As my anxiety fell, my curiosity climbed. “How old are you, Majesty?”
“Florian,” he grunted.
I smiled. “Florian.”
“One hundred and thirty-seven years,” he said absently.
I’d have thought him older, which did not bother me. Age was not something faeries worried about in the way mortals often did.
His hands squeezed my waist. “And in all those years, I’ve never seen…” His thumbs brushed the curving swells of my breasts. “Never touched anything so divine.”
I trembled. “And have you ever entertained someone in a carriage?” A foolish question, for he certainly had.
“Never had a female in my lap,” he said, watching gooseflesh rise over my skin. “Nor have I placed my mouth on their cunts.”
My stomach shrank and then bloomed, flushing a thorny warmth through my bloodstream. It gathered in my core and my chest.
He was dangerous indeed.
Knowing so did not stop me from smiling.
His eyes roamed up my neck to meet mine, amusement glinting within. They were clouded with a lighter blue I’d come to learn was desire. “Does that please you?”
“It does, but it also makes me wonder why I’m here,” I said carefully. “In your lap.”
“It’s where I want you.” His thumbs glossed over my nipples as he kissed my chin. “And I always get what I want.”
I believed him.
Such arrogance should have deterred me from wanting him. But when his mouth dragged to mine, his lips softer than silk as they parted my own for our tongues to lightly touch, I knew there was likely little he could say or do that would make me not want him.
I wanted Florian in a way I hadn’t expected to want any male—with a desperation and longing to peel back his every layer to claim and study what lurked beneath.
He groaned when I sucked his tongue, his teeth catching my lip and tugging. “I want to make you come.” It was his only warning before he clasped my face with one hand and slipped the other between my thighs.
He tipped my chin back and cursed against my throat. “When you need me, you must tell me.”
“I need you.”
He chuckled, his finger sliding through my wet center. “I meant before you’re dripping between my fucking fingers onto my pants.”
I stilled, embarrassed, and made to scoot back off him.
“Don’t move,” he growled, teeth latching onto the delicate skin under my jaw. “Not until you’ve thoroughly soaked my hand.”
His finger slid back and forth languidly, a teasing brush over my clit each time. I needed more, and rocked into the touch. His teeth sank into my skin in warning. “You take what I give you, how I want to give it to you.”
Frustrated and ridiculously close to release just from the timbre of his roughened words, I moaned.
“Good.” A kiss was pressed underneath my chin. “So very good.”
I clutched his shoulders. My fingers curled into his shirt. I wanted his mouth on mine, but his hand left my face to seize my hair.
The sharp sting on my scalp shocked me.
He wrapped the long strands around his fist and tugged until my back arched and my breasts were caught by his hot mouth. He sucked and kissed and gently nipped, and I knew without asking that he’d left marks.
Back and forth, he stroked me softly while my fingers scrunched the hair at his nape, and his mouth bruised my breasts. His hungry and throaty rumbles joined my noisy breaths. I shuddered, the sensations too much. “Florian…”
He released my breast to watch as I trembled and unraveled with a slowness that tortured. “Look at me,” he ordered, and I tore my heavy eyes open, his grip on my hair and his touch on my core unrelenting. “Perfect creature.”
Then his hold gentled, and I broke free of it to fall over him.
He was all hard heat beneath me, but when I dared to kiss his neck and reach between us to unbuckle his pants, to finally see and properly feel him, he grabbed my arms. “When you first greet my cock, it will be upon my bed and nowhere else. Sleep.”
I tried, but his gravel-coated promise and the hardness that failed to soften beneath me made it difficult. My eyes closed, my body languid and content, but my mind swirled with questions and anticipation over what lay ahead.
“This war you spoke of,” I said through a yawn. “Why would you want such a horrid thing to happen?”
Florian remained quiet for so long that I gave up on waiting for an answer.
When he gave one, it was a low question that accompanied the skimming of his fingers through my hair over my back. “What makes anyone wish for bloodshed?”
“Anger,” I said, unable to keep from thinking of Rolina. Unable to wipe one of many memories of hiding in my room when she drank so much that her fury made me an outlet for her grief. “Retribution.”
The king of Hellebore hummed, the deep and delicious sound a vibration against my nose. “Sleep.”
“Butterfly.” The thickened voice and the name I’d grown fond of stirred me awake. “Get dressed. We’ll arrive soon.”
My face was still in Florian’s neck. The soft wool of my coat draped over my back.
I groaned and lifted my head, blinking heavily.
Slowly, blue eyes, dark brows, and those devastating features became clearer.
The king smirked, swiping a tendril of hair from my cheek. “You slept through a parade of folk greeting us in the last town. Did I exhaust you too thoroughly?”
I was disappointed to have missed it, but I was also too tired to care. I blinked again in response, then felt the cool fingers of this winter-laden realm touch my bare skin. No wonder he’d covered me with the coat. My slip was still folded at my waist.
I rolled off the king to the seat beside him as he chuckled, frantically righting it.
“I do not share treasure, sweet creature. No one is going to see you.”
Though those words were a relief, they didn’t deter me from putting my gown back on. I finger-combed my hair and took greedy sips of water from the canteen the king offered.
He took it back while ordering, “Coat on.”
I pushed my arms into the sleeves and then immediately opened the drapes.
“Butterfly.”
I turned to find him holding my pouch of gold coins. Flushing, I ignored his amused gaze and snatched them from his hand with a mumbled, “Thank you.”
I tucked them into my coat pocket and looked out the window.
Snow-covered cobblestone streets filled with wagons of produce and lined with tall wood and stone buildings greeted me.
Among them were civilians dressed in heavy coats, furs, long-sleeved gowns, and thick tunics. The kaleidoscope of color and fabrics—ranging from moth-eaten cotton to expensive silks—I was accustomed to glimpsing on the dreary streets of Crustle seemed an entire world away.
And it now was, I thought with a sprinkle of alarm, absorbing this faerie kingdom’s dark blues, blacks, and varying shades of crimson.
Windows of colored glass dragged the eye to many homes. Some were two story, some three, and others tiny bungalows squashed between with adorable gardens.
Well-kept wooden signs with curling script hung from shop fronts. Displays in long, oblong, and arched windows were cast aglow by strings of fireflies within crystal orbs. Smoke puffed from almost every chimney within sight, rising toward the early evening sky.