**DAPHNE**
“Goddess, I want to taste you.” His voice throttles, against my sex warming me through the fabric. Teeth bite down gently as his hands slide up and over my stomach to squeeze my breasts. My hands find his and graze over his heavily muscled forearms. “But it will have to wait,” he says, sliding up my body to kiss my lips softly.
“Why?” I protest, trying to drag his body down to mine.
He chuckles. “Because if I lose focus on the deck - the way I will if fuck you as mercilessly as I want to right now - the ship will have to rely on the winds alone. And we have much of Faery to cross before nightfall.”
I attempt to get up only for him to push me back down with another kiss. This one is much deeper, his tongue forcing its way past my lips to dance about my mouth as he steals my breath.
“I want to see it!” I proclaim as he backs away from me, leaving me a hot mess on the bed.
“Not yet,” he says. His jaw locks, his eyes falling toward my cloak on the bed and the pocket that stows the book. “Why don’t you practice your letters a bit before you come up.”
*Does he know I have the book with me?*
*Or does he think it is the one taken from his study?*
“She told you,” I fish. “That she was teaching me to read?”
He nods, his gaze still fastened on my cloak pocket. “She did. So you should practice.” Lifting his eyes slowly from the pocket, he stares at me. “Perhaps we may learn just what it is about you that everyone loves so much.” He chuckles, “Despite that you are mine.”
I grin. “Yours, am I?” I tease.
He doesn’t smile back. Instead, the look he gives me is one of absolute conviction. “Abso-fucking-lutely. You... are mine.”
He exits the room, his words resonating through my body with possessive force. I groan against the pain that throbs for him at my center, fighting against the urge to claw him back inside and take him into my mouth the way I did the day before.
There is absolutely nothing that fires my blood like he does. Just the picture of his face when he loses control inside of me has me crossing my legs as tightly as possible.
Taking a deep breath and shaking the tingles from my body, I take the book out of the pocket and freeze.
The title has changed. What was once foreign script - in a tongue I’ve not seen on anything anywhere in my life - is now in *Mortal English.*
I flip the thing over and under before checking the insides. I am still certain that this book is the same one because, not only does it appear to be - despite the now English title - but the words on the inside remain unchanged. They are still foreign. The scribing inside has not been altered.
“What in Heaven?” I hiss, closing the tome to stare at the cover.
Well, I’ve already learned a few of the basics. The word ‘the’ for instance and the word ‘Fae’. After our little session last night while Ash held conference with the witch - most of the three letter words are easily packed away in my brain. It is more the remembering of vowels that I’m troubled with.
But even that seems to burn into my head as I stare down at the tome in my lap and say, “The Bbb-ooo-kkk of Hhh-iii-dd-ennnn Fae.”
I trace the letters as I read them and at the breath of my last word, they heat beneath my fingertips. Glowing faintly then withering out, they flash bright gold momentarily.
“What?” I gasp, as a thrumming release begins in my chest like a vibration of energy waiting to be unleashed.
It dies quickly. The light of it fading out and the letters going cold.
Perhaps if I say it again more confidently?
Almost in echo of my thoughts, I hear a voice in my head insisting that I speak. Like a whispering in my mind begging me to complete a melody. Telling me that the notes were there, but in the wrong key. As if in saying these words again, and whole, I might light the fuse that has gone cold for too long.
“Okay,” I say to myself. Concentrating on the bigger one and placing it together in my mind. “Hid-den. Hidden. Boo-kk.”
*The Book of Hidden Fae.*
Just in the thinking of it, the title heats again, before going cold, but does not light. I place my fingers over the letters again, testing what I assume could have been a trick of the mind.
Now, I concentrate. Willing myself to note that the face of the tome is cold, to realize that golden scripted title bears no warmth.
Then, I think it again.
*The Book of Hidden Fae.*
And again, the letters heat beneath my hand. It is not my imagination. This book wants to be read. But not by just anybody. It wants to be read by me. I can feel this. I know it. And... I am suddenly a tiny bit afraid of what might happen when I say these words aloud.
“I’m going to say it,” I spout at the book as if in argument. Feeling silly as I look around at the empty state room. “Just give me a second.”
*Ash did say I should practice.*
*He told me to do it.*
Well, he kind of did. But his urging may have been a bit more of my wanting it to be true and a little less of what he actually meant to say. But it matters not. Because there’s nothing like a little faerie magic, right? I mean - if it were forbidden - or dangerous - Klyesque would never have given it to me.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Here goes.”
I place my fingers beneath the words and say in a voice that falls out into a whisper, “The Book... of Hidden Fae.”