“What does that mean? ‘Raven one’?” she asked, at once enthralled.
“It means lovely one,” he told her. And when he said “lovely one,” he did so without any pretense or guile. He honestly meant it.
“Everything in existence lives within its own boundaries,” he explained. When he stopped directly before her, he gently cupped her cheek with his right hand. “Even the Wishers.”
A wash of heat moved out over her skin when he ran his thumb across her bottom lip.
“Especially the Wishers,” he added softly and tilted her head back, his green, green eyes making her weak.
“Your rare kind are the justice bringers of the fae universe. Long ago, it was not an ability to prevent wrong that frightened our rulers, Selene. It was your power to avenge it.”
Selene wanted to say something, but there was no point. He was right.
She couldn’t alter a human being’s desires, much less their inherent, evil psychopathic urges. She could not stop a war already in progress or heal others who were sick or wounded; only healers could do that, just as this Time King – whoever he was – was the only one who could control time.
She was limited. She was powerful beyond measure, but limited. She couldn’t stop evil. She could only get even with it.
It was like being the Genie from Disney’s Aladdin: “Phenomenal cosmic powers! Itty bitty living space.”
“But think of what you have accomplished,” he went on. “You’ve managed to turn the page in the story of the Wishers. You’ve gone beyond simple revenge.” His eyes became soulful. “You’ve done something no Wisher has ever done. You’ve made the world a better place.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked sarcastically, still feeling ashamed, still needing to be sarcastic for some reason, despite the rising heat in her belly. “How do you figure, Seelie King?”
He cocked his head to the side, meeting her hard gaze and holding it. “I can think of several hundred animals that would thank their lucky stars you exist,” he told her frankly. “Because it means now they can too.”
Selene fell silent.
“Not to mention the wolves. How many mothers and their wolflings have you allowed to see the sun come up because a bullet from the blue won’t be destroying them after all?”
Selene mulled this over, feeling more surprised with herself by the second.
“And then there are the trees.” His smile became heart-warming. “The Tuath hold the Redwoods in highest regard, and for good reason. There are souls in those trunks, spirits in the branches. How many more sacred woods will survive to see the next century because of your interference?”
Selene was beginning to feel better.
“And finally there are the humans.”
There went the feeling better. She’d done nothing kind to humans.
But Avery smiled a knowing smile. “I speak of the mothers, daughters, fathers and sons you have rescued from terrible fates by punishing those who would have otherwise brought those fates to fruition.”
She blinked, and his words sank in like the truth they were.
“Most importantly, by extending the gift of empathy, you’ve forced people to understand how others feel,” he went on. “From students to doctors to police officers….”
Selene suddenly realized he was so close, she could feel the heat from his body. She licked her lips nervously as his logic attacked her mental defenses – and his tall, strong form attacked everything else.
“Imagine the difference that makes. An apathetic doctor… versus one who genuinely cares.”
Avery smiled, and Selene lost a bit of her breath. “My little Wisher,” he continued softly, “you’ve created in man the emotion that suffers the greatest deficit for humanity.”
Empathy.
It didn’t need to be said again. He knew she was understanding now.
Selene’s pulse was quickening. She felt on the verge of something. Her eyes left his and trailed to the sleeves of his shirt, where they were pulled taut across the muscles of his arms… and to his trim, narrow waist, where it was so lazily half-tucked in behind a masculine leather belt… and to his legs….
Selene swallowed and inhaled sharply when Avery’s finger curled beneath her chin to bring her eyes back up to his.
The library around them had grown very quiet. Vaguely, somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized it was late. The library must be about to lock its doors.
As if to prove her right, a man who appeared in his fifties, very thin and very tall, came toward them down one of the aisles. She saw him like a peripheral nuisance, a blur on the edge of a really good dream.
The man was smiling, but he was visibly irritated.
Without looking at the man or breaking eye contact with her, Avery said, “Why don’t we take this someplace else?” He lifted his hand, snapped his fingers, and the library vanished around them.
When the world solidified once more, Selene stood atop a crystal-clear glass bridge that spanned between one planet and another in some solar system she had never before imagined, much less laid eyes upon.
Stars twinkled around them, orbs of red, of orange, yellow and blue. The crystal bridge, smooth as ice, stretched invitingly. The darkness yawned ancient and forever, and the planets turned slowly, multi-colored and miraculous.
She was in space, but she could breathe, and this was unlike any space she’d ever heard of. Even so, it was underwhelming compared to the man standing over her. His power coursed over her like a magic spell, his incredible, terrible sway. Maybe it was that fae glamour she’d read about so many times…. It had to be. He was taking her under. He was doing things to her.
“Where are we?” she whispered, trying with all her subconscious might to fight that sway.
“The Astral plane,” he told her easily. But he held her gaze, relentless in his building claim on her. “I come here often. It borders many different realms, acting as a buffer between them. Not far from here is the Phantom King’s realm. It’s a frequent stop for my brother and I.”
Selene felt dizzy. She felt overwhelmed and light as air, and she even felt giddy.
“I know,” he said softly, drawing closer still, “you have a million questions, raven one. And I promise to answer them all…. We have forever.”
Selene felt something tilt inside her. In that moment, it didn’t matter that her life had been turned upside down in the space of a single day. For some reason she couldn’t name, it didn’t matter that she had unbelievable powers or that she’d just exacted revenge against a good portion of the population.
In that very moment, it didn’t even matter that she wasn’t human.
For once, for one beautiful, fraction of a moment – nothing mattered.
Nothing but this. And him. And now.
She’d wanted him from the moment she’d first heard his voice. She hadn’t even seen him yet; he’d spoken behind her on that amethyst path – but when she heard that deep, crystal clear voice accented like silk and magic, she was lost. She knew that now.
It had been fate, after all.
She had wanted to kiss him. She’d wanted it so bad, so desperately, she could almost imagine it – the feel of his lips on hers, like satin on silk, the pressure of him taking her deeper, the inevitable swirl of sensation that would ride lower through her body… making her yearn for more. She could almost taste it – like candy and forever.
Now she wondered. She wondered if she’d been even close –
All at once, thought was blasted from Selene’s mind. Avery moved like a predator, his tall, powerful form shadowing her with dizzying speed. His magic engulfed her in a warm wave of electric need. Her breath caught in her throat, her heart leapt as if it would tear from her chest, and a moan worked its way up from somewhere deep inside as he fiercely drew her against him, crushing her with an obvious hunger that mirrored her own, and finally – finally – captured her lips with his.
*****
It had been but a day, but in wai
ting for this, it felt like a lifetime.
And now that he held her in his arms and claimed her soul with his kiss, he was nearly overcome with emotion.
A whitewash mixture of relief, heart-wrenching fear, and overwhelming joy swirled within him, blotting out every sense he possessed save the ones that were occupied by Selene.
He knew only the feel of her lips against his, the smell of her skin, the sweet taste of her on his tongue, and the heat radiating from her tall, lithe form as he held her to him. She tasted like coconut; it had been the last thing they’d consumed before coming here. Pina Coladas, in some small bar in Idaho.
He wanted to devour her. He wanted to taste deeper. He thought he’d been in control, he was Seelie – he was good. But his heart was cracking open and bleeding a restless, starving need into his blood stream.
Without letting her break the kiss, Avery bent and lifted her into his arms. As he’d suspected, she melted into him, weighing almost nothing in his strength. She didn’t seem to notice that he carried her down the crystal bridge. He could hear her heart racing; he could feel it pounding against his chest, her body was pressed so tightly to his. He could hear her breaths as she gasped them desperately when he allowed her to break away just long enough before he crashed back in for more.
She didn’t notice when he opened a portal, stepped through, and closed it again around them. She didn’t even notice the fire crackling in the hearth of his bed chamber, or the stillness of his enormous master suite. She was lost in him; she’d succumbed, her lips parted for him and her tongue exploring, offering up her unspoken surrender. He had taken over, and he had his prize – and the universe would have to kill him to wrench it away from him.
He carried her toward the master bed, a giant construct of precious metal and posters like spires that stretched to the ceiling a hundred feet above them. Carvings, ancient and powerful, were etched into gold and platinum and metals that mortals did not yet know. Sheets cascaded over the mattress, cream in color and softer than silk, beckoning like a siren’s song.
A lifetime of sovereignty passed before Avery’s eyes, century upon century of tending to the loves and lives of others, of ruling over the magic and the miracles of the fae, of doing so alone. Thousands of years of searching, waiting, hoping, and needing came rushing to the fore as he leaned into the bed, following her down until he was pressing her into the mattress.
He never broke his kiss. He couldn’t hold back. She was so precious in his arms, precious and tender and perhaps fragile in her rarity, but so very strong in what she was and what she promised, and the enigma of her drove him a little bit mad.
His kiss deepened, turning demanding, begging her to give him more of her. He kept her firmly beneath him on the bed with one arm as the fingers of his other hand found the hem of her shirt.
He could have done this the easy way, the fast way, and that shirt, her bra, and everything else that stood between him and his ultimate desire would simply vanish. But after all this time, that would have been too fast. He wanted to prolong this moment. The years leading up to it had certainly taken their time. Now it was his turn.
Avery settled on willing away her boots and socks, knowing he would have no patience for those, and felt her surprise beneath him in her kiss. Slowly, he broke that kiss, pulling back long enough to gaze down at his queen-to-be. Her eyes were glassy, her lips red and parted, her breathing shallow. Her lids were heavy, lashes lowered, cheeks flushed.
By the Tuath, he thought. Have mercy. “Oh raven one,” he whispered, choking the words through an emotionally constricted throat. Without warning, he jerked her up and yanked the shirt up and over her head, tossing it to the floor. The patience in him was flittering away with sudden ferocity. He’d wanted to go slow, but there was a flame licking through his blood, and it was growing stronger.
Again, he claimed her lips with his own, stealing her breath. As he drove her into the mattress with his kiss, his hand slid up her side. Her skin was so soft, so warm; he growled against her lips. His fingertips brushed the bottom of her bra, and a part of him – the seelie, the “good,” the lightness – wanted to unhook it and gently pull it off her shoulders. But the darkness yawning over his spirit simply yearned to rip the garment off her and destroy it for keeping him at bay.
As he paused, struggling with his inner demon for a few precious, fleeting seconds, Selene made the decision for him.
“Just rip it off, Avery.”
His eyes widened, and he could feel them begin to glow with the fire that had all but engulfed him.
He looked down at her, her raven hair spilled across his bed – the only hair other than his own to grace his sheets in countless centuries – the unbelievably creamy swell of her breasts above the thin lace of her bra, the smooth slope of her shoulders, the tapering of her waist to her tiny, filmy skirt, and Avery knew that if he’d been one of his vampire friends rather than the king of the Seelie Fae, he would have been all fang just then. He would have drained her dry.
Selene’s ice-blue irises were shrinking beneath the expanding pupils of what was a starkly hungry gaze. “For the love of god, Seelie King,” she said, shaking her head, her expression almost pleading. “Just take me.”
*****
The fae in her had grown stronger, more perceptive. She could feel the hesitation in him, like a hiccup in the flow of his dark-light power over her increasingly exposed body. She knew, somehow instinctively, that there was a war going on inside him. She didn’t know why or what it meant, but she could feel it as if it were a part of her own body, her own soul.
We match, she thought. It was an unexpected thought, one that rode the waves of a desire that was rippling through her, pulsing and heated. But she understood it.
Their souls were matched, not only by the fates, but in this battle, this war going on inside of them both. And in that matching, they were melding now – becoming one.
Selene closed her eyes… and behind those closed lids, she saw things through his own, felt things through his own body and his hands, thought things with his mind.
She saw herself, defenseless on his massive bed, in this great, alien chamber, in some realm she probably never could have dreamed of, and she felt wanton. She felt desperate. She felt seduced.
Selene recognized the tightening of Avery’s grip on her waist and gasped as he slid his hands along her rib cage and across her back. His touch brought chills of fire, and sent those ripples dipping lower in her body. The fingers of both of his hands curled over the clasp of her bra, and his eyes bore into hers, and suddenly beyond this physical need, Selene saw something building, something wondrous, something perhaps even greater than her king was.
It was what was left behind when everything else was peeled away and one was laid bare before the person they adored. Something defined by a word over spoken and yet understated. She sensed that in him. And it was matched in her.
Again, she felt him fight with himself. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he growled through gritted teeth. His eyes flashed, their glow becoming eerie and almost frightening. “But I’m not… completely in control.”
She gazed up at him, trapped in that changing gaze, held hostage by whatever it was he was becoming – by whatever it was he wanted to do to her. And she wanted it too.
“I don’t care!” It was the truth. She didn’t.
The darkness in his power swelled, riding over her and everything else in the room, and this time her good king lost. He tugged hard, and the metal clasp broke. He pulled, heedless of the way the straps dug into her flesh as he tore the now useless garment off her, and a second later, it joined her shirt on the floor of his bedchamber.
He reared up above her, his eyes burning like the liquid lightning of a Louisiana storm, starkly, mesmerizingly vivid in the tanned skin of his beautiful face. Those eyes burned down at her, scorching across her skin as he grazed them over her shoulders, her breasts, and her waist, claiming her with no more than a branding glance.
With unnatural grace and strength, Avery loomed over her, bending to run his hands up her arms until he gently gripped her wrists above her on the bed, binding them in a grasp both desperate and tender.
“Will you save me?” he asked her softly.
Save me, she repeated in her head.
From this solitude, he begged.
“Make me,” she replied, hissing the words through teeth that were clenched in growing need.
His green glowing eyes filled with some kind of warning now. He easily held her wrists with one hand as his other trailed back down her bare arm to the swell of her right breast.
The touch was electric and sudden, and its heat seared through her, forcing her to arch beneath him in an attempt to pull free of his hold on her wrists. It didn’t work.
He smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. All hint of kindness was now gone from his features. There would be no quarter now.
She stilled beneath him, her breath held, her gaze caught in his, as his thumb brushed tauntingly across her nipple and she hissed in response, the smallest gasp escaping her throat. He did it again, and this time she arched up to meet him, pressing her flesh into his palm.
He exhaled harshly at the sudden feel of her in his palm. She filled his hand, and in their fae connection, she could sense his wonder, his fiercely spiking yearning. He followed her with his body as she slowly lowered herself back onto the mattress, her breathing ragged. Then he leaned in to place his lips to her ear, his thumb and forefinger relentlessly teasing her nipple as he did so, causing her to writhe beneath his hard weight.
“Challenging a king?” he asked, his breath on her skin sending rivulets of pleasure down her neck and across her chest. He spoke calmly, but his voice was constricted with lust. She was driving him crazy, her exposed tenderness beneath him clawing at him.
In the Arms of the King Page 6
