Page 112 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

“What do you think of all of this?” she asked, gesturing beyond the safety of the limo.

“It’s returning to normal.”

“Is that what it feels like to you?”

“No,” he said simply. “It feels like a calm before the storm.”

Same as what Nate had said.

She so desperately wanted it to be the first option. That monsters and humans were getting along. The city was renewed. The world made sense again. But how did a world heal from a scar that deep?

Graves’s hand touched her bare wrist. “How go your mental barriers?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Fine. But I don’t like them.”

“You should try to keep them up tonight. May I testthem?”

She nodded and then reached for the black wall she put up in her mind that was supposed to keep anyone from accessing her thoughts. With a breath, she pulled her absorption back.

Graves’s magic came up against that black wall, and like smoke it blew away at the smallest prodding. The vision she saw was him, exactly as he had looked as she descended the stairs. The way he had been stunning and dangerous and how she had never been more captivated.

She shut it off. “I failedinstantly.”

“I did warn you that you would likely never be strong enough to keep me out,” he said with no bravado. “Let’s try a different approach. You can work on a wall, or you can stick to a single memory. That way, when someone gets into your mind, instead of nothing they see only what you want them to see. Sometimes it’s easier to focus on that than on shielding.”

“Okay,” she said. She’d read that in the book. She tried reaching for a mundane memory. “Ready.”

Graves touched her, and he stepped into the memory. It showed Kierse breaking into a small bank vault. She used to do it methodically, like taking apart and reassembling a gun. Break the vault, put it back together, break it again. Until her fingers could do it with her eyes closed.

Then she felt a physicalpushagainst the memory. It shifted from one vault to the next. A vault that she’d broken into when she was much younger and been caught by the police and thrown in jail. She had been so small then, so stupid, so arrogant. The pain of it all flooded back.

She shut it off again.

“That wasn’t any better,” she gasped.

He pursed his lips. “It was. I’d keep thinking about the vault. It was more solid than the wall. Try again.”

He still pushed against her memory like it was tissue paper. She was quicker to cut him off this time, but he nodded his approval.

“Good. Good. That’s stronger. Keep that close,” he assured her.

“You think I’ll need it? Are there that many other people who can get in my mind?”

“You don’t want to find out when it’s too late,” he said. “Again.”

Kierse tried to keep her barriers up against him. For a second, she felt resistance, like she might actually be able to keep him out. Excited relief flooded through her for a single moment before Graves obliterated her defenses. They came crashing down so fast that she was instantly swept back into his gray gaze.

She was on his staircase, staring down at the king of faerie. Her body responded to the sight of him, the heat of him. Her body wanting more of what it had been given in the library, knowing it was complicated, wanting it anyway. The desire spooling out of her like a cat batting around a ball of yarn. In the middle of it, wanting nothing more than to kneel for him.

Kierse shut it off again, this time with a gasp as she pressed her legs together.

Graves smirked. “You can kneel if you like.”

She flushed from head to toe. Here in the back of a darkened limo, she could do it. She could fall to her knees for him. Let him take control. They had mere minutesbefore they reached the theater. How far could they get?

“You’re considering it,” he said with a sensual brush of his lips along her jaw.

“My absorption is up,” she gasped.

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