Underworld Queen

by Sharon Hamilton

  And it seemed to Carl that the more they made love, the more he wanted her.

  Am I becoming obsessed, or is this real love?

  Later, as she stirred in her sleep, her back pressed into his chest, he didn’t care any longer. It was wonderful sleeping in the protective nest of her flaming hair and having her warm, smooth, willing skin rub the length of his thighs and pull out of him the best that he could be. Every pore craved her essence.

  She made grilled cheese sandwiches and green salad for a late lunch.

  “Professor, you need your strength.”

  Her half smile, her head cocked at that angle always told him she loved pleasing him.

  “Protein. Maybe oysters?” He chuckled. What would his teacher-friends on the academic committee think if they knew what he had been doing all last night and all morning? Molly’s boss, the head librarian, certainly knew, and so did the Dean.

  She bent over to serve the sandwiches, leaning just a little too much so that the dress shirt she’d borrowed hiked up over her ass, and he was undone with the look of her two perfectly formed cheeks, and the ripe fruit between them.

  I’m going insane with need.

  As if she heard him, she turned and gave him that little smile again. “You should eat first.” The smile left her face as she came up to press into his chest. “Then we talk. Then you can do with me whatever you want, Professor.”

  And of course it was impossible to concentrate on eating the cheese sandwiches or crunching down on the salad. Everything reminded him of what he wanted to do with her. Now that they had been so intimate so many times, his imagination ran wild with new thoughts, mixed with the pleasures they had already shared. He forced the food down.

  She made him a drink, a combination of bottled lime juice and mineral water. At the last minute, she squeezed a sliced blood orange into the mixture. “Come, we need to talk.”

  He started to clean the plates between them, but she would have none of it. She led him to the living room, and they sat together on the couch. She crisscrossed her ankles, raising her knees and faced him, so of course he could see everything in front of him. He was beginning to get hard again.

  “Molly, I have never felt this way. I just can’t get your…your…aura, essence. I don’t know what it is, but I feel it all over.”

  “Is it too much?” Her eyes were serious.

  “As if you could control it!” He smirked, but her eyes didn’t smile. He tilted his head but didn’t ask the question on the tip of his tongue. With furrowed brow, he glanced down, but then he could smell her sex and so he had to inspect her pink petals again. There. Jeez! I’m like a teenager. Better handle yourself correctly, Carl. You’re about to get so carried away you won’t know the difference between reality and fantasy.

  “Carl, now we talk. Tell me what’s going on.” She still wasn’t smiling. But she wasn’t making fun of him either.

  “I have no idea.” He leaned into her and gave her a quick kiss. “And I don’t care.”

  I love the way you distract me. I need to be immersed in your femaleness.

  He was rewarded with a beaming smile that lit up the room, something he could feel emanating from her body without touching her.

  “You need to tell me about the woman. How did she find you?”

  Pulled back to reality, Carl began the strange story. “Well, she called me at my office at the college, said she had a research project she wondered if I’d be interested in tackling. She said she would pay me four thousand dollars to dig up what I could on a particular character. I mean, how could I say no?”

  “Okay.” Molly nodded.

  “We met at the coffee shop last Saturday, just a week ago. She paid me and said she wanted information on this Jonas Starling guy.”

  “How did she find you?”

  “She said someone recommended me. She couldn’t remember the person.”

  “Did she tell you why she wanted the research done?”

  “No. I didn’t ask.” Carl turned his head and gazed out the window at a fast-moving white cloud in an otherwise blue sky. “I don’t know why I didn’t ask. She kind of spooked me a little, probably.”

  Molly gave him an appreciative glance. “I’m sure you have pretty good radar when it comes to character, Carl. I wouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “First of all, young lady, it’s probably just my imagination, which could be damaged. Perhaps my radar is bent due to all the use my antennae,” he pointed to his groin, “is getting.”

  They shared a laugh.

  “Honey, there’s nothing wrong with your antennae,” she whispered.

  Carl saw her half-lidded eyes drawing him in again. Damn! It feels so good to be wanted so much. He had never heard of a man getting so hard so many times in one day. And night. And how well he could function on less than four hours sleep!

  “Is this the part where I get to do anything to you I want?”

  “Almost, but first we have to get the big stuff over with.” Her eyes became serious.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve made a decision about your Glenda. I agree you must help her. Then perhaps she’ll leave you alone and focus on this Starling character.”

  “Molly, it’s ridiculous to think he’s still alive. No offense, but maybe it’s me she wants. She did say so, you know.”

  “Yes, I figured that. But I think she just needs your resources. You should play along if you’re going to get away from her.”

  “You’re not making sense, Molly.” He watched her glance down to her hands folded in her lap. Her knees had spread and her bent right leg extended off the couch so she sat with ankles crisscrossed in front of her. But her delicate pink folds were discretely covered by the tails of his shirt. He was certain some of her juices would remain there.

  If you wear that shirt you won’t get anything done all day.

  Molly smiled. “Carl, this is the big stuff.” She stopped, raised her eyes and took his hands in hers.

  Maybe it was reflex, but the pit in his stomach lurched down through the couch, through the hardwood floor of the cottage and deep into the earth a few hundred feet. His throat was parched, and he felt the pulse at the sides of his neck hammer like a drum. He couldn’t hear anything over the loud thrump-thrump of his beating heart. He inhaled and held his breath.

  “Glenda is a witch, Carl. A powerful black witch.”

  Carl exhaled. Well, maybe that wasn’t so bad. But he knew she wasn’t finished.

  “She’s also very old, possibly as old as Jonas Starling.”

  “You…you think he’s still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s a black witch.”

  “Yes.”

  “And just how do you know all this?” He thought there was a tiny chance she was messing with him again, like she liked to do before sex. He desperately clung to an explanation that was logical, not supernatural, something he would be able to accept.

  Molly smiled, squeezed his fingers and rubbed the backs of his hands with her thumbs, like mothers rub the hands of their children before they go into surgery.

  “Because, my love, I’m a witch as well.”

  Chapter 18

  Audray and Jonas walked in the windy noontime rush impacting Union Square, looking into shop windows. The Tiffany display cases had flawless diamond wedding sets nestled in white satin. Jonas was silent, standing behind her with his hands on her hips, watching her golden hair play with the wind, feeling her scent feeding every pore of his body. He read her thoughts, her excitement. She was imagining a big wedding with lots of flowers.

  She’s imagining a human wedding.

  Jonas searched his memories, and couldn’t think of a single dark angel union in his three hundred years. He’d been to his share of family weddings as a child and human young man. And he’d been forced to attend weddings at court. But Audray wanted to be bound to him forever, in a ceremony he wasn’t sure was possible.

  For the first time since dis
covering his gift of reading her thoughts, he found he no longer wanted to hear them. He was only glad she wasn’t able to read his.

  She turned to face him, her eyebrows raised, her sweet mouth in that moist red smile which always made him lean in to press his lips against hers. He held back this time and heard the question in her thoughts. He would try to answer.

  “My gift to you would not be one of these. I can only give you my heart and a silver band, as was the custom with my people for generations. I’ll not be having you buying a fancy ring yourself and then showing it off as being from me. That I won’t do.”

  He felt her recognition spread, like tumblers in a large bank vault adjusting to unlock. She was scolding herself and her lack of understanding of him and his ways.

  “No matter, Audray. You are young in dark years. I am very old. I’ve had lots of time to think about these things.”

  “But you will marry me, Jonas, won’t you?”

  “Of course, but mostly because I see how happy the thought makes you.” He peeled her away from the window. “But you must let me ask you formally. Even in your time that is usually the way it’s done, right?”

  “Yes, although the lines have been blurred a bit over the years. Women are so much more direct and forceful.”

  “I’d have to agree there.” He chuckled. “But some things stay the same. The woman chooses the man. But the man asks for her to bind herself to him, asks for her hand. Only a man can do that.”

  “I used to lead when I danced ballroom.”

  “I can see how that would happen. And if I were a skinny lad of fifteen, I’d let you do whatever the hell you wanted to do with me too.” He tucked her arm into his chest as they walked down the windy sidewalk. “But we’re talking about eternity, and a life’s decision is a man’s decision and a man’s question.”

  They walked to the next block and crossed the red light with a horde of tourists. He pretended he could get lost in the crowd. He began the discussion he knew it was time to have.

  “I don’t need a ceremony to declare to anyone I would defend your life with my own, that your life is more important than mine.”

  “Because I’m the Director.”

  Jonas stopped them mid stride and placed his hands on either side of her face. She seemed so delicate and small to him now. “Being Director’s got nothing to do with it.” He felt a twinge of anger well up, and it annoyed him.

  “Sorry.”

  “Part of the beauty of finding something you’ve always wanted is that, for us, we can have this for all eternity. But the difficult part is knowing if we were lost to each other, we would spend eternity alone. It is the double-edged sword, is it not?”

  “Yes. But I want to focus on the future.”

  And my past puts that in peril.

  Jonas hailed a cab and took Audray to the pier with the thirty-foot red metal arrow sculpture that pierced the earth. He had always liked this piece of urban art. Before he met Audray, he had thought it symbolized how he would feel if he ever really did fall in love. Staked to the ground with a hard-to-miss enormous red arrow through his heart. And he’d been right. It was exactly the way he felt now.

  They took a seat on a wooden park bench overlooking the bay dusted with whitecaps and white sails of the swarm of boats navigating the waters. He felt her watching him, knowing there was something on his mind. She wasn’t worried, not nearly as worried as she would be after he told her.

  “We sit here like we’re a couple of humans in love. It’s a nice fantasy, and it’s the one thing I cannot give you. Our world as we know it is about to come apart at the seams. I’d like to think we’ll be able to escape the consequences, but I’m too old, and I know too much.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Turns out, I fathered a son. Remember what I told you about the Court? That family has reached out to me from the past to claim what they think is their birthright.” He could tell she was struggling with the idea.

  “Are you already committed, then? Does this mean we can’t get married?”

  He knocked his head back and barked a laugh. Then he grabbed her, squeezing her supple frame, feeling the excitement of her breasts against his chest. He felt her arousal and it made him glad.

  “No. I had a child. That doesn’t mean I have a wife.” He smoothed the hair from her face and gave her a deep penetrating kiss. “You are the only woman I will bed, the only woman I will marry, I swear it.”

  “So then, what is the problem?”

  “They want me to give them a kingdom I didn’t deliver before. I gave them the child, but I didn’t give them the kingdom.”

  “Your son was to be king?”

  “Yes. But the old king died before my son could be declared the legitimate heir.”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  “In a way it is. They asked me to help with the uprising when the country was tossed into turmoil by the death of Charles. I refused. That cost me the lives of my father, my brothers and…and…my betrothed and her family.”

  “You were engaged?”

  “Yes. When they were all killed, I fled to the seas, and became a wanted man. Someone came to me and offered me a life of immortality. I thought becoming a dark angel was payback for the crime I’d committed against my family. And I was a coward. I thought I could disappear.”

  “You didn’t commit a crime. You refused on principle. That’s not criminal.”

  “I caused the death of everyone I held dear. My death was just a little step further, that’s all. I already was dead inside.”

  “So what has this to do with the here and now?”

  “They’ve come back to claim their kingdom. They’ve been looking for me for three hundred years. They want me to give it to them, and they’ve threatened to do you harm if I don’t.”

  “I don’t understand. What kingdom do they want?”

  “They want your job, Audray. They want to control the Underworld.”

  “Then why shouldn’t I let them take it?”

  “Because they’ll never let us go, my love. They’ll use the Underworld to find us no matter where we try to hide. If they found me after three hundred years, they’d find us eventually, and they’ll make me watch while they destroy you.”

  He read that she would willingly give up the Directorship. Though it came out of her love for him, he had to correct her thinking.

  “We’ll only exist as long as you are the powerful Director and can call on allies. If you relinquish that, they’ll use the Underworld as a steppingstone to dominate the entire human world as well. They want it all this time, and they’ll destroy anyone who tries to stop them. This time, there’s nowhere else to hide.”

  Chapter 19

  All afternoon Audray thought they had been watched. She felt it as she and Jonas sat at the pier. She felt it as they toured the Egyptian exhibit at the DeYoung Museum. Jonas had been fascinated with the weapons display, even reading about a primitive mechanism to release multiple spears invented by one of the Pharaohs, a young scientific genius.

  Audray saw a strange man dressed in black reflected off the glass case covering a sarcophagus. When she turned around, he had disappeared. This alerted Jonas.

  “You’ve seen someone.” Jonas’ jaw muscles tensed.

  “Yes, I feel like we’re being followed.”

  “We are. I saw his face.”

  He grabbed her elbow and led her out of the exhibit hall so fast, she almost mistook his swiftness for anger. They hopped into a cab. Jonas gave the Middle Eastern driver instructions down to the Mission district, far away from their hotel and the tourist area. The dark blue cab lurched and sliced through traffic like a chariot.

  When they arrived, Jonas searched the street through the rear view window before he exited the cab and then extricated her. They quickly ran into a narrow red building with blaring mariachi music piped from two huge speakers by the front door. Inside, it was dark and smelled of fried tortillas.

&nbs
p; “Why don’t you let me just disappear, Jonas. I can take you with me. I have that power.”

  “I’m not sure I want them to know that just now.” Jonas pulled her to a corner table, hunkering down next to her, surveying the street through the painted window.

  “Who do you think it is?”

  “Someone from here. Not the Underworld.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked.

  A heavyset teenage girl in a brightly embroidered white smock dress appeared with two waters, interrupting Jonas’ comment.

  “We have especials here.” She handed them a plastic menu covered with smudges, tapping on the handwritten note clipped to the top. “You want something to drink first?”

  Jonas ordered them each a Dos Equis.

  “Honestly, Jonas, don’t you know by now I don’t drink beer?”

  He looked at her and she melted. This man could make her eat or drink anything. Her knees quivered as the spot between her legs swelled. He smiled. She knew he felt it too.

  Jonas leaned into her and after brushing her lips with his he said, “Humor me, just a little, my Queen.”

  It was everything she could do not to jump on him right there in the restaurant in front of their little audience. Delicious thoughts were running through her head. It had only been a few hours since their last encounter. She missed the sex already.

  Every day she got more of a glimpse of the man she thought she knew, and every day she was surprised with some new revelation. Maybe this is what happens when you live over three hundred years. Like he had said, life was complicated.