Must… stop… this…
“He warned me you would be beautiful, Aflora,” the voice whispered, his face far too close to my neck. “But I didn’t expect you to be such a delicate little flower.”
My lips curled down at the phrase. “Wh-what?” I stuttered, my breath seeming to escape me as he kissed my throat. What are you doing? I wanted to demand, but my mouth rejected the words, choosing to moan instead. How do you know my name?
This can’t…
Oh…
His mouth touched my skin, causing my knees to buckle.
Holy Elements…
This was bad. I felt the illicitness of it crawling inside me, igniting my instincts, only to be tampered down by a seductive, dusky cloud.
Dark magic, I recognized, my heart skipping a beat. It swam all around us, infiltrating my ability to reason. To think. To run.
“Stop,” I managed to say, my demand lost to the raspy quality of my tone.
He chuckled against my neck, his tongue darting out to tease my racing pulse. “I wish I could, delicate flower. But I’ve been given a task. You.”
My fingers curled into fists, my limbs locking up as I fought to break the spell he’d woven over my form.
Which only earned me another chuckle from the powerful Midnight Fae before me. “Mmm, yes. More of that, please.” He nipped the tender skin behind my ear, his amusement palpable. “I was beginning to wonder if perhaps I’d found the wrong fae, what with your easy acquiescence and all.”
Easy acquiescence.
I’d show him easy acquiescence.
Just as soon as I could find my will to fucking move.
But his magic swathed me in a sea of black, cutting off my access to the element I relied upon for survival, and sank harsh claws into my soul.
I gritted my teeth, furious that I’d allowed him to trap me so effortlessly. That bike had momentarily stunned me, allowing this Midnight Fae jackass to hook me in his dark web.
Fortunately, it was
n’t my first date with his kind of magic.
Closing my eyes, I ignored the inky strands floating around me and focused on finding the core of my strength.
Earth.
It was dangerous to access the source of my element, but my royal bloodline enabled me to seek it out, to see the original World Tree. Its massive roots resembled a tangle of life reaching out to every living Earth Fae, the thickest band connecting to me—the last Earth Fae heir.
I crawled along it, absorbing its strength and readying my attack.
The Midnight Fae wouldn’t know what—
His canines sank into my flesh, eliciting a scream from my throat. Dread, darkness, and desire flooded my senses at once. A denial parted my lips. My soul screaming at the wrongness of his bite. While my body melted into him in a stark betrayal of my mind.
A tear slid from my eye, the pleasure from his embrace cutting deep into my spirit while my mind recognized the absolute horror of what this meant.
Midnight Fae were not meant to consort with other fae in any capacity. And that included tasting the blood of an elemental or any other fae.
This defied every rule I’d ever learned, and not just because of his teeth in my neck, but because of the very visceral need his touch elicited from within me.
“Stop,” I demanded, but the moan underlying the word belittled my intention.