Page 43 of The White Stag
Yeah, we technically had permission, but we still needed boundaries and rules. I didn’t want this to be something that burned fast and hot, only to fizzle out just as quickly. So, while I didn’t want to, I pulled away. She gave me this slow blink that just made my cock harder and then looked directly at Cyrus.
I hoped that grumpy motherfucker was mentally prepared for this, because she was about to change that whole shit mood he was always in.
Cyrus
Iblamed Tucker for this whole Reagan kissy thing. And by blame him, I meant finding an appropriate time to drop the entire pretense he irritated me and giving him a gift basket. I’d been thinking about what it would be like, and now she was looking at me shyly, waiting for me to act on it.
Boogeymen were solitary by nature. They didn’t really romanticize us or Bauchans and White Stags in human culture like some other Fae. Not like they did Vampires. Some of the traits they used in older Vampire stories could have been taken directly from Boogeymen.
We preferred being alone. We had our people, but we could take or leave everyone else. Mostly, they got on our nerves. I had my people right now, but I’d never really done girlfriends before, and for a very good reason.
Boogeyman fetishes were a real thing. Some of us made a lot more money than I did doing sex work. We were dangerous and scary. Plenty of people got off on that. The smoke that surrounded our bodies was like a shot of endorphins. It heightened fear, but people could make anything sexual if they were ambitious enough.
Now I had adrenaline freaks rubbing up against me for their fix, and I never bothered getting close to anyone aside from when I had an itch to scratch because I never knew if they were into me or leeching off my magic. So I just didn’t bother.
I had desensitized everyone here to my smoke except Tucker, and I wasn’t trying to terrorize him. Icouldsend it out stronger and affect everyone here, but I wouldn’t.
Babies and Boogeymen always required a delicate touch. Fathers couldn’t hold their children right away because of our smoke. It had to be done very slowly. Reagan was never like that. They’d chosen me for this well before she was born, and I’d read every single book I could on the subject.
I was alone with Estrella while we were working up to me getting closer. She had just finished feeding Reagan when her assistant burst in with some kind of royal emergency. Estrella had handed Reagan to me and had run out of the room. I’d rushed to put her in her bassinet, then realized she wasn’t screaming in terror. Instead, she was smiling and cooing at me.
Reagan didn’t have a Boogeyman fetish. For some weird reason, she liked everything about me except for what my smoke could do to her. She was everything. I didn’t give a shit that her mark didn’t make a lick of sense for a dragon. I just really needed to kiss her.
Finnan needed to keep his fucking tail to himself when she was sitting in my lap. Most Unseelie were polyamorous, and I had no problem sharing her with him, but he was not allowed to steal her from me when I was trying to hog her. I hadn’t beaten his ass for the tuba, but I’d knock him around for that.
I didn’t have a tail, but I was perfectly capable of stealing her back for my kiss. I sent my smoke out to wrap around her and gently deposit her in my lap. She straddled my waist and wrapped her arms around my neck. Those beautiful aqua eyes bore right into my soul.
“Hi,” she breathed.
“Hey, yourself.”
Finnan waited for her to go for it like he was worried he would scare her. I saw her with Oisin. She wasn’t afraid. She took what she wanted with Oisin and Finnan. I let out a little growl, grabbed the back of her neck, and crushed my lips to hers. She kissed me back with just as much passion as I kissed her with.
She had these glorious fangs now, and she raked them down my bottom lip. When I tangled my hand in her hair and pulled a little, she moaned and bit me.Fuuuuck.I wanted to ravage her, but I pulled away instead. I ignored my rock-hard cock and tucked her hair behind her ear.
“How about those movies?”
Oisin
Movies were a great idea. Most of Finnan’s ideas bordered on insane, but this was a good one. I thought we would just be showing Reagan some movies about famous dragons in history while letting her see other Fae actors in action. We all thought her ears and magic would come in pretty quickly, and we could get her home while we waited to take care of Alastair.
Everything about this was strange, but it had been five days of watching movies, and Reagan still had human ears. She detoxed off the iron pretty quickly, and then fire-sneezed a good bit of it out. Her magic still wasn’t here. She even went and tried picking those same flowers out of the garden to see if she could do the same thing again.
A dragon having an allergy attack could raze an entire neighborhood. Reagan didn’t shoot fire. She just disappeared in a flash of flame. That didn’t mean shewasn’ta dragon, even if her mark was a feather mandala. Dragon fire was the hottest substance in any of the realms. Just because we had neverheardof it burning through toxins in the body didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. There hadn’t really been any dragons born with quite so much going on with the stars as the night Reagan was born.
Reagan knew the longer she stayed, the more time Alastair had to find her. She wanted to stay behind when she thought she would have magic to fight back, but now she knew what was at stake and was on board with going home. She was trying to hide it, but she wasterrifiedof facing him again without magic.
We were totally transparent. We weren’t going to lie to her becausewethought it was best for her. Estrella’s people had eyes on Alastair’s hotel and gave us constant updates. Reagan was present for all of them. It was stupid and dangerous to keep things from the person you were guarding because you thought it would make them feel better. That was how fatal mistakes you couldn’t come back from were made.
Everyone knew Alastair’s assassins had visited him at his hotel carrying suspiciously large duffle bags and had left empty-handed. Honestly, that made sense. Never in the history of the Fae had we used humans to carry out our dirty business. I wouldn’t have put it past that wank stain, but modern humans tended to react badly to what they didn’t understand.
If he was dumb enough to expose the Unseelie and bring human military and scientists to our border, we’d just do the same to the Seelie. I was more familiar with how the Seelie saw Unseelie women because my mom was Seelie. We were all counting on them being horrified that Alastair had used iron on a child, but I knew if he tried to spin it that that was just how unruly Unseelie women had to be handled, he’d have supporters. Exposing the Fae? He’d never come back from that.
He'd be outnumbered and outmatched coming here, so he was being un-Fae and bringing guns to a magic fight. It was a pretty stupid plan. Tucker and I both had portal powers. As soon as we heard the shot, one of us would get Reagan out of there, and the other would portal behind Alastair to kill him. Cyrus could become pure smoke, and the bullet would pass right through him. Finnan wasn’t going out by an iron bullet. I knew that as much as I knew my name. Finnan was going to die a wrinkled old Fae, and his last words were going to be something along the lines of thinking some shenanigan was a good idea.
We could do this. Even if we couldn’t bring Reagan home just yet, we had enough people watching to end Alastair. Or so I thought. Cyrus was glaring at his phone pretty hard.
“Basil just showed up at Alastair’s hotel. He can portal, so this is probably go time.”
