“W Again.

ould you stop it?” I snapped, swatting Caelum’s hand away as he tried to snake his arm around my waist.

“You’re still limping,” he argued, as if that was justification for his continued attempts to carry me.

“You said it wasn’t much farther,” I said, nodding my head forward and motioning him on as I passed him.

He growled in response; the sound rumbling in his chest as he stalked after me. His massive hand came down on the top of my head, using it to steer my body more northward than I’d begun to walk. “You have the sense of direction of a hydra.”

“Aren’t they blind?” I asked, thinking back to the paintings I’d seen in the books that warned of the horrors of Alfheimr when the High Priestess wanted to scare me into staying away from the Veil. They were filled all the creatures we wouldn’t ever have to see with the Veil to protect us, so long as I learned to leave it alone. The Fae were terrifying enough, their ethereal bodies so similar to ours but different in all the ways that mattered. The monsters and beasts of Faerie were crafted from nightmares, molded from darkness and all the evil magic brought into the world. The enormous three- headed serpents didn’t even have eye sockets.

“Yes. Yes, they are,” he agreed, quirking an eyebrow at me as he walked at my side, his pace relaxed so that I could keep up.

As much as I feared the cave beasts, the thought of sleeping exposed to the elements and to the Wild Hunt and others who might kill us in our sleep was somehow even more terrifying. At least when I had Caelum to protect me, the two of us might have been able to escape a cave beast’s wrath.

But I doubted the Wild Hunt would let us slip away twice.

“I wish I was a hydra,” I teased. “Then I could just swallow you whole and not have to endure your endless hovering anymore.”

“My star, you can swallow me whole anytime you—” I smacked him in the stomach, drawing pleasure in the grunt that rolled into a laugh as the strike cut him off.

“There’s that tingle.” He laughed when I glowered at him.

“You do realize you aren’t supposed to enjoy being punched, don’t you?”

“I can think of worse ways to pass the time,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as if my little violent outbursts weren’t of actual concern to him. It both infuriated me and intrigued me that he was so unconcerned with my displays of violence, when so many men would’ve had me beaten for less.

“Do you not worry that I might bite it off if you put it near my mouth?” I asked, braving the dangerous tension between us to continue the conversation I should have left unanswered. His gaze felt heavy on the side of my face, his attention fixated on me when I didn’t turn to meet his stare. I focused on my feet, on the way my too-large boots trudged through the leaves and underbrush on the ground.

“Maybe,” he said finally, his eyes leaving my face as he turned his attention toward the path in front of us. A building appeared in the distance, the first of the village where we needed to gather supplies. “But I’d know a few moments of perfection until you did.”

I scoffed, laughter bubbling in my throat and doubling me over as I tried to catch my breath. “Do you believe the lines you feed to the women you try to bed? How do you say them with such a straight face?”

“Oh, my star, you seem to have misread the situation. I do not tell women lines or whisper sweet nothings in their ears or give them false promises I have no intention of keeping. They come to my bed entirely willingly with a great understanding of what I have to offer them: one night of fun. There is no need for romantic lines or exaggerations.”

“Then what would you call the perfection of my mouth? A dramatic half-truth?” I said, letting him guide me off the path itself and into the

woods surrounding the village so we could observe.

“I would call it the truth,” he said, turning toward me suddenly and trailing the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip. “I think we both know that there wouldn’t be many better ways to die than with your lips wrapped around my cock, Little One. The only thing that might be better is if I was between your pretty thighs, sinking inside you while you struggled to take me.”

I couldn’t breathe. We spoke of his death, of all the ways he could die that would be mixed with pleasure, and yet it was me who felt like I was on the verge of the end. As if my lungs would never draw in air again, not with the filthy words that came out of his mouth and the way his dark eyes seemed to glimmer with understanding as he stared down at me.

“Tell me again how much you don’t want me, my star. I do so love the way you lie.”

“I loathe you,” I wheezed, repeating the words from earlier as a blinding smile claimed his face.

“Hmm,” he hummed, leaning forward to touch his lips to the part of my mouth he’d explored with his thumb. My breath caught, a shuddering rasp in my lungs as he took my mouth and made it his. “Why fight the inevitable? We both know where this is leading.”

“With me brokenhearted and abandoned when you find something prettier?” I asked, the words escaping before I could rethink them. I hated the vulnerability they showed, the weakness it was to admit that he had the power to hurt me.

No one deserved to have that ability over me.

“I’ve seen my fair share of women. Trust me when I tell you there is nothing prettier for me than you. The only way this ends is with you as mine,” he said, drawing back to stare down at me meaningfully. “Always.”

I stuttered as I stared up at him, fumbling over the mess of words that came to my mouth. They all tangled together into a web of incoherence, leaving me with the distinct feeling that he would never stop throwing me off balance.

He enjoyed seeing me flounder far too much to ever allow me to just go about my day peacefully, without fear of making a fool out of myself when he said things I’d never imagined a man saying to me.

He touched a hand to my cheek, running that thumb over the freckles that dotted the arch of my cheekbone. His mouth still hovered just a breath

away, the words he murmured brushing the smooth skin of his lips against the junction of mine. “Come out and play with me, my star. I know you’re in there somewhere, burning away where you think no one can see you. Imagine how brightly you’d shine if you embraced all that fire.”

With his palm on my cheek and his face touching mine, we shared the very air we breathed between us. It seemed to sigh, something tangible arcing through the air as his hand slid down from my cheek to the Mark on my neck. The circle on the back of his hand shone with white light as he turned his head toward mine. His lips brushed over mine in a smooth caress, a glide that seemed to steal the breath from his lungs in the same moment it captured mine.

He groaned, a soft and low noise that erupted through the silence of the woods surrounding us. The village not far off ceased to exist, the potential for someone to see us no longer mattered as he dropped his free hand to my waist and guided me to take a few steps backward. The firm press of a tree at my spine ensnared me into the trap he’d set so quickly I didn’t have time to question any of it.

His mouth was a ghost of a thought over mine, almost there but not quite as he held my stare and shifted his head back and forth.

Taunting me. Teasing me.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” he murmured, the words brushing against me. They felt like a threat. They felt like a promise. They felt like everything I shouldn’t allow.

Yet I couldn’t move away, couldn’t stop it from happening; not with that intense, dark stare pinning me to the spot. I wondered just how it would feel to burn so brightly that I was reduced to nothing but ashes on the wind.

“I thought you already had,” I whispered, immediately cursing myself for my stupidity.

Caelum chuckled in response. “No, Estrella. I haven’t even begun to kiss you yet,” he said, tipping his head to the side to get a better angle. His mouth pressed more firmly to mine, molding against the seam of my lips as he guided my head back into the tree trunk. My mouth tingled where he touched it with his, and tiny pinpricks of cold static arced between us.

His lips stayed soft, a gentle exploration as he traced every corner of my mouth with his, and as he caressed me gently and found every weakness. When he parted for me, I followed in a well-practiced, synchronized dance that we had no right to know. We’d never danced together, never kissed

beneath a canopy of evergreens with branches hanging low all around us, and yet against reason, he felt familiar. He felt like coming home after years away, and the breath he expelled into my lungs was the first true breath I’d taken; one of pure, frosty air.

The girl who emerged from this tree canopy would never be the same.

I opened for him, letting him tip my head back with the hand on my neck and fingers that felt almost too harsh. His groan poured into my mouth and down my throat, his tongue tangling with mine as he drank from me as greedily as he gave. He kissed me fucking senseless, until my name was a thing of the past and my arms were wrapped around his neck. The moment my hand brushed against his Mark, he gasped into my mouth and pressed his body harder into mine.

The distance between us disappeared as he encased me in the safety of the cocoon he created with the tree and his broad form leaning over me. He pressed his hips against my belly, the length of him seeming to sear my skin through my dress, jolting me back to a bit of reality.

We needed to get back to the mountains before night fell.

“Caelum,” I murmured, tearing my mouth from his. He sighed his frustration, dropping his face into my neck and trailing his lips over the Fae Mark that was so similar to his. It blazed like ice so cold it burned, the white glow of it shimmering off his skin. “I’m sorry,” I added, feeling the need to apologize. I hadn’t asked for him to kiss me, but I damn well hadn’t stopped him, even though I knew better than to allow it.

With just one kiss, he’d proven everything I’d already known. The man would be the end of me.

“I would wait an eternity for you, Little One. You never need to be sorry,” he said, dropping one last gentle kiss to my mouth and backing away. I peeled myself off the tree, turning my attention back to the village as he gave me space.

My lips burned, the flesh bruised from his kiss as the cold air erased the heat of his mouth.

And I still thought it had been worth it.