He really is bad at this, I thought.
“When I told you I did not approve of your affection for Allard, I was not being truthful,” he said, his voice low and his eyes on the man we both loved.
“My words were not truly rooted in disapproval, but rather in fear.”
“Fear?” I asked, giving him my full attention.
“We fae look human enough but we’re not. And that can be ….”
He searched for a word and I fought the impulse to fill in the blanks. Troublesome? Worrisome? Disastrous?
“Tragic,” he said finally.
“It doesn’t have to be,” I said. “Half of my heart is fae after all.”
“But will half be enough?” he asked, but didn’t seem to expect an answer, so I kept silent.
After a while, Lyrus patted me awkwardly on the shoulder and left soundlessly, leaving behind the slight smell of violets he seemed to carry around like a tangible aura.
Alone, I took up my vigil, staring at Allard’s sleeping form and my mind wandered to a conversation he and I had had about fairy tales. Allard had told me that many of the fairy tales collected by the Grimm brothers actually had their basis in fact. “Sleeping Beauty” was one of the best-known fairy tales on the planet.
Could it be? I thought. Could a kiss be the way to end the curse?
I looked at Allard.
He did not seem to be in any distress but his eyelids were so thin I could see his eyes dancing behind them in the grip of some dream.
His fur was drenched and matted with fever sweat even though the little fairies seemed to be fanning him with their wings.
I bent down and closed my eyes and kissed him.
It was like kissing a shaggy bathmat.
Until I felt the fur melting away and opened my eyes.
And where the beastly Allard had been a moment ago, there was now a man lying on the bed.
And he was beautiful in a way that was very different from Lyrus’ perfection. For one thing, he shone. Literally. His hair was silver-gilt silk and long, framing a face that was pale and metallic looking. But as I stared in wonder, the silvery cast of his skin was replaced by a healthy pink blood-blush, and his hair faded to the color of ripe wheat in sunlight.
It worked! I can’t believe it freaking worked!
I have confidence in you, Hildegard, Allard said in my mind. And then he opened his eyes.
“You have saved me,” he said. “I thought I would be cursed forever.”
“I don’t think she’ll be cursing anyone for a long time,” I said.
“I dreamt of that,” he said, “when you destroyed her Book of Secrets.”
It hadn’t exactly been on purpose but if he wanted to give me credit, who was I to deny it?
He threw off the coverlet, scattering the tiny fairies. He thanked them for watching him and dismissed them as he stood up.
Oh my God.
His body made Michelangelo’s David look like a pencil-dicked troll. He was slender, but his muscles were well-defined, without that exaggerated man-boob thing that so many muscular guys get. Shirtless Chris Hemsworth.
That. Only better.
And not to objectify, but Allard had a gorgeous cock.
Not that I’d had a lot of real-life experience for comparison, but my mother had taught art history and there’d been all those paintings of naked saints and martyrs to look at in her books.
“How did you know how to break the curse?” Allard asked, as my gaze lingered at his waist.
“You are not looking at my waist,” he said out loud with a faint smirk.
I blushed all the way to my toes, although he spoke the truth.
“It’s in all the stories,” I said. “True love’s kiss.”
“The storytellers often lied,” he said. “They knew if they revealed the truth of what they saw while they were in the land of light there would be consequences.”
He took a step toward me. “But happily, in this instance, they seem to have shared a truth.”
“What kind of consequences?” I asked because I could feel his arousal even though he was not yet erect and even though we were not yet touching. That felt strange.
But in a good way, because I was drowning in my own anticipation.
“The fae would have moved on to other realms if they thought their secrets were being revealed.”
“I’m glad they didn’t,” I said. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
Why are we still talking? I thought and a moment later we weren’t.
Kissing is better when both people are participating and kissing Allard was worth the wait. His mouth tasted incredible, like honeyed wine.
Fairies must have incredibly good dental hygiene I thought, wondering what my own must taste like since I’d been away from a toothbrush for several days.
Allard raised his head from mine and looked at me quizzically. I felt the ache of separation all the way down to my throbbing groin.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a Pisces. We’re really bad at this romance thing.”
“Perhaps you have not read enough fairy tales,” he said and then he kissed me again.
And then we did other things…and all thought was lost in overlapping waves of sensation.
He took me to his flower-covered bed and I realized I could feel his pleasure as keenly as my own. The experience was…transcendent.
He knew without asking what I liked. He nibbled on my earlobes as if they were tender fruit, lighting a fire in my nether regions that I knew only one thing would quench. And when he lifted my breast and licked around the nipple, I almost came right off the bed.
He knew how to use his hands and where he touched me, he left behind little pulses that electrified my senses.
“Now,” I whispered, or maybe simply thought and I felt his smile.
“Yes,” he said, and I could feel his heart going like mad. “Yes.”
He plunged into me then and the heat of it was so intense I thought it might fuse us together forever.
I pulled him closer, wanting all of him, wishing I could enter him as completely as he’d entered me and then I realized I could because I was in his mind and there was no boundary between what he was feeling and my own sensations.
We rolled together, and the loving went on and on—no fifteen minutes and then off to sleep. Sometimes he was on top, sometimes I was. We went up Magic Mountain, my back against his chest as he drove deep into me, going way past my G-spot and creating a brand-new H-spot.
Our tangled limbs wove together in patterns maybe the Kama Sutra could name, but I couldn’t.
I made noises I’d never made before and heard them echoed in his mind.
I didn’t know it was possible to have more than ten orgasms in a row and not die. Although I might have actually lost count.
***
Afterwards, Allard must have sent out some nonverbal command because human-sized fairies came into the tower room with towels and basins of sweet water and fresh clothes for us—ordinary, everyday clothes, which surprised me. He answered my unspoken question.
“I thought you might want to see your brother,” he said. “I thought these clothes might be more appropriate.”
“You know where he is?”
“I walked into a dream of his,” he said, “while I was waiting for you.”
“Where?”
He touched the tattoo on my hip. “At the place where you received the Ascaris.”
“What is the Ascaris anyway?”
He looked surprised that I didn’t know.
“It is the symbol of the house of Lyrus, your house. That’s why Lyrus came when you were attacked in the woods. The symbol called to him.”
“Like the bat symbol,” I said. Allard looked perplexed.
“Never mind,” I said, picking up my cell phone and the little pink stone that were on top of the folded clothes. One of the fairies must have taken them out of the tunic I was wearing.
The phone seemed to be fine, but there were deep cracks on the surface of the stone, as if it had been subjected to high heat.
I held it out to Allard. “What happened here.”
He took it from me. “It absorbed some of Syla’s dark magic,” he said, “as I hoped it would when I gave it to you.”
I was touched. Even before he really knew me, Allard had been protecting me. I felt another sweet rush of love toward him.