“Frightened, little butterfly?”
At that, I looked at his brown leather boots. They were giant and pointed at the toes. “No.”
“If you’re going to be so bold as to lie, you will at least do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye while you do.”
His crisp words washed the heat from my cheeks. My spine locked, every instinct screaming to flee.
I could already hear Madam Morin’s threatening disapproval, so I did as he wished. I met his gaze, expecting to find a glower—more displeasure within the endless dark blue.
Instead, I found a calm stillness to his features, rendering them sharp like stone, and a studious glow that brightened his eyes. “Much better,” he murmured, and his head tilted slightly. “Now try again.”
“Try again?” I asked, confused.
“Answering the question.”
Oh. I squeezed my fingers together.
It was growing abundantly clear that I was doomed.
Whoever this male was, he was not from Crustle. His demeanor, the power roiling from him like a second shadow carried as an ever-fluttering invisible cloak, was too much.
It was as lethal and true to every word I’d heard and read of those with enhanced magical abilities. Of those native to Folkyn.
He was going to punish me by speaking of my incompetence and disrespect to Madam Morin. I could feel it. Or worse, he might even hurt and humiliate me until he’d felt I’d sufficiently learned my lesson.
At a loss for what to do, I bit the inside of my cheek and felt the sting of tears grow stronger.
All the while the creature radiating a power that shortened each breath did not blink. He waited for my answer, lashes curled toward his dark brows.
My chest tightened and tightened. I’d never felt more trapped, more like prey, as this faerie refused to set me free of his gaze. “I’m nervous,” I finally confessed, my words rasped. “And scared, yes.”
His blank expression did not change. “Was that very difficult to admit?”
“No,” I said, but when his head cocked, I corrected myself. “Y-yes.”
“Why?” he asked, his eyes never leaving mine as he crossed from the liquor cabinet to the divan. The nearing of such energy, of all that he was, raised the hair on my arms. “Because I frighten you?”
“I do not know you…” I stopped, for I was digging a deeper grave with every passing minute.
He huffed and lowered to the divan with eye-drawing grace, his form far too large although the seat was designed for two. “Try again.”
“Yes, you frighten me,” I admitted, turning to fully face him.
He placed his leg over the other, black trousers snug over muscular thighs. “What is your name, butterfly?”
I attempted to choose from the many names I’d always dreamed of having. In the end, I knew he’d see any of them for the lie they were. “I do not have one.”
That earned a surprised lift of his brow. He repeated in a slow drawl, “You do not have one.”
I shook my head.
He hummed. The arm spreading atop the divan caused his shirt to open more at his chest. “Come closer.”
Unsure how close he wanted me, I stopped mere inches from where he sat.
His leg dropped. “Closer.” My heart kicked at my sternum as his scent, an earthy caramel, deepened and lured. His knees opened, revealing the hard bulge at his groin that threatened to burst the seam of his pants.
My eyes stayed fastened upon it a moment too long, but thankfully, he did not comment.
“Closer,” he almost rasped. When I stood right between his knees, he said, “Yes, stop.”
The heat of him was overwhelming. A warmth so crystal sharp, it burned like the touch of iced water.
My lips parted, and my stomach clenched, as he stared at my mouth while saying, “Much better.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. He spoke before I could feel forced to say anything at all. “Surely, the people of this bustling town must call you something.” The word bustling was said as though he’d meant rotten.
“Flea,” I said. “My guardian called me Flea.”
His bark of laughter was unexpected, the throaty melody transforming his features from mouthwatering perfection carved from marble to ethereal. The sound died far too quickly for my liking as he said, “I do hope you’re trying to evade giving me an honest answer. If so”—he dragged his teeth over his bottom lip—“you are rapidly improving in the art of deception.”
“I wish I were,” I said quietly, attempting to smile.
His features flattened, eyes flaring so fast and bright, they turned an iced blue. The temperature in the room dropped. Before I could understand why, the faerie licked his teeth behind closed lips. “This guardian must have truly loathed you.”
“She did.” And I couldn’t avoid recalling the one time I’d asked Rolina if she would call me something else—couldn’t help but lose the nervous excitement that had thickened my blood as I remembered what my request had been met with.
Laughter followed by a slap across the face.
“Where is she now?” the male asked softly, daringly—as if he had already guessed.
“Dead.”
Another hum. “This pleases you.”
I shouldn’t have said anything, but he was crossing a line I did not think needed to be crossed. “I don’t wish to speak of it.”
I awaited reprimand. A demand to divulge whatever he sought.
It never came.
“Very well.” I stared at him in surprise and felt the tension slowly leave my shoulders. “But I will not call you such a thing.”
I nodded once, my lips unwilling to open.
His chest rose and fell with a deep inhale as his eyes briefly left mine to traverse my body. “Do you like that gown?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
Confused by all his questions when I thought he’d only wish to get to know my body, I couldn’t help but gently ask, “Why do you care to know?”
He laid his other arm over the headrest of the seat, fingers stroking lazily along the steep angle of his hair-peppered jaw. It firmed under his touch as he studied me. “You are brave.” Noting the furrowing of my brow, he explained, “To ask anything of me unless it pertains to how you can please me.”
I knew I had to, though it still irked me to say, “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” he said, his teeth flashing bright as they caught his pointer finger. “I do not think you are.”
I flushed, loathing it.
“Answer the question, and perhaps I shall forgive your carelessness.”
My eyes met his, and in them, I found a darkness gathering. His thumb rubbed his upper lip. “It itches,” I said, tracking that movement intently. “The dress.”
“Then take it off.” It was not a request and also not an order. It was not a suggestion, either. Rather, the words grazed the skin like the daring tickle of a blade’s point.
A taunting test.
Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. I was here to do more than undress for him, and it seemed it was time for the reason he’d visited this pleasure house.
Yet fear did not seize me as I’d guessed it would. As I clutched the mass of material at my hips and pulled upward until the entire monstrosity was falling from my hands to the floor, a rush of unexpected liquid heat swept through me.