Page 15 of Hellish Fae
It feels good to so easily get under his skin like this. I bet Zaviar is used to people bowing under his pouting moodiness.
Welcome to the Aries Sinclaire show. I can be just as much an asshole as he can. Except better. I can be a faehole. And trust me, that’s worse.
Ryke’s smile is a carving dangerous thing, but he surprises me when he leaps down as well. His weight jostles me when he lands, and his arms are ready when the netting slides me down against his hard chest.
Heat burns across my skin. He takes his time releasing me from his singeing touch. He makes sure to keep his hand planted against my hip over my jeans to steady me, but also to protect me from the iron in his blood.
A laugh slips from my lips on a sharp breath, and the way he pays attention to my changing emotions is a telling thing.
He thinks I’m afraid of him.
I’m not. He’s incredibly sexy. He has the body of a warrior.
But he’s also scarred. In more ways than one, I think.
Lightly, my fingers drift out to skim lightly along the carved runes my sister has etched into his skin for years. They left deep and lashing marks. A fiery feeling licks at my fingertips, but I toy with the tingling pain of it.
“Do they hurt?” I ask quietly.
I feel Damien behind us, but the heat of his body is more telling than his unspoken words. He seems like a quiet man with more dirty thoughts than sentences.
“Not at all,” Ryke says.
One after the other, my palms follow the harsh lines down his chest to just above his navel.
“Does it hurt to touch me?” His thumb slips slightly higher until he’s barely grazing the skin of my stomach with too much heat in that little touch.
I don’t move away.
“Not if I’m careful,” I say, my hands still ghosting dangerously across his skin until he trembles beneath my touch.
My heart pounds to life with that single uncontrollable shudder shaking through him. He’s so big. So strong. And yet, I affect him.
I smile quietly to myself.
“When’s the last time someone touched you, Ryke?” I can’t help the dirty thoughts of my hand slipping lower and wrapping around his shaft from slamming through my mind.
He swallows hard, and I wonder if he’s having trouble with some of his own thoughts . . .
“No one’s touched me without harming me in . . . centuries.”
I look up at his watchful pale green eyes.
He’s been here with Corva for a hundred years.
Who hurt him before my sister?
My lips part to ask him so many more questions when the threads beneath me jar harsh and tight, bouncing my body until I’m sprawled out between the two men. I lift my head to find Zaviar storming across the other side of the net like he’s walking on air, but that air has deeply offended him, and he’s going to make it pay with every stomping step he takes. In the darkness, he settles at the edge of the netting farthest from the three of us. His cruel gaze catches mine with a scathing look before he settles there, spreads out his wings, and stares up at the stars.
Alone.
This trio of men are not my friends. I’m a stranger to them.
And once more, I have to figure out where I fit in with this new life.
6
Past and Present
