Tainted (32 page)

Kind words can heal three winters while harsh words can chill even the heat of summer.  Isn’t that some kind of proverb with the humans?  Kin was pure evil no matter what charade he had me convinced of.  Ian would keep this all to himself, but I heard it straight from his brain. I hurried as fast as lightning back to the court and yelled to my guards I was headed off to bathe knowing it was the only place they wouldn’t follow. I felt him get closer.  How, I don’t know.  It was like his need was screaming louder than his brain was functioning.  Or maybe because I focused on it.  So when he entered the bath my surprised scream startled us both.  Danella went into hovering mother hen mode covering the pool of water with her short chubby body.

“Master Ian.  What is it?  What emergency warrants your intrusion on my lady?”

He didn’t want to look weak, but he was.  He didn’t want to look as desperate as he was to touch my skin, but he was.  His eyes darted to Danella, me, and back to Danella. I could read him one hundred percent because his emotions were
not
in control.  That’s how I knew he was close by. “Leave us.  I will stay on this side of the room.  Return in sixty seconds flat to remove her from the bath.”

Danella nodded ten times without words and frantically closed the door.

Ian was still holding his breath.  When he finally flared his nose out to find my scent, he couldn’t distinguish me from the bath water.  He looked like me might tear down the walls if he didn’t get to me.  I felt horrible knowing the cause of all this.  I blocked my mind with the strongest severity to keep him from finding out.  It would devastate him.

“Can you dress and meet me in your room in thirty seconds?”  His eyes were black and scary.

“Yes,” I breathed out.  He left as Danella knocked and entered.

When I walked through the doorway in just my robe because I wasn’t yet completely dry and didn’t want to wait for fear of what Ian would tell me next was some kind of bad news, I didn’t know what to do with this shaking man pacing my bedroom floor.

He saw me, or I think he smelled me.  He stopped for a second not facing me yet. He looked like a caged animal that realized his bars were swinging open and he could indulge on his need to have what he wanted most.  I just didn’t foresee what that would be.

Without an apologetic voice inside or out he moved fast as the speed of light covering me all over.  He pulled me close enough he buried his head in my wet hair and moved into the soft flesh on my neck.
Breathe
. 

I felt him tense, and then breathe hotly into my neck again.  This was an Ian I’d never been confronted with.  He was wild with a shaking fear from something unknown to me.  At least in his eyes it was.  I let him stay where he was.

He took another deep breath.  And another. 

“What is wrong Ian?  What happened?”

He couldn’t answer just yet.  He couldn’t.  He wouldn’t. His need was greater than words.  He needed to know that I was his.  I could still read him so easily.

“Mine only,” he mumbled inaudibly.

I stroked the back of his neck where we stood in the middle of the room with no other noise than the breathing that had slowed now.  His hands started to wander a little too much.  “What can I do to help you Ian?”

He croaked, “You are.”  Crap, he was showing weakness.  “I just need you.  Right now.”

I stiffened.  I wiggled.  He meant just to hold me, right?

He’d guessed my reaction.  “Grace, that would be the icing on the cake as you would say, but this will taper me till that day is here when I can relish in you however I want to.” 

Oh! 

I was afraid to repeat myself so I waited for as long as my legs could hold me up and said instead, “Do you think I could change? I promise only two minutes.”

He breathed me in again before pulling his head back.  My wet hair was sticking to his face as he pulled.  I searched his eyes still dark and full of fear.  Words fluttered by the marquee of my mind.  Utter need.  Necessity.  Empty.  Refuel.  Ground zero.  He needed me.  It wasn’t that he was thinking anything, but rather feeling it.  Back at the meeting I’d just witnessed it was the same.  It was something new.

“I will wait here,” he said.  I grabbed a gown and such.  Throwing it on and toweling my hair, I was back out in a minute and ten, but who’s rushing?  His face greeted me with a tinge of a smile.  Not the Ian smile I needed, but it would do.  I crossed the room and sat beside him on my bed where he sat.  I lay back dangling my feet off the side and he followed.  He folded over and pulled me to him placing our faces nose to nose.  Our bodies tangled.

“I don’t want to scare you.  I just...Grace, promise me that you’re mine.  Promise me.”  Desperate words.

I didn’t know what happen to my strong, unfettered prince.  Something broke him to the point he thought he might lose me from that confrontation with Kin.  I tried retracing what Kin said to him.  Kin had said he and I together would be more powerful.  The prophecy was exclusively him and Ian believed him.  “I don’t know what happened to you Ian or if you’re going to tell me, but I hope I’m correct in saying that I hope you are mine.  I would cage you and keep you inside with me twenty-four hours if it meant you’d not be hurt like you are right now.”

“Just say that you are mine.  I don’t want to lose you, Grace.” 

“Not happening big boy.  Not in this lifetime you extended to me.  Not any power or prophecy can steal me away.  I’m yours.”  He did flinch with the statement, but he didn’t say anything about it.  If he had a notion to think I knew a peep of what he’d been through, he’d be angry.

I am so ready to be married and done with the heartache.  I think I’ve decided marriage tames a man’s control over himself.  This pulling me closer and pressing against me was too much like a make out session in the back seat of a car.  Like he heard me, his mouth planted against mine.

Slow at first and then warmer.  He felt like he had a fever, he was so hot.  But just as I was setting in for my lovefest, he pulled his lips away and moved to my ear.  He nibbled it once gaining a gasp from me.  He obviously liked that because it gained me several more.  Then he whispered so soft like he didn’t really want to say aloud, “I won’t let him take you.”

Confronting Pike was needed.  Pike needed this like he needed...no, not going there.  He was on the range doing exactly what Ian would have done when that much frustration was built up.  It’s just how these guys deal with strong emotions.  Hitting.  Throwing.  Punching.  Violent stuff. 

I told Ian I was leaving the range, but I did as always and hid just behind the wall.  A spot I’d used for several escapades.

With me out of sight, his emotions relaxed watching me safe in the Seelie boundaries. Ian thought about all they’d been through.  He and Pike were natural enemies forced to be allies.  The irony with knowing they were once friends was hard for me to get past.  He thought it was funny how much he sounded like me and my years of undetected thoughts.  My twist on words of wisdom wiggled into his brain, stirred around sometimes, and would spit back out making him laugh at his own thoughts of me.  To hear this stuff made me love him all the more.

Pike nodded in acknowledgement that he was aware that he was no longer alone.  Ian let him finish plugging the arrows left in his quiver. 
              Drying off with a towel, he grabbed a bow and moved north of where Pike stood.  Aimed.  Fired.  Dead on.  “I expect nothing from you.  You can choose.”

“I will tell you when to boss me around.  Your queen may think you have that hold over me, but I was loyal to her first and will remain so.  I have her back, not yours.”

“Truth hurts doesn’t it?” Ian sent an arrow forward himself.  He sat the bow back down.

Pike raised a where-are-you-going-with-this eyebrow.  “Philosophy wasn’t offered in the human school man, so what’s dealing?”

Heck if they sounded more human all the time.  Riding the bikes with the Kin cronies was playing on their crude language long ago.  Ian thought that he better stop the amount of it for fear of dishonoring me causing me to laugh to myself.  I could hear him more and more.  “I will save her.  Nothing will happen to her.  Whether it was my back or hers you saved back there today, I thank you.”

Pike nodded wiping sweat from his dripping hair.  It was running all down his front and back.  The heat of a new summer was bearing down with a hint of fall looming in small doses.  “Like I said, for her.  I will not see her in that court.  I don’t have her now, I haven’t had her, I won’t have her.  BUT Kinsler
will
not have her.”  He pressed his finger into Ian’s bicep.  Was Pike giving up?

“No, I will not give up.”

I gasped and covered my mouth.  With a peek, I saw that his eyes were looking straight at me.  As if to me he said, “I will not give up till the day I no longer can hear her thoughts.  I will savor every second I have left with her until she is taken from me.  You can’t have that.  After that, I will leave.  I will not remain here to see her.  I can’t.”

Ian narrowed his eyes at Pike insinuating that he would leave the court without consent, but thought better of his judgment and said, “Understood.”

***

I had yet to remind Ian about the supposed gift being made for me.  It had been forever and a day since he’d said anything about it so I resulted to snooping..and crossing my fingers.  Danella was putty in my hands.

“Danella, Ian said the gift he was having made for me wasn’t ready yet.  Do you know when it will be?”

She eyed me recognizing my detective work, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Miss Grace.”

“Well, then you won’t know if it is small or large.”

She laughed.  Nothing.

“And you don’t even know if it’s something to have on me or take with me.”

Danella huffed, “If Ian wants you to wear it before you head to Pike’s he’ll have it.  Quit pestering me.”

Ha!  She didn’t even know what she just gave away.  I gave a whiney okay and bounced out of the bath to put clothes on.  I had what I wanted.

Next stop, Ian.  “Why are we going to Pike’s?”

Ian looked surprised I knew.  I ignored that. 

“We need to visit with the Nym liaison for an exchange of permission to cross their land.”

And no one told me, why?  “For what?” I said this nicely.

He sighed, “For the ability to find Kinsler’s other camp.”

“And do what?”

He was being short with me. 

“To assure him we know he’s there.”

“And that’s all?”

“You defend him, Grace.  That’s why I haven’t told you this.  He has a bigger agenda than you know.”

“Ian, I know his agenda and he knows how I feel about it.  He may try something, but I don’t believe he will hurt me.”

He couldn’t hold it in anymore.  “Grace, he may not hurt you. But I cannot and will not sit by while he possibly destroys this court in the process.  You have a wall up defending him and you can’t see past the fact that he can and will obliterate everything to get to you.”

Kin promised he wouldn't hurt others, but not to Ian he didn't.  Just the opposite.

I am so dang selfish.  I haven’t thought of everyone else.  Kin admitted he would kill Ian to get me.  I would kill him first.  And his father.  I looked down hiding the tears.  “You are right.”

He reached for me and I stopped him. 

“I am thinking too much for myself and not enough of the rest.  I told you I would not make a great queen.  I can’t even put others before a piece of crap like Kin.  He is still the manipulator. His undeniable proclivity to masterminding my existence is at an end. I know this.  I did what I did for this court to keep him away from it.  I just didn’t want him to die because of me or some jealous rage on yours and Pike’s part.”

He smiled.  “I wish that Grace, but I wouldn’t kill him just for the fun of it.  If he attacks my people, I will defend it.  And at the moment, he is attacking me by taking what he knows is my most prized possession. He knows what I will do to keep you safe.  I can’t sit by.  Pike and I are going after the source.”  I opened my mouth to protest.  “If we can rattle his chains, he will know that we are not going to be bullied into anything.”

I thought on this.  “So what is the ultimate goal here?  For all of us?”

“My ultimate goal is to marry you Grace, have children, and rule this court.”

I gasped at being reminded of my wonderful future with Ian.  “And theirs?  Pike and Kin?”

“Pike will have to make his own future, I’m afraid.  He is where he is.”  He looked like he was sad for him.  “And Kinsler will have to find his own bride and rule his own d—court.  Once he sees this, backs off of this stupidity caused by the prophecy, he will make a great Unseelie King.”

Whoa!  “You think he will make a great king?”

He stilled his eyes to a glaze, “Yes, Grace.  He will.  When he backs off of my girl he will be better than his father and a well remembered Unseelie king.”

This was all new information to process.  I don’t think that Ian completely hates Kin.  And he doesn't believe Kin is right about the prophecy. Wow!  “Okay.”

“Okay what?” Ian asked.

“Okay.  I will shut up about Kin and follow what you think is best.  You are right about his intentions and our court.  I have been stupid and will make amends knowing I should have put my people first and you know exactly how to defend them.”

I saw his shoulders relax.  I wanted to rub them. 

“Grace....”

“Shh!”  I moved behind him and started to massage his neck first.  He was tight.  “Did I cause most of this tension?”

He was silent.

“Honesty?”

“Yes, Grace you cause me a great deal of tension.”

“I’ll try to remedy that.”  I kissed his neck and let the moment seep into enjoying my hands on his neck and shoulders and no one else around.