Elfcharm Read Online Free Page A

tongue darting out to flick my lobe. He gathered me up in his arms and carried me back over to the bed. Gently he laid me down, propped up against the pillows, my arms lank over my stomach. He gathered the covers he had thrown to the floor earlier and shook them out before draping them over me. Kneeling on the bed, he caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned my face towards his to kiss me, softly, one last time. I smiled lazily up at him and he grinned down at me, a knowing look in his eyes. He liked to see how much he could take out of me, and I didn’t mind letting him know.
    I blinked slowly and, between one moment and the next, Andre was gone as if he’d disappeared into the shadows. I stretched long and luxuriously under the covers, reaching my arms up over my head to grip the railings of the headboard.
    The sun was fully gone, leaving the city in a wash of silvery moonlight and my bedroom in near total darkness. I rolled over until I could reach for the lamp on my nightstand, clicking it on. I thought about going back to sleep for a time, I didn’t have anywhere to be and I was well and truly worn out, but something stopped me. After so much blood loss, I knew I should eat something, but that wasn’t what was pulling at me.
    I slipped out of bed, taking the top blanket with me, wrapping it around my body, and walked over to the dresser. The amethyst chips twined in the metal seemed to glint even in the weak light of my lamp. I picked it up, holding it by the fairy floss chain, watching as the charm spun slowly in the air. I had started wearing it more and more in the past few weeks, realizing I felt different without it, disquieted somehow. The only thing was, when I fell asleep wearing it, I would dream of the elf who gave it to me and I would wake missing him.
    He had promised me that by taking the charm, I wouldn’t be put under some spell, making me his slave or something. The Fae couldn’t lie, but we’d spent eternity perfecting the art of telling half-truths rather than ever actually lying. But he hadn’t called to me like the Hunter had; I hadn’t seen him since the festival, and the dreams that I had were pleasant ones. They reminded me of a different time, when our people and humans were still separate, a time before mine.
    Surrounded by a forest at midnight, stars shone so brightly in the sky I could see them through the canopy of foliage. Will-o’-the-wisps drifted in the shadows, their gentle light glowing bright, beckoning me this way and that. I wore soft, hand worked leathers, hand stitched to carefully mold to my body. And though I wasn’t dancing, though I was alone in the forest, I could see the light from my eyes as they shown quicksilver, as if my magic was always just below the surface, full and alive, not waiting for another to replenish me.
    Every night was the same. I would walk through the forest, searching for something, for someone, and then I would hear the measured footsteps of another. I would turn just in time to see him emerge from the shadows. Our bright eyes would meet and he would smile at the sight of me.
    “Fallon,” I breathed his name, smiling in relief at the sight of him, realizing immediately he was the one I was looking for. His emerald hued hair was longer than I remembered, tumbling behind his shoulders in thick, curling waves, setting off his bright green eyes that glowed with the magic of the forest. The sharp points of his ears peeked through, curving back. He too was clad in hand tooled leathers, but only in boots and pants that were slung low on his hips, the sharp bones drawing the eye down to the lacings holding them closed. His skin was pale like moonlight glinting on a lake, an almost iridescent sea foam green, with darker green lines swirled and twisted down his arms like some ancient tribal tattoo.
    He stopped, waiting for me to come to him. It was strange, I know I would usually refuse to run to a man who was waiting for me to come