Page 74 of A House of Cloaks & Daggers

“Is it not safer that way?” the High King countered evenly, his thumb still brushing over my leg. “They’ll track Aura by scent. They don’t care whereweare while she’s alive.”

“No,” Morgoya agreed, her gaze following the High King’s hand as it slowly travelled further up my thigh until it was nearly against my hip. “But all of this magnifies her scent. If it continues and we leave,” she murmured, studying the strong arms around my body before glancing at Wren, “it won’t be long before the Malum catch a whiff—not to mention the rest of Faerie. And then we’ll have questions I’m not sure we can answer yet.”

“I’m sorry,” I interrupted a little breathlessly. I wriggled in Lucais’s lap, feeling like an insect beneath a microscope, and his palm slid down to my knee. A line of fire burned in its wake, threatening to warm my cheeks, and I hoped they couldn’t hear the slight acceleration of my heart. “Scent? Questions?”

Morgoya looked between the men as if asking for permission before she spoke. “High Fae have a heightened sense of smell, and the bond between mates is very potent,” she explained. “Think of it like a wedding ring on humans, something to tell others that an individual is spoken for. And with the way things are right now, it’s going to be a little stronger than normal until everything settles down.”

She had used the worddeliciousto refer to my scent.Ourscent, entwined as we sat together, emphasised by thethingcharging between us as Lucais’s fingers traced the seam of my pants, down to my calves, back to my knees, and up to my hip.

Lucais didn’t know what he was doing. He couldn’t have because they were talking about it right in front of us, and his hands were making it worse. His brown eyes were clear as he looked at me, murmuring something about the High King’s connection to the land and how intense it can be during certain life events.

But I didn’t care if the mating bond stretched over the whole of Faerie and made all of its residents aware of my presence. At that moment, I was more worried about what Wren and Morgoya were about to become aware of as his hand trailed up my leg, silk slipping between our skin as if it was about to fall off, and my body reacted in the only way it knew how.

Lucais noticed it first, saw the panicked tears pricking my eyes as every other part of my body began to melt like ice cream in full sun as a thrumming and lightheaded tension began to build in my core, and his hand froze on my leg.

“Leave the room,” he commanded quietly, and Morgoya immediately rose to her feet. Lucais didn’t take his eyes from my face, but I could only assume he spoke directly to Wren as he added, his voice a quiet snarl, “Now. We’ll discuss this later.”

Chapter thirty-one

Yes… Please

If Wren protested, Ididn’t hear it. If he left the room, I didn’t see it.

There was a whisper of movement, the swish of Morgoya’s gown and clink of heels against the floor, and the echo of the doors as they closed.

Then my heart, pounding in my chest like a war drum, as I watched Lucais’s eyes slide down my neck, over the buttons of my shirt, to where the ends of my hair were sitting in tangled curls over my chest. The silence was tense, like the strain of a match scraping against the side of the box, only moments away from catching ablaze. I could feel the hairs on my arms beginning to raise, rough against my silk sleeves, and the heat growing between my hips, resistant to my thighs pressing together to squash it.

I cursed the House, cursed the absence of underwear, cursed the whole of Faerie, and yet I remained in Lucais’s lap. I was too scared to stay but far too curious to leave.

With deliberate, steady leisure, he brushed my hair over my shoulder with the backs of his hands. The curls dragged over my breasts with featherlight pressure—only enough to send a small wave of dull, aching pleasure rolling out across my body—but it was his eyes, his focus on the shape of my nipples poking through the white silk as hard as stone, and the dark satisfaction in his gaze that undid me.

I bit back a small whimper, half desire and half desperation, as his throat bobbed, and he looked up at me again.

Lucais dragged a hand down his face and held it up between us, studying it as if it belonged to someone else. “If my hands ever go anywhere you don’t want them to,” he said, voice low and thick, “then you have my absolute permission to slap me.”

Pressing my lips together, I shook my head and writhed in his lap, trying to avoid the inevitable as I felt the wetness pooling between my thighs. The mating bond was stretched between us, taut and ready to snap, but it was also as thick as a cloud of heady smoke, drawing me towards him like I was suffocating, and he was the only source of air.

“What do you need, Aura?” he pressed, keeping his hands still. “Would you like to leave?”

I shook my head again because I didn’t know. Every part of my body was suddenly aching with borderline ecstatic tension, electrified by Lucais’s proximity, and his hands hadn’t been nearly as close or rough or greedy as some unruly and absolutely shameful part of me wanted them to be.

“Why will it be stronger?” I breathed, inhaling the scent of a bonfire so realistic that I could have been choked by it. His throat worked, and I could see the blood pounding throughhis veins, the barely restrained tightness in his neck as he bent to rest his forehead against mine. My eyes shuttered, trying to contain the explosion of lust-induced fog in my head. “What has to…settle?”

I knew very well thatIhad to settle down, for starters, but I didn’t seem able to do that, so I was hoping for another option. An off switch. Or maybe a really strong and off-putting cologne. Absentmindedly, I wondered if Faerie had anything equivalent to a skunk, and if Lucais would agree to being drenched in its scent for a while—just until I got my thoughts under control again.

“Maybe some space would be best for us,” he whispered, even as his hand slid up to cradle the side of my face, and he traced the length of my cheekbone with his nose.

“Haven’t you had enough space?” I asked boldly. I couldn’t stop myself.

He made a strangled noise, half-sigh and half-moan. “I haven’t been thinking. I’m not thinking clearly. You really don’t have to feel obligated to—to respond.”

High Mother spare me. I was going to spontaneously combust.

I touched the tip of my nose to his, the softest caress, and inhaled another unwieldy dose of him. His lips were so close to mine that I could almost taste them again, and I knew I wanted to—hadn’t I already decided that I wanted to?—but I was caught in a whirlpool, flailing halfway between fate and reality.

Don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it—

I brushed my mouth against his, a magnetic force tugging us together, and felt the warmth of his lips spilling out across my entire body like a dam bursting in the summer. The ache between my hips throbbed, a contraction of building pressure desperately begging to be released as his lips parted to letme inside, and his tongue stroked mine with slow, deliberate hesitation.

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