111. Summer
Chapter One Hundred Eleven
Summer
W e walk in silence most of the way home before I can no longer stand how loudly Rafe is thinking.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just thinking,” Rafe says, his voice pensive.
“About?”
“Mira,” Rafe says.
I glance at him, and his eyebrows are drawn when he looks at me.
“I have to be patient. Don’t I?”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“I waited so long.” Rafe sighs.
I slide my hand into his. “But now she’s here,” I say. “It’s not the same, Rafe.” I squeeze his hand because this is different. Mira is no longer in a locked realm across the world. She’s at Avalon, living less than twenty minutes away. “You just need to wait for the dust to settle.”
Rafe rubs his neck. “I just convinced myself to give up too early.”
I shake my head. “No, you didn’t. It was time to move on, Rafe. But Mira found you again.”
“I know it must sound weird, but she makes me feel like my skin isn’t too tight,” Rafe says, giving me a small smile.
“I know exactly what you mean.” It’s how the stranger makes me feel. He is the only person I have ever encountered who doesn’t make me feel alone. It’s why I can’t seem to move on from him. It’s why I’m drawn to him .
We’re almost at the house when I suddenly stop. “You know, I actually have something to do. I’ll see you later.”
Rafe nods and continues on toward the house. The moment his foot touches the porch, I turn around and plunge into the forest. I’m not sure why it surprises me when I see the stranger already there, waiting for me. I was drawn here for a reason.
“How did you . . . ?”
“Is there another reason you wander into the forest?” he asks, the smirk apparent in his voice.
Of course he was watching. He’s always watching, and I like it.
I stop, leaving about six feet of distance between us. “I don’t trust you anymore,” I say, and I don’t, so I am not sure why I’m here, why I can’t stay away from him.
“But you came.” He tilts his head.
I nod. “Because?.?.?.” I consider my words. “I want us to try again at being friends.”
“Why?” he asks, and I can feel the intensity of his gaze as he studies me.
“Because I miss you.”
He softens and moves in, his steps eating up the distance between us. “You miss me?” he asks, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear.
“Yes.” I look up at him, craning my neck a little.
He cups my cheek, and I wish I could feel the true roughness of his hand against my skin. “Tell me how you miss me.”
“Stranger . . .” I hesitate.
“So I can tell you how I missed you,” he says, sliding his arm around my waist and pulling me against him.
My breath hitches at the feel of his hard body against mine. “I miss the way I feel when I’m around you.” The power, the darkness, the desire. “The sound of your voice. The feel of your skin?.?.?.”
He glides his thumb along my bare back. “I miss your touch. Your kiss. Your warmth,” he whispers, and I can almost not hear him over the roar of my heart in my ears. “Feeling not alone.”
He feels it too . . .
“Your taste,” he murmurs, and I bite back a moan as he leans in and brushes his lips along my jaw .
“Stranger?.?.?.” I say, placing my hand on his chest. It’s meant to be a warning, but it comes out more as a plea.
He covers my hand on his chest. “Yes, princess?”
Be strong.
I push against his chest, putting a little space between us.
“Friends,” I say, trying to infuse some confidence into my tone.
I feel his intense stare locked on me. “Last time when we were more. That’s when things got complicated.
” I swallow, trying to find a stitch of strength, to make my voice strong and firm.
“So this time, firmly friends.” I have no idea if it’ll work, but I know I need him in my life, that the draw to him is too much to ignore.
He squeezes my hand and pulls back. It’s only a half step, but I exhale heavily.
“You’ll leave if I don’t agree to these terms?” he asks.
“Truthfully? I have no idea.” There are times I would destroy the world to hear his voice. There are moments when I would burn everything to the ground to have another five minutes in that pergola with him.
He watches me for a moment, and then his shoulders relax a little. “Friends.”
“Really?”
“For now,” I say, feeling his gaze rake over me.
My stomach knots at the thought, but I need to ask. “And Max?”
His shoulders go rigid again. “I will behave,” he grates out.
I can tell the thought causes him actual physical pain, but I need to be explicit here. I have to make sure there are no workarounds. “Even if he and I are?—”
He covers my mouth, stopping my words. “Please. It’ll only make it worse.”
I watch him, and I feel sympathy.
“I will behave. That is all I can give for now.”
“Can I help in some way?” I ask, though it’s a stupid question.
The way I can help is to stop seeing Max.
To stop fucking him, but there is something inside me that is begging me not to give up Max.
Not to give up the version of me I thought had died with Connor.
The possibility of a normal future in which I am someone good.
“Help? ”
“To make it easier?”
“And how would you do that?” he asks skeptically.
“Not talk about him, maybe? Not tell you when I’m seeing him?”
“Princess, please, I’m already struggling with this,” he says, and even in his avatar I can see how tightly wound his body is.
“I’m just trying to?—”
“Little fae,” he warns. “It is very difficult for me to allow this. For you to even be near someone else. You cannot make it better.” He cups my cheek. “We are friends, for now . But you know what I want. What I have always wanted, and it is not friendship.”
My breath hitches.
“So if you are asking me how to make it better, it would be for you to never see him again. Or anyone else. To be mine. Forever.”
“Right.” I look away.
He gently pulls my face back up to his. “But I’m trying. Trying to control it. All I ask is that you consider how you would feel if our situations were reversed.”
I nod and swallow the feeling clogging my throat. “I should get home.” Jealousy is clawing at me already, and I desperately need to claim him.
“Already?” he asks, and I tip my head. He drops his hand to his side, clenching it in a fist. “I suppose it’s wrong of me to ask you to stay.”
“Ask me,” I whisper, staring at him, my breath growing shallow. The sound of my resolve shattering is deafening.
He pauses for a moment. “Stay,” he asks, the vulnerability in his voice rocking me to my core.
My cheeks heat as I nod, and I feel in my core the need for his touch against my skin. It’s been months since I felt it, and I need it so badly.
“Touch me?” I ask, but when he touches my cheek, all it does is make me want more. “No, really touch me.” He goes as still as a statue. “Blindfold me.”
He looks around. “It’s not safe here, princess.”
“Then take me somewhere that is.”
He thinks again for a long moment, and then I hear the faint sound of magic behind me as a portal opens.
Without looking away, I step back into it.
The warmth of a fireplace ousts the cool outside air, and the soft dirt beneath my feet becomes hardwood flooring.
I have a brief glimpse of my surroundings before everything turns to black beneath the softest blindfold I’ve ever felt.
I hear the soft snap of the portal closing, and then I can feel him.
I feel his magic, and it’s more than just an echo from the avatar.
My lips part in anticipation of his touch, amped-up by the fact that I can’t see him, but I can feel his eyes on me.
My breath catches when I feel the barest of touches against my naked waist, his fingers ghosting along my skin.
The small sensation makes me pant, and when he drags his knuckle along my jaw, I can’t keep myself from moving against him.
The relief from feeling him physically here in front of me is incredible, and I slide my hands over his chest to trace the strong column of his neck before plunging my fingers into his hair.
“Stranger, I want to reach you. Lie us down,” I whisper, standing on my tiptoes to nuzzle his jaw.
“Princess,” he groans, and again, I’d forgotten how intoxicatingly delicious his voice is in person.
He steps backward, pulling me with him. He stops when the backs of his knees hit the mattress. I moan and push hard at his chest, hearing him land with a small exhale. I crawl up his long body until I can straddle him.
The stranger’s lips brush along my neck, and I tilt my head back for him, my pulse hammering for him.
His hands glide to my ass, and I moan as I feel him hardening beneath me.
His tongue darts out, flicking against my skin, and I rock my hips against him, his bulge applying teasing pressure to my pussy, making it throb for more.
He hisses, and the world spins as I am flipped with his weight above me, his soft sheets beneath me.
“Princess?.?.?.” he says, biting my neck hard, and I cry out from the pain, from the agonizing pleasure. I yank his hair, lifting and rocking my hips against him, needing more, needing relief from this gnawing, agonizing desire.
Friends! We just agreed to be friends!
I am not sure whose voice that is, but I suspect it belongs to the part of me that can still reason, and it succeeds in pulling me back into my body. As if he’s read my mind, he tenses and rolls off me, and I instantly miss the loss of his weight.
“Friends,” I pant.
“Can you call us friends when you know my cock is engraved with your name? ”
“Stranger . . .”
“Or when I can feel how wet the front of my pants are from your need? Friends is not the word I would use in this moment.”
I flush with embarrassment. “Fuck. I can clean them?.?.?.” I move to sit up, but accidentally brush my hand over his cock, feeling the moisture I’ve left there.
The stranger grabs my hand. “You are in very dangerous territory,” he says, that addictive danger I love, lining his voice.
“Can I help?” I ask.
“It’s impossible to hear you ask that when all I can think about is how it felt when your lips were wrapped around my cock,” he growls, and I can barely breathe, the memory playing in my own mind. “Tell me to take you back.”
“Fuck. We need to go,” I grate out.
He snarls but rolls out of bed, lifting me to my feet before opening another portal back to our meadow.