Finally, his eyes flick away from mine. They drop to my mouth where they hang for a long, thick moment.

  I make the first move.

  Leaning into him, I bring my arms up to wrap around his neck and let my eyes flutter shut.

  Cliff closes the distance between us. Hands firming on my bottom, he slides me closer until our cores are locked. The warmth of his mouth ghosts over mine, multiplying the butterflies going wild in my tummy.

  These feelings are not new to me. My first time had plagued me with the nerves of a crippled-anxious person. But this time, it’s enjoyable. There’s something sweet and calm in the air around us.

  Maybe it’s the forest, that he shared his past with me, his troubles revealed bare. I don’t know, but whatever the cause, I’m warm and calm all over, at peace almost, and I melt to him.

  Cliff’s lips softly part against mine. His familiar taste ignites a fire in my chest. Teasingly, he slips his tongue over mine and even my mouth is alive with tingles.

  I want you.

  Those words ache to be released. But I fight them back; even in this bubble of affection, I know better than to further peel apart that rawness between us, because what scares me is the way I mean those words. It isn’t just physical. It’s intimate.

  Despite my efforts to keep some sort of mask between us, Cliff tears apart the truths we shouldn’t speak.

  “I have found a fondness of you, Cora,” he whispers into my mouth. “And for that, I do despise you.”

  Somehow, his words bring a faint smile to my lips. His don’t imitate mine, and instead he uses the opening to deepen the kiss.

  His hands come away from my bum, sliding up to the small of my back. The hem of my dress bunches up, revealing too much, but neither of us care. We’re lost in this kiss, in each other’s tastes, drowning in our moment of truth.

  Hands on my back, he holds me to him and turns us. Slowly, he lowers me to the ground—so he likes to be on top, I’m learning—and he drops to his knees between my legs.

  Already, the ache in my core begs to have him inside of me. I spread my legs that bit wider, a clear invitation.

  Like a shield planting its hands on either side of my head, he moves over me, all rippling caramel muscles catching on the firelight.

  My heart flips at the nearing sight of his beautiful face. Falling to the urge, I reach up my hands for his cheeks.

  He pauses, his expression shuttering.

  I cup his face, revelling in the finer details of his face. His peach-toned lips are swollen from our kiss, his lashes as long as the kind I used to pay for, and the amber flecks in his eyes dance like sparks from a fire.

  I turn my gaze down at the fine natural highlight of his nose, then up to the frown lines that faintly crease his skin.

  How old are you, I wonder?

  But I decide that it doesn’t matter and I pull him down on me. He fits easily, so perfectly, that it’s as though we are two puzzle pieces meant to join together.

  Slipping his hand down between our bodies, he gently slides my wet underwear to the side. Then with a quick tug of his hand on the string of his trousers, his cock is free and it lands heavily on my sweet spot.

  I squirm, anticipation climbing its way up me.

  He rests his hands beside my head, dropping down to his forearms. His gaze locks onto mine, never leaving, as he brushes his lips against mine.

  He doesn’t dwell before he’s prodding along my slick entrance, finding what he’s searching for. And he finds it quickly.

  I swallow, hard, as he starts to slide inside of me. I feel my walls mould around him, fitting to him just right, and the far reach of his length.

  His amber eyes now burn with the reflection of the campfire. They glow with a deeper hunger than I should want to know about.

  To ease me, he slides in and out with gentle glides, allowing my heat to loosen tension, slowly accepting him with a warm embrace.

  Then he ducks his head to the nook of my neck, his hot breaths on my skin, and thrusts into me deep.

  A guttural sound catches in my throat. Bringing my hands to his back, I dig my nails in—an invitation to gloss over this raw truth between us and turn it into something ugly.

  And he does.

  Face buried in my neck, he thrusts inside of me with a sudden discovered urgency. His breaths come heavier, harsher.

  His name is the only thing on my mind as he pistons in and out of me, and I have to bite down on my lip to trap it inside of me.

  My nails claw down his back deeper and deeper with the growing fire in my belly. Starting to feel the rise of flutters, the tingles at my core as he shifts angles and creates a friction all for me.

  It works.

  Within a few thrusts, I’m squirming beneath him, the heels of my plimsolls scraping over the dirt. He slams in, faster and faster, and I can’t hold it back anymore—

  I come with a strained cry ... a cry that sounds too much like his name. And he’s quick to growl something savage against my throat, then stills inside of me.

  For a moment, I think he has paused because of what I groaned out—but then I feel the heat spread deep in my core, and he slumps, a puppet cut from the strings.

  With him on top of me, and his name hanging in the air, I think things I shouldn’t. And fleetingly, I wonder if it’s too late to close the abyss that we’ve opened up between us.

  38

  Turns out that manoeuvring relationships and hook-ups with dark fae males isn’t all that different to doing the same with human ones. They are both just as mentally fucked as each other.

  The morning after, Cliff was quick to pack up camp and have us moving on. He kicked dirt onto the flames, stole the torch from the fire, fastened me to his belt (looser than usual, mind) and marched onwards through the woods.

  Now, he doesn’t let me hold his hand or lean my head on his arm. Now, he doesn’t tell me stories of his family’s disgrace or the markings on his back or that he’s royal.

  He is silent, deadly so, and guides me through the dark with only an orange bubble of light to show me where to plant my steps.

  We stop for a short moment, and he reads the map perched on a boulder. I lean into the light and trace his travelling fingertip over the route. He pauses midway through the woods, and my heart sinks.

  Coming so close to the English Channel Tunnel. Getting too close.

  A part of me—a growing, evolving, anxious part that tingles the nape of my neck and sends electric currents down my fingers—wonders if I should have made a run for it into the dark when he threw me out of the cottage.

  I was so afraid of what hid in the blackness that I didn’t give myself a moment to think about what it really means to stay with Cliff. This bubble that the two of us exist in will soon be popped by a hundred swords carried by ferocious dark fae, and then I’ll be exposed. Vulnerable, without protection.

  As Cliff packs up the map, an icy current sways through my gut, and I think I might need the loo soon.

  He makes to move on through the woods, but I dig my heels into the dirt and stay put. He turns to look back at me, a withering stare latching onto my desperate one.

  “Take me to your world,” I blurt out.

  He blinks away his fleeting confusion before he frowns at me.

  “Don’t take me to your army,” I plead, stepping closer to him. “Just take me straight back to your world and keep me safe there.”

  His face shutters, then just as quickly, it’s back to stone. “I cannot.”

  My shoulders slump, defeat slackening my freckled face. Threading my fingers through my golden hair, I peel it all back from my desperate expression. “Why not, Cliff? Why can’t you do this for me?”

  “I have orders,” he says simply, “and I do not make them anymore.”

  I tug the rope. “So let me go now.”

  “I should,” he says, then a frown knits his brow. “Or perhaps I shouldn’t for the very reason I believe that I should.”

  “I should,” I start, fear rising up my chest, “resist what happened between us—both times. I should be free of you and your army. Or don’t you remember what your friends did to me?”

  He takes a swift, determined step closer to me, rage blazing amber in his eyes. “I delivered them to death,” he growls.

  “You said yourself you can’t protect me when we reach your people,” I argue, the heat in my voice rising up hotter than the flames of the torch. “So what will you do if it happens again? Slaughter more of your people or just turn your cheek knowing you can’t do anything to save me?”

  His gaze cuts down to the dirt between us. “You will no longer be my responsibility—my problem,” he corrects.

  Tears sting my eyes just as a ribbon of icy fear unravels down my jolting spine.

  “So that’s it, then?” I click my jaw. “You’re just going to take me to them, then leave me to fend for myself? I know what happens in those armies,” I add darkly. “Spike told me all about the stories of the whipping post, and what happens to those kuris who fall behind. What if I’m one of them, Cliff? You’ll just let me be beaten and whipped and murdered?”

  “Don’t fall behind,” he warns, his head bowed, looking up at me from beneath long and dark lashes. “Don’t talk back. And you will survive.”

  “Will I?” I challenge. “That’s the promise of a disgraced fae, is it?”

  His face crumples.

  Good.

  Hurt.

  Hurt just as you are hurting me.

  “That’s all you are,” I sneer at him. “You’re a grunt. A dishonoured beast. You’re worthless, and that’s why you can’t protect me—you know it, too. That’s why you’re so fucking ashamed of yourself, just as you should be.”

  Cliff strides towards me. He closes the distance in a matter of two steps, then snatches my throat. Fingertips dig into the sides of my neck.

  Bringing my face to his, my toes barely touching the dirt, he hisses at me, “What can I do for you, Cora-lee? In this world or the next, I have nothing to offer you.”

  “Set me free,” I grunt. “Or at least protect me.”

  He pauses to inhale long and deep, then steadies his gaze on me. “You must be prepared for our farewells. They will come soon. This,” he adds, looking down at me—at my body, “was only ever temporary.”

  I’m about to snarl vicious words back at him through the pain biting at my heart, flooding my eyes with tears, but then I hear it. In the distance, the roll of a thick critter-cloud, their faint skittering and coiling.

  A new plan starts to form in my mind, and it all starts with just how loose my tether to him is.

  “Fine,” I spit out then, with a jerk, pull out of his hold. I stagger back a few steps. “But don’t blame me if I find safety with another.”

  A cry catches in my throat as he lunges for me.

  The torch drops to a boulder.

  I stumble back, the heel of my plimsoll catching on a rock. I go tumbling back, Cliff following me.

  My landing is a thud that I feel all down my aching back. I barely have a moment to catch my winded breath before he’s on me, straddling me, and bringing the wink of a silver blade to my cheek.

  I still, wide eyes fixed up at his murderously twisted face.

  “Threatening me is not your wisest move,” he growls at me.

  Despite the warning bells blaring in the prickles of my skin, I grunt, “It’s served me so well in the past.”

  “Be silent!” His shout thunders through the forest, turning the leaves and branches restless. Dropping his voice, he warns me, “If you touch another—so help me, Cora-lee, I will destroy both of you.”

  He crouches over me, bringing his mouth to mine where he plants a gentle, chaste kiss.

  I shudder a breath.

  Against my lips, he murmurs, “And I will save you for last.”

  In a blink, he’s pulling off of me, leaving me flat on the forest floor.

  He gives me a few moments to catch my hoarse, shattering breaths, but his patience cracks and he hauls me up by the arm.

  So that’s it then. My plan has changed from escaping and surviving to simply what skitters ahead—the cloud rolling over the dark skies, headed our way.

  Distracted, Cliff tears his glower away from me and sheaths the dagger into his weapons belt, and he picks up the torch. As he turns his back on me, making to head onwards, I glance at the distance the rope has given me, then up at the skies where the critters are drawing nearer.

  Their wet, sloppy sounds shudder my skin and sprout goosepimples all over me.

  I take my chance just as Cliff steps ahead with the torch rebalanced in his hand.

  I bolt ahead, hands raised for the darkness.

  Behind me, Cliff curses and I faintly hear the thuds of satchels and the torch dropped. Light extinguishes entirely, and it’s pitch-black all over again.

  Skrt, skrt, skrt.

  It’s so close—I can almost taste them, like liquorice in the air.

  And just as Cliff’s hand snatches a chunk of my hair, my hands reach all the way up with a jump and…

  Tentacles latch onto me.

  They uncoil from the darkness, snaring around my arms.

  Agony is instant. It’s like a thousand fires have been ignited beneath my skin, and they are poisonous flames eating away at the root of my bones.

  As quickly as they came, the tentacles slither back up to their cloud and roll away—Cliff’s presence spooking them.

  But it’s too late.

  I’m already crumpling to the ground.

  And just as I hit, I land in arms awaiting me.

  39

  Cliff catches me before I can hit the dirt. His solid arms lower me to the ground and, with a panicked and fiery look at my arms, his caramel skin pales to washed-out honey.

  All I can manage is a whispered moan out of my still lips. The fire is burning my arms from the inside out, like the flames that devour whole villages, but I can’t do anything about it.

  Think I’m in shock.

  And if I am, it’s starting to fade away.

  The fire is searing now, eating into my bones, and a hollow cry tears free of me. My spine suddenly arches, my head cracking back against Cliff’s arm, and my scream splits the air.

  Eyes rolling back in my head, my every muscle clamps up like lead bolted to me, and the shudders start. I think I’m seizing, but my mind … my mind is so far, far away, drifting off into the nothingness.

  Still, I see what’s going on around me. Faintly, I’m aware of Cliff peeling his arms away from me and sprinting down the road. He hauls the satchels back to me and, as he drops them to my side, he falls to his knees.

  Something is thickening my throat; a pressure like a hand gripping my neck too tight. My screams start to melt down into whispered cries.

  I cut a panicked look at Cliff.

  Be with me in my final moment. Be with me in my agony.

  But he isn’t looking at me.

  Black tendrils fall over his whitened face as he digs frantically through the bags. He’s spilling and pulling things all over the dirt until—he fishes out a small pinkie-sized phial from the bottom of a satchel. It’s filled halfway with glittering black powder, like dried-out tar then pulverised.

  I recognise it even through the haze draped over me. It’s the same stuff he smeared into his side-wound from the bomb. The same stuff that healed him miraculously in a matter of hours.

  “Nooo,” my croak is chased by my hand lifting from the ground. “Let me die…” I reach for him, pausing only when I see my hand.

  The torn sleeve of my dress covers most of it, but those black lines spearing all over my fingers and wrist can’t go unnoticed. I look like some venomous thing from a horror movie. And the smell…

  The smell!

  My hands are radiating some rotten, pus-packed sores that punches the air with its stench.

  Vomit crawls up my throat, but I’m fading further and further away. Before I can be sick on myself in any way, Cliff’s hand shoots up for my face. He grabs my jaw so hard that it’s forced open and he tips the phial’s contents into my mouth.

  I fight him as much as I can; writhing weakly on the ground, lashes fluttering as darkness starts to take me.

  Still, wetness springs at my eyes. Beads of it gather on my lashes as I look at him. His hand slips away from my jaw, the phial now empty in his other hand.

  He looks at me. Defeat has his face slackened, his shoulders slump and he wears traces of panic in his heavy breathing.

  “Relax,” he tells me, his tone thick with exhaustion. “You will sleep for a while. And then you will wake.”

  My voice is a hoarse and croaky whisper, “You should let me die.”

  He simply watches me. Reaching for my face, he peels a strand of hair from my sweaty skin. “I am selfish, Cora-lee. Now sleep.”

  I do.

  40

  Sweat clings damp fabric to my body. My lashes are weighed down by the clutches of sleep.

  Slowly, I become aware of a stony weight draped over my middle and the faint taste of salted water in the air. Tendrils of hair rustle at the shell of my ear, as though a gentle and steady breath is pressed too close to me.

  A weary frown withers my face. Fluttering my lashes, I try to make sense of what I see around me. I’m on a bed; that much is clear by the plush, springy cushion that embraces my body. Beyond that, I see a pair of heavy curtains drawn over a window, an ajar door in the corner of the room, and in-built mirrored wardrobes opposite me.

  With a grunt, I push up onto my elbows and turn my tired, glazed eyes around the bedroom. The mirrored wardrobe faces me, revealing myself—looking utterly haggard, traces of black circling my eyes, gaunt cheeks that tell of my eternal hunger in this new dark world, and lips so dry that they have cracked—on the bed with Cliff draped beside me. His arm rests over my mid-section, which explains the weight. It’s like a steel bar pressing against my organs.