Maybe not, but if he didn’t butt his nose in where it wasn’t welcome, life would be very dull.
Rendell paused at the portal back to the Queendom. “Another day, Cormac.”
He disappeared through the portal and Cormac dropped the silken curtain over it. Rendell’s silver tongue had transformed the loss on Eric’s island into an inspiring story about the victorious battle for the survival of the fey—stressing the Dawning as the ones to have failed in their understanding of Yangzei. He’d been persuasive enough that the queen had decided to promote him to chamberlain, then agreed to close off the borders to the Queendom.
Two hidden portals survived. The first was the one Rendell used to secretly communicate with Cormac. Rendell had seen Yangzei’s power, and Cormac didn’t blame him for wanting to keep an eye on things on this realm, even if it meant working with an official enemy of the state, something Cormac twitted him about on a regular basis.
Cormac also had a direct path to Yetting Forest, safely back in his control. The moment the battle was done, with Michaela still in his arms, he’d had wolves chase out Tismelda’s guards and he’d placed a glamour over his entire forest.
Not even Kiana had been able to do such a feat.
The queen had still tried to kill them. Isindle lived in a High Park tree close enough to render aid if needed, and Cormac had set the entire forest up with traps and a complex early warning system of trees, squirrels, and bats. The ubiquitous Toronto raccoons did their part as well, gossips that they were. He and Isindle had already dispatched five ihune Tismelda had sent after them. The sixth he’d sent back with a message and a warning.
Leave me alone or I take your throne.
Cormac had accompanied the ihune with a personal thundercloud that had followed the poor woman all the way home, then had lingered over the Lilac Court to pelt it with hail for a week. Tismelda had stopped after that, but Cormac was under no illusion that it would remain that way.
That was when he decided to triple the protection on Yetting Forest as well.
His sigil throbbed and he stood as Miaoling tapped politely at the door. He gave the tree a silent command to open it.
When his mate came in, it took him a moment to catch his breath. She was so gorgeous, inside and out. She gave him a quick kiss and unrolled a scroll of paper she held under her arm. “Look.”
“I am looking.” Her hair was loose down her back.
She waved the scroll. “At my plans.”
“Later.”
* * * *
When Cormac looked at her like that, all of Miaoling’s willpower disappeared. He took the plans gently from her hand and laid them on the table. “I’ve got something to show you.”
Outside, the air was warm, a sweet kiss on the skin. Cormac led her to a ribbon of a path that wound through the forest before stopping at a tree surrounded by a sea of intensely fragrant white flowers.
“Tuberoses,” she said, bending down. The breeze wafted up her favorite scent.
Cormac pulled her close. “Look up.”
She peered up, then gasped. A small staircase made of branches led to a high platform covered with a canopy of deep green leaves. A small bed and comfortable chairs sat in the center, surrounded by low bookcases and a desk.
“I thought you might want a place to come now that you’re in charge of the Pharos,” he said. “A workplace might as well be beautiful.”
The stairs were perfectly placed, and she scrambled up to the platform. The desk overlooked the distant valleys and the leaves puddled light onto the smooth floor.
“I love it.” She hadn’t realized how much she had craved such a space. Her fingers itched to write at the desk. Solitude and inspiration.
“Look in the desk drawer.”
Curious, she pulled it open to find a small wooden box. Inside was a long golden rope studded with gems, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires all glowing in the light. She pulled it out, stunned. “It’s beautiful.”
“Good.” He drew her close and she lifted her lips to his. All those centuries she had dreaded the intimacy of a kiss, but with Cormac she was learning an entire new language of love, desire, and hope. His kiss deepened and her sigil began to glow, warming her flesh.
Convenient that he’d placed a bed here, but that’s not what she wanted. She stood back and closed her eyes, calling for the dolma.
“What are you doing?” Cormac gaped as a thick branch lowered down until it hovered over the bed.
“I thought of something.” Cormac wasn’t the only one who could act on an impulse.
“Looks interesting.” He eyed the branch. “Tell me.”
Instead, she stepped over and pulled up the hem of his T-shirt. If she lived a thousand years, she would never tire of seeing his body and running her lips over his cool skin. Cormac stood obediently in front of her, letting her undress him. His eyes turned a bright leaf-green as she ran admiring hands over him, letting her fingers linger along the long muscles of his shoulders.
Cormac leaned down to capture her mouth with his. After it swished down her back, he ran his hands through it, tightening his grip to pull her head slightly back. Small kisses rained down on her throat and she gasped.
In seconds, her clothes had dropped to the floor and the soft breeze ran along her skin. Cormac groaned and stepped away, his gaze lingering on her before he took the jeweled chain and wrapped it around her waist, the cool metal causing her to shiver. “Perfect,” he said.
Michaela guided him to the wide branch, now covered with soft moss, and then smiled as he lay down.
Then she climbed on top.
Cormac’s entire body jerked as she rubbed against him, then lifted herself up to tease them both.
In a single motion, she buried him deep. The branch was low enough that she could ride him standing up, hands planted on his abdomen, which rippled as he moved his hips under her. She’d never been filled so deep or had so much control over her partner.
Cormac’s hands reached out to stroke and pinch her nipples as she moved up and down, going high up on her toes until he almost slipped out before slamming back down. The slippery friction made her even hotter and she bent forward, desperate to get even more of him in. Cormac moved in her rhythm, building her excitement even higher. She was so close. Time slowed.
From her sigil came a soft explosion that reverberated through her at the same time Cormac roared out, his hands gripping her shoulders as he jerked beneath her. It was enough to send her over the edge, her orgasm spreading out from her core to shake every part of her body.
Then she collapsed on Cormac’s chest, both of them slick with sweat.
* * * *
Cormac lay on the bed panting and exhausted, Miaoling nestled under his arm. They’d tried her branch idea out one more time, but forked and with him standing between her spread thighs, before attempting a vine swing that had broken and tumbled them onto the bed.
Still, the last one had potential. Beside him, his mate smiled. “I like this place.”
Like was an understatement. He was going to get hard every time he saw her damn tree. “I like you,” he said and kissed her hair.
She stretched, that slender body arching like a cat. “Good, because someone told me that mating’s a pretty serious thing.”
“Thank God.” Miaoling. How had he ever lived without her? He leaned down and captured her lips under his.
His mate. Forever.
Fascinated by the masquerada?
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MASKED POSSESSION
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Masked Possession
A MAN WHO CAN WEAR ANY FACE
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Caro Yeats doesn’t run from much. As a former investigative reporter now working PR for Toronto’s supernaturals, what she hasn’t seen mostly isn’t worth seeing. But the assignment to “rebrand” Eric Kelton’s out-of-control alter egos has her on edge from the start. Kelton is the Heirarch of the masquerada, beings able to change their face—their entire persona—on a whim. Eric’s charisma muddles her instincts. How can she trust a man who can become anybody?
A WOMAN WITHOUT A PAST
Eric has never met anyone like Caro, with her lightning wit and uncanny insight. But desirable as she is, he’d be a fool to let her near. Struggling to hide the sudden loss of his powers, Eric can’t risk becoming entangled with a woman who scorns her supernatural side and claims not to play politics. The enemies on her trail are strong, clever, and vicious. And when they force Eric and Caro together, the fallout could shatter far more than two hearts . . .
Chapter 1
Caro Yeats entered the lobby cursing her new stilettos. Sure, they were sexy as hell and made her legs look a mile long but they were terrible for, say, walking. It had been a mistake to wear them, but they’d sat at the back of her closet for weeks and she’d grabbed them in a moment of uncharacteristic boldness brought on by the perfect spring day.
Estelle, receptionist at Julien D’Aurant Public Relations, gave a low whistle as Caro strutted past her desk. The strutting wasn’t deliberate; it was impossible to walk any other way in the damn shoes. “What’s the occasion? Hot date tonight? It’s sure not for any of us here.”
“Not true,” Caro said. “I wore my mouthwatering baggy jeans and stained sweatshirt ensemble to impress you last week.”
Estelle winced. “Forgot about that. Anyway, you clean up nice. The boss will be impressed.”
Caro rolled her eyes. Julien D’Aurant was so stereotypically French that she suspected it had to be an act. “Why do you not dress plus comme une femme?” was a question she’d had to dodge on multiple occasions. Her usual wardrobe of jeans and ballet flats seemed to cause him real anguish.
“Speak of the devil,” Estelle muttered.
Julien strolled into the lobby, his crisp, pressed, blue button-down tucked into his perfectly creased gray dress pants. The caramel-brown belt was the exact shade of his casual summer loafers, which he naturally wore without socks. In his hand—Estelle had told Caro that he went for weekly manicures and she’d never been able to look at his buffed and shiny nails again—he held his phone, regarding it as warily as he would a snake coiled to strike.
He glanced up, then back at the phone. After a moment, his head flew up in such a comical double take that Estelle burst out laughing and Caro felt a bit insulted.
“Mon ange. This is what I mean by dressing like a woman.” He strode over and grasped Caro by the shoulders, giving her a lingering kiss on both cheeks before stepping back and looking her over in admiration. “Quelle différence. Dress like this every day. You must.” His expensive Hermès cologne wafted over her.
Although it was nice to have her efforts appreciated, Caro suddenly had the impression that her black pencil skirt was a little too tight and definitely too short. Time to deflect his attention. “Good morning, Julien. What were you frowning about?”
“Ah. Yes, that.” He waved the phone at her. “Emergency meeting in the boardroom in an hour. New client.”
“Who?” She didn’t particularly care, but knew enough to feign enthusiasm once in a while. Or at least interest.
The phone rang out with the opening bars of Nina Simone’s “I Put a Spell on You.” Instead of answering, Julien pointed a single, pampered finger at her before murmuring “Allô?” and breaking into rapid French.
Caro raised an eyebrow and looked over at Estelle, who shrugged and shook her short, black, Louise Brooks bob into place. Caro caught a quick glimpse of Estelle’s wickedly pointed fangs. How the vampire avoided slicing up her own lip was something Caro always wondered but was afraid to ask. Friendly as she was, Estelle could bring on the predator when she wanted. She called it her resting-death bitch face and Caro had seen it reduce grown men to inarticulate lumps.
When Caro first started working at JDPR, she’d been surprised that a vampire could be out during the day—Estelle was the first one she’d ever met. Estelle had laughed and said silly rumors made for amazing camouflage. “You can see us in mirrors and I put garlic in everything,” she had said. “We’re like humans. Except for being almost immortal and drinking blood. Minor differences.”
Now Estelle said, “It’s a masquerada. That’s all I know.”
“Masquerada?” A fine tension weighed down Caro’s shoulders—her usual reaction to masquerada, the powerful shapeshifters who took on human forms.
“We don’t usually get many but why are you complaining? You were the one who pulled the ghoul client last month. This should be a cakewalk.”
Caro could not deny the sewer-dwelling ghoul had been a nasty piece of work. The office had to be professionally cleaned after his visit to dispose of the residue he’d left behind, and the meeting room had both looked and smelled like a post-plague charnel house.
She shuddered and slowly teetered her way to her office, where she kicked off the shoes with a sigh of relief. Taking one poor foot in her hand, she gently rubbed the feeling back into her toes as she waited for her computer to boot up.
A light-brown ring showed where her coffee cup should be—and wasn’t. One of the misfortunes of working for a feyman was that items constantly went missing. Apparently minor theft was a fey thing. Last week Julien had pilfered her lipstick. When she first started, Caro had thought he did it as some sort of hazing prank, a test for how much the newbie could take. Now, many discussions with Estelle later, she realized that Julien often didn’t even notice his thieving.
Not for the first time, she wondered if she’d made the right decision by taking this job. The supernatural arcane world was one that she had avoided for years. Now she had deliberately placed herself in the direct heart of it.
Inside the drawer of her minimalist white acrylic desk lay evidence of her past life—a battered envelope containing a single Washington Post newspaper clipping, the pages still crisp. Lynn Butler’s first A1, over-the-fold story was an exclusive scoop tracing criminal kingpin Franz Iverson to a string of illegal activities that reached right to the Mayor’s Office and even to the Senate.
Every time she looked at it, she felt a thrill that was immediately followed by deep aches in the year-old scars that traced pale, jagged paths along her abdomen, chest and back. The doctor had said the pain might never completely subside. It was a miracle she wasn’t dead from the attack, he’d added. “I don’t understand how you didn’t bleed out from those wounds. You’re one lucky woman.”
She rubbed her stomach with a shaking hand. The police had never caught the men who left her for dead and she didn’t expect them to. There was no need. She knew exactly who had ordered the hit.
Not even incarceration had limited Franz Iverson’s reach, or his need for revenge.
Those knife thrusts had ended her career in journalism and her life as Lynn Butler. When she finally got enough courage to walk back into the Post’s newsroom after her recovery, she barely managed to smile through her colleagues’ standing ovation before limping to the bathroom and collapsing in a shaking heap. The thought of writing another story made her hands shake uncontrollably and she had known, suddenly and without a doubt, that the life she loved as a reporter was done. Over. That had been a year ago.
The sea of multi-colored project folders that sat in neat layers on her desk made a knot twist in her stomach. Caro twirled her chair away to cast her eyes over the gray accent wall in her office. A single print hung there, a huge close-up of Banksy’s iconic protestor throwing his bouquet. Trendy and ironic, exactly the image that Julien worked hard to maintain in an industry where perception was everything. Caro rubbe
d her eyes. The job at JDPR was as far away from investigative reporting as she could get while still staying, however peripherally, in media. She’d left Washington in a panic to create a new life for herself in Toronto at JDPR. She was lucky the city was big enough to hide under a new name and new job, but with neighborhoods that gave her the homey feel she craved. It had turned out as best it could, but sometimes she regretted the move from hack to flack so much she felt numb.
Quit this, she told herself sternly. Enough. You’re alive, you’re working. Just because you’re not a reporter, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad life. It’s different. You chose different, remember? It’s what you wanted. It’s what you needed.
JDPR was definitely not a typical PR agency. It represented only arcane clients. Humans who stumbled across it were given such an outlandish rate list and cold welcome from Estelle that they didn’t return. For the most part, the company dealt in the delicate art of keeping humans unaware of the fantastic beings who shared the world with them. Most arcana could either pass as human, pass as odd humans, or lived as isolated as possible from populated areas. Regardless, there were enough incidents to make for some interesting days. She was grateful for that busyness at least.
Caro tapped her fingers on the table. Julien had made it clear that she had gotten the job at JDPR because she was part masquerada, although a latent and an extraordinarily and determinedly ignorant one at that. Before her death, her mother had tried to train Caro in the basics of taking on a masque, but Caro had stubbornly opposed any arcane education. Nor was there anybody else to learn from, even if she changed her mind. Besides her mother, she’d never knowingly met another masquerada and she often wondered if this avoidance was as deliberate on their side as it was on hers. Her mother had made it crystal clear that being a half-blood was nothing to be proud about, so she wasn’t surprised if none of them wanted to make themselves known to a pariah. One of the things Caro did know about masquerada culture was that it was unusually hierarchical and status-driven, like some time-traveling medieval court.
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