Page 102 of Somber Prince

He slid a finger under my chin, directing my face to his.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

Damn him and his all-sensing tendrils.

“I’m good.” I faked a smile. “Just tired. You’ve worn me out, Your Highness.”

“That I have.” He splayed a hand on my belly, stroking it with a dreamy smile on his lips.

I realized with a jolt of panic what he might be thinking about. I remembered what the purpose of mating fever was all about.

“Can fae reproduce with humans?” I asked carefully.

“Yes, but a child of a fae is always a fae. Ours will have shadow magic, just like me.”

Ours?

Oh, God…

I couldn’t let him think like that, not even for a second.

“No, Rha,” I said gently. “It’s not going to happen. I have an IUD.”

He stared at me blankly. Why the hell did I think a fae would know what an IUD was?

“It’s a device inside my uterus that prevents me from getting pregnant.”

His eyebrows moved closer in confusion.

“You were ready to receive my seed, Dawn. I would not have gone into the mating fever otherwise.”

“Right. Well. This version doesn’t stop the ovulation, it just prevents the implantation.”

He nodded. “I’m sure the royal hag can remove it.”

There was something new in his eyes when he looked at me. A different kind of longing—a longing for a future. Only there was no future for us. Letting him believe otherwise would be cruel. But what could I say, anyway?

In the end, I said nothing. I stroked his cluster as a distraction, running my fingers through the slick strands that reached for me as if magnetized.

“Dawn…” A warning sounded in his voice. “Don’t. You need to recover, and I can hardly hold back as it is.”

I ignored his warning.

“Tell me something, Your Highness. You need to come from all of them at once, right?”

“Yes.”

Breathless, he rolled to his back, trying to get away from me, but I crawled after him on all fours.

“So, what if I play with them? With my hands?”

He rolled his head on the pillow. “It can’t be your hands, my sweet. I need to be inside of you.”

“How about inside my mouth, then?”

He shot me an intrigued look. “Will you do something like that?”

“Why not? You’ve done it to me.”

---