Steal the Day (Thieves #2)(53)

“You have a twin?” One Dev was almost too much for the world to handle. The fact that there was another who looked just like him made me think things I probably shouldn’t if I wanted to be considered a good girl.

He grinned, likely guessing what was going through my head. “I do, but he’s very different from me. He’s older by a couple of minutes so he’s the heir. He’s much more serious. His training was different than mine.”

“Your grandfather was a Green Man.” A Green Man facilitated fertility rites and oversaw the harvest.

“Yes, and it quickly became evident that I had received his talents,” Dev continued. “Even as a small child I can recall playing with plants. The tribe was thrilled. My brother would be trained to rule, and I would be the new Green Man bringing fertility and sexual vitality back to the tribe.”

I knew where this story was going. “Then they discovered you were mortal.”

“It was a shock since my twin is fully Fae. I was trained to be a priest. You have to understand it doesn’t have the same connotations in the Fae world as a Catholic priest. Pretty much the exact opposite. In the Fae world, sex is a part of the divine. It’s a part of our rituals. There’s no shame attached to it. I was trained to please sexually and to transmit that pleasure to others through magic.”

He’d been trained well. I finally understood why he wrapped up his worth in his sexuality. When I refused him, he thought I was bored with him because he’d never been valued for anything else. Now that I looked at it, Dev tried to work himself into my world the only ways he’d known how. He became my lover, and he worked his way onto my crew. He tried to give me what he thought I needed. He tried to make himself valuable.

“The fact that I was mortal was a flaw they would not accept in a priest,” Dev explained quietly. “So my mother decided that I should attempt to pass my grandfather’s genes on to a more suitable candidate. I was barely twenty-one when she decided it was time for me to procreate. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t have a problem with the sex. It wasn’t like I hadn’t screwed every pretty Fae girl in the mound. I was a priest. It was a part of my training. My brother and I were a little wild to say the least. We left the sithein once and ended up in a Tijuana prison. God, I miss Declan sometimes.”

“Skip the good time.” I didn’t need to hear that story. “I take it she had someone in mind.”

“She believed that if I mated with a full-blooded Fae of excellent bloodline, that I had a good chance of producing another full-blooded Fae. I didn’t like being told what to do, much less who to f*ck. Gilliana was a horrible woman. When it was proven I was mortal, she advised my mother to leave me outside the mound to die.”

“Why would your mom want you to sleep with her?”

“Because she was fertile and of a royal line. I refused. I told her I would rather leave the mound and make my way in the human world. My father had left years before when he realized his use was done. He tried to take me with him, but my mother forbade it. I thought I could go to my father. The night before I was to leave, my mother used some very powerful magic on me.”

“She forced you?” No wonder he’d had a bad reaction to Felicity’s magic. It brought back his mother’s betrayal. It also explained why he preferred me submissive during sex. Dev liked to take control. He seemed to need it. He tried to hide his darker impulses in the form of play, but I’d seen his face when he’d tied me up and dominated me. He craved it.

“The worst part is I remember everything,” Dev explained in a far-off voice. “I tried to make myself stop, but I couldn’t. The next day I left without a word to my mother.”

“Did you find your father?” I didn’t ask for further details. He didn’t need to think about the fact his mother had facilitated his rape, because that was what she’d done. There had been no violence involved, but he’d been unwilling and that was rape in my book.

Dev moved on. “Time moves differently in the sithein. It’s like that on other planes as well. It can be unpredictable. My father was very old when I found him. I was twenty-one, but he’d aged fifty years. I spent six months with him, caring for him until he died. He hadn’t had any other children, so he left me his fortune and I started Ether.”

“Fortune?”

Dev grinned. “You can’t think I make that much money off the clubs, Zoey. Turns out I’m quite good with investments. My father left me fifty million and a multi-national company. I hired a CEO and now I just cash the checks.”

I shook my head. “And yet you spend your time chasing chump change with me?”

“I don’t do it for the money, lover. I do it all for the nookie.”

“Be serious.”

He leaned over, and his lips brushed my forehead. “I have never wanted a woman the way I want you, Zoey. I knew it on our first date. I knew it the first time I saw you. Why do you think I made such an idiot of myself the first time I met you? You make me feel alive. I can’t believe you’ve spent our time together thinking I was only interested in sex with you. How hard up do you think I am? Sex with you meant having every vampire in the world wanting to kill me.”

“I rather thought that was part of the allure,” I muttered.

Dev chuckled, a self-deprecating little laugh. “Well, at least you know me. I might get off on the danger a little, but I assure you, knowing that you’ll eventually leave me for your husband doesn’t do anything for me. Since we’re mentioning your spouse amid my confessions, let me warn you. If Gilliana did bear a child from that night, my mother would likely declare us to be married. My absence at the ceremony wouldn’t mean a thing. The queen wouldn’t want her new Green Man to be illegitimate. I should have told you, but we had enough roadblocks. Besides, it’s not like she’s going to show up and demand her wifely rights. The woman hates me. She has everything of me she will ever get. Everything else I have is yours.”