Page 23 of The Barbaric Fae's Soul

“Not because of me,” I countered. “Because Naomi broke your bond. She’s in some kind of a coma now, on a spirit journey.”

“Good for her, I suppose.” The man shrugged a gigantic shoulder. “I don’t particularly care what she’s doing, so long as I’m free of her.”

I rolled my eyes. “Liar.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been trapped with that woman for two decades, Dakota. If I’d known there was a way out, I would have taken ityearsago. We didn’t hate each other; we didn’t feel anything for each other. There was nothing but pain for me in this world because of that bond fortwenty years. Even the sex was terrible, and based on what happened between you and I, something tells me it shouldn’t have been.”

Any desire I’d felt vanished when he mentioned having sex with her. I’d known they’d done it, I just felt… possessive, maybe?

Or protective?

That sounded better.

I was going with protective, even if it was kind of a lie.

“You just slipped away,” he told me, studying me with interest.

“I’m in the exact same place I was thirty seconds ago, actually.” I was choosing to ignore the fact that he was referring to emotional slippage, not physical.

“In here, you slipped away.” His forehead bumped mine.

I lifted an eyebrow, trying to ignore the heat crawling over my face and shoulders and arms. “You’re delusional.”

A laugh escaped him. “Now I know I’m right. Your body tells your truth.” He brushed the backs of his knuckles over my cheek, and my skin only heated further. “If we’re going to be friends, you have to tell me when I do something to push you away. My only experience with women is misery.”

A snort escaped me. “That sounds like my only experience with men.”

His forehead creased. “You said nothing about men when you told me stories of your life.”

Dammit, I needed to watch myself much, much closer.

It was time for a hard-assed subject change. Really, I should’ve told him we needed to start running, but I was so comfortable. And I liked talking to him, more than I wanted to admit. So I blurted, “It’s weird to think of you and Naomi having sex. I’ve been here for so many years, and the fae are always… celibate, I guess? I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

Understanding flooded his gaze. “It’s not stupid. I would feel more thanweirdin your shoes if our situations were reversed. If you’d been mated to Nev…” He grimaced. “I don’t particularly want to know how I’d feel about that connection. I already want to break his nose for choosing Fovea over you. Who the hell wants to be mated to a murderous fae bitch?”

I grinned so widely that my face nearly split in two. “I think that’s the perfect description of her. But he mated with her to establish a connection with the female fae, and hopefully persuade them to refrain from said murderous activity because of it. He talked to me about it afterward, and I wasn’t upset. Well, maybe I was upset about the pain that followed the bond breaking, but that wasn’t his fault.” I rubbed at the center of my chest, where the ache had been for so long.

“You kept your pain too quiet. Someone would’ve forged a bond with you to remove it from your shoulders,” he said, his voice a bit chastising.

“I know. But I didn’t want something fake again; at least with us, we’re friends, you know?”

He nodded. “Our bond feels more like a home than the prison my last one was.”

“A home?” I teased.

He flashed me an amused look. “Yes. The connection feels as natural to me as breathing.”

“For me too,” I admitted.

It was strange, but I wasn’t going to question it. Not after everything both of us had been through.

“We need to get moving,” Aev told me, brushing his hand over my knee again like he just couldn’t help it. “But we may as well get the awkwardness out of the way first.” His eyes were locked with mine, and his expression was so quietly intense that I didn’t dare look away. “Honestly, I was in terrible pain when Naomi decided she would rather cement our bond than go to war with the seelie. Despite what some people seem to think, no one forced her to make that decision. I probably would’ve refused her if I’d been in my right mind, but I wasn’t. I haven’t been in a long time. That kind of mental strain and physical pain… it splinters your mind.” He shook his head a little.

“You don’t have to tell me this,” I said quietly.

“I do, because I don’t want you feeling discomfort with this topic,” he said bluntly. “Or wondering how it happened, either. I hoped that her agreeing to sex would mean that she would finally consider me as a partner. That perhaps the pain would end. But it only gave me more guilt, and rage, and detached unhappiness. After hearing the bits and pieces of the sex discussions that are now happening, and seeing brief glimpses into her mind, I became even more certain that Naomi wanted nothing to do with me. The pain grew worse, then. I felt… barbaric, almost. Reduced to my primal instincts.”

My throat swelled. “What do you mean, bits and pieces about the sex discussion?”

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