Page 135 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep. What happened?”

“Plan went to hell. We didn’t get the cauldron. I can explain more after we’ve all had some sleep, all right?”

Gen barely contained her yawn. “Yeah. Sleep. Good idea.” She waved halfheartedly to Graves. “Sorry about the cauldron.”

“Thank you, Genesis.”

Gen crawled up the stairs and disappeared into her room. Leaving Kierse on the landing between the library and Graves’s quarters. Her bedroom was a floor above them. She disliked the thought of being a floor away from him, wondering if he was sleeping soundly while he recovered. But there was still distance there. A bridge they’d teased around but hadn’t crossed.

Graves grasped her hand. “Come with me.”

She laughed as he tugged her forward. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Exhausted.”

Then they were through the door of his inner sanctum. A large bedroom with a four-poster bed, wooden dressers, and a million little details that were completely Graves. A collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry with “The Raven”featured prominently sat on his nightstand. His carved wooden bird collection had grown since she’d last been in here. She recognized that the coins she’d previously thought were European had one or two Nying Market coins in them. As if they were trinkets and not priceless. She loved the portrait of Anne Boleyn—the queen, not the cat—on one wall, and on another, a landscape of a field of wildflowers in an Irish countryside with two figures lying on the hill reading a little green book. It was all familiar and all new.

“Do I belong in here?” she asked, a touch teasing, a touch of true hesitance.

“You belong everywhere I am,” he said.

She flushed, running a hand over the cornflower-blue comforter. “Everywhere?”

He bent to press a kiss to her neck. “Everywhere.”

She turned in his arms as he threaded his fingers up into her hair. He met resistance and then slowly, with controlled care, began to remove each little pin. One tendril loose and then another. A wave of hair falling down her back like a cascading waterfall as he released all the tension on her scalp.

He dipped his head down to taste her lips, and she sighed into him, pressing their bodies together. His lips were hot and pliant, his magic a gentle warmth and not his regular inferno. Not a good sign, but she knew they were safe and he would be back to normal after scouring his library.

“This way,” he said.

He guided her away from the bed and into the bathroom. It had a large sunken tub with a turquoise mosaic on the bottom and a white stone walk-in shower the length of the room, stone seats on opposite sides.

Graves turned the handles in the shower to reveal multiple hidden spray jets and a waterfall feature. The water heated almost instantly until the shower was fogged and steam billowed out into the room.

His hands were gentle as he stripped her out of the cult clothing. First the robe, which she thought he might burn in protest. Then the shirt.

His fingers fluttered gently over her bandage. Worry crinkled his brow. “You’re injured?”

“Just a graze. They gave me stitches.”

“A graze,” he said darkly. “From a bullet.”

“You were busy. I was holding down the fort.”

“Busy,” he said. “Not quite the word I’d go for. Absolutely fucking furious and fighting Imani’s magic tooth and nail.”

“What are you going to do about her?”

“That’s a later problem,” he said as he dropped to a knee and removed her sweats and underwear. “Shower first.”

She stepped inside, letting the spray run down her body. She dragged a hand across the glass to get a good look at Graves. He removed the faerie king top first. It had hidden seams and seemed to simply unravel before dropping to the floor in one long piece.

Her mouth went dry at the sight of him. The tattoo that started at his wrist. A circle of holly vines with their piercing thorns digging into his skin like a living mural of his tortured pain. They snaked up his forearm, across the curve of his bicep, around the bulge of his shoulder, and swept out across his chest. He was broad and muscled and utterly delectable. She wanted to run her tongue along the dips and valleys of his pecs and across every ridge of his abs to the Adonis lines that led down into those inscrutable pants.

She watched her devil release his trousers and drop them to the ground. Her eyes widened. All muscled quads and narrow waist and thick, long cock, hanging heavy between his legs.

“You’re joining me?” she asked, a little breathless.

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