Naughty Little Gift -- A Temptation Court Novella (Temptation Court, Book 1)

by Angel Payne

  Her breath clutches—the sound I’ve been dreading. And now hate.

  “W-was?”

  I twist my lips. Focus my stare out the window, onto something as innocuous as possible. A crow sits atop a chimney half a block away, a black sentinel against the late afternoon sky. Why is that bird so still? And aren’t crows supposed to be magical symbols of something?

  “Cassian?”

  I swivel toward her. It’s torture but I’m unable to fight it. Magic. It’s not in the crow; it’s right here in her searching gaze, her quiet concern, her soft sorrow…

  No. Not sorrow.

  Pity.

  Fuck.

  I am the subject of nobody’s pity.

  “This isn’t something I want to talk about anymore, Mishella.”

  Her throat vibrates on a heavy swallow. Still, her chin jolts up before she replies, “Is that why the only sound louder than your fist against that desk is the grind of your teeth? Why you look as if you yearn to collapse where you stand, but run as fast as you can at the same time?”

  I jerk upright. Shove to my full stance. Pivot away. “This conversation isn’t going to happen. Period.”

  I had to go and nickname her after the princess who walked home from the ball carrying a pumpkin and a bunch of mice. Her hand, persistent and elegant, wraps around my forearm from behind. “I think this conversation is long overdue.”

  “Then you think really wrong.”

  “I do not want to hurt you.”

  A laugh twists out of my constricting throat. “Christ, Mishella.” All too fast, the laugh becomes a moan. “Don’t you see?” I focus outside again—seeking the crow. Needing it to get out in a snarl, “You. Will. Incinerate. Me.”

  Pumpkin. Mice. This damn, tenacious woman flattens herself against my back, her cheek like a flare to my whole spine…my whole being. “Maybe it is simply time to live in the light again.”

  Her arms circle my waist. She feels so fucking good…

  I clutch her wrists. Bring her in closer. “But you like the dark better.”

  “Maybe the world needs both.”

  The husk in her voice follows the fiery path she has already ignited…up my spine then back down. Spreading lower. Lower…

  I shudder. She presses tighter.

  “Cassian, please. I just want to help.”

  Her presence penetrates deeper. Makes me consider, if only for a moment…

  What would it be like…to surrender? To really talk about it all? To let someone into the darkness again?

  Like you let Lily in?

  My breath rushes out, full of relief, as the thought slams in. It’s the steel door I need. The clarity I crave. The passage back to the space I can best keep Ella too. Indeed, like a beacon, it guides my hands atop both of hers. Shoves them down until she’s cupping me. The inferno of my thoughts turns into the perfect fire between my thighs.

  “Then help me,” I grate…pushing harder into her grip. Filling her fingers, which now follow my lead. She grips and sprawls and stretches, taking in the width of my bulge…

  Her breath quickens against my back. “Oh. By the powers. Oh.”

  “Yes. Fuck, yes…”

  “No!”

  It’s just a gasp but breaks us apart like a scream. I wheel around but already know I shouldn’t be—that my glare, spawned by disgust for myself, is going to look more like impatient fury. Like the expression of a man who expects to get his forty million dollars’ worth out of the woman in front of him. The woman at whose feet he should be falling instead.

  The woman who stumbles away, lips trembling, eyes entirely too bright.

  “Well.” Her chin jerks high again—while her hands wrestle in front of her stomach. “I suppose apologies are in order. I am…sorry, Cassian. Truly.”

  My throat squeezes. “What the hell? You’re sorry?”

  “You were right. This conversation really is not happening.” Her eyes drop like a subject being judged by her king. “And now that I am enlightened about everything, it will not again. I give you my promise about that.”

  A strange weight slams my chest. “Promise?” I repeat. “Enlightened? I don’t…understand.”

  “It is all right. I do.” And why the hell is she smiling now—with such open serenity? “What you really wish for in all this is a bedmate.”

  “A bed what?”

  “A fuck friend?” She cocks her head. “Is that more comfortable for you? Or do you prefer a calling booty?”

  I unlock my teeth long enough to snap, “You are not my goddamn booty call.”

  “Hm.” The sound is clipped as her smile taps out. She drops her head again—though not quickly enough. The shiny tracks on her cheeks are unmissable. “That is…an interesting point of view.”

  Another sensation invades my chest. It’s not like the normal ache when I’m with her. It’s worse—like my lungs are wrapped in rope and a dull knife is relentlessly sawing to get through. Or to get out?

  “Mishella.” The dagger’s in my voice now, an entreaty for understanding. But will that matter? She wants things I can’t give. She wants the past. She wants the truth.

  She wants too much.

  She lets my plea fall into silence, as she turns and leaves on slow steps.

  I watch until she disappears—

  and then I can watch no more.

  I spin back toward the desk, toward the window through which I crave to drive my fist—especially now with the crow on its sill, smugly eyeing me as darkness takes over the city behind him.

  TEN

  *

  Mishella

  “Black.”

  “Blue.”

  “And red all over?”

  I watch, a little stunned, as my quip elicits the same wide eyes and dropped jaws from my two best friends. Their matched reactions are not strange because they have dialed into the video call from different locales in Arcadia, but because they agree on something for the first time in thirty minutes. Granted, half that time has been spent studying the fifty evening gowns I have strewn across the largest of Temptation’s guest rooms, and I am in the worst mood of my life not brought on by my parents, but the tension flowing from the two has been palpable—until now.

  “Did she just…make a joke?” Brooke ventures.

  Vylet cocks her head. “I think so.”

  “Everyone hold the line. I need to circle this day in red—somewhere.”

  “Hmmm. Maybe America is a good influence on you, missie thang.”

  I groan my way into a face palm. “Two weeks, Vy. I have been away for two weeks, and ‘missie thang’ is already out for some vernacular exercise?”

  “Two weeks and three days,” Vy asserts. “Almost four. And I’ll give up ‘missie thang’ when you get rid of ‘vernacular exercise’.”

  Brooke, who has given us a backup soundtrack of soft giggles, suddenly sobers. “Sorry, M. I’ve let her slide a little. Things have been a little…strange around here lately.”

  “Strange?” I push aside a few of the dresses, needing to sit down. “That does not sound…good.”

  Understatement. All the strain I have sensed from them is not my imagination—and I shiver just from wondering why.

  “Oh, now you have her going, Brooke.”

  “Have me going where?” I demand. “And why?”

  “It’s nothing.” Brooke waves a hand in front of her awkward frown. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “Probably?” My chest feels rubber-banded. “What does that—” I cannot finish. Coming from Brooke, who is married to the head of all Arcadian security forces, it could mean anything—but I force my mind away from the direst scenarios. The ones left behind are not the most comforting either. “Should Cassian be ordering the plane to take me home instead of sending me more dresses?” Because there will be more—of that, I have no doubt.

  “All right. Hold on and chug a chill.” Vy throws up a speak-to-the-hand too, with much more purpose than Brooke’s fly swat. “The heightene
d security watches could just as well be practice drills, and—”

  “Heightened security watches?” My optimistic resolve crumbles. My thoughts race, bringing up the period that changed so much for Arcadia three and a half months ago—thanks to the vigilante group who forced King Evrest to fake his own death, thrusting Samsyn onto the Arcadian throne. Thank the Creator, the movement was swiftly put down—though not the outside forces suspected of inspiring and funding it. “Are the…Pura…back?” I grimace, loathing even having to utter their name.

  “No,” Vy protests.

  “We don’t know,” Brooke says at the same time.

  “Saynt.” His name shoots off my lips, an arrow off the bow of my fear. He is technically not a soldier yet, but desperate times beget desperate measures. Where is he, even now? It is a new day on the island. Is he getting ready for one of those watches? Surely he is not getting done with one. They would not place him on a dangerous night watch so soon. In so many ways, he is still just a boy…

  “He’s fine, girlfriend.” Brooke’s words are jabbed with conviction, confirming she has checked that veracity herself. “If anything, he’s jonesing for action a little too hard for Samsyn’s liking.” She inhales with meaning. “But I know how the kid feels.”

  Slowly, a smile returns to my lips. I hope she can see the gratitude behind it. I miss my feisty former boss—even her daily grumblings about the grind of being a princess instead of a warrior.

  “Well…keep him in line,” I reply good-naturedly.

  “We both are,” Vy assures. “Just like his big sistah would.”

  “Speaking of keeping males in line…” Brooke exaggerates a brow waggle. “Can we get back to the subject—or should I say the confusing jerk—at hand?”

  “And the fact that the blue gown will drive him more insane than the black?”

  The dress Vy refers to, a sparkly pale blue sheath, is nearly the color of my eyes—not that Cassian will notice my eyes with its plunging neckline. Brooke’s top choice is a flowing black creation with an equally dramatic bodice: newly arrived from Milan, according to the curious little woman who has come every morning with fresh batches of gowns, per Cassian’s directive—or so she tells me. The man himself has not given me more than twenty words since our “discussion” in the study last week, choosing to work late and eat elsewhere—sometimes even just spending the night at the office. I have little hope that this Literacy Ball is going to change anything, but vow to give it a go.

  And yes…perhaps there is a small part of me who wants to really be a princess for a night. Just this once…

  “Show us both the dresses again.” Brooke’s request tugs my mind back to the present—away from its empathy with the sobbing sky outside. Like my spirit, the New York weather has been nonstop on the soggy for days. I welcome the chance to flip the smart pad screen, panning it across the bed. As I do, she emits a low whistle. “Daaammmn, girl. You know I’m not into apology by foof, but that man is trying to tell you something.”

  “Concurred.” I change the screen back, to let them see my little shrug. “He is trying, I think…in his own weird way.”

  Brooke laughs. “What man doesn’t have ‘his own weird way’?”

  “Mine,” Vylet retorts. “What you see is what you get with Alak Navarre, thank the Creator. And for the record, I am keeping the hell out of him, so neither of you get any ideas.”

  I move to the window seat. Gaze over the labyrinth of wet streets below, the streetlights and neon signs blended by the rain into a giant watercolor. I would have much the same view from Turret One, which is one floor directly above—but I have not returned to that space, perhaps in subliminal protest to the continued lockdown of the other tower. As long as it stays shackled, I cannot help but feel a similar weight, invisible but just as formidable, on my spirit.

  “Can you just lend Alak out for a while?” I venture. “How long do you think it would take for him to rub off on Cassian, just a little?”

  Brooke sighs. “I think that lesson has to come from you, girlfriend.”

  Vylet smirks. “Which, coincidentally, might be best with a little…rubbing.”

  Brooke peels off a giggle. I groan. Like old times.

  Perhaps too much.

  I bite my lip. Too late. The backs of my eyes burn. “Creator’s toes,” I whisper. “I miss you both so much.”

  Stunningly, Vy is the first to sober on their end. Even more astonishing, her next words aren’t then just come home. She gives four even better.

  “We are already there.”

  As Brooke nods, her eyes are shiny too. “She’s right, shella-bean. We haven’t gone far…the same way you aren’t ever far from us.”

  Now the rain falls inside too. I grip the smart pad as the flooding love of their friendship hits, a storm my heart has desperately needed. One awful sob overcomes another and another and another. They wait as only best friends can, their silence as perfect as a pair of hugs.

  “I—I d-do not know wh-what—to do.” The confession finally stutters out. “I—I feel so much for him…”

  So much. The new understatement. But I am so afraid of saying more. Saying it will make it real. Too real. And too much…

  “I told you, B,” Vy murmurs after a pause. “Did I not?”

  “Sure did,” Brooke replies.

  “T-told her wh-what?” Despite the stammer, I sound shockingly pragmatic. At least I hope.

  Vylet folds her arms, leans toward her camera, and nods with confidence. “That Cassian Court was going to be the man who changed you.”

  They both smile. I blush furiously. “Wh-when did you tell her that?”

  “From the second he first took your hand, at that reception.”

  Brooke nods. “That is what she said.”

  Vy maintains her close-up angle. Studies me with the intensity only possible in her big movie star eyes. “Mishella—”

  I get in my turn at hoisting a hand. “No. Do not ask it, Vylet Hester.”

  “—are you in love with him?”

  Yes.

  No!

  “I—I do not know.” I let out a new moan, conking my head back against the wall. “By the Creator. I am a mess…”

  “That’s all right.” Brooke’s interjection is as gentle as the rain against the glass. “Who said life is always neat and clean?”

  “She did,” Vy snorts.

  After joining my watery laugh to theirs, I mutter, “Point made…dammit.”

  “Karma is a nasty bitch sometimes.”

  “No,” Brooke interjects. “That little Prim what’s-her-name. She’s the bitch.”

  I shake my head—more violently than I can believe. “It is…bizarre…but I do not believe that. She does have a connection to Cassian—”

  “You mean hooks?” Vy charges.

  “Perhaps even that.” My concession clearly spoils a little of her fun—the woman is always up for a rowdy debate—but I continue, “Though they are not romantic ones.” I shrug, trying to sort through my bafflement. It is no use. “Aggghh. There are simply things I do not know.” Rough breath in. Painful exhale. “Ghosts…he will not reveal.”

  Silence. Contemplative but not uncomfortable. Though they are half a world away, sitting with my thoughts is so much easier with the sis-friend-hood around.

  At last, Brooke penetrates the pause. “Well, I understand ghosts,” she offers quietly. “Samsyn carries a bunch. A real sucky hazard of the job.”

  I meet her gaze, which has turned as somber as the thunderheads outside. “But he tells you about them, right?”

  “Now he does. But we’re married, bean—and had six years of friendship before the rings went on our fingers. Things are very different for us.”

  “Of course.” There is no use disguising my disappointment.

  Brooke’s lips flatten. I know the look but have never dreaded it as much as this moment. Tough love. “Mishella…the plan right now is that you’re there for just six months. So now you have to a
sk yourself—is that a tolerable time to live with the ghosts?” Her shoulders rise then fall. “I can’t answer it for you, and neither can Vy.”

  I swallow deeply. “I just want him to be happy.”

  She sighs softly. “Perhaps that’s your problem, girlfriend.”

  “Huh?”

  “You already make him happy,” she contends. “But maybe…”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe you want something more than just that.”

  “Just that?” I openly glower. What is she talking about? Are there “levels” of happiness I do not know about, like they talk about on the cable service ads on the television? Basic, deluxe, premium?

  “I’m just saying that maybe you crave…more.” Her own face twists, as if a small skirmish is taking place in her head, before a heavy breath rushes out. “A more he’s not capable of feeling, or giving. Not right now.”

  Not to you.

  I let the words—hers and mine—descend into taut silence. That is usually what people do when their heart is scooped out of their chest…yes?

  “Mishella—”

  “Fine.” I abhor the terse snap, but cannot help it from spilling. I cannot bear a moment of her getting apologetic about it—or worse yet, pitying. “I—I understand, all right? And I am fine.”

  “All right, stop.” Vy points a finger at her camera. “Do not punish Brooke for this. She is trying to help you see this clearly.”

  I force my lips into a girl Buddha smile. Do not let the serenity climb anywhere near my eyes. Continue to let them simmer while rejoining, “I see everything just fine, Vylet Hester. Now…I am certain both of you have a busy day ahead. I shall let you get to it.”

  I click my end of the call short without giving them a chance for farewells. It is a childish move—I am taking my sand toys and going home—but I cannot control the reflex any more than the frustration and fury spawning it. Both take over now, annihilating and untamed, then dump out in an unhindered flood. A long, lonely, ugly cry in a room full of silk, satin, and brocade—finery I would trade in a moment for the true fullness of Cassian Court’s heart.