“You could just let me have a good time once in a while!”
“Why do you need to have a good time with someone else? I would give you anything you wanted.”
Her silence spoke volumes. I got the feeling they had this conversation a lot.
“Alistair! Please. I’m—I’m not ready.”
“Not ready. Right. I’ve seen you hang all over other men. Men who are in terrible taste. You would rather be with a guy who calls himself DJ Tonearm than me?” Another heavy pause. “I would tell my mother that I want to marry you. I would go through all the scandal of it just to give you a real place in the world.”
Yep. Could’ve called that one. Oh, sure. ‘A real place in the world’. As if she would have a better life as his wife. He would still have say over her life, still keep her wings banded. That old story, promising to ‘make you my wife’, was practically a cliche.
“Don’t touch me—Al—please.”
That’s it. I’ve heard enough.
I opened the door. “Hey…where’s the bathroom?” I asked loudly in my best ‘clueless’ voice.
“We have three bathrooms downstairs,” Alistair said, sweeping to his feet and immediately blocking me from entry. I looked past his arm.
“Girl, you okay? You took a hard fall on those stairs. Is he bothering you?” My eyes flicked to her, then to him, and he was glaring at me with those clear gray eyes like the surface of a lake in winter, his body leaning over me as his arms leaned against the door frame. He wasn’t as tall as Waylon or Ansel, not quite, but I wished I had my knives.
Ansel came up behind me now, dropping his hand on my head. “Hey, I think it’s a little more fun downstairs. We should give the man of the house his space, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Alistair said. “You should.”
Ansel’s jaw flexed back and forth as he looked over Alistair’s head and saw Mina on the bed, in her short shorts and roller skates and the sleeves of metal on her arms. She was just sort of flopped there, like she had no will to move.
“Okay, Lance. We will leave these two alone.” I gave him a look that was, frankly, pissed off.
I knew what he was thinking. If Alistair was planning on hurting her now, he’d already hurt her many times before. We couldn’t risk our lives to stop him.
“Kaylee,” Alistair said, “be my guest, but…the fact remains, I didn’t invite you.”
Damnit.
We would have to go.
Mina suddenly sprung to her feet with surprising speed, like someone just turned on her power button, and skated over to us, wiping some tears from her eyes. “Wait! Wait. I want to go downstairs too. Kaylee, is it? I won’t drink anymore, Alistair, I promise, but you know I love talking to new people and she’s adorable! Or—or—maybe we could all play video games or something!” She was clearly reaching for something to break the iron grip Alistair’s will had on her.
“Go have fun,” he told us, and he shut the door, keeping Mina inside with him.
“I want my knives,” I hissed under my breath.
Ansel looked at me solemnly. It was actually impressive how serious he could look through his fashion sense. But his glasses frames were tipped down and his eyes were a coppery brown color, his expression both grim and sympathetic. “I know, tabby girl. But we didn’t come in here with an army. We’re here just to see. And you’re the one who doesn’t want anything to do with it.”
I squirmed. “Ansel, I just…I’m no good. I can’t do all that. I mean, if I knew how to really use my power, Alistair ought to be dust.”
“It’s definitely complicated,” Ansel said. “And I don’t envy you a bit. But…all of this bothers you a whole lot.”
I lifted my hands to my head, feeling absolutely miserable the more I thought about it. I hated knowing that the world was full of girls like Mina, and that every day I lived just as my normal self, I might be betraying them all. Leaving them to that fate. But if I actually claimed the title of the Black Queen, I couldn’t even imagine what would happen to me. I just knew it wouldn’t be good.
“You can think about it,” Ansel said. “C’mon. Let’s take another drink and look at the garden. It looked very nice. You’re more comfortable outside, aren’t you?”
I nodded, but I was still very reluctant to pull myself away from the door. Mina and Alistair were very quiet now. I wondered why. Did she pass out? Did he put his hand over her mouth while he forced himself on her?
I knew Ansel was trying to protect me from myself. I couldn’t get too emotional over it. That was certainly a lesson I kept facing over and over.
The garden was larger than I expected for Manhattan, and so beautiful that it just annoyed me. “Horrible people shouldn’t be allowed to have beautiful gardens,” I muttered.
We weren’t alone either. Another couple was sitting by the fountain making out and a girl was dancing by herself to the music that we could still hear clearly. But between the music and the bubbling water, it felt private enough.
Ansel stopped in front of a Buddha statue and raised his eyebrows at it. I doubted the Merryweathers were Buddhist. He took off his sunglasses and stuck them in his pocket. We had grabbed fresh drinks on the way out, but I just tossed mine in the fountain.
“I want to go,” I said. “I investigated. That’s what you wanted, right?”
“That was never what we wanted.” His face was pretty, but also quite masculine, I noticed for the first time. He didn’t have a boyish face like Alistair. In fact, his bone structure was pretty sharp, his jaw strong, it was just that his mouth was enviable. Those lips would work on a man or a woman, I thought.
“Are you gay?” I asked.
“No.”
“Ah.” I made a face. “Sorry I asked…”
“I am attracted to strength,” Ansel said. “And I’m pretty flexible. In many ways.”
“So kinda gay, then.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Kinda. But probably not as gay as you were hoping. I think,” he added, “that’s a survival mechanism too. I was treated better when people thought I was gay.”
“By Waylon?”
“No. Before.”
I nodded slowly. “So you were…in service.”
“For a rich family. Sort of like this. But never like that.” He lifted his glass to the window above us. A light was on. And Mina was there.
Suddenly I wanted to cry. I just got very stiff instead. “I understand why you took me here. I know you wanted me to see her and want to help her, and not just go back to business as usual. And it was a very smart move. I definitely feel guilty now.”
“I don’t really want you to feel guilty,” Ansel said. He leaned a little closer. He was a little softer, like we were sharing secrets. And I didn’t hate it. At first I thought he was Waylon’s lackey. But he was pretty independent, and he had his own way of sucking me in. They make a good team, I thought, with aggravation.
I wonder what it would be like to kiss those lips…
Our lives could be short and brutal, so most people I knew took their pleasure wherever they could get it. I was the silly one, holding a candle for Ian, even as I loved him enough to let him go. My heart broke every time he sent me a text or a little gift in the mail. He liked me back. I knew it. But he had to make something of himself first. Would he come back for me? By then, we would be too far apart.
Anyway, I wasn’t about to date Ansel. I just thought he looked pretty kissable and pretty willing to kiss.
“I think I’m glad you’re not as gay as I hoped,” I said, with a little teasing smile.
He took it as the invitation it was. “Is that so?”
My eyes did a mating dance down the length of his body. I probably shouldn’t have had any of the cocktails.
“Before we go back, we can party for real,” he said, and he had a deliciously soft and intimate timbre to his voice when he wanted.
My mouth parted as his tongue curled into my mouth and I met him with a liquid caress between our locked l
ips that felt shockingly easy. I hadn’t kissed much. Previous attempts had not gone this well. His hands fit to the hips of my silky dress, crumpling the thin fabric around my skin.
It felt so good. I needed this, I thought. But I wish you were Ian. If I close my eyes…no, it’s no use. I know what Ian feels like…smells like…
I had to pull away.
“What’s wrong, tabby girl?” Ansel asked, but luckily I didn’t have to answer.
A woman barged in between us, pushing us apart in a broad gesture. “Are you Kaylee?”
Chapter Ten
Mina
Alistair always got so mad when I drank too much, and I knew drinking was bad, but if it was so bad, why were his parties swimming in it? And what was the point of being a good girl? There was no reward for that. I might as well extract every drop of fun out of my life that I could. My only advantage in the whole wide world was that Alistair seemed like he actually loved me and he let me get away with anything.
I mean, mostly.
He was definitely lit with cold fire right now. Alistair was always angry, but he almost never lost his temper. It was quite a feat.
“Why don’t you have any self-respect?” Alistair asked, pacing to the window and giving me a condescending glare. He had gorgeous dark eyelashes, ruined by the accusatory pale stare that made his personality just plain exhausting. “You are so beautiful, so talented. I have tried to do everything possible to elevate you. I can’t change the entire world, but I can give you all of myself.”
“I guess, but…”
“You ‘guess’? Absolutely no one in the company wants me to marry you, but I would do it anyway. I’ve wanted you always. I let you do whatever you want.”
“You smother me,” I said. “These parties are where I unwind.”
“I smother you? I’m fighting against the world for you every moment and you don’t even care. All I ask is that you start developing a level of dignity that will let you transcend your status.”
“Who cares if I transcend my status? It’s not like I get anything out of that.”
“You will get so many, many things out of that. You’ll be right at my side. Go to parties. Have sway over the house. Our children will have a good education. They’ll have a better life. They’ll show the world that shifters aren’t…Mina, are you even listening to me?”
“Yeah. Yep. You always talk about the same things though. Honestly, I just want to be a pet. It just seems a lot easier.”
He grabbed my wrists and pushed me down on the bed forcefully, pinning me under him. “No, you don’t,” he said. “I’m trying to give you the only opportunity I can give you in this whole damned world.”
A little thrill raced through me.
Alistair had never forced himself on me. Never. He always stopped right about here. Whenever I talked to another bird, they all had the same story. If you were the companion to a child, then once you hit adulthood, either you became his mistress or you would get traded off to someone else and then you were that guy’s mistress.
It was only a matter of time. I already had it in my head that I would lose my virginity to this guy I’d known since he was an ace student at Trine Academy, when he already had a stick up his ass. He wasn’t letting me go. He didn’t even have many other friends. He was obsessed with academics, his plans for how to run the family business, and…me, I guess?
I liked watching him try to control himself. I kept telling him no, and he listened, but oh, he hated it.
I couldn’t deny that he loved me, in an obsessive way. He shunned other women. Many years ago, his mother “rescued” me to be the companion to her son. And he certainly needed a companion. Alistair hardly had any friends; he was already like a mini-CEO even as a kid. I was already perfectly trained to play any game the young master wanted so he wouldn’t have to fight with me like he would with his peers, and I was also naturally likable and charming like most birds.
The last thing I ever wanted was to be a legitimate member of the Merryweather family and have to meet his coworkers or attempt to talk to a teacher at the fancy-ass school our kids would attend, where everyone looked at me like a pretty, pleasing bit of nonsense. The whole idea was so ugh I just wanted to shrivel up and die. But I could be a happy pet bird forever if I could just have fun. Have my ballet classes, my video games, my roller skates, my dressing up…
But I knew it would happen, eventually, so I was determined to see how far I could drag it out.
He kept my wrists pinned and his clear eyes stabbed at me for a long moment before there was a knock on the door.
“Alistair?”
He let me go in a flash. “Yes, what do you want?” he asked, opening the door for his mother.
Normally, you would think Alistair’s mother would hate me and want to keep me away from her son. She didn’t seem at all comfortable with having a pet in the first place, and then he wanted to marry me while I did want to flirt with DJ Tonearm, thank you very much; he was fine as hell and a super cool guy considering his real name was Chad, which is not one of the great names of the world.
Nope. Esther Merryweather always seemed super nice and encouraging about Alistair’s love for me. She was patient and sweet and posted affirmations on my mirror that said things like “I am worthy of life’s greatest rewards” and “No matter what I face in life, I will emerge stronger”.
They were the most annoying Post-It Notes known in the history of the medium.
Despite Esther’s support of her son, Alistair and his mom were always clashing. They were total opposites. Esther was a huge softie who struggled to assert herself running Merryweather Corp, and Alistair thrived on the dream of having power.
“I heard a ruckus,” she said. “Was someone causing trouble?”
“It was fine,” Alistair said, cool as could be. “Just a girl who drank a little too much. As in, my girl.”
“Mina! Please, you really should keep your wits about you at all times! I worry about you.”
“I’m not sure she’s ever had her wits about her,” Alistair said in a stage undertone as he dashed a comb through his hair and turned on his laptop. “But…that’s why I’m here.”
“What about your party?” Esther asked.
“Al doesn’t know how to party, if you haven’t noticed by now. We can be in the VIP Booth at Zest and he’s like, ‘but I have emails to answer’. Like anybody answers their emails.”
“I was down there partying earlier,” Alistair said.
On a side note, Esther Merryweather planned all of the parties for the cool young people so that Alistair would seem like he was cool, and then he tried to avoid the parties as much as possible.
Esther smiled indulgently at her son. “You could relax a little. Speaking from experience, when you manage a company, you have to give yourself at least twenty-four hours of weekend or you’ll burn out before you’re forty.”
“I told you that I partied already,” he said. Then he spun in his chair like he’d realized a good distraction. “The couple who was up here bothering Mina…I don’t think we know them. Kaylee…? And a guy I’m sure I’d remember if I’d seen him before. A bird, I think.”
“I don’t know a Kaylee,” Esther said. “Party crashers, hm?”
“They seemed very interested in Mina. Unusually so.”
A spark lit in Esther’s eyes like he’d spoken the magic words that would turn his mother into a bouncer. “I’ll take care of it,” she said.
Chapter Eleven
Frankie
At first, there was relief when I saw that we were being interrupted by a petite woman with the look of a doll who had grown up. I don’t know how old she was, clearly not a teenager, but her perfectly unblemished pale skin made it hard to tell. Her puffed-sleeve blouse and pencil skirt framed a waifish figure. I could probably kill her in sixty seconds if I was so inclined.
“Kaylee?” she said, her voice also high-pitched and girlish but edgier than I expected. “You are Kaylee, aren’
t you?”
“Yeah, I’m Kaylee! And I’m kinda busy right now! Who are you?”
“I’m Esther Merryweather. This is my house.”
“Your house is ace,” Ansel said.
“Thanks for letting us hang here,” I said. “I’m from California. This party is sick.” We both grinned like idiots. Well, hopefully like idiots and not just very nervous people.
“I want to see your ID,” Esther said.
“My ID? Sheesh. Okay, whatever.”
I was reassessing her now and getting a little nervous because I had definitely underestimated her. I was so much more used to dealing with hunters and the crime-ridden underground that I didn’t assume much of wealthy white ladies who owned mansions, but now I was. I fished through my purse frantically.
“It might be easier to get it out if you took your gloves off,” Esther said.
I paused for a fatal half-second as a little burst of adrenaline shot through me. “Nah, nah, I got it. Here.”
She looked at it. “California, you say? And this man is a pet?”
“Uh, yeah, he’s my bird. Lance.” As soon as I said it I wondered if it was appropriate to introduce someone of pet status to someone like her. Maybe I had already betrayed myself.
“What brings you to New York?”
“Oh, my dad. He’s like, some financial honcho, you know. I’m just looking for something to do. He so wanted me to come on this trip because my parents divorced and he feels like he never got to know me. I’m like, whatever, Dad, I’m always down for a trip to the Big Apple, right? I shopped my way through the East Village today.”
“That’s fun,” Esther said. “But I’d like to talk to your dad real quick to make sure you’re really twenty-one. I’m pretty strict about that in my house.”
What a lie. I’d seen what was going on in her house.
“Uh…” Ansel looked at me and I got it. Call Waylon. I took out the phone and his number was loaded in already. I pressed to dial. Esther watched me with infinite patience.
Black Queen: Stray: Fated Mates Paranormal Shifter Romance (Shifters Among Us Book 1) Page 7