Chapter 9
Iwoke up to warmth and the weight of a body that didn’t belong in my bed when I’d fallen asleep.
Gabriella was curled against my chest, her face pressed into the hollow of my collarbone, one arm thrown across my ribs with the ownership of someone who had claimed the territory in her sleep and had no intention of relinquishing it.
I blinked at the ceiling beams. Morning light filtered through the window in a pale stripe across the quilt, turning dust motes gold.
I hadn’t felt her come in. I’d fallen asleep hard, and somewhere in those dark hours she’d slipped through my door and into my bed without waking me.
A feat that suggested either I was sleeping like the dead or she moved with the stealth of someone who’d spent six years learning to navigate a creaky farmhouse without disturbing her mother.
My body figured it out before my brain did.
The memory of yesterday hit all at once, the lake, the crushed wildflowers, the way her body had taken mine with a hunger that still lived in my muscles.
My cock stirred against her thigh, hardening with the uncomplicated enthusiasm of an organ that had very clear priorities and very little concern for appropriate timing.
I tried to move. She was pressed so close that any movement risked waking her, and waking her meant acknowledging the very obvious situation developing against her leg.
Too late. She stirred, and I felt the exact moment she registered what was pressing against her.
Her body went still, then relaxed in a way that suggested the information was not unwelcome.
Her eyes opened, found mine in the near-dark, and a slow smile spread across her face, lazy and satisfied and without shame.
“Good morning to you too,” she said, her voice thick with sleep and lust.
“You came in after I fell asleep?”
“I did. Your door was open. You were snoring. Very attractively, by the way. Like a bear who’s just discovered honey.” She pressed her hips back against me, and the friction sent a jolt through my cock.
My hand moved before I could stop it, sliding between her thighs beneath the hem of her nightgown. She was already wet, slick and hot against my fingers, and the discovery did absolutely nothing to help the situation developing in my sleep pants. “God, Gabriella.”
“Mm. That’s the idea.” She turned in my arms, facing me now, her body flush against mine, and kissed me.
Her mouth was warm, her tongue finding mine with the confidence of someone who had mapped this territory recently and was pleased with the findings.
My hand stayed between her thighs, my thumb circling her clit through the slick heat of her, and she gasped against my mouth, her hips rocking into my touch.
“I want you,” she whispered, her breath hot against my ear. “Right now. I’ve been thinking about it all night. How you felt inside me. How full you made me. The tingling sensation in my pussy. I want to feel it again.”
My cock was so hard it hurt, straining against the thin cotton, and every cell in my body was shouting the same thing: Yes. Now. Here. My hand moved to the hem of her nightgown, fingers curling in the fabric, ready to push it up her thighs and—
The floorboard creaked. The sound of someone moving through the kitchen, the light tread of bare feet on wooden planks, the soft clatter of a cup being set on the table.
Sabrina … It had to be Sabrina. And then I heard Angelina’s voice, so she was awake too, and then there was Gabriella, who was currently trying to devour my mouth with hers, which left exactly one option.
We froze. Gabriella’s lips still against mine, my hand still on her thigh, my cock still throbbing against her hip.
She groaned, and dropped her forehead to my chest. “Of course. Of all the mornings.”
“We could be quiet,” I said, and even as the words left my mouth I knew they were a lie. Gabriella made noise. Delightful, honest, completely damning noise.
She kissed me once more, her teeth catching my lower lip, and then pulled back. “Later,” she said, and the promise in that single word was enough to keep me hard for the next hour. “Somewhere with thicker walls. Or no walls at all.”
We disentangled. The process was its own form of torture. Her body sliding away from mine, the cool air hitting the places where she’d been warm, the ache of stopping so abruptly it felt physical. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her nightgown settling around her thighs, and stood.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she said, pulling her hair back with both hands. “You’re making it worse.”
“You started it.”
“I absolutely did, and I have no regrets.” She crossed to the door, paused with her hand on the latch, and glanced back at me. The look she gave me was equal parts promise and threat, and my cock throbbed in response like it had received direct orders.
Then she slipped out, closing the door behind her so quietly that it suggested she was at least trying to maintain the fiction that nothing unusual had happened in this room, which was charming but approximately six hours too late to be convincing.
I dressed. Trousers, shirt, boots by the door. In the bathroom, I splashed water on my face from the basin, ran a hand through my hair, and tried very hard to look like a man who had not spent the morning with his hand between a girl’s thighs.
Downstairs, the farmhouse smelled the way it always smelled on good mornings: fresh bread, tea, the warm yeasty scent of rising dough from the batch Angelina had started before anyone else was awake.
Sabrina sat at the table with a mug between her palms, her light blonde hair loose around her shoulders, her wings folded neatly behind her chair.
She looked up when I entered, and something passed across her face too quickly to catch, replaced almost immediately by her usual bright smile.
“Look who’s finally conscious,” she said. “The war hero emerges. I was beginning to think you’d deserted.”
“Desertion requires intention. This was just sleep.”
“Deep sleep, from the looks of it. You have…” She gestured vaguely at her own face. “Pillow creases. Very dramatic ones. Like you’ve been pressed into the mattress by something heavy.”
I touched my cheek and found nothing. She was messing with me, the way Sabrina had been messing with me since we were children, and normally I would have fired back without thinking.
This morning, the joke landed differently.
I could feel the heat climbing my neck, and from the corner of my eye I saw Gabriella at the stove, her back to us, stirring eggs with more concentration than eggs typically required.
Angelina turned from the counter with a plate of fresh bread, and her eyes found mine.
Then moved to Gabriella, then back to me, and whatever she saw in that triangulation, she kept to herself.
Angelina had always been good at that, the skill of noticing everything and commenting on precisely none of it.
“Eat,” she said, setting the bread on the table. “We have a full day.”
We ate. Eggs, bread still warm from the oven, preserves from last season’s apples that Angelina had put up herself, the jar label written in her careful hand. Coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in. The conversation moved to the day’s work.
“Chickens need feeding,” Gabriella said, reaching for the jam. Her fingers brushed mine on the jar, lingered a beat longer than necessary. “And the vegetable rows need weeding. I can handle both.”
“I’ll take the north orchard,” Sabrina said. “Apples are coming in fast. We’ll need baskets. Lots of baskets.” She looked at me. “You’ll be carrying, obviously. That’s your entire purpose now. War hero turned fruit mule. The kingdom’s finest.”
“I live to serve,” I said.
“And Angelina needs help with the heavy things,” Gabriella quickly added.
“The grain sacks. The beams. All the stuff that arrived while you were off fairy-hunting.” She said “fairy-hunting” with a lilt that carried private meaning, and I caught the flash of her smile before she hid it behind her mug.
Angelina nodded. “I do.” She passed me the butter, her eyes meeting mine over the table, and I saw it then, the thing she wasn’t saying. The careful neutrality of her expression didn’t reach her eyes. Her eyes were watching, cataloging, putting pieces together.
Sabrina saw it too. I felt her gaze, moving between Gabriella and me.
We finished eating. Plates were cleared, mugs rinsed, the kitchen settling into its mid-morning rhythm.
Gabriella moved past me toward the door, and as she did, her hand found mine, squeezed once, and was gone.
The touch lasted less than a second. It was enough to undo every bit of self-control I’d managed to recover since she’d climbed out of my bed.
I watched her walk across the yard toward the chicken coop, her stride confident, her back straight. No wings, just Gabriella, exactly as she was, and the sight of her warmed my heart and made me realize that I was in love with her and had no intention of stopping.
I turned to find Sabrina watching me, her arms folded, one eyebrow raised.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.
The look on her face was the same look she’d given me when we were children and she’d caught me stealing jam from the pantry, the combination of amusement and accusation that was uniquely Sabrina.
Angelina called my name from the barn doorway. “Gabriel! Those sacks aren’t going to lift themselves!”
I went. Behind me, I felt Sabrina’s eyes on my back, and the weight of them followed me all the way to the barn.
* * *
The barn smelled the way barns always smell, which is to say, like everything at once.
Hay, leather, the musk of pegasus that Valen contributed from his stall, and underneath it all the clean, dry scent of grain.
Angelina stood in the center of the floor, one hand on her hip, the other gesturing at the stacked supplies.