Page 50 of Kiss the Fae

Cerulean hedges. “I’m but a symbol for The Trapping. In general, we mountain Fae commune with the wind in limited, varying ways. How the wind reacts to us, and interacts with us, differs from soul to soul. We beseech it, and it answers, but we can’t command it any more than we can command the fauna, for we don’t have that right. Ultimately, no one controls the sky except the sky.”

His ambivalence dredges up The Black Nest and the look he gave Moth when she called himSire. That he’s conflicted about his rank, not to mention his role in history, and modest about the wind, well, stumps me. But I like what he said about not controlling the sky. “When I was little, I wanted to fly free, high, and unafraid of the world. Why are you making that face?”

Cerulean wavers, his eyes flickering. “You…remind me of someone.”

“There’s someone else who thinks like I do?”

“You flatter yourself, human.”

“Depends on who she was? Or he?”

The Fae gazes off with a remote grin I don’t think he’s aware of. “She was miraculous and devastating.”

Why does that comment poke me in the chest? I shake my head, because it’s my turn. “That a good thing? Seeing as I remind you of her?”

His head whips toward me, the cuts of his cheekbones sloping upward, the shadows digging trenches beneath them. “Hardly,” he says, annoyed.

The word snaps from the cage of his throat. How many words do I have locked inside me like that? How many more words are thrashing to get out of him? Would any of those words be the same?

I open my mouth to say…whatever I’m about to say…but Cerulean notices. He twirls his fingers, summoning a breeze that sneaks through the wild. The current coaxes the nightingales from their nests. They spring into action, migrating along the grass and cavorting farther into the woods to resume their mating serenade.

The lilting whistles fade into the wild. We’re alone now.

Out of nowhere, Cerulean eats up the distance and catches my hands. I make a gruff noise of protest, but my muscles go slack. His expression visibly wills me to cower, those eyes impulsive but determined, the visage of a dark imagination. Speckled visions fill my mind—late nights in a forge when reckless discovery had been so sweet. It urges me to see what this Fae will do.

He spreads our arms, splays our fingers, and turns my palms up beneath his, so that I feel whether the breeze has a heart. Our faces tilt, lips stalling a hair’s breadth apart, near enough to bite and draw blood. We stay like that, holding, holding. His intakes become my outtakes, and his shadow becomes my outline.

His skin warms my knuckles. Slender fingers cup my own, soft and thumping with an honest-to-goodness pulse. The rhythm matches the one beating through my veins.

Cerulean angles his head, his mouth brushing the slope of my ear. “Is that what you expected to feel?”

The question’s barely audible, shimmying down the side of my body. Cerulean’s good at that, blowing heat into the air. He’s a master at whispering.

Goosebumps flare. Vibrations ricochet over my spine. When that voice hooks onto the apex of my thighs, my mouth parts.

Cerulean’s eyelids shudder. “Answer me,” he intones, his accent causing another shockwave. “Does it have a heartbeat? Is it slow or fast?” His throat constricts. “Is it shallow as a sigh? Bottomless as a moan?”

Shit. That violent murmur, a withering funnel of sound.

He’s being flippant, yet the black silk of his voice unfurls down my legs. That hook between my thighs prods deeper, an invisible tongue flicking at the private knot of nerves hidden in my core. Fuck me if I don’t begin to throb.

He hasn’t moved, yet those whispers reach everywhere important, dampened warmth building under my dress. Every gulp of his throat, every hushed split of his lips, every muted syllable…I hear and feel it all, each breathy noise licking inside me.

Normally, I’d whip him up some snark. But I know my actual response is gonna haunt me: I burn as hot as a griddle.

And I’m wet, soaked from a few whispers.

Abruptly, Cerulean’s nostrils flare. So much for remaining elusive; his reaction is as boundless as the sky, spanning his whole face. It makes no difference that the only place we’re touching is our hands, because his intonations and my inhalations do the rest. His jaw ticks, and my nipples tighten, rising into the fabric concealing them.

He twitches, suddenly aware of what he’s doing. But he doesn’t let go, and I don’t pull back. Not until the breeze dissolves, ushering us apart.

I can’t decide whether to feel dejected, insulted, or plain pissed off at myself, so I settle for all three. It keeps things interesting.

I glower. “Don’t you have work to do? Solitaries to revel with?”

The menace returns, setting his blue irises aflame. He nicks his head toward the woodland route from which I’d come. “Do you not have a mountain climb? Or are you feeling overconfident, overeager, overindulgent? Shall I fix that? Up the ante?”

I stiffen. “You wouldn’t. It’s—”

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