“What is this?” I asked, staring at a natural pool in front of me. Water trickled down the face of the butte, falling into the
steaming pool in front of us. The carvings in the rock walls surrounding the pool were different than those below. A mix of humans and the same faces of the Gods we’d seen on our journey up the path, entwined in positions that left little wonder to the purpose this place had once served.
“According to my father’s books, this place was sacred to the Fae, once upon a time. The Old Gods were born from the Primordials, the first beings who didn’t have a human form unless they willed it for a time. This mountain was sacred to the Primordials Peri and Marat,” he said, gesturing to the couple at the center of the carvings in the rocks. A male and female Fae embraced, her legs wrapped around his hips and her back curved in ecstasy. “They were lovers once, before their only son was killed in one of the first Fae wars between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. They celebrated his birth every year by coming to the place of his conception and joining together amongst the Fae and humans who joined them.”
His fingers swept the hair off one side of my neck, his breath warm against my chilled skin. He chuckled as he undoubtedly watched my skin pebble with his proximity. “I think you can guess how they celebrated.”
I cleared my throat, stepping away from him and the canvas of rock that detailed every sordid event. The faces of the Old Gods stared back at me, twisted in pleasure as they toyed with one another or with the humans who had come to partake.
I’d never seen pleasure the likes of which was stamped onto every human’s face, with no traces of the pain I would have expected after everything I’d been taught about the ethereal beings. “How old are these carvings?” I asked, glancing at the haunting face of the God of the Dead. He sat on one of the chairs carved from stone at the side of the hot spring, two humans kneeling at his feet between his legs. His hair barely skimmed his bare shoulders, the rippling muscles of his physique bulging with effort. One of his hands was buried in a woman’s hair, pulling her toward his bare waist, with the entirety of his swollen cock revealed.
Holy Gods.
I turned away from the erotic image, my eyes landing on each of the Gods engaged in similar acts. It wasn’t only the male Fae who enjoyed the partnership of more than one human at a time; female Fae were shown grouped off with two to three human men at once, as well.
“I take it the Fae don’t believe in monogamy?” I asked, snorting as I gave the carvings my back. Facing Caelum, I watched his eyes drift down from the s*xual art on the side of the mountain, a smirk on his lips as he met my gaze.
“What’s wrong, Little One? Never been with two lovers at once?” he asked, his lips curving into a full blown smile when I flushed.
“No,” I clipped out, sidestepping him and making my way to the hot spring where I knelt down. I skimmed the surface of the water with my fingers, immediately feeling the warmth of the water suffuse my skin. “Have you?”
“I imagine I have done a lot of things you haven’t done.”
“Eew,” I groaned, immediately regretting asking the question as envy consumed me. Men were free to do as they pleased, whether that involved one woman or six. If I’d done the same, they’d have sent me to be purified by the Priests or hung me for my crimes against The Mother.
It depended on Lord Byron and the High Priest’s mood that day.
Caelum shrugged, stepping up beside me. He tugged his tunic out of his trousers, tearing it off over his head. With me kneeling at the side of the pool, I was immediately reminded of the humans kneeling for the God of the Dead.
I glanced up at him, finding him staring down at me intently. Swallowing, I held his gaze for a few seconds. Seconds that felt like hours.
The tension between us pulled taut, leaving no doubt to the accuracy of his earlier prediction.
I didn’t know how I would be able to travel at his side, sleep beside him every night, and never seek out the promise that lurked in his eyes as he watched me. The heat that blazed there was like nothing I’d ever seen: a desire so potent I didn’t think I’d be able to withstand it.
He reached out with a massive, calloused hand, cupping my cheek and running his thumb over my bottom lip. The tip sank inside, brushing against my tongue as the flavor of his skin teased my mouth.
“Tell me again how much you don’t want me, Estrella,” he said, pointedly using my name as he stared down at me. The arrogance of those words snapped something inside of me, my desire fleeing as rational thought returned.
I sank my teeth into his thumb, gratified when it twitched in response to the pinch of pain. When I pulled back, I stood fluidly and glared up at him as he raised his thumb to his mouth and sucked a drop of blood from his skin.
I ignored the last pulse of desire that still throbbed within me, ignored the strange urge to take his thumb into my mouth and suck. He stared at the expression on my face, something dark gleaming in his gaze. “You’re a dick,” I said, huffing and gathering my hair in my hands. I toyed with the snarled edges, wincing when I realized just how disgusting I must look.
How many days had it been since I’d bathed? Since I brushed my hair? “Why don’t we find out just how much you like my dick, Little One?”
he asked, his hands dropping to the ties on his trousers. He unknotted them while I watched in shock, my eyes caught on the smooth, nimble way his fingers worked the laces apart.
He kicked off his boots, sliding them to the side as my eyes snapped back up to his face. I held his probing stare, my lips pressing into a thin line when he smirked at me and shoved his trousers down his thighs.
I swallowed, compelling myself not to look, not even when he bent forward to push them off the rest of the way, pulling the fabric off his calves and taking his wool socks along with them. He stood up straight in front of me, running a hand through the short blond hair on top of his head. “It won’t bite you, Estrella,” he said with a grin, taking a single step closer to me.
He didn’t touch me, keeping a breath between us as he towered over me. He was so close that I stared at his bare chest, at the swirling lines of the Fae Mark where it wrapped around his bicep and crawled up the side of his neck.
It dipped down, skimming just over his collar bone before it stopped abruptly. From what I could tell, mine did the same, as if it was incomplete and waiting for the last piece to be written. If what Caelum had said before was to be believed, it was waiting for the completion of the bond.
I jolted when Caelum grasped my hand in his, lifting it to touch the place where the edges of the Mark curved onto his chest. His eyes closed at the moment of contact, and a shudder wracked my body as a feeling of comfort overwhelmed me.
Touching his mark, feeling the warmth of it flooding through me, felt more like home than the cabin I’d shared with my family ever had. Like the other Fae Marked were always meant to be my true home, the place where I belonged.
“Most Fae only practice monogamy once they’ve found their mates,” he said, answering the question I’d asked what felt like ages ago. I’d gotten distracted by his proximity.
By his nudity.
“Oh,” I said, my brain struggling to keep up with the conversation, knowing that I would see all of him if I only looked down.
“From what my father said, the Fae are very possessive of their mates. They’ve been known to kill if someone even looks at their mate inappropriately,” he said, reaching out to unclasp the cloak from my shoulders. The fabric puddled behind me, landing on the stone surrounding the hot spring. I shivered, the cool air kissing my skin as a sudden breeze blew through the trees.
Caelum smiled and leaned forward to sweetly touch his lips to my forehead. Turning so his arm brushed against mine, he strolled directly to the edge of the hot spring and walked down the slope that led into the water. The steam increased as his cool body touched it, the muscles of his ass flexing with every step.
Gods.
I swallowed, shoving down the images of nails digging into his flesh that erupted through my head in a chaotic mess, and I pushed away the
feelings his broad, muscular physique brought. He turned to me suddenly, jaw clenched, with eyes narrowed and so dark they almost looked black.
I’d been so busy staring at his ass, so fixated on the relative safety of that part of him compared to the front, when he turned I got an eyeful of everything.
He paused, the water touching just above his knees and hovering so close to where his length hung down his thigh. I froze, my body turning to a statue as my mouth dropped open in shock.
“Gods,” I muttered, my hands lifting to cover my mouth as I realized I’d said the word out loud. Caelum grinned, tilting his head to the side as he studied me, and made no move to sink lower into the water. Made no attempt to hide the manhood that must have been the source of his arrogance.
Under any normal circumstances, I’d have said that the man was overcompensating with his bravado for something that was lacking elsewhere. Caelum’s were not normal circumstances; his cock something I didn’t even know was within the realm of possibilities. I guess the magic of the mate bond had chosen a mate for what would be a very pleased Fae female.
“See something you like?” he asked, finally stepping backward until his lower body submerged, and I was freed from the temptation to continue to admire his cock.
“That looks more like a torture device than an instrument for pleasure,” I said, shaking myself and wrapping my arms around my waist.
Caelum chuckled, ducking his head beneath the surface. He ran his hands through his hair when he re-emerged from the water, pushing it back from his face as it dripped down over his chest and the muscles on his stomach. “When the time comes, you’ll take all of it and beg me to fuck you harder, Little One,” he said, walking through the water until he reached the edge where I stood.
He stared up at me, affection in his gaze that didn’t belong; it didn’t fit for how briefly he’d known me. If I hadn’t known better, I might have compared him to the images of the humans on their knees.
To the complete and utter worship on their faces as they serviced a God.
He reached up, catching me by the ankle and gently lifting my foot off the ground. A shock ran through my body when he touched me, my desire so potent I didn’t think I’d ever felt anything like it. But it also came with
the knowledge that it wasn’t real. It wasn’t about Caelum or about me, but about the magic on our necks that marked us as the same. He could have been anyone, any of the Fae Marked, and I suspected my body would react the same way.
Nothing else made sense. Attraction like this didn’t exist.
He slipped my shoe and sock off, tossing them to land next to his boots. “What are you doing?” I asked, stumbling back a step until I was out of reach.
“I think it’s obvious that you aren’t going to come in unless I give you a little push,” he said, reaching for my other foot. I kicked out, my bare foot colliding with his wrist with a solid thump that would have hurt most men.
Caelum only grinned at my show of violence.
“I’m not going to come in at all,” I said, my lips twisting as I shook my head.
“Baths don’t come around often for people on the run, and soon enough it will be too cold for anything that isn’t a hot spring. Don’t be foolish, Estrella. Get in the water,” he said, stepping back from the edge to give me some space.
I eyed the water with desire, wanting nothing more than to submerge in the warmth of it. Even with the steam billowing around me, the temperature had dropped since the sun had set. I bit my bottom lip, considering a way to do it without getting too close to him while I was naked. The spring was big enough for a dozen people. The question was whether or not he would stay on his side.
“Turn around,” I ordered, lifting my leg to pull off my other shoe.
“Well that’s not exactly fair. You’ve seen me,” he said, a smirk on his face that leaked into his voice, but he walked to the opposite side of the pool, resting his elbows on the edge and facing out over the valley.
I hurried to strip my dress off, splashing through the water in my haste to get entirely submerged before he could turn around. Warmth surrounded me, sinking inside and heating the bones I hadn’t even realized were chilled. Every aching joint in my body practically moaned at the feeling of bliss the warmth provided.
I lowered myself until I was submerged up to my neck, not wanting to answer any questions about what he might see. His body was free from scars, flawless in a way mine would never be, reminding me that we
weren’t the same, and no matter what the Fae had decided we would become soon, our lives hadn’t been the same.
“Okay,” I said, sighing as I dipped my head back to wet my hair. Letting it soak in the water, I ran my fingers through it to try to get the knots out the best I could without a brush.
“Let me help,” Caelum said, stepping closer to me as I struggled to reach a tangle at the back of my head.
“You and the basilisk in your trousers stay right there, thank you very much,” I said, snapping to attention the moment he came closer.
He stopped the moment I uttered the command, his face lighting with amusement. “I’m not wearing any trousers.”
“And that is the problem. I like my intestines in my stomach and not shoved into my lungs. You just keep that thing away from me,” I said, watching as he chuckled and looked at me as if I’d grown a second head.
“I can’t say that I’ve ever heard that one before. Usually women ask me to introduce them to the Gods,” he said.
“Gross.” I shoved back the surge of jealousy in my veins. “Can you maybe not talk about your previous conquests when you’re trying to get me to fuck you? It’s rude.”
“Jealous, Little One?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me as he took another step. “Why don’t you help me erase the memory of the ones who came before you? We both know they don’t matter anymore.”
I swallowed, ignoring the confusion that came with his words. He took another step, his growing proximity a far more important topic to dive into than why the others didn’t matter. “I swear to Gods if you touch me, I will rip it off and feed it to you, Caelum,” I said, backing away a step.
His grin widened as he took another step forward. “I probably shouldn’t find it so arousing when you threaten me, and yet I get a little tingle every time.” He shrugged as if there was nothing that could be done about it, stepping closer to me with his hands raised innocently. “I promised you I wouldn’t touch you in that way until you’re ready. I meant it, Estrella. You can trust me with your body.”
“I don’t even know you,” I said, my back touching the edge of the pool. He closed the distance between us, hovering just out of reach. The knowledge that he was so close, the feel of his presence drifting to my skin through the water, was maddening.
It pushed at my self-control, testing everything I thought I knew about myself.
“I know, and we have all the time in the world to get to know one another. For now, turn around. Let me help you with your hair. We don’t know when we’ll next get an opportunity like this.” He lowered himself into the water until only his head was exposed, putting it level with mine. Tearing my fingers free from the snarl I couldn’t quite work free, I sighed and turned my back on him. He slid his fingers into my hair, carefully pulling it away from my naked body so that his knuckles only brushed against my skin occasionally as he worked in silence.
“Where is your father now?” I asked, trying to fill the silence that hung between us.
“Dead. Some years ago now.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, knowing the pain of that grief. A commonality we shared, another link between us that gave us an undercurrent of understanding we shouldn’t have felt.
“We weren’t close,” he said, working his fingers through my hair. His words seemed to conflict with the way he’d spoken of the man who’d educated him about the ways of the Fae and their history. “He was dedicated to his studies and his responsibilities. His wife hated that I existed, and she did her best to drive a wedge between us. It worked more often than not.”
I stilled. “His wife wasn’t your mother?” I asked, wondering if his birth mother had died when he was young. It was the only explanation; the alternative of him being the child of an affair but raised by the father was unheard of.
“No. My father had an encounter with a married woman when he attended a party. It was somehow decided it would be my father who’d raise me, but his wife never warmed to me. They never had children of their own, so I became the sole heir, regardless of my status.”
“That’s terrible. To be raised in a home without love…” I trailed off, unable to fathom a life without my family who would have done anything for me. Both my parents and Brann would’ve given their lives for me in a heartbeat.
He sighed, leaning in until his breath touched my cheek. True to his word, he didn’t touch me, keeping a thin layer of water between us as I
turned my head to look at him. My hair slipped out of his hands, my lips hovering so close to his, if I moved in the wrong way, they would touch.
Caelum’s stare drifted down to my mouth, lingering there before those piercing dark eyes lifted back to mine. “It was as bad as you can imagine.” His words hovered on the air between us as a wall cracked inside my heart.
Not all scars were visible.
“But it taught me one thing,” he said, reaching out to tuck my hair behind my ear and smooth the tangles on the side of my head. “No matter what my future looks like, nothing will keep me away from the woman I love. Not even death will keep me from her.”
I cleared my throat, suddenly overcome with the need to retreat from the intensity of his words. Even barely knowing him, the thought of him one day having that with someone else filled my chest with lead.
With heartache I hadn’t earned.
What difference did it make to me if he touched another woman with those gentle fingers that so often stroked my skin? If his breath washed over another woman’s cheek while he murmured in her ear? If he tore another woman in two with his monumental cock?
It didn’t. It couldn’t.
“She’ll be a lucky woman,” I said, running my hand through my hair as he finished with the tangles. My fingers were pruney, my toes tender as they scraped the bottom of the hot spring.
“I hope she sees it that way,” he said, shrugging his shoulders with a smile. As if he knew he was both impossible to deny and impossible to tolerate, all in the same breath.
“I should get out. Do you mind?” I asked, smiling sheepishly as he stepped away. He turned his back to me where he stood in the middle of the pool, leaving me to heave myself out of the water and onto the edge of the spring.
The sudden burst of cool breeze pebbled my skin, everything in my body going still in response. I turned to look over my shoulder, finding Caelum’s tense face staring back at me. His gaze wasn’t on mine, instead fixated on my naked flesh and the scars covering my back in thick white lines.
When his eyes raised to mine finally, the menace in them stole the breath from my lungs. His jaw clenched, his nostrils flaring, as he took that first step toward me. Water sloshed at his sides as he prowled through the
hot spring with a look of pure rage etched into his handsome features. I scrambled, gathering my dress in my hands and covering my body with it as I spun to face him, tearing the sight of my scars away from him and hoping I could somehow defuse the situation and calm the monster that seemed to rattle at the cage of Caelum’s skin.
He placed his hands on the stone edge of the spring and, with an animalistic grace I would never hope to achieve lifted his nude body out of the water and unfolded to his full height. Through the steam, his dark eyes glimmered with the promise of violence and retribution. “What the fuck are those?” he growled, something darker echoing in his voice.
As if he was truly part beast, his rage made him vibrate as he stalked toward me. The Fae Mark on his neck glowed with his anger, the black and white swirls of ink pulsing in time with his steps.
I wondered if the Mark stole our humanity, if it made us more feral, like the Fae who claimed us.
“It’s nothing,” I said, swallowing and forcing a lame smile to my face. Shame heated my cheeks, leaving me wanting nothing more than to pretend the last few moments had never happened. That he’d never seen the consequences for my disobedience as a girl.
“That is not nothing.” He crossed the remaining distance between us, his eyes gleaming with a predatory light. All thoughts of his promise not to touch me until I begged for it forgotten, I backed away from him in a panic. Clutching my dress to my body, I shielded myself from his view when he was lost to the anger that danced in his face.
My back struck the rock carvings on the side of the mountain, the stone figures of the Old Gods digging into my spine as Caelum pressed his body flush against the front of mine. His forearm curved above my head, resting against the rock above me as he leaned down and surrounded me.
“Caelum,” I whispered, watching as the first snow of the season fell behind him as white flecks against the fading light of the evening sky.
“Who the fuck hurt you?” he growled, his chest rattling in front of my face as I stared up into his obsidian eyes. Something shifted on his face, a rage like I’d never seen taking over as he gritted his teeth when I didn’t give him the answer he demanded. “Who?”
“I was a difficult child,” I said, shaking my head to try to justify what I knew now had been just another way of the lord grooming me to become what he wanted. “Always getting into trouble. Playing with the boys instead
of sewing with the girls. Lord Byron thought it would force me to behave more appropriately for a young lady.”
“Is he still breathing?” Caelum asked, tilting his head to the side slightly as he stared down at me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, swallowing against the dread threatening to close my airway. “I fled Mistfell when the Veil shattered. It was the only way to survive.”
Caelum grasped my chin between two fingers and tipped my head up, dropping his face lower until his mouth was only a breath away from mine when he spoke the vow I didn’t doubt he had every intention of keeping. “He won’t be for long.”
I swallowed, unable to come up with any kind of response in the face of his wrath. No one in their right mind would threaten to kill a Lord for disciplining a girl.
“He will suffer for every mark on your skin, every moment he frightened you, every tear you shed, before I finally put him out of his misery.” He leaned forward, brushing his lips against the corner of my mouth. Not quite a kiss, not quite not. Everything in me tightened, the fear of the moment dissipating as I shifted with sudden desire to feel that full mouth on mine.
He stared down, as if he knew exactly what flashed through my mind, how the thought of him murdering my tormentor turned me on just as much of the feel of him hard against my belly.
He stepped back as quickly as he’d come to touch me, turning his back and running both hands through his hair as his muscles tensed with frustration. With control. Because I hadn’t asked him to touch me yet, I realized. He’d stayed true to his word, keeping my body safe with him. Even with me naked against him, he hadn’t taken liberties the way most men would have.
I narrowed my eyes on a roadmap of scars on his back, horrific marks of lashings far worse than the ones I’d suffered. The thick, raised white lines covered his back, crisscrossing and overlapping over his flesh as if he’d been whipped more times than I could count.
My dress dropped to the ground, forgotten as I closed the distance between us. I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t seen them before. Had I really been that distracted by his ass?
Yes.
I touched my fingertips to one of the scars in the center of his spine, feeling his body still at my touch. “Who did this to you?” I asked, my voice sounding softer and more broken than I’d ever heard it. Had this been what he’d meant when he spoke of the struggles of his childhood? Of being raised by a woman who hated him?
“Someone who I will never allow to touch you,” he vowed, spinning back to face me. There was no fabric between us when he pressed against me, nothing but the feeling of skin against skin as he pulled me into his chest.
His hands touched my scars, fingers drifting over the pattern as if he needed to memorize every single one. As if he’d need that information one day soon.
I sank into his embrace, drawing comfort from a moment of solidarity with a stranger. We both understood the blinding pain, the feel of our blood dripping down our backs and over our legs. We understood standing in a puddle of our own blood, slipping in it and hanging from our wrists when we couldn’t get our footing.
The snow stopped as quickly as it had begun, but shivers soon claimed me anyway, forcing me to separate from Caelum to get dressed and find a sheltered place to sleep.
I’d never forget the look on his face, the absolute rage on my behalf. My family had loved me, but they’d never promised vengeance for me. No one had ever cared the way he did.
That terrified me.
