Page 216 of Evil Hearts

Celedeis itself was a gorgeous expanse of low meadows and wildflowers. The mesa had been shaped into a shallow dish over time, so that all the rain that fell on it stayed on it, and I suspected that the wide stone building at the lowest point of the mesa covered a rain-fed reservoir. Delicate-looking deer no bigger than goats browsed in the tall grass alongside long-legged egrets, and orchards of dwarf trees grew in soil-filled sunken gardens hewn from the mesa itself, protected by low stone walls.

It had to be several square miles at least, and aside from small farmhouse-looking adobe buildings, there was a legitimate town surrounding the looming shape of the castle, with a wall of its own. A bustling town, too; though we didn’t linger, the place looked cheerful and busy, full of well-fed people in bright clothing, with vivid decorations and musicians on the corners. When we passed the final ring of defense into the castle itself, the sudden calm made it feel like we’d stepped into a different world.

Ruven made himself scarce the moment we got out of the carriage, leaving Syalin to take care of settling me in. Apparently getting the new Lady Castellan of Celedeis situated fell under his purview, from setting me up with some clothing and supplies inthe bedroom adjoining Ruven’s private quarters to scheduling the necessary encounters with tailors, various important people in Celedeis, and a suite of private tutors.

I ate dinner alone in my room, took a luxurious bath (the water, I was assured, would be filtered and used for the gardens), and retired to the spacious featherbed to sleep as the sun went down.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Ruven crawled onto the bed with me. Perhaps that should have been troubling, but my sleeping mind was able to identify him with ease, and I merely roused enough to verify what I already knew. I made a small noise of protest as he clambered on top of me, framing my body with his. “Ru…”

“You don’t need to fear me,” he murmured, lowering his face to nuzzle against my throat. “I’m not here to hurt you, and I never intend to force you. I just…” His voice caught, and Ruven had to swallow. The heat of his blush radiated against my neck. “I need to be near you,” he said in a rough voice. “That’s what Syalin was warning me about. Us about. My nature is wilder than most fae, even those wildlings with a more exotic appearance than I. Sometimes I… scent people, and then I… nearly all I want to do is taste them. Touch them. It’s intoxicating.You’reintoxicating. I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but I can’t seem to fuckingstop.”

His body slowly dropped towards mine as he spoke, drifting closer and closer until our chests touched with every breath and the heat of his body warmed me from head to toe. His lips brushed against my pulse with a hot sigh. A powerful thigh settled between mine.

“Tell me to go,” Ruven whispered roughly. His fingers tangled in my hair, and he shuddered, sinking a fraction closer. “Send me away. I don’t think I can leave if you don’t.” He shudderedagain, his arms and legs starting to tremble from the force of not plastering himself against me. “Avalon. Please.”

“Stay,” I whispered back.

He moaned, a sound of such wretched pleasure that heat flooded my body, thudding between my legs in a hungry heartbeat. Ruven’s weight sank down onto me, face pressed against my throat and his panting breath wetting my skin.

“Damn you,” he groaned, shoving himself closer, like he wanted to crawl into my skin. “Must you ruin me?”

I swallowed hard, his summer scent filling my lungs and the heat of his body commanding my attention. “Tell me what happened with Lady Mellinae and I’ll even let you sleep under the sheets,” I said, somehow able to avoid sounding like I wanted to him to fuck me until I forgot my name.

“Cruel woman,” he breathed, fingers tightening in my hair. Ruven nuzzled behind my ear, breathing hard, the ivory bar of his fang pressed against my jawbone. “I met her at one of my mother’s feasts. Scented her before I even saw her, and Syalin wasn’t there to stop me. I followed that lure until I found her, and then nothing would do but for me to have her then and there.”

My hands found his sides and slid up along his bare skin. My palms tingled from the contact, as if he was poisonous, but the sensation only made me want to dive deeper into danger—to throw myself to the wolves and greet the fangs with laughter. “Did you?” I asked, leaning my face against his.

“Of course I did,” he said, with breathtaking arrogance. “The face I wear as Lord Kezorwyn is considered a lovely one indeed. I had her on the dance floor and I had her in the garden. Twice. I… proposed. That same night. At dawn,” Ruven said, sounding deathly embarrassed. His tail started swishing back and forth across the sheets. “She agreed, of course. I brought her here, and Syalin looked like he was about to strangle me with my own tail.Which I wasn’t wearing, because Taliana had no idea I look like this.”

“Quite the start to a relationship,” I lilted at him, tracing my fingers slowly down his long spine.

“Shut up,” Ruven growled. He still arched his back up into my touch like a needy cat. “My estate is set up such that Syalin can override my decisions when he thinks I’m being an idiot. It’s saved me more than once. When I make foolish promises about my assets, he has the power to… modify them. And he did.” A low thrum started in his throat, but Ruven coughed and shook himself.

I fought back a grin. “You purr?”

“Shut up,” he said again, his face heating against my skin. “My hand is one of my assets. Syalin set it up so that any marital union of mine would only be finalized if my partner slept next to me in my natural form for a year and a day, and if we… coupled… in my natural form.”

“Fairytale rules?” I asked.

“It’s Faery,” Ruven sniped back. “Again, shut up.”

“Not happening.”

He growled and scraped his teeth against my neck, not able to bite thanks to his saber-teeth. “It was simple enough to slip into bed with her after dark and rise before dawn. I don’t need much sleep, and she was a lazy dilettante who loved to be pampered. The months slid by. I pleasured her and wooed her and spent well nigh every waking moment thinking of her, obsessed with the scent of her, getting needier and more desperate with each night spent in her bed without my natural cock buried inside her.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“And you’re obnoxious and troublesome,” he said, a sharp comment that was belied by the way he kept leaning into my touch. “Are you going to let me finish?”

I stroked my hands down his sides and onto his bare thighs with a tilt of my hips that earned me a sharp hiss of breath. I hadn’t realized he was fully naked. That was dangerous. “Eventually,” I said, lightly dragging my nails back up. “I enjoy having a man at my mercy.”

That touch won me a shiver of pleasure and a buck of his hips against my thigh. “I knew she wouldn’t want me like this,” Ruven said, talking faster. “I knew, and I knew that I was royally fucked, because the two ways this obsession ends are with me spending myself inside the one I crave as the wild thing I am or having the bond rejected, and I have onlyeverbeen rejected. But I thought—I hoped—that if we had time, if she grew fond of my stupid, foolish self, that perhaps she would accept a single mating from a thing like me for the sake of an eternity with the beautiful bastard son of a princess.”

My hands stilled. “And she didn’t.”

“She didn’t,” Ruven growled. “But I’d made her promises, because I’m hot-headed and demonstrative, and I do things like spend ten thousand gold for my soulmate to make an impression on her when eight hundred would do. She held me to them, as she should. It took me eighteen years to find ways to satisfy them all, and then eleven days later I sawyou. Fate is so dreadfully unkind to me.” He raked his teeth along my pulse again. “Now let me lie skin-to-skin with you, of your mercy.”

“You’ve been good,” I said, laughter in my voice. “You can get under the covers.”

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