Page 49 of Yearning For Her

Bracing a hand on the wall, Willow lifted her legs over it one at a time and sat atop it. She folded her hands in her lap and looked out at Memoree. It had been her home for the past nine years, a third of her life. But how brief had that life been in comparison to Kian’s?

He’d been around long before there was a city here, long before any of this land became part of the United States, before the country even existed. It was hard to imagine what this area had been like when Kian was young. Untamed forests, primal, dangerous, and beautiful. Unsullied by human ambitions…

She couldn’t fathom how much the world had changed in his time.

“You’re speaking to an incubus, Willow,” he said gently. “My age is hardly the strangest thing about this, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She smiled at him. “Where were you born? Here or…”

“Beyond the Veil, in a realm called Tulthiras. The Evergarden. Where the fae hold dominion and everything is brimming with magic.” He stepped over the wall with eerie grace and sat beside her, letting out a sigh. “All it really means is that everything is dangerous and deceptive, words hold true power, and those with the most potent magic rule unopposed.”

“It doesn’t sound like you like it there.”

“I find it isn’t a very friendly place, especially for incubi and succubae. But it has its beauty.”

“Do you have any family?”

“I’m sure I have blood kin scattered across a myriad of realms, but no. There’s no one who would really fit the word family.” He brushed a finger along her arm, and even through the coat, it sent a thrill through her. “And you? Where were you born, Willow? What of your family?”

“I was born in Florida.”

“You’re quite far from home.”

“It never felt like home there.” She swung her legs and stared down at the city lights. “I was what you’d call an accident. I wasn’t planned, wasn’t wanted, but my parents had me regardless. And they regretted every moment of it. They thought the right thing to do was to get married, but they were miserable. They fought constantly. I think growing up around it just desensitized me to their screaming matches. The only times I was happy were when I visited my grandparents on my dad’s side. They were the only ones who made me feel loved as a child. My mom’s parents disowned her for marrying my dad, so they were never in the picture.”

Willow rubbed her hands to warm them and drew the sides of the coat more snugly around herself. “I was picked on a lot in school. Because of life at home, I had turned to food as a comfort, so I was on the chubby side growing up. Kids are cruel, and sometimes they’d call me names and oink or bark at me. It hurt, but I didn’t always let them get away with it.” She chuckled. “I got into a fight with one of the more popular girls once and bloodied her nose. She stopped picking on me after that, but there were other bullies over the years. I just learned to ignore it. I had a couple close friends that I spent time with, and that was all I needed.”

“Things got worse when my grandparents died in a car accident.” She released a shuddering breath as that old pang of loss struck her. “My dad took it really hard and closed himself off from everyone. He’d just sit there at the kitchen table some nights, chewing his food with this blank expression while my mother screamed at him. And I… I just felt lost and alone. I mean, what does a nine-year-old really understand about death? All I knew was that the only people that ever truly loved me were gone.

“When I was eleven, my parents got divorced. It didn’t make life any easier. I was forced to live with my mom on weekdays, and my dad most weekends. He had no idea how to take care of me, and always acted like I was an inconvenience. My mom liked to go out constantly, and I swear she had a new boyfriend every month, one of whom…got a little handsy with me when I was fifteen.” Willow clenched her teeth as she recalled the shame she’d felt. “My mom accused me of flirting with him and blamed me for ruining their relationship. It didn’t bother her that her boyfriend had assaulted her underage daughter.”

She glanced at Kian.

His expression was hard set, jaw muscles ticking, and his eyes were dark. Though his glamour was still in place, his features looked sharper. Deadlier. For the first time, he wasn’t oozing sensuality; he radiated menace.

“Sorry,” she said. “Guess I’m just kind of vomiting my crappy childhood at you.”

His gaze eased, and some of the stiffness bled from his posture. “Don’t be sorry. I want to hear it all. I want to feel what you felt…what you still feel.” He reached up and brushed her hair back from her face, his nails trailing across her cheek as he tucked the strands behind her ear. His hand remained there, tracing the curve of her ear. “I cannot pretend to relate your experiences, but my early years were rife with unpleasantness of their own. I know the feeling of…being unwanted.”

Trying to ignore the tingles his touch produced, Willow arched a brow. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around this seductive, sensual, gorgeous man having ever been shunned or left out. “You do?”

He nodded, and his hand dipped, the pads of his fingers stroking the side of her neck while his thumb lightly touched her cheekbone. “I told you there are many sorts of fae. Mine is not well-loved by the rest. We’re considered parasites. Leeches. Beneath the others, mockeries of what fae are meant to be. But we’re also feared, because our magic can influence even other fae, though they are much more resistant than mortals. And because we can feed from them, from their power, and grow powerful ourselves.

“So, I found scant welcome in Tulthiras. The only ones who wanted me there sought to possess me, control me. Just as Florida never felt like home to you, the Evergarden was never a home to me. I am but one of many of my kind who have found solace here amongst mortals, though…” Something shifted in his eyes, a glimmer of vulnerability that made his gaze impossibly more entrancing. “I did not feel any less alone in this realm.”

“It’s like you’re adrift between two worlds, not feeling like you belong in either.”

“Yes. Exactly that.” The smile he gave her was small, but it was warm, gentle, and genuine, and it pierced straight to Willow’s heart.

To have lived for so long, never feeling like you belonged anywhere… To have interacted with so many people but never making a connection with any of them…

“I’m sorry you’ve gone through life feeling that way,” she said.

“I have learned to take what little pleasures the Fates have delivered unto me.” He grinned and lowered his face, burying his nose in her hair and breathing in deep. “Like purple-haired temptresses…”

Willow laughed and gave him a gentle push away. “I’m not even trying. You just won’t take no for an answer.”

He leaned back with a chuckle, but caught her hand on his chest, holding it there with his fingers curled around it. “Whereas I am trying harder than I ever have, Violet. You’ve turned the tables on me, but I’ll emerge victorious in the end.”

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