Page 208 of Primal Bonds

He massaged her nape, his fingers gentle, knowing. Something pinched in her chest.

It had been so long…

She turned her head to look at Fane. His eyelashes were a dark crescent on his lean cheeks, and his corn silk hair floated around his face.

“You may be right,” she told him.

”About what?”

“That thinking is overrated.”

His smile had a self-mocking edge. “Some would say I live my life by that principle.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t know me very well.”

“I know you well enough. If you couldn’t think several steps ahead, you wouldn’t have lasted long in a fae court. Especially this one.”

“Are you saying I’m as devious as they are?”

“Yeah.” Her mouth quirked. “I think I am.”

He threw back his head and laughed aloud. Then he sobered. “Gods. It’s been so long since I talked to someone like you.”

“Like me?”

“Someone who tells me exactly what she thinks of me. I’m so bloody tired of all the doublespeak. If only I’d met you before I?” He shook his head.

She moistened her lips, equal parts flattered and sad for him. “I wasn’t even alive when you signed the contract with the king.”

“No.” He let his eyes drift shut again. “You weren’t, were you?”

She studied his sculpted features, the pointed ear peeking through his wet blond hair. How in Hades had she ended up here, naked in a pool with this man?

She had a fada’s prejudice against rich, entitled fae. They used fada—as servants, assassins, bodyguards, or for sex—and then looked down their glittering noses at the “animals.”

But she was beginning to see that Fane was almost as much an outsider among the purebloods as she was.

Without opening his eyes, he rubbed a lazy hand over his chest. The water beaded on the curly blond hairs.

She drew a breath, her fingers literally tingling with the need to touch him.

“You didn’t find any soap in that hut, did you?” he asked.

“No. And I looked, too.”

He slid the rest of the way underwater, surfacing in the center where he scrubbed himself off with handfuls of grit before swimming back to her. He stood up in the pool, his waist level with her eyes. The tip of his cock bobbed above the water.

“Come here.” He reached out a hand.

She swallowed—and not in a good way. No, this was an I’m-not-sure-I-can-do-this swallow. She instinctively crossed her arms over her breasts.

Fane’s eyes flickered and she grimaced.

“Sorry.” Cat’s balls, she was a mess. But she couldn’t make herself uncover her breasts.

His mouth thinned. “Don’t.”

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