Lucus’s weight on me sent my mind whirling. Every inch of him eased against me, and my back arched like my body didn’t need my mind to be functioning properly. With deft fingers, he slid my wide-necked shirt from my shoulder and kissed his way across my collarbone, sending heat snaking toward my thighs.
He sat up, then lifted my skirt and began shuffling my undies down my legs, letting his fingertips drag down the backs of my thighs, knees, calves. He lifted my foot and kissed the arch, the heat of his mouth dusting along my heel and ankle. In a quick movement, he pulled me close, then knelt between my legs. Bending low, a wicked gleam in his eye, he took energy from my aura as his mouth hovered just above my inner thigh. His horns caught the firelight, and his lure intensified, heating me up and sending crashing waves of tingling want through me.
“Lucus. Please.”
“Slowly, my queen. We have two hours, certainly. We must remind ourselves why we fight. To revel in life, to delight in its pleasures, to live like every day is our last.”
I tried to argue, but then his mouth was on me, and my concerns scattered like startled birds. His tongue flicked along me, teasing, barely touching. Desire thrashed inside me, and I gripped Lucus’s head, feeling the pointed tips of his ears. His lure made my lips tingle along with the rest of me, and I tried to beg. I wanted the fullness of him, and I wanted it now.
“Lucus.”
His tongue was both torture and bliss as the heat of it smoothed across me. He inhaled over my navel, pulling in my aura, and I felt my palms wake with magic to draw fae power from him. In the glittering ribbons of emerald fae magic and the dancing flames of the hearth, Lucus’s hands smoothed across my breasts, and his thumbs circled my nipples before traveling slowly, slowly across my ribs until he was holding me close with his chest pressed firmly against mine. With a quick thrust of his hips, he filled me.
Pleasure rocketed down my body, and I shouted, unable to hold back because it felt so damn good.
“Enjoying yourself, you murdering bastard?” someone whispered from the door.
Lucus was up, trousers zipped and standing between whomever it was and me before I could even register what was going on. “You are early.”
Getting to my feet, I tugged my clothes into place and turned to see the Mage Duke.
26 Coren
The Mage Duke swaggered forward, magic crackling over his entire freaking torso. I couldn’t breathe. He glanced toward the bed.
The Yew Bow.
With a grin, he snatched the weapon and examined it. “Well, well. You grow too comfortable here in my castle, Yew Queen.”
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
“Your magic is the murderer these days.” Lucus’s voice was a sword drawn from a sheath. Bright fae magic curled around his fingers, and the trees in his room shook their leaves, roots slithering toward the Duke’s tall leather boots.
The Duke stepped forward, eyes widening, showing the white all around his irises. “That is your fault! There is no innocent blood on my hands.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “If you’d never cast the curse, then the humans here would never have suffered.”
“Semantics.” The Mage Duke raised the Yew Bow, lifted his knee, and broke the weapon in two.
I rushed the asshole, magic clouding around me as I rose above his head. Lightning shot from my palms and enveloped him. He shouted, and his face contorted in pain as Lucus’s vines shot from the walls and the trees woke to smash the Duke to the floor. The broken Yew Bow on either side of him, he shut his eyes and whispered. Lightning and thunder blasted Lucus and me backward. Before I hit the stone floor beside the rug, tree roots cradled me and lowered me safely. I scrambled up to see Lucus wave an arm and a tree bash the Duke into the wall. The Duke laughed like a fucking maniac, then lightning washed through the room and flames erupted from Lucus’s wings.
Lucus shouted and pressed himself to the tree behind him, which swallowed him for a blink before releasing him, blessedly no longer on fire.
The Duke leapt to meet his ancient enemy. I charged after him, but when I grabbed the Duke’s arm to blaze him with magic, the flash of steel stopped me. The Duke had a dagger pressed against Lucus’s throat, the tip piercing the flesh and a line of blood running quickly down his chest. Lucus’s skin went dark around the wound, his fae reaction to iron. His breaths came too quickly, his throat bobbing against the steel’s fierce edge as his eyes met mine. Pain glazed their green depths, and I could feel his lure surging, then fading as he tried to affect the Duke.
The Duke smiled at me over his shoulder even as he pushed the dagger further into Lucus’s throat. His ribs moved under his modern shirt like he was panting from either the lure or the fighting. I shuddered at the similarity between his features and Aunt Viv’s. I couldn’t believe this man was my ancestor.
“Don’t worry, Yew Queen,” the Duke spat. “I won’t kill your murderous lover now. I want his pain to last longer than a moment. I want his pain to last forever.”
Unshed tears burned my eyes, and my fingernails bit into my sweating palms. “So what’s your plan?” My words came out in a croak.
The Mage Duke held on to Lucus and led me out of the bedroom and into the corridor. “I will see if your fellow townsfolk can please me enough to spare them.”
“I thought you cared about sparing innocents.”
“They are innocent no longer. Don’t think I am unaware of what you have been plotting here within the walls of my own
