Savage Fae (Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac, #2)

by Caroline Peckham

She knew what it meant to me. She’d seen it in my vision; me sitting with my father as a boy eating that very flavour from a cone.

Maybe the stars held my death in their grip and had that fate waiting for me.

I’d always known the universe was conspiring against me.

A man who was nothing returned to nothing. It was the only way the stars would ...

leaning her head against my shoulder. I tentatively slid an arm around her as we stood in the rain which started to beat down harder.

her nose burying into my leather jacket and I glanced down at her in fascination.

Fuck, she knew. She saw through Ryder Draconis, King of the Lunar Brotherhood and gazed upon the worthless creature hiding beneath his skin.

“Why do you want that answer, Elise? So you can run back to your other boyfriends, satisfied that I was never what you wanted anyway?”

“Is that seriously what you think? That if you show me something real about you I’ll stop wanting you?”

My heart shuddered as I processed those words, mostly only hearing the last few. That she wanted me. I didn’t think she’d ever really admitted it to me so frankly.

“You want me?” I murmured and she pushed her lips out, defiantly owning h...

“But I want the real you,” she whispered. “The bits no one else gets. The ones I see shining through the cracks in ...

soaking wet and happier than I’d been in too many years to count.

I didn’t hesitate this time, I opened my mouth for her with a burning kind of heat in my chest.

Because perhaps it meant that I wasn’t an entirely lost cause. And all because of Elise. Dammit, fucking Nightshade was right.

and I curled an arm around her waist, holding her close as I let her feed me.

I wanted to kiss her so badly it was starting to become painful to endure and I cursed that fucking deal I’d made with Inferno. How stupid could I have been to swear her off? But at least it meant he wasn’t getting her either.

I caught her chin, turning her head away from me and running the icy cold pad of my tongue up her cheek. “Ryder!” she laughed and I grinned, letting her see me happy.

“I’m hungry,” she purred and my mouth dried up, lust burning in me as I exposed my throat to her. “Then take a bite, baby.”

It was the perfect point between bliss and pain and I rode the high, aching to take her.

How much I wanted to tear into her flesh and bury myself in her body until she fell to ruin.

When every drop of ice cream was gone, I rolled beside her, panting like I’d just fucked the life out of her even though I hadn’t even gotten beneath her underwear.

I am royally fucked when it comes to this girl.

“Did you enjoy that?” she asked teasingly. “I would have enjoyed it more if my dick had been inside you at the same time.”

making me rear up with a grunt as she slammed herself down on my hard on. “Fuck,” I croaked and she shifted forward to straddle my stomach with a totally innocent expression like she hadn’t done that shit on purpose.

If there was one pain I didn’t like it was having my goddamn dick crushed while I was fit to fucking blow.

“You’ll like it,” she promised. I opened my mouth with an empty expression, but inside I felt as whole as the kid in my memories.

for now, I wanted to pretend I was healed. Just for her.

And yet there was something about the clothes he’d chosen to wear the day he’d died that made me wary.

Knowing that it was the last outfit he’d ever put on…some of the last small choices he’d ever made.

If he could see me now he’d be laughing at me for being such a wimp.

The blue T-shirt was harder to dismiss as the scent of his cologne washed over me.

The ache in my heart throbbed and I chewed on my lip as I fought back any tears which might show themselves. Privacy never lasted long in this place. I didn’t want any of my dorm mates to discover me sobbing over an old shirt.

a photo ID which made my heart lurch and a few sticks of gum.

I didn’t want the hurt of losing him to make it too difficult for me to remember the joy of having him in the first place.

I needed to be able to remember all the good things I’d had with him without falling apart each time I tried. I had to be able to smile about them instead of just lamenting their loss.

“Are you alright?” Gabriel asked as I turned back to the room.

“Got it. So you threw me under the bus to protect yourself.” “That’s not how it is,” he said, moving forward and reaching for me like he thought he’d try and comfort me.

“Touch me and I’ll rip your fucking arm off,” I growled. “Elise, please-”

Something shattered in his gaze and for half a second I didn’t walk out on him. But I couldn’t afford to just let him get away with this.

I’d managed to drag up some happy memories to cling to as well as the dull ache of grief. But that never really went away anyway so carrying it was no greater a burden than usual.

He liked to show up whenever I was feeling emotionally fragile, probably hoping to find a crack in my walls so that he could disarm me again.

I wasn’t interested in anything else he had to say. Which shouldn’t have surprised him really. Surely his visions could show him my anger clearly enough.

I cast an air shield and noticed Dante had done the same for him and Leon to keep the rain off of them.

Dante and Leon were shoving each other back and forth, play fighting like little kids and I grinned as I watched them.

“Did you cause this bad weather, Dante?” I asked and he smirked as he looked up at me. “Leon was cheating and it pissed me off.”

“You just need to be doing this in bikinis and we’d have a real show,” I teased. Leon barked a laugh and Dante managed to flip him over so that he was pressed down in the mud instead.

“Do you like it, carina?” Dante purred, moving to walk beside me. “It’s not bad,” I hedged with a smirk.

Dante growled and the thunder boomed so loudly that the earth trembled with its power. “Fuck,” Leon breathed, slinging a muddy arm around my shoulders as my eyes widened in wonder.

“Okay, it’s fucking incredible,” I admitted and Dante smiled wide...