“Well damn,” Nina said using her phone to take a picture of the spread. “He can cook. Who knew?”
Once Nina was done taking all the pictures she wanted to put on her Instagram, they all began to pass food around. Merrick wasted no time asking Marcel all the questions he tried to ask MaLeila when he first found out about him and then some. Marcel took it all in stride, sometimes answering immediately and sometimes raising an eyebrow at Merrick as though he couldn’t believe he was asking a question before he answered it anyway.
“Alright,” MaLeila finally said. “I think that’s enough interrogating him.”
“I would have stopped a long time ago, but he seems not to mind. Why not take advantage of it?” Merrick said with a shrug.
“It’s no problem. My sister did the same for me when I was younger.”
“You have a sister?” MaLeila asked. “You never mentioned that.”
“You never mentioned you had a brother,” Marcel said with a shrug. “Honestly, it just never crossed my mind to mention her. There’s a picture of her over there on the fireplace.”
MaLeila had seen that picture earlier, of a tall woman with straight black hair and dark eyes.
“You don’t look alike,” MaLeila said.
“Everyone says that. Blame it on genetics.”
“So you dated someone older than you when you were younger,” Merrick asked.
Bastet sighed and said to Devdan, “I though you explained this to him.”
“Well he said his sister did the same thing for him,” Nina said.
MaLeila looked at Nina and said, “Marcel invited you here to be on our side.”
Marcel laughed. “It’s okay. No. I didn’t date anyone older than me. I just… I had a very tumultuous relationship with a girl when I was younger.”
“Tumultuous? In a good or bad way,” Merrick asked.
“Both. It was actually more dysfunctional, but I was trying to put it nicely. If she were here, she’d probably say it was more than dysfunctional. She’d probably say we were fucked up.”
“You still talk to her,” Devdan asked, the first thing he’d said all evening.
“Yeah. We’ve been good friends since I could remember. We just realized we weren’t good at the monogamous relationship thing together. We needed space. We get along better this way. Actually, you and MaLeila remind me a lot of the two of us,” Marcel added.
MaLeila and Devdan both looked at each other and then at Marcel before asking together, “What do you mean?”
Marcel shrugged. “You just relate to each other in a very unique way, in a more than siblings but less than lovers kind of way. If I didn’t have a relationship like this with someone already, I’d probably wonder if I had something to be worried about.”
MaLeila sensed the shift in Devdan’s aura, flaring from calm and relatively demure to dark and pulsing, defensive even. She looked at him from across the table, hoping to meet his eyes for once, but he was still looking at Marcel, more like glaring at him really.
MaLeila wasn’t sure if Nina noticed that Devdan look ready to lash out or if she just happened to decide to open her mouth, but either way MaLeila was glad her best friend decided to use that moment to ask about dessert.
Eventually, Devdan stopped glaring at Marcel and went back to being quiet at the table. But Devdan was nothing if not somewhat unpredictable, and MaLeila breathed a sigh of relief when dinner was long over and everyone was about to leave. She decided to stay a little while longer, assuring her brother that Marcel would bring her back later.
“I think that went well,” Marcel said as he put the chairs back at the table once everyone was gone.
“You sure? My brother didn’t make you uncomfortable did he?”
“No. He’s your brother. I expected it,” Marcel replied as he went to his cabinet and took out two wine glasses and a bottle of wine. “I saved this for us.”
“I’m not twenty-one.”
Marcel rolled his eyes. “And how many of your peers has that stopped? Besides, in Italy, drinking is legal once you’re sixteen. A glass won’t hurt you or get you in trouble.”
“It won’t get me in trouble,” MaLeila said taking a glass and allowing Marcel to pour the wine. “But you’ll get in trouble for offering it to me.”
Marcel smiled as he poured his glass and set the bottle aside. Once he was settled next to her he asked, “So what are you and Devdan fighting about?”
MaLeila stilled and then brought her wine glass from her lips and held it in her lap.
“What makes you think we’re fighting?”
“When I first came to your house and you two came in, he kind of… I guess the word would be hoovered. And you both kind of naturally fell in place next to each other. Today you both seemed to be keeping your distance from one another.”
“He’s just trying to be mindful of the fact that you’re my boyfriend,” MaLeila shrugged as she took a sip of the wine.
Marcel smiled. “If that’s what you want to believe.”
“Why so interested in Devdan?”
“Because I feel like more than your brother, he’s the one I have to impress.”
MaLeila tried not to cringe as Marcel’s words brought Devdan’s promise to shoot Marcel if he felt the need to back to her mind. When MaLeila told Marcel as much he laughed and asked if Devdan had brought his gun with him to dinner.
“More than likely,” was MaLeila’s reply.
Deciding that was enough about Devdan, Marcel asked more questions about her brother, which led him to asking about her mother.
“She wouldn’t have liked the idea of us dating,” MaLeila finally said.
“Why? Would she have called me a perverted old man for being interested in a little girl?” Marcel joked.
“She didn’t want me to be part of the magical world. She even forbade me from using magic at home or when I didn’t need it. It caused problems between her and Bastet. Bastet always argued that it was dangerous for me as a lone sorceress not allied with the council or a prominent family to not put my magic to good use and learn it. My mother seemed to be of the belief if I didn’t use magic, anyone that was dangerous to me would leave me alone. Lucky for me, I was intuitive enough with magic to be able to use it to defend myself when the time came.”
“You think she ever would have come around to it?”
MaLeila shook her head and said, “Knowing my mother, she would have used the attacks as even more of a reason for me not to use magic.”
“So she essentially asked you to deny who you were?”
“Magic isn’t who I am. Not all of who I am anyway.”
“That may be true, but that’s like saying the ability to fly isn’t one of the things that makes a bird a bird. Unless it was already flightless anyway, once a bird can’t fly, it’ll die. Magic is like that to a sorceress. We might be able to live without it for a while, but what kind of life would it be?” Marcel asked. “I think if your mother understood it like that, she would have come around.”
“Maybe,” MaLeila said with a shrug as she put her wine glass down, still filled with half the wine Marcel had given her.
“As it is though,” Marcel said setting his glass aside also, “You can’t keep living like your mother is holding you back. What’s the use of having an ability if you don’t use it to get ahead in life?”
“And how do you suppose I do that?”
“Just stop being afraid on it. If you stop looking at everything to do with magic as an intrusion, you can learn to make it work for you instead. Just learn to go with things, MaLeila,” Marcel advised, face only inches from hers now rather than the arm’s length it had been a few moments ago.
MaLeila took a few deep breaths and said, “Are you still talking about magic or us?”
Marcel didn’t answer her question immediately. Instead he kissed her once on the lips and then again and once more, all the while tugging her into his lap by her arms.
“I was talking about magic
mostly, but if that’s how you want to take it,” Marcel finally answered.
He buried his face in her neck and then began to run kisses down towards her collar bone. Once at her collar bone, he sucked on the skin there. MaLeila tilted her head back to give him better access to her neck and let out a low moan. Then he stopped and took a deep breath, inhaling her scent.
“You’re so beautiful. You know that?” he asked.
He lifted his head and pressed his lips to hers, not giving MaLeila a chance to answer or be embarrassed. They were soft a first, gently and slowly moving against hers and guiding the movements of her own lips. Then, as though realizing that they weren’t outside her house, the movements of his lips became faster and more aggressive. MaLeila shifted until she was straddling his lap so she wouldn’t have to awkwardly crane her neck and could better return his kisses. In response, he used both hands to firmly grip her thighs and pull her closer to him and when that didn’t seem close enough, he grabbed her butt and pulled her as close to him as she could. For the first time, she didn’t stop his wonton hands.
He thrust his tongue between her lips and used his tongue to play with hers and touch along the roof of her mouth. He pulled his tongue out and his lips away, giving MaLeila just enough time to suck in a gasping breath before his lips were upon hers again.
Her body became hypersensitive to his touch, so when he dragged his right hand away from her butt, around to her stomach and up to her breast, she felt it not just on her breasts, but her entire body.
MaLeila hadn’t had many boyfriends like many of her peers had, so she didn’t have much experience to compare Marcel to, but without a doubt she knew they hadn’t been able to make her feel like this; like her clothes were too constricting and too hot; the acute awareness of the pulse throbbing between her legs.
Then she felt his hand crawl under her shirt, further up her torso until he slipped his hand in her bra and touched her nipple. The touch sent a jolt through her body, right to her core, causing her to simultaneously jerk her head back from Marcel and gasp. She leaned back in his lap, making panting breaths. He simply stared at her, blue eyes dark and clouded with lust, lips swollen, hair in disarray from where she had been running her hands through it, hand still in her bra and touching her nipple. The thought made MaLeila’s face heat up in embarrassment and avert her gaze. At seeing her discomfort, Marcel pulled his hand from under her shirt.
“Was that too much for you?”
MaLeila nodded, breathing out a sigh that Marcel seemed to automatically understand what she couldn’t find the words to say.
“Sorry,” she said as she started to move out his lap.
He held her in place though and tilted her head up to look at him as he said, “I think I should be the one saying that.”
Then he gave her one final kiss and said, “I think it’s time to take you home.”
******
To her surprise, Devdan was sprawled on the couch when she got back, having apparently been waiting for her. If she didn’t know him as well as she did, she would have thought it was sweet. But Devdan waited up for no one just for the sake of making sure they got in the house.
MaLeila had known something was coming about their dinner with Marcel the moment she saw Devdan glare at him earlier, but still on her high from her tryst with Marcel she hadn’t stopped to wonder if Devdan might be waiting on her. Rather than cutting to the chase, she decided to play dumb, even if it would annoy Devdan.
“You didn’t have to wait up for me.”
Devdan wasn’t having it.
“You wanted my opinion about Marcel so badly? Well now I’m giving it to you. I don’t trust him, and I think you should break whatever it is between you before it gets too far,” he said simply.
Blunt, abrasive, straightforward, they were all words MaLeila had used to describe Devdan. He hated tiptoeing around topics and was always willing to draw attention to the elephant in the room if needed. But in all her time knowing him, MaLeila couldn’t remember a time where he was this forward. Usually he tried to be somewhat gentle with her, only saying what he truly thought if she pestered and pried it out of him because when it came to her at least, he tried (and usually failed) to be nice.
Once MaLeila got over her shock though, it gave way to anger.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You wanted to know.”
“I wanted to know six weeks ago! I wanted to know before I even got involved!”
“You didn’t say all that. You didn’t give a time frame. You just said if I told you not to, you wouldn’t. So now I am.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I think it’s ridiculous that you wanted me judge the guy’s character to tell you I didn’t think you should trust him when I hadn’t even talked to him,” Devdan pointed out.
“It’s never stopped you before or do I need to remind you that you greeted me when we first met by trying to put a hole in my head?” MaLeila snapped, trying to keep her voice down. Bastet would probably hear Devdan and MaLeila arguing and go back to what she was doing, but her brother didn’t need any reason to get into a confrontation with Devdan and possibly end up hurt.
“That was different.”
“Please. Tell me how. I’m waiting.”
“It doesn’t matter. The point is something’s off about him.”
“And you learned this from exchanging two sentences at the table.”
“No. I spent an hour in the kitchen with him. Of course we talked,” Devdan deadpanned.
MaLeila must have missed that when she was looking at the pictures of Marcel and his sister.
“Then please. Do tell me what’s off.”
“He knows you too well.”
MaLeila rolled her eyes. “That’s the point of dating, Dev. To get to know someone.”
“No,” Devdan said. “He knows things about you that you can only know through living with you every day. Either that or they’re incredibly shrewd. Sorry if an incredibly shrewd council representative who just happened to like you makes me suspicious.”
“Or maybe he’s just a good guy? Maybe he’s just attentive and caring.”
“How would you know that? You’ve only known him for two months.”
“I don’t know, maybe because he’s open? Maybe because he’s not afraid to let people in. Maybe because he’ll talk to me. Maybe because unlike you, he doesn’t give mixed cues and then act like a jealous bastard when I decide not to deal with it anymore,” MaLeila snapped.
It was the first time MaLeila had openly spoke about her suspicion that Devdan might like her more than he allowed himself to let on. MaLeila always hinted at it, alluded it to it in the hope that Devdan might just tell her himself and in fear that if she said it, he might up and leave again. But MaLeila didn’t care if he left or not at the moment.
With those words though, the chemistry that was always between them filled up the room and became too much, aura’s flaring, pushing and pulling them together until their lips were on each other’s. There was nothing gentle about their kiss or their hands as they roamed each other’s body in passionate frustration. They exchanged open mouthed kisses as though it were possible to devour each other, tongues fighting for dominance until like in most things, Devdan stopped fighting her and instead guided her tongue into his mouth, helping her to explore it. It was nothing like the fake kisses they’d shared to distract an enemy or blend in or divert attention away from them in magic conflicts amongst non-magical people. It was enlivening and electric and made MaLeila feel whole, like this feeling was what her soul had been looking for her entire life yet she hadn’t know she was missing anything.
For the second time that night, MaLeila felt like her clothes were too constricting, especially the more Devdan balled her shirt up in his hand and tugged on it like he might tear it off her. Some primal part of her wanted him to tear it off, to strip her of all her clothes, and fuck her until she forgot why they had been fighting in the fir
st place, why they had ever wasted time bickering.
Finally, they had to come apart to breathe and as they looked at each other, MaLeila remembered all the reasons that she was angry with Devdan, everything that had led to this moment. As much as she wanted to forget about it and let Devdan have his way with her and vise verse, she couldn’t.
“You don’t get to do this with me. You don’t get to fuck me as a way to keep me from getting in your head because you don’t want me to. If you want that, go to wherever bar it is you go to for a drink and a cheap thrill. I won’t be one of them,” MaLeila snapped.
Devdan looked mildly surprised by her words, which MaLeila was only too happy to elaborate on.
“Yes I know that when you leave here you go find some shallow girl who only cares that you’re hot and fuck her for a night because that’s much safer, that’s much less scary than facing me when I get too close, when you’re afraid you might just let me in and be open with me.”
Devdan stared at her for a moment and then asked, “How did you know where I go?”
MaLeila decided to ignore that he conveniently didn’t address that she knew why he left and answered his question anyway, “Because I saw you. Last year. Nina snuck us into this bar and I saw you. You must have been totally drunk out your mind if you didn’t sense me.”
Devdan let out a sigh and his breathing returned to normal, his aura calming down and retreating, his usual serene and nonchalant expression replacing his angry glare.
“You think you want to know certain things, MaLeila. But you don’t.”
“Or maybe you just don’t want to face them.”
Again, Devdan didn’t reply to MaLeila’s comment, which said a lot more than if he’d replied at all.
“Just trust me on this.”
MaLeila wasn’t sure if they were talking about Marcel or about him, but either way she replied, “How can I?”
The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening Page 7
