by Cat Marsters
She felt him come too, the wetness and heat inside her, and then they were both slumped against the wall with the snow coming down on them.
“That was great,” Kett said breathlessly. “Thanks.”
“Great?” Bael lifted his head. “It was fucking awesome.”
“Ego much?”
They were both silent for a minute or two, breathing hard. Then Bael pulled out of her, fastened his jeans and helped her get dressed again without landing in the snow. They started up the hill toward the forge and Bael took her hand.
“Just so you know,” she said, her skin still tingling, “that was a one-off.”
“It was?”
“Yeah. I’m still not subscribing to this mate thing.”
“Right.”
Silence. The snow fell some more.
“So, when we get back to the forge, you’re going to make me sleep on the floor?”
She lifted her chin and ignored her body’s cry of dismay. “Yes. It’s what you deserve for all this bullshit.”
“Well, okay. You have your own room, right?”
“Of course.” Hastily, she added, “Too small for you to sleep on the floor there.”
“Right. So I’ll sleep in the forge.”
“Right.”
Bael nodded thoughtfully. “Well, that’s good.”
Good? “Why good?”
“Well, because it’ll keep me warm. I don’t have any pajamas, you see. Packed in a hurry. Well, didn’t pack at all. Really only have what I stand up in. Besides, I hate pajamas. I always sleep nude if I can.”
Kett swallowed at the memory of what he’d looked like nude. No, Kett, stop it. You do not want to encourage him. Having sex up against the wall of the pub was bad enough, but continuing to shag him senseless would only compound the problem. Encouraging his delusions would be a bad idea.
“I wouldn’t think it’d bother Jarven, would you?” Bael went on, and Kett tried not to think about how many pieces Jarven would carve Bael into before he fed him to the dragons if he found him lying naked by the forge.
Besides, what if a spark jumped out and burned him? What if it burned his cock? She might not be sleeping with him anymore, but she wasn’t evil, and she didn’t want to ruin that body for other women.
“Okay,” she said. “You can sleep in my room, but I ain’t having sex with you. I have to get up early and…and…and besides, the sex would be bad. A bad idea, I mean. Because I don’t…I’m not…we’re not having sex again, all right?”
“Right,” Bael said, his eyes sparkling.
“Oh, shut up,” Kett said, and unlocked the door to the forge. It was quiet and dark but for the glow of the dormant fire, and she ushered Bael across the floor to her small room on the other side of the cottage.
As she’d told him, it was small, and there really wasn’t enough room for him on the floor.
Bael looked at the bed, looked at her, and his mouth twitched.
“No,” she said. “Look, maybe I should go sleep in Jarven’s room, so you can—”
She was cut off by Bael grabbing her and sliding his tongue inside her mouth.
“Okay,” she said breathlessly. “Maybe I’ll stay.”
* * * * *
When morning woke Bael, pale cracks of light filtering in through the gaps in the heavy metal shutters, the bed was empty of Kett. He stretched, smiling, and looked around the small room. It wasn’t what could ever be called pretty—it wasn’t even cozy. There were rugs on the stone floor, a couple of plain wooden trunks and some hooks on the wall for clothes, and that was about it. No mirror or any girlie accoutrements of any kind.
He couldn’t even see a hairbrush.
Noises from the outside room caught his attention and he pulled on his clothes to go investigate. Maybe his mate was making him breakfast!
Bael snorted. The idea of Kett making anything but trouble for him was pretty funny.
Jarven stood at the forge, pulling on heavy leather armor like Kett had been wearing. Bael smiled in greeting and got a nod in reply.
“Kett out with the dragons?” he asked, and could have sworn he saw the quirk of a smile on Jarven’s face.
“She’s out with a dragon,” he said.
Bael nodded and opened his mouth to say he’d go out to find her. Then, remembering her reaction to that yesterday, changed his mind and said, “I guess I’ll just wait here for her then.”
“Could be awhile,” Jarven advised.
Encouraged by this entirely voluntary input from the other man, Bael said, “How long? Couple of hours?” Maybe he could make her something to eat. It’d show willing, even if he was a crappy cook.
“More like weeks,” Jarven said.
“What? Where is she?”
“Elvyrn.”
Bael blinked. Elvyrn was a couple hundred miles to the south.
“Well, shit,” he said. “Why?”
“Family. Yule.”
Memories of Chance telling Bael he must come to the family Yule party came back to him. Of course. Kett hadn’t seemed wildly keen on the idea, and he’d wondered why. Dark had warned him the family might be tempestuous…
Which sounded like fun to him.
“Of course,” he said out loud, and smiled. “Are you going?”
Jarven shook his head.
“Are you invited?”
That earned him a sharp glance. “Yes,” Jarven said. “But Kett’s family is…a lot to take.”
“Are they like her?”
Jarven seemed to consider this as he fastened his gloves. “No,” he said eventually. “They’re worse.”
* * * * *
Kett chucked her kitbag on the ground and slapped the dragon’s hide, watching it rise into the air and head home. It, like all the others, was trained from birth to return to the mountains, several hundred miles away from Elvyrn, but just a few hours flight for a dragon.
She patted her damp shirt, throwing a filthy glare at her traveling companions. It was all very well and good having an aunt who’d shacked up with the Realms’ most evil man, but he tended to have a detrimental effect on, well, everyone. Including dragons. She’d had a fight on her hands ever since she’d picked up Striker and Chalia at the Bridge, and when they’d finally landed outside Elvyrn in the early twilight, the young dragon had thrown a hissy fit and tried to incinerate them.
Striker had remained totally impervious, as had his lover. Kett remained slightly scorched and, after Striker had laughingly conjured a bucket of icy water to douse the flames, she was also soaked through and utterly frozen.
As she pulled a blanket from her kitbag and wrapped it around her shoulders, Striker stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled twice. A minute later a horse thundered into the clearing at breakneck speed. It skidded to a halt when it saw Striker, flanks quivering. A second after that, another horse did the same thing.
Kett shook her head. She’d seen women react in much the same way. Striker—six feet of menace wrapped up in muscle and perfect bone structure—could make a happily married woman orgasm on the spot just by fixing her with his blue, blue eyes.
He’d passed the talent on to Chance. Magical ability and sexual magnetism. Kett had heard her cousin say she’d have preferred to inherit a house and some money, but she played the cards she’d been dealt.
They all did.
Striker looked smug as he slung his saddlebag over the first horse’s back. “Just a little move I’ve been messing with,” he said.
“Whose horses are they?” Kett asked.
“Who gives a fuck?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Does Kett get one?” Chalia asked, looking around. Striker shrugged a negative and Chalia sighed. “Okay then, you take one, Kett, and we’ll share.”
Kett didn’t argue. Chalia would probably lean on Striker for the return of the horses later, and if she didn’t, then Kett guessed she could probably send them back to the general vicinity and someone would claim them.
It seemed to be the way their relationship worked. Striker had no internal conscience of his own, and Chalia had none of the magical power that crackled around Striker, but they’d evolved to share what they had with each other. It had been Chalia who’d persuaded Striker to help Kett after the sabertooth-tiger incident, for which Striker had been extracting favors ever since. Favors such as picking him and Chalia up and flying them to Elvyrn for Yule.
It seemed impossible to consider, but once upon a time Striker had been a child, and a fairly normal one at that. He’d been school friends with Kett’s father, Tyrnan, which Kett figured probably explained a few things. Chalia, herself a childhood troublemaker, had turned out to be Tyrnan’s illegitimate sister. She’d been the one to track Kett down and force her brother to meet his teenaged daughter.
Kett still wasn’t sure she forgave Chalia for it.
She scowled at them as they rode on ahead. Despite being nearly twenty years older than Kett, they appeared years younger, which she considered to be monstrously unfair. Not for Chalia, the fear of getting older and older and the dread of dying alone…
Not that Kett suffered such a fear, because if she did then she’d have happily taken Bael up on his ridiculous suggestion that they were mates. But she hadn’t, because she wasn’t some pathetic creature who needed that sort of validation in her life, which was why she was feeling guilty. Because she’d had hot sex with him last night, twice, instead of just walking away…
Not because she felt bad about sneaking away and leaving him there with no explanation. Well, with Jarven, which was worse than no explanation.
They rode into Elvyrn, the Realm’s second city, picturesque in the early twilight as people bustled around getting ready for Yule. There was a light dusting of snow on the pink buildings, although the streets had been swept clean, and everywhere Kett looked seemed to have sprung straight from a Yule card.
Chalia and Striker veered off to visit other friends and Kett continued up the hill. Her uncle’s Winter Palace stood tall and beautiful at the summit, illuminated by flickering torches. A few streets away stood her stepmother’s massive house, every light blazing.
Kett hesitated outside the gates of her parents’ mansion, where a young garda waited patiently to admit her. On the one hand, Yule with her parents, who would almost certainly try to get her to attend their high-toned, fancy shindig, for which she’d have to wear a dress and be polite to people. On the other, going back to the mountains and facing Bael, on whom she’d so suddenly run out.
Well, it was about time he learned what that felt like.
And her parents were never stingy with the alcohol.
Kett sighed and nudged the horse onward, hooves crunching over the snow. She let herself in through the kitchen door, snagged a hot meat pie from the counter and juggled it as she wove past the servants.
“Your ladyship!” the butler cried as she was halfway up the stairs from the kitchen to the public part of the house, and Kett winced. She turned to face him. What was his name? Willis? Wilson? Willikins?
“Hey, Wills. Didn’t I ask you not to call me that?”
He made a courteous bow. “My apologies…miss.”
“Miss”…well, better than “your ladyship”. She waved a hand, taking a bite of the meat pie and shucking the blanket from her shoulders. “Whatever,” she said through a mouthful. “Can someone make my room up?”
“As always, it is ready for you, miss.”
“Great,” Kett said indistinctly, and swallowed. “This is a great pie. I’m so bloody hungry.”
“I shall pass your compliments on to Cook,” the butler said politely, despite Cook standing a dozen feet away. “Dinner shall be served in five minutes in the Gold Salon.”
Gold Salon? “Which one’s that?”
The butler gave an almost imperceptible sigh. “Formerly the Rose Room, my…miss.”
“Gotcha,” Kett said, and continued up the stairs, the butler following. Shoving open the heavy door at the top of the steps, she took another bite. “Cheers, Wills.”
“Wilden, miss.”
She waved her hand at him as the door swung shut. Then she shoved it back open again and handed her bag to him. Through a mouthful of pie she said, “Can you chuck this in my room?”
“Certainly, miss,” Wilden replied, not missing a beat.
“Ta,” Kett said, and went to try to find the Gold Salon.
* * * * *
“How interesting, Lady Kett,” said the duke of…oh hell, wherever. “And how exactly does one train a dragon?”
Across the table, Nuala mouthed, “Sorry!” Kett grimaced. Her stepmother was so unfailingly charming toward everyone that she’d been unable to turn away the very boring duke and his unbearably pompous wife when they’d “dropped by” that afternoon and invited themselves for dinner.
In the thirty seconds before it became impolite not to introduce them, Nuala had whispered to Kett that she’d tried every trick in her not-inconsiderable arsenal to get them to leave, but being Nuala, she was unable to be outright rude.
However, once her stepdaughter had walked in, that hadn’t been a problem. Unfortunately, by then the first course had been served and the duke and duchess were well entrenched.
“You feed it some villagers then chain it up when it’s sleepy,” Kett said, and her father let out a shout of laughter. From the corner of her eye, Kett caught her brother sniggering, but when she looked around he was politely enquiring of the duchess whether she was enjoying her dodo breast.
“Villagers?” the duchess honked. “Surely you must be joking!”
“Nope,” Kett said, picking up a roast potato with her fingers and taking a bite. “They like the fat ones best.”
The duke gave a nervous laugh. Kett ignored him and licked her fingers.
“And is this dragon-taming garb?” asked the duchess, looking Kett over as if she was daubed in pig shit.
“Nope, actually this is giving-a-lift-to-a-man-so-evil-he’s-invented-new-crimes garb,” Kett said, aware her shirt was thin, dirty and nearly transparent with dampness. “Is yours?”
The duchess looked outraged. Nuala was managing to keep a straight face. Kett’s brother was shaking silently.
Kett lit up a cigar and wafted the pungent smoke toward the duchess. “Which reminds me, Dad, Striker says hi.”
Her father, the infamous Tyrnan of Emreland, laughed out loud and reached past her for the gravy. “Damn, Kett,” he said, “you need to come home more often.”
Kett wasn’t so sure about that. Sure, it was entertaining, but she wished to hell the duke and duchess would get the hint and leave. How much more obnoxious did she have to be?
How much more obnoxious could she be?
“I say, my dear, isn’t it awfully cold up in the Northern Province this time of year?” the duke brayed.
“Freezes your tits off,” Kett told him cheerfully. “Well, not yours. Maybe your ladyship’s, over there. Amount on display, she’d get frostbite to the nipples in no time.” She picked up the dodo breast and ripped a piece off with her teeth.
The duchess went purple.
Happily, before she could say anything, Wilden entered the room and said something quietly to Nuala. Her eyes grew wide and she stared at Kett.
“Boyfriend?” she cried. “Kett, you never told us you had a boyfriend!”
Kett was fairly sure she looked like a deer caught in the beam of a coach lamp.
“Er, I haven’t,” she said, and attempted a smile. “Wills, stop flirting with me. I can’t be your girlfriend. I ain’t posh enough.”
Wilden bowed and said, “A Mr. Bael Var is here to see you, miss. He says he is your boyfriend.”
Kett’s stomach performed a somersault. She actually felt the smile fall from her face.
“Here?” she asked stupidly. “Now?”
“Yes, miss,” Wilden said. His eyes sparkled a little. “Both here and now.”
Everyone was staring at Kett. Nuala looked amazed; her
father, brother and sisters disbelieving. The duke and duchess looked annoyed.
And the thought occurred to Kett that if anyone was obnoxious enough to get rid of these two uninvited guests, it was Bael.
“Sure,” she said to Wilden. “Send him in.”
Wilden looked a little surprised but bowed and went off to do just that.
Kett found herself wishing she’d changed out of the dirty, scorched shirt and washed her face. Which was stupid, she thought immediately, because a) Bael had seen her looking a hell of a lot worse; and b) she wasn’t trying to impress him. Not at all.
“You have a boyfriend?” her half-sister Eithne breathed.
“How is it possible I did not know this?” Eithne’s twin, Beyla, shook her head.
“Which asylum did he come from?” their brother Tane asked.
“What’s he like?” Nuala begged, and Kett, mildly shocked at her own behavior, answered without thinking.
“Big,” she said. “And mad. And loud. And…” She frowned, formed a mental picture of Bael and described what she saw. “He shouts at kelfs, ’cos he’s scared of them, I think. And he picks fights with them when he’s angry. And he gets thrown in jail sometimes. And he doesn’t think in straight lines. But he can be sort of kind when he wants to. And he’s very persistent. No, stubborn. He’s sort of…” She scrunched up her face, trying to describe him. “About eleven, really, inside. Well, maybe sixteen,” she amended, thinking of his unstoppable interest in sex.
A small silence followed.
“Well, he sounds…charming,” Nuala said.
“He sounds like a lunatic,” Tyrnan replied.
“He sounds perfect for you, Kett,” Tane offered.
The duke and duchess, for once, were silent.
“Would anyone like more wine?” Nuala asked to fill the silence.
“Yes,” Kett said. She had a definite feeling she was going to need it. Glugging a large amount, she wiped her mouth and said, “Listen. He doesn’t know about the whole shapeshifting thing, so don’t tell him, all right?”
“Why not?” Nuala asked.
“Because…” Kett said, scrabbling for an excuse that wasn’t because I don’t want him to have any reasons for us to be together. “Because I haven’t mentioned it yet, and I’m looking for the right moment so I don’t, you know, freak him out.”
