Page 43 of How To Please A Princely Fae

I inhale slowly, breathing in the many mouth-watering scents of the spread in front of me, the lavender I use to wash my linens, and the faint herbal scent of my own magic.

“Tell me you aren’t still thinking of running off to the Elder Gods,” Kieran says, and his voice breaks on the last word.

“No.” My response is immediate, and fervent, and surprises us both.

His hand wraps around mine, first one and then the other, until both of mine are caged in warm lilac flesh.

“Then you’ll stay with me,” he presses.

I never thought before that time had mass, that it was something besides the ticking of a clock or the sun moving across the skies.

But with his gaze searching mine, his body leaning towards me, the future weighs heavy on my shoulders, heavier even than the pull of the past.

Our past—the one where I’ve pined after him for weeks only to be met with ice—and my past—where I’ve always been the one overlooked or worse, an afterthought to any partner I wanted.

His hands squeeze mine, but it’s the slight tremble in them that urges me to speak, to break the spell of what was and what might be for what is, right now.

“I’ll stay.”

“You’ll stay,” he echoes, and a slow smile transforms his face, the warmth enough to melt snow in winter.

I shrug a shoulder, trying to deny my own pleasure at seeing it, at the absurdity of all of it. “I live here.”

“So you do,” he says, and for a second, I worry I’ve hurt his feelings.

I raise an eyebrow.

“So you do,” he repeats, and a spark of mischief lights in his eyes that washes my worry away. “We have things to do today, people to see,” he continues. “I’ve already tended to your more sensitive plants in the greenhouse, as well as made all the soap that you had listed in your soap-to-make list.”

“Are you trying to put me out of a job?” I ask, half teasing. Or aiming for it, at least. It comes out slightly brittle, though. With too much pressure, the question would fissure and crack like too-thin ice.

Over thirty years of not feeling good enough. Of feeling like the things I do, the magic I have, my entire life’s work is a simple matter of sunshine and water and time. Things an Unseelie fae prince could do without a second thought.

Things any witch with an inclination could do without so much as trying.

I swallow, trying to push the ugly thoughts back, trying to shove them back into a box and lock them away until I have the energy to pull them out and find all the holes in them.

“Never.” He stands up, then leans down, close enough it feels like he’s thinking of kissing me.

Or, maybe,I’msimply thinking of kissinghim. My core tightens, the ever-present heat his mere existence seems to conjure spreading like wildfire, fanned to new heights by his proximity.

“You are special, Willow of Wild Oak Woods, and not just to me. You are special because you are you, a fierce, ungovernable force of nature, whose love of all things natural and green speaks to her wild heart.”

My mouth pops open in surprise, my eyes widening, and this time, the heat that explodes through me has less to do with lust than joy at feeling seen.

At the truth in his ferocious words.

Even if Kieran doesn’t remember his past—he sees me. He sees who I am, and who I want to be, the witch who hides inside her greenhouse coaxing leaves to unfurl and blossoms to bloom.

Now he’s the one coaxing met to do so, too.

This is real. Whatever happened to Kieran to have him lose his memories… I don’t understand it, but this moment now, this man in front of me—this is more real than anything he’s shown me before.

I’m moving without thinking, responding to all the hope and desire I’ve caged inside me, bundled up and smushed down until it threatened to explode out of me.

My lips brush against his, and my eyelids flutter shut.

It’s the barest of contact, and yet my breath catches in my chest, agonizing and wonderful all at once.

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