“Trying to seduce. You just switch tactics. I’m not stupid, V’lane. I couldn’t teach you to care about us in a million years. But you know what really pisses me off? I shouldn’t have to justify our existence to you, or any Fae. We were here first. We have the right to this planet. You don’t.”

“If might makes right, we have all the right to this world we need. We could have exterminated your kind long ago.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“It is complicated.”

“I’m listening.”

“It is a long story.”

“Got all night.”

“Fae decisions are not for humans to know and understand.”

“There you go, getting all superior again. You can’t fake nice for more than a few seconds.”

“I am not faking, MacKayla. I am trying to know you, to earn your trust.”

“You could have earned some of my trust by being around when I needed you. Why didn’t you save me?” I demanded. I’d been scarred by my hellish time beneath the Burren in ways I didn’t fully understand and, although my body had healed, and I felt stronger than ever, I wasn’t certain I was necessarily the better for it. “I almost died. I begged you to come.”

He stopped abruptly and spun me to face him. Though his body was as warm and solid as mine, his eyes blazed inhuman fire. “You begged me? Did you cry my name? Pray to me?”

I rolled my eyes. “Figures that’s what you’d hear.” I stabbed him in the chest with a finger. It sent erotic recoils up my arm. Even “turned off” he was turning me on. “The important part in there is that I almost died.”

“You are alive. What is the problem?”

“I suffered horribly, that’s the problem!”

He caught my hand before I could poke him again, turned it up, and grazed his lips across the underside of my wrist, then bit it, sharply. I snatched it away, skin stinging. “Such a naked, defenseless wrist,” he said. “How many times have I offered you the Cuff of Cruce? Not only would it prevent lesser Unseelie from harming you, with it, you could have summoned me and I would have saved you. I told you this at our first encounter. I have offered you my protection repeatedly. You have refused me at every turn.”

“A cuff can be removed.” I sounded bitter because I was. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.

“Not this—” He closed his mouth but it was too late. He’d slipped. All-powerful Prince V’lane of the Supercilious Fae had slipped.

“Really?” I said dryly. “So once it’s on me, I’m stuck with it forever. That’s the tiny little inconvenient catch you’ve never happened to mention to me before?”