The sight made her smile. It always did.
With only a living room, a bedroom, and a bath, her castle barely cleared 500 square feet of pure joy. It was the first house she’d owned, the first one she’d felt safe in. The one that meant she’d made it away from her father and a despicable future. Here, she could grow something that was hers. She stepped inside, dropped the purse on the table, and kept going to the bedroom, then to the second door without even stopping to change. She opened it and stepped outside, smiling.
Her backyard was so over the top, sonotsomething carefully designed or minimal. Nope. The garden was a riot of life, a wildjumble of scents and a bag of mixed colors that had no business working together, but somehow did.
Flowers bloomed in every shade imaginable from pale blush to screaming magenta, sunflower gold to a violet so deep it was nearly black. Raised beds overflowed with strawberries, while tomatoes tangled toward the sky. Neat rows of carrots, lettuce, and bright green snap peas stretched across one side of the lot. Basil, mint, rosemary, and sage crowded the corners buzzing with bees. It looked, honestly, like it had been planted half by intention and half by joyful accident and despite of it, things made sense. You planted, you watered, you pulled the weeds, and things grew. Simple. Predictable.
Unlike a certain elf who could turn a casual meeting into a headache without even trying.
She took a seed bag and moved to the raised beds, scattering seeds into the neat furrows she’d made earlier. Her fingers brushed the soil with precision, patting it down in a soft, even rhythm. Gael would probably know the name for every damn thing she was planting in forty-five languages. He probably knew how to read root structure like a love letter and tell the pH balance of soil just by scent. Earth affinity and magic tuned to the bones of the world and all that.
That touch. Its memory clung to her like heat after a fever. Not burning but there, low and warm and maddening.
She clenched her jaw.
“Nope,” she muttered, brushing her palms off on her bare thighs. “Not thinking about that. Not today. Not ever. Nope, nope, nope.”
But her fingers hesitated because she was already warm. Her breath had already changed. Her whole body had tuned itself to some low, insistent frequency that hummed behind her ribs and between her legs and would not shut up.
It had been a simple touch. Not even that, really. But it clawed at something deep, at an ache that hadn’t stirred in years. Now it was crawling under her skin, impossible to ignore. His mouth. His voice. His scent. Looping through her like a curse she couldn’t shake.
Sin carved in silk, that’s what he was. He wasn’t bulky, elves rarely were, but there was a dangerous elegance in the way he moved. Even without his magic, his body could destroy things. Or worship them. And for one wild second, she wondered what it would feel like if one of those things were her.
Oh hell no.
She dropped to her knees by the spinach before her body could go any further with that thought and buried both hands in the warm, crumbling soil, forcing the earth to take it, all of it. The heat. The ache. The sheer, traitorous pull of longing for someone who’d made it very clear she wasn’t on the list.
She. Did. Not. Want. To. Be. On. The. List.
Liar.
She let out a hiss through her teeth and shoved her hands deeper, up to the arms, like she could dig the want right out of herself. The dirt was cool and grounding, but not nearly fast enough. The flush in her cheeks wasn’t from the sun, and the damp between her thighs definitely wasn’t from sweat.
Absolutely stop this nonsense.
“Having fun?”
Beth jolted at the voice, then let out a breathy chuckle when she spotted Bryn leaning on the sturdy fence she’d built herself. Another elf, with tress-less ash-blond, cropped hair and blue eyes so pale they almost looked white in the fading light. Lean and willowy, too, but without the untouchable perfection. Not nearly as powerful or, let’s be honest, as beautiful as Gael, Bryn had something else going for him: he wasn’t a conceited prick. Down to earth. Friendly. Not that she’d been around him a lot,they were possibly only acquaintances. Still nice, though. “It’s more relief than fun,” she said, standing and cleaning her hands and arms. She didn’t immediately cross to him but waited a beat longer than normal. Elves and their damn sense of smell. No need for Bryn to catch a whiff of her...moment.
He didn’t seem to notice. “Did you have fun at the Oreads’ party?” he asked, squinting into the sun.
“I did. Were you there? I didn’t see you.”
He shook his head. “Passed.”
“Oh? How come?”
He glanced away, lips twitching into something that was too stiff to be a smile. One hand ran down the edge of the fence post. “Let’s just say some of the out-of-town attendees wouldn’t have appreciated my presence.”
She frowned. “Gael and Valerian?”
“Mostly Gael.”
That surprised her. Bryn looked so mellow, practically allergic to drama. “Why?”
Bryn gave a dry chuckle. “Oldest story in the world.”
“That’s a lot of stories. You’ll have to be more specific,” she said, then paused. “Unless it’s painful.”
