Bad Fae | romantasy | Bad Fae #1

Chapter Four

As soon as Dain saw me walk into the dining room the next morning, he was grinning. I felt my cheeks flush and hoped he had no idea what I'd dreamt about him.

Luck, it seemed, was not on my side. As usual.

"Pleasant dreams, Yana?" he asked, his voice light and airy, and full of teasing.

My cheeks burned as I took my seat from the night before, feeling like I wasn't quite in total control of my body. "Wholly unpleasant," I spat at him.

He chuckled, but it was darkness. Enticing, inviting darkness. Everything my dream had been the night before. While my cheeks burned in shame and discomfort, the warmth that spread further down felt none of that. In fact, the complete opposite. It was want. It was need. It was burning flame. The kind that swept through and rejuvenated a land long choked.

And I was the land long choked.

He was the flame, standing there and promising rejuvenation.

It was a lie. It was deception. It was trickery.

But it was the promise – the lure – of the fae that left far stronger humans than I crushed and broken and cursed in the wake of our far more powerful neighbours.

I wished I could say it was the first time I had dreamt of him like that. Wished it to be true that the fae food and wine had addled my mind and gave me such vivid, sensual dreams about him. Wished I could believe that he'd been in my head and made me dream those things. But it wouldn't be true.

He had plagued my nightmares for over six years. For the past two, those nightmares weren't just filled with blood and death and fear. They'd changed, twisted. I still dreamt about the death, but I just as often dreamt about soft touches, of skin on skin, lips and hands and other things, of whispered nothings in the dark, and of pleasure so intense it pulled me awake sheened with sweat and a satisfying tingle lingering between my legs.

Perhaps he had been partly responsible the night before, but his reaction to me – his surprise – in the Darkrealm told me that he hadn't spared a single thought for me since he'd ripped that necklace from my throat. He was either an even better actor than I thought, or those dreams were based on a figment of my own imagination and no one else's.

We were the only two at the table and Dain's eyes made no secret of what was going through his head as they caressed me unashamedly. "You look beautiful."

"I suppose I have you to thank for this outfit?" I sighed, picking up the steaming mug that sat beside my plate.

For what other reason would I have bypassed all the trousers and shirts in the wardrobe and pulled out this slip of a black velvet dress that clung to every one of my curves and valleys? I'd have said it was obscene, if there wasn't a part of me who felt like I was rebelling against all those in my life who'd told me to 'be a lady'. If there wasn't a part of me who had felt beautiful and strong before I'd even left my room.

It was lucky the air in his home was mild, seeming to adjust so that it was never too hot or cold, regardless of how many clothes or blankets I wore. In the short time since my arrival, I had always been comfortable. Temperature-wise.

Dain elegantly placed one elbow on the table in front of him and rested his chin on his fingers. "Please do," he purred. "Thank me, Yana." There was no pull on the geas command. This was an entirely different kind of command.

Heat pooled in my stomach. "And what would the price be?" I asked him, picking up my fork before he could force me. One only needed one sip, one lick, of fae 'hospitality' and the damage was done. I wasn't about to spite myself and deny myself the delicious fare in front of me now.