“Ha-ha.” Something occurred to me. “Who taught you?”
“Why do you ask?” he returned smoothly. Too smoothly.
“Son. Of. A. Bitch.” I strung out the words, watching his face for the slightest twitch, chasing the fleeting thought through his mind. “It was her, wasn’t it?”
Rogue gazed back, a world of memory passing behind his eyes. My turn to wait him out. With a mental sigh, he let me see. The boy running on the beach. Raven’s feathers flying through the air, dense, denser until they blackened the skies. Crying out, the boy stumbled and Titania, all lissome loveliness and sugarcoated poison, smiled down at him. Swathed in impossibly long silver hair, fine as tinseled spiderwebs, she picked him up and took him by the hand, her delicate, multijointed fingers weaving with his, making him hers.
How I hated that bitch.
I looked around the arena with new appreciation. “This was her castle.” That, too, showed in his memories. “At least, one part of it.”
“It’s mine now.” He said it with implacable firmness, making me wonder how he’d managed to drive her out. A surge of pride filled me, for his indomitable strength of will. And deep sympathy for what he must have suffered, belonging to her then and again so recently. It made me love him all the more.
Something I hadn’t been very good about showing him. So many fears and suspicions holding me back. I really needed to get over it.
I crawled the few feet over to him, the dirt soft on my declawed fingers, the skin there sensitive as new flesh, and pushed him onto his back. He gave way, curious, not quite certain of my intentions. Straddling his narrow hips, I perched on his flat abdomen, running my hands over his shirt, then parting it down the center. With the gleeful delight of a kid on Christmas morning, I pushed the material aside and bared his skin.
“As you are mine now,” I told him. Titania would have a serious fight on her hands if she tried to take him away from me ever again.
“Is that so?” he asked, with something of a pleased look.
“Yes. Don’t argue. I’m tired of you playing hard to get.”
He laughed and lay back, letting me explore him as I hadn’t been able to this past—had it only been a day? Surely it had been longer. At some point I’d likely need to sleep. For the time being, however, I felt wildly replete with life energy.
And I wanted him.
“No one will disturb us here, will they?”
He shook his head, slowly. “The door answers only to me. And, now, you.”
“Good.” I tugged at his sleeve and Rogue laughed again, a breathy sound, full of rising desire.
“It would be easier to magically dispense with it, sweet Gwynn.”
“Shut up.” I wrinkled my nose at him. “I’m enjoying doing this for myself.”
Obligingly, perhaps a bit bemused, he levered up so I could pull the shirt off entirely. While he was upright, I freed his hair from the leather thong and brought the silky mass of it around to drape over his shoulder on the unpatterned side of his body, before I made him lie back again. Arranging the glossy locks into a long, trailing fan over his lean chest, I indulged myself in its texture, compared to the brushed satin feel of his skin.
Freed of the claws, I savored the winding of the thorned lines covering the left side of his body, how the black-patterned skin felt no different than the golden-hued rest of him, Following the path up, over his collarbone, throat and jaw, I finished at the cut-glass edge of his lip, where that vine ended in an infinitesimally fine point. Turning his head ever so slightly, Rogue pressed a kiss to my fingertip, his dark blue gaze finding mine and burning.
He lifted a hand and touched my left temple, tracing over my cheekbone to the corner of my mouth, with the same grave tenderness. Like him, I showed my internal animal on the surface of my skin. It had started as a branching line on my temple, silver-white. By the lingering glide of Rogue’s finger, it had grown larger and more complex.
Soon it would engulf my body, too, leaving me unrecognizable.
“I will always know you, my Gwynn. Never fear that.”
He pressed his other hand between my shoulder blades, urging me close enough for his lips to reach mine in a long, soul-searching kiss, then slid down to my thigh, pulling up my skirt.
I wriggled away. “No. Be still or shall tie your hands.”
“Promises, promises.” He smiled, wickedly, but stretched his arms obediently over his head, letting me have my way with him.
I’d done this once before, but I’d been tipsy, if not outright drunk. This time I wanted to learn him as he’d learned me, testing which kind of touch excited him most. His heart thumped and his unblemished belly fluttered as I kissed my way down it.
Finding the way to open his pants, I started to peel them off, pausing when I encountered the dagger at his hip, the silver blade searing me. I knew this knife—he’d held it to my throat once before—and it hadn’t burned me then. A sign that the magic was infusing my tissues, transforming me as surely as a bombardment of gamma rays. Withdrawing the knife from its sheath, I looked up his body to find Rogue returning my gaze calmly.
“You didn’t tell me you brought this.”
“I didn’t want to frighten you unnecessarily.”
“Not this time.”
He smiled ever so slightly. “You pay much better attention than you did then.”
“Amazing how that works,” I said drily, then cast the knife aside so it skidded through the dirt. “You’re a ruthless bastard, you know.”
“But you’re not angry?”
“Nope.” I grinned at him and freed his cock, grasping the solid length of his shaft in my hands. “After all, I’d do the same for you.”
“Why doesn’t that—” He broke off with a strangled sound when I cupped his balls and took him into my mouth.
After that, neither of us had much more to say.
Part II
Massaging the Data
Chapter Ten
In Which I Am Reunited with My Wacky Sidekicks
Like any society, Faerie has its social pariahs.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Flora and Fauna”
Starling, Athena, Larch, along with my erstwhile supply caravan and entourage had arrived at the far edge of the moat by the time we emerged from the practice arena.
Though I was, naturally, relieved and delighted to have them safe, I tried not to feel like the honeymoon was over.
Rogue settled his hand on the back of my neck under the fall of my hair, rubbing lightly while we waited for the enormous drawbridge—it had to be the length of a football field—to lower its ponderous weight across the water. Teams of human men, brawny muscles flexing, shouted in unison as they worked the chains through the great wheels.
“Why a manual system?” I asked Rogue. “You’re forever championing how much easier magic makes everything. And that thing has to weigh tons.” Probably a lot more than that, but there were reasons I hadn’t gone into engineering.
He stroked the hollow formed by the cavity below my occipital bone, one of my most erotically charged hidden points, as he’d discovered and loved to exploit. “What one sorcerer can affect magically, another can also. Try your magic against it.”
I tested it in a nondamaging way. Wouldn’t want to compromise castle security, after all. It did not turn bright pink with blue zigzags as I’d planned. Too bad, because I’d really wanted to see Rogue’s face at that one. Alas. “Interesting. And stop that.”
He stroked that point again and smiled down at me with warm desire. “Only to remind you that the honeymoon, as you so quaintly picture it, will never be over.”
That got me and I shivered a little, but with heat.
“We don’t have to wait for them.” Rogue leaned in and brushed my left temple with a kiss. “Let me leave them a message that we’ll join them for dinner tonight. Or breakfast tomorrow.”
I peered at the bright light showing through the arched portal, not able to see the height of the sun.
“How long from now is dinner? I’m suddenly starving.”
“You know how to find out. And I’m not surprised, it’s been days since you’ve eaten. Even magic cannot sustain your mortal flesh indefinitely.”
“I hate how you say that like it’s some fatal flaw.” I groused about that instead of commenting on the passage of time. I’d been afraid of that very thing. Later I would check the mass-mind calendar and see if I could measure just how long it had been. While I was in there and at my leisure, I would do some exploring too. And take notes. “No,” I answered his initial proposition, “I want to greet them.”
“And welcome them to your new home,” Rogue said, with implacable firmness.
“Yes, yes—lady of the castle, blah, blah, blah.”
“As such, you might dress appropriately then.”
I rolled my eyes but obliged, turning the very dusty gown I’d worn to the practice arena into a shimmering black velvet dress that matched Rogue’s outfit.
He glanced at me with some surprise that I’d willingly donned his colors. “Thank you.”
“Hey, I can play nice.”
“Who knew?”
“Ha-ha.”
By then the group had nearly made it to us. The creepy Cylon guards peeled off as they advanced, stationing themselves at regular intervals along the way. I supposed they had the virtue of perfect discipline, much as they raised my short hairs. Starling in the forefront clearly simmered with so much impatience that she easily kept up with Athena and Larch, though they were all on foot.
“Why are the horses staying behind?” It didn’t make sense. “Do you stable them elsewhere?”
“In a sense. Once the people have entered, I will change the entrance the drawbridge leads to, so that the livestock and wagons go to the correct part of the castle.”
“Including the human soldiers,” I noted, seeing them still standing on the far bank.
“Don’t start, stubborn Gwynn.”
It was an old argument between us—though I felt a bit of nostalgic fondness that he and I even had old arguments—that I disagreed with his total disregard for the human folk who lived in Faerie. They weren’t exactly like the sort of people I’d left at home, but neither were they livestock.
“These guys are in the main part of the castle.” I indicated the men resting by the drawbridge chains, preparing to pull it up again. “Shouldn’t we banish them below-stairs or some such?”
“We’ll discuss it later then.” He gave the nape of my neck one last sweet caress before stepping aside as Starling ran the last few steps and barreled into me, seizing me in a fierce embrace.
“Gwynn!” Starling nearly shouted in my ear. “You didn’t die!”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed, though my sore ribs creaked under her grip. “No, I didn’t. I’m just fine.”
She laughed too, and pulled back, wiping away a couple of tears. “I know I’m silly, but I—we—were so worried about you, and look at you!” Her gaze fastened on the left side of my face, her expression not horrified but certainly shocked. She quickly looked away from it. “What did you do to your hair?”
I put a hand to my hair, feeling the wild snarls. A telling sign that I’d been totally absorbed in Rogue. I cast him an irritated look. “Why didn’t you mention it?”
He shrugged. “I thought you’d adopted a new style.”
I sighed to myself. So alien and yet still so male. The scene out the arched door had changed to a lovely view of the river, with the moat monster serenely gliding by.
“Happy to see you, Sorceress Gwynn—” Athena gave me a cheeky smile, “—no matter the hairstyle. Too bad about the claws though.”
“Don’t you worry—I have them close to hand.” I winked at her and she grinned in appreciation at the joke.
“My Lady Sorceress.” Larch bowed with his usual gravity.
“Welcome to the Castle of the Dark Gods,” I said to them, trying to sound gracious and comfortable with it. Rogue settled a hand in the small of my back. “Lord Rogue and I bid you, um, welcome.”
Athena snickered and I glared at her. Clearly I needed to practice this.
“I add my welcome to Lady Gwynn’s,” Rogue inserted with considerably more suave charm. “I’ll have servants show you to your rooms, so you may rest and freshen yourselves before you meet us for the welcome feast.”
I managed not to roll my eyes at the phrase “welcome feast.” Rogue knew—hell, they all knew—how much I hated the endless fairy feasts. In the background, the men renewed their chant. The view had changed back to the drawbridge and they were hauling it up again. Had the rest of my soldiers made it over? I glanced up at Rogue and he nodded, answering before I could ask.
“Meet you?” Starling’s happy mien crumbled at the edges. “Am I not still your maidservant? You’ve cast me aside then. All right, I imagine the maidservants at the Castle of the Dark Gods are ever so much more special and—”
“Would you stop?” I interrupted her tirade. “I don’t have a new maidservant, okay?”
“Well, that explains the hair,” she muttered.
“I’ve been busy.” Mostly having a lot of sex, but also dealing with stubborn elemental spirits too. And healing. “But you can come fix me up for dinner if it makes you happy. Lord Rogue only thought you might want to relax a little.”
Rogue’s hand drifted down my lower back to just brush the top curve of my bottom, a reminder that he’d had something else in mind.
Darling Hercules trotted up just then, waving his tail in hellos, and informing me that the mouse population of the castle had rebounded in his long absence, but that he was working on it.
Goliath, he reminded me.
“We’re not in battle,” I told him. “We all agree that, since Goliath is your battle name, it should be reserved for that very special occasion.” I widened my eyes at the others, who hastily nodded in agreement. Except for Rogue, who looked coolly amused.
Darling Hercules considered and, to my surprise, agreed. Then asked about supper. With a resounding boom, the drawbridge connected with the castle, sealing us in once again.
“So, my Lady Gwynn,” Rogue said, taking my hand, turning it over and pressing a burning kiss to my palm, “since you will be busy being appropriately groomed by Lady Starling and I have business to take care of, I shall take your leave until the feast.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What business? Don’t tell me the minions aren’t sufficiently oppressed.”
“Nothing interesting,” he replied breezily. “Besides, I’m sure you’ll want to start your minions on planning the wedding.”
Starling squealed like some tropical monkey and clapped her hands together. “A royal wedding! At last. I told you true love would triumph in the end.”
I ignored her, concentrating on scowling at Rogue for throwing me to the wolves. He grinned, completely unrepentant, then tugged my hand and pulled me in for a kiss that turned considerably steamier than appropriate in front of friends.
Just as I resolved to push him away, he broke the kiss, giving me a very smug look, and strolled away. “I’ll return in time to escort you to the feast, my lady,” he called over his shoulder.
Starling sighed on a long croon of delight. “He is positively dreamy.”
“He’s positively an asshole, is more like it.” I gazed after him, proud of myself for summoning the correct sour tone but unable to keep from admiring his very fine form. With a bit of a wrench, it hit me that we hadn’t been apart in days—or however long. And here I missed him already. Whoa. I seriously needed to take a step back.
“My Lady Sorceress?” Larch spoke up. “Do you wish me to stay or go?”
“Go?” I echoed blankly.
“The Castle of Dark Gods houses many pages. You may not have need of me, in your new household.” His blueberry face looked stolid as always, giving no clue to his preferences.
“Well, do you want to go home? Or back to Falcon’s camp? It’s really up to you.”
/>
“If you no longer wish to employ me as your page, I would as soon not stay, as I would have to find a new place in the hierarchy here.”
“He means it would suck, Gwynn,” Athena put in, pulling out her dagger and spinning it in a complex pattern so it wove between her fingers, like coin artists would do back home. She’d been practicing. “He’d probably get stuck scrubbing pots or something. You owe him better than that.”
Larch purpled and glowered at her. “The most powerful Sorceress Gwynn owes neither you nor me anything, you upstart fairy. You’re lucky they even let you—”
“Kids.” I held up my hands in a referee’s gesture. At least it wasn’t Starling and Athena bickering this time. “You all saved my life more than once and you’re also my friends. Of course I owe you. I haven’t seen any sign of Rogue having a personal page, so why don’t you continue as mine—I mean, ours. Would that work?”
Larch puffed with pride, something that made his fireplug body look a bit more like a plump blueberry. “I shall serve you faithfully and well, my Lady Gwynn! With your permission, I shall familiarize myself with the staff.”
“You don’t need my permission, Larch. Have at it.”
He trotted off wearing an imperious air that made him seem taller somehow.
“You realize you probably just completely overturned the entire chain of command in this place, right?” Athena looked more amused by this possibility than anything.
“That’s Lady Gwynn’s right. After all, Lord Rogue made it clear that she carries equal authority. She may do as she sees fit. And, with her new station, you should call her Lady Gwynn all the time now.” Starling finished the reprimand with a little sniff.
He did? I supposed he had. He’d been saying as much to me, though I hadn’t quite assimilated the import of that. “No, you should both call me Gwynn or I’ll have to kick you. Besides, we’re not married yet.”
“How about that royal wedding, huh?” Athena needled me, her lovely lavender eyes sharp with sarcastic humor. “Gonna have a big fancy dress with a crippling train?”
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