He grimaced and shook his head while I reached for one of the spare towels and wrapped it around me tightly. “You have a way of making your actions known,” he replied.
Uh oh, I thought my cheeks going up in flames. “You didn’t… I mean you and Mom… please tell me you didn’t sense us,” I whispered, wanting to bury myself under the sand when he raised an eyebrow at me and nodded.
“It was… enlightening. I wasn’t aware that was possible. But then I have never been into sharing. I believe you shocked your Mother. You seem to lack all sense of proprietorship,” he added.
I groaned but managed to look him in the chin. It was about as high as I could force my gaze at the moment. “You’re dead wrong on that. But apparently it’s a one way street. I need to share, but my men are under no delusions of what will occur if they do.”
“Ah,” he said, then his lips twitched upwards. “Banishment?”
“Impotency, a sudden decrease in… reproductive organ size. You know, pretty much the standard stuff.”
“Hmmm,” he replied, not sure if he should take me serious or not.
I couldn’t help smiling at his look. “So, where’s Mom?” I asked as I seated myself on the sand near him.
His grimace slid to a frown. “She’s discussing things with Mi. They will likely be at it for hours,” he grumbled. “So I thought it might be the right time for us to talk. Your... ah… friends just left.”
“Oh,” I said and rested my cheek on my upraised knees. I was tired from my swim, having pushed myself past any reasonable limit about a mile and a half ago. When I didn’t say anything else he leaned back on his elbows and crossed his ankles, his light eyes searching my face.
“You are quite beautiful child. You’re Mother has done a fine job,” he told me.
I couldn’t help smiling. “You should include Mi in that compliment. She did more than her own fair share.”
He nodded but didn’t add anything to the comment.
“So what’s the deal with you and Mom?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she’s already had one child and is going to have four more. Did you think you might marry her and make the lot of us legitimate?” I asked. I knew it was rather rude of me, but seeing as how she was still engaged to Amras, I had a vested interest for several reasons.
“Amras, Amras… I am sick to death of that name,” he muttered. “What were you thinking child?”
I raised my head and looked at him. “Well sorry, Dad, I didn’t realize when she handed him over to me that it was going to be a problem. It’s not like the two of them ever had sex or anything!” I replied with a huff.
His silver eyes widened then narrowed abruptly. “And how would you know that?” he nearly growled at me.
I did my own eye widening and nearly snapped at him. “I may have been born at night Dad, but it wasn’t last night! Do you honestly think I wouldn’t have asked? Or slept with him if he and Mom… no way, that’s just… sick! I think I’m offended,” I replied, my hair standing up on my arms. “Thanks a lot. It’s true I’m new at this but I don’t need sex that badly.”
He looked like he might have swallowed something sour and finally nodded. Cripes, you’d think that would have made him happy! “It does actually,” he sighed, his grimace being replaced by something less unhappy. “Do you honestly think she gave him to you to sleep with?” he asked.
I blushed, I couldn’t help it.
His eyebrows shot up and he stared at me intently. “I’m almost afraid to ask what that was about,” he muttered, more to himself than me.
I swallowed and shrugged my shoulders. “I think she didn’t think of him as a man. I think she doesn’t think much of any man. Except you, and if I hadn’t seen you two together earlier...,” and I actually shuddered. “I might have questioned even that.”
He seemed surprised by my comments and dropped his eyes to the sand while he thought them over. “So she hasn’t…,” I think he actually blushed and my eyebrows shot up to my hairline.
“Wow!” I whispered in shock. “No way, in fact up until about four hours ago I was pretty certain my birth was an Immaculate Conception,” I assured him.
He scoffed and gave me a look. “Not likely,” he growled. “And you’re illegitimate not from any lack of my asking her to marry me. But now…,” he replied with a sly smile. “I only stayed away so long because I thought… well I thought she would have returned to the Sidhe and married Amras as her Mother wanted.”
“Wait a minute!” I told him, sitting up straight in my towel and glaring at him. “You’re telling me that you’ve been off doing whatever because you thought the woman you loved was going to eventually get around to marrying someone she clearly didn’t love and whom she’s kept on a leash for several hundred years? Are you aware he was celibate all that time?” I demanded harshly. “I’d like to tear her hair out myself!”
“You’ll do no such thing!” he told me sharply and I actually jumped at his tone.
“Fine, but you better do something about her. She’s worse than a freaking Siren!”
“Tell me about it,” he grumped.
“Well if having quadruplets doesn’t do the trick, come back and see me when she’s recovered from giving birth. I’m sure we could arrange sextuplets next time!”
“What?” he replied, his voice sounding shocked.
I looked up and quickly rearranged my features to bland. “Ah nothing Dad, just talking to myself.”
“Yes, you do that a lot,” he replied more calmly.
“So where have you been? Obviously it’s someplace where they don’t have mail delivery or I might have gotten a Christmas card; even a postcard would have been nice,” I told him with a touch of sarcasm in my voice.
“It’s obvious you get your wit and charm from Mi and not your Mother,” he complained.
I shrugged and reminded him, “Well I’m still young. I could grow out of it.” He actually laughed at that and then shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter where I’ve been,” he told me. “And it wasn’t like we were never in contact.”
“Yeah, well catching me as I fall night, after night, after night, seems just a little redundant,” I told him, tongue in cheek. “It might have been nice to actually chat once in a while.”
“I would have loved to, Lexi, but it was your dreams that reached me. Not the other way around.”
“Huh?” I demanded, surprised by his comment.
“You pulled me into your dreams not the other way around.”
“Oh,” I breathed, then lifted my hand to my head and rubbed my temple. “Sorry about that.” I thought about it for a moment and asked, “What about this morning?”
He sighed and crossed his ankles again so the other one was on top. “I’ve been working on it. I thought with your Dragonsward in place, you might be able to hear me. But with your Drakes in the room I knew I hadn’t much time.”
Dragonsward, what in the world was that? My shield? And he could sense Jace and Gareth with me?
“Yes, your shield, as you call it. It is quite rare and I am amazed that you were able to develop one at such a young age,” he nodded and agreed. “The Drakes are quite powerful. I am pleased with your selection,” he added with a smile. “It is strange though to have two so…willing to share,” he hesitated, his eyes concerned, a question in them. “Did they say why they would do such a thing?”
I smiled and shook my head. “I guess I’m just a lucky girl. It has been like this since they first discovered… I didn’t have…ah, dangly parts. It also didn’t hurt that you mixed a mean cocktail. I think they especially enjoy the bits and pieces you got from Knight.”
“What are dangly parts? And I’m not certain what you mean by your other comments?” he told me, a confused look on his face.
I waved my hand and said, “Dangly parts… the extra appendages all of the female Dragons seem to have.”
“I see,” he winced then nodded and looked
at me, clearly waiting for the rest of my explanation.
“The bits and pieces… you know when you stirred me up in the beaker before sticking me in Mom.”
He looked at me like I’d grown a third set or maybe fourth set of horns. I think he might have been too surprised to say anything because his jaw dropped open and his eyes widened. “What?” he demanded.
“It’s okay Dad, I don’t mind that you threw in the kitchen sink when you were building my DNA. Since I started having sex it’s been one new talent after another. The guys all think it’s amusing. Heck, Kit says it keeps things interesting. I have to say though, some of the things I can do are just a wee bit alarming. I don’t know what Knight did but my Lust Demon parts are particularly impressive.”
“Oh my God!” he groaned. “Lexi, where did you ever get the idea you were… what did you say? Created in a beaker?” he demanded. “Or that I built your DNA?”
“Well, from Mom or maybe Mi. Are you saying I wasn’t?” I couldn’t believe this. “Are you sure?”
“Am I sure….?” he laughed, his voice sounding so not funny. “Lexi, your Mother and I had sex! She was a Princess and engaged. I was in love with her from the moment I first laid eyes on her but she adamantly refused me for more than two decades! After nearly a quarter of a century of me trying to seduce her, she finally gave in and….and you were conceived! I didn’t even know she was pregnant with you until after the lab was destroyed and my partners killed! By then she’d gone into hiding. My God, Lexi, she is the Royal Princess of Faerie and she was having a Drake’s child!”
“So, Knight? He must have had something to do with me. Dad, I’ve been to Hell! I’m part Demon, part Lust Demon. Ask Kit if you don’t believe me. And what of the others you created? What happened with them? Are they my brothers or… or what?” I cried, as my whole world turned topsy turvy. No wonder Mom would never speak of Dad! How could she have let me go on thinking that I’d been a test tube baby! I was so going to yell at her the next time I saw her.
He groaned and ran his hand over his face, then flopped back on the towel as if in pain. “Knight was my familiar. I conjured him,” he replied, his voice sounding slightly shell shocked. “The deal was… the first female we created was to be given over to him and in exchange he would protect her and be freed from Hell permanently. I choose him because I knew you would be safe with him. He… he preferred men. But all the females turned to males and we stopped trying. We had gone back to the basics and were attempting to discover the enzyme or chromosome that was causing the shift to male. I never imagined. Oh God, Lust Demon! And your Demon is a Lust Demon… he must have bartered you away.” His face took on a horrified expression and he swallowed, then added more softly, “Your Demon… he must care a great deal for you. Earlier he said he’d watched over you all your life, kept men away from you?”
“He said I wouldn’t have enjoyed Knight. That he’d earned me. And once he said that he wondered who the donor had been. I assumed he meant the Lust Demon donor,” I told him, watching as he closed his eyes and pressed the palms of his hands into them.
“As you said, Knight must have done something to you in your Mother’s womb. But I swear to you, Lexi, I did not know.”
“So maybe all these interesting things I can do are merely a side affect of being half Elf and half Dragon?”
He nodded and pushed up to one elbow. “With a twist of Lust Demon and who knows what else. Knight had access to everything in the lab and more. We had samples of nearly every non-human species. My God, your powers could be…” And he trailed off with a look I’d seen on Mom’s face when pondering a medical conundrum.
“Yeah, did I mention they seem to be getting stronger each time I… have intercourse?” That seemed to surprise him even more and I was thinking he might start muttering to himself any moment. That’s what Mom usually did. “So what of the others, the ten Drakes? What are they exactly?”
“We found women, fey women, interested in having children. They were inseminated. My partners were their fathers. I couldn’t do it, not with loving your Mother and desperate to have her. She would never have forgiven me.” Well that made sense.
“Marcus told me his mother is Belinda. She is not a woman, she is a Dragon. A seriously deranged Dragon that I could have killed last night had I not shown mercy for Marcus’ sake,” I warned him, my words a challenge and a demand for answers.
“Belinda was… one of my partners knew her before she crossed over. I don’t know how she found us, but she did and she begged us for our help. Marcus is only a few years older than you; he was our last attempt before we stopped trying. We thought if we could place the egg inside her that maybe it wouldn’t turn.”
“But Gareth and Jace told me that none of the females that crossed over are fertile. So how could she be his mother?”
“She isn’t. She’s only his surrogate. He is as much fey as you! As all of them are. Understand these were women that wanted very much to have children. It is no secret that no children have been born to the Sidhe in a very long time, none except you and those few others. But the women who came to us over the years, all of them were originally from the Seelie Court. They simply chose to live outside the Sidhe amongst the humans for various reasons. Likely it was that or banishment to the Unseelie Court. And once there, you cannot come back. So they fled the Sidhe and eventually made their way to us and we helped each other. They didn’t say and we never asked. I do know though, that your Mother is the only one of royal blood. That she conceived is a miracle,” he finished.
A miracle? More like a cruel joke, given that she was still engaged to a full blooded Lord of the Seelie Faerie and found herself suddenly pregnant from her one fall from grace, with a Dragon no less.
“I won’t apologize for her,” he warned me. “She was wrong and so was I. I should not have given up on her so easily. I should have realized the effect the shame would have on her and tracked her down. But I thought I had already ruined her life and she was still engaged…”
I thought about it for a moment and realized I was a miracle. And why was I a miracle? I mulled it over in my mind going over everything we’d discussed. “I’m very unique. And Kit is here, he’s a full blooded Lust Demon and… my sisters…” I trailed off, golden eyes meeting silver. “The strength and number of my abilities seem to be linked through sex. And Kit is very good to me. I’m sure we could find each of them their own guardians. He did keep men away from me until just last week. He claims that none of them up until then… were worthy.”
My Father pushed himself into a sitting position and thought about it for a moment. “I will discuss this with your Mother.”
“And Dad, one last thing?” I asked as he pushed himself to his feet. “I suppose this means that no one is actually after me to… ah… slice me into sushi and study my bioengineered DNA?”
His eyes looked tormented by my comment and he shook his head. “By God, what was she thinking!” he muttered then turned and strode purposefully toward the door.
On a good note, it seemed no one was coming in their lab coat to cart me away anytime soon. And when I got over being happy about that, I might just be so pissed at having spent my entire life as Plain Jane that my head exploded. I couldn’t stop to think about that at the moment though. I wanted to savor the thought that Mom was about to get an earful from Dad. Damn her! I just wished I was there to hear it.
Chapter 9
Someone was stroking me, someone who was thinking lusty thoughts while enjoying the feel of my hair sliding through his fingers. The same someone who wanted very much to roll me over, peel back my towel then make love with me right there on the sand. And when he leaned over me and whispered something against my skin, something too low to hear, I moaned and tried to open my eyes. Cool fingers brushed my ear, sliding over the tip and down the other side moving on to my cheek, then across my lips. I inhaled the scent of him, an unfamiliar mixture of something wild with a very faint hint of cloves, and shuddered.
My eyes popped open in horror and the dream was broken. I hissed and rolled to my knees grateful when my towel came with me. My eyes swept the room and I realized I was alone and must have fallen asleep. Spot was missing, probably sleeping on his bed at the other end of the cavern. That was odd. He usually kept me company when I napped. There was nothing or no one else in the chamber with me. I glanced around again and headed to the door, a strange sense of unease filling me.
In my bath, I filled the tub with hot water and poured some of the lilac scented bubbles in with me. Sinking into the water I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, realizing I wasn’t alone in the room. Someone, or something, was there with me. I slipped lower into the water and did something I hoped I wouldn’t regret. I reached into my mind and cracked open my red door and breathed desire out of me, spreading it about like a silken cloak across the room.
The tension around me ratcheted up a few notches, so I smiled and cracked the door open just a bit farther. This time it was less of a breath and more of a breeze that I sent skittering into the corners so that it rebounded off the walls.
“I know you’re there, Alan,” I told him calmly. “If Kit finds you in here you’ll wish you’d never met me.”
He appeared sitting on the edge of the tub, wearing a tailored black silk shirt and crisp black slacks. His eyes were dark and very intense, his dusky skin flushed. He dipped his fingers in the water and swirled his hand around, sending waves across the tub that shifted the bubbles and played peek-a-boo with the water beneath.
“And what have I to fear from your little familiar?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as his eyes caressed my face.
I smiled and looked back at him, tilting my head to the side. “Ever visited Hell?” I asked softly.
“About two minutes ago, when you tempted me.”
“Hmmm,” I replied, letting that comment go. “Thank you for the flowers by the way. You really shouldn’t have.”
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