Page 87 of The Dark, Dead, Deep

Shay nodded. His eyes were wide, begging me to suggest anything except sex magic.

My lips pulled to the side as I mulled it over. “Why don’t we do both? Shay’s magic and Tor’s magic?”

Rainn’s eyes rounded, and his hand fluttered to his chest. “I’m wounded, princess. Don’t I have anything to offer?”

“You’ve already tried to break the enchantment on Cormac with your weird immunity?” I asked.

Rainn feigned a wounded expression. “My weird immunity? Gosh. If I wasn’t such a confident selkie, completely at ease with my natural-born abilities—”

“Yes,” Shay cut in dryly. “We tried to break the enchantment, but there was none. It was as you said. Being away from the weaving broke the magic, but Cormac had retreated into his mind, and we need to pull him back. He is no longer under whatever spell held him, but he needs help healing from it.”

I rubbed my hands together. “Okay,” I murmured to myself. “How do we do this?”

Shay glanced at the others. “Youwant to do this?”

I forced myself not to look at Cormac’s lifeless body. “It’s partly my fault that he’s here. I promised Urma Illfin that I would do whatever I could do save her grandson—and although my promise isn’t binding as I am not yet Sídhe—I will do my best.”

Shay nodded, exhaling as if to brace himself. “Okay. I suggest you scoot over then.”

My teeth worried my lip. “Me? I thought perhaps Rainn or Tormalugh would begin.”

“If you want to stop—”

I interrupted Shay. “No. No. I can continue. I’m sure.”

Rainn nudged Tormalugh. “Heh. She calls you Tormalugh. If any of us uttered that name, you’d grip us with your coat and ride us to perdition.”

The kelpie bared his teeth. “Shegets to call me whatevershewishes.”

“Oh? It’s like that, is it?” Rainn tilted his head and wiggled his brows.

Tormalugh pinched the bridge of his nose and began to count. “Belisama, grant me the patience not to kill the selkie.”

Rainn slung his arm over Tormalugh’s shoulders. “You’d miss me once I was gone.”

“So, you say,” the kelpie replied dryly.

“Ignore them,” Shay urged as he moved into my field of vision so that I could no longer see the two male Sídhe on the other side of the room. “Focus on me.”

Fae, by their nature, were not shy when it came to the nature of sex. I didn’t know why, but my inexperience snagged my tongue. I didn’t want to mention it to Shay. He was a nymph and was, by definition, more worldly and sexual than I could ever hope to be.

Intimacy had seemed like an unattainable goal for most of my life, by my design and that of others. I had always been treated as either a burden or something to shun. Both masks did not tend to lend themselves to relationships involving sex, kisses, and cuddling.

Though I knew that Liam and Moira had experimented, as many of the younglings did, I had never had the opportunity. While they were in Cruinn, in the city where life bloomed and grew, I was in the castle with the courtiers that wanted to do nothing but simper at whatever illusion of power they held in their adorned fingertips.

Shay raised a brow. “Those must be some heavy thoughts,” he noted calmly.

I licked my bottom lip. “My mind tends to ramble when I get nervous.”

“Is that so?” He reached forward and smoothed the edge of the bed. We were so close that it was easy to forget that Cormac lay on my other side, like a cushion with a tail and a face.

I nodded.

“But not your mouth?” Shay’s lip twitched.

My fingers fluttered to my mouth. “My mouth?” Somehow his husky voice woke something inside of me, deep in my belly and below that. Something hungry and wanton.

“Your mouth does not seem to run away with you,” Shay noted with a smile. “I suspect every thought that leaves your lips is carefully chosen.”

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