When I sniffled, wiping the last of the moisture off my face, Caldris grasped the hair at the back of my head in his fist and guided my head away from him with gentle pressure as I released his tunic and stared up into the brightness of his blue eyes. They were so unlike the obsidian stare I’d grown used to, so unlike the warmth I’d found in that dark stare.
They were so…other.
“You will not harm yourself. Is that understood?” he asked, his voice gruff as his probing stare searched my face.
“I do not take orders from you. Maybe you should consider the kind of desperation I must feel to even think of it. How much I must want to be rid of your stain upon my life that I would be willing to slit my own throat just so that you could never touch me again,” I snarled.
He glowered as he rolled his head to the side, the patience fading from his expression. “It would be pointless in the end. I will heal any injury you suffer, min asteren,” he said, releasing his grip on my hair. My neck tilted forward with the loss of pressure, dropping toward his and bringing our faces closer than I wanted.
“Why won’t you let me go? I don’t want you. I don’t want to be your mate. Surely you would rather spend your time with someone who does,” I protested, closing my eyes tightly as I turned my head away from his.
He swept my hair over one shoulder, baring my neck as his lips dropped to brush against the Viniculum. A surge of awareness flooded through me, the heat of his body sinking into my front as he knelt in the dirt in front of me as if there were no clothes between us. “You are too young to understand what we share. Just because you would take it for granted now does not mean that you will not come to appreciate me in time, as your fear and prejudice against my kind dissipates. You have a lifetime of untruths to overcome, but I can be patient for you. I have already waited centuries to feel the love we share. I would wait one hundred more.”
He murmured the words against my skin, the silken caress of his breath washing over my Fae Mark and sending an unwilling shiver through my body. The image of him between my legs flashed through my head, a rapid succession of images from my memory. They were twisted, distorted and shown from his perspective, so that even though I remembered the memories themselves, they were new—different altogether. My thighs clenched as Caldris trailed his nose over my neck, inhaling deeply.
I shuddered. “Do you ever think of anything besides sex?”
“Oh, Little One, what I feel when I’m inside of you isn’t about anything as mundane as sex. It’s about being united with you as one. Our bodies moving in tandem and our souls melded as closely as they can be. It isn’t about fucking you, but about being inside you in every way. The moments when you orgasm are the only ones when you open yourself to me, when you share your feelings so that I may feel them too,” he said, nipping at the top of my neck sharply. “Besides, you quite liked that for someone who hates me,” he teased, as he continued to breathe me in, trailing his teeth over my skin.
He drew away slightly to tear fabric from the bottom of his cloak, dipping it into the frigid water of the pool beside us. I flinched away as he touched the icy fabric to my skin, wiping away some of the mud on the side of my face with gentle fingers. His gaze drifted over me, the tenderness in his gaze stealing the breath from my lungs.
“I hate you more than you could possibly imagine,” I murmured, fighting back the urge to slap his hand away. It warred within me, fighting against the parts of me that needed his gentleness and soothing. The cruelty of my own kind made me feel as if I’d been dragged against the stones of the riverbed, my skin flayed to expose the raw parts of me I didn’t want anyone to see.
“What can I do to lessen that?” he asked, rinsing the cloth in the pool and touching it to the side of my neck that was caked with mud. His fingers gently worked to clean me, ringing the cloth out so that the water didn’t make me any colder than necessary.
“Let them go,” I said, fully aware that imploring him to free me would be pointless. He had already made it clear that he would never be willing to accommodate that desire, but perhaps I could negotiate for the others.
“After what they’ve done to you, you would still seek their freedom?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as he dipped the cloth beneath the neckline of my dress.
I swallowed, shaking off the involuntary response to his touch. “They’re scared. They see me as an enemy, and I can’t blame them. I would likely do the same if I were them—”
“You wouldn’t,” Caldris said, cutting me off. “No matter what rage is in your heart, you are not capable of doing something like that. You very well may kill to survive. You may harm and maim, but you would never demean someone in such a pointless way. The sole purpose of that was to hurt your heart, not to protect themselves.”
I scoffed. “I don’t think you know me half as well as you seem to think you do,” I said, turning my head away from his.
He reached up, grasping me by the chin with gentle fingers and turning me back to him. “I don’t think you know yourself at all.”
He held my stare, the challenge in his gaze blazing as he dared me to deny those words. I couldn’t, I couldn’t find a way to refuse the truth in what he was saying. My life was a stranger to me, but even worse, I didn’t feel like I knew the person hiding within my skin anymore.
“I hate you,” I whispered, fresh tears burning my eyes and nose.
His face softened further, pain lancing across his brow as he pursed his lips and hung his head forward. “I know,” he murmured.
The gentle expression only served to make me angrier as the sting of tears sharper, gathering moisture in my eyes. I shoved him back, pushing against his chest as I fought them back down. “I hate you!” I screamed, my face twisting with agony.
“I know, Little One,” he said softly.
“Would you say something else?! Stop acting as if you are the victim in this. Stop acting as if I am wrong because I will not forgive you.”
“What would you like me to say? Would you like me to tell you that I think you are behaving as a spoiled, prejudiced brat?” he asked, dropping the cloth to the rocks as he glared down at me. “That in a few years, you will come to regret the words you’ve spoken to me in anger? Those years may feel like an eternity to you, but they are nothing to me. You will come to your senses and learn to appreciate what I offer you. All I need to do is wait.”
My chest heaved, my breath coming in sharp gasps as I fought through my rage. I hated his words, because I knew there was truth in them. He had the kind of time, the kind of lifespan, I couldn’t even dream of.
He just had to wait.
I shoved his chest again, wincing when he caught my wrists. He held me still, staring down at me as his eyes bled to that familiar darkness I’d stared into so many times before. “You cannot hate me without hating yourself, Little One. Think of that the next time you want to blame me for this bond. I didn’t choose you anymore than you chose me.” His words lashed against me, harsh and hurtful and all the things I knew myself to be when I was angry. “I am just not spiteful enough to throw you away on principle.”
I bitterly mocked him. “So fucking romantic, and you wonder why humans believe the Fae to be brutes.”。