Chapter 7
Someone had hung my clothes up around the fire, and everything was mostly dry as I got dressed. “I’m sorry that me crossing the barrier into Spring didn’t work,” I said as I pulled on my pants.
Flurry nodded, his back to me as he dressed.
I got the feeling he didn’t want to talk about it. “We can talk through it with everyone when we get back. See what else there is to try.”
He finished dressing, said not a word, and walked out of the tent.
Ah, shit. Was he regretting what we’d done?
Rescinding that next time we’d talked about?
Or was he upset that I’d failed to deliver after all my talk about doing whatever I could to help break the curse?
If it was the former, I’d offer friendship and reassurance.
The latter? Well, I’d let him know I wasn’t going to back down just because a lake tried to drown me.
I stomped into my boots and left the tent.
Immediately, several people went into the tent with chests.
I peeked back inside and realized they were putting all the furs and pillows and such into the chests, cleaning up.
Anyone with a nose was going to know what we’d done in there.
Hopefully, the prince wouldn’t get any more upset about the potential gossip.
Flurry wasn’t far away, standing beside his unicorn and putting on a pair of gloves. Despite there being a servant holding the unicorn’s reins, I went over to try and sort things out now.
“Your Highness—”
“Go ride in the carriage with Lady Lennon.” He made a shooing motion.
I looked over in time to see Giselle step up into a large white carriage pulled by four dove gray horses with white manes and tails.
First, she would definitely know what we’d been doing in the tent if she was so tuned into the gossip of the land, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about that. Second… “I’m fine now. I can ride—”
Flurry’s wings appeared in a puff of glitter and propelled him right up into my personal space. I almost took a step back as he glared up at me.
“I thought you were dying,” he whispered harshly. “The snow was crawling over your skin, you were turning blue, and I thought you were dying.”
Holy shit, he did care.
“I’m not,” I whispered, wanting to touch him but not sure if I should. “I promise I’m okay.”
He swallowed so hard I heard it, and his wings vanished as he stepped back. “Ride in the carriage. It’s warmer in there.”
“I like the cold.”
Peeking up at me through his snowflake lashes, I could’ve sworn his eyes got even bluer as a pink blush stained his cheeks. Was he remembering me sucking his popsicle, too?
“You can have as much cold as you wish,” he whispered. “But only when I can control it.” And he pointed at the carriage with his little royal finger.
I could have as much cold as I wanted as long as he was controlling it?
Good god. I headed for the carriage with a grin on my face and a throb in my cock as I imagined what he meant to do to me.
And I’d definitely make sure he had the chance to inspect every inch of me for frostbite to reassure himself that I was fine.
Someone held the carriage door open for me, and I stepped inside. I was glad Giselle—er, Lady Lennon—was sitting with her back to the front so that I could sit facing forward. I sometimes got carsick; was carriage-sick a thing?
“Mister Hawkins,” she said with a smile, “you gave us all quite a fright. How are you now? Psychologically speaking.”
I didn’t want to think about it, so I smiled right back. “Well, it’ll be a while before I go swimming next, but I think I’m okay.”
She stopped smiling and pressed a hand to her chest. “When that wave came out of nowhere and threw that Spring man back onto shore, we all thought you were doomed.”
“Yeah, I saw that. It’s like whatever had a hold of me didn’t want me over there.”
“It only allowed you to be rescued by Winter people.”
“Yeah.”
I mulled that over for a minute since it seemed like another clue. Like the curse saying you better stay on your side, or else. Could we assume the witnesses from Spring were also feeling like they’d be turned back from trying to swim across as well?
“And it felt as though something held you?” Lady Lennon went on. “Pulled you under?”
“It did, yeah.” I shivered at the memory. “Not anything specific, like a hand or like I got tangled in kelp. But there was a definite grip and a determined pull down.”
“Down, not out.”
“Right.”
She sighed heavily, shaking her head. “I’m ever so glad the prince had the wherewithal to tie a rope around that rock. I was quite paralyzed by shock.”
“Flurry did that?”
She nodded, a sly grin stretching across her lips. “Flurry, is it?”
I smiled back, caught. “The prince is stronger than he looks.”
“Louder than I would’ve guessed as well.”
A shocked laugh jumped out of me as I felt a blush heating my face.
“It’s very quiet out here on the snowy fields,” she said. “Sound tends to carry.”
“I bet it does.”
“And I won a ten pound note off Lord Lennon.” She pulled the money from her bodice to show me before tucking it back into place.
I laughed in earnest, guessing what kind of bet she’d made with her husband.
The carriage jolting forward shocked me quiet again. There must’ve been some kind of spring beneath us because we bounced gently up and down as the carriage rolled along.
“Your title,” Lady Lennon said, “will be prince-consort, and I believe the Bellrare estate will become yours. It’s in the mountains so only really suitable for—”
“Whoa,” I said with an embarrassed chuckle. “Hold on a minute. What you, uh, heard wasn’t a proposal or anything.” What was it then, genius? “That was just two people being glad to be alive.” Okay, that made sense.
She laughed like I was ridiculous. “Come now, Mister Hawkins, a virgin doesn’t give themselves to a man they met yesterday on a whim.”
“Where I come from, it’s not unusual.” I waved a hand. “And it doesn’t have to mean anything, so stop reading so much into it. He literally told me he was glad I wasn’t dead.”
“Because he loves you.”
Tenacious like a terrier, this one. “Yesterday. We met yesterday.”
“Oh, pish-posh.” She leaned forward, pointing at me. “The prince has resisted everyone. That tells me he was waiting for the perfect someone.” She stabbed that finger at me.
I chuckled uncomfortably. I liked the ideas of fate and destiny and true love. Of finding The One. And, sure, everything that had happened since I fell through that ring of rocks and flowers was fantastical enough to include such things. But seriously? It was a little too rom-com for me.
Lady Lennon left me to my thoughts for the rest of the ride back.
If she was right—and the way she smiled out the window said she believed she was—then could hooking up with Flurry be a way to break the curse?
Well, no, not hooking up with him. I doubted it would be that easy, even for a prince who liked to say no to everyone who asked.
A curse like this? It made more sense for it to require love.
So I needed to woo him? That wouldn’t be a hardship. I wanted into his bed again. He was a prickly little shit, but I liked him. If we’d met in the human world, I’d have asked him out. We’d have talked and gotten to know each other. Fallen in love? I wasn’t against it.
I did have concerns, though. Who fell in love with a fae prince and then left him?
Getting out of the carriage was a hell of a lot easier than dismounting a horse and, though my ass was a little numb, my hips were still connected to the rest of me. I might be a carriage kind of traveler going forward.
Everyone seemed to be dispersing, some people even riding away.
Badru was one of them, as well as Lady Lennon and a man I assumed was her husband who had ridden along side the carriage.
Maybe they had things they needed to catch up on?
Every moment I’d been here had been an interruption, so I didn’t bother saying anything about talking through what we knew now. They had lives to get back to.
Talking to Flurry, though…
I hurried over to catch up to him as he stalked into the palace.
He must’ve heard me clomping after him because he looked over his shoulder and then the wings came out.
I lunged, grabbed his arm, hoped no one with a spear saw, and hauled him into an alcove with a stained glass window of pink and blue flowers.
With a mulish look on his face, he easily wrenched his arm free of my grip. I held up both hands.
“Look, I know I’m probably doing everything wrong, but I don’t mean to. If you can just tell me what’s okay and what isn’t, I’ll do better.”
“Don’t accost me for one.”
“Right, sure, but you were about to flutter away, so—”
“Flutter?” he said, aghast.
“—I needed to stop you because we need to talk.”
Somehow, he managed to look up at me while also looking down his nose at me. It might’ve singed my eyebrows off if he’d been taller than me but as it was, he just looked like a cute little grouch.
I smoothed my hand down his arm and tried to coax his fist into unclenching. “Come on. Talk to me.”
His hand seemed to open involuntarily, and then he stepped back and bumped into the wall. Not looking at me anymore, he said, “Many males have offered themselves to me to forge alliances or curry favor.”
Well, that was not where I’d thought this might go. “You think that’s why I want to be with you?”
“Isn’t it?”
I tipped his chin up so he’d look at me. “No.”
He didn’t believe me.
I cupped his cheek. “Flurry, I like you. You’re prickly and frustrating sometimes,” I hastened to add when he glared at me, “but I couldn’t stop thinking about you even before I got you naked.
” I took a chance and planted my hand on the wall behind him, flexing my forearm when he looked at it.
“Ask me what’s occupying my thoughts now,” I said with a little extra rumble.
“I’ll give you a hint… It’s not your throne. ”
His lips parted and his breath came faster.
I leaned in and gently kissed him. A tiny breathless sound left him before he pushed up and kissed me back.
I opened for him, giving him a moan, and shivered when he hopped up and wrapped his legs around me.
Grinding against him, I pressed him to the wall and fought with him to own the kiss.
But then I heard the clink of metal on stone and a whooshing noise. We broke apart at the same time, both of us looking toward the hall. There was a literal curtain hanging from a rod beside us, two sets of hands holding it up. I couldn’t see who, but they had on the white gloves of staff members.
“What’s happening?” I whispered.
“It’s…” he cleared his throat. “It’s for privacy.”
“So we can keep…” I widened my eyes and nodded between us.
He covered his eyes and nodded, his face bright pink.
I snorted. “So they’ll just stand there while we—”
He covered my mouth with his hand and hid his face in my neck. I licked his palm. He sat up with a frown and wiped his hand on my shoulder. Which was kinda funny since there was a lot of him that I wanted to lick and I knew he was going to enjoy that.
“Please escort us to my chambers,” he said and pushed at me until I set him down. He fixed his clothes, adjusted himself—gave me a look that said I shouldn’t mention that—and then stepped out of the alcove.
I didn’t bother with any adjustments, and was immediately enveloped in the curtain.
They wrapped it around behind us so that it was only open in the front, letting us walk forward.
It was like being inside an old-fashioned shower or a tiny changing room in a boutique.
I wanted to laugh at the fact that we were going up to his room to fuck and literally everyone would know because we were inside this privacy bubble, but instead I just followed Flurry’s little ass to our destination.