I licked my lips nervously. “Caom.”
As he turned to face me, I chewed my lip. I hadn’t wanted to ask him to buy me some, because it felt weak—and slightly dangerous—to admit that I didn’t want to go in there. That I was intimidated by the thought.
I forced myself to ask, “Will you… would you go and buy me some coffee beans? I’ll give you the money for them.”
He stared at me, confused for a moment. “Why don’t you just buy them yourself?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, but before I could answer he laughed and said, “You’d rather coffee than wine? Alright. Let’s go in.”
“No,” I blurted, my face flushing. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I think I’m going to go home, actually. I don’t want a drink.”
“Oh.” His face fell, and he glanced over his shoulder at the tavern. “Alright. I’ll walk you home.”
My chest tightened when a tall, dark form appeared in front of us. Lonan’s pale face glowed in the unseelie candlelight flickering from open windows, his eyes endless holes of black and his mouth a thin, irritated slash.
“I’ll do it,” he said flatly, staring at Caom and daring him to answer back. Then those black eyes shifted to me, blank and cold. “I have a message from my mother for the mortal.”
So I was back to just being the mortal. Not that he’d ever called me anything else.
There was none of the heat or hunger that had made those eyes burn so intensely that night. It was like it had never even happened. Shockingly strong sadness filled me at the thought of him acting like he’d already forgotten it. Like it had been nothing.
I’d built it up in my head, seeing things that weren’t really there. The Folk were good at making mortals do that. They were cold but fierce. It would be easy to make it seem like he’d been overwhelmed with desire for me when it had most likely just been another way to fuck with my head. Make me want him because it amused him. Make me pine for him so he could get me to do whatever he wanted.
I hated that it had worked.
Caom didn’t dare argue with the assassin prince. I didn’t protest either, even though now that the thing I’d been hoping for was actually happening, I just felt nervous and uncertain.
It didn’t help that Lonan said absolutely nothing as we started walking, leaving Caom behind. He was a wall of cold indifference beside me as I clutched my bag and stayed quiet.
“The Carlin is pleased you are socialising with the Folk more,” he said in an emotionless voice as we started walking through the rapidly descending darkness in the direction of the cottage. “She is eager to see you shed your mortal skin and become one of us fully.”
I wanted to say that I wasn’t doing it forher, but I knew that would achieve nothing, so instead I just said, “Okay.”
He didn’t speak again. The entire walk was spent in painful, tense silence. I wondered what he would do if I brought up that night. If I asked him why he’d kissed me. Why he’d dropped to his knees and sucked my cock like the urge had been burning inside him for ages.
I was fairly certain he’d drive his blade through my gut if I did, just to escape the conversation. He was brittle beside me, his normally slinking gait tense and jerky, like it had been when he’d walked me home after the Carlin’s dinner.
Unease and the reluctance to reveal anything at all kept me as silent as he was. If I brought up that night and he laughed in my face, I didn’t know how I would react. Either the crushing embarrassment and disappointment would be painfully obvious, or I’d see red and lunge at him to start the fight I’d been goading him for that night. Both reactions would be too telling.
It didn’t stop the disappointment settling in my gut like a lead ball as the cottage came into sight, though. My only opportunity to talk to him in weeks, and we’d walked in silence. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say to him. I didn’t know what I’d been hoping for.
Lonan walked me right to the door, but still said nothing even as I stood there clutching my bag instead of just going inside. We stared at each other in the dark. Neither of us moving. Neither of us speaking.
I was breathing too fast and I didn’t know why. My heart was pounding, so hard I was convinced he could hear it. Lonan was unmoving in front of me, but I realised his own chest was rising faster than normal. His lips were parted slightly around his short, shallow breaths.
The bag slipped from my fingers when he lunged at me, everything rolling free onto the grass as he kissed me hard and moaned helplessly into my mouth.