“She didn’t know who I was to you,” Cha began.“So—”
“Arantxa.”
“I’m trying to tell you.But it might be hard to figure out who she is.I don’t know her name and—”
“Arantxa.”
“Fine,” she snapped, pushing at him ineffectually.“We dubbed her Sunshine.Blonde, gorgeous, likes to walk around naked, turned into a thing like a mushy preying mantis when—”
“Fuck!”He exploded away from her, his clothes miraculously draping around him again.
Guess he did know who Sunshine was.
Fury radiated off of Azul, his wings extended as if he might take flight at any moment.Good thing there weren’t any windows.Azul glared at Cha, who felt oddly guilty, as if it had all been her fault.Which… maybe it kind of was, given her slutty, easily seducible nature.
“Tell me exactly what she did,” Azul instructed icily.
Cha, not wanting to be naked for this—well, mostly, as she still had her shirt on, more or less, much good that did—looked around for her pants and boots.Hopefully Azul hadn’t simply vanished them.But no, there they were on the floor, as if tossed there by impatient hands.Which, she supposed they had been, just of the magical variety.She grabbed her pants and pulled them up.
“Arantxa…”
Cha flipped him off.“Stop using that tone with me.You’re not my dad and I’m not doing this naked.”Okay, that sounded really wrong.She plowed on.“I was walking up to the castle right at sunrise—”
“Walking up from where?”
“The wall where I crossed into the palace grounds.Cut it out with the interrupting me.Do you want to hear about Sunshine or not?”
He grunted, which she took as an affirmative.Wise man to at least keep his mouth shut now.She told him about Sunshine coming toward her, inviting her to sit.She told it fast and matter-of-factly, reminding herself that it had been an enchantment and for thousands of years mortals had been falling for this kind of fae seduction.Still, she still felt like a fucking idiot.She could just hear her mother’s voice.If you’d just learn to keep your legs closed, you wouldn’t be getting yourself into this kind of trouble.
Full of shame as she hadn’t felt since those days, Cha used the excuse of pulling on her boots to avoid Azul’s gaze as she rushed through the transformation and battle, and how they’d bargained for Sunshine to get them into the castle proper.
Azul was suddenly very close, sitting beside her on the sofa, a long finger under her chin, tipping her face up so she was forced to either close her eyes or meet his gaze.Well, she might be a slut, but she was no coward.She made herself look him in the eye.
She nearly lost her nerve though when he softly said, “This wasn’t your fault.”
Stupidly, she felt tears well up in her eyes.“I want you to know it’s not the same as I feel with you…”
His lips quirked and she narrowed her eyes, ready to let him have it for laughing at her.So wrong to kick a woman when she’s down.He stopped her scathing remark with a quick kiss that then softened and lingered.“Arantxa, believe me when I tell you this: I have never once used any kind of enchantment to seduce you.”
“You promise?”she asked before she remembered who she was asking this of.You didn’t ask the fae to make vows any more than you thanked them or bargained with them.She’d clearly lost her mind.She blamed the very thorough sex for scrambling her brains.
“Never once,” he answered with such solemnity that she did believe him.Then his lips quirked in wicked mischief.“Of course, you’re so easily seduced through normal methods that—hey!Ouch!”
She punched his chest again for good measure, knowing it hadn’t hurt him in the least, especially since he was laughing too hard to breathe at the moment.“It’s not nice to make fun of me,” she informed him primly.
“I’m not.I’m not.”He held up his hands in surrender, struggling to catch his breath.Then he took her—gently—by the shoulders and also embraced her lightly with his wings.“I adore that about you, Arantxa, and would not make fun of your for it.Your open and honest enjoyment of sex is one of the things that makes you so very compelling.”
Aww.She softened, unexpectedly sentimental.No wonder she liked him so dammed much.
His hands flexed on her shoulders.“But you still shouldn’t have come.”
“Funny, you could’ve mentioned that earlier.”
“You’re not funny.What made you think I was in need of rescue?Tell me that part next.”
Deciding to get it over with so they could move on with the actual rescuing—and maybe he’d forget about Sunshine and avoid starting a war between fae realms, if the agnicurna she’d brought wasn’t doing that already—she told him about Lenorae’s arrival and insistence on Cha coming with her.He sat and listened to the entire tale, without interrupting this time, though she almost wished he would since he seemed to be calcifying before her very eyes, going immobile in a way humans never could.Worse, she knew it was because the rage building in him was heating to flashpoint and he was holding himself contained to the point of not breathing in order to control it.
When she finished, they sat for a long, tense, and awkward silence while he glared at her steadily and she did her utmost not to squirm like an ant under the magnified heat of his gaze, which seemed as if it could fry her at any moment.