“At their discretion,” she said with a shrug. “I’d wager that they’ll take them from me. The same way they took my mother’s.”
“If they do, you can come back to me?” He looked hopeful. Too hopeful.
She shook her head. “No. I cannot.” She could be carrying his child. If she was, she would never, ever leave the land of the fae again. She would never take the risk her mother had. She would never, ever lose her child. She would live in her land without Ashley and with any child they created, or she would do so alone. If she wasn’t with child, she would still remain there. She would live her life as though she’d never met him. But she had. Oh, yes, she had. She let him draw her into his arms as they entered his bedchamber.
Ashley tugged at the ties of his dressing gown and shoved it from her shoulders in one quick move. She stumbled against his haste to disrobe her, laughing as he lifted her chemise over her head, and then she stood there, dressed in nothing more than moonlight.
His eyes grew darker, almost black in the dimly lit room. He reached for her, and she stopped him only momentarily, long enough to disrobe him as quickly as he had taken her clothes off. Within seconds, he was as naked as she, and she led him to the bed with a forceful tug of his fingers.
With her hands upon his shoulders, she took a step toward the bed, forcing him backward with a gentle shove until he sank into the bed of his own accord. His mouth immediately moved to her breasts, as his arms snaked around her waist and drew her to him. She flung her head back with a laugh, and pushed him to the bed, climbing over him. When they were nose to nose, he cupped the back of her head in his hand, forcing her to look at him. “What can I do to make you stay?” he breathed.
“Nothing,” she said. She stopped moving. Stopped laughing, stopped loving. Just stopped. “I am not of your world. We were never meant to be.”
With a quick roll, he drew her beneath him, smothering her gasp with his lips as he growled against them. “Tell me we’re not meant to be,” he said, settling between her thighs. He rocked against her center but didn’t lodge himself inside her. Instead, he stole her breath as he pressed the head of his shaft against that little bundle of nerves that thumped so loudly and made her cry out. “Tell me,” he growled. “Tell me you don’t love me.” He rocked against her center again, small noises leaving his throat as he narrowed his eyes. It was almost as though he could look into her very being.
“You know I can’t,” she cried out as the head of his shaft lodged inside her.
“Tell me you love me,” he ground out as he filled her completely in one harsh stroke. His arms shook on either side of her head, quavering as he looked down at her.
“You know I can’t.”
He pushed himself even farther inside her, farther than she’d known he could go. “You can’t love me, or you can’t tell me?” he growled.
“It’s forbidden,” she whispered on a rush of pleasure as he moved inside her. He withdrew in one long, slow stroke. And then he vanished. He didn’t surge within her again. He fell beside her on the bed and covered his eyes with his arm. He inhaled deeply. In and out. She watched the rise and fall of his chest. His manhood jutted up, standing between them, shimmery with her wetness. “Don’t push me away,” she whispered, reaching to pull his arm down from where it covered his eyes. “Not tonight. Don’t push me away.” She tugged harder and he finally relented. “I leave on the rising-dawn wind.”
He laughed. It was a sound without any mirth at all. “I’ve a mind to lock you in the tower and keep you there.”
Her heart leapt at the thought. But they would come for any children she and he conceived. They would take them. It would never work.
“I could go with you,” he offered. “Anne and I. We could leave everything and come with you.”
“You would do that for me?” she whispered.
“I would do it for us,” he said. He rose up on his elbow and looked at her, as though a light had just flickered to life for him.
“There has never been a human in our world.”
“Ever?” He looked shocked. Everything he’d learned and that shocked him?
“Ever,” she affirmed.
“There’s a first time for everything.”
She shook her head. “No.”
***
He refused to beg her to love him. He had too much pride. She would leave with the morning wind, as though she’d never existed. “You will forget me in time,” she said.
“Never,” he vowed as he rolled to cover her with his body again. If she thought he would ever forget her, she was due for a stay at Bedlam, rather than her land. He brushed her curls back from her face. “Tell me you love me. Leave me with the knowledge of that.”
“Do you doubt it?” she croaked out. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. For God’s sake, Ashley, I lost the color of my wings tonight. I’ll forever be known in the land of the fae as one of lost innocence, provided that they let me keep my wings at all.”
He didn’t understand. Not at all.
“I wanted one night with you,” she growled, tugging at his hair in frustration.
Something she said finally sunk in. “I have ruined you,” he said.