AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why?” he murmurs into the crown of my head.
“Because my mind’s in the gutter.”
“What does that mean?”
I laugh against the damp shirt he simply should not be wearing. “It means it’s not very ladylike to entertain scandalous dreams about one of my student’s fathers. And yet I’m so tired right now, I kind of just want to drop all my efforts into the bottom of the sea.” I let the lull of his heartbeat create a whisper of music in the background. “I try so hard, Pollux. Sometimes, it feels like I’m a shadow of what I could be. There are so many rules and rights and wrongs standing in the way of everything I want to do. I couldn’t get CPS to help me with you. I couldn’t get my school board to approve new equipment. Who knows if I’ll be able to get any help from anyone if I can prove you’re part of a cult. And…Zahra. What am I even supposed to do for Zahra?”
His fingers plunge into my hair, grip, and tug my head back. “I’m sorry. Kassandra. Could you…back up for just a moment or more…?” He meets my eyes, utterly bewildered. “Did you just say I’m part of a cult?”
“Yeah. You’re in, well, real world Pollux is in a weird cult that believes faeries are real and follows the law of a guy named Cael. Who claims to be a prince. The stupid thing is how not-creepy nice the members I’ve met have been. Andromeda adores them all. But that’s how cults get you. They paint this glorious picture of acceptance until you’re too far in to leave. Then the leaders use their early love-bombing against you so you’re always questioning and reaching for something that never really existed.”
Pollux opens his mouth and shuts it. He looks elsewhere, then back at me. “So I’m abusive to my daughter and also in a cult now?”
“I’m not sure about the abusive thing at the moment. You’ve been too cute with Meda lately, and I’m starting to wonder if that time you shook her was just a panic response. Maybe single guy dads toss their kids around a bit more than I’m used to. I don’t know. I’ve seen her scale two people like a chimpanzee. Maybe she’s one of those special kids who can go flying over their handlebars and laugh it off as their knees gush blood.”
Pollux has removed his hug in favor of clamping one arm to his body and one hand to his mouth.
I want my hug back, but unlike most things in my dreams from what I remember when dreaming was a usual thing, I can’t seem to control him. Lifting my hand, I touch his wrist. “Are you all right, dreamboy?”
“I’m managing unfamiliar emotions.”
“Oh. Okay.” I tilt my head. “It’s just… Not to be rude or anything, but this is a very disappointing spicy dream so far.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re here because my brain has given up on dignity. Your job is to already be ravishing me on the bottom of the seafloor surrounded by glowing fish and brilliant coral until I forget why I was one poorly-placed thought away from crying myself to sleep.”
He glances down through the murky puddle clinging to him. “If I go down there, the sea life will morph into horrors.”
“Cool. Like angler fish? They glow. Very atmospheric for ravishing.”
He frames my cheeks in his hands. His claws just barely prick my skull, and my eyes might half-lid in response to the sensation of it. He says, “I love you.”
My heart erupts, and the sky slashes pink, red, fire.
He swears and shakes me gently. “I love you, but I have no idea what to do with you.” His lips tip down at the corners. “Faerie is a real place. Faeries are real people. You are my soulmate. I love you. And I already know you won’t believe a word I say here, but you…” He hefts a sigh. “You make me want to abandon all caution and reserve.”
A nervous laugh spills out of me. “Yeah…yeah…” I drop my attention and draw circles into his shirt. “You’re obsessed with me. Going to the ‘elf party in the woods’ really did a number on my brain cells. I’m so worried for Zahra that I would love to believe the faeries are real narrative. But, if they are, why didn’t they talk to her?”
“You went to the elf party in the woods tonight?”
“Yep. I went to a clearing in the woods tonight and watched my best friend have a breakdown. It was a real…party.”
“The average fae in Cael’s domain are charged with responsibly interacting with humans, which often means not interacting with humans they are unfamiliar with.”
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” I mutter. “Do not attempt to rationalize this. Just, I don’t know, kiss me. Give me something that’ll haunt me when I wake up so I don’t have to think about anything else in the morning. If I can’t get my head off you, I won’t have to deal with all the other stuff.”
He sweeps me into his arms, rocks me against his chest, and steps from the water onto an ink-dark surface that pulls free from the depths and shines like polished obsidian. His lips graze my forehead. “You are a temptress, but I cannot in good conscience do what you’re asking when you think this is only a dream.”
“Please?”
He swears. “If you beg, I don’t know what will happen to my morals.”
Stretching, I kiss the rough edge of his jaw and whisper in one sharply pointed ear, “Please?”
His hold on me flinches, tighter. He glances sidelong into my eyes and growls, “You are a unique torture. Give me more.”
More? I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here. The handful of my dates rarely got past goodnight kisses in front of my college dorm. After I came back home, they happened in the car before I went to bed in my baby-blue childhood room with my stuffed animals tucked around me like sentries. Now, I spend my days picking up after small gremlins who occasionally still eat paste.
