by Angel Payne
“Oh, no,” I teased. “Not boktards. Not you four.”
He chuckled. “We were a handful. It does not amaze me that Mother chooses the respite of her rooms over tolerating us on a daily basis.”
“Does she still have her own offices elsewhere in the palais, then?”
“Yes.” The gleam in his eyes softened a little. “She is still queen, after all—though she has scaled back on her activities since Father passed. But she sees that we are all grown, happy, and productive.”
I kept up my smile, thought it felt more forced by the minute. “I’m sure she still keeps careful tabs on all of you.”
“So she clearly declared when I went to say goodbye to her this morning.”
Of course. Because that was what most moms did. They worried. Watched. Did the ardent tab-keeping thing.
Not the I’m-going-out-tonight-so-zap-your-dinner-in-the-microwave thing.
“She sounds wonderful,” I said. “Actually, it all sounds wonderful.”
He shrugged. “Well, typical. In many more ways than people imagine. Likely no different than many of the things you enjoyed growing up.”
“Right.”
I desperately hoped his nostalgia muted out my syllable of defeat.
Wasn’t happening.
He raised his head. Cocked a solemn stare.
I may want your body with every cell of mine right now, Your Majesty, but come at me with some sympathetic psychobabble and I’ll turn your balls into man prunes.
“You are an only child, correct?”
The man really did know me. With the respect beneath his tone as my safe zone, I was able to answer. “Yeah. That’s right.”
“And I know you care for your father…”
“And my mom, too.” It was more defensive than I intended, but I didn’t back down. Uneasiness prowled my bloodstream. Evrest’s interest wasn’t malicious but that didn’t help anything. I just didn’t want to do the peace-love-kumbaya on this…not with him.
He’d already seen too much, anyway. Not just the getting naked shit. Too much of the other stuff, in and around that. The wicked brain that had begged him to take me last night in that illicit way. The shadows that might have been filled by Frisbee golf and beach days…
Or maybe the darkness that had turned Mom and Dad away.
Ow. No. Not there. Please.
“Look,” I rushed out, “it’s not that the three of us don’t love each other. We do. They do. My parents—they’re really busy. They had lives before I came along, existences that really fulfilled them. They both put it all on hold for me, for a lot of years, and I’m grateful for that. They put in their time. Now they don’t have to worry anymore. It’s all good. We’re all good.”
“Good?” His eyes narrowed like I’d tried to tell him the ocean was really made of angel tears. “Because they don’t have to ‘put in time’ for you anymore? Because they can pick up their busy, busy lives that you carelessly interrupted by being born?”
“Shit.” I should’ve remembered his uncanny sixth sense—and the bite in the ass that karma owed me for last night’s magic. “I’ve said too much.”
He snorted. “Save the line for someone who will believe it, sevette.”
“Dammit, my life hasn’t sucked, okay? I can take care of myself completely. Some of my friends still don’t know how to do their own laundry! I’ve been very self-sufficient—”
“For too damn long.”
His snarl didn’t come barging in by itself. He slid his hand across the back of the seat, extending fingers to the back of my neck, compelling my gaze toward his. Once he had that lock, I was a prisoner—unwilling this time.
“Stop it.” Seething syllables. “I don’t need this, Evrest. I don’t want this.”
“This…what?” Like he knew the damn answer already. Like he knew me. Like he expected me to cut back this scab that easily for him, reopening all the loneliness and emptiness again. All the messages I’d left on cell phones over the years. All the homework I’d done alone, earning me awards bestowed in ceremonies without a familiar face in the crowd, always second choice to some important seminar, lecture, trip, or training session. All the nights I told myself to do better or perform better next time, finally landing the achievement that would make Mom and Dad sit up and notice. And then they’d finally show up. They’d finally be there.
I was still waiting. In the dark.
But nobody got to know that. Especially not Evrest Cimarron. He could fill my body, grant all my fantasies, and even twist at my heart, but nobody got in to that part of my soul.
“I’m dropping this,” I spat. “Now.”
“Camellia.” He rumbled it so deeply, it was barely a word. “I do not under—”
“Did I say I want your understanding?”
He loosened his hold, letting me yank away. “You had no trouble beseeching it last night.”
“Another time, definitely another place.” I glowered. “And FYI, you’re dancing at the edge of a low blow.” Literally. We’d agreed that everything in the crypt of carnality would stay right where it had to. Underground. Hidden.
His jaw tensed. But shit, was I certain he’d practiced the crap out of that look, gaining maximum mileage from those wet dream lips of his. “Neither of us changed back at ground level, Camellia.”
“Speak for yourself,” I rasped. Because it’s what I’m most afraid of.
“Very well.” His gaze swept over my face, thick with passion…devotion. “I have not changed since I held you last night. I am the same person you trusted in that room. The same man you shared your darkest desires with. The man who held you as you shattered, over and over again, even from the inside out…” He shifted so our knees touched. My breath clutched as he pressed in again, just a little closer. “Camellia, you are always safe with me. No matter what.”
Leaden gulp. “But I can’t be, okay? Don’t you see, Evrest?” He had to see. The facts hung over our heads, unaltered… unchangeable. Before the year was over, he’d be engaged and I’d be halfway across the world. “And even if everything weren’t so complicated, I wouldn’t accept it if your pity came attached.”
“Pity had nothing to do with what I shared with you last night.”
“And last night has nothing to do with this conversation.”
“But you think I pity you now.” His nostrils flared and that tic reappeared, pulsing under his stubble. “And that everything I’m saying is because of it.”
“No.” I jogged my chin higher. “I don’t think it, Evrest. I know it.” Resigned sigh. “It’s stamped all over your face.” I longed to stroke the noble line of his jaw just one more time—and hoped my steady, sad gaze spoke at least that much. “And that’s okay.”
“The fuck it is.”
He ignored my glance through the van, ensuring everyone hadn’t dropped what they were doing the second he’d gone from irked to pissed. We got lucky—but he still ramped the rant. “You are wrong about this. You are wrong about me. Do you dare assume I will be like everyone else? That I would default to the same convenient reaction as everyone else? How dare you, Camellia. I know you better than that. I. Know. You.”
I bared my teeth, silently begging him to calm the hell down. “You have known me for all of five days!”
“Bullshit.” He loomed, just inches away. “You know it. And I sure as fuck know it.”
For a long moment, I couldn’t muster any reaction beyond a tighter glare. Words would come. I’d make them. He wasn’t getting the last word in.
Before I could restart the gears in my brain, the driver stomped on the brakes. The van screeched to a stop, its back end fishtailing.
Harry reacted first. “Holy shit!”
Crowe jumped in next. “What the hell?” He grabbed at Beth’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”
The stench of burned rubber tainted the air as we all gaped at the three boys we’d nearly run over. “Boys” was a loose term. They were adolescents, well on their way to men
’s bodies but not sure what to do with them yet. Two were lanky and tall, the third a little shorter but more filled out through the chest—or so I was able to discern through the full-body wetsuits they wore.
The suits turned out to be convenient, providing ample leverage for the boys to be grabbed by Samsyn and two other men, both in Arcadian military uniforms. The officers dragged the youths to the side of the road as if carrying naughty kittens, dumping them on the retaining wall between the road and the shore, which was mostly drenched beneath a high tide of ferocious waves.
When the boys lifted their heads, Evrest snarled. Arcadian expletives followed. I glanced at him but wished I hadn’t. Anger still hardened his features, but it wasn’t a desperate fury anymore. It was the hard wrath—and deep stress—of a king.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
Before he could answer, Beth spoke up. “Omigod. This is Minos Beach, isn’t it?”
Evrest nodded tightly. I still didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. “What the hell is a Minos Beach?”
“I heard some of the locals talking about it when we were shooting on the beach the other morning,” Beth clarified. “Minos Beach leads to the Minos Cliffs—obviously.”
Easy enough to confirm. Just ahead, dark rock bluffs rose several hundred feet, a sight that stole my breath as much for its dangerous potential as its soaring beauty. Merely thinking of those boys anywhere near those towers turned my gut to cole slaw.
“The cliffs are home to the Cave of the Bull Rocks,” Beth went on.
Crowe and Harry spurted instant chuckles. “Cave of the Bull Rocks?” Harry drawled. “Does it lead to the Tunnel of the Dog Balls?”
“The Grotto of the Walrus Nuts?” Crowe volleyed.
Beth and I traded an eye roll. Before we finished, Evrest continued. “The label is rooted in Greek mythology, from the story of King Minos of Crete. He secured his rule over the island by negotiating a gift from the ocean, from Poseidon himself. Poseidon produced a bull from the waves for Minos, but Minos didn’t honor his agreement to return the bull to Poseidon, keeping the animal for himself.”
“Bet Poseidon unleashed some oceanic kick-ass for that,” Crowe inserted.
“There are lots of stories about how Minos was punished,” Beth stated. “Though most of them involve his poor wife being given a girl boner for the bull for the rest of her days.”
I grimaced. “Gah.” Crowe and Harry had more colorful feedback and weren’t afraid to voice it. When they were done, I asked, “So where do the rocks come in?”
“That’s where Arcadian legend takes over,” Beth replied.
“Ahhh,” Harry jumped in. “Okay, I think I know how this goes.” He nodded at Crowe and even at Evrest, seeking male commiseration. “Minos didn’t like competing with a bull…”
“Who would?” Crowe cracked.
“…so he took the animal here, and hid it in the cliffs…”
“…where the poor beastie finally died,” Beth concluded. “Calcified into the walls of the caverns where it lived.”
I looked toward the road again. “What does that have to do with the fact that Samsyn looks like he wants to scalp those boys?”
Beth held up a finger. “Because the legend doesn’t end there.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Harry drawled.
“The story says that the bull, being a creature originally from the sea, still yearns for his place in Poseidon’s realm. His longing is so intense that when the ocean water covers him, his bones gain a beautiful iridescence. Over the years, it’s become an Arcadian rite of passage for young men to swim to the rocks and wait for the tide to come in. The caves containing the bull bones are located higher up on the cliffs, so that’s the only way to reach them.”
“And once they swim into the caves?” Crowe asked.
“If they make it into the caves?” Evrest snapped. “If the waves do not sweep them off the rocks first, slamming them to the whirlpools beneath the cliffs then tossing them like fruit in a blender? If they do not bleed out from that before drowning?”
“Right.” Harry grimaced on the word, almost splitting it into two syllables. “If all…what he just said…doesn’t happen, then what do they do?”
“The goal is to hack off a piece of the rock and bring it back.” Beth slid a glance at Evrest, clearly wondering if there were more miracles required to survive that part. “When they do, certain stature on the social food chain is ensured.”
Crowe snapped his fingers. “Follow the path to the popularity kwan.”
“Except that the ‘kwan’ is fucking impossible to get.”
Everyone gaped as if Evrest’s mutter had been a full scream. Their reaction didn’t make sense until I realized they’d likely never heard an English profanity out of his mouth. It was too late to feign my own shock—probably a good thing—since the vibe pulsing off of Evrest had gone nuclear with weird. He was really invested in every move made by Samsyn and the officers. He seemed to be waiting on his brother, looking for the moment Samsyn was done tearing into the boys, his tension ratcheting with every moment of the effort.
I wanted to grab him in reassurance but Harry was now engaged fully in the conversation, leaning over to throw his attention on Evrest. By virtue of proximity, that sure as hell meant me, too. “Sounds a lot like you speak from experience, Majesty.”
“Of course I speak from experience,” Evrest retorted. “As the idiot who almost greeted my thirteenth birthday as a corpse because of it.”
“Holy shit,” Crowe uttered.
“Indeed.”
I sank against the cushion as the depth of his admission took hold. It started with an image of what he must’ve been like as an early teen, just as stunning but a lot skinnier—and very eager to prove that the future king of the realm wasn’t going to use the chicken exit for the Bull Rocks challenge.
“Damn.” It tumbled out of me, thick with emotion, but I was safe from Harry’s evil eye—for now. Nobody in the van was unaffected by Evrest’s intensity. “You’re not kidding, are you?” I murmured to the man at my side.
“Not by a word.” Evrest’s huff was labored. “How I wish I was. I was one of the lucky ones. Every year, we lose three or four young men to this stupidity.” He dropped his head onto his steepled fingers as if to pray. “Thank the Creator these three weren’t among them.”
New commotion from outside snapped our heads up. The dark-haired youth directly under Samsyn’s watch had sprung back to his feet and surged forward, chest puffed. He went totally James Dean rebellion at the big man, minus the rebel yell cigarette. Shockingly, Samsyn simply folded his arms, letting the kid spiral into cartwheel arms and yo-mama chin jabs.
Evrest rose, voicing the exact same thought I had. “Is that child fucking crazy?” Then a thought that wasn’t. “He was raised better than this.”
Before I could piece together a question that sounded more like curious stranger and not intrigued lover—ex-lover—he was on his feet and bolting out of the van.
The second Evrest was out of earshot, Harry glanced to all of us again. “Show of hands. Anyone with me on voting this Bull Rocks thing as one of His Majesty’s hot buttons?”
“He almost died out there, Harry.” Beth gave one of her special snorts, wildebeest wrapped with woman. “That has a tendency to become a ‘hot button’.”
I jumped at the chance to back the point up. “You could have been submitting your filming application to King Samsyn of Arcadia instead of Evrest.”
His mocha complexion actually paled by a shade. “Shit.”
“No kidding.” Crowe actually shuddered. It was apparent, even during our short time on the island, where the guys’ opinions fell about the royal family. Jayd was the untouchable jewel. Shiraz, the mystery ninja. Evrest was in the most enviable shoes, getting the king-style perks, living every straight man’s dream with a dozen eager women dogging his every step. But they didn’t entertain any thoughts about Samsyn. Not even on
e. Even that felt too scary.
Which made the next minute a little eerie.
Between the van and the wall, something happened to Evrest. His spine stiffened with rage instead of a protocol. His shoulders expanded, pulling up as he formed tight fists. His pace was no longer a king’s stroll. It was a soldier’s stomp.
By the time he got to Samsyn’s side, they could’ve been taken for twins.
“Holy crap.” Harry mumbled the sentiment on everyone’s behalf as Evrest butted in front of Samsyn, slamming chests with the youth. The boy, startled to see Evrest, relented his guard—long enough for Evrest to dig in a brutal hold, hoisting the guy to his tiptoes. He wasted no time after that, all but ripping the boy a new asshole with rage that was, to be honest, a little scary to watch. I wasn’t the only one to think so. The youth’s face was a rotating mix of reaction. Defiance, then hurt, then terror, before the cycle started again.
Evrest dumped the kid somewhere between fury and fear while pointing back to the wall. As the boy slumped, Evrest huddled with Samsyn, exchanging terse words and tight nods. After a minute of that, he pivoted back toward the van with his solemn soldier’s stomps.
None of us said a word as he climbed in then slammed back into the seat next to me. “I regret the interruption.” He addressed everyone. “I am not normally inclined to interfere with my brother’s procedures—or to lose my composure while doing so. This was an unusual circumstance.”
That was easy enough to interpret. “You know that boy,” I stated. “Don’t you?”
He grunted as if not really wanting to deny it. “His name is Valerian. He is my cousin.”
“Your…” Beth spluttered. “Huh?”
“Rissa’s brother?” I broke in.
He nodded at us both. “My mother is the oldest of five, and her youngest sister married late in life. I was a teenager when Val was born, and he’s been a pain in my backside ever since. If I’d had to watch Samsyn take that boy’s broken body home to my Aunt Neryn…”
