Page 53 of Curse the Fae

“I remember being so present in the moment, like the past and future didn’t exist. That was the first time I believed I could become a creature of the water, if I wanted. Not that it was truly possible, but the belief itself was real.”

I trail off, stunned that I’d gotten caught up in the tale. Elixir’s head slants, his irises emblazoned with interest. His thumb had been idly tracing the water, but now it stalls in realization, his knuckles bending with tension. “You’re grinning.”

The Fae’s gruff tone reaches from his end of the enclave to mine. His lethal timbre sinks below the whirlpool and licks the cleft of my thighs. I wiggle to rid myself of the forbidden sensation, then hiss when the motion aggravates the welts.

Notwithstanding, I strive for an animated mood. “What else can you tell? What am I doing now?” I straighten and bunch my features into a theatrical snarl. Elixir’s mouth crooks, but I switch before he can answer. “What about now?” I part my lips in an oval and widen my eyes so that I look like a scandalized duchess. “Or now?” Then I compress my face into a miserly glower.

I see Elixir wrestling to preserve his frown, which emboldens me. “And now?” I cross my eyes and bloat my cheeks like a blowfish.

Then I finish by sticking my tongue out at Elixir. “How about that?”

“Cease, mortal,” he concedes. “You have made your point.”

Thank Fables. My blood, temperature, and breathing aren’t the extent of me. There are some facets he can’t detect. Not unless he traces my facial features.

And someday, I might pry a smile from him.

“Although,” Elixir says, “I might guess one of those expressions had involved a tongue and a measure of defiance.”

I glance heavenward and mock huff. “If I lie and say you’re wrong, would you believe me?”

Then I swallow my gasp as his breath coasts up my ear. “Not a fucking chance.”

My gaze falls to his bath, but it’s empty. Heat radiates at my back, and a shadow flanks my body. I freeze. His arms fence me in, bars of solid muscle extending on either side of me, and his fingers seize the pool’s rim.

My heart goes wild, pulse thumping in my chest. Sweat nestles in the dip between my breasts, the swells inflating and beginning to ache.

I’m naked. I’m naked and caged by an equally naked Fae monster.

My limbs and curves are indecent, exposed inches from the viper towering behind me. If I swerve to face him, my nipples will scrape his pectorals.

Elixir knows this. Yet instead of moving, he goes as still as I do. Though, when he balls his hands into fists and releases them, I see the tempo of his own pulse slamming against his wrists.

I think he’d meant to say more, but he doesn’t. Oxygen siphons from his lungs and blends with my exhalations, both sounds amplifying despite the crashing waterfalls, churning pools, and hazy showers.

I could tell him to move, and he would.

I could plunge and swim around him, and he would welcome the retreat.

Yet neither of us seeks to alter the moment, to reposition ourselves, to veer away.

I stare at our combined hands, which grapple the ledge for dear life, for leverage, or for restraint. “What is this?” I whisper.

Elixir’s head bows forward. “I do not know,” he grits out.

The whirlpool emits steam like a cauldron. The eddies toss water at our hips, coaxing us nearer. I imagine him hauling me around and off the floor, my limbs splitting and clasping his waist.

A hoarse noise rumbles from his chest. “Do not do that.”

“Do what?” I pant.

“Do not think what you’re thinking. You will regret it.”

“Will I?” I mumble, my skull reclining backward toward him. “Will you?”

Another masculine outtake, this one heavier. “Your blood. Your heat,” he gusts. “They are too loud…so loud.”

“I feel yours, too. In a different way.”

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