Page 202 of Fated or Knot

“Okay, so she did. I understand,” he chuckled.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again with a shake of my head. I wandered the room looking at his posters instead. When I found the most recent one, I gasped. There Fal was in glossy color as the Prince of Winter, just his head, shoulders, and a gloved hand holding a rose made of ice. His slitted eyes and sideways smirk gave him the sinister edge the character was usually depicted with. Of course, he was the villain in this play, while the child and a few other fae posed on the other side of the poster.

I wished I could’ve seen it. Maybe from someone else’s memories.

“How’d you hold that rose without it melting?” I asked over my shoulder.

He chuckled. “Let me go get it and show you.” He went into his bedroom for a minute, and emerged with the ice rose in his mouth. Its fan of petals and leaves were icy blue and glinted when the light hit them. Crystals, then.

Fal lifted his brows at me suggestively and purred with a muffled roll of his tongue. A blush warmed my face. Taking it out of the clamp of his teeth, he leaned down until the crystal bloom was the only thing between our mouths. “My director let me keep it because I put too many teeth marks on it between takes.”

I took it to admire with a laugh.He would do that on purpose.

His expression softened as I tilted the rose and took in the sparkles it put off. I noticed him a moment too late and held my breath in anticipation of a kiss, before he thought better of it. He straightened and brushed a few locks of hair behind my ear. “I’ll send a mothkin off to retrieve dinner. In the meantime, I have a wine I think you’ll like, if you want to get comfortable.”

“Okay.” I smiled and picked a seat on one side of a comfortable-looking loveseat. It was squashed just right to suggest that it’s received a lot of use. Fal returned with a bottle and two wineglasses, serving us both a measure of the blush-colored liquid.

We clinked glasses and drank. It was sweeter than I expected and I took another sip immediately. He settled next to me, arm around my shoulders. We pressed together like magnets and I took in his scent again with a wistful sigh. If things were different, I’d crawl in his lap and bury my face in the curve of his neck for a concentrated taste of his pheromones.

“Well, tell me about your dates,” he invited.

I perked up and started from the beginning, which was the train ride to Laculi Point with Marius. I talked about the landmarks on the trip to Telimarr, and some of the cool things that were preserved in the old city after the flooding. Eventually he went, “Hm.” It was a loving little sound and I glanced up to see him watching me intently.

I doubted he was listening to a word I said, just soaking in the sound of my voice.

“Then you two fucked underwater like a pair of passionate wild animals?” he asked after a moment.

I nearly choked on a mouthful of wine. After I was done with my coughing fit, I croaked out, “Phrasing, Fal.”

His mischievous grin only grew. “Is that a yes, then?”

Heat suffused me. “Yes. Well, not quite. We weren’t sure it would work underwater.”

He started to chuckle. “Not sure ofwhatnot working underwater?”

“Like, sex. You can’t really thrust…the water prevents fast movements…” I let the thought fade as Fal wheezed, tears beading at the corners of his eyes.

He put down his wine before he spilt it and held his side as he continued to laugh. “No, please, go on. Tell me why you and my water fae brother didn’t have sex in his element.”

“Fal,” I groaned.

“Are you going to say you two didn’t eventryit?”

“We didn’t.”

“Stars. It’s called friction,mo stór.”

“You’ve done it?” I asked in surprise.

He shot me a sideways look that clearly said,of course I have. “Sounds like we are taking a trip to the sea to rectify this gap in your experiences,” he said playfully.

I was glad I was wearing a heat pad, as I got rather slick imagining entwining with him in the shallows. “Looking forward to it.”

“Anyway,” he prompted.

A little spurred on by his reaction to the underwater bit, and the touch of buzz warming my blood, I said, “We went to a cute inn by the sea and fucked like animals in abed.”

Fal retrieved his wineglass and sipped, nodding with an air of what seemed like approval. “At least someone’s been having sex.”

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