Page 40 of Taken By the Fae

“Will you please relax?” I don’t want to look at him anymore, not when he appears as if he’s about to rip something—or someone—to shreds.

He pulls his hand away from my face, and I slide across the couch a bit to put some much-needed distance between us. “You’d like me to allow my people to threaten you?” he asks.

“That’s not what I’m saying. I just don’t want to make a bigger issue.”

He chuckles, but it’s humorless. “Since when?”

I respond with a mockingly fake laugh. “This is exactly why I wasn’t going to bring it up.”

The smile fades from his lips. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Okay.” I tug at the hem of my dress for no reason other than to have something to do with my hands. “Thanks for the healing,” I mumble, reaching for my coffee again and taking another drink.

He nods.

“Is everything okay? When I came in, the tension in the air was enough to suffocate a person, human or otherwise.”

The corner of his mouth kicks up. “You’re worried?”

I blink, ignoring the dip my stomach does when I look at his mouth. “Well, yeah.”

“That’s interesting,” he muses.

I ignore his comment. “What’s going on?” I can’t help but wonder whether it’s related to the fae I saw fighting the other day.

“Nothing you need to be concerned about.”

Images of Tristan’s nightmare scene flash through my mind. Yeah, Iamworried.

I set my cup back on the table and cross my arms. “Skylar isn’t here to boss me around today, so I’ve got nothing else to do but sit here until you talk.”

He hums, his eyes darkening with something akin to hunger. “I find it amusing you think you have control here.” He points at the door. “The moment you stepped into this office, you lost it.”

Despite my racing pulse, which he can no doubt hear clearly, I say, “Were you not validated as a child?”

He tilts his head to the side, questioning me.

“I’m curious,” I continue. “You couldn’t have been born an asshole, so I’m just wondering when you developed this inherent ability to drive people—me, specifically—absolutely fucking crazy.”

“Ah, Aurora, charming as ever.” He stands and walks back to his desk.

I follow him, leaving my coffee behind. I’m not completely sure what I’m doing, but I can’t seem to leave well enough alone. “Should I go ask Max why you have an entire tree up your ass?”

His eyes snap to mine, and he disappears from behind the desk, appearing in front of me a second later. He towers over me, but I don’t back down. “Enough,” he growls. “We are not talking about this. End of discussion.”

“End of…? There wasn’t any discussion,” I shoot back. I shouldn’t care, and I had no right to ask, but something inside of me—maybe my concern for Allison and my curiosity about the fae world—made me ask, anyway.

He exhales a heavy breath, shaking his head. “Why do you care what’s going on?”

“Something tells me I’m missing information,” I tell him. “I know more about the fae world than I’d ever wish to, but nowhere near everything. Call me crazy, but I don’t make a habit of putting down a book halfway through the story.”

Tristan leans in close enough the heat of his body radiates against my chest. “What about the ones you don’t enjoy?”

I shrug. “Sometimes I need to remind myself to give them a chance.”

His eyes dance across my face, reminding me of the night he invaded my dreams and the look he gave me just before it all went away. “You’re right,” he finally says. “You don’t know the whole story.”

“I know about the seelie and unseelie courts and how they’re divided.”

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