Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
“Okay then. So it’s obviously working.”
She smiled, and on the one hand, it was nice to have my Gayle back to the Gayle I knew.
On the other hand, knowing it was the effects of magic didn’t thrill me.
“Tomorrow, can we talk?” I asked.
“What about?” she asked back.
I wanted to show her Selediel’s portrait, but I didn’t want to do it right before she was going to bed.
“History,” I prevaricated.
“What?”
“It’s not a big deal.” Okay, that was an outright lie.
“Okay. But I have to deal with my bosses and my schedule first thing. Can we do afternoon?”
“Sure.”
“Mega.”
“All right. I’ll let you be. Love you. Sleep well.”
“You too.”
I moved away.
She shut the door.
I left Laura and Aleksei alone, just in case they were engaged in activities they didn’t want interrupted, and I headed to Tanyn’s bedchamber.
He wasn’t there.
Then again, he was doing his rounds of Bainon, Sirk and Cormac, so he might be a while.
Thus, I grabbed my tablet, climbed into bed, and had just started reading when Tanyn strolled in, Hurley, who had been absent for the evening’s festivities (I had learned the pup loved being outside), trotting at his side.
Hurley rushed to me.
I set aside the tablet so I could bend over the side of the bed to give him a full body rub.
When I lifted away, I had a king in my face, kissing me.
He ended it and said, “Be right back.”
With that, he (and Hurley) went into the closet.
I nabbed my tablet again.
He (and Hurley) came back.
I watched him in his pajama bottoms round the bed. I did this because it was a good show.
I also did it feeling something new.
Something I liked.
I liked it more when Tanyn got in beside me, stretched out, and he turned right to me, wrapped an arm around my hips and tipped his head back to look up at me.
Lilith, he was beautiful.
“You want to read for a while?” he murmured.
“Is that a nice way for you to say you want me to ditch my book so we can have sex?” I teased.
His gaze warmed, but his lips said, “No. It’s my way of asking you if you want to read for a while.”
I set my tablet on the nightstand, shifted down in bed, turned to him, and since his arm never left me through these movements, it was right in position to pull me closer.
“I kinda can’t wait for this to be our normal,” I noted.
“Pardon?” he asked.
His big hand was moving over the silk covering my back, but in a soothing way, not in a starting-something way.
“Me, lying in bed, waiting for you to be done doing your kingly duties and coming to me so you can just be my Tanyn.”
Mm-hmm, yes.
I slipped the “my” in there.
Lightning crackled in his eyes.
And that was my reward.
“Without threats of fisticuffs in the antechamber and rogue dowager queens on a rampage, that is,” I added.
“Yes, it will be nice when all that shit is done.”
“Since it’s not. I talked with Aleece. She’s coming to terms, and she’s decided to stick with our quartet. She’s still going to put Bainon through it, I fear. But she’s coming to terms. And I talked with Gayle. No ill effects from the spell.” I hesitated for effect. “So far.”
“That’s good.”
“Thanks for taking her back.”
His hand smoothed over my ass, and he used it to pull me even closer. “No problem, baby.”
“And how are the boys?” I asked.
“Sirk is settled. I like him. He’s a good male. Very funny.”
“He is that.”
“And it says a great deal about him that not long after a breakup, he’d come to Gayle’s aid.”
That did say a great deal about him.
“But his mission is accomplished. He’s leaving first thing tomorrow.”
“That’s probably good,” I mumbled.
“I know she’s taken the spell, but I fear that was a mistake for an unexpected reason.”
This change of mind was interesting.
“I thought you were all for it.”
“I was, until I saw Mac react to her around another male.”
“Oh,” I whispered.
“I need to carve out time to see if I can get him to share. Because whatever is holding him back, it is absolutely not that he doesn’t want her.”
My lips parted in shock.
“You didn’t see it?” he asked.
“It seems he’s struggling with something,” I allowed.
“He’s holding back, for reasons unknown, but I don’t think he wants to hold back. I think he has to.”
“He told her he doesn’t want a half-human, half-fae Fallian as his bride and eventual queen.”
“He lied.”
Tanyn seemed very sure about that.
So I asked, “How do you know?”
“Because you don’t lose your shit that a female you don’t want is with another male.”
“But the fated mate thing…”
“Her merest whim, she voices it, he backs down.”
Hmm.
I’d noticed that.
“Mac doesn’t back down from shit,” Tanyn continued.
“Do you have any clue what his damage is?”
He shook his head but said, “I know him, and have for some time. Longer than Aleksei or Bain. He did a year at the Eyrie in an exchange when I was there. He was younger than me, but seeing as he was who he was, and getting shit for it, and I’m who I am, even though I’d been officially stripped of my titles, I looked after him. You know Niall and Laoise had a son before they had Cormac.”