The Unseelie King (The Kings Book 6)

by Heather Killough-Walden

  She spun at the sound of something cracking behind her, and looked to the windows to watch a hair-like fracture spider-web itself across two of the panes. The temperature in the room was dropping. There was a pressure, too. She felt it press in on her skin, her eyes – everything. It was subtle now, but held a threat of becoming much worse very quickly.

  She turned back to face the Unseelie King. Caliban stood motionless beside the table, one hand poised around his glass, the other in his pocket. His eyes were hard and cold.

  “I think you’ll find that ultimately, you have no choice in the matter, Moonbeam,” he said icily. He took a step toward her. “You may decide to fight, and you can even run. But eventually, your fate will catch up with you.” He took a drink from his glass, this one not quite as large as the two before it, and continued to come toward her.

  She felt his power brush against her like dry ice or frozen fire. It burned. And yet, it was warm, and damned it all, like a born masochist, she wanted more.

  “As will I,” he added before emptying the glass for the third time.

  He stopped before her and lowered it to his side just before it shimmered in his grip to disappear altogether. He then slid his now-free hand into his other pocket and squared her with a gaze of sheer intensity. “So I will ask you again, and I suggest you give the question some real thought. What can I do to help you accept this and take your place as my queen?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Minerva stared up into those purple-green depths and knew good and well that he wasn’t just offering to help her. He was giving her an ultimatum.

  What surprised her was that her heart was pounding, but not in fear. Not even close. The room felt as thought it would implode and take both of them down with her, and yet she was still writhing in fate’s grip, fighting like a prize fish on a reeled-in line.

  With slow deliberation, Minerva crossed her arms over her chest. She even narrowed her gaze. “Well, for one thing,” she said, shocked beyond belief that she was speaking firmly and clearly, with not a hint of tremor to her words. “You can tell me why the hell you would even care about gaining a queen.”

  She was on a runaway train now. She’d been feeling this burning in her gut ever since she’d awoken in the king’s bed only to find that not by a long shot was she the only woman to have done so.

  “You aren’t spending your nights alone, my lord,” she hissed, gaining both strength and courage with every word she pushed between her lips. “You have plenty to keep you busy. The fairy as much as handed me your little black book! You definitely don’t need me!”

  She felt a rush of pride when Caliban straightened before her, and for the first time since she’d met him, actually looked a little uncertain.

  “What is it exactly?” she demanded, leaning forward in momentum. “Does a Wisher make a really nice fae trophy wife or something? Do you just want to keep one of the only two Wishers alive firmly under your thumb? Is that why you’ve been by my side this entire time? Is that why you came after me? Fear? Power? What the hell is it?” she demanded, yelling now. “Why the hell do you care?”

  The silence that rushed in after she finished speaking was all-encompassing and nine months pregnant with a huge host of unspoken things. Caliban stared at her for some time, and seconds stretched into veritable hours before he finally blinked, and his beautiful eyes narrowed.

  His tone was low with earnest, his voice soft, as he said, “I care, Minerva, because quite frankly….” He swallowed hard, appearing for all the world almost human in that single moment. “I never cared about any woman in any manner, depth, or capacity… until the moment that I met you.”

  His words rocked through her, a rogue wave that knocked the breath from her lungs. It was the kind of thing she couldn’t be sure she’d heard correctly. It took her a second to process. But when she did, its effect ploughed through her, sucking away the vast majority of her anger to replace it with a mixture of stark confusion and unbridled hope.

  He seemed impossibly unsure for a moment, and in that dilemma of bewilderment, the world looked on. It held its collective breath as he raised his right hand to curl his finger beneath her chin. The touch was so soft, she barely felt it. It was like holding your hand over a candle’s flame, a gentle warmth that was sheer moments from getting burned.

  He moved in, tall and overwhelming, and what was left of her doubt slithered away, leaving her unshielded and defenseless before him.

  “Despite the fact that you threw everything metal within a one hundred foot radius at me, I cared instantly,” he told her in that urgent whisper. “You needn’t have attacked me to see me defeated, Minerva. I would have knelt before you anyway. I was already fallen.”

  That silent shock spread, its long white fingers coursing through Minerva’s veins so that all she could do was stand paralyzed by the confession he was giving her.

  He brushed his thumb across her cheekbone to send electricity shooting down her spine. It crackled like white fire, bringing every one of her nerve endings to delicious life. He moved closer, and his power came with him, tightening around her like a silken vice.

  “And if you think for a single moment that I’m going to allow the only woman I’ve ever cared for get away from me, then,” he shook his head. “You know very little about the Unseelie King, after all.”

  Time slowed and the silence stretched, punctuated only by the sound of her breathing, ragged and shallow. Stars swam in the corners of her vision. Her heart pounded a bruising rhythm against the inside of her ribs.

  “So I’ll ask you one final time, Minerva Trystaine. What can I do to help you accept your place at my side?”

  He was so close now, when he whispered this question, it brushed across her lips like a lover’s caress. He glanced at those lips, so close to his own, and Minerva felt the world tilt beneath her. She licked them absently.

  The flames at the centers of Caliban’s eyes leapt to life as if doused with gasoline. They went from flickers to bonfires, and she could almost hear it: whoosh.

  “I’m – I’m sorry,” she whispered, knowing she was the one making them burn, and wondering if it hurt as much as she felt it must.

  Caliban looked back up into her eyes, his gaze naught but a world on fire. She could feel the heat emanating from it.

  “You should be.”

  A single pulse passed before he firmly grasped her upper arms and shoved her into the smooth wood wall behind her as his lips crashed down onto hers with terrible, desperate need.

  Minerva’s world finally toppled over and her senses went spinning off its edge as his hard body trapped her against the bookshelf’s divider. She lost her balance, her legs gave out, and all reason went flying in every direction, like leaves in a gale force wind. Caliban shoved his free hand through her hair, fisting it hard to send tingling pain through her while his mouth once more invaded hers. Every ounce of her was humming to delicious, wanton life when the king then snaked his arm around her waist, and her feet left the ground.

  He was holding her up, clasping her to him with a grip that bordered on desperation. He kissed her as if she’d made him go mad – and the thought was fuel to a spark that had already been waiting, smoldering somewhere deep inside her.

  The burning from his gaze was searing her insides now, spreading like wildfire to the far reaches of her body. Her fingers were curled tight into the lapels of his suit coat, clutching at them in temporary insanity. She couldn’t breathe, and she didn’t want to. Her head felt light, her lips tortured.

  His grip crushed her and he spun with them, carrying her as if she weighed nothing. A moment later, Minerva felt the cushion of a plush, soft surface beneath her. She didn’t know where she was, and she couldn’t have cared less. There were warning bells sounding somewhere in an unimportant distance; they were easy to ignore.

  The hand in her hair loosened its fierce grip to move to her throat, encircling her neck gently, but possessively, a clear sign of control. His thumb ca
ressed her pulse for a moment before his fingers slid further down to wrap around the top of her shirt. He gripped it firmly, and Minerva felt his muscles tighten as he clearly prepared to rip the thin material off of her.

  She experienced a sudden flash of panic and tried to pull away in that fleeting instant, but Caliban broke the kiss instead to raise himself up on one arm.

  In that moment, she stared up into eyes like hell and lost her will completely. Whatever she’d thought of saying floated away like a curl of smoke that had once been her courage. Caliban smiled. It was a smile so perfectly profane, she understood then and there why he was called the Unholy King. She took a quick breath, perhaps to scream, or perhaps because she knew very well what was coming.

  But Caliban silenced any sound she might have otherwise made when he once more claimed her sore, swollen lips with his own, showing no reprieve, no tenderness in his demands – and tore the shirt from her body.

  Chapter Eighteen

  He was flooded with magic, had been drunk on it since Minerva had cast those release spells on the rubies. His eyes were burning, and the pain was filling his head with madness. But it was nothing compared to the insanity that Minerva had sent roiling through his bloodstream when she’d done no more than bite her lip.

  He’d only come to the library wanting to speak with her. He’d wanted to get everything out in the open, wipe the slate clean and start fresh. And then he’d walked in to find her standing near the window, her tall, slim form outlined by the waning light of the land beyond, and he’d seen her as she truly was. As his queen, regal and graceful, innocent and powerful. Whatever he’d originally planned took a quick back seat to the awakening sensations within him.

  She’d been bleeding, and she’d been angry with him; that anger surrounded her like an aura, red and jagged. He became wary, and his eyes lit up like warning beacons. But she was so lovely… an angel in blue jeans, her dove-white hair in perfectly unkempt locks that curled at her waist. He awakened in other ways, humming to life like an engine.

  The fairy had told her what her fae name meant. Caliban took the opening and seized it in an iron fist. In his mind, he willed her to accept it. To accept him. To take her place at his side. He cornered her in the library, like a massive cat stalking its prey, and in that single moment when it appeared she might actually let him into her existence, he found his control slipping. He stole the kiss he’d been yearning to steal from her for several painful days.

  Her anger flared around her; he felt it like whips of flame, batting at his outer defenses, struggling with his power with a near equal intensity. She pulled away. She defied him, and Caliban fought a losing battle with his need. Every ounce of his physical form begged him to seize what was rightfully his. He struggled internally with a fire that was consuming him. His head hurt. His eyes hurt. His body ached like mad.

  His palace responded to his needs, providing him the strongest alcohol in the fae realms, and he downed it with vigor, commanding it to sink into his bloodstream and cool it off. But it didn’t work. Nothing worked, and he sensed an oncoming war with Minerva that would rock the foundations of the Unseelie Realm.

  He had to have her. Now. Even if that meant using his magic against his queen. He could spend the rest of his immortal life making it up to her – in that mad-with-lust moment, he didn’t fucking care. So long as she gave in to him here, so long as she opened for him now, he could bloody well die tomorrow.

  But then she faced him with her fury, and in her righteous innocence, the truth escaped those pouty, parted lips. Little by little, the mystery of her rage unwound itself before his eyes.

  She didn’t like being told what to do. Which was so very like a queen.

  But more significantly, she didn’t like sharing the king’s bed with other women.

  It was a realization that struck him like a ton of iron bricks: She was jealous.

  Perhaps she had no idea why he took so many women to bed. Maybe she was unaware that an unseelie fae regained his power in such a manner. It didn’t matter. Because the end result was that she hated sharing him. That was his ultimate undoing. She wanted him.

  And that was all that he had wanted from the very start.

  Her unwitting confession had a profound effect on Caliban. The power swimming through him roared to untamed life and flayed at his mind until his will lay subjugated and beaten – and before he realized what he was doing, he was confessing to her as well.

  Everything he was, all that he ever would be, every ounce of his simmering soul, he poured out before her. He cared for her. And he had never cared for another woman before in all his very long life.

  Minerva at last quieted. He felt her magic go still and then retreat. Her anger rainbowed from red to blue, she quaked and trembled, and he moved in. Like a guiding star on a cold night, he locked on to the beckoning desire in her eyes. Before his studying gaze, the thin veil of her barely-kept control dissipated to reveal to him the truth – the belied heat in her heart that burned so strong, it rivaled his own.

  Cal broke then, cracking in two and shattering before the woman he had barely met, but had known a lifetime. He claimed her lips a second time, and became a slave to the building, aching passion in him that hurt too deeply and tortured like darkness.

  He tasted her in that darkness, drinking her in like a man dying but for the sustenance she alone could give him. He clasped her to him with arms of steel, desperate to feel her against him, then held her aloft as her exquisite body gave way beneath her. She melted into him, weakening beneath the onslaught of his power and control, and he lifted her, turning with her into a portal that he opened with no more than passing will.

  He took them into that portal, and it sped them through time and space to a location he had never before taken anyone. The portal closed behind him as he led Minerva to the ground, not once releasing her from his kiss.

  She went willingly, her hair brushing against his cheek as they descended, her body arching against his in natural yearning. Her warmth was a teasing promise that he was helpless to deny, and his hand moved down her body to the hem of her white shirt, his muscles tensing, preparing to rip it away.

  She hesitated beneath him suddenly, no doubt sensing what he was about to do. Her hands pushed at his chest, even as her fingers clutched at his clothes. But there was nothing a predator chased harder than prey that ran from him, and her sudden defiance acted only as a fuel for the conflagration already consuming him.

  He chuckled darkly against her lips before he broke their kiss and rose up, meeting her lust-filled gaze.

  She was as crazed as he was. He smiled in cruel victory.

  In one clean movement, he tore the fabric from her body and reclaimed her lips. She gasped into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound as his hands now spread across the smooth, bare flesh of her torso. She was small enough that his fingers spanned the width of her waist before they slid to the waistband of her jeans. He needed to feel more of her.

  The monster in him roared its desire to rip them from her body as well, but the material was rough and thick, and he knew better. He wrestled with his demons, and with rigid control he could scarcely believe he possessed, he braced one arm on the ground at her side and lifted himself up one final time, breaking the kiss once more.

  Minerva gasped beneath him, her chest rising and falling in quick succession as she sucked in rapid, shallow breaths. Her cheeks were flushed, as were the sensuous, soft mounds of her breasts where they rose temptingly above the thin lace of her delicate bra.

  He went still above her, his gaze a fire brand that blazed a trail of heated need across her skin as he took her in. The breath caught in his lungs and his throat tightened. Shimmering locks of platinum white were spread across the thick carpet of clover beneath her, its strands blessing the very ground they rested upon. Her indigo eyes were lit by a candle’s flame of simmering blue at their centers, casting her heavy-lidded gaze into glowing contrast as she looked up at him from beneath long, th
ick lashes. Her swollen, red lips were parted in earnest, beckoning further torment.

  Caliban’s gut clenched, his body throbbed, and he made a pained, growling sound before he gave in to the madness, gripped the sides of her jeans, and tore the buttons from their casings. They popped and went flying, but Caliban didn’t pause before he was yanking the top of her pants down over the rise of her hips. She lifted herself for him, helping him to rid her of the barrier between them.

  Allowing his animal instinct to take over, Caliban shed his own clothing with harsh and ripping speed that destroyed most of it. Her heavy-lidded gaze stopped on the marks upon his flesh, and recognition flashed in her eyes. But he allowed her no time to dwell on the scars, for a split second later, he was looming over her once more like an untamed beast, his hungry mouth blazing a trail over her neck and collar bone – as his fingers pressed through her soft, blonde curls below, parting them and delving lower, following the beacon of her heat until he was gliding over the moist, ready entrance to her pulsing core.

  She made a small sound, vividly desperate, and arched against him, her body in control now, her mind having surrendered wholly to its needs. But he slowed there, threatening entrance, expertly teasing and slipping so easily across the slick evidence of her mounting desire.

  Caliban felt her arms encircle him. A second later, he inhaled sharply as her fingernails found purchase in the muscles of his back. He chuckled low against her skin, tore away the flimsy material of her bra to expose her breasts, and clutched her right nipple between his teeth in warning.

  She gasped and cried out with the sudden sensation, but her nails continued to dig. Grinning to himself in dark triumph, Caliban gripped her throat with his free hand, clutching it gently but firmly, and clamped his mouth down over her breast, sucking hard before he bit down with just enough pressure to cause pain but not break the skin.