by Leia Stone
She tsked-tsked. “This will take a few days to fully heal. I can stop the bleeding and close the wound, but the ligaments and tendons are torn as well. You’ll need to take light therapy.”
I nodded.
“Light therapy?” Liam peeped up from the wall. He watched Kira’s hands on my arm in fascination.
Kira looked at me, as if asking permission to tell him, and I nodded.
“Light—” she held up her hand, which glowed an insanely bright pink “—therapy is when I place my healing light into a crystal, or glass jar, and she can lay it on the wound when I’m not around.”
Liam nodded, but it was hard to read him. What did he think of all this? Did the Winter King have any healers? Did any of the Sons of Darkness have healing powers? I wanted to know everything.
Kira whipped out a bandage and wrapped my arm, handing me a felt satchel with three light stones in them. They glowed pink and I was careful not to touch them and discharge the healing early. “One a day for three days should do it,” she told me.
I nodded. “Thank you.” I felt so much better, but I was suddenly hungry. It had been a while since those pancakes in New York.
“Let’s see it.” Kira walked over to Liam. He stood there for a full minute, calculating.
“She’s harmless,” Mara finally called out, and Liam relaxed, showing her the hole in his jeans.
“I’m going to need to cut those off.”
He nodded and my throat went dry. He was already shirtless; I wasn’t sure how much more undressing I could take.
She went to work cutting off the right leg of his jeans while I tried and failed not to check out his muscular thigh. Mara caught me looking and my cheeks reddened.
After Kira gave him the same pain medication drink and healed his leg, she also gave him three light stones. “You lay it over the injury until the stone stops glowing,” she told him.
He nodded and took them in their velvet satchel. “Could these … cure cancer or aids or human stuff like that?”
Kira froze and Mara and I shared an uncomfortable look.
“I’ve never healed a human. I don’t know,” was all Kira said. She left without another word, leaving Liam and I alone with Mara. Interfering in human affairs was forbidden. Healing one of them? I couldn’t imagine such a thing. It would expose our kind to them and create a witch hunt. Or at least that’s what we’d been told. King Cypress didn’t seem to mind about revealing the magical world to the humans in his … group.
Mara set down her magazine. “I gave a healing stone to a human once.”
I gasped. “You did?”
“What happened?” Liam and I both asked in unison.
“Mara held up her cuffed hands. “This. Among other things.”
What the fuck? Was Mara saying she healed a human and that’s why she was given life imprisonment? No way. Surely that wasn’t something severe enough for the elders to do such a thing … right?
Liam’s eyes were wide. “Did it work? Did it heal the human?”
Mara shook her head. “Temporarily. But there is a rebound effect that takes them quicker. Fae magic is not to be used on humans.”
Liam’s shoulders sagged and I wondered why he was so interested in this topic.
But suddenly I felt so tired. That pain elixir was working on me.
“Where to?” Mara asked, starting to tinker with her dials.
“Seattle.”
“New York,” we said at the same time.
He shrugged. “She can do whatever she wants. Take me to Seattle.”
I glared at him. “Mara, take us to the New York apartment. The first place the Winter King will look for him is Seattle. Clearly, he can’t think straight.”
“Clearly, you don’t let a man think for himself!” he yelled.
I stepped closer to him, “I rescued you today. Clearly, you need me to think for you.”
He stared down at me and heat bloomed in my chest as the blue light pulsed between us. “And I saved your life.” His breath washed over my face and something uncoiled inside of me.
“Strap in. I know where to take you both,” Mara snapped.
I’d forgotten she was here. That shut us both up.
Liam pulled his heat away from me and we both strapped in. The room spun, the blue light on our chests pulsing slow and steady with our heartbeats. When we stopped, Mara pointed to the door at the office.
“I’ll pick you up in the morning and we can go over the plan,” she told me. I yawned. It was midday. Not even dinnertime and I was ready to sleep for a week.
Liam just grumpily unstrapped his buckle but also yawned as I reached out and opened the door. The second I saw a small cabin with windows that looked out onto thickly treed woods, I looked back at Mara.
She nodded. “Ashville, North Carolina. One of my favorite places on Earth. It should have everything you need.” She winked and I frowned.
Okay. Vague AF.
I stepped out into the space. Liam groaned and grunted the entire time behind me.
“Fucking Ashville. I said Seattle!” he growled as I shut the door and we stepped out into the living room. It was a bit dusty. Clearly, it hadn’t been used in a while.
Liam spun, chest heaving as he glared me down with glowing amber eyes. His wings stood straight up and started to smoke at the tips. “Listen, you’re not my girlfriend. Or my soulmate. Or whatever, okay? I can fucking take care of myself.”
His words stung, because I was his fucking soulmate, and knowing he didn’t want me was like a punch to the gut. The blue light was going crazy as our heartbeats sped up. “Yeah! Clearly.” I pointed to our chests. “And you’re doing a great fucking job taking care of yourself! You’re welcome for rescuing you by the way. TWICE!”
He clenched his fists and screamed in frustration: “I got captured because I was saving you! If you didn’t exist, my life would be fine. You came in like a fucking tornado and took everything from me!”
My head reeled back like I’d been slapped. “I … took everything from you?”
Rage built in my chest and the entire room swathed in blue light. “Your piece of shit, psychotic father killed the only person in this world that loved me!” I shouted, tears spilling out onto my cheeks. “And stole the fucking crystals from Faerie, causing the largest genocide of my people known to history. So GO FUCK YOURSELF!” I shouted and spun, tearing through the house with no idea of where the hell I was going.
This fucking asshole was not who I thought he was. He was incapable of saying thank you? Or seeing reason? Or listening to his intuition? What a shit show. The gods had paired me with a soulmate who was the exact fucking opposite of what I wanted in a guy.
I heard a door slam and then a water tap turn on.
Yeah, take a shower and wash off your ugliness, you prick.
I’d never been so mad in my entire life. My chest heaved up and down as the blue light frantically flared and receded in short bursts.
I lay down on the couch in the small study that I’d found myself in and stared at the ceiling.
Why was this my life? Why the fuck did I meet this guy and kiss him and now want to kill him? I asked myself fifty questions over the next ten minutes before my eyes started to droop. I wanted to stay awake until he got out of the shower and then take one myself. I wanted to yell at him some more. I wanted to… but sleep took me under its heavy embrace.
I awoke in the middle of the night to a dark room, only the glow of the embers from a small fire that had long burned out to light up the corners. I looked down and saw that Liam had covered me in a blanket.
Why the hell would he care if I froze to death? Pulling the blanket back, I went to step off the couch when I noticed a lump on the floor.
Liam.
He was snuggled on the rug right in front of the couch. Why was he sleeping in the same room as me? Shouldn’t he be halfway to fucking Seattle by now? Stepping over him, I shivered as the cold seeped into my skin. Grabbing another log, I li
ghtly set it onto the fire, causing the embers to splash upward. Adding two more logs, and a shoved-up piece of newspaper, I got the fire roaring once more.
Brrrr. This cabin clearly didn’t have central heating, but something told me the prince of Winter here would be fine with that. Had he lit the fire for me?
My mind stewed over our fight the entire time I showered and well into picking out clothes from a dresser where there were his and hers sides. The underwear were a size too big, but in a brand-new package, and clean. Same with the yoga pants and pink tank-top I found. Someone had set this house up as a safe house of some sort.
I desperately wanted to wear a thick hoodie, but couldn’t risk pinning my wings to my back if we had to escape. I didn’t know where scissors were, so couldn’t cut holes. My arm was tender but better, and my wings were healed as well, though I would try to hold off on flying as long as I could.
Finding fuzzy socks, I padded out into the family room and wondered if I should try to make food or get some more sleep. It was 1A.M. and we’d slept through dinner. The pain meds were worn off, but I still felt a lingering grogginess, along with some throbbing.
I was just deciding what to do when I passed the study and noticed Liam draped against the open doorway, wearing low-slung sweatpants and a t-shirt too tight for his muscles.
I gulped.
He stepped forward. “Look, about earlier … I’ve been taught to hate your kind. Okay?”
Any hopes I had of an apology were dashed.
I crossed my arms and sneered at him. “Ditto.”
He sighed, running a hand through his light blond hair and flexing his muscles as he did so. Not that I was noticing or anything.
“What I’m trying to say is … you’ve clearly led a privileged life—”
“You ass!” I shouted, taking a step closer to him. “You don’t know anything about my life.”
He put his face in his hands. “You’re not letting me speak. I’m trying to explain—”
“Out with it, then!” I roared, feeling the tension build in my chest. This motherfucker infuriated me.
“I’m fucking sorry, okay! I shouldn’t have said that shit to you before. I was pissed about not being in Seattle and I took it out on you.”
My mouth snapped shut and he stepped closer to me as the low blue light began to glow in his chest. “You have no idea the horrors I’ve lived.” His face looked chilling in the deep blue glow. “I’ve killed more people than I can count. I’ve buried more friends than I have fingers. I’ve been beaten within an inch of my life by my own father.” His throat constricted. “All. Over. Those. Fucking Crystals.”
Stalemate.
It was the first word that popped into my head. I’d lost a billion Fae over his dad stealing the crystals from Faerie, and he’d been through great loss as well. We both needed the crystals … but that’s not how these things worked. Only one of us would win.
“They belong in Faerie,” I whimpered. “And so do you,” I said finally. Was there some way that everyone could be happy?
He shook his head. “Lily…” Reaching out, he cupped my face. “You’re so damned naive.”
The way he said naïve wasn’t derogatory. It was just as if he’d had a realization.
He stepped closer until his body was flush with mine, and I nearly moaned at the warmth that he brought with him. It was like when we wanted to, he could either be hot or cold, both in body temperature and personality. The blue light was so blinding it made me squint. My body ached for him to touch me, to take me. This blue light begged to be extinguished.
I leaned my face closer to his, looking at his lips as he wet them. “Let’s work together—”
“I work alone.” He stopped me, jaw clenched, but he didn’t move away from me.
“Not anymore,” I growled.
His grip on my face tightened, not painful, just more commanding. “You’re fucking infuriating!” With that declaration, he yanked my mouth to his and we crashed into each other. Pressing his warm lips to mine, he claimed my mouth in a kiss.
We both moaned at the same time, like we’d been starved of air and were finally being fed. His body heat melted my chill as his arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me flush against him. My mouth parted, letting his tongue enter, and I shivered as his hand slipped under my shirt and stroked my back. Even with my eyes closed, the blue light was so intense I could see it.
I knew how this worked. The light would keep pulsing, keep lighting up until we’d mated, made love, fucked, whatever you want to call it.
I was so fucking ready for that time to come. Wetness pooled between my legs at the mere thought of it. Liam’s hand shifted to the front of my shirt and stilled at my solar plexus as if waiting for permission.
Reaching down, I yanked his palm up until it cupped my breast, and a deep throbbing shot between my legs when he lightly grazed my nipple. I jumped up and straddled him, lining up my center with his hardness as he reached one arm around my butt to hold me up. A growl escaped him, and he used his palm to press me into him harder. I heard the flapping of wings and then we were airborne. I let him direct us back into the room with the fireplace and then suddenly I was being spun midair as he lowered me onto the couch on my back. When he pulled back to look at me, his eyes reflected the flickering flames, his mouth wet and swollen from kissing. My stomach dropped at the sheer sexiness of this man. All of our verbal arguments were forgotten, and I was full enthralled in this lust bubble.
He’s my soulmate, I kept thinking as the blue light flickered between us faster than ever. We both reached down at the same time and took off our shirts. For a second, he just let his gaze rake over me slowly, and it was the sexiest most vulnerable thing in the world. Then he dipped his head and took my nipple into his mouth as my fingers threaded through his hair.
Fuck me, I was going to explode.
Trailing kisses down my breastbone to my stomach, he rested at the top of my yoga pants. Then he looked up at me.
You motherfucker, don’t stop, I wanted to scream.
“Are you sure?” was all he said.
I could barely find my words, nearly forgetting how to speak. “Yes. Yes.” I said it twice for good measure and he grinned.
Cocky bastard.
Reaching up, he hooked his fingers into the waistband of my pants and underwear and pulled them down, kissing my inner thighs, the top of my pelvic bone.
“Fuck!” I shouted as he nipped my inner thigh before plunging two fingers inside of me. I was so ready for it, so primed, so fucking here for this that I cried out as waves of pleasure racked me. He rubbed me in small circles while I wound up and then exploded, yanking him by the hair and pulling him back up to kiss me.
When he sucked my tongue, I completely lost my shit and nearly blacked out. My legs were shaking, but I wasn’t satisfied. Not fully. I needed more. Reaching down, I unbuttoned his jeans and pulled his pants and boxers off. I looked down at his naked form and … yum. Wrapping my hand around his hardness, I pulled him closer to me.
“I don’t have protection,” he panted as I worked him up and down. Fae couldn’t get human diseases like STDs, or even the common cold. We could only sustain mortal injury.
“It’s fine,” I told him. “I’m on bitter melon.”
Bitter melon was a natural birth control. It stopped ovulation and inhibited periods. I realized he probably had no idea what that meant, but he must have gleaned it, because we came together then and every cell in my body ignited with pleasure.
“Oh gods,” he breathed in my ear as we rocked back and forth. The blue light was swirling around us now like thousands of fireflies. It was incredible, and I was suddenly overcome with emotion.
Soulmates. I’d never in a million years thought I’d meet my soulmate.
I clenched my thighs, rocking hard as his wings started to flap and I was pulled up into the air with him as his strong hands came around to hold me close to him.
This weightless feeling, it
was incredible. Leaning down, he took my nipple into his mouth and I raked my nails down his back, flapping my own wings as we flew towards the ceiling. I could feel that building pressure inside of me again, until I was ready to explode.
Nothing else in the world mattered in that moment but his touch. Not the crystals, not the fact that he was the Winter King’s son, nothing. His tongue trailed down my neck as I arched my back and he quickened his movements. Pure pleasure radiated through my entire being as we both exploded in ecstasy together. Blue lights flared against the walls like the aurora borealis as we rocked together, sharing pure bodily bliss. My entire body convulsed as Liam slowly lowered us back to the couch, until, finally, we lay there, panting and sticky with sweat, no more blue light.
What the fuck just happened? I felt like I’d left the planet momentarily and came back.
I burst into laughter and his body stiffened against me. “Why are you laughing?”
He probably thought it was at his performance or something.
“That was crazy.”
Now it was his turn to chuckle. “Yeah. It was.”
Reaching down, he pulled the blanket over us and I snuggled into his arm, falling fast asleep.
I awoke to the morning sunlight on my face and squinted as the memories of last night hit me.
My eyes widened when I realized I was naked under the covers and Liam was gone.
Shit.
I scrambled to sit up, throwing on my clothes hastily and tearing out of the room. Did he leave me? Did he fucking have sex with me and le—?
“Whoa, turbo, slow down. You’re supposed to be healing, remember?” Liam’s voice came from the kitchen and I skidded to a stop.
“Hey.” I tried to act normal and like I hadn’t totally just panicked. At his words about healing, my arm throbbed.
“You thought I bailed, huh?” he asked, spreading peanut butter on crackers in the kitchen.
I sighed. “Maybe.”
He didn’t say anything for moment. “I thought about it.” He didn’t make eye contact, just stared at the peanut butter. “But then I thought maybe we could work together … temporarily.”
