House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(103)

He seizes my hand and carries it to his mouth, sliding his lips back and forth over my skin. “Don’t injure these pretty fingers.” He sets my hand on his neck, then drops his hand back under the water and cups my knee before gliding his hand up my leg. When he reaches my backside, he gives it a pinch and rasps, “And don’t call me an asshole.”

“Or what?”

His fingers spread on my cheek, then begin to rub my skin.

“You’ll spank me?” I say with a snort.

The smile he raises is pure, delicious evil.

Oh my Gods, I’m right on the mark. Because I’ve never been spanked, I stare at him slack-jawed. Slack-jawed and turned on. How can I be turned on by the threat of corporal punishment?

He kneads my cheek with a little more gusto, and a moan slips through my parted lips. I think Lorcan could pluck my eyelashes out one by one, and I’d find it pleasurable.

“Mórrígan, the thoughts that go through your head.” He expels an amused breath. “There’ll be no uprooting of lashes.”

My heart must’ve changed consistency because it no longer feels very solid. It feels as though it has begun to drip through my ribs. “So, you’re unattached?” I ask around another moan.

“I’m very much attached.”

That puts a cork in my mewling. “I didn’t mean to your cause; I meant amorously.”

“I also meant amorously. I am attached to my mate, Fallon.” The steam glistening on his face scrapes down his black makeup. “I am attached to you.”

“Magically. Not amorously. Gods, you cannot possibly like me. I’ve worked so hard on being a complete cow to you.”

His lips twitch. “And I was impressed with your dedication. At times, I almost believed it would take an act of great valor to conquer your heart.”

“You’ve not won my heart; merely my attention.”

His chest lifts with a theatrical sigh. “A great act of valor it will have to be then.”

I find myself smiling until something shifts behind him. Something which ends up being a curlicue of white steam. It does serve to remind me that we’re in a public place.

“No one will come.” He cups my cheek to steady my twisting head. “I’ve stationed guards upstairs and told them to bar the entrance to all.”

I swallow, wondering if they all know I’m down here.

He traces the shape of my mouth with his thumb. “How Mórrígan has blessed me.”

Although he may rethink this once he really gets to know me, I do store away this pretty declaration that makes him sound as though he’s hopped straight off the pages of one of Mamma’s books.

Granted, he is from another century. Several centuries, for that matter. “How old are you?”

“Going on seven hundred.”

Seven centuries . . . As old as Xema Rossi. “You look rather svelte for such an old man.”

His citrine irises glitter.

“If I ever become immortal, will I stop aging like you?”

The glitter turns flat, and his thumb stops stroking my lower lip, denting it instead. “You will become immortal. Don’t ever doubt this. And yes, once immortal, you will forever stay the age you are at when you come into your powers.”

Speaking of immortality . . . “I’m still mad at you for not telling me about Meriam.”

He reclines as much as one can recline when one is sandwiched between a rock and a hard—all right, soft—place. “I didn’t tell you immediately because I wasn’t one hundred percent certain Dante was lying. After all, he took a salt oath in front of me and proclaimed she’d escaped.” His fingers sketch arabesques on my submerged skin. “It wasn’t until the Crows I sent to Nebba reported back that the High Fae were ingesting the same compound they’ve been pouring into the ocean in order to immunize themselves against salt that I understood Dante had lied to my face.”

“Does he know you know?”

“He does now.” At my arched eyebrow, he continues, “He’s sealed all three Racoccin tunnel entrances that Antoni and his crew managed to blast open.”

“So Antoni is stuck in the tunnels with my grandmother and mother?”

“And Justus Rossi, and whichever other poor sod Dante sent down into the earth to guard the women.”

Underground. They’re all right under our feet. “How do we get them out?”

“We?”

Right. I signed a contract to stay put. “You.”

He clasps my chin between his fingers to bring my eyes to his. “Fallon, it’s not a punishment.”

“Ha fios.”

The smile that rises over his face at my use of Crow feels like watching the sun break over the horizon and unleash all of its color and light. “What a gift it is to hear you speak my tongue.” He noses the side of my neck, and holy Cauldron, my bones turn to dough. “Can you make more sentences?”

“I can.” And I do. And although my pronunciation is awry and my sentence structure still poor, he smiles at me with such pride that heat scores my heart.

“Make sure to speak in Crow when your father returns.”

“To distract him from murdering you?”

“Did you read my thoughts, Little Bird?”