Page 348 of Never Kiss a Fae

“Excuses,” he grumbled against my ear, his earthy scent wrapping around me in a cloak of comfort. “You knew what we expected from you, little flower. And you cheated.”

“I would hardly call it cheating. I would have known who was who regardless.” They’d wanted to play a sexual game that required me to guess who was inside me.

Sol’s girth always gave him away, just like Vox’s long length.

Heck, everything about them was unique. Even their tongues and the way they touched me. Sol always held back, afraid his much-stronger form would crush me, and Vox preferred sensual strokes and wind kisses.

Which, of course, had my thighs clenching. Because now I wanted sex.

And something told me that had been Sol’s intent as he aligned his chest to my back and wrapped his arms around my waist. “We’ll have to play again to find out,” he hummed against my ear.

“But decorations first,” Vox insisted. “Now close your eyes, Claire.”

A shiver traversed my spine at the demand in his tone, my insides heating all over again with the promise of what was to come.

My mates liked to play.

And I liked to play, too.

I closed my eyes and relaxed into Sol’s hold. My pointy ears—something I still wasn’t fully used to—twitched as the door swept open. Then my nose picked up on the subtle hints of foliage.

Sol had created something. My affinity for earth roared to life, trying to identify the foreign substance. It wasn’t Elemental Fae in origin, but foreign. Not human, either.

My lips curled down as I tried to determine the roots. But then Sol urged me forward with his much-bigger body guiding mine from behind, pushing me into my office.

Lights flickered beyond my closed eyelids, and the door whispered closed behind us.

“Okay,” Vox said. “You can look now.”

I squinted my eyes first, nervous, then immediately widened them at the sight of my fully transformed office.

A tree stood rooted beside my desk, branches resembling vines along my ceiling and wrapping around the upper molding of my walls. Yellow, red, and orange leaves decorated the limbs, their vibrancy the embodiment of autumn colors. A breeze ran on a loop between them, spreading the fragrance of home throughout my office.

“Oh, it’s beaut—”

I jumped as a skeletal thing appeared in the corner, billowing in the wind in a ghostlike state.

My eyes widened. “What the hell is that?”

Vox and Sol followed my gaze, the former frowning and saying, “It’s supposed to be a skeleton. Like for Halloween. Exos created it using spirit magic. Did he do it wrong?”

I blinked. “He used…?” I trailed off, because, yes, I could feel it now, the hint of his element weaving through the skeletal structure, commanding it to disappear and reappear at random.

A Halloween trick.

“Oh.” I grinned. “That’s clever.” I took in the tree again. “And this is amazing. What breed is it?” I pressed my palm to the bark, asking it to speak to me, but all it did was whisper Sol’s name.

“I, uh, sort of made it up. You once told me about the leaf cycles from home, but ours don’t do that. So I created a tree with leaves naturally occurring in your autumn colors. It will always look like this. I guess we can call it an autumn oak?”

“Autumn oak,” I repeated, my heart thudding in my chest. “Yes. Oh, Sol, thank you!”

I spun around in his arms to kiss him, only to be caught off guard by the glowing pumpkin lanterns strung around my door. My eyes widened at the very real flames brightening the insides of the hollowed-out baby pumpkins. They were all strung together by strands of water swirling with spirit and air.

“Wow,” I breathed, stunned by the gorgeous use of elements.

“You like it?” Vox asked softly, his chest caressing my back as he sandwiched me between him and Sol.

“It was Vox’s idea,” my earth mate said, a note of annoyance in his tone. “He made me create all those pumpkins just for Titus to gut them.”