, that my freeing him led to his recapture.
That’s when I cry. That’s when he slings his arms around me. That’s when I feel safest.
It takes Cerulean a while to absorb that I thought him dead. It takes him even longer to recover from the news.
To cheer me up, he rotates his wrist. A plume appears, hovering midair. He uses his hands to conduct the wind and juggle the quill across the enclosure, then sends the feather through the trees and far into the sky.
At some point, I roll on top of him, flattening my crossed arms over his chest, my limbs cranked upward and hooked at the ankles.
Cerulean’s brows clamp together in amusement. “Oh, no. What now?”
I hitch my shoulder. “Just looking at you.”
“And…?” he draws out.
“It’s only that, I don’t even know your birthday.”
He runs his fingers over my ass. “But you know other things.”
True. As for the rest, we make up for lost time.
His birthday is in February, mine is in May.
He taught himself to play the flute, like I taught myself to wield a whip.
If he could be a flightless animal, he’d be a wily fox. Unlike me, who’d rather be an ocelot because they’re agile and have a spectacular coat.
He listens as I talk about my family, and I listen when he talks about Moth, Puck, and Elixir. Being around him, it doesn’t feel wrong, me being a human and him being a Fae.
We keep whispering. I show him how to whistle between my fingers. And we keep whispering. He tells me a bedtime Solitary Fable about a roadrunner. And we keep whispering.
“Teach me your language,” I say. “Teach me Faeish.”
Cerulean’s gives me an artful look. “Which naughty words do you have in mind?”
“Well, now. Since you’re offering.” I pretend to give it serious thought, then slide my palm down the muscles of his abdomen. I stray farther, cupping my favorite place in the universe, encasing the heat and length of him, which is warmer than the rest of his body. “What do you call this?”
He keens, his hips bucking. “Fanlídan.”
That sarcastic tone is a dead giveaway. “Oh, no you don’t. Not the formal word. Gimme something carnal and scandalous, or I’ll let go.”
Cerulean half-laughs, half-groans. He flips me over and grates his pelvis between my thighs, punctuating the movement with a single reply. “Tüppide.”
Now that sounds more like it. I pronounce the word, letting it glide across my tongue while rubbing my center against his, savoring him from the base to the tip. His entire frame shudders, and he speaks against my throat, “I want to know every corner of your heart.”
Juniper and Cove are gonna kill me. They have dibs on my heart.
From then on, Cerulean and I fail miserably to keep our hands to ourselves. We swap heated touches and breathless kisses, groping and tonguing one another. He whispers erotic, foreign words that translate everything we do, until I’m blissfully exhausted, and we doze off.
At one point, the cougar slinks into the area and curls up beside us with a lazy purr. Cerulean extends an arm, he and the feline batting at one another with playful drowsiness. I hook myself around him and watch, amazed at the trust between them.
Eventually, more creatures arrive and settle in, claiming branches and plots of grass. We find ourselves in a pack, falling into a deep, wild slumber.
When I blink awake, the fauna are gone, but Cerulean continues to sleep, his arm roped around my waist. I twist in the basin of his chest to watch him. When I was little, I wondered if Faeries had the same color dreams. Part of me still wonders that.
His body is a land mass, steadily rising and falling. With his mouth partly open and his windswept hair covering his ears, he looks real, flawed, and vulnerable. Human.
Pain carves through me. He’ll never be human.
I chart his eyelashes with my pinky. Then I move to the scars where villagers jabbed an iron poker at him, not because they condoned torturing a child, but because they believed he wasn’t a child at all. They believed he was a monster of magic, a violation of nature.
He’s done horrid things. So they did horrid things back to him.
Who’s wrong? Who’s right?
Faeries love. They feel loss and longing. They’re born of nature and live amidst the animal kingdom, same as my culture.
Faeries also rest. It hurts to look at him, such a brutal creatur
e—who wasn’t brutal tonight. I lumber to my feet, the breeze caressing my skin. His shirt rests in the green, so I shrug it over my head. The linen quivers halfway down my thighs, the low neckline only marginally higher on me, the curves of my breasts peeking from the V.
I pad to the cliffside gazebo. Beyond the mesh, a giant owl funnels through a cloud, the raptor’s mighty size dominating the view. Everything’s moving, moving on, moving forward.
A great flapping sound hits the air, like sails unraveling. The outline of wings spread on either side of me, and a pair of toned arms link around my body. I lean into him, his pulse beating in the gulf of my shoulder blades.
I love this moment. I love this embrace.
I’d say I love him, but that would be too easy in this setting, basking in the aftermath of our moans. Any love worth sharing’s gotta have jagged edges, especially if it’s forbidden.
Cerulean plants a kiss on my shoulder. I sigh because that’s all it takes, just one touch of the lips. I squirm against the railing, antsy for more. He grunts in response, his mouth drifting to my neck.
His nakedness aligns with the linen hanging off me. “I like seeing you trussed up in my shirt,” he intones. “But what I like more is freeing you from it.”
Fingers descend to the neckline’s dip. He gives a controlled jerk, and the garment tears down the center, the material flaring wide to the panorama and blending with my hair. He turns me into a cloud—a temporary presence, impossible to catch and keep.
A stray, unattainable thing. That’s what he called me at the throne summit, at The Parliament of Owls.
I’m no more kept than he is. Cerulean’s boundless, lacking edges to grasp ahold of. But for now, we’ve got each other.
He lifts the shirt’s tail, exposing my lower half. I want this, so I broaden my stance, lust a dull throb in my temples, in my veins. He cups my tits, thumbing the peaks while he strums his tongue across the pulse point in my neck, and I release a stilted moan.
Cerulean’s mouth swerves into the trench beneath my jaw, the position tilting my head farther back. He sucks there, coaxing more noises from me. I reach behind and cling to his nape, then swivel my lips upward.
Kiss the Fae (Dark Fables: Vicious Faeries Book 1) Page 28
