Page 9 of Of Pixies and Promises
Just don’t look up,he told himself. But also don’t look down.Shit.
What the fuck was wrong with him? It was like everything about her not only plucked his strings but controlled them—wound them around her little pixie fingers. Clearing his throat, he forced himself to look only far enough to locate the next bark to grip. His strategy worked well enough until he caught up to her and inadvertently glanced up.
Definitely compatible with a human, a voice from the back of his mind said. He wasn’t sure exactly what he expected fae genitalia to look like but knew it must be close enough to human. Silver fucked one of them, after all.
He might have stared too long at the sheer gauzy strip covering her ass because he misplaced his hand and slipped. Bark crumbled down to the ground.
Get your mind out of the gutter, Sid.
But he couldn’t.
For the entire climb, she was there every time he glanced up. Finally, when they crested the branch that felt more like a ten-foot-wide ledge, his cheeks were flaming hot, half the blood in his brain was still south, and he couldn’t look Nyra in the eyes.
She sat down and fanned her face. “Phew. That was work. I need a drink.”
He was parched, too. But he couldn’t entirely blame the exercise. He nodded and occupied his eyes and hormones by searching through the leaves for the sun’s position. It wasn’t hard to locate as it was setting. Most of the day had passed.
Nyra walked toward the nest at the end of their branch.
“I don’t think anyone is home. Ooh. Look. Robin eggs.” She caught him in the snare of her violet eyes. “We can hitch a ride when the mama comes home.”
“How will we steer it to where we want?”
“I have a little mana refilling. Not enough for us to grow back to human size, but enough for me to influence the bird.”
“Won’t using your mana deplete your stores again?” He scratched his head, not liking the sound of starting at ground zero.
“It doesn’t matter. Once we get to the power source, I’ll refill fast.”
He peeked into the next at the three spotted eggs.
“There’s food right there,” he said.
Nyra hit him on the pec. “Don’t you dare.”
He stifled a smile. “I’d rather it be them than us.”
Unable to help himself from teasing further, he pulled the spear out of his shirt. Her outrage doubled, and she climbed into the nest, putting herself between him and the eggs.
“They’re babies. Not even born!” She tried to bare her fangs, but tears glistened in her eyes.
“Hey,” he said, his voice softening as he lowered his spear. “I was kidding. I wasn’t going to eat them.”
Her expression crumpled, and she heaved in a breath to steady herself. “You can’t joke about things like that to a pixie. It’s our job to nourish the forest, protecting all life inside it.”
And she was a princess. She would hold firm to that conviction. Now he felt terrible. He fit the spear safely into the nest and climbed in after her. He dipped his chin to meet her eyes.
“I promise I won’t hurt them.”
She glanced up at him, and a moment of connection passed between them. A moment of weighing each other, noting how fewer walls were between them now than the last time they’d done this. He tucked pink flyaway hair behind her ears, unintentionally brushing her skin. She shivered.
He had the irrational urge to see what else would make her shiver, but he clenched his fist and dropped it to his side.
“We should rest until the mama comes home,” Nyra said, somewhat breathlessly.
He nodded. “Here?”
She lowered to the nest floor. He crouched, intending to fit himself next to her, but the space wasn’t as big as he’d thought.
