Page 117 of Ulune's Daughter

I hold my hand out to him.

He pounces, leaping from where he’s come through the door, across the room, to land on top of me. Laughing, I collapse back into the pillows and blankets. He holds himself up over me with his hands planted on either side of my shoulders, his hips pressing my lower body into the cloud-softness of his bed.

I lift my hands to his face and trace his features. Strong brow, snub nose a little bent by an old break, the wide bow of his lips, the narrow chin.

“You’re beautiful,” I whisper.

“All cats are beautiful. Does my face please you? Now you’re seeing it at last.”

“Your face is ... very familiar. Struan looks a little like you. Luca looks alotlike you. More than cousins.”

“Younger brother,” he admits.

“Ah,” I say. My overfull heart hitches but doesn’t have the seizure it should have. I’m too warm, too safe, too content. “He’s your inside man. Tell him that mask design was gorgeous. He should offer it to the museum gift shop. Ask for a split of the profits. He’ll make a mint.” I unwind a stray hair stuck to the stubble on his jaw. Blue. Could be his or mine. “Luca will be the first one to tell you that it’s problematic for me to be with a member of his close family.”

He nods. “I spoke to him after our night at the fires. If a relationship with me is something you’ll permit, he’ll avoid any situation where you’d be giving him a grade. Even though he’s talked about little else other than your classes for months.”

I sigh as I continue to stroke his cheeks and jaw with my fingertips. He’s mesmerizing. It’s more than beauty. It’s that sense of wildness contained, of the predator lurking just below the surface. It’s not glamor. I’ve never been susceptible to the glamor of other fae.

It’s just him.

My brain finally parses through what he’s said to throw one word up to the top of my thoughts. “Permit?” I ask.

“Allow? Agree to?” He lowers himself like he’s doing a push-up to brush his lips over mine. “You’re in my bed at last. I want nothing more than to keep you here. But I would never cage you, Kellan. That’s not who I am. I want you to desire your presence in my bed as fiercely as I do. I want you tocravebeing with me. As much as I crave being with you.”

Every word sinks into me, increases that sense ofrightnessthat’s filling me. He’s said he believes we’re fated mates. He’s planted that seed in my mind, in my heart, and every word waters it.

“I do,” I admit. “More and more since our night at the fires. When I smelled you, saw you, last night ... I had to be with you. I couldn’t be without you. If you hadn’t been there ... if it’d been my imagination, I think I would have gone into Faery to try to find you. I need you that much.”

His wide mouth spreads into a smile that bares the tips of his sharp, white incisors.

“I like this facet of you,” he says, nudging my nose with his. “This quiet, sleepy, bemused morning you.”

“Relaxed, happy, falling-for-you morning me.”

He stills, those hypnotic eyes intent on mine. “Falling for me?”

“Would I need you this much if I wasn’t falling for you?”

He drops onto me, wraps his arms around me, and rolls so I end up above him in a flurry of blankets. “I fell for you years ago.”

“You might have told me.”

He shakes his head. “You’d have thought I was some sort of obsessed stalker.”

“You are an obsessed stalker.”

His huffing laugh bounces his chest under mine. He trails his fingers down my spine until he finds the edge of my pajamas; his fingers wiggle underneath, seeking skin. “You’ve made your obsessed stalker very happy. What can I do for you? Can I bathe you? Feed you? Give you more orgasms?”

“All of those are good, but for right now could we just cuddle? I’d really like to cuddle.”

He rolls to the side and tugs on the blankets and my pajamas until my skin meets the furnace of his. “Now we can cuddle.”

I wriggle in, wrapping myself around him. My cheek seeks the hollow of his shoulder like it’s rested there a hundred times. My nose finds the faint scent of juniper and mist lingering on his skin. For as firm and muscular as he is, there’s also something wonderfully soft and yielding about him. Just like a big cat.

He takes my hand, resting on his chest, and laces our fingers together. His short black claws resting on my pale skin; my longer blue claws resting on his. “My parents are here. They felt you arrive last night. It’s hard to sneak anything past my mother.” He huffs out an exasperated breath that makes me grin, thinking of all the childhood attempts to evade his mother’s attention that must be behind that expression. “If you’re up to it today, we could join them for dinner? They’d like to meet you.”

The terrors that had me wrapped tight yesterday feel as distant and insubstantial as last night’s dreams. Why did I isolate myself from everyone? My growing powers haven’t hurt anybody. I’ve used them to heal. That strange place—the Court of Cold Mist—doesn’t seem as terrifying, lying in Lawson’s strong arms, in his soft bed.

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