by 1
It had been Elise that started his love of life. She had fought so hard to keep hers that her struggle to nurture it in plant form as she recovered had won his admiration. She taught him how to plant, water and care for plants that could feed the body as well as the soul. The first carrot he had grown had filled him with a sense of pride. Elise had encouraged him to branch out and now, he had a full garden as well as orchard in the depths of the demon spaces of Realm.
With a low, tuneless hum, he gathered vegetables for a salad and fruit for Elhara’s morning meal.
He brought the food into the seldom-used kitchen and washed the dirt and sand from them. He had made a study of preparing what he had grown and Elise had sacrificed multiple days in sampling his skills. When she had stopped gagging after year ten, he knew he was on the right track, or she had developed a tolerance.
With his produce clean, he put it aside and prepared to open a small portal to engage in some petty theft. A ringing chime got his attention.
In his seventy-five years in this crystal cavern, he had never had an unanticipated visitor. Curious, he went through the main hall and opened the door. A dwarf warrior was standing with a basket under his arm.
“Are you Solar?”
Bemused, he nodded. “I am. Welcome to my home.”
The dwarf pushed past him and assessed the structure of the crystal. “Gwelvar sent me to check on your domicile. If it does not meet with his specifications, alterations will have to be made. Oh, and here is some food that will meet with Elhara’s needs.”
The basket was shoved at him and the dwarf was moving, knocking on walls and making notes. The smell of fresh bread wafted up and when he drew back the cloth, Solar saw eggs, meat and bottles of Elhara’s favourite soda.
“You are a relative then?”
“Gwelvar is my brother, Elhara my great niece. Good-hearted that girl. To see her married to a demon is going to be a strain.”
“And your name?”
“Gaffin. Lord Gaffin if you must. Elhara is my favourite niece, but don’t tell Asha. I can’t believe that that girl took up with a leprechaun.” He shook his head and kept wandering around, taking measurements and knocking on walls.
Solar quickly put the basket in the kitchen, the meat in the cold room and the bread next to the vegetables. Letting a strange dwarf run around his home was not in his plan for the day.
Lord Gaffin was standing in the doorway to the gardens and staring in amazement. “This is all yours?”
“Everyone needs a hobby, even demons.” He was relaxed but ready to act if Lord Gaffin took a step toward his seedlings.
The dwarf turned and looked up at him with deep sapphire eyes. “I do believe that Elhara has made a good choice in you.”
Startled by the approval, Solar bowed in acknowledgement of the compliment.
“Now, let me see the rest of the house, so I can give my brother my seal of approval. There are a few spots where I would like to see additional supports, but I am sure that it can be done without too much interruption in the flow of the space.”
Solar had no choice but to follow in the dwarf’s footsteps and to shush him when he peeked into the bedroom where Elhara was sleeping on a bed of silk and rose petals. The smile on her lips was visible from across the room and as quickly as he could, Solar got her uncle out of the room and down the hall.
By the time the exploration was complete, Solar was eager to get working on Elhara’s meal and he had little patience for her great uncle.
As the dwarf left with a promise to return the next day with a crystal specialist, Solar agreed to anything just so that he could return to his work. Elhara was starting to wake and he wanted to be there when she did.
Chapter Seven
Dreams of pleasure and roses had carried her away and gently set her down again. Feeling refreshed and more energized than she could remember, Elhara sat up and looked around her.
She was in a room made of crystal and silk. The crystal changed in shade from dark to light, giving the impression of a window.
Elhara sat up and stood next to the bed, smiling at the blue and crimson tangle of silk that was the bedding under a rainbow of rose petals. The rose petals were in her final memory, the only one she couldn’t recover. The pounding of her head the moment she tried was enough proof that it was an important thing, but she couldn’t quite capture it.
“It will all come back to you, the leprechauns are certain.” The demon in her dreams appeared to her out of the corner of her eye.
“Solar. I am so glad to see you.” She waited until he put the tray down and rushed into his arms. All of her memories of him were of them laughing together, enjoying each other and flirting outrageously. She could remember the moment that she first saw him, their first date and the horrible coffee he was served.
His arms came around her and he held her tight. “You remember?”
“All of our time together, except the last day. It escapes me, but I know that rose petals are somehow involved.” She kept her cheek pressed against his chest and smiled at the feel of muscle under her skin. His dark red colouring had once alarmed her, but now it was a beacon of heat and warmth for her.
“Do you want me to tell you?”
“Not quite yet. It is the last thing that I seem to be missing. I remember my first bike, my first pony ride and my first kiss. I remember our day at the ren faire and you fencing with that idiot in the monk’s costume before you had to fend off the stampede of buxom wenches but nothing of our last day together.”
His chuckle moved her. She could feel his joy spilling through her as he spoke. “And I had to fight my way back through a bevy of knights who were vying for your hand as well.”
She laughed. “They had no chance. I have made my choice.”
He held her back at arm’s length. “Have you? Still?”
She caressed his face. “Yes, of course. Not even a hex can break a Warder’s attachment when she finally makes one.”
“Would you care for something to eat?”
Elhara looked closely at his expression. There was intensity and eagerness there. “Of course.”
He showed her to a table and held her chair for her. The tray he had been holding when he came in contained a selection of her favourites all on one plate—a small piece of steak, bacon, a quarter of a waffle, toast, fruit salad, Caesar salad and a bottle of soda.
He took a seat across from her and smiled. “There is no surly server here to spark conversation, but I think we can make do.”
She laughed and took a bite of the steak, smiling as the juices ran down her throat.
He closed his eyes and tilted his head as if she had just caressed him.
Blushing, she worked her way through the tiny samplings of food and sighed triumphantly when she finished. “How much of that did you get?”
He had a dazed and aroused expression on his face. “I got every single wave of pleasure that the food gave to you and reflected as much of it back as I could, but it has been a few days since I have seen you and I was hungry.”
She sipped at her drink and asked him the question that all women wanted to know. “Why me?”
“What?”
“Why me and not one of those buxom women who would have been climbing all over you, or those lady lawyers or the surly server at the bistro on our first date? Why was it me?” She bit her lip and held her breath.
He smiled and took her hand, turning it in his own. “I have told you a bit about my people and the way that we get our nutrients. That we take from humans what they surrender in pleasure. Some demons take it in pain, some in apathy or cruelty, but my kind feed with pleasure.
“What I did not tell you was that to seduce our prey, we shift our shape to take on the image that our food source desires most.” He smiled at her. “The shift occurs during first contact and it changes the very way that we think.”
She blinked. “You didn’t change with me.”
He lifted her palm to his lips and
kissed it. “When you touch me, I turn to myself no matter the glamour that I am wearing or what you are thinking, I am always me. It was like this the moment that I touched you at that bar and every day that we have met since. You wanted me as I was and to one of my kind, that is the bond that will keep us together until we are both old and decrepit.”
She blushed as he worked a trail of kisses from her palm to her wrist and toward her elbow. “Is that your sole reason for pursuing me?”
“In you, I have found a woman who literally does not want me to change. In me, you have found a devoted servant who will provide you with anything you can think of and who will stand beside you in whatever you so choose.”
Elhara was losing track of the conversation as he sent curls of pleasure up her arm. There was something familiar about the sensation, but she had no idea why. He had certainly not kissed his way to her neck on the day that they were go-carting.
Her confusion must have gotten through to him. He pulled back reluctantly. “Would you care to see our home?”
“Of course and while you show me around, you can tell me how a demon would come to have such an individual home.” She took his arm and let him lead her through his house, her bare feet pattering on the peculiarly warm crystal.
The leprechauns had dressed her in a knee-length gown that wrapped and tied at her hip. It wasn’t her favourite colour, but it was currently all she had to wear.
“Now, why would an incubus have an underground palace made of crystal, hmm?” She twisted her lips in amusement. Seduction was the most likely motive, but she wanted to hear what he had to say.
“Centuries ago, the dark elves were prolific and filled the region with their underground palaces. As they died off, some of the palaces crumbled, but others remained, still and waiting for a new owner, new family to give life to it. This was one of them.
“The demons have shifted their territories over the years and this home is on the edge of their properties. As an unmated male, I had the right to request my own home and I did so, drawn by a vague idea of taking my conquests here to have my wicked way with them.”
She giggled. “I knew it.”
He laughed. “But that grand plan was never to come to fruition. I met a woman named Elise and she had been left near death by one of my relatives. He had drained her of all her emotions and energy and left her for dead. I gathered her up, gave her what energy I could and hid her here where no one could find her.
“When she was well again, she taught me to grow things, to nurture the tiny spark of life in plants like I had in her. I helped her return home and set up a greenhouse all her own. She thrived in her little rose cottage and she is still one of my dearest friends.”
An image came to Elhara of a small, elderly woman with bright eyes and an ornately carved cane serving her a cup of tea. Roses had created a halo around the woman. “You took me to meet her, didn’t you?”
He smiled. “Yes. She liked you and you her.”
“What else did she teach you?” Elhara looked up at him and he nodded for her to look forward.
In front of her was an endless corridor of green boxes, trees with fruit and an elaborate system of crystal troughs that provided water to the garden.
She took a few steps forward into the garden and saw a riot of roses in multiple colours. Images flashed and she walked to the roses, caressing them slowly while the memory of her last day with Solar rushed in on her.
The scent of roses and aroused woman came to her and she blushed as she realized that it was her scent and hers alone. The memory of his touch and how carefully he had caressed her overwhelmed her senses and she knelt in front of the roses, fallen petals on the ground softening her descent.
“Elhara, what is it?”
“Why does Elise grow flowers?” She knew the answer. Elise had told her the answer over tea.
He gathered her in his arms and whispered into her hair, “Elise grows roses, because they are beautiful but never let down their guard. The thorns have to be stripped from them and at that point, they are no longer roses.”
“She called me a rose.”
“She did. You remember?”
She turned in his arms and pressed her lips to his. “I do.”
Chapter Eight
One moment, they were on the floor of the greenhouse and the next they were on his bed, rose petals everywhere.
She ran her hands over him and enjoyed the echoed pleasure that her touch brought them both. He tugged at her clothing and the tie at the side gave way under his long fingers.
“No fair. Your clothes don’t come off so easily.” She ran her fingers along the edge of his trousers and he quickly rolled away from her, removing his boots and skinning out of his clothing in a few short moves before he rolled back and pressed his body along hers.
He rocked against her and she groaned at the peculiar feel of a man against her from neck to toe. Elhara bemoaned the lack of a good look at his naked body, but he seemed to read her thoughts.
“Save something for the wedding night.” His whisper against her neck preceded him trailing his mouth in a flurry of kisses down the length of her body and he spread her thighs with his hands, allowing him full access to her sex.
She remembered the heat of his tongue, the flick of his fingers, but when he pressed a thumb to her anus, she arched and whimpered.
He growled against her, moving aggressively into her until she screamed. He withdrew all digits rapidly and surged up her body, the pointed head of his cock pressing into her, parting her body’s initial resistance with no difficulty.
Her maidenhead didn’t even twinge as his thrust carried him to the hilt. She met his black eyes as he rocked into her with a steady beat, each movement carried her lust to him and his back to hers in an endless round.
Elhara felt a coil of tension inside her that wound tight until it snapped. She arched against him, wrapping her limbs around him to keep him inside her as her body shook and milked the thick heat within her.
As her orgasm faded, he shifted slightly and it started again. He kept her body in flux by steady shifts of his weight, slow plunges of his cock and light strokes of his hands.
She was limp and exhausted by the time her body was unable to respond to his skilled touches. He lay against her, sweat coating his skin, but he had not come and she opened her mouth to ask him why when he smiled and pressed a kiss to her lips.
He was sitting next to her on the floor of the greenhouse and her body was still humming with the memory of his touch.
She looked at him and narrowed her eyes, “What the hell was that?”
“We will have a wedding and a wedding night, but now is not the time, so this was a mind-only interaction. With my kind, we can do that at any time.” He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her palm.
“You cheated.” She punched him in the arm. “Just like you cheated at golf.”
“Well, there was a slight difference of technique, but the sentiment was the same.” He grinned. “Now, do you want to see the rest of my collection?”
She laughed. “I don’t know if my knees will hold me.”
He kept his smile on his lips while he got to his feet and lifted her in his arms. With an odd move, he sat her on the edge of the nearest planting table and then he turned his back toward her. “If I can’t have you on your back, you can ride mine.”
Laughing, she loosened her gown so that she could straddle his back and he supported her legs while she looped her arms around his neck. He carried her that way on a tour that showed her all the trees and plants she had seen when she broke her fast as well as dozens of flowers that were obviously lovely hybrids of standard breeds. “How do you cross pollinate without bees?”
He laughed. “I ask the plants to get in the mood. As with nature, sometimes I have to get my hands involved, but the pollen gets where it needs to be with a little effort from all parties.”
She was leaning over his right shoulder and seeing what he saw wit
h every new species. “This is amazing. Everything you have done here is amazing.”
He darkened. He opened his mouth, but a chime rang somewhere in the palace and he misted them both, reappearing at the door.
Elhara gasped and hung on in belated panic. “What was that?”
“The doorbell or the teleport?” He walked to the door with her on his back as if was the most normal thing to do.
She recognized the dwarf on the other side of the threshold the moment that the door opened. “Uncle Gaffin!”
She kicked her feet and Solar let her down so that she could rush forward to hug her great uncle.
Being held in the arms of the dwarf reminded her of her grandfather. Dwarves tended to carry the scent of earth and metals with them wherever they went.
“Ah, my little topaz. How are you feeling? I have heard that things have not been well with you.” He didn’t let up on his hug.
“Things are better now. He is truly the one for me, Uncle Gaffin. I know it the same way Gran knew Gramps when she saw him.” She leaned back and smiled at him from her kneeling posture. “Why have you come?”
Her uncle gave Solar a haughty look. “I was here earlier and I found a few structural defects in your home. I told your demon that I would find a specialist to make the necessary repairs, but you know…I am the specialist.”
Sitting in the doorway, she smiled at her demon. “He really is the best if there is any structural problem in the crystal palace.”
Solar scowled at the dwarf. “You could not have mentioned this earlier?”
“I wanted to make sure that my niece was in good hands.” Gaffin straightened. “She is dear to me and seeing her asleep, I was not sure that things would improve with time.”
Elhara got to her feet and walked to take Solar’s hand. “Things have improved and I am sure that they will continue to evolve apace. What news do you have from the Warder front?”
Gaffin entered the crystal home as if he owned it. He reached out and touched one of the supports. At his touch, it shifted colouration until it glowed blue for a moment and then returned to its glowing opalescence.