Page 67 of Faking with the Fae King

“I’m taking you home.” His arm goes around me, right as Jared walks back past us.

“Hey. It’s Hannah’s fiancé!”

Everyone turns to look at us.

I glide my hand up Severin’s chest and glance up at him through my eyelashes. Then I bat them a few times. Ha! Even tipsy, I’m a great actress. The best. Send me an Emmy.

I say, “We need to put on a show.”

Autumn’s expression goes horrified, and she starts flapping her arms around in warning, like the town’s only stoplight broke and she’s directing traffic.

Oops. My voice might have been an eensy bit loud. My next words come out as a whisper-yell. Much better. Super discreet. “We need to fa—”

Severin’s mouth crashes over mine, hot and insistent and stealing all of my ability to form words. His hands splay across my lower back, pulling me closer, and my butterflies dive straight for my lady bits, making everything tingle.

I moan against his lips, opening for his tongue. No matter how this started, there’s sure as hell nothing fake about my response to him.

Whoops and cheers come from all around us, the pixies the loudest of all.

We pull apart, and the heated look in Severin’s intense green eyes makes my knees go weak. I always thought that saying was BS, but nope! One-hundred percent accurate, if it’s the right guy.

I’m stillstaring up at him like a deer caught in the headlights when a bar fight breaks out a few feet away.

Severin’s shadows pick me up and move me aside right as a punch goes whistling past my head. His fist jackhammers forward, crashing into the nose of the stranger who tried to hit me.

As the man crumples to the ground, his face and hair flicker, changing shape and color until…

“That’s Meloria’s representative!”

Severin growls, a feral sound of warning that flashes his fangs.

A woman comes stumbling toward us, arms pinwheeling. Instead of catching her, Severin’s shadows form a shield around me. She bounces off and sneers—the expression is familiar, even if the face isn’t, and contains more malice than a stranger should feel. Somehow, I know she’s Meloria.

“Severin! It’s her!”

“I know.” He catches my gaze. “Do you trust me?”

“Always.”

Something flickers in his eyes, too quickly for me to tease out its meaning.

Then the world goes hazy as he cocoons me in his shadows. Chaos whirls all around, but nothing touches me, and even sound is muffled. It feels like being wrapped in a cotton-candy hug, and it smells like Severin, pine and leather and wood smoke.

God, I love that smell.

In the next few seconds, Skye shoves in beside me on the right, followed by Autumn on the left. I hug them both tome. “Are you guys okay?”

“We’re fine!” Skye says.

“Yep.” Autumn nods. “Severin and Rune kept us safe, and then Severin stuck us in here with you.”

Oh, god. Tears prickle my eyes.

Severin’s in the middle of a bar fight with Meloria and whoever else she’s got working for her, but he took the time to keep my besties safe!

Screw it. I’m too drunk to keep lying to myself. Nothing I feel for him is fake.

I’m falling in love with the man who only wants me for a year, and I’m falling really freaking hard.

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