What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(55)

“Gross.” I shoved back the surge of jealousy in my veins. “Can you maybe not talk about your previous conquests when you’re trying to get me to fuck you? It’s rude.”

“Jealous, Little One?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me as he took another step. “Why don’t you help me erase the memory of the ones who came before you? We both know they don’t matter anymore.”

I swallowed, ignoring the confusion that came with his words. He took another step, his growing proximity a far more important topic to dive into than why the others didn’t matter. “I swear to Gods if you touch me, I will rip it off and feed it to you, Caelum,” I said, backing away a step.

His grin widened as he took another step forward. “I probably shouldn’t find it so arousing when you threaten me, and yet I get a little tingle every time.” He shrugged as if there was nothing that could be done about it, stepping closer to me with his hands raised innocently. “I promised you I wouldn’t touch you in that way until you’re ready. I meant it, Estrella. You can trust me with your body.”

“I don’t even know you,” I said, my back touching the edge of the pool. He closed the distance between us, hovering just out of reach. The knowledge that he was so close, the feel of his presence drifting to my skin through the water, was maddening.

It pushed at my self-control, testing everything I thought I knew about myself.

“I know, and we have all the time in the world to get to know one another. For now, turn around. Let me help you with your hair. We don’t know when we’ll next get an opportunity like this.” He lowered himself into the water until only his head was exposed, putting it level with mine. Tearing my fingers free from the snarl I couldn’t quite work free, I sighed and turned my back on him. He slid his fingers into my hair, carefully pulling it away from my naked body so that his knuckles only brushed against my skin occasionally as he worked in silence.

“Where is your father now?” I asked, trying to fill the silence that hung between us.

“Dead. Some years ago now.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, knowing the pain of that grief. A commonality we shared, another link between us that gave us an undercurrent of understanding we shouldn’t have felt.

“We weren’t close,” he said, working his fingers through my hair. His words seemed to conflict with the way he’d spoken of the man who’d educated him about the ways of the Fae and their history. “He was dedicated to his studies and his responsibilities. His wife hated that I existed, and she did her best to drive a wedge between us. It worked more often than not.”

I stilled. “His wife wasn’t your mother?” I asked, wondering if his birth mother had died when he was young. It was the only explanation; the alternative of him being the child of an affair but raised by the father was unheard of.

“No. My father had an encounter with a married woman when he attended a party. It was somehow decided it would be my father who’d raise me, but his wife never warmed to me. They never had children of their own, so I became the sole heir, regardless of my status.”

“That’s terrible. To be raised in a home without love…” I trailed off, unable to fathom a life without my family who would have done anything for me. Both my parents and Brann would’ve given their lives for me in a heartbeat.

He sighed, leaning in until his breath touched my cheek. True to his word, he didn’t touch me, keeping a thin layer of water between us as I turned my head to look at him. My hair slipped out of his hands, my lips hovering so close to his, if I moved in the wrong way, they would touch.

Caelum’s stare drifted down to my mouth, lingering there before those piercing dark eyes lifted back to mine. “It was as bad as you can imagine.” His words hovered on the air between us as a wall cracked inside my heart.

Not all scars were visible.

“But it taught me one thing,” he said, reaching out to tuck my hair behind my ear and smooth the tangles on the side of my head. “No matter what my future looks like, nothing will keep me away from the woman I love. Not even death will keep me from her.”

I cleared my throat, suddenly overcome with the need to retreat from the intensity of his words. Even barely knowing him, the thought of him one day having that with someone else filled my chest with lead.

With heartache I hadn’t earned.

What difference did it make to me if he touched another woman with those gentle fingers that so often stroked my skin? If his breath washed over another woman’s cheek while he murmured in her ear? If he tore another woman in two with his monumental cock?

It didn’t. It couldn’t.

“She’ll be a lucky woman,” I said, running my hand through my hair as he finished with the tangles. My fingers were pruney, my toes tender as they scraped the bottom of the hot spring.

“I hope she sees it that way,” he said, shrugging his shoulders with a smile. As if he knew he was both impossible to deny and impossible to tolerate, all in the same breath.

“I should get out. Do you mind?” I asked, smiling sheepishly as he stepped away. He turned his back to me where he stood in the middle of the pool, leaving me to heave myself out of the water and onto the edge of the spring.

The sudden burst of cool breeze pebbled my skin, everything in my body going still in response. I turned to look over my shoulder, finding Caelum’s tense face staring back at me. His gaze wasn’t on mine, instead fixated on my naked flesh and the scars covering my back in thick white lines.