Cerulean contemplates this. “Then show me your magic, and I’ll show you mine.”
Slipping his fingers through my digits, he weaves us together. Sparks pop at the tips. His skin is smooth, his touch magnetic. He aligns our arms and spreads them wide.
“The zephyr,” he whispers as a dainty breeze swishes between us.
“The gale,” he hums, summoning a thrust of air and maneuvering our arms along its trajectory.
“The wuther,” he rasps as a stream of turbulence roars dully and blows me into him, the blast pummeling our clothes.
It’s a delicious rush. The impact whisks my white locks with his obsidian-blue ones, a cloudy layer flapping against that single, longer rope of hair.
We become the sky. We become dawn and dusk.
And I can see the texture and shape of each flow. I canseethem.
He’s showing me the wind. He’s showing me every type and shape possible. A swatch of hazy, floating opal. A prismatic streak zooming past. Then a fluid funnel, metallic and blurred at the edges, raging against our garments.
Our bodies inhale and exhale in tandem, his shoulders bracing me, my hips framed by his waist, my ass resting against his pelvis. Hoarsely, Cerulean lists a dozen names for wind. Some of them I know, others I’ve never heard of.
He tells me magic must be honed to be wielded. It takes patience to understand it, respect to bond with it, discipline to wield it, and humility to honor it. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, just like he’d never viewed natural acts as magical.
Each comes with strength. Each with sacrifice.
This moment is familiar because I’ve known it before. Years ago, another Fae introduced me to the wind, making me chase it until I giggled out loud.
Tears pools beneath my closed lids—
“Very careful now,” Cerulean warns.
—until I can’t take it anymore.
I slide around to face him, my breasts dragging over his bare chest. My body’s alive, thrumming against his muscles. Craning my head, I let my eyes scroll from those dark blue lips to those eyes.
Provocative eyes. Wicked eyes.
This Fae ruler. This vicious creature.
My thighs spread an inch, and he takes that inch, slipping through enough for me to feel the ledge of his cock. It juts along my inner thigh, inciting a pleasurable throb beneath the nightgown. My fingers climb through his hair, itching to trace the blades of his ears.
I use my thumbs to pop the winged caps free, the jewels tumbling to the ground. The second my fingers scale those slender points, my restraint snaps—and so does his.
The Fae grabs my face, his nails pinching my skin. His head swoops down, his lips seething against mine. “You fucking vice of a human.”
Then our mouths slam together.
21
It happens without a warning, like most things between us. I don’t wait for him, and he doesn’t wait for me, because we’re done with that shit. So the instant his lips slant over mine, and my lips surge into his, it’s over. I’m finished baiting, finished resisting.
And hell yeah, I’m through with talking.
Cerulean’s mouth fits around my own. The contours of those lips shove into me, sharp and swift, a violent gust of a kiss that knocks me off my feet. His lips rock into mine, the force of it yanking a gasp from the back of my throat.
My arms fling around his shoulders, the tips of my fingers prickling as they carve through his hair and cling to his scalp. I pull on the roots, punishing him, savoring him.
A hushed groan vaults from his chest and ripples across my mouth. One hand dives down my back, burning a trail over my flesh and then catching my ass in his palm. Seizing the back of my head with his other hand, Cerulean hoists me against the cliff of his naked chest, his coat flaring open around us. The nightgown rubs his flushed skin, softness mashing into muscle and bone. Separated by a swatch of material, my nipples bud over hard, heated flesh.
An impatient breeze whisks our hair, scattering all that white and blue. This elicits a delicious shiver, and I respond by thumbing his ears.
