Solstice (Midsummer #3)

1. Lex

1

Lex

NOVEMBER

T he sound of Ivy’s scream woke me. I’d always been a light sleeper, but my fiancée’s wail could reach me even in the depths of hell. I sat up and blinked against the moonlight, grabbing my cigarettes so I could light one before standing and heading toward my door.

The stoic expression of Theo, our bodyguard on duty, met me in the hallway.

“Sir?” He raised his eyebrows, expecting a response.

I waved him away. “I got it.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded, and he turned to head back downstairs.

Am I sure?

No. I hated this. I hated that the nightmares gnawed at her. I hated that her pride wouldn’t let me sleep in the same bed with her, that I had to put on this charade of going to mine so I could wake up in the middle of the night and trudge down this fucking hallway in the dark.

It was like this the first time, right after we got back from Ireland when we were in college. They’d gone away after that fairy bitch, Siobhan, returned the ring to her. It had protected her somehow. Not anymore. Ivy had lost the damn thing on her way out of Faerie two years ago, and Siobhan hadn’t put in an appearance since she saved us at the ruins.

I stalked across the soft white carpet, taking one last draw on my cigarette before putting it out in the crystal next to her bed. It already had three butts in it. I guessed Ivy had picked up my habit in the days leading up to the election.

It all ended today—now or never. She’d run out of rope to hang herself.

Perhaps it was the stress that had made the nightmares worse this week. Maybe after this was over, they might go away permanently. Wishful thinking.

I stood there for too long, watching her writhe and moan against her pillows.

“I won’t tell you,” she whimpered. “I won’t tell you where she is. She’s mine. Go away.”

The king again this time. Or maybe the queen. Any number of those sadistic fucks could be tormenting her. I didn’t know how it worked or why, but Ivy was connected to the fairies through her gift. For most people, she had to put her hands on them to see inside their head, but the fairies haunted her subconscious, showing up whenever they wanted to rifle through her dreams.

Every night, she fought it.

Something about me sent them away. All I had to do was wrap my arms around her and kiss her forehead, and she settled into peace. The same with Carter or Miri. If they came into town, they slept in her bed, and she finally got some damn rest.

“It’s like you shield me from them,” she’d said. “Like being with you shields all of us.”

We were stronger together.

Truth be told, it didn’t matter why it worked, only that she shut the fuck up and let me sleep. She wasn’t the only one that had a big day tomorrow. Yes, I had to be the dutiful future husband and stand next to Representative Washington on her big night, but I also had a full-time job myself.

Being an appeals attorney wasn’t a cakewalk, even though I knew when someone did what they were accused of. It shocked me to learn how many people were behind bars that hadn’t done a damn thing wrong.

Did I cheat the system by exploiting a gift given to me by a fucked-up fairy curse? Well, I’d neither confirm nor deny those allegations, but let’s say I was really picky about my clients, and I usually won my cases. Which was why I was so high in demand and I couldn’t afford these sleepless nights.

I took a deep breath and slid in between the sheets, grabbing Ivy’s wrists to stop her from flinging her hands at my head.

“X,” I murmured, tugging her in close. She struggled and pushed my shoulders, clawing at my chest to get away.

“No, stop it. Get off me.” She thought I was the monster in her dreams.

“X, it’s me, goddamn it. Stop. Shh.” I kissed her head and tucked her nose in my neck, forcing her to breathe me in deeply. Even asleep, she recognized my scent, and I knew hers. I could pick it out of a room full of people. Our lives had always been lived together, even when we didn’t like it.

Then it happened, the thing we’d been practicing for years. I touched her, and our minds connected.

“It’s okay,” I told her through her gift. “You’re asleep. It’s just a dream.”

She froze and took another deep breath, sighing and relaxing into me, her arms going around my waist, her face burrowing deeper into my chest.

“Lex,” she breathed.

“Ivy,” I said.

“Thank you,” she murmured mentally. “Thank you.”

She fell back to sleep, but I stayed awake and ruminated—about life, about death, about this twisted relationship I had with her.

After Samhain, Carter and Miri kept their promise. We got together every year for Christmas and took summer vacations to remote parts of the world where no one would find us, and those who did had no idea who we were.

We even visited Poppy, who I still didn’t trust completely. I won’t say I regretted suggesting we should leave her in Faerie because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But something about her still raised the hairs on the back of my neck, even after all these years.

Did it make me a cold, heartless prick that I didn’t trust a twelve-year-old girl?

Maybe, but I could swear I looked into her eyes and saw someone older than any of us staring back out at me. That, of course, caused conflict between Ivy and me.

My fiancée loved her and thought she was the child that had never been given to her and Carter. Poppy took advantage of that. Which brought me right back around to this fractured, duct-taped thing she and I called a betrothal.

Carter and Miri would say Ivy and I had been in love with each other since we were children. While I wouldn’t go that far, I’d admit my feelings for Ivy were complex and difficult to understand.

I loved her unconditionally. A part of me couldn’t live without her and knew our square would be incomplete if she disappeared. We were a team. Partners. Together, we had to live a life we didn’t choose and make the most of it.

But lately, that wasn’t enough for me.

I’d come home to Ivy and Carter fucking in the shower, the sounds of her delighted giggle igniting a jealous fire in my gut. This time, it wasn’t about him. I’d catch her between Miri’s legs, kissing and biting and licking, and a heat rolled through me that had nothing to do with my princess. I could kiss and bite Miri anytime I wanted.

It rankled that Ivy would never do that to me, never willingly peer up from between my legs and giggle and lick me until I came on her face.

Why do I want her to?

After everything, after Midsummer and the breakup and Samhain, we should have come to some kind of understanding. Maybe that we could admit the fact we were two sides of the same coin or we could only be complete together, that half of a puzzle was no puzzle at all.

But whenever Carter left, Ivy returned to her isolation. Whenever Miri went home, Ivy retreated inside her political shell, the fake one that answered questions diplomatically and pretended like the only desire she had for me was the one that made her want to punch my teeth out.

We were political allies, faces to put on a household name.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

I hated that, most of all. I wanted to make Ivy squeal. I wanted to be in her bed when she fell asleep and roll over when she woke up. I wanted it to be real.

I didn’t know why, and it didn’t matter anymore because I realized, there in the dark, listening to the sounds of her peaceful sleep, that I’d do anything to make it happen. We’d been playing this game of wills since we were children, and I so rarely denied myself the things I wanted.

I didn’t know why I craved Ivy all of a sudden. Was it the jealousy of the others? Was it an entire lifetime of this insufferable urge finally catching up to me? Or maybe it was always there, trapped behind a door neither of us had the guts to open.

“You know what you both need ,” the deviant monster inside of me said. This was the fucker that once loved to shake Ivy’s cage, the one I chained up in college when she started dating Carter and I fell in love with Miri. Now, it blinked awake and stretched, preparing to take out the years I’d spent ignoring it on her delectable ivory ass.

I groaned and adjusted my cock while I stared at Ivy’s ceiling. Yeah, I knew what turned this ginger inside out when it came to me, and it wasn’t the sweet gentleman whore that Carter liked to play or Miri’s demure princess slut.

With me, Ivy needed a fight. And God fucking help me, I loved to give her one.

* * *

Ivy won the election. We’d watched the results from the residence of the White House, and after her mother gave her the fakest hug I’d ever seen Evelyn Washington lower herself to give, the recognition hit Ivy’s features.

“I won,” she thought, seemingly in disbelief, as if she’d never considered she’d actually get here. “I actually won.”

After the celebrations died down, we sat in the back of the Range Rover while Theo drove us through downtown Washington, DC to take us home. At midnight, the streets were almost empty, save for the countless other political monsters out on the prowl, likewise celebrating their victories or drowning their sorrows. Perhaps both.

Warm fingers wrapped around mine where they rested on my thigh, causing me to lift my gaze to my fiancée on the other side of the SUV. She flashed me a rare grin and leaned her head back against the seat, but I focused on the curve of her lower lip, recalling how far I could sink my teeth into that tender skin before she squirmed.

“Thank you,” Ivy said, barging inside my head without knocking.

I cleared my throat and pushed that mental image away before she noticed it.

“I’m proud of you, X.” I returned her smile, forcing my attention on the connection between us. “You were awesome.” As much as I tried to hide the warm, fuzzy ache that had gotten desperate for her touch, it shot out of me in a moment of unfiltered adoration and vulnerability.

Ahh, fuck.

I yanked my hand away and locked my features down, glancing back toward my window and hoping she didn’t feel it. To my utter horror, she stared at me until I couldn’t stand it and eventually said, “What?”

“What’s gotten into you?”

I shrugged. “What do you mean?”

A lock of hair fell into her face, and I almost reached out to brush it back, stopping myself at the last second because after what had happened, touching any part of her was too goddamned intimate.

“What was that”—Ivy cleared her throat and shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable with voicing whatever she wanted to say. Her rich vanilla smell assaulted my nose, and I resisted the urge to lean in to get more of it—“that feeling?”

I shook my head and sighed, giving her a sheepish chuckle as a response.

“Miss Washington,” Theo interrupted, bringing our attention up front as he put the SUV into park. “Mister Fairfax. We’re home.”

Ivy looked at me one last time and pushed the button on her seat belt to climb out, clearly ignoring the predatory way I stalked behind her. It reminded me of that night in Ireland when I’d followed her through the halls of Killwater College in the dark before the lust took over our sensibilities. We’d darted into an alcove, and I dry-fucked her against the wall, savage and hard.

And she liked it.

She didn’t want to, but she did.

The thought buried itself inside my brain, setting off a chain reaction of indecent fantasies I suddenly yearned to make a reality.

Would she cry out like that if I fucked her rough for real? Would she fight back? Would she ? —

I shook my head to clear them away. If this were the fifties, I might have said my slip was showing. I’d allowed her free rein inside my mind, and in doing so, I’d given away too much. In the four years since Midsummer, the boundaries between Ivy and me had blurred to the point where I couldn’t tell where I ended and she began. Our names were synonymous with one another; they had been our entire lives.

Was I finally accepting my fate? Or did the universe know what I’d wanted all along, even if I’d been a stubborn prick about it?

I didn’t know, and somewhere along the line, I stopped fighting it. What was it about this night in particular? Perhaps it was the glint coming off Ivy’s shiny iridescent hair that had me transfixed. Maybe it was the way she smiled in that SUV, her lips so incredibly soft and bitable.

Goddamn it.

Once Theo cleared our townhouse and left us alone, I took off my jacket and helped Ivy out of hers, hanging them in the closet by the door. She bent over to take off her stiletto pumps while she rambled on about our schedule tomorrow.

“We need to meet our parents at seven a.m.,” she said, but I’d long since tuned her out. Instead, I focused on the way her mouth moved and the fading remains of what had once been cherry-colored lipstick blurring into her natural skin tone.

“Well, good night,” she said, picking up her heels before walking barefoot toward the stairs.

“Wait,” I cut in, my chest tightening at the thought of her leaving me.

She turned and furrowed her brows. “What?”

“What are you doing with the rest of the night?”

She sighed and rubbed at her neck. “I just won an election I’ve been running for since I was born. Tonight looks like a bath, a bottle of wine, and a fistful of sleeping pills. Why?”

I cleared my throat and put my hands in my pockets, stepping toward her. “Do you want company?”

“To which part?”

I shrugged. “All of it.”

“Is this your desperate attempt to get me naked?” She rolled her eyes and flashed a playful smile.

I grinned. “If I wanted to do that, X, I could have a long time ago.”

“That’s what you think,” she replied with a scoff.

“There’s a drop cloth somewhere in Georgetown that says otherwise.” Memories of the day I fucked her in our former loft floated through my mind. We’d been heartbroken and drunk, and we swore we’d never mention it again. Even if I had photographic evidence that it happened. Even if I’d memorialized the entire thing on camera.

Ivy lifted her chin, a clear sign of a challenge, and ran her eyes over the length of me, assessing me, casting her judgment.

“Fine,” she said, pointing at me. “But no sex, and I get to pick the wine.”

There’d be no negotiating because she headed up the stairs to our rooms with little hesitation. I, the greedy prick with the worst intentions, happily followed her.

We stripped with no self-consciousness. We’d lived together for four years and practically another four before that. Besides, nothing said no boundaries like an orgy in the woods, so Ivy and I were beyond such trivial things as naked skin.

She turned on the faucet in the tub, grabbing a bottle of wine and two glasses from her room while I sank into the water. She climbed into the other side and handed me my drink.

“Now that the election’s over, we’ll announce the wedding by the end of the year.” She leaned her head back to wet her hair, the heat making her skin splotchy and pink, revealing the mark on her throat. I focused on it like a target, my fingers itching to caress that delectable skin. “Our parents are aiming for the first weekend of June.”

“June?” I blew out a breath. “That’s quick.”

“Mother wants a grandchild by the fall.” Ivy took a long pull on her wine, and I let out a small groan.

“Mother will be disappointed.” I relaxed in the water, resting my head against the cool tile.

“Now, now.” Ivy raised an eyebrow. “You’ll never spread the Fairfax family tree with that attitude.”

I returned her skeptical playfulness, grinning in spite of my reluctance to encourage her. “You’d have to let me between those Washington legs before I could do that.”

She laughed and splashed me before lying back against the tub, pressing her feet against a jet. “Ahh, that feels nice. Those shoes were beautiful, but hell on my toes.”

Working on autopilot, I grabbed her feet and put them in my lap, rubbing my thumb and my fingers over each ridge, massaging the muscles until I found the area that pained her. I thought she might try to pull away, but when she relaxed into the touch, I continued.

“All right, spill it,” she said. “What’s going on with you?”

I looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Something came out of you earlier. It felt like…” Ivy shrugged and sipped her wine. “Well, it confused me. And now you’re being all sweet and weird.”

“Sweet and weird.” I repeated her words, trying to decipher their meaning while I rubbed up her ankles and down again. Her skin felt like satin under my palm, soft and warm and decadent. “I thought that’s what you liked about Chicago.”

She chuckled. “It’s not your style.”

“And what’s my style?”

“Honest and cruel.”

“Ouch.” I pretended to be offended, but who the fuck was I trying to fool? It was true, especially with her. Like I said, Ivy and I had no boundaries. Whatever I thought came out of my mouth or entered her head through touch. “That hurts.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing I say hurts you.”

“That’s not true.” I paused, an amused competitiveness flickering behind her eyes. “You once said comparing me to Lucifer did a disservice to Lucifer. That hurt a lot.”

She laughed again, which made me smile, and I switched to the other foot, caressing that one with as much attention as the first.

“I’m serious,” she murmured in my mind. “Tell me what’s up with you.”

I paused, pursing my lips while I did my best to conceal my true intentions. I couldn’t tell her what I really wanted. I couldn’t even think it, or she’d know. “Just proud of you, X. That’s all.”

“Proud?” She gasped in feigned shock. “Wow. Talk about things I thought I’d never hear you say.”

“Can’t a man be proud of his wife after she wins a seat in Congress?”

“You have two, so it only counts as half.”

I didn’t know why, but it bothered me that Ivy continued to think she wasn’t as important to me as Carter or Miri. To be fair, what had I done to convince her otherwise? And why did I even care? Somewhere in the haze of the warm tub and the delicious wine, I forgot.

“Why didn’t it ever work between you and me?” There . I said it. It was out in the open now.

She narrowed her gray eyes, distrust in every tense, calculating muscle. “What do you mean?”

“Why can’t we be like we are when they’re here?” No sense in elaborating who I meant by they. Between us, there could only be one they. “Why can’t we be like that all the time?”

“Because I don’t like you.” She said it on a laugh, but it was a trained response, one she’d been saying for years. “And you don’t like me.”

The lies hit me in the gut like a slug, a palpable throbbing that squeezed my heart. “You know…you keep saying that.” I shook my head and massaged up her calf, hitting a spot that made her moan and arch into the touch. Her perfect pink nipples poked out of the water and I homed in on them, my fingers yearning to coast higher. Despite my twitching cock, I behaved myself, sliding my palms back down her legs to her feet, relishing her luminous, velvety skin. “And yet, here you sit. Naked. In a tub. With me.”

“So?”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

She stared at me from under hooded lids, the wine now having removed the rest of the inhibitions between us. “What do you want, Lex?”

I took a deep breath, let it out on a slow sigh. “A trip.”

“What trip?”

“Let me take you away. You deserve it.”

“Take me away?” She raised an eyebrow. “Like a date?”

“Sure.”

Ivy scoffed and rolled her eyes. “We’ve been on thousands of dates.”

“No, no.” I leaned back and smirked. “A real date. One where you like it. One where you let me convince you.”

“Convince me of what?”

I paused, swallowing before I added, “That what we have is real.”

“It’s not.” She pulled her feet away and sat up, wrapping her arms around herself. That political mask slid firmly into place, locking her emotions down like the wine didn’t matter. Like the connection between us didn’t matter. Like I hadn’t spent hours inside that brilliant brain.

I licked my lips and sighed, realizing I’d pushed too far too soon. “X?—”

“What I have with Carter? That’s real. I felt it before we went into those woods. Miri, too. You and me?”

Clearing my throat, I braced myself for the worst of her venom.

“We were forced into this,” she continued. “We didn’t have a choice.”

Lie, lie, lie. It hurt to hear and stung even worse because of my gift.

“Does that make it less powerful?” I tilted my head and assessed her, wondering why she railed so hard against the idea of us. Didn’t she feel what I did? Couldn’t she swallow her ego for one goddamn minute and admit I meant something, anything , to her?

“No, it just means that whatever this is will end once we break the curse.”

If we break the curse. It had been two years with nothing but fucking nightmares to show for it. Siobhan hadn’t shown up. Her sister, Ashley, had gone radio silent. Poppy hadn’t heard from anyone, either. We had nothing but rumors and conjecture from ancient books with lost connotations.

“I don’t think that’s true,” I said, using the word true specifically. It had implications, as it usually led to me using my fairy curse. But I hadn’t yet. That, perhaps, was the only limit between us. I didn’t force her to tell me anything she hadn’t already agreed to share.

“Which part?” She gulped down the last of her wine and poured herself another glass.

“Any of it.”

Ivy glared, clenching her jaw, gearing up for the fight. If she wanted to go, I’d fucking take her. At least then I’d get a reaction out of her. Of all the people on this great earth, I lived to make Ivy Washington turn red.

“I was the first person you touched after Siobhan kissed you,” I said. “You drank from my chalice and shared your gift with me.”

“So?”

“So.” I grabbed her hand, intertwining her fingers with mine. “Take me up on my offer. Forty-eight hours, that’s all I’m asking. One weekend.”

She still seemed suspicious, her eyes barely slits as all the years we’d spent at each other’s throats danced behind them. “That’s all you want? A weekend of my time?”

“No, Ivy,” I said. “I want you to like it.”

She stared at me like she was trying to find out what trick I planned to play on her. “Why?”

“Do I have to have a reason?”

“You usually have an ulterior motive.”

I licked my lips and answered through our bond. “I want my wife to want me.”

“All you’ve ever done is try to make me hate you.”

“You ever wonder why?”

“If you’re about to say because you liked me, I’m about to drown you in this tub.”

“It’s because you never backed down from me.” I tilted my head and grinned like a cat with a mouse. “And that used to piss me off.”

“Oh, yeah?” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “And what about now?”

“Now it turns me on.”

She froze and tried to pull away from me, but I wouldn’t let her. Perhaps the alcohol had taken what little restraint I had left because I opened our mental connection more. I made her feel how fast my blood raced around her, how I hung on every word she said, especially if we were arguing. I let the wave of my adoration for her sift through her curse, and when it hit her between the legs, she clamped her thighs shut and let out a small moan.

“Every time you fight with me,” I continued, “it’s a struggle not to bend you over the first piece of furniture I find. If you want it like that, it can be like that.” I didn’t know why I kept talking, why I let it pour out of me. This was probably going to blow up in my face like all the times before it. “But if you want it sweet, I can be sweet.”

She met my gaze, and the night with the photographs echoed behind its ironclad defenses. I watched it play out in her eyes, reflecting in mine—when I’d held her hands while she moaned under me, when I’d kissed her neck and her breasts, when I let her run her fingers over my tattoos. It had been gentle and annoyingly erotic, and I couldn’t get it out of my head, not in all these years.

“I remember,” she murmured.

“I’m just…” I sighed and stood. “I’m just tired, and I think you are, too.” I climbed out of the tub and wrapped a towel around my waist, leaning down to kiss her temple before heading toward her room. “And in case you were wondering, your pride can go fuck itself. I need a full night’s sleep, and so do you.”

Then I opened the door, leaving it cracked behind me as I walked out.