Chapter 25
Maeve’s eyes narrowed. “You are not wearing my gift, little human.”
Tamsin met her gaze blandly. “I’m afraid it met a tragic fate.”
As had the bed. Even a tied-up, spread-eagled fae was ridiculously strong. Next time, she was going to have to chain Cuan up.
Bet Maeve could lend me some…
“Your gift pleased us both very much.” Cuan came forward, offering Maeve a deep bow. “Perhaps too much so. I fear the garment was too delicate for my brutish hands. I can only offer my deepest apologies, my lady.”
Maeve sniffed. She looked Cuan up and down, and her icy expression thawed. Tamsin did not at all like the possessive heat that lit in the elf queen’s crimson eyes.
“I thought that this outfit would suit you.” She trailed her long nails over Cuan’s chest, fingering the gold-studded straps. “Bathed and properly attired, one might almost mistake you for a nobleman rather than a beast.”
Maeve traced the spiraling faemark on Cuan’s pectoral muscle, with slow and lingering appreciation. Tamsin clenched her hands in her skirts, fighting down a strong desire to slap the woman.
Cuan, for his part, endured Maeve’s manhandling with an air of stoic martyrdom. His faemarks stayed dark, not showing even the faintest glimmer of arousal.
Maeve’s eyes narrowed again. Her hand closed around Cuan’s bare throat—not tight, but it definitely wasn’t a caress now.
“Yet you are not fully dressed, my beast.” Her voice sharpened. “Why are you not wearing the fine golden collar that I sent you?”
A deep blush crept over Cuan’s high cheekbones. It badly clashed with his dark blue faemarks.
“Er,” he said. “Ah.”
“You can blame me for that one, Lady Maeve.” Tamsin forced out the Lady. Much as she hated the woman, it wasn’t wise to antagonize her too much. “I convinced him that it wasn’t appropriate.”
In a way, it was true. Cuan’s first experience of bondage seemed to have left quite an impression on him. When he’d put his collar back on after a quick and much-needed shower, he’d become instantly—and very visibly—aroused. In the end, he’d had to leave it behind.
Tamsin pressed her lips together, battling the smirk that wanted to spread across her face. “In the human world, we don’t wear that sort of thing in public. Well. Mostly, anyway.”
“But we are not in your world, little human.” Maeve’s tone still had that dangerous edge. “You are in ours. You follow our rules. We do not bend to yours.”
Cuan cleared his throat. With Maeve’s hand around his throat, the sound was rather strangled.
“That is true, my lady,” he said. “Yet still, I find that my mate—ah, that is, my human—is broadening my horizons.”
Maeve loosened her grip. There was a faint bruise around Cuan’s neck—but in the shape of a collar, not the elf queen’s fingers.
One of Maeve’s eyebrows rose. “So it seems.”
Cuan went an even more spectacular shade of red.
Maeve let out a low, purring laugh. She released Cuan at last, stepping back.
“So you have broken my beast to harness,” she murmured to Tamsin. “How kind of you. Basic training can be so tedious. You must inform me when he is ready to learn some advanced tricks. Some things require the firm hand of an experienced mistress, after all.”
“I’ll let you know,” Tamsin said, in the same tones as Over my dead body.
Cuan stared at the sky with the expression of a man praying for the sweet relief of a direct lightning strike.
Maeve laughed again, turning away. “Come, my amusing pets. I have a very special revel planned tonight. It would not do to be late.”
Well, that’s not ominous at all.
Tamsin repressed a shudder. For a short space of time, straddling Cuan as he’d cursed and strained against the ropes, she’d felt…powerful. In control.