by Autumn Dawn
Then he stood up and simply walked away.
Keilor set the empty tray down on Jayems’ table while Rihlia watched him with anxious eyes. “She ate.” Keilor smiled with affection as the lady of the most powerful lord in the Haunt realm sank down in a wing chair. A new anxiety filled her face and he shook his head wryly, guessing its source. “Give her until morning,” he advised, resting one hand on the table. “I think you’ll find her in better spirits and more pleased with company.”
The unhappiness didn’t leave her face as she twisted the end of a long black lock. She touched the silver hair ornament holding her hair up and off her face as if she wanted to remove it and then stopped and dropped her hand. “She never drinks so much, Keilor. Last night was hard for her.”
He tilted his head slightly. “It was hard for you as well, but I don’t see you sulking.”
She grimaced and slouched in her chair, tracing an eyebrow. “I need to, I think. I just haven’t had the chance.” She raised troubled eyes. “I don’t remember her at all. My mother, I mean. She looks at me with such hunger, and all I want to do is push her away. I feel guilty, like I’m doing something wrong. What kind of person doesn’t love her mother? Then I get angry because she makes me feel that way, and it starts all over again.”
He nodded, just listening, and she went on. “And then there’s Jayems.” She smiled without humor. “Do you know he told me that I was everything he ever wanted in a wife? How could he say something like that? He hardly knows me.”
Keilor’s smile held real humor. “Love does not take long among our kind—we know.”
She leaned back and looked at him skeptically. “Love, Keilor? I think you’re getting it confused with—”
Joyous male laughter rang out. He shook his head at her. Making himself comfortable on the couch, he told her, “Cousin, I have known Jayems all of his life and seen him with more than his share of women.” She scowled at him and he continued more seriously, “But never once have I seen in his eyes what they hold for you.”
She clasped her hands together over her stomach and rested her elbows on the chair arms, staring at her knees. “I don’t know what I feel for him.” She frowned. “I don’t want to have to feel anything at all.” There was silence for a moment and then suddenly she said, “Speaking of feelings, what are you doing to my friend?”
Taken off guard, he started. What the blazes was she talking about? “Nothing.”
“I know better than that.” She folded her arms and her foot started tapping. “There’s something going on between you two. Every time you’re in the same room the air starts crackling.”
Best to cut this inquiry at the quick. He threw an arm over the back of the coach and adopted a nonchalant expression. “Your friend is a Sylph, cousin. If I show sexual interest in her, it’s no more than can be expected of any other man in the room. You’ll have noticed Fallon was no different.”
“That’s a bunch of bull!” Rihlia’s eyes shot sparks as she sat forward, gesturing angrily. “She might be a little shy with men, but Jasmine has always been a pretty girl, and I don’t think it’s fair of you to blame some non-existent pheromone just so you can have an excuse for being attracted to a human!”
“What I feel, what Fallon feels, what Knightin feels,” he answered with grim conviction. “What every unattached male above the age of puberty will feel whenever she is near.” He leaned forward, determined to make her understand. “She is pretty, and it doesn’t help, but it wouldn’t matter if she were fat and bald and covered with boils, men would still want her.” She tried to interrupt, but he cut her off ruthlessly. “Fallon likes his women, true, but I have never seen him pursue one with the tenacity he displayed last night. If she hadn’t surprised him with that comment about tongues,“ he grimaced, “then we might have had to leash him to keep him from following her to her room.” He paused to give his words weight. “Do you really think that her beauty alone would bring three grown men to their knees?”
Rihlia’s lips were tight with anger. “Prove it.”
“Very well.” He strode towards the door. “Give me fifteen minutes to arrange an escort, and I’ll meet you in the courtyard. We’ll take a tour of the cadet’s dinning hall.” He slammed the door behind him, giving vent to his frustration, and strode quickly down the hall. Jayems might have his head later, but by fire, he’d hear no more complaints about imaginary pheromones!
Somehow, word spread about what he was about to do, and by the time he met Rihlia and Jasmine in the bricked courtyard the rest of his female relations were there as well, standing by the fountain of a forest in miniature. The spray from the small waterfall misted the air and sparkled around his aunt Portae as she talked, gesturing expansively.
Jasmine was coolly confident in the nondescript white uniform of a servant, and even Rihlia looked a little disdainful, but there was nothing chilly in the greeting Urseya granted him.
“Keilor! This is so exciting,” she greeted him, smiling, and put her hand on his arm. When he merely nodded an acknowledgment her smile faded a little, and her hand fell away. “Well.” She bounced a bit on the balls of her feet and looked over to their family. “I must warn you, Keilor, that we’ve placed wagers on the outcome of your Sylph’s unveiling.” She smiled up at him through her long lashes. “As a vote of confidence, I’ve placed my money on you, but I must say, I think Rihlia’s friend is cheating dreadfully. Just look at what she’s done to her face.”
Jasmine’s face was coated in something that made it pasty gray, and she’d greased her hair so that it hung in limp strands on her shoulders. Dark circles dimmed her green eyes and she smiled at him, revealing three blackened teeth. She looked like something two days in the grave.
“It won’t matter,” he said grimly. Jasmine’s confidence visibly wavered a bit at those words, and he felt a sharp pang in his chest. He didn’t think she was going to enjoy this.
He knew he wouldn’t.
Gesturing sharply to the fifteen mated Haunt guard he’d brought with him, he turned and strode resolutely towards the cadet barracks built into the curving arm of the mountain fortress.
Jasmine stiffened her spine and told herself she had nothing to worry about. This whole thing was foolish. Keilor had made a mistake, and she’d prove it to the idiot. She’d show him that what he felt, what she felt, had nothing to do with a stupid legend and everything to do with a man and a woman who were attracted to each other, and had been from the first. And after that...Her mind shied away from the ‘after’. First she had to prove her point. There was no mysterious, seductive pheromone, and even if there ever had been, she didn’t have it.
She was butt ugly today and confident that Wiley and the beautiful Urseya outshone her by a mile.
No one would look at her twice.
No one looked anywhere else.
From the moment the double doors were opened for the noble party and her scent was carried into the hall, all eyes were on her. They remained on her throughout the introduction that excluded her, even though she tried to hide behind the others. The necks of cadets at attention craned to watch her as she walked by, in spite of sharp words from their superiors and the warning growls of her tense guard. One dazed young man even broke rank to watch her walk by and was forcibly escorted from the hall.
Jasmine began to shiver as the cold of dread seeped into her bones. Keilor wasn’t imagining it, and it was far worse than she could have dreamed. Edging forward an inch, she gripped the back of his uniform and gave it a frightened little tug. His head came up a fraction and he raised his arm. Instantly their tour was over, and the Haunt guards closed ranks and got them out of there as swiftly as protocol would allow.
“Jasmine...” Wiley’s voice was concerned, stunned. Jasmine began to walk very fast. “Jasmine!” She began to jog. In a moment she was running back the way she’d come, the warm, damp sea air burning her lungs as she tried to out run this thing she’d become.
No one stopped her.
“What?” He looked up from a map he and Knightin had been studying and frowned in distraction.
She gestured violently. “This Sylph thing!” Raising a trembling hand to her forehead and closing her eyes, she continued, “They were all looking at me like...”
Jayems glanced at Knightin, dismissing him. Tossing his pen aside, he leaned back in his chair and regarded her. “Like they desired you?”
She threw her hand down, but could only hold his eyes for a second. “It was worse than that! They—” She grabbed the back of a chair for support, feeling like she just might fly apart. “I want it to stop. Now.”
Knowing eyes considered her. “Is it so bad to be desired?”
She clenched her fists and shouted at him. “Yes! Yes. I don’t want men to look at me like that!” She moaned in frustration, sweeping her fist through the air. “I was afraid genetics would come back to haunt me.” He tilted his head in inquiry, and she swallowed hard. Addressing the gold patterned black and white carpet in front of his desk, she said, “My mother was a stripper. She...ah, when she danced, she...stripped.”
“Ah.” He examined his desktop as if it held the secrets of the universe.
“In front of people. Male audiences,” she finished bitterly.
“I see.”
“Good. Then send me back.” His face took on that stubborn look and she didn’t wait for his denial. “Listen here, you pig headed son of a bitch! I...” to her horror, her throat closed on the words, and she could only stand there in humiliation, reduced to the helplessness of a child. A single tear tracked down her cheek, completing her disgrace. She bowed her head and clenched her fists, fighting it and refusing to turn her back to hide. She might as well concede defeat if she did that.
“It won’t be forever, Jasmine.” Jayems had sat up, and his voice was soothing. She wanted to scream. “It will stop as soon as you take a mate.”
Bile churned in her stomach. “You think I would...” Her world blackened on the edges. “I don’t even have a boyfriend!” Breath, Jas, just breath.
“Fallon—” He didn’t even flinch when the priceless black diamond statute of a volti splintered against the front of his desk, nor even when the heavy crystal decanter followed. His door crashed open, but he waved the Haunt guards back as she insulted first his mother, his ancestry and finally himself in graphic, lurid detail and then stormed out, rolling on her own thunder.
Jasmine started violently when Wiley touched her shoulder.
“It’s just me,” Wiley assured her softly. She bit her lip. “It’s getting close to dinner time.” She paused, hope in her eyes. “The family is eating together again.”
Jasmine shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
“Feign it,” Keilor told her flatly, announcing his presence. “Jayems expects you to be there, and your lady desires it.” He ordered the bath to start up. “I’ll be back to escort you to the table in half an hour.”
Jasmine jumped to her feet. “Get out of my room, you jerk!”
He didn’t budge. “Are you going to be ready?”
“I don’t think so,” she said with biting sarcasm, and made the mistake of adding a sneer. In a heartbeat he’d crossed the room and tossed her over his shoulder. Striding over to the tub, he dumped her swearing self into it, clothes and all. She surfaced, spitting water, and furiously raked the hair off of her face. “You son of a—”
He hefted the soap in warning, and she clamped her mouth shut, trying to glare and blink away the water spiking her lashes at the same time. He gave her a pleasant smile. “Now, you can either finish this yourself, Sylph, or I can climb in there with you...” his voice roughened a fraction, and she swallowed, hard, “...and I won’t be wearing my clothes when I do.” Fire shot into her cheeks, and he handed her the soap. “I’ll be back in...” He glanced at the clock on a wall shelf. “...twenty-six minutes. Be ready.”
The door shut behind him, and Jasmine looked at Wiley.
Wiley looked at her. She offered a weak smile. “Need help with your hair?”
He knocked on the door exactly twenty-six minutes from the time he’d left, clad in his own formal wear. Rihlia opened the door and entered the hall, followed by a sulky Jasmine. Her jade gown deepened the green of her eyes and made the red of her glossy, pouting lips all the more inviting, not that he would tell her. She ignored his politely offered arm and tried to walk around him, so he took her hand and tucked it into his left arm, clamping his right hand over it.
She gritted her teeth. “Shouldn’t you be escorting Wiley? Doesn’t she outrank me?”
“Her name is Rihlia, and Jayems will escort her.” He nodded to Jayems as he stepped out into the hall and offered Rihlia his arm.
Jasmine’s sulky lip protruded again. “I’ve called her Wiley for years now and I have no intention of—oh!” She gasped as the backs of his fingers brushed against her breast.
“Rihlia,” he repeated with as much patience as he’d use training a new villi. “It is her name, and I expect you to address her as such.” Jayems and Rihlia rounded a corner up ahead and he deliberately lagged as their footsteps began to fade. There was far more to Jasmine’s refusal to acknowledge Rihlia’s name than sheer stubbornness. To many shocks had hit her too quickly, and she was still trying to retreat. If he continued to allow her to call his cousin Wiley then he was tacitly allowing her the illusion of a return to life as she knew it. Such a thing would be a cruel tease, and the sooner she forgot the idea and moved on the better off she’d be.
The woman on his arm sent him a withering look. “I’ll call her whatever I wish, and what I wish to call her is—” she broke off with a yelp as he spun her back to the wall and bared her left breast. A hot, wet mouth closed over her nipple and she cried out, grabbing his hair.
“What will you call her?” he demanded and gifted her nipple with a long, fiery lick.
She tugged at his head with weakened arms, gasping. “Stop! They’ll see—Oh, my word... Keilor...” If anyone else had touched her in such a way she’d have done her best to draw blood, but this was Keilor. Though she’d have taken a beating rather than admit it, she’d wanted this. Dreamed of it...
His teeth raked her stiffened peak and she mistakenly clutched him to her for a moment, squirming against the wall. Her scent rose around him, entered into him, permeating the chinks in his defenses, calling to him to take her fast, now, against the wall.
Keilor forced himself to pull away and glance pointedly down the hall, reminding her that they lacked privacy. “You want to call her Rihlia, don’t you, Dragonfly?”
Reminded of his game, she shoved against him hard and tried to knee his groin, but he twisted and trapped her with his hips against the wall. A handful of silky hair stilled her head for him and a massaging hand at her naked breast gained him entrance to her mouth. With all the pent-up passion she aroused, he kissed her, stealing her breath and making it his own.
With one last lick to her luscious tongue, he drew back, keeping their bodies locked together. Fighting for breath, he warned her, “I can go all night, sweetheart, but I can’t guarantee that we won’t draw an audience.”
She panted against him for a moment and then slowly closed her eyes. She’d done it again, let him use her body against her. When would she learn? “Rihlia,” she said, and it tasted like ashes.
“Rihlia,” he agreed, but didn’t withdraw as they both expected. Instead he kissed her again, softly, washing away the ashes with the sweet tenderness of his kiss. Desire like a warm rain washed through them, and when he withdrew this time, both were trembling.
Stepping away while he still had the strength, he reluctantly reached out and straightened her bodice, tucking her sweet breast away from his sight. His hand fell away, and for a tortured moment, neither could move.
“Your hair is loose,” Jasmine observed from wh
ere she sagged against the wall.
He gave her a rakish smile and ran both his hands through it, smoothing it back. “So is yours.”
“Yeah, but mine started out that way.” A corner of her mouth tugged up, and she looked down shyly, uneasy with this thing between them. Somehow, with their second kiss, a wall had shivered and collapsed, and she was afraid to look beyond the swirling dust to see what might come walking through the other side.
Jayems and his lady walked around the corner just then. Jayems’ eyebrow shot up as he surveyed the pair; Keilor with a gleam in his eye and reeking of possessive dominance, Jasmine leaning against the wall as if afraid her knees would fail her. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what had been going on here. “Should we expect you at dinner?” He addressed the comment to this cousin with some amusement.
Rihlia jabbed him in the ribs and scowled at Keilor as she looped her arm protectively through Jasmine’s. “She’s coming to dinner, and I’m escorting her.” She shot Keilor a look of disgust. “At least that way I’ll know she’ll get there.”
Chapter 5
Lady Rhapsody smiled when they entered the room. Her eyes rested first, as always, on her daughter and then settled on Jasmine with kindness. Taking her hands, she asked with concern, “You must be in better spirits to be joining us this night, Jasmine. I am glad to see it.” Her eyes rested with love on Rihlia. “My daughter’s face casts a shadow whenever you aren’t near.”
Jasmine smiled wryly. “Thank you. I’ll try to behave myself this evening.”
Lady Portae huffed and waved a perfumed hand and Jasmine tried not to stare at the soft flesh that oozed around her many rings. “I certainly hope not, my dear. You livened things up the other night. I can see why our Rihlia adores you.”
As they moved towards the table to begin the blessing, Jasmine was a little surprised when Fallon moved to stand behind her.
He noted that and gave her a charming smile, lifting her hand for a gallant kiss. “I was unaware of your unique...gift last evening, dear lady, but I’m quite certain I would have been equally devastated without it. May I have the pleasure of sharing this blessing with you?” He took her relieved smile for assent and placed his strong hands on her shoulders while Jayems blessed the meal.
