Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine Book 1), page 5
My eyes lifted to find his were upon my mouth, his thumb pressed at the corner. “Such lovely lips. A perfect, silken bow. Tell me,” he said, nearly absently, “has anyone ever kissed them?”
Heat threatened to engulf my neck and face again, but I sensed what he wanted and shook my head.
“Kiss me, butterfly.”
I couldn’t deny that I wanted it, too, so I leaned forward. Doing so made his erection press harder against me, and a startled breath with low sound slipped free.
His hand clutched my cheek tighter. “Does that feel good?”
I swallowed, not needing to answer when my body leaned instinctively into his in response, seeking more of that sparking warmth.
“I’m still waiting,” he murmured, lashes dipping and his words heating my mouth.
“Yes,” I said and closed the small gap between our mouths, nerves long forgotten when my eyes closed upon the first touch of his lips meeting mine. I sat them against his carefully, savoring that I was truly doing such a thing.
That I was doing something I’d only ever dreamed about doing.
Then I slowly moved them. His lips parted at my urging, and a soft sound rumbled from deep within his chest. I skimmed and pressed, and after a minute, I licked just under his upper lip.
He was whiskey and winter. A poison so intoxicating, I greedily sought more.
I lost myself and grasped his cheeks. He tensed beneath me at my boldness, but when I made to withdraw, he clasped my rear. Firmly.
And then he kissed me back.
His silken lips claimed with hungry prying and pressing. He groaned and tilted his head, his tongue entering my mouth to meet mine.
I forgot why I was here. I forgot this male was a stranger willing to pay for my company. I forgot I’d ever been afraid and uncertain.
All I could feel was fire.
A moan stunned me, falling between us when his hips jerked and his length dug hard against me. He tore away, his eyelids heavy and his pinkened mouth tempting me to reclaim it. He swallowed, and I had the sudden and extreme urge to lick his throat.
The hand upon my rear squeezed then left, my skin chilled in its absence. My slip had risen, I realized.
He’d touched my bare skin.
Though it shocked, I didn’t mind. Especially when that same hand rose to my chest. A lone finger dragged along the edging of my slip over the swells of my breasts. I waited, almost asking him to tug it down to expose more of me.
As though at war with himself, the male’s jaw hardened, and he straightened until our noses were close to touching.
His hold upon my face gentled, his thumb caressing the curve of my cheek and luring my eyes to his. “You are the most exquisite treasure I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he whispered against my mouth. He bit my lip—hard enough that I flinched. I gasped when he sucked it clean of blood and dragged his mouth over my cheek to vow to my ear, “And I’m going to do such filthy, dishonorable things to you.”
I should have been afraid.
Many Fae, especially those with immense magical abilities, hungered for blood. They relied on it for strength and to appease addiction if they were prone to feeding too much.
I had no time to decide what either of us might be.
I was lifted, then dumped upon the divan beside a fat pouch of coin I hadn’t seen sitting next to him. That magnetic heat from his body had left the velvet of the chair toasty warm. I stared up at him while he rolled his shirtsleeves, my lips and flesh tingling.
Goddess damn me. Even his forearms, thick and sprinkled with dark hair, were tantalizing.
This unexpected client of mine dragged a hand through waves of darkest brown. The strands fell back over his shoulders to brush his granite jaw. “Do not speak of this meeting or meet with anyone else.”
“You’re leaving?” I blinked and blurted, “But we...”
The glare he gave me was glacial. “Understood?”
Alarmed and speechless, I blinked some more. Then I nodded my acceptance and pulled my slip over my thighs as though he hadn’t just researched my body like he was learning a map.
“Moving your head about is not an adequate answer, butterfly.”
I frowned but acquiesced. “Understood.”
“Good. Await my sparrow.”
The door opened, but before he could step through, my confusion and the mess he’d made of me demanded something. “You’ve not even given me your name.”
He stilled. I expected him to be irritated by my audacity or that he might just leave.
But as he stepped out into the hall and the door slowly creaked closed behind him, he said far too simply, “Florian.”
My heart clattered to a violent stop in my chest.
Then fell with a sickening splash into my stomach.
I’d never seen the royals of Folkyn. Given how little they wanted to do with Crustle, and of how little they thought of the citizens, any paintings and depictions of them had been forbidden in these lands eons ago.
But due to my research of the place in which I’d been born, I knew of all their names. And no one would dare name their offspring after a royal unless they too were part of that royal family.
My eyes remained stuck to the door. As the swift return of fear threatened to expel the meager contents of my stomach, I forced them to the coin next to me.
Not only had I kissed a royal faerie of Folkyn.
I’d made a deal with the winter king.
His name haunted me for the next two days.
Florian.
My first and only client was king of one of the four ruling houses of Folkyn.
The winter-wielding king of Hellebore.
King Florian.
The succinct way he’d given his name befuddled, as if he’d known it would leave me thinking of nothing but him until we met again. As if it were not an unusual thing for a faerie king to visit a pleasure house.
It was.
Kings and queens had their own personal harems, lovers, and even spouses. Whatever and whomever they chose. They had no need to seek indulgences elsewhere. Even more unusual was that a king would seek such a thing here in Crustle—in the middle lands the folk of Folkyn thought far beneath them.
And all of that coin...
It sat upon the tea table before Rolina’s favored armchair, catching starlight and sunshine as the hours passed, barely touched.
I’d been burning with the need to talk about it, yet I couldn’t decide whether to tell Gane of the meeting. Besides a quick visit to the grocer yesterday to buy more food, I hadn’t left the apartment. I was behaving as though Rolina were still here, though I’d seldom had room to think of her since my first evening at the Lair of Lust.
I’d seldom thought of anything but the bone-chilling memory of kissing a faerie king.
I’d lost hours to sitting upon the cushioned window seat and staring at the busy town street, pondering why such a powerful creature would want something like me. Not because I thought there was anything particularly wrong with me, but because of the overabundant perfection of him.
King Florian could bed anyone of his choosing without paying for it.
Sleep came in bursts of midnight-sky eyes and flesh-eating mists.
Dawn delivered quiet but busy streets.
With what I hoped was enough coin in tow—I didn’t dare bring it all—I hurried across the street from the apartment building and cut through the alleyway to Main Street. Freshly baked bread and steamed fish coated the brisk morning air.
I squeezed between the bakery and the vendor cart parked outside of it, ignoring the leering gazes of some of the miners and tradesmen who waited in line for beverages and breakfast. Farther down the street, beyond the myriad of shops and apartment buildings yet to open their drapes and shutters, awaited the market.
Amid the permanent display of mismatched carts, tents, and rickety tables and stands, row after row of vendors were setting up or already at work. A maze, I’d thought upon my first trip to the market crowding the broken and weed-infested cobblestone of an abandoned street. I was greeted now as I had been then, by the misty reek rising from the canal behind it.
Rolina had never liked to be seen with me, nor had she trusted me to venture out too often on my own.
But after contracting a violent stomach flu when I was fourteen years, she was bedridden for nearly a week. Reluctantly, I’d then been granted my first taste of independence. Though the cackling and shouting and incessantly stalking eyes had frightened me so much that I’d returned to the apartment with only half of what I’d been sent for, and I was never permitted to return again.
I was only permitted to shop for what we needed at the grocer on Main Street and ordered to return straight away. Failing to do as I was told was always met with repercussions too painful to warrant appeasing any desire I had to explore.
That was then, I thought soberly as I began the walk through the numerous stalls.
Discomfort curled into my chest and scoured through my limbs like slithering barbed wire when it came knocking again.
Relief.
Only a monster would be glad for the passing of another soul. Yet I still felt only an odd sense of confusion at the sight of her belongings, and a curious sadness for that of her missing mortal daughter.
All my life, Rolina had lived with nothing but crumbs of hope.
It was the one thing that had bound us—the only thing we’d had in common—our desperate hope for answers. I couldn’t decide if it were best she’d left this world without knowing of her true daughter’s fate. All I knew was that I couldn’t rest until I found the answers to my own.
Some traders muttered greetings as I passed. Others watched on while I scanned their wares. Healing implements, tonics, sweets, clothing, rare pelts, and...
Up ahead, the smallest of the stalls remained empty. But the beadwork upon the jewelry pulled my feet and fingers close. Sapphires of milky blues and crystal skies had been entwined into bracelets, necklaces, and even diadems.
A large hand slammed over mine.
My heart stopped at the sight of three long fingers. Two were nothing but gnarled stubs.
“Hello,” I said and cleared my throat as I attempted to snatch my hand back. “They’re beautiful.”
Slowly, the hand slid from mine. When I looked up, my eyes met with an orange set.
“So are those fingers of yours.” The faerie’s voice was gruff. “If you wish to keep them, don’t fucking touch unless you’re buying.”
Right. I’d forgotten that the rule as old as the Fae themselves extended to many business dealings here in Crustle, too. “Is that how you lost yours?”
The bald faerie raised a white brow. “Did you wake up this morning and decide to look for trouble, or are you always so reckless?”
At that, I couldn’t help but smile. “Merely curious.”
“Curiosity kills far more than cats, pretty thing.” My heartbeat slowed, then grew heavy as he sank onto the tree stump behind the table and reached for a copper mug of coffee. “A forlok got them, if you must know.”
Forlok.
My astonishment was mistaken for cluelessness, for he said proudly, “’Bout as tall as you. Skeletal but deadly.” His eyes glinted. “Their bones sell for a real handsome price to certain witches. Anyway, I got what my young and foolish self deserved instead.”
It seemed I was indeed in the right place.
I tried to keep my tone mild and casual. “You’ve visited the faerie realm.”
He paused with his coffee halfway to his mouth and eyed me as if I were born yesterday. If he only knew that I might as well have been with my lack of worldly experience. “No one visits Folkyn. I was born and raised there, and I left.” His clipped words implied there was far more to the story. That he likely fled before he was forcibly removed or worse.
Looking back at the jewels, I said, “These aren’t from here.”
He thumped his mug onto the table and loomed over it, startling me. “All right, who the fuck are you?” he sneered. “Huh? One of those good for nothing royal spies? I haven’t done a damned thing wrong, you hear? It’s all legal enough.” He flicked his hand. “So be gone.”
I stepped away and raised my hands. “I swear I’m nothing of the sort. I just...” I sighed, then confessed, “I just need a little information.”
Taken aback, the male’s face scrunched as he surveyed me once more. “I’ve nothing worth knowing. Go back to bed.”
“But I think you might.” Gathering two gold coins from the pocket of my dress, I opened my hand and gave him a glimpse of them. “And I’m willing to pay.”
His fire-colored eyes narrowed on the coins, then my threadbare cotton dress. “What’s the likes of you doing with coin like that?”
“It’s not stolen, if that’s what you’re inferring,” I clipped, then reminded myself to keep my emotions at bay. Now was not the time to be offended. For all I knew, he could be one of the few with the ability to help me in some way. “All I need to know is how to get in.”
He snorted. “Get in?” A bark of laughter. “To Folkyn?”
I nodded.
His smile waned. “You’re as insane as you are stupid.”
I gritted my teeth and made to tuck the coins away.
“All right, all right,” he said quickly. “Fine. I’ll tell you one thing and one thing only.”
I placed one coin away, and the male cursed. “You’re meaner than you look.” I waited, and he grumbled, “You need to know someone.”
“Someone?”
“Exactly,” he said, glancing at the quiet stalls on either side of us. “You know what I mean.”
“Someone from there, you mean,” I said, my hope deflating even as I recalled the heat of Florian’s mouth upon mine, his branding touch.
Other than the payment his visits provided, the king would be of no help. Merely alluding to my lifelong desire for answers could prove an irreversible and disastrous mistake. The royals of Folkyn did nothing that did not serve them, and if King Florian knew of my plan...
He could kill me for so much as dreaming of entering a land forbidden to me.
Snatching a cloth tucked within his belt, the jewel trader polished a large sapphire as an elderly woman walked past. “Good morning, Hal.”
Hal huffed indignantly. “When is morning ever good, Issle?”
She chuckled as if accustomed to such a greeting from this Hal, and after eyeing me up and down, she continued to a wagon of old produce parked by the curve of the canal.
Hal waited, then went on a good minute later. “Two options, really. If you wish to survive. You need someone from there or high up in the ranks here.”
I withheld the urge to groan and curse. “Of course.” I couldn’t keep my eyes from rolling. “I’ll just go pay the governor a nice little visit, shall I?”
I made to return my coin to my pocket when he said, “Or you could find yourself one of her corrupt henchmen.”
I blinked. “Her guards?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you wish to call them. With eighty of those...” A nod of his head to the coin in my hand. “You might be able to hire one to get you through the wards.”
“Eighty?” I nearly shouted.
That was far more than the king had left me with. More than another four meetings with him would accrue, providing he even gave me as much coin again.
“I don’t make the rules, pretty thing, and very few have the means to break them.”
My chest tightened at the thought of never leaving this place of in-between. Never knowing. All the many nevers I would fail to erase.
“What’s Folkyn got that you want so badly?”
“Answers,” I said, my tone flat as I placed the single coin on the table.
“Answers to what?” He immediately pocketed the gold. “Don’t know who your shit-stain father is?” His laughter was rough and scornful. “You and hundreds of others, pretty thing. Trust me, some truths aren’t worth finding.”
My smile was weak, as was my desire to correct him. So I didn’t. I turned to leave. “Thank you, Hal.”
“Wait a second.” Folding the cloth, he released a heavy breath and beckoned me closer.
Too curious and with little else to do, I turned back.
“Listen.” He peered at the stalls astride his before lowering his voice. “Whatever it is you’re seeking...” His eerie eyes met mine. “Goddess knows it won’t be worth getting.”
I almost rolled my eyes again, as he’d already said as much.
But then he added, “You’ll have more luck sneaking into those warded woods”—he jabbed his thumb behind him to the south—“and making a home for yourself in the mortal lands than you will any kingdom of Folkyn. Ain’t no such thing as sneaking about in any court, no matter who gets you in nor how. If they don’t want you there, then mark my words...” His voice dropped to a rasped whisper. “Eventually, they will find you, and if they don’t kill you, you’ll spend what remains of your days wishing they fucking had.”
The sparrow arrived with the waking moon.
Content to stay in bed, I ignored it. I hadn’t moved since arriving home from the market, my mood flat enough to neglect the growling pleas of my stomach.
Hal’s parting words were a constant spinning wheel through my mind, erasing all I’d clung to for years.
Insistent, the sparrow hopped along the ledge at the window and chirped.
“I’m not interested,” I said, though the creature wasn’t able to hear nor understand.
Perhaps it did.
The bird paused and watched me from across the apartment. Then it plucked the piece of parchment that’d been tied to its leg. It fluttered to the chipped row of low shelving beneath the window to land on a lace doily next to the small wooden clock.
The bird chirped again, wings spreading.
“Oh, fine.” I threw off the bedding and rose from the same single-sized mattress I’d slept on since I could remember.
Though I’d often wondered what it might be like to sleep in such comfort, I couldn’t bring myself to enter Rolina’s room again, let alone use her bed. Which was large enough for two grown men and overflowing with frills and feathered pillows.
