Tristan’s face softened and he opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment, the waiter and several assistants arrived with their drinks and a steaming assortment of finger foods. Angelica cursed their timing. Tris drew her into a conversation about the beverage and appetizers he’d chosen to tempt her. No matter how delicious, and they were, she’d little desire to discuss what size of monopod made the best nubibus cochlea. She wanted to know what he’d started to say.
Tristan placed his glass on the table and ran a hunk of panis through the butyrum sauce that surrounded the snails. He paused before putting it in his mouth. “Your manner of greeting Ramsey DeKieran was unorthodox to say the least, and you refer to him as Dominus. What’s the story behind that?” Tris popped the panis into his mouth and settled back in his chair. A faint smile lingered around his mouth. His eyes ensnared hers, daring her to evade his question. Angelica wished to return to the safe discussion of snails.
“Perhaps that is a question to put to Lord DeKieran?” she offered.
Tris shook his head, a soft “No” on his lips. “When did you meet Ramsey DeKieran? Why did you drop to your knees and call him Dominus?”
She raised her eyes to scan the room, hoping to see the waiter coming with their main course. She would never be so lucky. The intimate atmosphere of couples in deep conversation, dim lighting, soft music, seemed to envelop the two of them in a private bubble. With a soft sigh, she turned back to Tristan, but her gaze and her hands remained in her lap. “The same entity who hunts me, now, runs a galactic cartel that deals in human trafficking. They hijacked a hospital ship I was on and transported me to Vxloncia.” At his quiet exclamation she looked up.
“Vxloncia? That pestilent hell-hole?” Tristan leaned forward and his hand crept across the table toward her. “You were one of those women experimented on, weren’t you?” Warm concern shone from his eyes. At her silent nod, Angelica thought he would pull her into his arms across the table, but then he seemed to recall where they were. He sat back, his face an impassive mask once more.
“Yes… well… I spent three years there as a sex slave. I came into Lord DeKieran’s care while he and Steffania were there to locate and return a missing Verdantian noblewoman. Ramsey DeKieran saved me. I suppose I dropped to my knees because I have always considered him my Dominus. It is a sign of respect.”
“It also reveals volumes about your sexual orientation, as did your slip the other night when you asked permission to leave. Are you a submissive by nature—or is this a result of—whatever?”
She glared at him. “This is who I am.”
“Good.” His mouth tipped in a crooked half-smile. “Did Mage top you?”
Discomposed, Angelica glanced away. “I… I… I don’t have to answer that.”
His chuckle was low and intimate. “I can always ask Magellan. I’ll find out sooner or later.” She allowed her discomfort to show and Tris lowered his voice further still and a note of hesitancy crept in. “I’m feeling my way with Mage. I’ve made some missteps that I don’t care to repeat. I was hoping you’d share some personal insight. It would help to know if he’s a strong dominant.”
She sat up straight. “Oh.” Her eyes widened as a thought occurred to her. “Oh! You and he have never… ah, haven’t…”
Tris shook his head. A disarming smile twisted his lips. “No. We haven’t. I’ll ask again. Did Mage top you?”
“Yes.” Her answer was a mere shred of sound. “But I don’t get the same, ah, vibe, from him that I get from you.”
Tristan cocked his head and his interest sharpened. He opened his mouth to speak, but happily, the arrival of more food spared her. Unhappily, after the meal was distributed and she began to lift a tempting bit of savory meat to her lips, Tris said, “For the sake of comparison, what sort of vibe do you get from me?”
She filled her mouth, placed her fork on her plate delicately, put her hands in her lap and chewed until her meat turned to tasteless paste. She swallowed, raised her goblet and took a small sip. Tristan relaxed back in his chair and waited her out, seemingly more interested in her response than in eating. She raised her chin, stiffened her spine and held his gaze. “You put me in mind of Dominus DeKieran. But a submissive always has the right to choose her Dom. I don’t drop to my knees for every sexual dominant that crosses my path.”
Tris grunted. “I certainly hope not. The question remains—will you for me?”
She closed her eyes and tensed. “I haven’t decided.” When she cracked them open again, she saw the opposite of what she’d been expecting.
Tristan aimed an unguarded, charming smile at her and murmured, “Well, don’t lose sleep over it. You’ll either love me or hate me. Your decision will be effortless.”
The hand that raised her drink to her lips shook. She doubted she’d hate him.
***
As Angelica strolled home beside the physically intimidating, masculine presence of her dinner companion, she acknowledged, if only to herself, that when Tristan DeHelios set out to be charming, he was a force of nature. She was no more able to withstand his allure than water could resist flowing downhill.
Fully dark, the velvet night created an atmosphere of privacy between her and Tristan that the empty streets lined with flowering window boxes and old-fashioned light poles did nothing to disturb. She found herself watching his mouth as he spoke, wondering what those full lips would feel like pressed against intimate places on her skin. A part of her, a physical desireshe’d been resisting, wished he would take her in his arms and kiss her. But from the start of their “date,”he’d never attempted to touch her. He simply sauntered along next to her, his hands in his pockets, his steps carefully measured to match herstride. Professional. A gentleman. She jeered at herself for being so vulnerable to a handsome face and commanding sexual presence. There must be more to him than his fine appearance, sexual aura and knowledge of monopods.
The display lighting in the window of the designer dress shop they were passing flickered and then the shop next to it did the same. A subtle pressure built within Angelica’s head, as if something inside pressed outward seeking release. She flashed back immediately to Talleo IV and one of the attacks on her life. A horrendous realization paralyzed her. “They’re on Verdantia.” She clutched at Tristan’s arm and he stopped. “They’re here. Oh, God, no!”
The street lights on both sides of the street popped softly one by one as the entire block, at least as much of it as she could see, went black. The painful pressure in her skull grew and clear thought required effort. Tris felt it also. He growled and shook his head as if to shake off the building weight that might crush them.
“By Her light… who?”
“Tristan! Help!” she gasped.
“What—is—it?” He ground the words through clenched teeth.
She wanted to drop and curl into a fetal position from fear and agony. “I think… a mummer… a null,” she sobbed. “A creature that dampens energy. They are murderers, assassins.” She moaned at the agony in her skull. “Your gun—useless. Always two of them. Oh!” she exclaimed softly and pressed her palms to her temples. Her vision grayed. There was no ambiguity in her mind. Harsh reality cut through all her pain. If Tris couldn’t protect her, she was dead.
Tris shoved her behind him into an alcove created by a shop door. He pulled his Razar 88K from his shoulder holster and faced outward, using his body to shield her completely. “Stay behind me,” he snapped.
“Gun’s useless.” She groaned at the pain in her skull.
Tristan barked a vulgar curse. His hips jerked backward and slammed her into the door behind her. He struck out in an arc as though he held a blade, though she’d never seen him draw one. She ground the heels of her hands against her temples and fought to remain conscious as she slid to a sitting position, her back braced against the door panel. Through the vee in Tristan’s legs, she watched a menacing figure undulate before him. The unnatural contortions of the mummer’s body multiplied her fear
. No human body bent at those angles. A sibilant threat hissed through thin lips in what she supposed was its face, though a hood and black robes shrouded the being. She sobbed fearfully as Tristan stepped away from her and met the foul creature in a flurry of advances and withdrawals that appeared like some choreographed dance of death done in triple time. The two fighters closed as if embracing. A banshee wail split the night and her skull. Angelica surrendered consciousness to the vicious agony inside her head.
***
Excruciating pulses at her temples beat in time with her heart. Conscious thought flashed back brutally. Her eyes flew open unseeing, and she jerked up with a scream to defend herself. Iron-hard muscles banded her to a broad chest and Tristan’s voice soothed her.
“Shh… you’re safe. I have you.” He sheltered her in his lap as he sat propped against the alcove door. His hands held her firmly to him until she stilled.
“I’m all right. You can let me go now.”
Tristan slipped an arm under her knees, pulled his legs underneath him and stood in an effortless show of strength. Once upright, he released her legs and allowed her to stand. His arm stayed around her shoulders until she nodded. Angelica craned her neck to scan the area around them, once more illuminated by display windows and streetlamps. Then she saw the black mound sprawled on the sidewalk in a spreading pool of dark viscous fluid. She ducked her head into his chest and clutched at his shirt with both hands. “Is it dead?”
“Yes. Tell me what I just killed. It had a fair degree of skill with a blade, but it wasn’t human.”
Angelica shuddered. “A mummer is an unholy creature with the ability to absorb energy. They are assassins and murderers. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the universe depends on technological weaponry for personal defense. Take away that weaponry and they are easy victims for the mummers.”
“For once I’m glad I brought knives to a gunfight.” Suppressed humor colored Tristan’s voice.
What did it take to faze this man? Evidently a creature the rest of the galaxy considered a nightmare wouldn’t do it. “Did you see its dependent? Another being that cloaks the mummer? They always travel in pairs.”
“No. Something scurried away in the night. I couldn’t tell what it was.”
The cloth she clutched was sticky and damp. With a soft cry, she pushed away from his body. Red stained her hands. She pressed her bloody palms against him frantically. “You are bleeding. Where are you hurt? Tristan!”
“Nothing fatal, I assure you. It got a good swipe at me in the beginning, but it’s just a scratch.”
Angelica did everything but rip his shirt off him, beginning with the rent in the fabric that ran diagonally from his collarbone to his navel. She stood back, horrified at the foot-long, gaping slash marring his body of honed muscle. She raised her face to him, dismayed. “This laceration needs to be disinfected and sealed immediately. Much deeper and blood would not be the only thing leaking out. I must get you to the medcenter. Should we notify the port police?” The idiotic man blinked at her as if she babbled in a foreign tongue.
“I’d just as soon not deal with the port police right now. I’ll be long enough explaining the events to Lt. Colonel DeKieran. She’ll notify the port police. I’ll take you to the medcenter, though. I need something for my head.” Tristan grimaced. “My brains are trying to burst out of my left eye. All I see are jagged lines of pulsing white.”
Angelica gratefully took refuge in what she knew—medicine. The comfort of having concrete knowledge readily available allowed her to conquer the part of her that wanted to dissolve into babbling hysteria. “The visual display is due to pressure on your optic nerve.” Her head felt almost as bad, but her vision remained normal. “It’s a side effect of whatever a mummer does to absorb power. The blood vessels in your brain dilate. Your vision will return to normal as soon as I administer a vasoconstrictor. How did you kill that thing with a debilitating headache and impaired vision? I passed out.”
He shrugged. “I’m your bodyguard. I couldn’t let you be killed. Besides, it confuses Hel when I don’t fuck up. I enjoy confusing him.”Tristan winked. That wink contained only a fraction of his prior machismo, and that told her more than words how badlyhis head bothered him.“I’m contacting Lt. Colonel DeKieran to ask that the exterior guard be increased for the rest of the evening. The other half of that pair that attacked you tonight is still in the city somewhere.”
She and Tristan consumed the better part of two hours at the medcenter while Angelica administered an injection of a potent vasoconstrictor and analgesic to both herself and to Tris and then carefully disinfected and sealed the wide gash on his abdomen. “There. I treated you with a healing accelerant. You should be fine in a day or two.”
Tristan sat up carefully. “Thanks, Doc. If that fails, I’ll go see my sister-in-law. She’ll wave her magick wand over me and I’ll be good as new.”
Angelica looked at him sideways as she cleaned her hands and put the used instruments in a sterilization unit. “Are you serious? Your people have magick wands?”
Tristan laughed. “Our Great Mother, Verdantia, endows certain of us with extraordinary abilities. My sister-in-law is a miraculous healer—quite literally. I believe in magick when it comes to Adonia. But, no, she doesn’t have a magick wand.” He grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows. “I do. Would you like to see it?”
Angelica rolled her eyes. “Now I know you’ll be fine.” Tristan simply chuckled.
When they got to her apartment entrance Tris halted and lifted her hand. He placed a gentle kiss on the back of it. “Will you be all right by yourself? I’ll be downstairs, but I can call for one of the women staff to come and keep you company if you don’t want to be alone.”
Angelica held his gaze, bemused. “What? You aren’t volunteering for the role?” The sudden heat in his eyes returned her immediately to the restaurant and a tingle of apprehension zinged down her spine. All frivolity left her.
“I might be one of those you want protection from. No. I’m not volunteering my services to you as a platonic companion—not tonight—not any night. Remember that if you ever ask me to stay. Sleep well, Angelica. I’ll be on guard all night.” With a twitch of the lips that Angelica assumed was a smile, Tris turned and began to walk toward his door.
“Prince DeHelios?”
He paused and turned. “Yes?”
The word “stay”poised on the tip of her tongue, but her courage deserted her.“Thank you for saving my life.”
***
“It’s Stults. Get the boss on the line fast, Zebo.”
“Why? Now what?”
“The contractor failed to take out the woman. Worse, it’s dead.”
“Aw, shit. That’s going to put him in a mood.”
“Yeah. For once, I’m glad I’m light years away on some archaic backwater that’s not even on the star charts.”
“Zebo said you needed me right away, Mr. Stults, so I’m here. Give me some good news for a change.”
“Sorry, sir. I can’t.”
“The contractor failed?”
“Yes, sir. It’s dead. The woman has a Verdantian bodyguard with some serious knife skills.” Silence crackled through the commdevice. “Sir? Are you still there? Hello, hello?”
“I’m here, Mr. Stults.”
“Yes, sir. Ah… should I contact the other resource? They will take all the profits from the Pinwheel Galaxy and then some, and it’s a death sentence if we’re linked to them, but…”
“Do it. I don’t care about the cost. That woman saw my face when I met with Veacon Narr on Vxloncia, and need I remind you that you’re involved, too? Tell ‘them’ to consider the Verdantians collateral damage. Verify she can ID me and bring her to me.”
“They aren’t supposed to kill her, boss?”
“No. It’s not enough anymore. She owes me a pound of flesh, Stults. I intend to collect.”
***
In her dreams, Angelica repeatedly relived the mummer’
s attack and that of the one on Talleo IV. Finally, she abandoned any hope of sleep and found a good holo-vid to watch—a coming-of-age story about a young Aquarion male and his pet cannes aquam. Nothing could have been further from her reality than the adolescent angst of a young person on a water world, and it was exactly what the doctor ordered for herself.
When the light filtering into her apartment announced a new day, she dressed while in a sleep-deprived fog. She stumbled out to join Tristan for their walk to the medcenter. He seemed his normal, effortlessly powerful self until she examined his red-rimmed eyes and noted the downward drift of his eyelids from time to time. If he’d been on guard all night, he must be staggering with fatigue. She took the proffered cup with a murmur of thanks. “No kaffé for you?”
He grunted. “No. I’ve had enough kaffé to fill your bath.”
“Your chest?”
“I’m fine, Doc. Let it be.” He guided her elbow in the direction of the pathway and they walked to her destination in companionable silence.
I like this man. The disconcerting thought came out of nowhere. When had her antagonism turned to appreciation? She couldn’t say. She snorted to herself. His saving my life might have something to do with it. Tristan said Mage wanted them to be “friends.” What kind of “friends” did Mage have in mind? A fugitive arousal lurked at the thought of having both Mage and Tristan as lovers.
Tristan halted her with a touch on the arm before she entered her office. “I’m handing you off to different bodyguards today. Three of the Daggers will rotate protection for you. I’ll see you late tonight.” He turned to leave.
Her comfort vanished. “Late tonight? Wait! Prince DeHelios, you can’t leave me. Where are you going? I mean…” Her voice trailed off and she cleared her throat. She didn’t want to examine the reason for her sudden panic. “Of course, you must have other business from time to time. I’ll be fine. I’ll… ah… be perfectly safe with the,ah, others.”
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