Page 28 of The Heir the Fae Forgot
Icarus might be finished with me for now, but I was only just getting started.
CHAPTERELEVEN
I’d learned littlefrom the dark fae in our first lesson, but it was just enough to make me crave more. I’d yet to have so much as a hair shrivel from trying to use the glamour, but that didn’t mean I didn’t still have my reservations about using it.
If I evencoulduse it.
However short—and ineffective—my first lesson was with Icarus, it left me drained in a way I’d never experienced before. Icarus had warned me that I was drawing on some kind of glamour, even if I couldn’t feel it, and from the way my mind and body ached by the time the demon servant and I had descended first, and then ascended back to my room, every ounce of my energy was spent.
I was too tired to even complain when I awoke tangled in the blankets of my own bed shortly before dawn, with no recollection of having changed out of my dress and into the thin black nightgown now clinging to my body. It was, undoubtedly, the work of those bones-for-fingers, as Finch had so accurately dubbed them.
However tired I was, I was not too tired to at least mutter, “Damn you, demon,” into the darkness as I rolled over with a moan to snuggle tighter into my pillow.
That moan, however, was cut short when I realized through my eyelids, only half open, that it wasn’t a pillow at all. That moan soured, curdled into something that was more like a scream, until the not-pillow reached out a finger to gently press it to my lips.
The fae’s touch calmed me even before my tired eyes registered who he was.
“Come now, My Storm,” Icarus purred in the dark. “There’s no need for that, here.” His black wings shuddered like many small shadows over his shoulder. They draped over his back and onto the floor, covering more of his body than the scant silk robe he wore, one that had long since slipped from his shoulders to reveal the hard cut lines of chest and stomach. Exhaustion had me looking over him with all the subtlety of a drunk.
I found my gaze shifting lower, only for Icarus to let out a low, growl-like noise in the back of his throat.
“Looking for something?”
I had to force my gaze back up to his face, but not before heat flooded my cheeks—because he was right, and I’dcertainlyfound it. A thin sheet of silk could do little to conceal what this fae lord possessed.
“What are you doing here?” I finally managed to croak, once I’d been able to force the image of his visible excitement away enough for my mouth to form actual words. Then, before he could answer, I reached out and hesitantly pressed my hand to his chest.
Surprise, and a little relief, flooded through me when my hand felt his cool skin. I became transfixed again on the way his jaw cast a shadow across the elegant line of his throat. His skin was so smooth and perfect, I had to press my fingers into him to be sure he wasn’t carved from marble, but from flesh.
“Were you worried I was some kind of ghost?”
I glanced back up to his face, realizing how close I’d come to losing myself. I snatched my hand away from him, cradling it with my other arm, as if he’d attacked me, not the other way around.
“It wouldn’t be the first time you showed up in a vision,” I said, hesitantly.
At the mention of our first encounters, something sparked in Icarus’ eyes. His lips parted as his face took on a dream-like state of its own. A memory consumed him, and for a moment, he allowed himself to be lost in it where I had not, one finger lifting to trace the outline of his lips.
“I prefer to call it a dream, or perhaps…”
“A delusion?”
My words pulled Icarus back into the bed beside me. The far-off look in his eyes sharpened onto me, his hand now pressing so hard to where it lingered on his lips that I was worried for a second that he was going to draw his own blood with those claws.
An overwhelming sensation came over me then, as for the first time, I realized just how entangled in him I was. I wasn’t just lying beside him, I was pressed up against the arm that supported him now, cradled in it, even. How long had he been here? Had he been holding me all night?
Worse still, had I been the reason for his…excitement? Had I felt him in my sleep and rather than move away, or better yet, wake, had I pressed further into him?
As if sensing the sudden flood of emotions, Icarus reached out with his free hand to cup my face. He was gentle, his claws once again surprisingly soft—when he wanted them to be.
“I came only to tell you I’ve been called away from the court, just for a few days.”
“Something to do with that little nothing you refused to tell me about, earlier?”
He ignored me, but the slight twinkle in his eye was all the confirmation I needed. “Though, I suppose I could linger here a while longer if you wanted to make that last…delusion…we shared a little more real?”
And I thought my face was red before.
It didn’t matter if Icarus could read my thoughts, I knew from the way another growl, a hungry growl, began to tear its way up his throat, that he couldsmellthe arousal his threat had damningly pulled out of me. It was impossible here, half wrapped in this gorgeous, powerful fae’s arms, to ignore the way my body ached for him again. Even in our shared vision, he’d left me craving more of him,allof him.
