Arms around his neck, I pressed my lips to his. I wasn’t sure if it was magic or lust driving us, but I flowed, carrying us both into the house. I’d never moved a second person this way, but I did. In a heartbeat or three, we were inside, upstairs, and somehow entangled on the floor.
“Genèvieve.” Eli pulled back and stared at me. His already bee-stung lips looked thoroughly kissed. “How did you . . .?”
“You’re not the only magic creature here.” I removed my shirt. It was too much of a barrier. “Please?”
He looked at me like he’d never seen my half-naked body. He’d stitched enough of me that I wasn’t sure I had many secrets, but the way his gaze burned me up now, I thought I might be wrong.
Our gaze was only interrupted by the removal of his shirt.
“Rules?” he asked.
“Touch me.”
He laughed, low and full of the same needs I was feeling. “That’s a demand, Genèvieve, not a rule.”
My hands were on his skin already. Muscle under silk. Magic under flesh. I wanted all of it, all of him—but I wasn’t going to end up married.
I kissed his chest, his shoulders, his throat.
“Genèvieve,” he said. “Rules?”
“No intercourse,” I said between kisses. I couldn’t call it fucking because it wouldn’t be, and I couldn’t call it making love because I was afraid to say that. If a faery made love, truly made love, to a person who reciprocated that love, they were wed. It was that simple. “No intercourse. No . . . I want to, but I won’t end up accidentally wed.”
He looked unsurprised by my demand, but disappointed.
I knew damn well that he wasn’t going to remind me of that rule, but I wasn’t going to forget it. There were other options.
“What do you want, Genèvieve?”
“Touch me. Kiss me.” I stepped closer. “Please?”
Maybe it was the please, or maybe he simply understood me better than anyone else ever had. Eli took my hand and led me to a bedroom.
He leaned down and kissed me speechless. Then he ordered, “Stay right here. Strip. No jeans. No shoes. Nothing.”
When he returned, I was naked. I don’t know what I expected. Ravishing? Hurried grasping? I ought to have known better. Eli was fae—which meant he had the patience of nature.
In his hand, he had a bowl. “Turn onto your stomach, love.”
I rolled over, and soon I felt the hot drizzle of oil. The room smelled of the clean nature of Elphame, so whatever oil it was, it was fae in origin.
At a word in his language, the room became completely dark.
I could see nothing. “Eli?”
“You asked for touch,” he said, voice low and rough. “No intercourse. Merely touch.”
I felt him place my hands along my sides, arrange my body as if I was clay in his hands. Then I felt him touch me. Slowly, steadily, hard, teasing, he rubbed and caressed almost everything in some fashion.
Time seemed to freeze. I could see nothing. The world was reduced to touch, scent, and sound. His murmured words, sighed, groaned as he explored my body. It didn’t matter whether he was caressing sensitive spots or mundane. Under Eli’s touch, everything was erotic. My feet, my calves, my hips. He was leaning his weight onto me, his forearms and muscular chest brushed my body as his rubbed along my spine.
And I realized he was atop me.
Straddling me.
Naked.
Eli was naked.
I felt the hard length of him nestled between my thighs. Unconsciously, I parted my legs further, and he leaned down so his chest was flat against my back and his lips were by my ear. “No intercourse, Genèvieve,” he taunted.
Goddess help me, I whimpered. “We can’t, but this is . . . nice.”
“Nice?” he echoed. He was a voice and pleasure in the dark, and I was certain that no one had ever made me so desperate so quickly.
He thrust his hips against me, groaning. Not entering me, merely taunting me with what I was refusing.
“Still just nice?” he asked.
I moaned and admitted, “More than nice.”
By the time he had me roll over, exposing my naked chest and hips to his touch, I was wishing I could find a loophole in the no intercourse clause.
He parted my legs further. “Shall I be thorough, Genèvieve?”
“Please. Please.”
His hands danced between my legs, but only for a moment, sliding along my most delicate skin, and then they were gone. In the dark, he plucked my nipples, massaging my thighs, my belly.
I could only feel and beg. “More, Eli. Please. More.”
In that moment if he’d asked me again, I’m not sure I’d have refused intercourse. Damn the consequences, I was shaking in need. Maybe he knew that, and it was why he didn’t ask.
Instead he asked, “Is it so horrible to date me, bonbon?”
“No.” I took several breaths. “Not horrible.”
He was quiet, breathing as needy as mine. I heard the strain in his voice as he asked, “Would you still only like touch or would you like a kiss? Or more?”
I knew what would happen if I agreed to more, and as much as I wanted his mouth on my body, I wanted to see him when we burned that bridge. So, I reached out into the darkness and trailed my hand over his hip. The oil from where his naked body had been against mine made my hand glide over skin and muscle.
“Touch,” I asked, demanded, begged.
“Yes.”
So, I stroked him as he touched me. We were nothing but hands and skin and moans in the darkness. I wanted more, but I wasn’t sure I could endure it.
Chapter Six
I’d slipped out of Eli’s house in the night. I slid away from his embrace and fled. He said I was to be myself, and well, my self wasn’t great at the softer side of dating. My world was tilted by the intimacy we’d shared—and in my usual way, I ran from emotions.
Honestly, sometimes I felt sorry for anyone who tried to date me.
I liked Eli more than I’d cared for anyone, and I suspected most of our conflicts boiled down to my innate panic at feeling tender things in his direction. Some girls had pretend-weddings as children, fantasies of gowns as teens, and thought about the future as young women. Me? I thought about monsters. I dreamed of swords or trips. I fantasized about the sort of sex that made grown men blush.
The odds of finding anyone who found my messed-up brain and monster-tainted body appealing were so thin that I never really expected to deal with it. I’d always been the person that nice boys and girls took for a spin before settling down. I was the mid-life crisis car, the thrill-ride, and not the sort anyone wanted to marry. I chose that. I highlighted my traits that kept me firmly in the “makes a great mistress, not a wife” box.
So, I was not prepared to wake up the next evening to a gift-wrapped faery-wrought dagger and antique bottle of the same oil Eli had rubbed all over me. I sniffed the bottle and couldn’t help but smile.
The post also delivered a piece of parchment with elegantly written instructions for a “celebratory holiday gathering” hosted by the dead-chick-in-charge of the draugr. The dinner at Beatrice’s castle was later that week.
No rest for the dead, or half-dead, I supposed.