When the Woods Go Silent (Haret Chronicles: Dark Fae #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

K IER

I smell my brother all over the fucking bookshop, and I’m desperate to know if he found anything about Rose that I might have missed.

The second I had stepped out of the palace and saw him gone, I knew he’d tricked me. Delayed me with Brigance so he could go behind my back. Fucking bastard, always double checking my work.

Either he trusts me even less these days, or he suspects the changeling could be in Clearwater, too.

It’s this second possibility that had me scouring the town all over again all day, tracking his scent until it led me right back here to Under the Covers . The bookshop, and the women. The books that hold magic, and the women who definitely shouldn’t.

“Tell me about your first day. Many customers?” I call, knowing Rose is following me, warring internally over whether to let me bend her over that checkout counter or make me wait a bit longer. I have my preferences, of course, but I’m patient when I need to be.

“Eleven sales. Ruby thinks that’s good.”

“And you want more?” I ask, tossing her a wink over my shoulder.

“Well, you can never be too rich, right?”

I don’t answer this question. I’ve never known a day when I didn’t have coin or means to get it, and I found out early that humans never like hearing about it. “Any tourists yet? Or was it mostly locals?”

I hope she can’t tell that I’m fishing. I can’t exactly ask if there was another tall, gorgeous man with an accent checking to see if she has hidden magic.

“A few of each. I think you and our neighbor Charles were the only men, though, and he just came for the donuts, not the smut,” Rose teases, and my chest loosens as she answers exactly what I wanted. Ronan didn’t come to question her, only to spy on her through his invisibility glamor.

Maybe he’s only here for the dreamwalker, after all.

Fucker never can resist showing me up when it comes to tracking and hunting.

ROSE

I’m debating whether to ask Kier to dinner, but I’m not even sure I want food now. My stomach has been in ridiculous knots ever since he pinned me against that shelf. I know what I really want to fill me up now, and it has nothing to do with takeout.

“So what have you left behind, to come here?” he asks, sidetracking my naughty thoughts.

“Not much,” I shrug, laughing. “I had a desk job in the city. Spreadsheets and water coolers and pointless meetings all damn day.”

“These woods must be so strange to you, if you grew up in a city.”

“Yeah, they really are. Ruby loves them, but I’m not sold yet. Although I’m not from the city originally. My dad still lives in the same single-wide trailer I grew up in. Some little blink-and- you’ll-miss-it town on the way to a slightly larger town. I haven’t been back there in years.”

“Not close with your family?” Kier asks, turning to lean against the window. The moonlight limns his profile in silver, and my breath quickens a little at the sharp beauty of his features. With some chain mail and a sword, he could be on the cover of one of my fantasy books. Even better, a bow and arrow with some sort of tunic and leather ties.

Oh. He asked me a question. “Um... it’s just my dad now. My mom died when I was pretty young. No other family, really.”

“Sorry to hear it,” he says, and it sounds genuine. I remember the first conversation we had, when I admitted I want a big family.

“It’s fine. It makes me appreciate Ruby more, you know?” Or be more codependent on her, but I don’t say that part out loud.

“What?” I ask Kier after a long moment of him just staring, studying me like he’s trying to figure out a puzzle.

“Just wondering if your book fetishes extend to baby-trapping.” He smirks as my eyes go wide.

“Oh, hell no. I mean, to each their own, but tricking a girl into pregnancy just so you can ‘keep her’ is so not sexy to me,” I warn, hoping like hell that isn’t one of his book fetishes. Then I decide to toss the heat back at him. “My favorite book fantasy, if you really want to know, is when the girl gets to have more than one guy. At the same time,” I add, thinking of a particularly hot double penetration scene I read recently. “Both obsessed with her, but without the love triangle jealousy. Just her, in the middle of it all, soaking up the attention.” I look him directly in the eyes, daring him to react. Plenty of guys want a threesome, but most of them back away if they realize the dynamic involves two men.

“Filthy, gorgeous girl,” Kier says, his voice a few octaves lower already, and a rush of desire floods my body at the way he isn’t backing away. His eyes are getting bright again, liquid gold mixing with the deep green. I want to ask him if he’s ever shared a woman before, but I’m not quite brave enough yet.

“For the right person, I am.”

“You mean, people,” he says, advancing on me with a sly smile playing around his lips. I step back, then again, until I feel the press of a bookshelf behind my back. I need its solidity right now, because my own legs have gone liquid.

“And have you?” he breathes, one arm circling around my waist as he cinches us closer.

“Have I?” I echo dumbly, my body shutting down all rational thought. So much for taking things slow.

“Have you had a man in front.” He nuzzles my neck, his hips grinding into me, the hard ridge of his cock rubbing against my center right through my thin dress pants, as easily as if I were naked beneath him. “And in back.” His hand slides down the curve of my ass and squeezes the sensitive place at the very top of my thigh. “At the same time.” I gasp as he combines the motions, rubbing so close to where my body wants, yet so fucking far away.

“No,” I whisper, my lips sliding across his jaw, trying to meet his as he nips at my ear again.

“And would you, for the right person?” Kier asks, his hips circling into me with each word. Fucking hell, this is the closest I’ve ever been to coming with all my clothes on.

Is this man on a mission to clear my entire sexy bucket list? He hikes one of my legs around his waist, and my knee bends to hook him even closer.

“Yes,” I moan as the friction drags me deeper into lust. My hands tangle in his hair so I can keep them from undoing his belt, and finally our lips meet. He nibbles and sucks, devours and plunders, taking everything I give him and coaxing even more from me. At some point I realize I’m not even standing anymore, and his pure strength is another layer of insane attraction. Both my legs are wrapped around his trim waist as he rubs his hard length against my center, his hands tight around my thighs as he pins me to the bookshelf with each measured motion.

My breath is coming in shorter and shorter gasps, and I tear my lips from his as the orgasm rocks through my body, shocking the hell out of me as my cry echoes through the empty store. I tilt my head back to stare up at him, not quite sure how he did that so easily.

“Good girl,” Kier murmurs into my hair, his hips slowing down as he kisses my swollen lips more gently.

I’ve been called lots of things in the bedroom - even that - and I usually just play along, preferring touch over dirty talk. But something about hearing the praise from his mouth is different. Something about the way he’s looking at me right now makes me want to earn those words again and again.

Kier lets my legs down one at a time, waiting for me steady myself. His body is still pinned to mine, and I swear I can count every one of those five rungs in his cock, right through our clothes. But I told myself slow, and this is already way more than that word can reasonably mean in one night.

Really, I should leave something for the next time.

“Okay?” he asks, tipping my chin up so he can see in my eyes.

I smile, the post-orgasm chemicals giving me the satisfied feeling of a cat stretching in the sun. “Perfect. I guess you want the favor returned now?” I tease, palming his cock through his pants.

He blinks at me, then frowns as he understands what I mean. His fingers grasp mine and pull my hand back up to rest against his chest.

“This wasn’t a sale, Rose. It was a gift. I gave it, and you took it. You took it like a very good girl.”

And I practically melt.

This. This is new.

I’ve had a lot of sex in my short life, and I’ve enjoyed a good portion of it. Still, I learned pretty early that it’s always a transaction. More often than not, I even get stiffed with the bill, needing to finish the job later with my vibrator. But this? This is so much better.

Part of me doubts that it’s real, but holy hell.

What if it is?

I grin up at Kier, a different and new sort of pleasure soaking through my limbs. I open my mouth to tease him back, but suddenly, I feel lightheaded and tingly, like when you stand up too quickly. My fingers and toes get the pins and needles sensation like they’ve fallen asleep, and my knees go weak as my head flops forward into his chest.

Kier gathers me in his arms before I can collapse onto the floor. My face feels hot, and I’m hyper-focused on how weak I am, how strong he feels around me.

“Are you okay?” he asks again, concern flickering across his handsome face just as my vision goes blurry.

“Puh-fek,” I manage, although it’s a damn lie. My lips aren’t moving the right way, like after a trip to the dentist. My head is spinning, and I know I would be on the floor if he wasn’t guiding me to a nearby reading chair.

As I sink into the chair, my fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt, pulling him down with me. He kneels on the floor, moving my hair away from my face and pushing me gently against the back of the chair as I struggle to calm my breathing.

“What... where did you find this?” he asks a few seconds later, and I feel him uncurl my fingers and hold my hands in his. I blink up at him, then down at our palms, feeling woozy and more than a little embarrassed. What the hell kind of orgasm was this?

My eyes are itchy, and I rub at them with the back of one hand, finally able to focus on what he’s holding. Or what I’m holding, rather.

It’s a rose.

And when I reach for it with my other hand, I find that there’s another one, already there between my curled fingers. A fragile pair of delicate pink roses flushed with red, each resting in one palm.

The fuzzy feeling shrivels in the shadow of growing fear, and shock wakes me up immediately. I drop the flowers like they’re burning coals and stand, skittering across the room on shaky legs.

Kier bends to pick them up, watching me carefully as I lean against the wall.

“Where, Rose?” he repeats, his eyes narrowing.

“What do you mean?” I say, trying to make sense of what happened. I didn’t have roses to find. They’re definitely not the flowers he brought, and I know every inch of this shop. Where did they come from?

“Where did you get these?” Kier asks a third time, his voice tight and almost angry, like he thinks I’m keeping secrets.

“I didn’t,” I protest, my voice sounding too loud for the small space. “I didn’t have those.” The way he’s making such a big deal out of this is freaking me the fuck out. I don’t like things that aren’t easily explained, and I definitely hate practical jokes.

He brings the crushed petals to his nose, inhaling deeply, and I see his fingers begin to shake. “Rose. Where did these flowers come from?” He’s acting like I’m holding out on some vital information.

“I don’t fucking know!” I yell, pissed now and fuming at the hard edges of his glare. Whatever this is, it’s not my fault.

I feel like I’m being pranked, but my brain rejects that idea as quickly as it came up, knowing it’s not true. I’ve been ignoring my gut for days now. Playing dumb, and resisting seeing the pattern that’s been forming right in front of me.

A thought I’ve been suppressing for too long now begins to force its way to the surface.

What if it’s not me going crazy, but the world itself?

All the weird things I’ve been imagining. The impossibly broken glass, the horror of knowing I was sleepwalking in the forest at night, the alarms that were triggered for no reason, the books out of place. All the times I’ve felt like I’m being watched.

What if it never was my imagination?

My knees really do buckle beneath me this time, and my eyes slide closed as my brain tries one last time to block out the outside world and the possibility that I’m slipping into an alternate reality where Ruby has been right all along.

Where science and math, spreadsheets and careful accounting, all fail in the face of something truly unexplainable.

Magic.

It feels stupid to even think the word, but now that I have, I can’t stop thinking it. What else could explain all these oddities? The word beats behind my eyes like the pulse of a telltale heart, knocking the truth into me even when I don’t want to hear it.

Part of me feels Kier sliding his arms around me and hefting me up the stairs, even though my mind is dark and fogged over with an unexplainable exhaustion. Part of me registers the softness of my bed, and the familiar glow of moonlight through my windows, even though everything is layered with a film of confusion and doubt.

I squeeze my eyes tightly closed against the figure of Kier standing above my bed, his fingers still holding a handful of rose petals as he stares down at me. The sweet scent of them reaches my nose, though, and as much as I want this to all be a dream I’ll wake up from later, part of me knows that’s not going to happen.

Part of me knows that everything is different now.

Part of me has broken, and the rest of me knows that nothing will be the same again.