by Sunny
We would be there in twenty-five minutes, they had said, and were accurate almost down to the minute. The little hand of the clock had just ticked up to eight when we turned into the driveway of a neat little home just off of County Road 257, fifteen minutes past the WELCOME TO TEXAS sign. It was a rural setting, looking totally normal and feeling that way, too, if you were just a human, which I was not.
A wave of power, of need, coming from the house punched me like a blow to the stomach, so strong and fierce it was. I gasped, sitting there in the car, more than a little shaken. “Christ, what the hell is that?”
Quentin, the boy, turned around in his seat, said with sorrow in his eyes, “That’s Dante, my brother.”
Holy crap. “How old is your brother, exactly?”
“We’re twins. He’s twenty, same as me.”
“Twins, huh?” And a whole year younger than me. How thrilling.
“We’re not identical.”
“No kidding,” I said. “You feel nothing alike.”
“No, we don’t,” Quentin said sadly. “He’s older than me by six minutes, which is why I was spared his fate.”
Lunara asseros, Nolan, the father, had called it, or lunar craving. Also known as Moon Madness, so named because those who had it were often driven mad by their unfulfilled need for lunar light. It was why I was here, and what I was supposed to cure, a rare affliction that could strike down a warrior. Not all. Usually just the strongest or the first born. Rare because it occurred only if a Monère warrior never Basked, never was exposed to the moon’s essential light pouring into them. Rare because almost every Monère Basked at least once in their lifetime. Unless you were born rogues, as these two boys had been, and had never known a Queen’s light.
What happens to those afflicted? I had asked.
If they do not receive the light that their Monère body craves in time…that their thinking mind needs to survive…then they burn out, go mad. Become nothing more than a ravening beast that must be put down and destroyed or he will go on to kill others.
I’d asked how long Dante had been ill.
Thirty-six hours now, had been the answer. That was a long time.
A brown-haired woman with warm brown eyes, standing half a head shorter than I, rushed out of the back door and hurried to the car. Her hair was coiled in a simple bun, and a gold ring adorned her left hand.
“Thank the Goddess,” she said fervently. “You brought a Queen.”
“My mother, Hannah Morell,” Quentin said, introducing us. “Mother, this is Mona Lisa. She’s come to help Dante.”
I didn’t quibble over his choice of words. Didn’t say that they’d kidnapped me. I stepped out of the car and I saw the surprise register in Hannah’s eyes when she saw that I was not restrained.
“And you’ve come of your own volition.” She sank down to her knees, tears in her eyes. “Thank you, gracious lady, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Please, get up.” I gestured awkwardly for her to rise, flustered at having her kneeling like that. “And I only promised to take a look at him,” I clarified.
“Quentin is hurt, Mother. A sword ran him through,” Nolan said as he opened the passenger door and gently lifted Quentin into his arms. “He needs your healing touch.”
I glanced back at the small woman rising to her feet. “You’re a healer?”
“Yes, milady.”
I turned with exasperation to father and son. “If you dunderheads had told me that in the first place instead of knocking me out, I’d have come with you voluntarily. God, I’d do just about anything to get a healer for my people.”
“Save my son,” Hannah said passionately, “and I will serve you.”
“You will be our healer?”
“Yes. My word, by the holy Goddess of Light.”
“Okay, good, good,” I said, immensely cheered and vastly more motivated now…until another powerful wave of that vibrant want, that stunning need, hit me, stealing my breath away. I swayed for a moment, then caught my breath and balance and followed Nolan and Quentin into the house.
It felt odd entering their home. Odd because the real reason I was being brought here was to have sex with their son. That’s right, sex. Not Basking, because we drew down the moon’s rays only during a full moon—that was several weeks away, and from what I’d felt, I didn’t think the boy could wait that long. But Basking wasn’t the only way Queens gave off light. Sex—pleasure—also made us glow.
Nolan laid Quentin down on a sofa in the family room next to the kitchen. Leaving him in Hannah’s care, he led me down the hall to his other son. “He’s in the study,” he told me.
I followed him, trepidation fluttering inside me like wild butterflies. I don’t know what I expected to see when he opened the door and cautiously entered. Maybe someone looking like Quentin, only more drawn and haggard, sitting in a chair, shaking with need. I should have known better. I should have known from the feel of his power that he would be nothing like what I expected. That he would be nothing at all like his brother.
My first thought was that this was not a boy. I would have called him a man, like I was a woman and not a girl despite my years, had he been a rational being. But he was not. There was nothing rational in those eyes. And what odd eyes he had, a blue so pale they were almost translucent. They were eyes that I had never seen before, but felt somehow as if I had. Those eyes sent a chill racing through me, as if a ghost had just tripped and fallen on my grave.
He was shackled at both wrists by a three-foot length of silver chain attached to the wall, allowing him to stand and move about. And he was doing that, straining against the taut length when I stepped in, his body quivering, his pale eyes fixed upon me with unthinking hunger. Making me thankful for the chains that restrained him, otherwise he would have been on me like a famished beast.
He had his mother’s brown hair, but lighter in color, honey brown. That was the only soft thing about him. His hair was an even longer length than his brother’s, pulled back in a ponytail that may have once been neat, but was far from that now. Hanks of hair, freed from the hair tie, hung about his face. Unkempt stubble shadowed his chin, and an earring, if you could call it that, punctured—not pierced, but punctured—his left ear. I’d never seen a Monère with an earring before. Probably because our bodies healed so quickly. But this man-boy creature had one. Not the neat, needle-thin hole you normally saw, but a much bigger one. A crude, hand-hammered gold bar almost pencil thick was punched through the earlobe. Much more primitive, like what you’d see among native tribes in Africa maybe. And that was pretty much a good word to describe him—primitive. Primal. Dangerous.
Whereas his brother was model pretty, Dante was like his famous namesake, invoking images of Hell. Cruelty and harshness marked his face, and all he wore were dirty, torn pants. His chest and feet were bare, showing his starved leanness. It was as if every ounce of fat had been consumed from his body, honing him down to nothing but hard striations of bunched muscles. He was like a cutting blade of power, hard and austere. I could literally count his ribs, see the hard muscles fanning over them. His chest was soaked with sweat, and the smell of it was sickly, not a healthy scent. Just as the look in his eyes was not a healthy hunger, but an unthinking, overpowering one—like that of a rabid dog foaming with madness and the need to tear out your throat.
The sorrow that had been in Quentin’s voice was heard in his father’s now. “Dante. Son,” he said softly, trying to bring Dante back to himself. “I’ve brought a Queen to help you. Mona Lisa. She’ll give you the light you need from her, if you let her.”
A rumbling growl started deep in Dante’s chest and rose up into his throat. With no warning he lunged at his father. The chains jerked him to a halt, snapping him abruptly back. He prowled back and forth restlessly against the restraining length like the wild creature he had become.
The sadness I’d first heard in his brother, then in his father, was a pervasive thing. It seeped into me. Sadness at the
waste, at the loss. Sadness because I thought it was too late to save him. But still I had to try. Taking a deep breath, I stepped forward until I stood only two arms’ lengths away from him.
“Dante,” I said softy, and knew somehow that he was as intensely aware of my presence as I was of his, even though his gaze was locked with his father’s, a steady growl rumbling from his throat. I called his name again but his attention did not waver from the other man.
“Nolan, back up to the door. Don’t leave, but give us some room.”
Nolan did as I asked, moving back until I could no longer see him, and his presence no longer pressed so strongly upon us—until all I could see was just the tortured, wild creature that was his son. The growling stopped and those odd blue eyes suddenly turned and met mine. The impact reverberated through my entire body. Such fierceness, such intensity. There was something very frightening about those eyes. Was there anything still rational left in there?
“Dante.” Though my heart beat rapidly, my voice was as calm and gentle as the freshly fallen night. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Can you speak?”
He stood still but not at ease. Every muscle in his body was tense, quiveringly taut. I took one step closer to him, and slowly lifted my hand out, a hand that shook slightly.
“Dante.” His name fell from my lips like a soft melody as I touched him. As I laid my hand lightly on his chest.
He groaned, a harsh, guttural sound like an animal in great pain. The sound startled me, and I jerked my hand back. He went wild at the loss, snarling and lunging powerfully forward, jerked to a rattling halt by the chains. Only the fleece lining beneath the shackles kept his skin from tearing.
I fell back a step, I couldn’t help it. Even knowing that the silver chains rendered him only human strong, there was such anger to him, such menace, I could not help but be frightened. My heart pounded and the trembling of my hand spread to my entire body.
“I’m sorry,” I said, turning so I could see Nolan from the corner of my eyes. “I…can’t. Not with him like this. Even if I were crazy enough to try it…” And I would have tried it, had Dante shown even a modicum of reasoning, of understanding—making me wonder who the crazy one among us really was. “It would not do any good. We shine only in pleasure.” And I doubted I’d be able to feel that with Dante, as wild and violent and dangerous as he was.
The big man didn’t say anything, and his silence and sorrow weighed down upon me like a heavy stone. And why should it not? I had just essentially passed a death sentence on his son. One that he would have to carry out. But the tall, formidable warrior didn’t protest, didn’t try to insist, holding to his word…that the choice would be mine.
Because he did, I swallowed and voiced the other option I had considered. “If your other son, Quentin…if I glowed with him here in this room, would it help? Could Dante absorb my light if we were close to him but not touching?”
Hope flared in the big man’s eyes. “Yes, it should. Proximity is all that is needed in Basking. It should be the same with this, too.” This being sex.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s give it a try.”
We didn’t have to call him. Every word we said was clearly heard by everyone in the household—one of the downfalls of possessing such acute hearing: no privacy, unless we deliberately tuned down our senses. Quentin appeared in the doorway, dressed in clean clothes and no longer smelling of blood.
“You’re healed?” I asked as our eyes met in that intense awareness of two people who knew they would soon be intimate with each other.
Quentin nodded.
“Do you have a condom?”
Uncertainty passed across that pretty face. Young. So young, cried a voice inside me. Yeah, but he was the lesser of two evils. I sure as hell was not going to fuck his father. Nolan was a married man.
Ironically enough, it was the married man’s wife who appeared with a familiar square foil packet in her hand. She pressed what I had requested into Quentin’s hand and left when she caught sight of my flaming face and Dante’s wild, animalistic state.
With condom in hand, Quentin stepped into the room and came toward me. His brother went ballistic. Dante lunged, flung himself out. Not his upper body, but his lower one, his feet flying out in a half-circle. With the added length that gave him, that of his entire body and arms stretched out to their fullest, it was enough to reach me. His feet swept across my knees, knocking me down. I fell and he rolled over me, a fluid, seething mass, coming quickly to his feet. Hands clamped down on me and he pushed me behind him, crouching in front of me, growling viciously at Nolan and Quentin, who had rushed forward in alarm.
“Stop!” I said. “Don’t come any closer. It’s all right. It’s all right,” I repeated as father and son halted their headlong rush. “Dante’s just trying to protect me…I think.” The last two words were muttered prayerlike, flung up heavenward by my racing heart.
Whatever Dante was doing, it was compelled by his most primal instincts. And the need to protect a Queen was a real hard-wired one instilled in all warriors. I was betting my safety—and his—on it.
He had latched his left hand onto my wrist, leaving his right hand free to fight with. And he’d put me behind him, a protective gesture as well as a possessive one, setting himself between me and the other men.
“Back up,” I said as calmly as I could. “He has me, and hasn’t hurt me so far. Let’s see what he does.”
Nolan and Quentin moved back to the door and stopped there, watching us, making me realize what I had said: Let’s see what he does. I hadn’t meant it literally. Not really. At least, not in Quentin’s case.
“Quentin, if you could, um, leave. The less people in the room, the better,” I said to soften my request. “I’ll be fine with your father. Just…leave the condom.” My face flushed fire-engine red as Quentin slid the precious foil packet across the floor to me. When he slipped quietly from the room, the coiled tension in Dante’s body revved down a notch. Down to a watchful battle readiness instead of a ready-to-erupt-and-tear-out-our-throats state. He backed us up as far as we could go, until we came up against the wall. Then his attention turned to me.
Oh boy.
Intensity was a nice thing in a would-be lover. It told you they were paying attention to you. But not to this degree—this raw, overwhelming amount. This much of it was more scary than exciting…but a spark of sanity had crept into that blue sea of madness. Those fierce, pale eyes swept over me, examining every detail as if I were a two-headed alien suddenly plopped down in from of him. He studied me as if he felt the same thing I did: like he should know me but didn’t. I had the feeling that if he could have drank me down with those pale, eerie eyes of his, I would have been drained completely dry and left like parched, cracked earth.
He raised a hand slowly as if I were the wild creature that had to be gentled, and swept it just above my skin as if he could feel my force, my presence, my aphidy—that unique, attractive force and fragrance inherent to all Queens. It had flared out wildly, reaching for him the first time his hungry power had hit me. I had clamped down on it tightly, desperately contained it. It vibrated my skin now where he ran his hand over it, stroking my invisible power, buzzing and prickling where his hand wrapped around my wrist. A small pulse of power escaped from me and jumped to him against my will, as if our energies wanted to blend, merge, come together—something I’d never experienced before with another man.
As startled as I, he dropped my wrist and we faced each other, inches apart, both of us breathing heavily, our bodies quivering and tense. He was behaving himself as much as I was, keeping his power controlled on a tight leash, not letting it pummel me as it had before. He was sane enough not to want to scare me away, I realized. Comforting. But if we were to get intimate, I wanted—needed—to know that he was rational enough to control himself, to not hurt me. He was bound by silver. I was stronger than him, I could protect myself. But still…something in me could not help but fear
him.
Strong though I was, when a woman opened her body to a man, she was vulnerable to him in ways only another woman could understand. Before I let loose my aphidy, before I had sex with him, I had to trust him enough to let go of the tight rein of my control. That was the only way I’d be able to glow. And I didn’t know if I could do that with him.
He was such a raw mass of seething pain. I sensed it, and that part of me that had always been drawn to pain was drawn to him now because of it. I didn’t try to resist it. Lifting my hand, I laid it again on his bare chest. Once again, the small pulse of power jumped between us. His face twisted, as if my touch pained him, but he did not groan as he had before—the sound that had startled me, made me jerk back away from him. He clenched his teeth, swallowed down the sound, and shuddered from my touch.
Just my palm laid flat against his chest with my Goddess’s Tears pressing into his skin, and something between us connected like a current flowing out of me to him. A circuit that cycled back to me. My pearly moles flared to life and did what they usually did around pain. My palm began to tingle, my hand grew warm, and my power, drawn forth by the suffering of another, spilled out of me and seeped into his flesh in a wide, assessing sweep, easing the pain.
God. Such agony he was in. What control it had taken on his part simply not to lash out at me in reaction to that pain. “Dante, can you say something? Anything?”
“Touch me more.” The words came out hoarse and guttural, as if they’d been wrenched from him.
I looked into his eyes and saw that tiny spark of sanity firm, grow stronger with our physical connection. “Thank God,” I whispered. Looking into his eyes, feeling him through my palm, reading him, I knew that we’d pulled him back—both he and I together—from that brink of madness he’d been teetering on. I knew that he would not hurt me, that I could save him. That I wanted to save him. Not just for the healer he would gain me. But for himself. For the valiant warrior that he was, the fierce will inside of him that had tenaciously pulled him back from the encroaching madness.
