Feeling uneasy, I realize he might not recall what just happened the same way I do. The scene replays in my head and I don’t like what I remember.
He had accused me of being a succubus who was trying to tempt him, and said that he didn’t want to make a mistake. “I don’t think a man like you makes mistakes,” I had said. I had meant about his intention to marry, but what if he thought I was flirting with him, encouraging him to stay with me? And the next thing he had done was pull me down beside him and kiss my cheek and tell me that he was glad he found me.
Suddenly it seems different from what it was. I feel mortified. I get up and run back towards the terrace where I came from, and through the floral archway, and back towards my room. Except I don’t know where my room is. Within just a few minutes I am hopelessly lost in the tangle of corridors inside this castle.
After passing several staff, who all stare after me with concern, I stop running. The last thing I want is to make a scene. I didn’t do anything wrong. Xander Daxx may be intoxicatingly handsome to some women, but not me. I hadn’t been flirting with him. Surely he must have known that?
As I keep walking, still a bit too rapidly, I struggle to catch my breath. My cheeks must be flushed bright red, and I probably look upset. I don’t want any of the staff to come up to me and asked me if I am all right. I wish there was no one around to see me.
He was drunk. He probably won’t remember any of it, I tell myself. Maybe she won’t either.
Finally I reach a large empty hallway that is lined with statues and art. This castle seems to be full of places that are beautiful for no reason whatsoever other than for people to stop and stare. Benches have been provided for this purpose. I sink into one of them, and bury my face in my hands.
I cannot believe that the Princess Caroline herself caught me in that ridiculous situation. She thinks I was mooning over her drunken fiancé, millimeters from kissing him. I can’t blame her for thinking it. And now she’s going to be mad at me, and what if she makes me leave?
What if I have ruined it? I don’t want to go yet. This week of parties and beautiful dresses and beautiful people is what I needed. What I longed for. Even if there is no dark-haired Hunter here for me, this party was a respite from the ugliness of real life. A hidden safe place where I could have precious time to clear my head and make some plans. A place the Coltons can’t find me.
Why couldn’t I just have kept the hell away from Xander Daxx, the one man that all eyes are bound to be on? I curse myself for being stupid, and realize I have spoken out loud when my voice echoes from the vaulted ceiling.
I might as well sit here for the rest of the night admiring this beauty, and give the princess a chance to hopefully forget my stupid face. Otherwise this may be the last of this castle that I will see. I sit there, staring into space, regretting how easy it is to mess things up.
And then I hear the click-click of high heels on mosaic tiled floors. The Princess Caroline is walking towards me. Somehow she has found me. She probably asked the staff, and being her staff, they probably immediately pointed her in my direction. How humiliating.
I stand up hastily when I see her, caught by an instinct that I ought not to sit when royalty is standing. Immediately I feel stupid. But I do owe the princess an explanation, and maybe even an apology. And I would give it if it wasn’t for the fact that she is looking at me like she thinks I am worth no more than the dirt on her shoe. It raises my hackles.
I am surprised she is not followed by an army of servants to throw me out. She is alone. She comes to a stop a couple of feet away from me, and we face each other like two combatants about to start a fight. At least that’s how I am beginning to feel. My heart is pounding. She has no right to look at me like that. Her attitude has killed my instinct to grovel.
I have seen that look in her eyes before. Violence. I wonder what I will do if the princess hits me. Will I cower like I did for Mrs Colton? Or will I defend myself? I know it would be stupid. It’s probably a crime to hit her back.
I raise my chin, because that is the only defense that I have. She stares hard at me, as if waiting for something. It irks me that she kind of has every right to look at me like that. As far as she’s concerned, I am some floozy who was trying to seduce her fiancé.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, but I can hear the edge of resentment in my words.
The princess slaps me, her cool palm stinging my hot cheek. She slaps me hard, but just once. Unlike Mrs Colton, she has not let her anger get the better of her. She does not deliver a series of raging blows.
But that one cold controlled slap is deliberate. It shows me that she can slap me if she wants. That she thinks I deserve it and so will everyone else. That I am nobody here, and that she is a princess.
My hand rises to my cheek. I am stunned, and I feel thoroughly humiliated.
Her eyes rake me from my blow-dried silky hair to my pearly sandals, all of which her money must have paid for. Her eyes show me that she knows that she has paid for them and for me.
“I knew it was a mistake to let him invite you things here,” she says in her cut-glass English accent. Her voice is low, not high and girlish like I expected.
I don’t say anything. There is nothing I can say that she wants to hear. It fleetingly crosses my mind that I should tell her I was trying to help Xander, tell her about my vision. Maybe she will let me stay. Except she is more likely to think I am a liar or whacko or both. I wait for her to tell me my time here is over.
“Strip,” she says.
“What?”
“Strip, you imbecile,” she says, biting off each word precisely. “Take off the clothes that I paid for.”
My eyes brows fly upwards. She can’t seriously think I am going to strip naked, and let her throw me out with no clothes on? I stare at her incredulously. She is a royal princess. She can’t do this! And yet she can. She can do anything she wants. My eyes must widen a bit in horror.
“No?” she questions snidely. “I might have to put up with you little beasts because Prince Xander invited you here, but I’ll make you entertain my guests naked if I have to do. You’re here because I’m allowing you to be here. Is that clear?”
When I don’t say anything she takes a step closer to me. “Is that clear?” she repeats even more icily.
I nod.
She manages to look smug and disgusted all at once. When she speaks again, every word comes out clipped and precise. “You’re going to return to the terrace now, and you are going to flirt and dance with every man who wants you. And you’re going to make sure that every man is satisfied. Because that is what you are here for. Whore.”
I am shaking, stunned and mortified at the insult. And yet I am nodding, because staying here is better than being thrown out when I have nowhere else to go. I take a step away from her, intending to do as she has instructed me, to go back to the terrace.
But she holds out her arm to bar my way. She spits the next words into my face.
“He is mine. Mine. If I even see you looking at him again, I’ll deal with you. You’re just an animal. Nobody will even miss you.”
Her words chill me. She thinks I am an animal. What would she think if she knew what I really am?
“What about him?” I ask.
“What?” She looks startled that I dared to speak.
“Your fiancé is otherkind. Is he an animal too? One you think you own? What will you do to him if he betrays you?”
The second I have said it, I regret it. I cannot believe I said those words out loud. When will I learn to keep my mouth shut?
“Worry about yourself,” she hisses. “I’ll make you suffer. You might think you’ve seen awful things, little succubus, but you haven’t seen anything yet. Is that clear?”
I nod, and look down at the ground, trying my best to not rile her up. She seems to think that she owns me. While I’m here, she probably does. I have no doubt she can do everything she says she can. If I want to be safe, I will do as she say
s. And more than anything, I want to be safe.
“Stay away from him,” she hisses, and then she stalks away.
Bitch, hisses the little voice inside my head. She’ll regret doing that to us.
“Shut up,” I whisper. “Shut the hell up. I don’t need you anymore.”
Chapter 15
DIANA
I wait a while in that statue lined corridor, feeling like I am in an opulent prison. And then I make my way back to the garden terrace. I have no doubt that the princess will be keeping her eyes open for me. That if I do not turn up she will send her staff looking for me. I don’t want to get her angry.
When I get back to the river terrace the first thing I notice is a couple of girls sniggering at me. I thought my humiliation was private, but these girls must have seen me rushing from the garden and seen the princess coming after me. One of them, a redhead, is one of the escort girls that I had seen on the plane and again when I had been shown to my bedroom earlier.
Embarrassed, I turn away from her. Not an escort, I remind myself. A succubus. Both Xander and the princess made it clear that all those girls are succubae. And they think I am one too.
I only have myself to blame. In my eagerness for nice dresses, I never fully realized that I might be giving up the advantages of being a guest here. And now they are gone. I am going to have to stay in my guise, and hope that I don’t bump into whoever invited me to this party in the first place. Because it sure as hell wasn’t Prince Xander or Princess Caroline.
Where the party had felt exciting before, now it feels suffocating. Every time I accidentally look into someone’s face, I quickly look away. I feel out of place. I feel like everyone is watching me and they know I don’t belong. It hits me that half the people in this room must be otherkind and I have no idea which is which and whether it should matter.
I cast a quick glance around the room to find the area that the princess and Xander are in, specifically so I can avoid it. That single swift glance tells me that he is by her side again, drinking and laughing, his encounter with me seemingly already forgotten. I see her pull him onto the dancefloor. He goes willingly, followed by a group of their close friends. He is holding her like I had dreamt my Hunter was holding me. I look away.
I walk in the opposite direction, towards the bar. I don’t want to talk to anyone, but I have to be seen to mingle. All of the staff here belong to the princess. She might have told them to keep an eye on me. I don’t want to displease her again.
I busy myself by joining the throng of people queueing to order their own drinks, rather than plucking the ready-made cocktails off the trays of the waiters circling the room.
As I stand at the back of the queue, hoping not to be noticed, the redhead succubus girl comes up behind me. She links her arm with mine. Startled, I try to take my arm away. She holds on, and lets out a tinkle of laughter. It is a beautiful sound.
“We girls have to stick together,” she says.
I remember how Xander had said that succubae play games. This girl looks so playful that she isn’t even hiding it.
“So, my honey, you’re one of us, aren’t you?” she says.
I shrug, unwilling to lie, unable to tell the truth, and say, “What do you think?”
She looks amused. “Without a doubt.”
She strokes my hair, running her forefinger almost from my scalp right down to the very tip of one long lock. Though admiring, the gesture feels intrusive.
I shrug her hand off. “I’m not a succubus,” I tell her.
“My honey, you’re not fooling anyone.” She nods towards the crowd. “These mere mortals only wish they could look like us.”
She isn’t even being arrogant. She is gorgeous. Her clear skin has an undertone of pink and yet it seems to glow with an inner light. Her red hair is no mere ginger, it is a glorious flame color. On someone else it might almost be called orange, but on her it is stunning amber gold with hints of red, so rich and nuanced it could never have come out of a bottle.
“I’m Delilah,” she says. “You can call me Lila. And you are?”
“Diana,” I tell her, even though I hadn’t meant to. “I’m really not one of you.”
“You really are,” she insists. “You can’t fool me.”
“If I’m fooling you, I must be fooling myself.”
She blinks. And then she lets out a tinkle of laughter. “You’re serious,” she says incredulously.
When I don’t smile, her amused look fades away. There is a hint of sympathy in her eyes when she says, “You poor thing. You’re one of those.”
I stiffen. What does she mean? And yet I don’t want to ask for fear she will say something I don’t want to hear. I give her a mutinous look.
She strokes my hair as if I am a kitten, and she answers my unspoken question. “You’re not the only one of us that never knew what she was. You’re a little old to be finding out now. Most of us find out when we hit puberty.” She downs a shot the barman has rushed to give to her. “And most of us get into trouble for it.”
“What sort of trouble?” I ask warily.
“The sort that happens when a succubus doesn’t know how to control her Hunger.”
Oh. She still thinks I am a succubus. I almost let out a sigh of relief.
“I’ve heard of that,” I say. “Like when succubae are feeding off human energy when you’re… When they’re being, erm, intimate.” I blush.
She giggles. “Or maybe we’re being intimate because it feels good when we’re feeding.”
I try not to gape at her.
“We can feed when we’re not being intimate too,” she says pertly.
“And you think I’m one of you?”
“The ones who don’t know usually have some things in common.” She tilts her head thoughtfully. “Let me guess. You’re adopted or fostered?”
I nod grudgingly.
“Your whole life you’ve had weird dreams and felt incomplete?”
I nod again.
“Ever since you were a teen, men haven’t been able to keep their hands or their eyes off you?”
I shrug, this time feeling angry.
“You’re a succubus,” she declares.
She says it joyfully, and loudly enough for people nearby to look at us. She doesn’t seem embarrassed, unlike me. She blows kisses at them, until they look away.
“You’re a succubus?” says an incredulous voice behind us.
I turn to see Freddie standing there with a drink in each hand. He looks gob-smacked. I want to shake my head, and tell him no, but my head is still whirling. Everything she said about me was true. But I’m not a succubus. I can’t be.
Lila has put her hands on Freddie’s chest and is running them all the way down to his waist. “You are delicious,” she purrs. “Who are you?”
His eyes widen, and then a big soppy grin comes over his face. I roll my eyes, and he looks at me just in time to catch me do it. He immediately steps away from Lila. He thrusts one of the glasses at me.
“I went to get a drink for you, but then I couldn’t find you.” He says it almost accusingly.
“Orange juice?” I ask, taking it, and feeling pleased that he remembered.
“Mimosa,” he tells me.
At my confused look, Lila whispers in my ear, “Champagne and orange juice.”
I smile at her gratefully.
“Who is this lovely beast?” she asks me, trailing her slender finger in a wavy motion down Freddie’s arm.
I introduce them both. Soon the two of them are chatting and laughing, and I find myself relaxing and joining in. Freddie’s eyes are eagerly lapping me up. I had expected the possibility I am a succubus to put him off, but it seems to have made him even more enthusiastic. I am not sure how I feel about this. And yet it is good that Freddie is here. He makes my worries about Princess Caroline slip away. I am entertaining him, and he is a guest after all.
Feeling guilty for this, as if I am using Freddie, I lean against him and give him
a friendly cuddle, my arm going around his waist. Poor Freddie. It’s not his fault that I don’t quite find him attractive that way. He beams, and puts his arm around my waist. His hands strokes up my back all the way to my neck and then down again. I stiffen a little. He seems to have got the wrong idea.
“Well, what are you two waiting for?” Lila says. “Go and get busy!”
I give her a startled look.
She laughs out loud. “Busy on the dancefloor,” she says, pushing us both in that direction.
But I see Freddie giving me a look, and he and I both know that is not what she meant. He looks a little too pleased about it for my liking.
Psychic for Hire Series Box Set Page 9
