Chapter 3
three
KAI
I left the bedroom when I couldn’t take it anymore.
When I couldn’t take her anymore.
The feelings her magic had sent through me were unreal. Insane. Otherworldly.
And knowing she was bare in my bathtub, wrapped in the scent of my soap, satisfied the carnal male beast within me that I’d been trying to suppress for so damn long.
It had worked, until her.
I slammed the bedroom door behind me, finding Orvin already returned with a few of our fae.
They looked like they hadn’t had a chance to rest since I ended the eclipse. They probably hadn’t.
“The siren has already rejected two men who didn’t clean themselves,” I barked, pointing upstairs. “Find a room and take a shower.”
They all dipped their heads toward me and booked it upstairs.
I rubbed my temple, fighting a headache. It was some combination of exhaustion and horniness that I couldn’t fight.
“You okay?” Orvin asked, eyeing me.
“You’re back too soon. And you were only supposed to bring Jordan.”
He shrugged. “Josh, actually. But when you say ‘siren’, they basically lunge for you. The woman wasn’t wrong about being desirable.”
No kidding.
My erection hadn’t gone down since she slid off my lap. I could still feel her wrapped around my fingers. I could still see her bare body in my mind as she sat on the edge of my tub, too.
I clenched my fists. “She won’t stop humming.”
“Cute.”
“Not cute,” I grumbled.
Sexy.
The only fucking word was sexy.
“The woman is cute. There’s no way around that. What’s her name?” he asked.
I didn’t want him, or any of them, to know her name.
But she’d tell them if I didn’t.
“Clementine.”
Orvin whistled. “Even her name is cute. The name, with the hair and the freckles…” he gestured to his face. “You should’ve given me time to shower. I’d wash Violet off my skin for her.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“And the rest of us aren’t?”
We were.
None of us deserved her.
But someone was going to have to mate with her anyway.
“She has a list of questions. Offer to answer them and she’ll probably give you another chance. She’s nice,” I gritted out.
“Nice, and cute. Two characteristics that make it hard to survive in this realm,” Orvin said.
“No kidding.” I should’ve headed to the kitchen for some food. I needed energy.
But eating and sleeping were moot points while the siren was naked in my room.
I wanted her too much.
So, I headed to my throne and took a seat. At least I could see the door to my bedroom from there, and make sure no one tried to talk to her. Or look at her. Or smell her.
Fuck, I was a mess.
“Didn’t I tell you to make this thing more comfortable?” I asked Orvin.
“I don’t recall that conversation.”
“Liar.”
“Insulting one of your closest companions isn’t the way to guarantee your throne, your highness.”
“No one wants this throne, and you know it. Bring me something to eat.”
“Please,” Orvine said pointedly.
I glared at him, and he snorted. But, he walked away.
Finally, I had a moment of peace.
I closed my eyes—but all I saw was the gorgeous outline of her soft little body, curled up on the edge of my tub with her feet dangling in while the water filled.
“Kai?” Her cheerful voice sounded behind my bedroom door, and she opened it a moment later, a towel wrapped around her middle as she peeked out.
It took everything in me not to storm over and push her back inside, where no one else would see her.
I was losing it.
Fucking losing it.
“What?” I managed.
“I need something to wear. Are there any women in the castle who can lend me their clothes? Or?—”
“Everything is contaminated.”
She grimaced.
It was mostly true. There were probably some clean women’s clothes somewhere, but most were dirty.
And rather than sending someone to find the clean ones, I wanted to see her in mine.
“Take whatever you want from my closet,” I said.
Her cheeks went pink, but she nodded.
My cock throbbed as she disappeared back into the room. Clearly, my possessive tendencies had flared too hard and too fast. I needed to get her mated so I could have a clear mind again.
Even if the idea of her with someone else’s mark around her neck made me feel irrationally angry. It wasn’t as if I could mate with her.
A few of the staff finally made it downstairs, freshly showered and looking a bit sheepish. I’d caught a few of them screwing at different points during the eclipse. They’d rarely bothered to make food, which was what I paid them for.
“We have an unmated siren here who needs a mate,” I said bluntly. “She’ll be… interviewing… candidates… for the next few days. This room is the cleanest public space in the castle right now, so I need a table and chair set up in here. When that’s ready, we need a waiting room for the rest of the bastards. They can help scrub it. Everyone’s hungry, so let’s put together an actual dinner tonight.”
The men and women nodded emphatically, then hurried off together.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the throne.
I really needed to sleep.
Between killing the monster that had been hunting Clementine, pushing through the eclipse with my magic, and everything else that had gone down before, I was drained dry.
Yet somehow, the redheaded siren had her claws so deep in me that I couldn’t relax even slightly.
I felt another portal appear in the room, and bit back a sigh when I heard a lot more than one man with Steve, too.
“Showers,” I commanded, gesturing upstairs without opening my eyes.
They all marched up without complaint.
My bedroom door opened as the last of them disappeared upstairs, and I forced my eyelids up as I looked at my siren.
She had put on a blue button-up shirt and rolled the sleeves up, but left far too many buttons open. I could see the bone between her perky little tits. She was so short, she hadn’t bothered with pants at all. I only saw the hem of my boxer-briefs sticking out from beneath the button-up.
Damn, she looked good in my clothes.
Small.
Fragile.
Sexy as fuck.
Something within me settled.
She smelled like me, and was wearing my things. Sure, she was going to be interviewing other men, but for the moment, she was clearly mine.
Or under my protection at the very least.
Her gaze followed the assholes up the stairs, and a few of them looked down at her.
Her face reddened. “I thought you only sent for two people.
“Turns out, you’re even more desirable than you said,” Orvin said with a wink, as he reentered the room and handed me a plate.
She wrinkled her nose at me. “You ordered him to bring you food?”
“Yup.” I popped a cheese cube in my mouth.
The more she disliked me, the better. If she turned her seduction on me, there would be no stopping myself from acting on the desire I was warring with.
“In his defense, his magic is so weak right now that he probably couldn’t retrieve it himself,” Steve clarified.
“Why?” she asked him, looking away from me as if he knew the extent of my magic.
Which he did, unfortunately.
“He killed that spider in the forest when it was chasing you, while he was already drained. Our spiders are about the size of semitrucks,” he explained, holding his hands out as if to demonstrate. “They track you during the eclipses, if you don’t kill them. Then, he ended the eclipse. And he doesn’t really sleep when the moons are red, so…” Steve shrugged. “He’s wiped out.”
Clementine’s eyes widened with horror, and she looked at me. “It was a giant spider? You should’ve told me you didn’t have the magic to kill it!”
“It’s dead, so obviously, I did have the magic for it.” I popped another cube in my mouth.
“I would’ve actually shut my mouth in the bathtub if I knew you were that tired. You have to tell people these things, Seven.”
“Seven?” Steve frowned at her.
“He calls me Five because I’m only five feet tall. So, I started calling him Seven, because he’s seven feet tall,” she explained quickly, before looking back at me. “Seriously, I don’t have to hum.”
I hadn’t even been sure if she realized she was doing it at the time.
And honestly, I liked it. She had a pretty voice, and the songs were decent. I couldn’t sleep because I wanted her, not because she was humming.
I grabbed a hunk of sliced meat off the tray and tossed it back.
Clementine shook her head at me, still scowling until some of the staff appeared with a small, elegant table and two chairs.
It was far too small for my liking.
The men would be much closer to her than I wanted.
But I hadn’t specified, so I kept my mouth shut and let them set it up.
“Is that for the dates?” Clementine asked, her eyes trained on the furniture.
“Interviews,” I corrected, a little too sharply.
“Sure.” She ran a hand through her long, wet hair, detangling a few strands. When it was damp, the shade was much darker, and made her pretty blue eyes look brighter somehow. “How long until they’re ready?”
The front of her shirt was wet from her hair. If she moved it away, there would be no hiding her breasts.
Fuck me.
Someone was going to die.
“I’m sure some are ready now. You’ll see them one at a time. Kai will stay here, to make sure they can’t hurt you,” Orvin explained.
“He can’t even walk, and you think he’s going to protect me?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“I don’t need to walk to strangle someone with vines, Five,” I said.
“Even at his weakest, Kai’s magic is stronger than most of ours,” Steve added.
“I guess that’s good to know,” she said, her eyes flicking to the food on my lap.
She was hungry.
Part of me wanted to declare that I was full and make her take the food, but I couldn’t do that. If I didn’t eat, I’d get weaker, and I was barely functioning as it was.
“Some of the staff is already working in the kitchen. We’ll get you something to eat soon,” Orvin said, noticing her attention too. “We can start the interviews whenever you’re ready.”
Clementine’s expression brightened. “Let’s do it.”
She took the seat that made me face her back, and I forced myself to breathe evenly.
She didn’t need to know that I’d struggle to control myself when I saw the other men checking her out.
Orvin glanced back at me. “Do you mind if I…” he gestured upstairs.
I threw another chunk of cheese into my mouth.
It tasted like cardboard.
“Do whatever you want.”
Orvin nodded in thanks, and disappeared to his room.
“I’ll get the first of the suitors,” Steve said.
I couldn’t suppress the growl in my chest.
Both of their attention snapped to me.
“Candidates,” I said.
“Right. Candidates.” Steve’s expression was suspicious, but that bastard was going to figure out where my head was at whether I let it slip or not. “I’ll be back.”
He headed upstairs, leaving me alone with Clementine.
“Why does it matter what we call them?” she asked me, the adorable curiosity still shining in her eyes as she looked over her shoulder in my direction.
It was possessiveness.
Pure, unfiltered possessiveness.
I couldn’t say that, though.
“If you call them suitors, emotions will get involved. And considering your magic, you need to make your decision with as few emotions as possible. Everyone here wants you because of your power.”
Her curiosity faded as the woman practically wilted in front of me.
Guilt slammed into my chest, hard.
“I thought I was poison in this realm,” she said. Her voice had a hard edge, but there was no way to hide her overall softness.
“People poison themselves for pleasure all the time. If they didn’t, the alcohol and drug industries wouldn’t hold nearly as much money as they do.”
She let out a long breath. “Well, maybe I’ll find someone who doesn’t like my magic and just wants me for me.”
Her magic was too addictive for that.
Far too addictive.
“Maybe,” I said, but it was a lie.
Only an absolute fool would dislike her magic.
“When you do choose one of the candidates, we’ll have to test them to see how they react when you feed from them during an eclipse,” I added. “If they lose control and try to hurt you, we obviously can’t allow you to mate with them.”
“I don’t want to mate with someone who could accidentally hurt me, so we agree on that.” She looked down at her sheet of questions.
Everyone could accidentally hurt her.
The woman was the least harmless creature in all of the fae realm. Even the centipede we’d seen in the forest could do more damage than she could.
I grabbed a piece of meat off the tray, and her eyes narrowed in on it. “I thought you were a vegetarian.”
“I lied.”
Outrage blossomed on that adorable little face, reddening her cheeks. “Why would you need to lie about that?”
“I was trying to make myself sound weaker, so you’d be comfortable.”
“Are geminis weak?”
“I don’t know. I just thought it would humanize me.”
She huffed.
Apparently it had worked.
“You’re an ass, Seven.”
I bit back a retort along the lines of, “You have a nice ass, Five.”
And focused on my food.
Steve came back with the first suitor, and I tried not to clench my jaw as his eyes lit up when they landed on Clementine.
I couldn’t see her expression as he sat down across from her, but his grin told me she was probably smiling.
The interviews were going to be fucking torture.