Page 134 of His Darkest Desire

But her thoughts had taken a sorrowful turn. Vex had asked her to tell him about her adventures, to share her experiences and describe the things she’d seen, when he’d been trapped here for centuries while the world outside passed him by. While everything moved on without him.

Kinsley brushed her fingers over his wrist, remembering how Vex had stood atop his tower in his memory, separated from the goblins he’d protected. “Did you ever leave your tower? Before you met with the queen, that is.”

“Very little,” Echo said.

Vex shifted his head to rest his cheek atop her hair. “Loath as I often was to leave, I did venture out from time to time. My aim was knowledge and power. I had seen my clan slaughtered, and I had witnessed countless other atrocities before coming of age. Always it was lesser fae, beings like goblins, who paid the steepest price in the conflicts that ravaged my realm.

“I sought a means of using my magic to protect. My illusions had saved none but myself. All I could do, all my people could do, was hide and hope. Hope that we’d survive another day, another hour, another heartbeat. I wanted more than a means to hide. I longed to fight. To stand against those who treated us as vermin.

“That necessitated travel. I hunted obscure tomes and artifacts, traded for information, scoured ancient places for secrets. I dealt with mortals and fae alike—even seelie, when it served my goals. And I brought it all back to my tower, where I hoarded it.” He chuckled without humor, shaking his head gently. “The fool I was, I journeyed about your world with its beauty all around me and still returned to that tower time and again, locking myself away from all of it. Never truly seeing, never truly experiencing. Too focused on my goals to appreciate anything but the pursuit of them.”

Flare did a little twirl in front of Vex and Kinsley. “This one told the magus to dance and sing during the celebrations.”

This time, Vex’s chuckle had warmth to it. “I would only have succeeded in frightening everyone off.”

Kinsley grinned, broke Vex’s hold on her, and scooted off the cushion. Standing, she shook her dress back into place around her legs, faced him, and held out her hand. “Will you dance with me?”

Fire sparked in his eyes as he glanced from her hand to her face. His lips curled into a sinful smile. “Not here.”

Rising, he took Kinsley’s hand and drew her against him, locking her in place with an arm banded across her back. She stared up at him with wide eyes and parted lips.

“Let us take this dance into the sky, my love.”

Before Kinsley could respond, Vex lifted her off her feet and whisked her toward the doorway. With a gasp, she wrapped her arms and legs around him, watching the bookshelves streak by in a blur.

“These ones will wait here!” Flare called. The wisps’ laughter followed Vex and Kinsley out.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The instant Vex stepped out the front door, his wings burst from his back, and he leapt into the air. Kinsley squeaked and held tight as her stomach lurched and wind rushed around them, but she didn’t close her eyes. She watched over his shoulder as powerful pumps of his wings carried them higher and higher, watched as the cottage shrank with distance.

Just like when she’d looked down into the Grand Canyon all those years ago, Kinsley felt wonder instead of fear. She was in the arms of an otherworldly unseelie fae, surrounded by magic and excitement. She was alive.

The forest was dark but for the soft glow of crystals and the faint bioluminescence of mushrooms and lichens glimpsed through breaks in the canopy. The light of moon and stars shimmered on the leaves, which rustled in the breeze, making the tops of the trees resemble the surface of a gently rolling ocean.

Her hair whipped wildly around her head. She tugged it back, tucked it behind her ear as best she could, and slipped her arm back around Vex’s neck, delving her fingers into his hair.

Vex strengthened his hold on her. “I have you.”

Kinsley smiled and grazed his ear with her lips. “I know.”

She felt the play of muscles in his back as he carried them higher still. She could see everything now—the patch of forest that had been Vex’s world for so long, with a sliver of shoreline on one side, all surrounded by dense gray fog as far as she could see. Surrounded by nothingness.

But the sky above was unrestricted, boundless, infinite. Inky blue and deepest violet stretched endlessly upward, with countless twinkling stars scattered across it. Whole words—entire galaxies—lay out there, looking so tiny. And the more altitude Vex gained, the closer Kinsley was to all of it.

As he crossed the path of the moon, she glimpsed the veins through the membranes of his wings; for all his magic and mystery, he was flesh and blood. And he made her flesh and blood burn, made her crave his heat, his touch, his kisses, his cock.

She lifted her head to look at his face.

Silhouetted by the moon, his features were lost in shadows. They were darker than the night sky, blackness cut out of the fabric of the universe itself, but for the pair of crimson flames that were his eyes. His hungry, adoring eyes.

It was just Kinsley and Vex, flying through a sea of stars. Soaring through the majestic night.

He leaned his head down and kissed her lips, her chin, her cheek, each brush of his mouth as tender as it was ravenous. Tension rippled through his body, rousing the fire within her. “Never have I dared dream I would have anything like this,” he rasped against her neck as he slid a hand up her back to cradle her head. “Anything like you.”

Vex kissed her neck, nipping her with his fangs, and she quivered, drawing herself impossibly closer to him. His other hand moved down to her ass, pressing her pelvis flush against him, and she felt the hard evidence of his desire. The prick of his claws was a splash of pain followed by a flood of pleasure.

Kinsley closed her eyes. “I am yours.”

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