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“Gwynn,” Rogue murmured. “Say it can be now.”
All those times I’d said no. All those arguments and my determined resistance. I might have paid my life debt to Rogue by promising to bear his child, but I’d at least been able to forestall those consequences by refusing his seduction. All come to nothing.
I’d never agreed and I’d still lost that battle. I hadn’t quite assimilated that I was truly pregnant. Titania had forced us—tricked, manipulated, however you wanted to split the hairs—into doing the deed, but then she’d removed the memory afterward. It had happened weeks ago. Or months, as time in Faerie flowed in a different way. Titania had restored the memories and informed me of the pregnancy in a neat double whammy meant to lay me low. I was still reeling from the rawness and violation of the rape. Technically I’d done it to Rogue, but I counted Titania as our true rapist, as she’d pulled the strings.
I could let that go now. No more defending myself from the embryo I already carried. I could say yes, finally.
“If you say no again, it might kill me,” he growled, biting my lip again, then laving it with his tongue.
“Even though you’re immortal?” I teased.
“Even so.”
“Then yes.”
Something inside me released at that moment, old scar tissue breaking open, finally yielding up that tight, binding pain. A rush of gladness followed. I didn’t have to fight this anymore.
Not letting me go, raining kisses on my upturned face, Rogue swung down from Felicity, in a feat of strength and grace that had me gasping. He smiled, the fanged lines around his beautiful mouth twisting with the movement, loving that he’d impressed me.
His magic swirled and he laid me down on a bed of velvet he’d wished into existence, stretching himself beside me.
“Doing magic left and right now?” I asked him in an arch tone.
“Yes. I am overflowing with you. And still you feed me more. Let me have more.”
“It’s yours.”
With a choking sound and some incoherent emotion I couldn’t discern, he fell on me, fingers twining into my hair, holding me in place while he kissed me in that drugging way that swept all thought aside.
I meant it too. For the time being, at least, I just wanted to enjoy him. Savor the moment without worrying how much I might lose to his magnetic personality. He’d said he loved me and, though it might not mean to him what it did to me, I wanted to believe in that. Even if it had been in the heat of battle and the crushing aftermath. I only wished that I could touch him in turn. At least loosen the band that tied back his hair.
But I couldn’t use my hands. Thanks to the handy anesthetic magic of Darling Hercules Goliath—I was trying to remember, though the name chain was getting ridiculous—I mostly didn’t feel anything. The makeshift bandages swaddling my hands, however, both mittened me and hid from view the lethal claws that had made a ruin of my fingers. The feline spirit that had recently taken up occupation in my soul had helped defeat Titania, but it also wanted out and needed my flesh to do it.
Nothing to do about it at the moment. Rogue had promised we’d fix it and we would. For now I wanted not to think about it, to simply seize the moment and savor Rogue.
Besides, I had other means at my disposal. A lowly scientist in my previous mundane life as a university professor, I’d become a sometimes distressingly powerful sorceress, with even my least notion coming true until I learned to control it. A hair tie was far more easily dealt with than, say, an army of flying monkeys. I vanished it, and the black silk cloak of Rogue’s hair fell around us.
“I am looking forward to the moment,” he commented in a wry tone, “when I manage to sweep your thoughts away in truth.”
“You’ll just have to work harder.”
“Oh, sweet Gwynn, I fully intend to.” He untangled his hand from my own hair and put it on my bare leg, raising my skirt. I stared into his fulminous eyes, riveted.
At last.
“Oh no!” Starling’s startled exclamation shattered the moment. “Turn around, you guys.”
Athena’s and Larch’s voices protested. Rogue and I stared at each other, sharing the same frustrated annoyance. For once we were in perfect sync. His hand flexed on my thigh, as if unwilling to let me go, then relaxed and smoothed my skirt back down. He sat up, drawing me with him.
Larch, Athena and Starling stood a short distance away, black-and-silver shapes in the moonlight, Starling wringing her hands together and clearly kicking herself for the interruption. My half-fae, half-human maidservant and friend had been hoping so hard for me to give in to Rogue that she no doubt deeply felt the irony of interrupting us. Larch, a Brownie stolid as the blue fireplug he resembled, looked into the distance. Only Athena, a petite fairy girl with a diabolical brain, seemed unperturbed, spinning her glinting dagger in her fingers, a salacious grin on her face. Darling wound around their feet in greeting and I glared at him. He could have warned us they were close.
“Goliath,”he replied in a grumpy mental tone, tinged with more than a little jealousy. Great.
“Looks like you’re feeling better, Gwynn,” Athena observed. “We thought we’d better come check on you two to see how you fared against those nasty chimps, but you seem to be doing quite fine without us. Brilliantly, in fact.”
“We should go!” Starling announced. “Come on, everyone. Back on your horses. We can, um, go find a place to camp.”
“No, don’t go.” I levered myself to my feet awkwardly, Rogue assisting me after a moment’s hesitation. Dark and broody irritation rolled off him, but I could hardly dismiss the people who’d accompanied me on this quest—and who probably were the making of it. Especially with another attack possible. What had I been thinking? About sex, clearly. “Are you guys okay? No one is hurt?”
