Page 36 of How To Please A Princely Fae

What if this little glimpse into who he is under the hard shell of his constructed identity, free of the pressure of past and present expectations, is the real Kieran?

What if laughing with him is what I am supposed to be doing?

My heart skips a beat, and it must show on my face because the sound of his laugh softens into something else, something caught between a groan and a sigh.

I want to kiss him.

I want to feel his mouth against mine, to taste that noise and all the other ones he’ll make as I wrap myself around him.

My feet take a step back. And another, until I’m pressed up against the wall of shelving, chock full of ingredients.

Ingredients I haven’t put away or organized or labeled yet, because all my plans went ass over tea kettle what with ye olde Elder Gods and an amnesiac fae prince.

Suddenly, I’m not interested in kissing Kieran.

Or in making the soap.

I’m bone tired, and it’s hit me like a fifty-pound sack of manure swung off the back of the delivery cart.

The potion for my customer has been made and decanted, and I sag against the shelves, my eyes fluttering closed.

“You need sleep,” Kieran says, the words laced with commanding imperiousness.

“I need to use the lye mixture,” I tell him, opening my eyes and narrowing them at His Majesty of the Underhill.

Or whatever the honorific would be for an exiled Unseelie.

How should I know? I’m a lowly human witch, one he never deigned to worry about when he had his memories.

“I will do it for you.”

It’s a sign of how completely done with this day I am that I even consider it.

“It would be my honor to do it for you,” he adds sincerely, and I pinch the bridge of my nose in annoyance.

“Have you a lot of soap-making experience?” I ask him, incredulous and prickly all at once. “Have you been holding out on me?”

“I was known as the royal soap maker in Unseelie court.” He sweeps into a low bow, the muscles under his tight-stretched shirt rippling.

I blink at him. “What? Really?”

He unfolds from the waist, leaning against the scarred wooden worktable and bestowing me with a grin only capable of being described as feral. “No.”

I scoff and roll my eyes, but he slaps a palm against the table, startling me back to attention.

“I am willing to learn, Willow, and I am sure you can point me to a recipe. If I know anything about you, it’s that you are hard-pressed to let a good recipe or note or thought go unwritten.”

I tilt my head because, while he’s not wrong, he shouldn’t know that. “Did you remember that? Is it coming back?”

He tips his face back and laughs, then raises a hand to gesture at the overflowing leather-bound grimoire I’ve stuffed full of all the things he just accused me of loving to write.

My cheeks pink. “If you mess up the recipe, I’ll have to buy new supplies,” I manage.

“I fully expect you to dock the supplies from my pay.”

“Of course I wouldn’t!” I gasp, scandalized. “Losing supplies is part of training an apprentice.”

His gaze sears through me and I swallow, fully aware I have my back against the wall.

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