Page 19 of Bound By Dance and Desire

She gave me another one of her reserved half smiles. “And I don't mind if you tell me things. Explain things I need to know about the city. I'm just so focused on dance that it might seem like I'm not paying attention.”

I squeezed her hand gently, amusement and indulgence soothing some of my worry. “I watched you dance. It should consume you.”

When I'd thought vaguely of who I might take as consort, I’d assumed it would be a polished, powerful, politically connected Lord of a High Fae Court. Fate had delivered me the exact opposite, but looking into eyes both knowing and guileless, gentle and ruthless, I couldn't be more pleased.

This mortal girl possessed depths. I hadn’t lived five times a human's natural lifespan only to fail to recognize a soul that would one day be completely my equal. Perhaps not in the raw power of the Fae, but in the strength of her will, her intellect.

Her passion.

Perhaps the Dark wasn't laughing at me after all.

As I caressed the back of Hasannah's hand with my thumb, the hunger I'd managed to bank in the market reared back to the surface.

I stilled, counting her breaths, inhaling her scent, and began to think of all the things I could do to her during the coach ride home.

Beginning with licking her between her thighs and ending with licking her opening after I filled her with my seed. First her lush mouth. Second, her glistening lips. Third, the tight entrance I knewfrom looking at her no male had ever touched.

Would she allow me to touch her so soon? Or did she require courting, promises of love and fidelity and protection?

“In the interest of clear communication,” I said, “I would like to know your requirements to fuck me. Preferably sooner rather than later. I'm not interested in drawing out the anticipation. I'm too young for that sort of game.”

The older Fae enjoyed savoring their food before they devoured it. I didn't blame them when little in life offered anything new, anything exciting. But I was barely five hundred. Life was still fresh for me.

“What?” She jerked, then stilled with the automatic muscle control of a trained dancer. “No, you don't have to repeat that, I understood you the first time.”

Nothing could disguise that betraying flutter in her neck, or the rapid inhalation of her breath.

She cleared her throat. “I've never had a man say something quite like that outright. Usually they try to get you drunk first.”

“So you require wine?” She’d insisted she didn’t drink. “Provisions?” I frowned, wanting to be fair to her. “All of that I'll provide you as a matter of course for being mine—you have noHouse, so you must come under my covering. What else do you want?”

Anah stared at me. Abruptly, sorrow laced amusement bubbled into her eyes, and she laughed.

“I don't know, Andrei, how about some time getting to know each other? It's a radical concept.”

I resumed caressing the back of her hand. Her gaze flickered to where our flesh joined.

“The bed is an excellent place to learneach other.” I tried out my earnest voice, but it wasn't my best Court mask.

“I can't just. . .” she trailed off and sighed, glancing away, then straightened her shoulders. “You're flustering me a little, and I'm too old to be feeling like a schoolgirl.”

“Too old? Is that a human joke?”

She scowled, and even that expression lacked true harshness. “Maybe not old for a Fae. But I'm thirty. An adult by human reckoning.”

“Thirty.A veritable Ancient.”

“And how old are you?”

“Don't humans consider it rude to ask a man his age?”

“Only if the man is also a lady, and I don't think you are. Of course I could be wrong.”

I smiled, enjoying the game, and her acerbic tone. “I'm also considered not old, but an adult by the reckoning of my people. I'm not yet five hundred.” Would my youth dismay her?

“I'm strong enough to protect you,” I clarified, repressing the urge to bristle.

“That never crossed my mind, Andrei.”

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