Me, who he opens up to in the quiet of the forest.
Me, who despite his best battles, cannot be defeated within him.
This time, he doesn’t stop me. I shift onto my knees and, with his watchful stare hooked onto me, I reach around his back.
My fingertips graze over bumpy skin. It’s all so rough that it reminds me of the edges of burn scars or even cheese graters, and I’m fleetingly worried I might cut myself on the markings.
A warmth sways in my belly. A familiar sensation, spreading all over, down to my core and up to my swelling heart.
I inhale a shuddering breath and shift around to his front. His dark eyes, embers once more, shadow my every move as I straddle him.
Slowly, his hands come up to my thighs, fingers creeping beneath the hem of my dress. His eyes don’t leave mine as he runs his hands up my thighs, feeling the creamy texture of my freshly moisturised skin, until his hands come flat along the curve of my bottom.
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.
4
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.