Page 76 of A Song of Air
“I will find him,” she said. “We will all look. Please, try to stay calm.”
The place where their hands touched seemed to create sparks of electricity beneath the skin. Like their magic was reacting to each other’s proximity. A call of a wildness that lived inside them both. Corvina gasped and Bryson knew it must’ve been surging through her as well. Just the brief moment of contact was enough to make the magic inside Bryson swell. She’d never felt a power like this before. So grand that it seemed to want to explode.
What would have been like for all the Elementals to touch? What kind of havoc would they wreak?
Bryson’s fingers smoothed over Corvina’s gnarled ones. They were bent at crooked, imperfect angles. Corvina must have had a story to tell, and Bryson regretted the fact that Arlo constantly had her busy, unable to connect with these women, who she was sure were amazing in their own right. She wanted to know them. Wanted to know everything about them.
“Thank you,” Corvina whispered.
Bryson pulled away and turned to dart into the forest. Her head tilted up and she scented the air. Nobody knew these woods like she did. Nobody knew the pathways and the scents better than her.
She followed Basil’s fragrance. It was faint, like he’d run through here, feet barely touching anything. But soon, his scent was overpowered by another. Shivers slid along her back as footsteps approached, and she tried to keep her anger in check as Weylyn approached her from behind.
The Fae didn’t touch her. But he moved close enough to her side that she felt everything. A flash speared through her mind, memories of last night and the ecstasy she felt as she fell into his arms.
Bryson took in a breath and faced ahead, squinting as if that could make the images clearer. The action caused the scars on her face to itch something fierce, but she resisted the urge to swipe her hands over them.
“You will ignore your mate?” Weylyn said.
She wasn’t prepared for the impact his voice had on her body. Whispers in her ear, through her mind. A claiming. The way his hips surged up to meet hers. The vicious way he clawed and demanded to be clawed in return.
She shoved all those memories aside and gritted her teeth. “You are no mate of mine.”
“If you truly believe that, I would be writhing around in agony due to a rejected mating bond.”
Bryson’s nostrils flared and her temper spiked. “Leave me alone, Weylyn.”
“You know I cannot do that.”
I will claim you, one way or another.
His words from a few nights ago echoed through her. She let out a breath. This was the first time she had seen him after what had happened, and she needed to clear the air with him, because it was time she told Ev the truth.
“You invaded my mind. You spied on me and Everette.”
There was a brief second of silence. “I will not apologize for watching you and your human fuck. Nor for giving you more pleasure than he ever could.”
“That was wrong, and you know it.”
“Was it?” He seemed to press closer to her, his body heat enveloping her like the rays of sunlight in the sky. “Was it so wrong to give you what you’ve been vying for this entire time?” His hands played with the ends of her curls, and she couldn’t bring herself to pull away from him. “We are evenly matched, you and I. I can give you the aggression you seek. I would let you use me as you saw fit. I would fuck you like we were nothing but two wildlings in an Unseelie Court. Isn’t that what you desire? What the human cannot give you?”
Bryson jerked away from his hold. “It doesn’t matter what I want. You’re missing the point entirely. I’m with Everette. I’m loyal to Everette. And I broke that loyalty to him because of your mind tricks.”
Bryson knew it had also been her own fault for being so weak and succumbing to him. But he never should have invaded her mind in the first place. She’d told him to get out of her head several times. Why would she want a mate who didn’t respect her most basic wishes?
Because you loved every bit of it.
She silenced the voice in her head. This time it wasn’t Weylyn’s. It was her own.
“I broke Ev’s trust,” she went on. “I cheated.”
“What the human does not know will not harm him.”
Bryson scoffed. “Are you saying you want to be the other man? My dirty little secret?” She found that very hard to believe.
“Oh, no, little mate. You misunderstand me completely. I want to absolutely destroy that human of yours. I want to tear him apart until there’s nothing left but scraps. I want to obliterate him from this world because he is allowed the privilege of holding you at night, of fucking you until you scream. He is afforded everything I’ve ever wanted, and he doesn’t even fucking deserve you.”
Her feet skidded on the ground as she forced herself to a stop and whirled to face him, forcing him to stop as well.
