44
____________________
The desire to touch Raegan never seemed satiated.
He lay beneath me, his wings wide and smothered by his weight.
I was sprawled out on top of him, not a shred of clothing between us, yet the comfort of it was innocent in that we had spent hours simply talking.
Smiling at him, my chin on my hand that laid across his chest, I reached the other forward and brushed his hair behind his ear. Yet again my skin grazed the scars along the top of them, where they once would have taken to one of the four positions that signified which kingdom he belonged to.
“Do you remember?” I whispered. “Do you remember what they looked like?”
Raegan looked at me, his hands soft against my waist. But it was what was in his eyes, the shaking to steady them, the moisture building along his water line.
The heartbreak and the openness, all right there.
And with each blink he made, he kept that expression on his face, never looking away from me.
“I do.”
That made me feel worse, somehow. My pity took to new heights as my head lolled to one side, my fingers still rolling over the bumpy flesh.
“Will you tell me?”
His brows pinched as they lifted. “Does it matter?”
“No,” I said, my voice quiet. “Not at all.”
We remained in that silence for a moment, the two of us staring at one another.
“There are days where I feel lost. There are days where I feel like a stranger in my own life, like none of it is real.”
He nodded, his face solemn. “I know that well.”
I crawled along his chest and placed a kiss to the scar of one of his ears. He let out a low, soft grunt as he turned into me. Then it was the other ear, my hands braced on the back of his head, his face nuzzling against me.
“There are days that I wish others were beside me, reminding me who I am,” I whispered against his scar.
He nodded once more. “I will remind you.”
“I know,” I admitted, finally pulling back and letting my hands follow. My pads roamed the peaks of his cheekbones, his eyes fluttering with every swipe of my skin against his. “And I wish to be the one that reminds you.”
He was back to staring at me. Staring, listening, and contemplating.
Raegan leaned forward, his hands sliding up my back to push me closer to him.
With his eyes closed, his lips against my ear, he whispered his truth.
He told me what his ears had once looked like.
And all I could do was muffle a sob as a tear tracked my face.
A tear for all that he had lost, for his mother and his wings, for his father and his ears.
For what Raegan had endured and continued to mourn.
There was relief across his face as he leaned back again, placing one hand behind his head so that he had a better angle at which he could watch me.
“I have never liked being touched,” he murmured.
With a shy gasp, I retracted my hands from his body and made to move away. A low groan came from him as he set one hand on my back, keeping me close as he blinked slowly at me.
“Until you,” he continued. “The thought of others touching me makes me feel nauseous. But you…” The smile that took to his face was small and genuine as he continued to bore into me with his gaze. “Now that I have had a taste of your touch, Olivia, I fear I will become a madman if deprived of it.”
I couldn’t help but to giggle at his theatrics, and hearing me do so only made his smile stretch wider.
“You make me want to give it all up. You make me wish I was just a male, hand in hand with his female.”
I smiled as I shifted my focus to his wings, the long muscle of the one closest to me. Cautiously, watching him as I moved my hand towards it, I drew nearer. He shuddered when my fingers finally found the strong bone, the width that I hadn’t been prepared for.
“Then let it be so.”
Another shudder rippled through his body, followed by a gasped moan as I trailed my finger along the spine of his wing.
“But we are neither of those things, Ol — oh, stop that,” he groaned as I finished another drag of my finger along the sensitive surface. I felt him hardening with every second beneath me, a twitch against my thighs just as his body twitched with every torturous drag.
“You know, I was told that pixies can hold the human-size for as long as they like–”
“Olivia,” Raegan warned, low and guttural.
“Don’t Olivia me. Just hear me out,” I hummed, leaning against him and relishing in his natural heat. “What would it look like?”
His eyes, so sad yet so bright, widened. “What would what look like?”
“That life,” I breathed, hating myself for tempting my dreams. “That life where you aren’t Raegan at all. Where I’m not Olivia.”
Sadness dared to further hog his features, so I trailed a hand along the sharp point of his cheek and shook my head. “Your name, it would be…” I looked foolish as my grin split larger. “Derek, I think.”
“Derek?” His brow flicked upwards. “I don’t think I like that name.”
I muffled a laugh into his broad chest. “It suits you. I haven’t met a Derek that wasn’t arrogant as all hell.”
And now that sadness slipped away, leaving only a humoured grin and that sly look in his eyes. “Is that right? Well, what would your name be, Olivia?”
My name on his tongue would never fail to awaken something primal and needy within me. “Mary.”
“You’ve thought about this,” he said, a near whisper that almost sounded like a plea.
“Perhaps.” I grinned.
“I assume Derek is not a King,” Raegan continued, falling heavier into the image we painted for ourselves.
“Surely not,” I added.
“What human job would I have?” he purred, pushing some of my hair out of my face to tuck behind my ear. I groaned, leaning against the heat of his palm.
“Hmm…” I truly needed to contemplate this. “I think you would be a high-end investment banker. They’re all smug as shit, charming but in that sort of rude way that you can’t tell if you love or hate?”
“You speak so highly of me,” he hummed, his eyes lost completely as he stared up at me. “And what of Mary? Would she be skilled in the art of healing, too?”
“No,” I said too quickly. “Actually, yes… It is my life, regardless of what persona I take to, I suppose. But yes, I would still be a veterinary surgeon.”
“I have no idea what any of those words mean,” he admitted, smiling even larger. And hell, what I wouldn’t do to keep that carefree, gorgeous smile on his cold face.
“That’s how Mary and Derek would meet, I think.
Derek, because most people don’t understand him and he’s quite rude to most, decided he needed a cat.
And said cat decided to swallow a copious amount of plastic, as they do.
So Derek rushed his cat to the nearest emergency, and Mary saved his beloved creature. ”
“That sounds familiar,” he said, his eyes bright.
“And the surgery was quick but the recovery was long. Mary begged Derek to go home, to rest, but he refused to leave his little feline for the night, so he slept in the waiting area. And Mary waited with him.”
Smiling, Raegan’s head fell backwards and revealed the sharp angle of his jaw that I wanted to drag my tongue along.
A deep, approving groan came from him as I imagined he lapsed this little life behind his eyes, even though I knew he had no idea what an investment banker, veterinary surgeon, or waiting room was.
Whatever he was picturing, though, I wanted it. I wanted it so badly, because all at once Raegan was someone else entirely. And that version of him, rosy-cheeked and lost in the bliss of this simple tale we weaved, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
The damning thing was that I could see it, too.
I could see early mornings on the weekdays, hurrying ourselves across a kitchen and feeling his heat drag along me as we darted eagerly between stovetop and coffee machine.
Then I could see the late evenings, both of us returning home at separate times only to wind up in one another’s arms across a couch that had seen every ugly side of us.
And then I could see the weekends, buried into his side or sprawled out across his chest in any variety of setting.
This little life so quickly took the air from my lungs. And I knew my heart was beating rapidly, disgustingly fast, but Raegan paid it little attention. Because I was sure his was, too.
I was content to leave it at that, but Raegan was so lost in it. So, so lost that I had no desire to haul him out of it.
It was as if he was drunk when he lifted his other hand to place behind his head, giving him a new angle to drill his gaze into me. His words were smooth, if not a bit slurred, as he said, “I want that life with you, Olivia.”
It was a punch to my chest that broke through the wall I had erected around this delusion of mine.
It brought a tear to my eye that I did not stop from falling.
Raegan watched it, this tiny ball of liquid, as it slipped down my cheek.
And I loved that he let it, that he didn’t stop it, not until it was at the peak of my chin.
Then his lips, warm and hot, pressed against that small tear and he took it.
“Me too,” I whispered my admission. “But I want it here.”
His face tensed, his brows twitching, as he looked across mine several times.
I was convinced he was going to shut down, like he usually did, or come back to sternly tell me to stop being a fool.
But he didn’t, and I was sure that it was worse when he leant forward, his breath hot against the shell of my ear, and murmured, “So do I.”
I had a thousand things to ask, to offer, in that quick second, but his eyes dropped to my lips and his thumb ran along the softness of my lower lip.
“What a Queen you would be.”
Reality crashed over me like a violent wave, but I wanted it to. I wanted to drown in the depths of that realization, as long as he was right there with me. And judging by the ache in his eyes, he was.
“You would be the best of them,” he whispered. “They would love you. Your kindness would heal the pixies of Saoghal – I know it.”
He had to be drunk. There was no way he was admitting all of this. I pinched my arm, convinced it would bring me out of the dream, but I remained there, naked across his rippling body.
His thumb continued to drag over my lip, back and forth, as his eyes refused to lift from the flesh that was growing swollen at his tender touch. “You would be capable of saving my people, Olivia.” His words brushed over the very same skin his finger traced. “Just like you saved me.”
I frowned as my body shook, a new type of ache within me that demanded I fight for this male, for a King of Saoghal who had somehow derailed my entire life and centered it on him.
My finger found the delicate muscle of his wing once more, where I started to drag. And it felt like the right time to admit what I had known for so very long, what I had harboured in my heart but wore on my face in his presence. “Raegan, I–”
“Stop that,” he chuckled, referencing my trembling hand that with every graze against his feathers was causing him to stiffen beneath me. “We’re going to get no rest if you keep touching me like that.”
Lost in the lust that flared in his eyes, I laughed. “Like what?”
I looked just as evil as my finger dragged once more, tip to base of that glistening wing.
“I will take them away,” he purred, his grin wicked.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
He laughed, and I relented, because I truly did not want him to hide away the most beautiful part of him. So with a roll of my eyes and a new sort of exhaustion that came from baring one’s soul, I curled myself into his side and awaited the mass of his arm to hug me close to him.
And we truly did just rest.