Cool air swirled around my legs, free at last from the confinement. Drayce kissed one eyelid with a touch as gentle as a butterfly’s caress.
“It’s been an eternity since you visited me in that room.” He kissed the other and ran his hands over the curve of my buttocks. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Pleasure pooled low in my belly, swirling, heating, spreading its heat between my thighs. I whispered, “How long?”
“Time lost meaning in that realm.” He hooked his fingers beneath my leather bodice and eased the armor off my skin with a gentle ripping sound.
“Are you peeling off my scales?” I asked with a smile.
He grinned back. “It’s only right, since the night fowl crowed.”
“When?” I nuzzled his neck.
“While you were talking to Osmos.” He scooped me up in his arms, making my heart giddy with delight. “Didn’t you hear it?”
I threw my head back, a giggle bubbling up to my throat. Drayce had returned to me at last. I wrapped my arms around his neck and slid my fingers beneath the silk of his nightshirt. Before I could unwrap him, shadows crept from beneath his shirt and pulled it off his shoulders.
“But I wanted to undress you.” I glided my arms over the smooth skin of his broad, muscular shoulders, enjoying the way the tendons beneath his flesh bunched under my fingertips.
“Next time.” Drayce rubbed his nose over mine, our lips barely touching. It was as though he was committing the sight and scent of me to memory. His warm breath fanned over my skin, sending tingles of anticipation skittering over my spine.
I yearned for our lips to touch.
As he carried me across the room and through to the door that led to the bath chamber, he pressed a gentle kiss on my lips and murmured, “Do you promise not to drown me in the bath?”
I drew back. “What are you—” I caught his twinkling eyes, and realization struck. The last time we had made love, I had set his skin on fire. To make things worse, I’d only recently stabbed him through the heart. “That isn’t funny!”
He chuckled, gave me another peck on the lips, drew back, and smirked.
A smile curved my lips. “Although if breaking the curse on the Spring Court requires me to drown my mate, I could consider holding you underwater.”
Drayce drew back and frowned. “Not funny.”
I threw my arms around him and burst into a fit of breathless laughter. When was the last time I had felt like this? I couldn’t remember. Certainly not since arriving in the realm of the fae, and certainly not since that horrific Samhain. Since that night, I had lived with the fear and guilt and shame of having brought the fae to my village.
Drayce opened the bath chamber door, letting out the roar of running water and a cloud of warm, jasmine-scented air. I turned to find a cascade streaming down one of the marble walls.
A breath caught in the back of my throat. “Is that a waterfall?”
“An aqueduct,” he said, carrying me toward the water. “It’s modeled after a bathhouse in the Spring Court.”
As we approached the wall, a fine spray of droplets misted against my skin, and my heart quickened with anticipation for what would happen next. In the blink of an eye, Drayce and I stood beneath the aqueduct’s full force. Water hit my head and shoulders in a drumbeat quicker than my pulse. It was hot and loud and invigorating.
I clung onto Drayce’s neck and squeezed my eyes shut as the relentless flow cleansed me of everything—dirt, guilt, despair. His strong arm around my back and the other beneath my legs held me in place, and I yielded to the water’s purifying effects.
Thoughts of the Dearg Due, the demon dog, the Dagda, the deaths on our disastrous drive through the Summer Court washed away under the flow. With Drayce free, I felt like I could face the Fear Dorcha.
When I thought the water would shatter me into a million pieces, it lessened in intensity to a heavy rain. Leaning back into the embrace, I opened my eyes to meet Drayce’s hungry stare.
“Neara,” he said, his deep voice curling around my senses.
“Drayce, I…” The words died on my tongue.
Drayce cradled the back of my head as we kissed under the warm spray, sending the sensation of ghostly hands caressing my skin with touches so gentle that I thought they were my overactive imagination. But when slippery tendrils wrapped around my breasts and thighs, I drew back to find his shadows wrapping over my skin.
“They felt like hands,” I murmured.
“I can shape my shadows in any way I wish.”
Licking my lips, I trailed my fingers down his muscled chest. “Have you ever used them to pleasure a woman?”
“I’ve never made love with a human.” He kissed my neck.
“You know what I’m trying to say.” I rolled his nipple between my thumb and forefinger.
Drayce hissed through his teeth, the sound making my insides ripple with delight. “Have I ever used my shadows to do this?”
The shadow stroking my leg snaked up the inside of my thighs, sending a blaze of heat in my core. I clung onto Drayce’s neck and whimpered.
“Do you like that?” he murmured as the shadow inched further up with tight, teasing circles.
It was molten fire and white lightning, sending a quickening deep in my core. A moan tore from my lips, which Drayce swallowed with a deep kiss.
I was lost. Lost in a haze of cascading water, questing shadows, and his lips and teeth and tongue.
Drayce devoured me with a passion that burned hotter than the steam, a fierce hunger that melted me from the inside-out. My heart pounded so hard that I felt its reverberations in my marrow, and my breaths turned hot and heavy as the cascade.
“I love you,” he murmured into the kiss.
A moan reverberated deep within my chest, which swelled with incandescent joy. I knew
