One Thousand Kisses (12 page)

“And I’m not?” He raised his eyebrows. Both of them. His surprise wasn’t that someone found him unrelatable but that Anisette had verbalized it.

The tactic with the physical contact must be working. What would she confess if he touched her more? He took her other arm, gliding down until he clasped her wrists. He found himself wanting to hold her hands, but the gesture might be too distracting for a discussion about his shortcomings.

She reddened further, her cheeks matching her hair. “It’s not possible you don’t know.”

“I have some idea,” he admitted.

The tomcat on the bed pirruped. The muscles of Anisette’s arms tensed as if she intended to break contact with him to pet the cat. “I don’t mean to offend.”

“I’m not offended.” Hells. He took her hands. He wouldn’t be derailed by a cat. “How can I be more pleasant for you?”

Her pink lips worked but no sound came out. “I can’t answer that,” she spluttered. With her attention on him, she didn’t notice the cat rolling on the bed, presenting his belly for a rub.

“I’m not averse to hearing I’m perfect the way I am.” He stroked the back of her hands with his thumbs.

“You’re not perfect.”

“I know.” If he were, she’d love him instead of avoid him. She’d have succumbed without him having to do anything besides be himself. “I have split ends.”

“You have split…” Her eyes rounded. “Are you…
you
…trying to be funny?”

If she had to ask, he’d failed. As usual. “It’s not against Court law for the Primary to joke.”

The cat head-butted Anisette in the rear. “Meow.”

She tried to pivot, and he stopped her, squeezing her hands. “I’m not finished.”

“The cat is…” A line appeared between her brows. For all he knew the cat was telling her something horrible.

“The cat can wait.” If she picked the cat up, it would place his body between Embor and his goal. He’d started out intending to schedule Anisette’s vacation. Get her away from the Torvals. Now?

Now he wanted to put her at ease. If nothing else, she’d be more likely to agree to go to Fiertaggen.

He spoke louder than the cat was purring. “I also can’t swim.”

Her fingers, which had been inert, curved around his. “How did you grow up next to the Bay and not learn to swim?”

“I find immersion in water unpleasant.” Embor glanced at the bed. The cat slid past Anisette, rubbing his whiskered face against her rear.

“Fire magic,” she guessed.

He shrugged. He’d known fairies with fire magic who didn’t mind water. As much. “Do you enjoy swimming?”

She tilted her head. “Breathing underwater was the first magic I learned.”

“Have you visited the Bay?”

“Many times. The first time, I was young. We went to Gala. Tali nearly…” She shook her head. The cat batted the long fall of hair down her back. “It was a long time ago.”

“I can only imagine what she nearly.” He raised her hands to his chest and thought about kissing them. Instead he peered into her eyes. “Tell me the good parts.”

“I swam far out under the waves. My mother says when I came back I told everyone stories about fairies under the ocean. I don’t remember the stories. I just remember it was beautiful.”

She was beautiful, her face full of wonder, the pinched expression she tended to wear around him gone. “Are you relaxed now?”

“Actually, yes.” She bit her lip and smiled, her face tilted toward him. “I feel nice.”

The cat, haunches twitching and pupils huge, crouched behind her and readied himself. Embor led her away from the small predator like they were dancing. She followed. When they were out of the cat’s range, he halted, trying to ignore the malevolent yellow stare and concentrate on the princess.

“Can you share,” he asked slowly, caressing her fingers, “what you think might have triggered your panic attack besides me? I want to help you.”

The deep blue of her eyes was ingenuous, yet assessing. “Why do you want to help me?”

He provided a quarter of the truth, not as honest as a half-truth but not a lie. “You’re an asset to the Court.” When she failed to react, he gave her another quarter truth. “I can’t believe anyone would intend you harm. If someone does, come straight to me with whatever concerns you have. You and I share a history.”

And a future.

“I swear there was something.” She sighed, her brow wrinkling again. Behind her, the cat thumped to the floor. “I wanted to tell you something recently. Yesterday or today.” To his surprise, her hands cooled in his grasp. He increased the room’s temperature again with a mental command. “I’m not usually forgetful.”

“Perhaps it will come to you if you relax more.” He could think of a few ways to ease tension without anxiety spells. “I’ve been told I have warm hands.”

“And how would your warm hands relax me?” she asked, the expression in her eyes no longer guileless.

“However you wish.” Unless he missed his guess, she was flirting. He wondered exactly what type of pills Gangee had given her. Her taking one every day might speed the courtship.

She didn’t answer immediately. He hoped she was thinking about his hands, his hands on her skin, his hands heating her. Pleasing her. He was definitely thinking about it.

As his imagination sprang to life, so did his body. Hells. She’d read his hormones and lust. He ought not be that obvious until he’d told her about the Seers. He dropped her hands and stepped away.

A yowl erupted from the floor, startling them both. The cat pounced on Embor’s feet, whipping his tail back and forth, and began to claw his slippers like a dervish.

Embor stifled a curse.

“Master Fey, what is it?” Embor thought Anisette sounded annoyed, unless his own annoyance was coloring his interpretation. What was with that cat?

As quickly as he’d assaulted Embor’s feet, the cat leapt away, pivoting in midair to land with his front to the fairies.

Anisette knelt and inspected Embor’s feet. “Did he hurt you?”

“No.” Though he felt the fool, he and the cat stared at one another, neither of them blinking.

She rose and straightened her apron. “The cat says you’re lying to me.”

Embor blinked—first—and turned to the princess. The cat purred loudly. “About what?”

“Something before the exam, something during the exam, something right now.” She inched away from him. “That’s a lot of lying.”

“I haven’t outright lied to you.” That he could recall. “I may not have provided all the information due to its restricted nature, but I’ve no reason to lie.”

“He says you do have a reason.”

He restrained the impulse to dangle the cat by the scruff and demand the beast talk to him, man-to-man. “Cat, if you see so much—” Could the cat see they were bondmates? “—you know I have her best interests at heart.”

“Then why lie?”

“State secrets.” He hadn’t claimed they weren’t bondmates. Nor had he told her. He hadn’t told her many things, but there were things he told no one.

“The cat says no.”

“The cat can…” Embor bit off his response. “What does the cat feel I need to tell you? If you don’t have clearance, I can’t share it.”

“You need to tell me about the Torvals.” Her eyes widened. “What about the Torvals?”

Which Torvals? The ones he hated with every drop of fire in his veins or the ones he despised to the depths of his hot soul? “I need more information.”

“I’m supposed to ask…” Anisette paled. “No, Master Fey, I will not.”

“Damned cat,” Embor growled at them both. If he was supposed to tell Anisette Warran had used spirit magic on her, he’d do it. Would that prevent the cat from mauling him and his possessions? “Just ask.”

She trembled as she sank onto the bed. “I don’t want to.”

He strode forward and took her shoulders. “Didn’t I prove I can handle criticism?” The cat plainly had an agenda, and Embor didn’t appreciate anyone’s agenda interfering with his own.

He was the Primary. His agenda came first.

Anisette’s fingers grazed his wrists, almost a caress. “It’s not my place to know such things.”

As she imagined herself in a relationship with Warran, he didn’t see why it wasn’t her place to know he was a degenerate who’d tampered with her mind. What had Warran erased? Was the missing information worse than the mindwipe?

They were back to this, then. Warran of Clan Torval had much to answer for.

“I think it is your place. I should tell you whether you want to know or not.” He needed to tell her, to pry her away from Warran.

“You should go.” The soft touch of her fingers tightened. Tugged.

“Ask!”

When he raised his voice, Anisette’s eyes sparked and she grabbed his shirt at the neck. Where her fingers brushed his skin, they stung. “Very well, sir. What happened to you in humanspace?”

“That has nothing to do with Warran.” Did the cat know about his recent outings? Was he supposed to confess he was hunting the Torvals?

“No, it doesn’t,” she said in a quiet voice. She released his shirt and laid two fingers against the pulse in his neck. “What happened when they kidnapped you?”

Embor glared at the cat, who glared back. The feline’s pupils grew rounder until the yellow of his irises almost disappeared. What did the cat know? Fury, frustration and shame rushed through Embor like a prairie fire.

“That’s what the cat wants you to tell me.” Her voice seemed to come from the end of a long hallway.

“State secret,” he managed before the memories blazed out of control, as if they’d been shoved there by an outside force.

It wasn’t all a state secret. It was his private nightmare. Private, between him and the four Torvals. Not even Skythia knew everything he’d suffered at the hands of the lunatics who called themselves fairies. Yet this cat insisted he sully Anisette with that knowledge?

Her cool hands covered his, but he barely noticed as his vision hazed. He didn’t want to remember. He’d tried so hard to move past it, and when the nightmares disappeared the first time, he thought he had.

The new dreams weren’t the same. Were they? Would he never be free?

“What did they do to you?” Anisette asked.

“You truly wish to know?” His knees bumped the bed, his body collided with hers. His legs would no longer hold him. Without noticing how he got there, he realized he’d forced Anisette back and pinned her to the mattress. “Why doesn’t the bloody cat tell you?”

“You’re angry.” She turned her face from him but he wouldn’t let her. He grabbed her chin, his fingers hot against her cheek.

“How many details do you need before you and the cat will be convinced I’m telling the truth?” His body weighted hers to the bed, and his cock hardened. “Shall I tell you what it feels like to have your brain die as everything that makes you Fey bleeds through your pores? Perhaps you’d rather hear how many ways a man’s body can be abused and defiled?”

“Hush.” She touched his lips, trembling. “I believe you.”

“Do you?” With minimal effort, he dragged her arms over her head, securing them with one hand.

She struggled. It enflamed him further. The fabric of her nightgown was hardly a barrier. Her body felt alive, supple and yielding. He wanted to lose himself and his vile memories in her sweetness. Erase it like it had never happened, like he’d never come so close to death his own spirits had deserted him.

There was no magic in humanspace. No soul. Nothing but death.

Bonding with her, burying himself in her, would wash it away. She’d give him the power he didn’t have to make it right.

“Release my arms,” she said.

“I don’t want to.” He liked having her beneath him. Her hips cradled his like she was made to fit him.

She tugged her wrists, her breath quickening. “You’re not well.”

“Do you know what’s wrong with me?”

“You’re mad at me?” Her pulse beat so fast he could sense it in her skin. Feel it hammering out of her like tiny shockwaves. But it didn’t feel like fear. It didn’t feel like he had, in humanspace, when he’d been at their mercy.

“I’m not mad at you,” he told her, lowering his lips toward hers.

She closed her eyelids, her lashes a dark swash on her ivory skin. “You’re forcing me to do this.”

His teeth clenched as he fought his urges. “I promise you, you’ll be glad of it.”

“I don’t mean sex, you stupid man.” She reopened her eyes, her pupils dilated. “I mean this. The cat says if it was so bad, why haven’t you punished them?”

The heat inside Embor flared until the air filled with it. The bedclothes smoldered. The cat hissed. Yet Anisette didn’t cry out.

“It’s on my list of things to do,” he ground out. “Near the top, in fact.”

One of Anisette’s hands, still miraculously cool, slid out of his grip and cupped his cheek. “I don’t want to tell you this. But I will. The cat knows where they are, and he can take you to them.”

Chapter Eight

To Ani, it seemed like Embor stopped breathing. No part of him moved, twitched or pulsed. Their bodies were so close, she’d have noticed whether she wanted to or not. His face was smooth, his skin hot.

Finally he blinked.

“How does a cat know where they are?” He captured the hand she’d placed on his cheek, his fingers like a manacle.

“How does a cat know anything?” A new emotion had awakened inside her, something like need. The erotic heat pouring from his body blasted the chills out of her. Her legs parted to accommodate him, and his cock between them was a jolt of pleasure.

She felt almost scalded. Almost afraid. Almost hungry.

“Are they in the Realm?”

“He didn’t say.” Ani tried to tug free, steeling herself to act. If only she could decide what action to take. Her libido battled with her sense.

He was so much stronger than she was. A glint in his eyes, he stretched her arm above her head again. “Ask him.”

“Let me go.” Heat pooled in her privates and throughout her body. If he knew the effect he was having on her, she’d evaporate with mortification.

“No.” He caught her wrists too easily in one hand. “Cat, tell us where they are
or…”

“Or what?” Ani had been freezing—now she burned. “You’ll torch my bedchamber?”

Or seduce her?

It wouldn’t take much. She was halfway seduced already.

The cat leapt onto the bed. When she focused on something other than Embor’s face, the air was hazy.

Are you going to mate now?
the cat asked Anisette.
Good. I shall watch.

“What did he say?” Embor’s free hand hovered near her breast.

She almost groaned. “Nothing about the Torvals.”

Hurry
, the cat advised.
You don’t have much time.

“Much time for… Oh my stars.” When Embor’s hips shifted, so did his erection. By the spirits, he felt good. Even angry, he felt good. Sweat broke out on her forehead. “Do you smell smoke?”

“Damn and blast.” He gestured abruptly. Some of the heat engulfing her dissipated.

But not the heat between them. She hadn’t been approached without a ritual card since she’d arrived at Court. Embor had pushed her down, threatened her freedom of choice—and she was more aroused than she could remember being in years.

To make matters worse, his actions seemed to have little to do with her and everything to do with injuries he harbored from years ago. His attention wasn’t on her, yet she ached between her legs.

“Cat,” Embor said, wrath in his voice, “you have knowledge that’s essential to the safety of the Realm. Tell me where they are.”

The cat’s tail lashed. His ears flattened against his skull.

Mate now
, the cat insisted. He appeared to have a voyeuristic bent.

“I don’t think so,” Ani said.

“You don’t think he’ll tell me?”

“I was talking to Master Fey.” To the cat she said, “He deserves to know.”

It’s not time
. The cat hissed at Embor.

Embor frowned. “Comply.”

If she didn’t get free of Embor soon, she was going to proposition him or knock him unconscious. Gangee had shown her how to induce sleep today, and a sleep spell was more her style than agony in a crisis. The question was whether this qualified as a crisis.

“When will it be time, Master Fey?” she asked the cat. “When he lets me go?”

The cat’s ears swiveled up, and he blinked.
So you aren’t going to mate?

Alas, it didn’t seem they were. Ani held her tongue while Embor stared at her suspiciously. Without releasing her wrists, he eased down until his feet hit the floor. He dragged her into a sitting position.

“Now tell me,” he ordered the cat.

The Hand of Fire amuses me
, the cat said to Ani.
I almost hate to—

Quicker than Ani’s eyes could follow, Embor snatched the feline into his arms. The cat yowled and spat.

“You can’t do that to a cat,” Ani said with a gasp. “They’re practically spirits.”

“I can and have.” He trapped the cat’s paws and winced when the cat sank his teeth into his arm. “Cat, the location. Now.”

The cat growled and gnawed. Embor’s lips thinned to a white line of pain, but he made no move to jostle the cat, simply to restrain him.

Ani jumped to her feet, torn between freeing the cat and begging the cat not to hurt Embor. Why had the cat dangled such valuable information if he didn’t intend to share it?

“What do you want in return?” she asked the cat. “The blanket?”

The cat’s feral moan was her only answer. He writhed in Embor’s arms, but the man was mightier than the cat.

“Elder, I beg you. This isn’t an honorable way to treat a sly one.” She bounced from foot to foot and nipped her fingernail jagged. “I’m sorry, Master Fey. What do you want me to do? Please tell me.”

Nothing yet
, the cat said calmly. His mental voice didn’t match his snarls.
He must learn.

“You should be sorry for me,” Embor said with gritted teeth. “I’m the one losing the feeling in my hand.”

What was the Primary supposed to learn, not to argue with a cat? The knowledge didn’t seem to be sinking in. Blood stained Embor’s sleeve, leaked down his hand and dripped to the floor.

“Oh my stars. Kitty, you’re hurting him.” The blood roused Ani’s healing instincts, but she stopped herself from reaching for Embor. She’d no wish to suffer the feline’s teeth. Like most healers, she couldn’t doctor herself well.

“Please let the cat go. You can’t grab people and make them do what you want,” she told Embor. “It didn’t work on me, and it won’t on the cat.”

“I’m not done with either of you.” Embor edged toward the bed and leaned over the mattress, the cat chewing him vigorously. With a quick twist, Embor wrapped Master Fey in the coveted brown blanket.

Again, she had trouble following Embor’s motions. Magical enhancement? She’d never seen anyone move faster than a cat, not even a gnome.

Embor cradled the bundle with one arm and shoved his other wrist in her direction. “Heal this.”

You should
, the cat said.
He has enough scars.

Ani could barely see the cat’s eyes in the tunnel of fabric. His body was encased so tightly he’d ceased to struggle. Either that or he was finished teaching his lesson.

She cradled Embor’s wrist, rolled up his bloody sleeve and was stunned to see a multitude of small, raised semicircles all over his muscular forearm.

Fairies rarely had scars. Their healers were skilled enough to erase them.

“What are these?” She ran her fingertip across his skin, barely touching. Blood smeared in a line. His outdoor workouts had turned his hands golden, but his forearm was pale.

“Just heal me,” Embor said. “I don’t need an interrogation.”

You’re about to have company
, the cat told her.
The sooner we leave, the better.

“Who’s coming?” she asked.

A disturbance in the air shimmered near the door, coalescing into a person.

Warran began bellowing before he emerged from between-space. “What in the Realm is going on? What’s this I hear about you entertaining Fiertag in your negligee?”

“What are you doing here?” Her security alarm should be blaring loudly enough to wake the wing. Warran wasn’t coded into her privacy wards.

“Poacher.” Warran pointed at Embor. Cold collided with the hot air in the room, forming a white vapor. “She’s mine until released from our agreement.”

Embor held the burrito of cat, whose hisses were muffled by the blanket. “Consider her released.”

Ani straightened the apron covering her semi-translucent gown. If Embor annulled her relationship with Warran for her, she’d forgive his mistreatment of the cat.

“Before the test? Absolutely not,” Warran said, as if it were his choice alone. “You’re a stickler for the old ways to the detriment of the Realm, yet you defy our basic traditions to slake your lust?”

“What traditions?
The Thousand Kisses
and its bizarre claims have barely existed a hundred years. A ridiculous fad has no comparison to the humanspace policies that have kept us safe for millennia.” Embor clamped his arms tighter on the cat, who mewed piteously. “If you want to discuss violations, Anisette didn’t invite you into her chambers, yet here you are.”

Ani inched closer to Embor. Veils of fog partially obscured the room. “How did you transport here without triggering my security system?”

Embor’s eyes narrowed. “Is breaking and entering a skill of yours, Torval? I’ll be sure to share your new talent with the truthseekers.”

“You do that. I’ll tell them you forced yourself on the princess.”

You can’t force someone who’s willing
, Ani said, but it was one of those comments trapped in her head.

She tried harder to speak up. Dismiss Warran. Nothing came out of her mouth but a squeak.

As the men argued, ice formed on the floor, smoke on the ceiling, and water vapor between. Ani’s feet slipped. Magic oozed out of the Elders whether they willed it or not. They weren’t as far gone as she’d been when she’d resorted to the pain spell, but it was dangerous. Twins could absorb so much they were unable to contain it, almost like onesies.

Like Jake—who’d nearly destroyed the Realm and humanspace at the same time.

White clouded around them, banks of rolling steam. The men flung accusations like missiles. She swished a hand in front of her face and felt a now-familiar headache crack into her skull.

Droplets condensed on her arms and hair. Ani funneled water into her bathing chamber before it damaged her possessions. Still the fog eddied. She could see Warran, and then she couldn’t.

She reached for Embor blindly, afraid to take her eyes off the spot she’d last seen the other man. If Warran attempted to molest her again, she might…

Wait, again? Tears filled her eyes as sparks erupted in her brain.

“What are you holding, Fiertag?” Warran’s form appeared near Embor. “Is that blood on your arm?”

Embor glanced at Ani and back to Warran. “A scratch. Anisette was healing it.”

The cat’s miaows escalated. Warran’s eyes widened. “Is that a cat? You’re torturing one of the sly ones?”

“No,” Embor said with a firmness belied by the cat’s earsplitting wail.

Every time the cat had mind-spoken to her this evening, he’d been unruffled. Amused. He was, Ani realized, playacting.

He might not be the only one. Extending her senses, she read no alarm in Warran’s hormones or fear for her safety. But she did detect an adrenalin spike.

“Revolting.” His lips twitched. “I can’t believe anyone would hurt a cat.”

The cat’s eerie howl blared through the room as if it were directly in her ear. Ani winced. Embor cursed. The smoky heat at the ceiling beat down the ice, which melted to slush.

Ophelia arrived in a shimmer of between-space. “You called?” she asked her brother, a smug smile on her bony face.

It wasn’t the smile of an uncertain person. It was the smile of a person whose plan was coming together. Ophelia, too, failed to set off Ani’s wards.

Ani’s fingers began to tingle. She wanted to force the Torvals out. Make them leave. She didn’t care how. A sleep spell wouldn’t be enough. Her magic kindled auras around everyone, adrenaline and hormones a blur of colors with a curious blankness from the cat. She couldn’t control it any more than Embor could control his heat or Warran his ice.

Finally she could speak.

“Please leave, Elders Torval.” She hated Ophelia. Hated Warran. She’d never hated anyone in her entire life. It energized her, smashing through her chronic civility. “You aren’t welcome here. I’m reporting you for breaching my privacy.”

“
Tsk
,
tsk
.” Ophelia’s black gaze raked her from head to toe. “Is that how you talk to your future sister-in-law?”

“I’m done with your clan.” Ice crystallized in her veins at the thought of joining the Torvals.

“Do as the princess says,” Embor ordered in a deadly voice. His aura blackened like charcoal. “If you don’t, there’ll be hells to pay.”

A giant flash of heat turned all the slush in the room to vapor, all the vapor in the room to nothing. Fire defeated water. Fire defeated ice. Searing wind blew everyone’s hair back. The mirror above Ani’s dressing table cracked, and the canopy of her bed caught fire.

“Baseborn thug,” Ophelia cursed. The wind knocked her to her knees. Black smoke began to fill the room, stinging Ani’s eyes and lungs. Her overspill of magic melted away like Warran’s ice. The auras vanished.

Warran staggered away from Embor. Smog obscured him, sinister and opaque. “You’re the criminal, using fire on people who tried to protect an innocent woman. We were warned about you.”

The smoke swirled and parted. Warran fumbled at his pocket.