Phantom of the Library - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,54

me tear off my t-shirt and panties and I was looking very deliberately casual as I reached for my dress, although my pulse quickened.

“Maybe I’m trying to kill you,” I said.

“Mm…” He lunged for me then and grabbed me before I could pull the dress over my head. “Drop it.”

I opened my hand. The dress fell on the floor.

“Jake told me what you did to him in the van,” Jasper said. “I think I need to issue you an unsafe driving violation.”

“Issue…a violation? Oh no, sir. We were going slow…”

He bent me over the bed and thrust right into me from behind, getting right to work as I leaned forward and clenched the blankets.

I really admired how smoothly Jasper mixed work and pleasure.

But while the upstairs was quickly shaping up into a sleek, updated space—Jake had to admit the fireplace looked great when everything around it was given a more modern touch—this grotto was certainly turning into a problem. Either I had to force Maya from her home, or I had to force her into a marriage to save herself, an idea I abhorred to the core of my rebellious heart.

Chapter Nineteen

Helena

“Byron, what do demigods do for a living?” I asked him as I was curled against him, in the space between sleeping and dreaming after a deliciously hard day of work. “Are you sitting on a fortune or anything? I haven’t asked about all of that.”

Beside us, Graham was sleeping. He slept so still I was tempted to check his pulse. He wasn’t used to manual labor from morning until five pm when we had to slow down to avoid getting yelled at by the Avalon Woods Heights neighborhood association.

“I have a manor,” he said. “When the worlds were separated, half the manor went to Sinistral and the other half stayed in Etherium, where Marisa lived. So now I guess she lives in the whole thing. But if we ever had a fortune…ah, no. A fortune doesn’t come with the territory.”

“Well, that seems unfair.”

He plucked idly at my hair and slid a hand down my body. I had taken Charlotte’s advice and made a schedule, although I usually ended up in a man sandwich, like tonight. Sort of. Graham fell asleep while trying to seduce me. His hand was reaching for me like a man who died trying to get to a desert oasis.

“It does seem rather unfair, now that you mention it. I liked being a librarian…but I’m not sure what magical library would want to employ me anymore, now that I stole valuables…so I suppose I will just serve my queen…” He pulled down the V-neck of my t-shirt and kissed my shoulder.

“Your queen is really tired…”

“So is our second…”

“Our second. You said that in the dream too. Like…Lady Hulda was going to have a baby with two dads?”

“That is how I was created,” Byron said. “The guardian of three worlds needs the blood of three worlds. In this case, the seed of two men can mingle together and both will be a part of one child.”

I paused. “So more children. Everyone wants me to have children. And you need to have children, don’t you? To pass on your blood to a future guardian? Part of why I left my family was to get away from the whole patriarchal baby thing.”

“Well…” Byron’s head rested on his hand, his hair falling disheveled into his eyes, such a bedroom look and I loved it. His other hand was still caressing me, stirring me no matter how tired I was, because I knew what that hand could do, and it was never disappointing. “Do you feel as if you simply don’t want children, or is it a fear of being relegated to a second-rate position in life?”

“I don’t hate children. I’d never thought about it. I’m definitely worried that I just won’t be a good mom. Like I’ll only want to pay them any attention on my time, and that won’t be enough for them to feel loved. I don’t want to just shunt them off to boarding school unless they want to go. But I also don’t want to give up a moment of my time.”

“Well, maybe the answer to how I’ll make my living is that I won’t. I will be the guardian of this magic and watch over the Way of Paths, and I’ll also take care of our child. All of your children. So you and Jake and Jasper will not lose a minute of doing