43
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There were no words to describe the type of anger that I tunnelled deep down and in to.
Considering that these days, it took a lot for me to feel much other than numbness, that was saying a lot.
But my body took to rattling, a constant and steady vibration that didn’t stop and likely would never stop until I had answers.
Rory had those answers for me.
Which meant that I needed to quicken my pace.
My plan had been to go to him tonight, after the Imbolc Ball, and convince him to turn the Rachainn’s sights off of Raegan as there were no ancient scrolls with god-summoning rituals.
And while the death of Queen Tonn definitely threw a very large kink in that plan, I still wanted to pursue it.
And now, I had to. Because Rory was going to explain himself, and he was going to have to do a very good job at it.
There was only one thing to do before I left.
I refused to leave without checking on both Raegan and Killian, both of whom I last saw trying to wrangle three Kelpies and their oozing wrath.
I had a lot I needed to say to Raegan before I left, because while the journey to Rory wouldn’t take long, the not-yet-had argument that was sitting between Raegan and I would have distracted me from the anger I felt towards Rory.
So I headed towards Raegan’s room, hoping that he was in there, so that I could quickly say my five minutes worth and be on my way without him knowing.
~
I knocked on his door four times, each bash of my knuckles against the stone shaking the fragile bones in my hand. If I was to have a serious, somewhat useful conversation with Raegan, I would need to wind in the flushing temper that Rory had spurred within me.
“Come in,” Raegan’s voice called, though it was not any of his usual tones in that it was quiet and muffled.
Swallowing, I steeled my spine and tested my resolve, convinced that nothing could distract me from just how furious I was with Rory. At least until I opened the door, stepped into Raegan’s room, and shut it behind me. Because the moment I got a look at him, it all disappeared.
It was like looking at the Prince who once kneeled at the side of his dead father all over again. The hollowness of his cheeks and the shadows beneath his eyes drowned out all of his other features, though the downturn to his lips and the shape of his brows were enough to make me hesitate.
I knew broken and beaten all too well, but nothing compared to the sight of the King of Talamh where he sat on the edge of his bed, looking more than exhausted and fed-up, ailed in ways that only a king of a kingdom could look.
“Raegan?” I managed, my voice croaking as I feared my voice could shatter him once and for all.
And it did, in a way. He lifted his eyes to me, the bright greens of them dulled down into something dark and haunted.
“We need to talk about today. What happened, it was…”
The words died in my mouth as he blinked at me. Perhaps I was a fool, perhaps Raegan had truly learned how to manipulate me, but I couldn’t continue in my lecture as I looked at him.
“I know,” he whispered, his words hardly coming through at all.
“I do not know how it… How it went so… Just so very…” He trailed off, his head shaking, his eyes slipping from mine and instead landing in his lap.
“Whatever you have to say, please do not. I know it. I have said it, over and over, in the hours that have lapsed.”
The anger was still pulsing through me, though I suppose to him it looked like disappointment, because I wasn’t prepared for what he said next.
“Please, Olivia,” he whispered. “Just for one night, please. Do not look at me like that – like I am some great evil. I know what I am, what I have done. Is it possible for you to remain here, with me, without expectation? Without holding me to my responsibilities? Without needing from me as everyone needs from me?”
I blinked. All of my rage simmered away.
“Because if you cannot – if you cannot let it go for one night, if you cannot refrain from needing the King of Talamh for one night, please go.”
I forgot what I had come in here for as I stared at Raegan, at his unkempt appearance and the truth to his words.
He looked as worn down and destroyed as he ever had.
I realized, at last, why that was. Because the Raegan I was looking at had lost all of his masks.
Or, he no longer had the energy to pick them up and place them on.
Whatever it was, the Raegan staring at me, pleading with his eyes and so thoroughly heartbroken, was the real Raegan.
Neither Prince nor King, fox nor cunning.
Just Raegan.
My Raegan.
That’s why I stepped towards him.
“You offered me a distraction, once. When I desperately needed it.”
His head lifted from where he had allowed it to hang against his chest. Everything to him was so lost beneath a haze, his eyes glassy and his smirk nowhere to be seen.
“Perhaps I can offer you the same?”
Please say yes.
The thought possessed me and I needed him like a flame needed oxygen. We were chaotic, catastrophic, and a disaster waiting to happen – but I was so fucking tired of refusing it.
“No,” he said, the hollows beneath his eyes never-ending.
Swallowing, I tried to accept his answer and nod, but Raegan wasn’t done.
“You are not just a distraction to me. Or, you are, in that you are the distraction, the very thing that I want to run into and away from it all. But I do not want you to offer yourself to me as some sort of plaything. You were never that. You will never be that.”
My body flared up with heat and confusion at the same time. It was everything I had so desperately wanted to hear from him, yet now that I had it, I didn’t know what to do with it.
So I was honest, utilizing my small and cracking voice. “I wish to run away from it all and into you, too.”
It was his turn to swallow, his throat bobbing as he refused to look away from me.
But second by second, the shadows were lifting, making way for the raw expression of desire that I had come to know from the pixies.
The blowing out of their pupils, the flaring of their nostrils, the pointed-state of their eyes.
“Just tonight,” I said, not believing it for a second, as I stepped towards him. “I know that you cannot give me more than that, Raegan. But let us run away from it all, together, for just one night.”
Another swallow, his throat tightening, the veins on his neck slowly lifting.
I took another small, cautious step towards him, stopping only to pull the scattered state of my hair up and behind my head.
He watched me, his gaze intense and unwavering as the King of Talamh simply froze.
The look in his eyes, the slight slant to his head, told me all I needed to know – he was completely at my mercy as I prowled closer.
His mouth opened, a thought slipping from his brain at last, but he closed it just as quickly.
I moved closer.
His knees touched my thighs, and I used one hand to pry a small gap between his legs. He allowed me to move him, to bend his body and his mind in whatever way I desired. With a cat-like grin, I slipped between his legs and placed myself as close to him as I could.
I had never known Raegan to be nervous, but his hands shook as he lifted them towards me.
He flexed them, twice, before he allowed the brash ends of his fingers to fit gently on the curve of my waist. In his grip, held gently yet intentionally by him, everything melted away.
And for once it wasn’t a form of escape or a form of avoidance, but it was a type of acceptance and relief that allowed me to let go of everything else, to be present only for him and with him.
I moved as close as I could, until his chin was on my breastbone and he was watching my face between his brows.
“I never got that dance,” he murmured, his breath warm against my skin.
The shiver that licked my spine was delicious in every way, forcing me to arch so that I was impossibly closer.
That subtle movement bore an approving noise from Raegan as his grip tightened on my waist, his eyes darkening not with that previous defeat but with a vicious hunger.
“I am sure there will be many more.”
He nodded softly, his eyes lost within mine as he continued to stare. “You are… transcendent, Olivia.”
My throat was thick as I swallowed, the weight of his words crashing against me. “Remove my dress, Your Majesty.”
His renewed grin was wicked and promising as he nodded once more, his eyes round as he obeyed my command.
Without urgency, Raegan pinched at the length of the tattered and bloodied remnants of my dress, slowly gathering more and more until it sat around the mid of my thigh and he was lost in the subtle movements.
Every brush of his fingers against the silk material sent a shudder through me that transferred into him, the two of us distracted by the simplest of our senses.
He continued in his craft of gathering, until he had the majority of it at the bodice. Without sacrificing much distance between us, he pulled the whole thing clean over my shoulders and freed my head from it, letting out a sharp breath as the entirety of me was revealed to him.
His eyes didn’t know where to look first, but they ended up darting to a small patch of skin on my left, hovering around the bottom of my ribcage.
Moving over the skin with his hand, he frowned. “What is this?”
Matching his frown, I twisted awkwardly to get a look at the skin that peered out just beneath my breast, only to let out a gasp and feel the immediate desire to flee.
His legs pressed against me, keeping me still in a cage of his limbs. “What is it?”
“It’s a… Well, it’s a tattoo.”
“A tattoo?” His head cocked to the side, curiosity glistening in his eyes. “I have heard of them. You have marked your skin permanently?”
Pulling my lower lip between my teeth, I nodded.
“And… What is it?” He tried to maneuver my body, but I remained solid. “Is it…” Then he gasped as he realized what I had tattooed on myself.
“I…” I lost myself in whatever excuse I was planning on spewing, and instead just settled on the truth. “I couldn’t stop thinking about them. About you.”
He looked up at me once more, a moisture in his eyes as he stared.
Because what I had tattooed along my side was a set of wings. Feathered and elegant, just as I remembered his being.
“Olivia, I… I do not know what to say.”
I placed a hand beneath his chin and used my hooked finger to draw his face closer to mine. “You do not need to say anything.”
I watched his throat bob as his eyes flicked between my face and my tattoo. “You truly… You truly like them?”
It was heartbreaking to hear the complete disbelief of his question.
“I think that they are the most magnificent thing that Saoghal has shown me.”
His smile grew wide as his innocence and his relief removed all doubt from his face. “Would you mind if I – no, no.”
“What?”
I placed a finger between his brows, the two of them so closely pinched that the crease was becoming permanent. He watched my face as I massaged the tension there, and released a long sigh. “Would you mind if I had them out? I do not get to, often, and it is agonizing.”
It was my turn to smile wildly. “I would love that.”
It took him only a few minutes to shed his surcoat and his shirt, leaving the hardened muscles and taut skin for me to stare at as he rolled his head and stretched his spine.
Unlike the previous times he had shown them to me, this time they came out slowly and peacefully.
They sat behind him in a neutral position, bent yet relaxed against his back in a way that made him release a shuddering breath.
I let my hands wander across his chest, feeling the deep valleys between his muscles and the intense angles at which they rose.
My fingers trailed of their own free will, leaving little of his skin untouched as I dragged and swiped.
But it was his face that I watched, his face that sagged in a quiet type of joy as his eyes fluttered shut and he let his head fall back with every brush of my touch.
While he was in that quiet, relaxed state, I saddled myself across his lap. He returned his grip to my waist while I continued to touch and feel, his eyes still shut and his breathing evening out.
“Raegan?”
He hummed a response, his body slowly falling down from the heights at which his life of tension and stress hung him at.
“Will you bite me?”
Two bright green eyes snapped open and took to a wide position as he returned to looking overly stiff.
“I can’t. You do not know–”
“I do know. And I want you to do it. I know you want to do it, too. I have felt you linger there time and time again. Now that I understand it, I want you to.”
The darkness of his pupils started to expand as he shifted his focus to my neck, his breathing changing as he drew in a few scent-filled breaths.
I placed my hands against his cheeks and turned his attention to me once more. “Whether or not you are mine, I do not care. But I have been, and I will always be, yours.”
His mouth twitched, his throat constantly shifting, before he finally nodded.
His fangs found my neck with ease, the sharpened tips of them diving into my flesh as he moved at a speed that spoke to the desire that I knew was within him.
My gasp was soft and bordering on a moan as my bloodstream changed temperature, as it filled with a substance new to it that slid alongside the blood and found a permanent home there.
My eyes fluttered as the rush hit me, my own nostrils widening as the scent that would forever be his started to fill the room.
When he finally finished, when he pulled back and wiped a drop of blood from the corner of his lips, he wrapped both arms around my waist and tugged me against him, burying his face into my neck.
He remained like that for a long while, the room filled with the sound of him drawing deeper and deeper breaths from my skin.
Then all at once he softened against me, his shoulders rolling forward and his head becoming heavy.
“I am so very tired.”
I ran my hands through the base of his hair, massaging at his scalp. “I know.”
“Rest with me, won’t you?”
It wasn’t often that I sat naked over someone’s lap and had them beg me to rest with them, but I found myself smiling even larger at the suggestion.