by V M Black
He escorted me across the room to where my friends were and lifted my hand from his arm, bowing over it before stepping away. “Ladies,” he said to all three of us.
But his eyes glittered only for me.
Marie and Paquita stood close together at one end of the buffet, and it was only when Dorian left that I registered the three shorter figures around them. Children, I realized with a small shock. Marie’s little girl was obvious, but I could only tell which boy was Hattie’s by the redness of his eyes and the way his gaze kept straying over to the caskets while the slightly younger girl held his hand and patted it reassuringly.
“I’m so glad you came, Cora,” Paquita said. “I knew you wouldn’t miss it. You might not have known Hattie as long as we have, but she always made an impression.”
“She did, didn’t she?” I said a little weakly, not sure what I should or shouldn’t be saying in front of the boy.
“Elise, Paul, Renato, allow me to introduce you to Miss Shaw,” Paquita said.
“Good to meet you,” I said to each of the solemn children. They each offered a hand in turn, smiling with preternatural poise over mine and murmuring echoes of my greeting. That settled, the little girl reached for Paul’s hand again.
“You are going to be Paul’s friend, aren’t you?” she asked. “That’s what Mama said this was for. Friends. Allies. And allies help one another when we need it, like Paul does.”
“I suppose we are,” I said carefully.
That seemed to satisfy her, because she looked away, back over to where the caskets sat with the priest now praying over them both.
“There are a lot of kids here,” I said, looking around the room and noting them for the first time. Not as many as there were agnates, of course, but there was one for most of the cognates in attendance.
Marie nodded, and Paquita said, “There are not very often funerals like this one for them to attend, no? This is something for them to remember. It’s important for them to understand that we really can die.”
I nodded, not quite following the logic but willing to go along.
“Why don’t the three of you go to the kitchen now?” Marie asked the children quietly. “I’m sure the cook can find you some treats.”
“I want to go to my room,” Paul said.
Marie bit her lip for a second before she nodded. “Of course you may. Just remember that all your toys and clothes and games are at my house now, yes?”
He nodded, looking solemn, and darted off.
She sighed. “Children are so peculiar in their grief. Some days, Paul cries at almost anything or bursts into a rage. Others, he seems like any normal, healthy boy, and others still, well, he doesn’t seem to feel anything at all.”
“I don’t think that’s peculiar,” I said, a trifle defensively. When my grandmother had died, I hadn’t felt all that different. “Anyway, I thought that Jean was in debt up to his neck. This place looks pretty palatial for that.”
Paquita laughed gaily. “Oh, Cora, you don’t truly believe he bought it, do you? They paid their enthralled staff out of Hattie’s salary from Gramercy labs—and for their groceries and her clothes, too. But as the condo, the furniture, the art, and Jean’s wardrobe, those he...asked for.”
“But they were Adelphoi,” I protested.
“They were,” she agreed. “That is why he took only what he felt he needed.” She put a delicate stress on the word. “And they treated their staff well.”
“Hmm,” I said. “I’d hate to see what he would have taken otherwise.”
She shook her head. “Different agnates hold different beliefs, even among the Adelphoi. Some see Jean’s techniques as cheating.”
“Dorian?” I asked reflexively.
“Ay, Dorian is a positive monk compared to most agnates of any political flavor,” she said. “But then again, he’s so rich that he can buy anything he needs, no? Dorian is most certainly the one who plays money as a game. And he plays to win.”
“In everything,” I agreed, looking at him.
“Indeed,” she said without a trace of levity. “In absolutely everything.”
“When did you get back from...wherever Raymond took you?” I asked.
“Early Monday,” Paquita said readily. “In plenty of time for the council and Dorian’s strike.”
“His strike?” I repeated, my heart tripping over a beat at the word.
Paquita gave me a curious look. “His strike. At the Kyrioi. Five of them were killed, and The Plant was burned to the ground. Or hasn’t he told you?”
“He left out many details,” I managed even as the blood rushing in my ears threatened to drown out both my voice and hers.
“But he was wounded,” she said even as Marie tried, not very subtly, to hush her. “He and Clarissa and Tiberius. Tiberius, he got the brunt of it, but even Dorian—why, it was, as you say, touch and go there for a while.”
Touch and go.... A shudder ran through me at the memory of my agony the night before. I couldn’t even imagine what the full force of it must have been like, if I had experienced only the echoes. My eyes sought out Dorian in the crowd, and as if he sensed my scrutiny, he met my gaze with his own.
He must have read on my face what Paquita had just told me because he frowned deeply before breaking eye contact and throwing back the drink in his hand.
“He hadn’t mentioned,” I managed. He hadn’t told me anything at all.
“I’m sure that Raymond was just making the story dramatic for your benefit, Paquita,” Marie said in her soft little voice. “We all know how much you love a rousing tale.”
It was her attempt at smoothing over the situation. But that was impossible. Dorian had almost died. I’d felt it in my bones as I’d bent over the toilet in my bathroom, heaving my guts out again and again.
Had Dorian stationed a phalanx of guards outside my dorm room, to break the bond if word came through of his death before I could do anything desperate? I remembered the two outside my door that morning, and I knew that he had. That night, when I’d felt the most alone, I hadn’t been alone at all.
The bastard. The beast. I hated him then with all the force of my love because of what he’d nearly risked, what he’d nearly lost. What I had nearly lost, which was too precious to ever be replaced.
What right did he have to risk himself like that when I loved him more than the world? What right did he have to hold my beating heart over a fire? Whatever cause he had, I could understand that it was more important that I was, but my heart would not accept that it was more important than him.
I managed to swallow down those enraged, irrational thoughts, but even once my reason had reasserted itself, my anger remained. He’d thought so little of me that he hadn’t even told me what he’d intended—hell, he still hadn’t told me a full day later.
He’d never said goodbye. He’d told me he’d see me on Friday when he knew that he might die. And he’d said nothing about it. Not even a word.
While I was stewing in my thought, another cognate had come up to us, Oleg, whose cognate Svetlana was deep in discussion in another corner of the room. He’d begun a conversation with Paquita, swapping stories of Jean—which mostly had to do with either drinking or gambling—and Hattie.
But I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to get Dorian alone. I had no clear idea of what I’d do if I did, but thoughts of murder weren’t too far from my mind.
Dorian broke away from the conversation he was in, and I excused myself from the other cognates and crossed to intercept him before he could engage anyone else. He saw me coming and paused, his eyes wary.
Aware of how well those around us could hear what I had to say, I murmured, “Have you finished paying your respects?” But I let my eyes carry a much greater message.
He handed his cocktail off to the nearest server. “I believe we’ve been here long enough,” he agreed. “We’ll go to the cemetery chapel for the funeral and burial tomorrow, of course.”
“Of course,” I ag
reed, crossing calmly with him to the coat stand beside the elevator, where a footman that I recognized from Dorian’s Georgetown house helped us to our coats and my purse.
Dorian hit the down button, and the doors opened to reveal an empty cabin. I stepped inside, turned to face the living room, and waited for the doors to shut.
They did, and as the elevator slid into motion, I turned calmly toward Dorian and slugged him in the jaw with all my strength.
Chapter Seven
Or at least I tried to hit him, because his hand came out lightning fast and wrapped around my fist. He caught my other wrist before I could strike him with my purse, and the clutch fell to the ground between us.
“How dare you!” I cried, yanking futilely against his grasp. “How dare you take off without even telling me what you were doing or where you were going and nearly get yourself killed!”
Dorian switched both my wrists into the grip of one of his hands, then reached past me as I kicked at his legs to pull the emergency stop on the elevator. The elevator jolted into stillness with a brief, loud buzz.
“Enough,” he said, and the word roiled with contained power.
But he kept his promise and didn’t use his power to force me, and so its effect boiled off in my white-hot fury. I kept fighting, yanking against his hold, calling him every vile name I could think of until my throat hurt. My high-heeled toes crunched against his hard shin, and I yelped at the shock of pain.
Dorian shifted his grip then, and suddenly I was spun away from him and pushed up against the smooth wall of the elevator. My head was forced to the side, the cold metal panel biting into my cheek, and I tried to kick backwards, but Dorian twisted my arm until I had to rise up on my toes to keep the angle from sending jabs of pain into my shoulder.
“Enough,” he repeated.
But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough after what he’d done. I still cursed him, and I cried as I did, all the pent-up emotions from the two days of pain and fear spilling over at once. Eventually, I ran out of breath, and I sobbed through my raw throat against the wall of the elevator.
The pressure on my arm eased, and the confusing messages of pain—because pain with Dorian was never simply pain—abated. He kept a firm hold on my wrist as he stepped up close behind me, leaning so near that I could feel his breath against the back of my neck even though I couldn’t see him.
He kissed me then, tracing the line of my spine from the base of my skull down to where it disappeared under the back of my dress. And I cried harder at what I’d so nearly lost—what he’d almost taken away.
“You’re right,” he said softly then. “I didn’t tell you.”
“How long did you know what you were going to do before you did it, Dorian?” I demanded. “When did you know there was going to be a fight and that you might die?”
His hands slid around my body as he released my wrist, but his weight still kept me immobile against the elevator wall. “When I knew how Jean and Hattie had died.”
That tore another sob from my throat, but this time, I fought against it, swallowing it down. “You should have at least told me.”
“And what would you have done then? Begged me not to?”
That was exactly what I would have done, so I said nothing.
He kissed my cheek softly. “I was too afraid that I couldn’t have denied you, and I wouldn’t have done what needed to be done.”
“But why you? Why did you have to do it?”
“Should I ask others to fight and perhaps die in my place?” he asked. “If I hadn’t done this—declared a blood feud based on jus ad bellum—it would have only gotten worse. For me, for you, for all of us. No Adelphoi would be safe if we didn’t respond to this with swiftness and savagery once we established a casus belli.”
I squirmed against him, and he moved away just far enough that I could turn to face him, my tailbone up against the handrail. I scrubbed my face free of my tears, still angry, still not ready to forgive.
“And I did tell you,” he added. “Yesterday afternoon.”
“With words that you chose so I wouldn’t understand,” I protested. “And Clarissa—she knew more, too, didn’t she?”
“She knew about the assassinations on Wednesday night, and she participated in Thursday’s raid.”
“That’s what happened to her hair,” I said. “And what happened to you? My God, Dorian. I thought you were dying. I would have thought that I was dying, if I could have thought clearly at all.”
Wordlessly, Dorian stepped back and shed his coat and tuxedo jacket in a single motion. He dropped them to the floor next to him and jerked his black bowtie loose before working down the studs of the shirt, his gaze never wavering from my face.
He said, “The night began as a raid on The Plant, to show the Kyrioi that not even Mortensen’s stronghold was safe from us. In the confusion, someone began a blaze—their side, our side, I don’t know. Many were killed. Few agnates, of course, and none of ours, and not the djinn who are impervious to fire. But some of the elves, the other fae. The shifters.”
I gasped as his shirt began to gape, revealing a pattern of faint, silvery marks, like those that he left on me when he drank from me. Except that I’d never seen as much as a line on his skin before, and the silver marks on him weren’t merely lines but formed thick bands that waved across the flesh of his torso.
“Clarissa, Tiberius, and I were farthest from the exits when the blaze began,” Dorian said. “Clarissa believes that one of Mortensen’s own men torched the place in hopes of killing me. My death would be worth the cost of finding a place for a new aether club to him. We almost didn’t get out.”
I reached out, tugging his cummerbund around so that I could unhook it and jerk his shirt open all the way to reveal the full pattern.
“Oh, Dorian,” I said, blinking away the tears again.
The scars began at his right shoulder, wrapping down across his torso, marring the perfection of his rippled abs. I pushed his shirt down his arms and off, and the wavy scarring continued down his right arm almost to his wrist.
I put the flats of my hands over those marks, sliding across the contours of his muscles as if my touch could heal them. When I reached his planes of his flat belly, he put his hands on top of my own, stilling them.
He said, “We escaped, Cora. We lived. Let’s focus on actuality rather than what might have been. It doesn’t even hurt anymore. Even the marks will be gone in a few more days.”
I looked up at him. “But it did hurt. It started only an hour after sundown yesterday, and it continued all through the night, hour after hour.”
That was why he looked so drawn. Even for an agnate, healing from so much damage must have come at a terrible cost. No human body could have survived. The merest echoes of his agony had almost been too much for me to bear, and I wasn’t even human anymore. Not really.
I pulled my hands out from under his and unbuttoned my coat, then tossed it on the floor next to his.
“What are you doing, Cora?”
I held out my wrist. “The marks will be gone faster if you drink.”
He looked at me, and I could tell in his gaze that he understood everything that I was offering—healing, if not forgiveness; love, if not absolution.
He took my wrist in both his hands, but instead of raising it to his lips, he stepped up against me and pinned it to the wall above my head, then caught the other and held it against the first. The motion hiked the skirt of my cocktail dress up from its knee-grazing length, and I was hypersensitive to the inch of freshly exposed skin on my thighs.
I looked up at him, and the naked need on his hollowed face made it suddenly hard to breathe. He wanted to have me—and to hurt me. To be healed by me. And I wanted him to do all those things.
With the back of my head pressed against the wall of the elevator, I couldn’t even tip my neck back to meet his mouth as his lips descended to mine. Instead, he had to lower his head all the way, and there was something abo
ut that strong neck, proud bowing that almost undid me right then.
His lips touched mine in the barest of grazing caresses, sending a shock through me as strong as when he’d touched me the first time—and even after all these weeks, hardly less confusing. I knew now what he could do to me, call from me, and it made the twist of need itself almost like pain.
I gasped slightly as he pulled back, but then he was back with another feather-light kiss, then another, scarcely deeper.
Soon, I lost count, and my head swirled with the headiness of his kisses, desperate for more than these teasing touches that gave no satisfaction. Desperate for everything.
For what I could never have, nor ever give, or else end us both.
My mouth begged for his, and he deepened his kisses systematically, as if he were calculating precisely how to make my body stretch thin with need before he’d done more than press his lips to mine.
Finally, when I was almost past the point of bearing, he pushed past my lips and teeth into my mouth with his tongue, my body melding instantly to the rhythm of his strokes, everything surging to a beat that he controlled as surely as if he had strings on my soul.
When he pulled back, I moaned, half out of my mind with all the messages that my body was sending me. My clit ached so hard that it sent waves up into my belly, suffused with need for him even as the emptiness throbbed deep inside me. I wanted him there—no, I wanted to lose myself in him, to let go and never come back.
He held both my wrists in one of his hands now, and with the other, he grasped the fabric at the neckline of my dress, meeting my gaze squarely.
Lost in those endless blue eyes, I couldn’t tell him no. So I merely swallowed, and he pulled down until the thin straps gave and the tube of a dress slithered down my body to puddle at my feet.
“You should be afraid,” he breathed as he moved in to nuzzle my neck, his free hand skimming up the curve of my waist to cup my breast through the slate-blue lace. My skin itched and burned at its chafing touch, the bra that was almost unbearable over the skin of my breasts and my nipples, the panties that felt suddenly like sandpaper to my swollen flesh below.
