Page 105 of Curse the Fae

That’s it. That’s why he hasn’t asked about me breaking the curse. That’s why he hasn’t broached the subject.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t plotted more ways to unravel him, because I’m no longer sure I want to, because I scarcely need to, because it’s happening on its own, without duplicity. And because the more we’re together, the less I know where our games end and the truth begins.

All I know is right here, right now, in this bed, away from everyone. Our reality is the place where we’re joined, where we pulse together like a heartbeat.

This is what it’s like to fuck sweetly. This is lovemaking. This is real.

We beat our hips languidly, yet it remains as intense as the other times with him. Everything has changed. It’s nothing like I once imagined, fantasized, or dreamed of. But it’s everything I want because I’m his light, and he’s my darkness, and I want us crying out in unison, and I want us to confide everything, and I want us to fall asleep here, and wake up here, and fight as allies once we leave here.

Perspiration beads across our flesh, and our bodies quaver. My spine curls, my breasts lurch into his chest, and my limbs hook onto Elixir. He grinds his waist, his cock striking me to the wet core until we’re a passionate mess, until my eyes lock with his.

The climax fractures through us. A convulsion spreads from the spot where we’re linked, and shouts fall from our mouths, the noises filling the chamber.

Elixir roars but keeps thrusting, riding out the orgasm. He heaves over me, sucking on my lips and muttering, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Please. Please, forgive me.”

My throat swells. I’ve wanted him to say this, and I deserve it, and I want to purge myself in kind. I want to tell him I know about the curse, that I know what I did, though I hadn’t been aware at the time, and I didn’t mean it.

I don’t want it to end

Make your choice.

I will drown you.

But Elixir didn’t drown me that night. He never even tried.

I did.

“I’m sorry, too,” I choke out while my hips undulate with his. “I’m so sorry.”

Just like that, Elixir’s tempo ebbs, slows, and ceases. As his hair falls in a curtain around us, alertness brightens those irises. His ears slant, detecting something in my voice. It’s not affection, therefore it’s not inaccessible to him.

No, Elixir hears what I hear: guilt.

That, and hurt. That, and a tinge of anger.

The emotions collide in me—guilt over a curse, along with pain and anger that he hadn’t told me about it himself. After what we’ve been through together, he still never told me. I’d had to find out on my own.

We were supposed to make love and then dream. That’s all. We were supposed to fall asleep like lovers do.

Instead, awareness unspools across Elixir’s features. “How long have you known?”

29

The question suspends between us like a held breath. Shadows and flames glaze our naked bodies in washes of spectral blue and chimeric green, illuminating the beads of sweat covering us. We lie tangled together. My legs are snatched around his waist, and his cock is still lodged inside me, his hardness coated in my wetness. I want us to stay this way—joined, united, one—but I have a terrible premonition.

How long have I known? Far too long.

“Since our first time,” I confess. “At the lily pond. That is, I realized it later, after I left you sleeping there. What we did…it jogged my memory of a Fable.”

His eyebrows slam together.“When a Snake Bewitches a Viper.”

I nod. “That one.”

Abruptly, Elixir’s cock slips from my body, and he lurches upright on the bed. He twists away and then whirls back. “Why did you not tell me?”

I vault to a sitting position beside him. “Why didn’t you tellme?”

“And give you that power from the onset. Give you that advantage in the beginning.” Elixir listens as I shift the blanket and use a corner to shield my breasts. His jaw clenches. “Why are you covering yourself? I have already touched and tasted them.”

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