A Strange Hymn (The Bargainer Book 2)

  Cruel Des. Dark Des. My Des.

  “What was that thing?” I finally ask.

  “The bog?”

  I nod against him.

  He straightens, pulling away without letting me go. “It’s a sentient nightmare. It eats fairies alive, subjecting them to their worst fears as it digests them.”

  A shudder courses through me at the thought. “That’s horrible.”

  It’s his turn to nod, his face somber. “It is.”

  And yet it hadn’t stopped him from unleashing it on one of his enemies. Even now he doesn’t look regretful.

  He’s a fairy. What did you think you were getting yourself into when you decided to be with him?

  I run my fingers through my hair, emotionally and physically exhausted. The training leathers I’ve been wearing all day are sticky and chafing in places they really shouldn’t be.

  “I want to go home,” I say.

  I’m tired of my wings and perpetual night. I’m tired of being surrounded by monsters and feeling powerless against them. Most of all, I’m tired of living in a world that doesn’t have Netflix.

  Des’s eyes soften. “I know.”

  “You haven’t offered to take me home.” This comes out more accusingly than I meant.

  “You haven’t asked,” he responds as smoothly as ever.

  “If I did ask for you to take me home, would you?”

  The Bargainer’s jaw tightens, and for a second I see something alien in his eyes. Something predatory and very fae-like.

  And then it vanishes.

  He nods. “I would.”

  We both fall silent, and I know he’s waiting for me to ask him exactly that—to take me home. If only wanting could make something true. But I can’t leave, not as I am. If Des dutifully took me back to earth, I’d still be a human with wings and scales and claws.

  “Where do we go from here?” I ask hopelessly.

  Des’s mouth curves up. “You seem to be under the impression that you don’t still owe me a great deal of favors—”

  There is that.

  “—or that you happen to be my mate.”

  There is also that.

  He takes my hand and leads me back inside his rooms.

  “But, as far as where we go from here, I’d say for starters that we get you a bath.”

  I crack my first smile of the evening. “Look who’s talking.” I swear boy sweat is at least twice as stinky as girl sweat. I’m pretty sure it’s a scientific fact.

  Des releases my hand. “Is that an invitation?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

  “You’re the Lord of Secrets—I think you can figure that out for yourself,” I say.

  His eyes brighten with mischief.

  While he looks at me like I’m the most delicious macaroon he’s ever laid eyes on, I reach around my back and paw uselessly at the training leathers I wear. For what feels like forever I’ve been trying to unfasten the ties that crisscross my back and hold the leather bodice in place, but I can’t quite reach it—

  Des’s warm hands brush mine away, turning me around and unlacing the ties. Each graze of fingers feels like a kiss. Suddenly, my heart’s thundering all over again, and the humorous moment we were having is replaced by something that smolders like embers over a fire.

  My bodice loosens, falling to the floor in front of me, the air caressing my exposed torso.

  Des rotates me back around and places his hand over my pounding heart, as though he’s trying to capture the beat of it for himself.

  His gaze moves to mine. “Cherub, we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  I feel his words all the way in the pit of my stomach. Love, romance—the whole thing feels like a rabbit hole, and I’m Alice, about to plunge into it.

  His hand slides to my wrist, and I tense as his fingers roll over my bracelet. What will he ask of me now? More training? Some kinky sex act? Not going to lie, I’m pretty sure I could get behind the latter.

  … And I do mean get behind.

  “Tell me something about your past, something I don’t know.”

  Of course, the moment I’m actually eager to participate in one of Des’s dares, he blows my mind by asking me a simple question.

  A second later I realize that the Bargainer’s magic doesn’t grip me as it usually does. He didn’t take a bead. He just wants to know a bit more about myself … as I stand here topless in his chambers.

  “Ummm, what do you want to know?”

  I bring my hands up, hiding my breasts from him. I aspire one day to shamelessly have topless conversations with Des … but that day isn’t today.

  “How did you and Temper meet?” he asks.

  That’s what he wants to know? Right now?

  He reads me like a book. “You think I’m concerned about losing an opportunity to make love to you?”

  Those words go straight to my core.

  His eyes dip to where I cover my breasts, and he lowers his voice. “I’m not.”

  I narrow my eyes at his arrogance.

  He steps forward, into my space, and it’s all I can do not to edge backwards. Des is still overwhelming, still a force to be reckoned with. “I knew who you were the night I left you Callie, and I’m learning who you are now, but I want to know about everything that came during those seven years I lost you.”

  That has my breath catching as I stare up at him. We are lovers and old friends and strangers all at once.

  He’s absolutely right, there’s so much we have to catch up on. Things that no amount of physical intimacy will make up for. And that’s what he wants from me.

  “I met Temper senior year at Peel Academy,” I say, my mind jogging back to the final year at my supernatural boarding school. That was a rough period of time. I’d lost Des only months beforehand, and I found myself with no friends and no family. The only thing I had in abundance was heartbreak.

  “It was the first day back, and I wasn’t sitting next to anyone in my morality of magic class when she dropped into the seat next to me. And then she started talking to me.” She talked to me as though we were already friends, and I just hadn’t gotten the memo yet. “It was the first time since you left that another student tried to befriend me.”

  It doesn’t hurt so bad, admitting to Des that I was once a social pariah. That, he already knows about.

  As for my friendship with Temper, it was only later that I found out how hard it had been for her to take that seat next to me and put herself out there. She knew enough about me to know I had no friends, something the two of us had in common.

  It took me weeks to learn that people avoided Temper even more than they did me, largely because of the type of supernatural she was. Of course, considering my own troubled past, Temper’s infamy only made me like her more.

  “Ever since then,” I say, “we’ve been inseparable.”

  Talking about Temper only makes me miss her all the more. The last seven years might’ve been the pits when it came to my love life, but not when it came to everything else, and that was largely thanks to Temper. She has to be losing her mind right now, wondering where I am.

  I shove my worries away. “How did you meet Malaki?” I ask, pivoting the subject from me to him.

  I’m not even sure Des will respond. He never answers these things.

  He stares down at me, standing so close I can feel the heat of his body.

  “Will you unfasten my leathers?” he asks instead of answering.

  I deflate at his response. I shouldn’t be disappointed. Already Des has shown me so much more of himself than I ever thought he would.

  Pressing my lips together, I nod.

  He turns around, his wicked-looking wings still out.

  My hands find the ties that secure the leather armor to his back. One by one I begin to unfasten them.

  “I met Malaki when I was a teenager,” he begins haltingly.

  My fingers still for a second.

  “Back then I had … lost my way,” he continues. “I
found myself in Barbos, the City of Thieves, without a cent to my name.”

  I bow my head, letting a small smile slip out before I resume unfastening the bindings.

  “That was around the time I joined the Angels of Small Death,” he says.

  “The gang,” I say, remembering the explanation he gave me for his sleeve of tattoos.

  “Brotherhood,” he corrects over his shoulder. He takes a deep breath. “Malaki was another member. He was several years older than me, but still the closest fairy in age.”

  I can tell dragging out these memories is hard for him. His mind is a steel trap. Things go in, and they don’t come out.

  “Living on the edge like we were,” Des continues, “brought us close together. He’s saved my life before, and I’ve saved his.”

  I unfasten the last of the ties at Des’s back, and the leather slides off of him. Just like me, he’s bare from the waist up. I guess this is our weird version of Show and Tell—show some skin, tell a secret.

  He turns back around to face me, his chest bare. “He’s my brother in every way but blood.”

  I meet his eyes. It’s rare that I catch Des laid bare like this. Like me, he’s spent years building armor around himself … and now it’s coming off. He’s no longer the terrifying king, or the slippery Bargainer.

  Right now, he’s just my Des.

  “How long have you known him?” I ask.

  He pauses.

  “Long enough,” he finally says.

  I know enough about fairies to know that long enough can just as easily mean centuries as it can decades. And the comment Malaki made earlier …

  I’ve been waiting centuries to meet you.

  I tilt my head to the side. “You’re really freaking old, aren’t you?”

  A sly smile creeps along Des’s face. “I can answer that, but it will cost you.”

  I don’t need to buy a favor to know the dude must be ancient.

  I begin backing away from him, heading towards the bathroom. “Raincheck … grandpa.”

  I only have time to see his grin widen, and then he’s scooping me up, throwing me over his shoulder.

  “Naughty thing,” he says, smacking my butt.

  I shriek, then begin to laugh. “No wonder your hair is so white. How many centuries ago did it lose its color?”

  I can feel Des’s rumbly laughter shaking his shoulders.

  “I’ll have you know that it kept its color until the day I met you,” he says.

  He marches us to the bathroom. As he does so, I feel my boots tug themselves off of my feet, clattering to the ground. My pants and underwear go next.

  “Des!” Now just about every inch of my bare skin is pressed tightly to his.

  “Callie.” He mimics my tone.

  “What are you doing?”

  His hand caresses my upper thigh. “Disrobing my queen.”

  That stops me completely.

  Oh God, his queen.

  “Des, you don’t mean that, do you?” Because—nope. Nope, nope, nope.

  I’m just getting used to the idea of there even being an us. Anything more is beyond what I can handle.

  “It was a turn of phrase,” he says smoothly. “If you’d rather I call you a scullery maid—”

  I whack his back, which only makes him laugh again. The sound of his laughter has me relaxing again. Just a turn of phrase.

  As he carries me, his own pants slide off his hips and down his ankles. Gracefully, he steps out of them.

  And now we’re both naked.

  Ahead of us, the grand bathtub’s spigot turns itself on.

  He steps into the giant tub, setting me carefully on my feet. For a moment, I stare at my soulmate, his face just as painfully lovely as the first time I laid eyes on him, his white hair loose. His crown and war cuffs are gone, and the only remaining adornment he wears is the ink that runs down his arm.

  Without clothes, Des is all the more appealing, his torso massive, large ropes of muscles cording it.

  Just as I drink him in, he drinks me in, his eyes moving to my breasts, then downwards, to my waist and hips.

  He steps in close, tilting my chin up. “I want to be good at this, cherub. At us.”

  I reach out and run a hand down his sleeve of tattoos, my finger lingering over the tears inked onto his skin. “I do too.”

  For several seconds, the only sound is the spray of water filling up the tub we stand in. Then, out of the near silence, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” comes on, the song filling the room.

  Just as I look around for the phantom speakers that must be playing the music, I catch sight of a polished wood tray resting to the side of the tub, On it sits a steaming mug of coffee, an espresso (in an impossibly small cup), and a plate of macaroons. It’s our usual order from Douglas Café.

  And for whatever reason, that does me in.

  I take a shaky breath and laugh, though it comes out more like a sob. “Stop it,” I say, my voice soft and rough all at the same time.

  But rather than stopping, Des pulls me in close, his pretty, pretty muscles pressed against my soft curves.

  He leans in, his lips a hair’s breadth from mine. “Never.”

  Chapter 5

  Des is a romantic.

  Ugh.

  That’s so not what my heart needed. It’s not like there’s any turning back at this point, but still. It wounds my ego a little to know how easily I can be done in by a few thoughtful gestures.

  Close to an hour after the two of us get in the tub, I step out of it, my stomach full of macaroons and coffee as I dry myself off. I watch Des—wings and all—as he saunters out of the room, a towel wrapped low around his waist.

  Once he gets to the far side of the bed, his towel drops to the ground, and holy virgins and saints, that backside is everything.

  I wrap my own towel the best I can around myself, accidently plucking a few of my feathers in the process, my eyes fixed on the Bargainer. I am absolutely creeping on this man right now and I have zero regrets.

  He glances over his shoulder at me, his pale hair slicked back. I should be embarrassed that he caught me blatantly ogling him, but his own expression heats at whatever he sees in mine.

  We still haven’t done anything together—naked espresso-drinking and macaroon-eating aside—and the need to rectify that situation is beginning to grow.

  I ring out my hair as I pad into his bedroom, the hanging lanterns above us glowing softly.

  I’m about to head over to the fancy armoire already stocked with a million fae outfits for me when Des reaches into a dresser drawer near the bed and tosses me a black piece of clothing. I catch it, the material soft beneath my fingertips.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “A concession prize. It’s the next best thing to earth I can give you.”

  I furrow my brows.

  He nods to the garment in my hand, and reluctantly I tear my gaze from his to shake the faded material open.

  A huge grin spreads across my face when I see the giant lips and tongue printed across the faded T-shirt. It’s one of Des’s vintage Rolling Stone’s shirts.

  “That’s on loan to you,” he says.

  “On loan?” I say, raising my eyebrows.

  Des steps into a loose pair of pants. “Just because I love you doesn’t mean I’m going to give you one of my most prized possessions.”

  He just made it official: I now fully intend to keep this shirt.

  Taking my cue from Des, I let my towel drop to the ground and drag the shirt over my shoulders. My light mood wipes away the moment the hem of the shirt comes in contact with my wings.

  I forgot all about them. Now that I have wings, I can’t just pull clothing over my shoulders.

  Before I can consider throwing myself a pity party, the T-shirt’s soft material, which was bunched just above my wing joints, now slips down my back as if there were no obstacle in the way, the hem of the shirt falling to mid-thigh.

  My head snaps u
p to Des, who’s smirking a little. “How did you—?”

  “Magic, love.”

  I reach around my back, feeling for where my wings connect to my back. The edges of the shirt split around my wing bones.

  I’m so focused on the logistics of Des’s shirt that I fail to see the way he stares at me. It’s not until he disappears, reappearing at my side, that I take notice.

  He fingers the hem of the shirt. “This looks good on you.”

  I freeze.

  Des is all coiled purpose. His eyes flick to mine. We’re just moths circling a flame.

  It’s right then that a yawn slips out.

  Worst—timing—ever.

  I’m not tired—I mean, I am—it’s been a long day, from waking up early to the hours-long training session, to watching a man get eaten by a living nightmare—but I’m not tired enough to miss out on this.

  Des’s eyes drop to my mouth. Whatever passion took him over a moment before, he tucks it away.

  I want to cry out when I see him slip on the respectful mask he used to wear back when I was in high school. For all his wicked tendencies, he can be surprisingly chivalrous.

  He tugs the edge of my shirt. “We’re not done with this yet,” he says, his voice still rough with promises of sex.

  He drags me to bed, and I almost think that the man hasn’t been deterred by my yawn.

  Des’s wings disappear so he can roll on his back. A moment later, he pulls me half onto his chest. The way he holds me … the dude has definitely shelved getting frisky for the moment.

  I could probably make him reconsider, but damn, there might literally be nothing comfier than being curled up against Des.

  “Tell me a secret,” I whisper.

  “Another one?” He looks so legitimately put out that I laugh.

  I can’t even remember the last secret he told me—was it about his friendship with Malaki?

  “Yes, another one,” I say.

  He groans and pulls me tighter. “Fine—but only because I like you.”

  I smile a little against him.

  Can’t believe asking him actually worked.

  Des smooths a hand over my feathers. “The only thing I dislike about your wings is that they hide your ass—and I really like your ass.”