by May Dawson
“I was prepared to take my own punishment, you know,” she said softly. “I wouldn’t do something that I wasn’t willing to pay for.”
I scoffed. “You would’ve been discovered.”
“That wasn’t the only reason you did it. You are obnoxiously heroic, you know that? Quite the show-off.”
She phrased it all in the most ridiculous way, but she wasn’t exactly wrong. I’d had motives beyond the practical for protecting her body. I said finally, “The whip hurt less than standing by while someone else hurt you.”
She huffed a breath of exasperation. “And don’t you think it’s exactly the same for me, you big oaf?”
“Watch it,” I said. “No name calling.”
Her hand caressed my skin, which was healed now. “You’re so damned stubborn.”
“Me?” I sat up, twisting to face her. My exhaustion was rapidly fading into irritation. “You’re ridiculous. So determined to be a hero instead of a princess—”
“I don’t think I have to choose,” she shot back.
“You don’t think half the time at all,” I told her. “You fixed things for your friend this time. So what? You think she won’t be discovered sooner or later?”
Her jaw set and she looked away. She knew that already.
“She doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” she said softly. “Herrick had her family killed. She’ll be killed too, if she’s found out.”
“So you think you owe her.”
“I do owe her. I haven’t stopped him.” When she turned her wide eyes toward me, I knew she was devastated that she couldn’t stop Herrick.
She might have been innocent when she came here, but being emerged into the world of all four courts had stripped that away.
I hesitated. I shouldn’t trust a summer Fae with anything so precious about my own court. My first loyalty should always be to them.
And yet…
“I’ll take care of her,” I promised. “I have connections, Alisa. If things go sideways… I’ll get her out of Herrick’s grip.”
She smiled sadly. “Can you do that for me too?”
“What?” I asked, instantly hot with anger at the thought she was trapped by Herrick.
But that sadness was already gone, chased by mischief. She straddled my lap suddenly, her fingernails biting into the fresh skin that covered my shoulders.
“You promised Vail you’d punish me,” she purred into my ear, and I was instantly hard when her lips brushed my cheek. “Are you going to keep your promises, Autumn?”
“Always, Summer.”
She was laughing as I fell back on the bed, rolling over with her until I could trap her legs with mine. I smacked the pert curve of her ass, the sound ringing out in the room. I yanked her pants down, revealing the pale orbs that rapidly turned red under my palm, and her laughter turned into little moans and wiggles across the bed.
“Can I distract you?” She rolled over onto her side, reaching for my cock.
“Not yet,” I said, rolling her back over and smacking her ass again, hard enough to leave the marks of my fingers across her beautiful skin. She let out a little cry and then wiggled her ass, unable to resist begging for more even as she tried to convince me to stop. “Someone should’ve done this a long time ago. And regularly. But I’m happy to try to catch you up.”
She laughed. “I’ll never understand how you can be such a—”
I interrupted her with a flurry of spanks that had her trying to writhe away, but I wrestled her across my lap, pinning her leg with mine to keep her across my knee, where she belonged. With her in those position, I could see her pink, glistening clit and see just how wet she was from her punishment. Well, maybe there was more than one way to tame her; maybe the power of orgasms would be good for her attitude.
I aimed a few more smacks at the spots where she sat, determined she’d still feel me as she went about her classes tomorrow. “What did I say about name calling?”
“I was going to say you’re such my favorite.”
“Mm, and lying too.” I continued spanking her cheeks, loving the sight of her spread in front of me, the way her bottom turned pink, the way she alternately tried to buck away and waved her ass in front of my face if I paused, wanting more.
I paused, rubbing the overlapping red marks my fingers had left, and she let out a soft moan. That sound always drove me crazy. I ran my fingertips across her inner thighs, caressing her, and her hips bucked, trying to get my fingers against her clit. I laughed and smacked her ass again. “You’re so demanding, even when you’re in no position to put up a fight.”
“I know what I want,” she corrected, glancing at me over her shoulder, “and I’m always in a position to put up a fight. If anyone thinks I’m not, they’re underestimating me.”
I grinned at that and lobbed a few more hard smacks at her ass. She buried her face in the sheets, but she was smiling too.
“I’d never underestimate you,” I promised, finally releasing her, and she rolled over onto her side. “You’re a terrible roommate, but besides that, you’re pretty perfect.”
She grinned, reaching back to rub her bottom. “I’m the furthest thing from perfect and you know it.”
“Not to me,” I promised. I pushed her shoulder, knocking her onto her side. She was laughing even as I pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, and then the laughter died as my lips traveled steadily upward.
When I kissed her center, she writhed just a little. I looped my arms around her thighs, holding her still as I ran my tongue across her, lapping up her sweet honey as her fingernails slid back and forth across the sheets. Then I teased my tongue inside her, working my mouth steadily against her clit, and her hands fisted the sheets, yanking them loose.
Her hips began to buck, or try to, but I held her still. She tossed her head, her lips parting, then ran her fingers through her hair, pressing her palms against her head as if she were trying to keep from flying apart.
But of course, I wanted her to come to pieces, and she did. She moaned my name as she began to pulse around me, her body shuddering around my tongue as her orgasm rippled through her body. I was painfully hard, and I was afraid I’d come in my pants from the pleasure of seeing her come for me. She was so beautiful when she was like this, her pale skin flushed with pleasure, her body vulnerable and open and mine.
Then she went still, smiling at me. She ran her hand through my hair, and I climbed up to collapse on the bed beside her. My fingers stroked idly over the flat planes of her abs as she lay there, still shuddering with the occasional aftermath of the orgasm.
“You are too good to me, you know that,” she said softly.
“No such thing.” I kissed her naked shoulder. “You deserve the world, Alisa. And all I can give you…”
I trailed off, because our life together was all secrets and sin.
“All you can give me is all I want,” she assured me, capturing my lips with hers. The two of us traded long, slow kisses. Then she settled her head onto my shoulder, the two of us lying together.
“The truth is, Summer, I don’t want to be at this academy without you,” I whispered into her ear. “And I don’t think I want to live without you anywhere.”
She looked up at me. “The odds that you and I are going to have a happy ending…”
She trailed off, but I finished it for her. “They aren’t good.”
“Then let’s enjoy now,” she said, right before she nipped my earlobe with her teeth, and I had to start all over trying to punish her.
As if Princess Alisa could ever be reformed.
Chapter Forty
Azrael
The next few days passed more-or-less peacefully. Most of the time, I was with Alisa, teaching her royal protocol and history. She was cold, but a conscientious student. She fled as soon as we’d finished our discussion. It made me think of Duncan’s accusation that she always ran away.
When I wasn’t with her, I was in the library, searching for answers about her m
agic. The cursed caves were a long, dangerous journey that Faer refused to agree to. He didn’t want Alisa to slip that far out of his reach, I was sure.
I wasn’t convinced he wanted her to have her memories back at all.
I closed the book I’d been searching through and rubbed my hand over my face. She’d always be a bit helpless as long as she didn’t have her memories, and I could see how much that wore on her. I dreaded what would happen when she remembered and she no longer needed us, yet it made me ache to see her suffer at all.
“You look like you need a break.”
I startled at Alisa’s voice. She stood in the doorway.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“I only got lost half-a-dozen times,” she admitted. “One of the servants finally helped me.”
Her brows drew together, her voice changing, when she asked, “Are some of them… humans?”
“Yes,” I said. Then, defensively, already knowing it would bother her, I added, “They all came here willingly.”
“And can they go back willingly?” she asked, a barb in her voice.
The old Alisa hadn’t minded the plight of humans in the Fae world at all. I shook my head. Any evidence she’d changed always left me unsettled. How could I hate her when I caught glimpses of the woman I’d loved, and not the faintest glimmer of the one I’d come to hate?
I leaned back in my chair. “Why are you here?”
She hesitated, then admitted, “I’m tired of fighting with you. How are things with Zora?”
“I sent word for her to go to the Sisters and pretend it was a spontaneous conviction on her part. If she listened… then she’s out of danger. Faer respects them and won’t take her away.” The odds that my sister would actually listen for once worried me, though. If she left the Sisters, then Faer might manage to snatch her away.
She came and perched on the edge of the desk, flipping idly through the pages of one of the books I’d discarded. Her honeysuckle scent teased my nose. The memory of burying my face in her hair, of wrapping her tight in my arms as she laughed and twined her arms around my neck, made me ache.
“You’re trying to figure out what happened to me,” she said.
“I told you I would.”
“I know,” she said, but she still said it as if it meant something to her.
She leaned forward, and my lips parted in surprise right before her mouth covered mine.
Her lips were still soft and tender, the perfect counterpoint to the quick blade of her words. Her words could be a lie, but could those lips? I struggled not to believe she meant it when she kissed me, even after everything. My mouth parted against hers, welcoming her in.
She was too far away, leaning in to kiss me when I wanted her body against mine. I reached for her, threading my hand through her soft hair until my hand cupped the back of her head.
That first kiss had been tentative, but now her lips were urgent against mine. My heart quickened, beating so quickly that I could hear it thundering in my ears.
Her skin carried a clear, cool scent, like greenery and mint and honey. The scent reminded me of the clear, cold lake where Alisa and I used to swim. We’d slip away from the academy and swim under the moonlight. It was worth losing sleep to share those stolen moments. Magic warmed our bodies as we swam, the air so cold our breath hung in the air in an icy fog. The shock of a cold bath still jolted sweet memories into my mind.
My arm circled her waist, and I yanked her off the tabletop into my lap. I kissed her back just as fervently, just as wildly, and when the two of us broke apart, we were both short of breath. I kept my arm around her waist, anchoring to me, just for a little longer.
“What brought that on?” I asked, trying to cover how much emotion it stirred for me.
“I had a silly thought,” she admitted, tucking her hair back behind her ear. “Sometimes in fairy tales, an enchantment is broken with a kiss, and I thought…”
She trailed off and glanced away across the expansive library, but made no move to escape my lap. After a second, she added, “And also, I wanted to. I’ve wanted to for a while.”
“Oh?”
“It feels like parts of me remember you,” she admitted with a small laugh, as if it embarrassed her. Her teeth flashed white, a little sharper than a mortal’s now, and I caught her chin with my two fingers and turned her face back to mine.
I kissed her again, greedily. The tip of her tongue teased against my upper lip, and I opened to her. Our tongues swirled together as she kissed me hungrily. My fingers ran through her hair, caught at the back of her head as I held her still.
She moaned against my lips, shifting closer to me, as if desire had swept over her as quickly as it had me. My cock was suddenly, achingly hard. The librarians would disapprove.
It was hard to stop, to pull away, before doing things that the librarians would never recover from. I pressed my lips to her forehead instead, a chaste kiss.
“Do you want me to tell you what I found?” I managed, a hitch in my voice. Facts and myths couldn’t do anything to relax the tension that throbbed in my cock right now. But Alisa and I couldn’t go any further into our desire.
“Sure,” she said, curling against me easily, and despite my best judgment, I held her close.
“I haven’t been able to identify the enchantment that stole your memories. I imagine it might be a series of complex spells, because it seems like an almost impossible thing. The magic might have sealed off your brain’s pathways to everything you knew before—”
She tensed, but didn’t move her head from my shoulder. “That sounds…final.”
“I think another spell could unblock those neural pathways,” I said. “I just don’t know what spell.”
“That’s not your only theory.” She looked up at me, hope bright in her eyes.
“No,” I admitted. “I think maybe you’re under some kind of spell of continuous forgetting. You do remember everything, but as soon as it begins to rise in your mind, the enchantment makes you forget. All your memories are in your mind right now—you might be remembering the enchantment itself right now—but the memory of remembering is forgotten as soon as it rises.”
She was silent for a second. “That gives me a headache just to imagine, Azrael.”
“It would take a lot of power,” I admitted. It gave me a headache too.
“Faer knows who changed my face.” She rested her fingertips lightly on her cheekbone. She pulled away from me, sitting up, although she was still on her lap. I missed her body against mine, but that didn’t matter.
“Let me guess. He’s holding the knowledge hostage?” I asked. “We can’t even trust him to tell you the truth.”
“Why does he hate me so much?”
“I don’t know. When I visited the summer court as a boy, you two seemed close. You weren’t just brother-and-sister, you were best friends.”
“I need to know what happened.” She sounded determined, and Alisa was always unstoppable once she made up her mind. “Is Faer still refusing to let me travel freely?”
I nodded. There had been no more parties. Faer had insisted his sister was unwell and needed to recover. The lie irritated me, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Although thanks to Tiron, who seemed to have a friend everywhere, rumors were spreading about the queen being stronger than ever before. Duncan had shaken his head and grumbled that the two of us were playing a dangerous, senseless game. He insisted we let her go to Raile and be done with it.
As if Faer could be trusted to keep any of his promises.
As if Alisa would just go to the gown fittings, the wedding, the undersea, like an obedient princess.
As if the three of us would be able to bear her being forced.
Nothing about my life had been simple since I met Alisa, that day in the forest outside the academy when I discovered who she truly was.
I pushed all that aside for now. “I’m sorry it’s not better news. It might be a perilo
us journey, but I think the answer might still be in the caves, as the Delphin said.”
“Then we should go there.” Then, after a second, she said, “It’s good to have a familiar face here, Azrael. An old friend. Even if I don’t remember you. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.” Guilt and regret twisted through my gut. But I had to say something else, something true but sweet. “I’d do almost anything for you, Alisa.”
Almost anything.
But my top priority was still freeing the autumn court from Faer’s clutches.
If I could just restore her memories, she’d be the same person again, the woman who wasn’t worth throwing away a kingdom for. Wouldn’t she?
The question haunted me, because the girl who lay her head against my heart now?
I knew I truly would do anything for her, all over again.
Chapter Forty-One
Alisa
When I left Azrael, I was reluctant. Faer had asked me to have lunch with him privately. I felt more comfortable with Azrael or Tiron by my side. Hell, maybe I was even happier with Duncan by my side, even though he growled insults at me.
At least it was a chance to press Faer on the Cursed Caves. He’d been avoiding me. I wasn’t going to bemoan the recent lack of parties, but I knew he had his own motives.
But when I walked out onto Faer’s balcony, he wasn’t alone. Raile was with him.
“Why are you dressed like that?” Faer frowned. “Well, never mind. Raile’s never minded your quirks.”
“Or yours,” Raile told him, which almost made me smile.
The table was set for three, out on the balcony. It was blindingly bright out here with the sun reflecting off the ocean, and a crisp wind kept ruffling the tablecloth up so that it almost covered the plates.
“Raile is more comfortable out here,” Faer said, as if he recognized my unspoken question. “Closer to the sea.”
“Right,” I said. “You’re from the sea court?”
Raile nodded. He pulled my chair out for me, and I sat awkwardly. I’d been on some dates in the human world, and no one had pulled my chair out for me. My dates had been more pay-for-your-own-burrito, then hey-want-to-give-me-a-blowjob. They had not prepared me for the niceties of the Fae world.
