Free Shadowfae by Erica Hayes Page B

his sensual image, and I wallowed in it. We played every game, twisted every kink, left no vice untried. Our library was hidden in a locked room, ancient books with human skin for covering, grimoires, poison recipes, the devil’s handwriting in blood on singed black paper. Luna’s power proved elusive, difficult, always just beyond my reach.
    And one day he tired of me and left me chained to a wall underground, visiting me every so often to make me eat and to humiliate me with things I no longer wanted to do, at least not with him. My silk gown wore thin and greased up with grime, the curls falling from my hair. I cursed Luna as I’d cursed god, but a liar doesn’t need belief to thrive, and I’d learned no power that could ever hurt him. He’d made sure of that.
    Two months later he lost me to Kane in a faro game. End of story.
    I hadn’t thought about Luna in a long time, and I didn’t like talking about it. I’d wanted immortality once, to spite that skinny god who insisted I must die as he had. I’ve changed since then.
    Now I looked across at Rajah, this oddly animated, disturbingly attractive stranger who longed to escape Kane’s thrall so he could live, not so he could die, and an empty place deep in my heart yearned. I wanted him to understand me, and not just because an incubus was probably the only man who could, but because for some deluded reason I thought Rajah might actually care. I wanted him to care. I wanted him to know me for myself, not just as some desperate rapture-drenched screwup or a scared little princess who gets beaten up by her jealous vampire boyfriend.
    I took a deep breath and told him the whole thing.
    He walked in silence for a minute after I finished, his hands still stuffed into his pockets. “Our stories are similar,” he said at last, and looked up at me with a dark hint of smile. “We searched in the wrong places. There’s no shame in that.”
    We turned the corner into my street, and I couldn’t help but smile back, his gaze steady and warm on mine, until after a while his candor made me uncomfortable and I looked away.
    He surveyed my door, squashed in under the stairs like a rabbit hole, and laughed. “You’ll go a long way to make your point, I’ll give you that. You know Kane would put you in a South Yarra mansion if you asked him to.”
    “I’ll never ask him to.” I shifted, awkward, and held out my hand. “Thanks.”
    After a moment he took it. “No worries. If Ange bothers you, call me.”
    I flushed to remember that he’d walked me home so Ange wouldn’t beat me up again. Not because he actually wanted to talk to me or anything. “I didn’t mean that. I meant thanks for dinner. And . . . and for wasting your night on me, I guess.”
    “It wasn’t a waste. I . . . umm . . . had a good time.”
    He didn’t drop my hand, and my skin burned even hotter. He was teasing my wrist with his fingertip, wearing a tragically innocent look on his face. A shiver whispered up my arm, delicate, genuine, not a contrived shimmer of rapture but honest desire. I thought of my flat, humid and dark, sour with that blue-drenched smell. I didn’t want it to smell of Nyx. I kept Nyx in my heart, where he belonged, not smeared on my floor like excrement. I wanted it to smell of rogan josh, the sweet smoothness of lassi and the dark, fresh aroma of Rajah’s sweat.
    I swallowed. “Rajah?”
    “Yeah.” He slid his fingers over mine, tracing them one by one, watching, transfixed.
    I didn’t pull away. “You’re still here.”
    “So I am.” He brought my hand to his beautiful lips, and his clever tongue flickered tingles over my fingertip.
    I couldn’t help but gasp at the rush of desire that flooded me, burning, all the way to my hardening nipples, my trembling thighs, the desperate ache starting between my legs. I wanted to slip my finger into his hot mouth so he could suck it. “Didn’t you say something about disappearing?”
    He gave a sultry half smile and