Page 9 of Fleshbound
“Is this book cursed?”
“Aye, there tis a curse.” He lifted the flower to Quill. “Tis mine, no yers.”
Quill met Corven’s stare and sense the truth there.
“That’swhy I didn’t sense it,” Quill said, taking the flower between two fingertips. “The book’s not cursed.Youare.”
“No one can be harmed by it,” Corven said. “Only me.”
“What’s the curse?”
“Stuck in here,” Corven said, waving his hand around. “For all of eternity.”
“But you can move around freely, from place to place? Within the book.”
“Tae some degree, aye. I can sometimes push maself toward energy I sense around me.”
“Why did you come to me?” Quill asked.
Corven didn’t answer at first.
Quill lifted his gaze to the sky. Hours had to have passed, yet it was still twilight, the sky still filled with fireflies. It was stunning.
But not as stunning as what Corven said next.
“I came tae ye because I sensed yer loneliness. It felt nearly as great as mine. I kept pushin toward it until I finally made it. Only took me a decade or two.”
Quill met his red gaze and was trapped by it.
Corven grasped Quill’s hips. “I’ve sat on a shelf in yer shop for near six months without notice, listenin tae ye an yer coven. But mostly ye. Gettin tae know ye. Tae make sure ye were the right one.”
“The right one… for what?”
“The one who might chase ma loneliness away.”
Quill’s body tensed. He’d half expected Corven to call him mate. The right one…
“Are you a shifter?” The dragon drawn onto the title page… was that you?” Witches were poly. They mated with one human and one shifter in a throuple. Quill had yet to meet either of his two and sometimes doubted he ever would.
He was no longer a young man.
“I once was human. A donae ken what I am now,” Corven asked.
“Your eyes… you’renothuman.”
“Laddie… when I was a wee bairn, the realm o the fae still walked amongst that of man. They mingled here and there along the way. Perhapsallhuman, I am no, but wha the other part is, is beyond ma ken.”
Quill sensed no lie in his words. He shifted his questions to a new line of thought, sensing he’d hit a wall.“Whoput you in that book?”
Corven turned his face from Quill. “Dinnae ask me that.”
Quill forced Corven’s face forward. “I need to know.”
“Ye dinnae.”
From the firm line of Corven’s jaw, Quill sensed he might not get an answer. Two could play at the torment game. He might not have much practice at it, but from the hot pulsing of a vein against his ass, he guessed he might have a way to get more answers.
He rolled his hips, squeezing himself against Corven’s hard shaft.
