Page 7 of How To Please A Princely Fae (Wild Oak Woods #3)

WILLOW

T ry as I might, I can't seem to recover my composure.

Business stays fairly steady throughout the day, giving me enough reprieve from having to look at my emotions any closer than I’d like to.

There’s a rush of customers once the doors are open, and I assume the festival has wrapped up on the square. Mostly, my regulars are in for refills of their favorite balms and solutions. In some cases, medicated ointments, their own herbs, spiced salts for bathing with a variety of charmed effects: relaxation, dreamless sleep, sore muscles, or, a trickier and more expensive salt bath that causes pleasant dreams.

There are endless questions on plant care, and in one case, a request for a potion designed to help hair to grow back. I warn that particular customer that I can offer no guarantees.

However, I do have an idea for how to help, and assure him it may take several days for the potion to be ready. He seems to take heart in that, and leaves satisfied that I’ll provide a solution for him.

It doesn’t matter how busy we are though, not really, because Kieran looms so large in my mind.

Before long, my stomach is growling with hunger, demanding to be fed. It’s well after one or two o'clock in the afternoon. I lost track of time what with the rush until my stomach was ready to remind me of my oversight.

As for Kieran, I'm grateful that the business has kept us from each other. While I handled the more complicated requests, he was careful to assist in packaging and payment and all the other bits and bobs of stocking shelves and readying customer purchases.

If the customers notice something's changed about him, they don't say it. More than one though, seem surprised by his decidedly helpful attitude. I’ve tried my best not to look at him, but now that it is just the two of us alone in the shop. Well, alone save for my plants and Chirp, who snoozes quietly in the corner on his favorite perch… still, it's too easy to become overly aware of Kieran.

"You're hungry,” he announces, breaking the silence. There's an undercurrent to his statement that I don't quite know how to answer.

"I am hungry," I finally squeak out. He doesn't need to know that I'm hungry for more than lunch. He doesn't need to know that I’ve been doing my best all day to ignore just how good it felt to be called his. My cheeks heat at the mere thought and I know I'm blushing as red as the hair that coils unruly and frizzing around my temples.

He stands in the doorway between the greenhouse and the main shop, the humidity behind him causing mist to swirl around his ankles and the pointed tips of his ears. The sight makes my breath catch.

“I prepared something for you,” he says breezily, as if he's been making lunch for me our entire lives. I blink, certain I misunderstood him.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

He arches an insouciant eyebrow, clearly amused by my lack of understanding.

"I've made lunch for us," he enunciates carefully.

"Right," I manage, nervous in spite of myself. "What I should have asked was, why?"

To my surprise, the cocky smile on his face grows. “I must have been an utter asshole to have you wonder why I've made us both something to eat when it's the least I can do for you." He leans heavily against the doorframe, and it's then I realize that despite his lean, well-muscled figure, he's quite large. The tips of his ears extend past the silver fall of his hair, practically brushing the top of the open archway.

My breath catches, it hitting me all over again just how handsome and compelling a figure he cuts. You’d think that I would be over it after all this time, but his beauty cuts me fresh and new, except this time there's a care behind it that doesn't leave me cold and that I fear is far more dangerous than his casual cruelty. Because when he remembers who he is, which he will, and he remembers how he feels about me, which is not how he feels about me right now, it will hurt all the more to remember how he's looking at me in this moment. A great sadness wells in my heart and I swallow hard, resisting the urge to break down in tears before him, to mourn the loss that hasn't even happened.

“Don't look like that,” he cautions, closing the door behind him, the noise jolting me back to the present. “I don't like to see you sad. Is there something about lunch that upsets you?”

I sniffle, then laugh at his outrageous question.

"Of course not,” I say, feeling watery still, like I might burst into tears at any moment.

“I can't stand to see a beautiful woman cry,” he tells me, brushing a knuckle over my cheek. Sure enough, one traitorous tear sits on his hand and shame fills me at the sight of it twinkling in the dim afternoon light. To my surprise, he raises the knuckle to his hand, his lips brushing against where my tear rests.

"Why did you do that?” I ask, shocked out of my ridiculous, morose mess. Stupid to mourn something that will never happen.

The smirk on his lips fades and his eyes darken as he stares at me intently. A shiver goes down my back at his focus.

"Because I think I'll die," he says.

It's so unexpectedly dramatic and over the top that I can't help but burst into a peal of laughter. Laughter that turns into awkward silence when he doesn't join in. I clear my throat, unsure of how to proceed. “Maybe it would be better if I paired up with someone else?—"

"I forbid it."

"Excuse me?"

"I said no," he continues. “I meant what I said at the festival this morning. You’re mine. Mine to taste, mine to touch, and mine to care for, and I will not allow anyone else the pleasure and privilege of your company.”

Hoo boy, I fan my face.

If he remembers, I’ll almost feel sorry for him. And then I remember how he treated me and decide I might as well enjoy it.

"I feel like I need to tell you something,” I say, abandoning all caution.

"Nothing you can say will dissuade me from pursuing you," he replies just as calmly as though he was foreseeing reticence on my part. I cough, completely uncomfortable and, I’m embarrassed to admit, amused.

“What if I told you you don't even like me?" It's my turn to raise my eyebrows and I relish the perfect occasion to do so, pursing my lips and waiting for a reply from the cocky fae prince. "What if I told you you could barely stand my company?" I challenge him.

He doesn't answer right away, his smile fading into some expression that makes me regret saying anything at all.

"Then I would tell you that you are sorely mistaken, because there's no way that I could be in the same room with the creature such as yourself and see all you do for the people of this town and feel anything but the utmost admiration for who you are."

My jaw drops and he has the audacity to chuck his hand under my chin, to close it for me with familiarity that leaves me just as breathless as his handsomeness.

"Now, about that lunch," he says breezily, as if he hasn't just turned my entire world upside down. There are so many things wrong with everything that he said, with all the ways that he is acting, and yet I can't bring myself to not want to believe him when he tells me something so beautiful.

“While you were speaking with the last customer, I took the liberty to go through your kitchen and assemble the best lunch that I could for you.” The put-upon expression he wears is so much more familiar than the besotted one as he turns away that its sight is bittersweet.

“And what I found is that you need to take better care of yourself, Miss Willow,” he says while traipsing through my hallway with the swagger of a man who thinks he owns the place. Were it anyone but Kieran under some sort of amnesia curse, I might be offended by it, but as it is, I am thoroughly amused, which might say something more about my character that I'd like to admit.

“I did the best I could do with the meager contents of your cupboard,” he calls over one shoulder, and I have to bite back a laugh at how thoroughly put out he seems by my admittedly poor selection of food.

“I've been busy,” I say by way of protest and he snorts in apparent disagreement.

"How do you expect to take care of anyone else if you're hardly taking care of yourself?” he asks me, swinging wide the door to my kitchen. I try to stifle my gasp but it comes out anyway, hand over my mouth, staring around wide-eyed at the spread he's managed to put together while I finished up with the customer suffering from hair loss.

My table’s laden with fruits from the greenhouse arranged elegantly, strawberries sliced to resemble roses, the last pot of summer’s honey sitting like a sign in a circle of yellow cheese slices. The last dregs of the ham I made a few days prior has been sliced into succulent pieces and set beside a fresh bread he must've baked between his store chores.

"Don't worry, I've closed the door, locked it, and changed the sign to say you're closed for lunch," he tells me. He seems slightly twitchier than normal, his eyes laser-focused on me, his arms crossed elegantly across his chest. It takes a moment to realize he's nervous. He wants my approval. I’m not sure how I could give him anything else.

“This is fabulous," I tell him. "No one's ever done anything like this for me."

"Well," he drawls. "That certainly makes my job easier."

How does that make your job easier?" I ask, amused and mystified. My face scrunches up as I study him trying to make heads or tails of it.

"Because that means all the idiots who came before me have set the bar so incredibly low that making you fall in love with me will hardly be difficult at all."

I stare at him, waiting for the punchline, but he simply turns around and fixes me a beautifully arranged plate and hands it to me with an entirely self-satisfied expression. This isn't right. I shake my head, gathering my thoughts, trying to deliver the news to him in a way that he can get through his thick Unseelie fae prince skull. He might be stubborn but no one's more stubborn than the willow tree. We bend in the wind, we dance with it, but we don't snap and break.

"It's not right for me to take advantage of you right now,” I tell him firmly.

"Oh," he says with a satisfied look on his face. “I didn't know you wanted to take advantage of me."

I sputter, growing more annoyed by the millisecond. “You are not in your right mind," I enunciate carefully. "You don't even like me. Your normal self can hardly stand to breathe the same air as I do. You can't keep up with this. It wouldn't be fair to either one of us for you to start something with me while under a spell. It's unethical,” I tack on at the last minute as he opens his mouth, looking like he's about to argue with me yet again. Not on my watch. I’m not about to take advantage of him. I'm not about to delude myself for one minute into thinking that this man, this fae, actually wants anything to do with me. It will just end up hurting us both. I suck in a breath, waiting for him to argue, preparing myself for more, but all he does is shrug his shoulders.

"If you insist,” he says agreeably.

“It just wouldn't be right,” I start, and then stop, pulling myself up short. I narrow my eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, if you're so bothered by the idea of me liking you and so concerned with the ethics of it, then that's fine, I'll respect that,” he says, blinking his eyes carefully. I wish he wouldn't do that. He has very nice eyes, very nice everything. I heave a sigh that comes out somewhere between resignation, despair, and exhaustion.

"Eat,” he says easily, “it will make you feel better."

"And you don't expect anything in return?" I ask. So what if I'm untrusting? He hasn't given me any reason to be anything otherwise. He is an Unseelie fae, after all.

He shrugs one shoulder, casual, elegant, flippant, beautiful. Hiring him was a mistake.

“I want you to feel well,” he says breezily. “I want you to be able to conduct your business and not collapse while doing it.”

"Hmph," I huff.

“Well, if you're this suspicious all the time,” he announces, piling his own plate high with food, “no wonder no one's ever made lunch for you."

"How rude," I gasp.

He grins at me. "Tell the truth, when's the last time you let someone take care of you? When is the last time someone insisted on it?"

I want to deny the truth in his words, but they hit me like a brick to the heart, because there's truth in them. I haven't let anyone help me, I haven't let anyone get close to me. My coven sisters, yes, but I'm not sure that counts. Not in the way he means it. “When was your last lover?" he asks, his tone so casual that I'm answering before I can think better of it.

"Two years ago,” I say, then blush, fresh color singeing its way into the roots of my red hair.

Dear goddess, why did I say that? As if he needed any more information about me. Why can't I keep my mouth shut around him?

"And when's the last time you brought yourself to orgasm?” he asks calmly. This time I don't answer. I have that much sense at the very least.

Unfortunately, now this is all I can think about is when the last time was that I made myself come. When was the last time I crawled under the covers and worshiped my body by myself? I frown, disgruntled because I can't remember. I've been too busy. I've been so exhausted from working so hard that I've collapsed into bed unsatisfied and exhausted most nights. He clucks his tongue, clicking softly along his fangs, and I glanced up in surprise.

“None of your business,” I grid out.

"What if I want to make it my business?” he asks lightly.

“We've just agreed that nothing can come of this,” I say, motioning between us.

“So you admit there is a this?” he asks slyly.

I groan in frustration, my forehead slamming against the table where I've sat.

"Why does it have to be anything?" Kieran says softly. "Why can't we just be two adult individuals who can agree to enjoy each other's company for as long as it lasts?"

Glaring at him, I stuff some bread into my mouth and chew slowly to avoid having answer his question. We eat the rest of the meal in silence because how in the world am I supposed to talk to him when he has one thing on his mind and is making the same one thing be on my mind? Not fair.

It's not exactly uncompanionable. I don't know if the tension between us is one-sided, but it's taking all of my energy not to fidget and think about what he would feel like between my thighs, to wonder what exactly being with a fae prince would be like. Wondering what exactly would happened were he never to remember how much he hates me. Wondering what it would be like to be wanted by someone that I've wanted since the moment I laid eyes on him.

And wondering what it would be like to be worthy of being his.