Page 34

The brownstone was empty when she trekked back to the Upper West Side. She hadn’t heard from Gen, which probably meant she was still with Colette. All the better. Kierse didn’t know how to tell her what had happened with Ethan. The disaster that had occurred—with Lorcan, too.

Jet lag pulled at her body, encouraging her to take a quick afternoon nap. She was a thing of midnights. Early mornings irritated her. And Lorcan even more so.

Lorcan had been part of a triskel?

No wonder he’d fucking recognized it when it had happened last year.

He’d been so quick to try to scoop them up then, too.

As soon as he’d realized, he’d wanted to spirit them all away and hide them forever.

He still wanted to do that. And worse, she didn’t know if she could stop it all from happening, if she even wanted to.

The training, not the getting swept away part. She had shit to do.

She walked through the double doors of the library to find the massive room empty. Anne lounged on a couch, her black body seemingly twice as large as normal, belly exposed. Kierse laughed at the sight. Well, at least some things hadn’t changed.

“Where’s your person, huh?” Kierse asked her as she walked to the cabinet and poured herself a drink.

“Here,” Graves said, appearing out of the stacks like a wraith.

Kierse jerked around. “I didn’t know you were home.”

“I just got back.” He dropped a stack of books onto the table. “I was unboxing what I purchased in Dublin from Oisín.”

“Do I want to know why Edgar isn’t doing that?”

“Because it is my library,” he said simply, stroking a spine. “Books are a singular pleasure. Nothing else in existence can transport you in quite the same way. All you have to do is crack the spine and learn the secrets of the universe.”

“I don’t think you possibly have the time to read them all.”

“Collecting books and reading books are two different hobbies,” he told her. “Don’t get them mixed up.”

“Noted.”

She tipped back her drink with a flourish. Graves always had the best liquor. His eyes followed the movement, lingering on the bob of her throat as she swallowed.

“And how was your business?” he asked.

She lifted the drink to him and took another gulp.

“That good?”

“Bombed.”

“He wouldn’t let you see Ethan?” Graves asked, still as a statue in his crisp black suit. His gloves were on. His eyes ever watchful.

“Oh no. I saw Ethan. He’s fully brainwashed by the Druids.”

Graves sighed. “You thought he would be otherwise?”

She turned her back on him to refill her drink before saying, “He doesn’t trust me because we’re working together.”

“Ah.”

“It’s stupid. He thinks they’re the good guys .” She put as much disdain as she could into the words. “I don’t know how to disillusion him on that. There are no good guys.”

“It’s the Druid way,” Graves said with a sniff. “It’s not even his fault.”

She turned back to him. “What do you know of Druid training?”

His eyes met hers as he considered. “I went through it.”

“What? When?”

“I was young.” He set his book down and reached for the liquor. “It was before I met Kingston, even.”

“Really? Forgive me, but I simply cannot picture you as a Druid.”

He smirked. “No, I never fit the bill. But I came to Dublin as a teenager, eager to be reunited with my mother’s people after my father had sold me.” He took a drink. “Oisín introduced me to Lorcan.”

“Oisín!” I said in surprise. “You have known him a long time.”

“Indeed.”

“What happened? They let you join?”

“Not exactly,” he said bitterly. “They accepted my mother, my blood, my Druidic magic. They rejected…everything else.” He waved a gloved hand. “I was an anomaly, and military schools, no matter how progressive, don’t like anomalies.”

“But you trained with them.”

“Yes. I spent many years in Dublin and the Irish countryside learning their ways. Always just a bit of an outsider. Except…”

He broke off and took another drink. She wasn’t sure if he was going to finish. She had heard so little of his past, and every bit had been fought for. She was shocked that he was even trusting her with this much information without some huge tug of war. Maybe this was also part of his “prove it.”

“Anyway,” he said, “I know what Ethan is going through. For someone who wants to belong, the bonding is a high like you’ve never experienced. It’s family. Until it isn’t.”

Kierse wanted to ask. Did this have something to do with Lorcan’s sister, Emilie? Lorcan had claimed that Graves had killed Emilie, and Graves hadn’t denied that fact. What had really happened to sever him from the Druids so long ago?

But she knew when he’d hit a subject he wasn’t ready to discuss. She saw it in herself as much as him.

“Lorcan said as much,” Kierse said.

Graves pursed his lips. “What else did he say?”

“He thinks Cillian Ryan is dead. Sometime in the Monster War.”

“Hmm,” he responded skeptically.

“I guess he drained a sacred tree and that’s how he eluded Lorcan all this time. Sansa-something.”

“Sansara?” Graves asked with wide eyes. “Fucking hell.”

“That’s the one.”

“I knew he was pathological, but not that bad. No wonder the spell lasted so long on you, if it was fueled by Sansara.”

“Lorcan said that, too.”

Graves’s face turned dark. He clearly disapproved of the comparison. “Is that all he knew?”

She told him the rest. About his wife and her parents and the triskel. Graves looked unsurprised. He’d known, then, that Lorcan had been part of a triskel. For some reason, that didn’t seem to be what he wanted to discuss.

“Did he ask for anything else?” His voice was pitched low, his body leaning toward her like she was the earth and he her moon.

“Well, he asked me to stay. To move me and Gen onto the property.”

“Of course he did.”

“Which is why you kissed me,” she breathed as he loomed over her. She tipped her chin up to meet him.

“Is that so?”

“You knew he’d ask.”

“I know what he wants,” Graves said with finality. His hands moved to her hips, finding the hem of her black shirt and running it through his fingers.

“He offered me the world,” she teased. “Training and magic and a family and a throne.”

“How could you deny him?” He toed her feet farther apart, spreading her legs wide and settling between them.

“Who says I denied him?” she breathed. She put her hands on his chest. The heat of him rippled through her. Just a breath away from tipping over the edge.

“Well, if I knew all I had to do was offer you the entire world to get you to accept,” he began, his hands slipping to her ass and lifting her effortlessly onto the table, “maybe I would have done so earlier.”

“Are you offering me the world?”

“And the stars.”

“All of the ones in the night sky?”

“We’ll see if I can get you to see them all,” he said before pushing her flat on her back.

Her heart thudded noisily in her chest as he loomed over her exposed body, ripe for the taking.

His eyes crawled over her chest to the sliver of pale skin exposed at her navel.

Down her toned legs in fitted leggings to the black boots.

Her wren necklace beat its wings against her breastbone. A thrum calling like to like.

She was the wren to the Holly King. In so many ways—magical and metaphysical and spiritual—wrens belonged to the winter god.

A physical manifestation of his power. A hope for spring in a long winter.

The source of his own destruction. Because after the winter solstice, their connection ebbed and he lost his power to make way for spring.

The changing of the seasons, born in this pair of men and monsters.

Which meant at the summer solstice, their connection would grow once more. A little bird power-booster, destined to destroy him.

Even if they were currently out of season, she could feel the power blossom between them. The temperature in the room dipped, the balmy summer weather responding to the anthropomorphic winter at its heart.

Her breath frosted. Graves smiled. “Hello, my wren.”

He methodically pulled his gloves off, finger by finger. Stripping himself bare and revealing the source of his powers all at once. Even though his magic didn’t work on her, she never got tired of watching him expose his true nature.

“I’ve been dreaming about this,” he told her as he dropped to one knee.

“What’s that?”

He slid off one of her boots. “Being on my knees before you.” Her breath hitched.

He slipped off the second boot. “Spreading your legs.” Her socks were tossed onto the pile.

He ran his hands beneath the waistband of her leggings.

“Stripping you out of your clothes and tasting every inch of your sweet skin.” The leggings came off.

“That’s what your dreams are made of?”

“Do you blame me?” He placed a kiss to one inner knee, then the other. “One taste would never be enough.”

“You weren’t satisfied?”

“Satiated but never satisfied.” His bare hands slid up her thighs, dragging her inch by precious inch down the table until her ass nearly hung off. He lifted her knee over his shoulder and kissed a hot trail up her inner thigh. “Never enough of you.”

Her breathing was coming in quiet pants.

This Graves she hardly knew what to do with.

When it had been a game to get him out of her system, she had played it well.

Now she heard his words and matched his energy tenfold.

She wanted this. Him. Like this. However he’d have her.

Laid flat on a table. Bent over. Spread eagle. Bound and teased and high on him.

“Shall I remember the taste of my favorite delicacy?”

“Yes,” she gasped as his lips reached the apex of her thighs.

She was already flushed and indecently wet from his coaxing. But the first brush of his tongue against her clit made her moan. He smirked dramatically up at her. Every bit the cat playing with his food before he pounced.

“I have missed that sound. Perhaps you can try to be louder.”

“Louder,” she whispered.

He slid one of his perfect pianist fingers down the center of her wet pussy.

“Louder, wren.”

It was a command, and she could do nothing but follow. All of her clever quips and careful banter lost to his touch.

He pushed one luxurious finger into her core. He gave her body a quick and efficient stroke before adding a second and stretching her wider.

“Oh fuck,” she said. Her hands gripped the edge of the table, holding on for dear life. It had been an achingly long five months. That one touch of him in Paris would never be enough. There was nothing like him.

“So wet,” he said. “So very wet, this pretty pussy of mine.”

“Graves,” she moaned louder as he licked up her center.

“I’m going to have you dripping on the floor.”

His tongue ran flat along her, dragging out her pleasure as he indulged in her.

Then he dug in, burying his face in her pussy.

His tongue grew incessant and insistent—hard, quick flicks against her clit that made her jump.

She was desperate and turned on, and he was finger-fucking her like it was his job, as his tongue ruined her life in the very best way.

She was not going to last. Not even close.

“I…I…”

“Not yet,” he commanded, pulling back but leaving his hand.

“But…”

As his eyes lifted to her face, his strokes turned languid. Two fingers inside her and his thumb stroking ever so gently. Edging her until she thought she’d tip over, but he held her back.

He rose to his feet, spreading her wider.

“Look at yourself.” She shook her head. “I want you to watch as I make you come,” he said, his voice like velvet across her skin. “Remember that I did it.”

She hauled herself up onto her elbows and looked at the space where they were connected.

His fingers deep inside of her. His thumb on her swollen nub.

The whole thing indecent, with his scattered books on the floor and papers under her ass.

A liquor bottle inches away, threatening to topple and shatter into a million pieces.

And here she was, nearly dripping onto the antique rug of his precious library.

Like she was the most important thing in it.

“Perfection, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

His smile was dangerous when he said, “Now come for me.”

He knelt and returned his lips to her clit, sucking it into his mouth before swirling his tongue around the sensitive bud.

His fingers worked in and out of her, curling upward to hit the perfect spot.

She couldn’t have held back a second longer.

She released with a roar, her body exploding into a million tiny stars as the cosmos crashed down around her.

And as she slowly returned to her body, she saw the entire night sky, as promised.

When her screams subsided, she fell backward, her head striking the wood, and stared up into the depths of the endless library.

“This is how I want to think about you,” Graves said as he slid his fingers out of her and wiped them clean with a handkerchief. “Perfectly fucked.”

The creak of the door in the now-silent library alerted them with a second to spare that they were no longer alone. Graves blocked the view from the intruder, and Kierse scrambled for her panties— where the fuck had they gone? —she snatched them up just as Gen strode into the library.

“Genesis,” Graves said.

“I was just seeing if Kierse was ready to go.” She was halfway across the room before she seemed to realize what she had stumbled into.

Kierse didn’t know exactly how much Gen could see of her trying to pull her pants back on, but Gen could read the energy of the room. “Sorry, I…” Gen said, coming to a stop.

Kierse couldn’t see Graves’s face. She could only imagine what they looked like in that moment, his mouth still covered in the evidence of their indiscretion. That wide, dangerous smile on his lips. Kierse behind him in nothing but her underwear.

“Can we help you?” Graves asked.

“I just…heard voices,” Gen said with a note of panic as she retreated a step.

“I’ll be right out,” Kierse said on a scratchy, used voice.

“Okay. Yep. Yeah. I’ll see you later.”

Gen turned and fled the room, and Kierse released a breath. She tugged her leggings back on and glared up at him as he turned toward her.

“You have noise distortion,” she reminded him. “You could have made it so no one else heard.”

“Oh, I know.” He leaned in with a smirk on his lips. Close enough she thought he might kiss her again. “I didn’t want to.”