The Fae Queen's Captive (Peculiar Tastes, #6)

by Sierra Simone

“You’re not supposed to eat the fairy fruit. It drives us mortals wild with desire.

They’re not talking about actual fruit here

I craved romance and sex, yes, but more than that, I craved happenings. Novelty. I wanted everyone to be looking for love or falling in love or having their heart broken…I wanted everyone to be poised on the edge of some new cliff, ready to tumble into the next pool of excitement or pain.

I’ve learned the hard way that insatiable girls don’t get happily ever afters. They eat their way through lovers and friends too heartily—and that they also want to be eaten alive, their blood drunk and their bones cracked open, is irrelevant. Insatiable girls stay alone. Insatiable girls settle for living by proxy, for craving and wanting and shoving those wants down where they won’t scare anyone away.

And I like playing a naughty French maid game as much as the next pervy grad student—particularly if there’s spanking involved—and I’m not saying I haven’t occasionally dreamed of being kidnapped and tortured with sexy shit—but this isn’t a dream, this is my real-ass Halloween night.

Because I’d like her to. Because even though I was kidnapped by someone named Maynard and carried to a mushroom castle, even though I’m so very certain this is a dream, it would be a very good mushroom castle dream if she put her fingers in my mouth.

“Because mortal toys are more fun,” he says. “And more beloved. And when beloved things bleed, the land sings.”

Why have I been pressing myself into the shape of someone easy, someone composed and guarded and temperate, when I’m none of those things? When I don’t even really want to be? When what I really want is to be as hungry as I can be, as messy as I can be, as much?