Chapter 28 Apples Are Red
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
APPLES ARE RED
ADELINE
I come awake with a start, and instantly groan at the crick in my neck. Ow…
Light is spilling through the open door, gilding four pillars at the center of the cabin and a marble table with a bench. Someone is sitting there, cutting what looks like a round fruit into pieces.
Roane.
He glances up and gives me a slow once-over that has my face heating. “You’re looking better.”
Really? I’m dressed in what’s basically my underwear—my petticoat and long underpants.
Sometime in the night, I managed to kick off my shoes, and my stockings have holes at the ankles.
My clothes dried overnight, but I realize that the fabric I’d tied around my chest has slipped and my petticoat isn’t hiding my breasts very well.
With a hiss, I pull the fabric belt back up, securing it in place.
One corner of his mouth twitches up. “Hungry?”
“No. I’m mostly thirsty.”
“This should take care of both. It’s water-apples.”
Slinking closer, I slide onto the bench beside him. “They are… white?”
He nods, skillfully parting the apple into slices. “Water-apples are always white. Well-known fact.”
“Is it? Apples are red. Or green. Sometimes yellow. I’ve never heard of water-apples in my life.” I frown. “Then again, I have never traveled before now. Where did you say you grew up?”
“I… Fuck.” Shaking his head, his expression dark, he gets up, abandoning apples and knife, and he strides out of the cabin.
What did I say?
After a moment, I follow him outside. Below the hill spreads this bookish world, so different in the light of day, a landscape made up of dashes of pale color as if painted on a canvas.
He’s standing there, his long hair whipping in the wind, his arms hanging at his sides. Cautiously I approach him. Most of the time he feels like an untamed animal that I might scare with a sudden noise. Scare into roaring and attacking me, most probably, but still.
Maybe ‘startle’ is a better word, I think, my mouth tugging into a smile. He certainly doesn’t seem like a man who’d be scared of anything, just like Ardruna had said.
A good choice for a guardian of this library of horrors.
“Why did you leave?” I ask softly. “Is it because I inadvertently asked about your past?”
He casts me a dark look. “Did you eat?”
I shake my head.
He looks away. “You should eat.”
“And I will. In a moment.” Something catches my eye and I take his hand, lifting his arm. “What happened here?”
“It’s nothing. A scratch.”
“Not from the hydra? That creature’s poison is slow to act but it will burn you from the inside out, if the stories are to be believed.”
“The hydra didn’t cause this. So…” His lashes shadow his eyes as he gazes down at me. “You said you’d do anything to have me return the egg?”
“I never said that.”
“That means… you don’t want me to do it?” His mouth tugs into a smirk, his expression lightening. “Are you sure? I can make you a good deal.”
“Which involves crawling and begging?”
“Oh, you were paying attention.”
I snort. Gods, I can’t keep up with his quicksilver moods. “No deal.”
“You’d rather wait for the griffin to come grab you again?”
“That’s not playing fair.” A shiver wracks me.
“Hey.” He lifts a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, then he gently grips my chin. “Sorry. I keep saying the wrong things.”
Does he realize what he’s doing to me? Every time he touches me, my breath catches. A tender gesture. A tender touch. This vulnerability about him when he’s usually closed off and surly. It always catches me off guard.
“Your world is dangerous,” I whisper.
He gazes at me, a question in his eyes, and releases my chin. “Yeah?”
“If I can’t leave this place, I want… I want you to teach me how to fight. I won’t be a burden and put you all in danger.”
He straightens slowly. “That can be arranged.”
“The way you use your scimitars is impressive. I didn’t know such weapons were still in use.
” I know I’ve shattered the tender moment, but nervousness grips me, and I can’t stop chattering.
“I thought straight swords have been favored since the reign of King Eventhor, before the Last Reversal. Unless… you found them here.”
“Something like that,” he murmurs.
“You must have found lots of stuff, like the clothes Talton located for me. I still don’t understand how so many things are just there, lying about. But… stories. They are part of stories, just like the hydra and the river.” I smile. “Oh Gods, I will put on clothes from a story. That’s amazing!”
Unexpectedly he grins. “You’re so obsessed with stories. It’s kind of cute, though fucking crazy.”
I can’t recall him ever grinning before. It has to be the first time. It’s a bit unsettling, fae teeth being sharper than human, the canines a little longer, giving him a feral look, and yet he’s cute… Cute and hot…
He tips his head back. “Now let’s go back to what you owe me.”
“Owe you?”
“For saving you today. Twice.”
I gape at him. “I…”
“And for the favor of flying back up to return the egg to mamma griffin, thereby risking my ass for your folly.”
“It wasn’t folly.” I recover from my daze. “It was strategy.”
He waves an elegant, filthy hand. “End result is the same.”
“I already said, no deal.”
“Are you sure? Do you really want to risk a griffin’s wrath?” His expression hardens. “I could ask you to give me that haunted book.”
“No.”
“Sooner or later I will take it, Ellin.”
“Roane…”
“Or I could ask you for a kiss.” He blinks. “A kiss…”
“Stop teasing me.”
Another blink, and his cheekbones flush. “Why? It’s fun. Didn’t you ask me if I do anything for fun?” He licks his lips. “How about this: I could ask you to polish my blade.”
“Seriously?”
His grin returns. His eyes seem to change hue, from pale gray to midnight blue. “And other things.”
“I’m not some innocent girl from a village, you know.” I put my hands on my hips. “I know all the euphemisms.”
“Do you, now?”
“Do you really need to trick me into touching you?”
“You’re right,” he says, his voice dropping to a growl, “I don’t need parlor tricks. You want to touch me.”
“I don’t,” I breathe.
“You want me to touch you, too.”
I shake my head. “Never.”
“Are you so sure?” he asks.
He’s so close, gazing down at me. His mouth looks so soft.
The only soft part about him. Lush and tempting.
The man is a walking temptation, with those sharp cheekbones and hard jaw, the thick brows over those crystalline eyes, the long hair clinging to his temples and falling over his broad shoulders.
His strength, his presence, the heat emanating from his tall body, the power he wields, it all comes together in a heady sum.
A valiant warrior, sacrificing his life to slay the monsters or imprison them. I never knew I had a weakness for the type, yet here we are.
He’s so sexy I can’t think straight.
Which is the only explanation I have for placing my hands on his chest, my breath shallow, and rise on tiptoe. My gaze drops from his mesmerizing eyes back to his firm lips.
I want them. On my mouth, on my skin. Everywhere.
Gods, I’ve never been so attracted to a man this way before. Figures I’d go and fall for a grumpy jerk of a fae who’s guarding a nightmare library. He’s the bane of my existence and yet right now, it feels like he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
Falling into lust.
“What if I asked you to get on your knees for me,” he says, the growl in his voice deepening, making me tremble. “Undress me. Touch me. See how you arouse me.”
A moan leaves my lips. How can I fight this? My body strains toward him without conscious thought.
His hand slides around my neck, while his thumb feathers over my throat, pressing lightly. “What if I commanded you and you obeyed my every command? What if you begged for me to bruise you and then kiss it all better, take you against the wall and make you forget your own name?”
“Roane…” His dirty talk bypasses reason and dips straight into a primal need.
His head dips, his mouth so close, casting a long shadow over me, his wide shoulders caging me, the spice of male sweat winding through my body, reaching and yanking on my desire.
No matter what I said earlier, if he told me to kneel, to beg, to touch, to spread my legs for him, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
It’s scary how readily I’d do anything he asks just to have his skin slide against mine, his mouth move over my mouth, that muscular body rock between my legs, his cock pushing into me.
I’ve fumbled in the dark before, in back alleys and stables.
But those were boys, not men. This is a man, no mistake about it.
He’s not the kind who’d tease me, caress me, give me butterfly-light kisses, laugh awkwardly as he gropes me through my underpants, as he enters me without knowing what he’s doing.
Roane is unlike anybody I’ve ever met. Nothing wholesome about him. Nothing half-hearted. It’s go all in, or quit the game.
His other hand slides into my hair and yanks, tipping my head back. His gaze is hungry and feral. “I’d take you right here and now. Wreck you. Destroy you. Make you scream until you’re hoarse. Have you ever been with a fae male before? I don’t know if your tight little pussy can take my cock.”
I’m gasping. His thumb is pressing down, cutting most of my airflow, but I’m not scared. I’m aroused. I want him so much it hurts. I want him to press me down and push into me, to make me feel every inch, to pull harder on my hair and bite my flesh. Mark me as his.
Make me feel everything.
His lips part in a snarl, those sharp teeth flashing. No, it wouldn’t be like the sex I’ve had with anyone before. It would be unhinged, savage, painful. It would shake my soul free of my body. Shake all sense out of me.
And it scares me how much I want that.
Reaching up, I trace his ear to its sharp point where those dark dots mark its shape.
A shudder goes through him. Then I slide my hand down to his neck where the edges of that mark I’d noticed peek out from under his long hair.
I push his hair back, dreamlike, marveling at how close I am to him, how I can see everything, from the small vein thrumming in his jaw to the edges of the scar in his cheek.
Suddenly, my hair is released, my neck freed, and I stagger back, lifting a hand to rub at the bruises his fingers have left.
“Dammit,” he breathes and stumbles back, too. “No.”