“I should bury her, at least. I owe her that much.”
He waved a negligent hand and a wave crawled up, wrapped around the girl’s corpse like a watery fist, and swept her away. “There. She’s buried. Now, we have things to discuss.”
“Okay.” I throttled down my residual terror and rising annoyance at his callousness. “Let’s start with where you’ve been and what the Queen Bitch was talking about. Were you with her?”
Rogue turned the hand holding my wrist to weave his fingers with mine. “Jealous? Did you miss me?”
“I did not.” Not that I’d admit. “Now answer my question.”
“Which? You asked three questions.”
I stopped myself from growling at him. “What was that ‘tick-tock’ shit? What will she take into her own hands? Give me a straight answer.”
“What will you give me in return?”
That white-cold feeling rose up again, a flash of silver claws raking my heart. The anger welled, cold and precise, a razor edge of rage. For Dragonfly’s wasted life, for Titania’s cruelty, for the fact that I had missed him and that I desperately feared he’d been with Titania, plotting about me, laughing with her about the ignorant human.
Abruptly, Rogue’s head snapped around. He turned in a wary circle, searching for something I couldn’t see. His cautious gaze finally settled on me. Was that a glimmer of fear? Surely not. He feared nothing. Except perhaps the Dog’s power over him. Not that he’d admit it.
“Gwynn.” He held palms out toward me, as if warming them at a flame. “What is that? What are you doing?”
“I—I don’t know.” I shifted, unsteady on the sand. His uncertainty put me off balance. Always he knew more than I did.
“What does it feel like? No games. This is deadly important.” He’d moved into his professorial mode. “Describe it in the best detail you can.”
“It’s white. Kind of a ghost. And chill with it. It has curved claws, very sharp. Feline.” I thought of the things I’d seen in his mind, images I associated with his feral brand of magic. And the Black Dog. “What is it, Rogue? Why are you looking at me like that?”
He dug his hands through his hair, scrubbing over his scalp in thought. In near desperation. Then he threw back his head and laughed at the sky, a bitter sound, throwing his arms out as if daring a bolt from above. Or from Titania. “Of course. How could it have been any other way?”
“What? Tell me.” I fisted a hand in the wet black velvet of his shirt, demanding his attention, which he settled on me with such full intensity I had to steel myself not to flinch. “Is it the Black Dog? What is in me, Rogue? I have to know.”
He laid his hand over mine, soothing, flattening it out to rest on his lean chest. The three-four beat of his heart thumped under my hand. Regret softened the fierce lines of his lips. “It may be best that you don’t know. You cannot stop it.”
“Knowledge is power,” I insisted.
He shook his head, slowly. “Not always, my Gwynn. Sometimes it’s just the wound that never heals, the ongoing torment of knowing there is part of you that defies containment. I did not wish this for you.”
“It’s not the Dog. It’s...something else.”
His fingers stroked my hand. “Yes. Feline, you said. It will find its way out of you and you will come to know it through the way the world reacts to it. It’s stronger than you can ever be.”
“Where did it come from?”
His mouth quirked. “From you, magical Gwynn. All from you. You carried the seeds already. Now they grow, a vine twisting in your soul. She’s still a ghost to you now. She will eventually take flesh from yours.”
I shuddered. I’d seen the Black Dog erupt from Rogue’s body in a fountain of blood, leaving an empty skin behind. He must have suffered it many times. Floundering, I tried to understand how this could be possible. “But I am not immortal as you are. How can I survive such a thing?”
“I doubt you can.” Though his words were blunt, even cruel, his voice, his face held a kind of compassion. His twisted, unfeeling brand of it. “I will help you. But this makes it even more crucial that you be by my side at all times. That you learn what I can teach you. Your very life and sanity may depend on it.”
He poured it on just a titch too thick. Tick-tock. I pulled away again. “This is just another manipulation. You’ll tell me whatever you think will get you your way.”
He raised one silky eyebrow, on the left side, where the twining pattern of black lines, thorns and fangs shifted with the movement. A vine twisting in your soul. The hiss of white claws whispered through me. I touched my face, wet with cold rain. Would I soon bear a similar mark?
“You are not stupid, Gwynn.” Rogue made the observation quietly. “It ill behooves you to play the fool.”
Fear crept through me, ice riming a window with slow curlicues of frost. And I had no one to turn to for comfort. Only the offer of help from the man whose greatest desire was to lock me up so he could exploit me for his nefarious purposes and pleasures—or, it now appeared, for Titania’s.
He stroked my cheek, gaze melting blue now. “Never would I lock you up. I swear that to you. I can taste your fear. Don’t be afraid of me.”
“I won’t ever wear a leash again, Rogue.”
“We all wear leashes—some are just more visible than others.”
I took a deep shuddering breath. “This changes nothing. It’s as if I found out I have cancer or something. I can’t let it stop me from living. And you won’t distract me with this. What does the Queen Bitch want from you and what does it have to do with me? Is she why you want me to have your baby? Tell me the truth.”
He studied me, still stroking my cheek. I took an obscure comfort in it. Sometimes I longed to stop fighting him and just let him take me over. It would be so much easier in so many ways. But then, slavery always was. The Romans defeated the Britons not with warfare, but with steady food and hot baths.
“You fascinate me, Gwynn.” Rogue murmured. “Have I ever told you that? The flow of your thoughts, the quicksilver of your mind, and that crimson passion boiling beneath. Even if I didn’t need you, I would be unable to stay away.”
His lips hovered near mine, wine-dark, so tempting.
“I will make you a deal. No, don’t argue yet. I will visit you daily, for lessons. I’ll teach you what you need to know about Titania. We can work together to track the evolution of your beast. Perhaps I can help you navigate the minefield of it. Working together, Gwynn. Partners. It’s what you said you wanted. It’s a good bargain.”
As he spoke his lips had drifted over my skin, a whisper away from my cheek, my temple, my ear, jaw, throat. Desire shimmered through me.
“Won’t you just tell me the truth?” My voice came out hoarse.
“This is how I can. Trust me on this.”
“It sounds very expensive—what’s the price for such generosity?”
“You know what I want.”
Yes, my firstborn child. Talk about pricey.
His hand slid over my shoulder, down to the small of my back, pressing me to him, his heat and alien heartbeat infusing me. “You can live at the camp, if you insist, but I will visit you at night. I want to share your bed.”
“That’s it?” I tried to focus, searching out the loopholes. “The other rules remain in place? No hanky-panky under the clothes, etcetera.” In one of my rare, proud moments, I’d managed to outwit Rogue. I’d let him think he’d maneuvered me into flirting with him, which meant acting like I was attracted to him—not difficult, unfortunately—and allowing one-handed physical contact over the clothes, to all publicly accessible skin. It strained my willpower, but prevented him from impregnating me. Apparently all of those religious groups who insisted on full-coverage clothing for women were on to something after all.
“That’s it. I won’t take you until you beg me to.”
“That will never happen.”
He smiled. “Never is a very long time, succulent Gwynn. Six ye
ars is much shorter.”
I sighed for the truth of that. “Okay, I agree to the terms as stated.”
“One more thing.”
I braced myself. Here it came now.
“I want a kiss.”
“Now?” The beach remained empty, cleared by Titania’s fearsome presence.
“Now and at least once a day going forward, at the time of my choosing. Though you may always freely offer more.”
“What’s my incentive? We already have a deal.”
“I have not put my agreement to it. I want this perk.”
“What kind of a kiss? How long?” I knew better than to leave this to chance. He’d kissed me twice before, both passionate, long and completely devastating kisses. I would not be getting away with chaste pecks.
His eyes glittered. “Will you set parameters even on a kiss?”
“Absolutely. As you said, I’m not stupid.”
“How do you propose to quantify it?”
“It’s your kiss—give me some options.”
“Our kiss,” he qualified.
I squinted to keep from rolling my eyes. He hated when I did that, said it wasn’t flirtatious, which I suppose was valid. “We will set a time limit.”
He considered. “I will say when the time is up.”
“Oh no, no, no.” I poked him in the chest, but he only held me tighter to him. “I’ll make a sand timer—” I barely caught myself in time to avoid saying hourglass, “—and we’ll use that. Same length of kissing every time. Lips to lips, only.”
His mouth quirked at that, making me relieved I’d caught that particular loophole. “I want my first kiss now.”
“We don’t have the timer yet.”
“So make it.” He let me go. “I will want to approve the length of time. I need to assess your level anyway, if I’m to teach you.”
Making this thing was a small effort, but my faults include pride. I wanted Rogue to be, if not impressed, at least satisfied.
I created a perfectly clear image in my head of what I wanted, along with the most precise sense of five minutes I could produce. One minute would be better, but I doubted Rogue would go for it. I held out my hand, palm up, and wished the timer into being.
It appeared on my hand, looking suspiciously close to my grandmother’s egg timer, with its cheerfully yellow plastic end caps. I would have modified them into a less-tacky natural wood, but I didn’t want to give Rogue the impression that it hadn’t turned out exactly how I wanted it to.
He took it from me, turned it so the sands slid the other direction, and nodded. “Agreed.”
Showing off, he withdrew his long-fingered hand and left the glass hanging midair, the bottom full, the top empty, waiting to be overturned.
“My lady.” He took my hand and laid it over his heart again, drawing me close. Thunder rumbled with the surf, the sound of drumbeats running through it, darkly musical, and the rain poured over us.
I trembled with anticipation, not wanting to contemplate whether I’d allowed him to maneuver me into this deal because I wanted to taste him, needed his lips on mine.
“Our kiss.” The glass tumbled over and he leaned in.
I expected the wolf, the demanding, ravishing kiss, maximizing his time with the most he could take. Instead his mouth brushed mine, a slow seeking, tenderly exploring, urging me to open. A flower blooming in the warm sun, I unfurled, the desire he fulminated in me pouring forth. He kissed me like he loved me, a nourishing caress that stretched into infinity, drowning me in warm pleasure.
I was in seriously deep shit now.
Chapter Three
In Which I Sign Up for Courses at the Local Community College
In Faerie, life is not precious until evaluated and priced according to the going market.
Usually this evaluation is not under the control of the person whose life it is.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Rules of Bargaining”
The last grains of sand slipped through the glass with a soft sigh. No—I couldn’t possibly hear that over the rain and the drumming of the surf. That was me. Rogue still held my hand in his, looking into my eyes.
“Come away with me, Gwynn. Let me show you what we could have.”
I wanted to say yes. Heavens help me, I did. This was why he wanted the kissing. Erotic teasing I could withstand—more or less—but these drugging kisses went straight to my foolish heart. Which clearly needed armoring. Teflon might work.
“Nice try, but no.” The words came out with a satisfying edge. I stepped back and wiped the rain off my face, twisting my hopelessly tangled hair back behind my neck. “You can teach me what I need to know here, while I keep doing my job.”
“You are an exceedingly stubborn woman.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re just now figuring that out.”
Rogue snapped the timer out of the air and pocketed it somewhere inside his cloak. He hid his irritation well, but I could scent it on the air, a tinge of impatience. Point for me. Good to know I got under his skin too.
A subtle movement and I glimpsed the ever-patient Larch making his way around from the point, leading my horse, Felicity. I had no idea how such a stolid fellow managed to move so gracefully. Brownie magic, no doubt.
“Well.” I felt awkward. End of date, no more kissing allowed. Did we shake hands?
“Until tonight, lovely Gwynn.” Rogue bent over my hand and brushed it with an air kiss. With a wink, he disappeared.
“Poof,” I muttered to myself, suppressing my smile out of principle, then turned to make the short walk to Larch and Felicity.
Immediately upon returning to my tent on the fae side of General Falcon’s sprawling war camp, I wished the brass tub in the corner full of hot water at my favorite temperature—if only all magic was so simple—and immersed myself, dunking my head, too, and savoring the burn. What I really missed at times were hot showers, just standing there and letting the water pound the headache out of your skull. I should try to make one.
But this was good. The hot water felt like heaven, warming my chilled extremities. My myriad scratches stung, especially over my scraped chest and my shoulder where the Dog had latched on. Bruised and battered, but nothing time wouldn’t heal. As I soaked, I mulled over what had happened. What did we learn today, kids?
Starling came in and handed me a glass of wine without asking. She had managed to find a white that I liked and kept it in supply for me. One of her many thoughtful ways of making my life easier. I couldn’t decide if the half-fae, half-human young woman was my friend, maid or babysitter. She and I had been through a rough spot recently. The whole being-looked-after-by-servants thing didn’t always sit all that well with me. Particularly when it leaned toward feeling chaperoned.
But that was water under the bridge. For better or worse, I’d gotten myself bonded or something to Rogue, and there would be no more sneaking off and dallying with handsome human officers again.
Besides, it was really nice to have someone hand you a glass of wine after a hard day at work. And flirting.
She scooped my now-ragged dress off the floor and held it up, scowling at it. “What in the name of Titania happened to you?”
“Her,” I replied in a sour tone, “among other things. But most of that damage came from being dropped in the ocean by a dragon. The rocks around here are sharp.”
If I’d expected horrified sympathy, I was out of luck.
“I heard Lord Rogue rescued you from the sea monsters.” Her caramel-brown eyes were wide and soft with romance. “I knew he’d come back for you. Does this mean we’re moving to his castle now?”
Starling’s fixation on my supposed happily-ever-after romance with Rogue had to come to an end. Clearly I needed her as my friend, if I was going to find my way through this tangle with Rogue and Titania. I set down my glass and grabbed the little vial of scented shampoo.
Starling moved to help me.
“No—stay there. I can soap myself. Pour yourself some wine.
There are things I need to tell you.” Closing my eyes against the suds, I lathered my scalp and thought about how to explain this to her. “I know you have ideas about me and Lord Rogue. Mostly things other people have told you. I don’t know if you precisely understand the nature of the bargain between us.” I squinched open an eye to see her interested look.
“Nobody really explains anything to me, you know?”
I sighed in agreement and dunked back to rinse. “I do know.”
“So, here’s the deal.” I got out and dried off with one of the rosemary-scented towels Starling left stacked on a little table next to the tub. “It’s a long story, but in essence, I owe Rogue a life debt.”
“Ooh,” Starling breathed.
“Exactly. When I first got here, I was badly hurt. Rogue saved my life and claimed my firstborn child in return. And, through a complicated trade involving Puck that I don’t quite understand, Falcon ended up paying for my healing. So I owe him seven years of war service for that. Six and a half-ish now.”
Starling nodded as if this was perfectly normal. Their version of medical and life insurance.
“Upshot is, after I perform my war service for Falcon, I’m to report for impregnation by Rogue. After which, I guess he gets the baby and I don’t know what happens then.”
“I guess I knew some of that.”
I dried myself off and shrugged into a nightgown and then a red velvety robe with a high collar and full sleeves. “So, as much as staying here sucks, it’s all that’s keeping Rogue from starting the clock early. That, and a certain set of rules that keeps him from seducing me early.” I plopped down on the pillows next to her and they lit up in rainbow colors at the impact. I smacked the one under my elbow into a softer glow. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
A line formed in her smooth forehead. “Yes. But...”
“But what?”
“Why would that be so terrible? Don’t you want a baby? Isn’t Lord Rogue your one true love, destined to be yours until the end of time?”
Rogue’s Possession Page 3
