How greedy of her to want them both, how foolish to remain unhappy without Jay when her day with Arlan was so beautiful.
“Boss, you buy the lady, matching earrings? Ring?” “Yes.”
“No!”
But he already had his money out. She could feel her cheeks brighten, embarrassed by the extravagance.
When was the last time anyone bought you a gift?
She took the pale green peridot studs—her birthstone—from her ears. Arlan took the elegant turquoise stones in their silver setting from the little box, and she placed the studs in it. Then he brushed back the tendrils of hair that had escaped from her braid as she put the new earrings in. The wave of bliss that swept through her toppled down years of walls built around her heart.
Arlan leaned forward and lowered his head. She closed her eyes, anticipating another kiss, but they flew open again when his tongue flicked against her earlobe. He took the soft lobe between his teeth and sucked it into his mouth, earring and all, making her groan as wetness seeped from her pussy. Arlan, let go, slipped the ring on, then, laughing, pulled her back into the stream of foot traffic. She noted a mobile van among the more rudimentary stalls. An old man with a wrinkled face, pooched and puffy, waved to them through the window.
“That’s my friend, Zivai,” Arlan said.
The mobile van sold sadza, the staple food of Zimbabwe, made of cornmeal, other food and various drinks.
“Want sadza, boss? Goat meat sandwich? Coca-Cola? Lemonade?”
“Some milk please, Zivai.”
Zivai gestured around the back. “You come to the backdoor, easier for me. Fridge back there.” Arlan shrugged and took August’s hand again. They made their way around the back of the van into
a secluded area and round to the back door. Arlan paid for the milk. “You want lemonade or anything?” She nodded and reached for her purse. He held up a hand and paid the old man. The sweet, cold taste of the drink was divine in the heat. She stood still for a moment, enjoying it.
Zivai swore as he dropped something inside the van. Arlan told him good-bye and led her off a few yards to some shade beside a wall.
A random sense of foreboding suddenly gripped her, and the bliss of the sunny day, of the cool lemonade, the jacaranda trees, the gift of the necklace and earrings, the joy of being with Arlan, all suddenly drained away into some crack in the universe, until there was nothing left but anxiety.
Shocked by her own change of mood, she wasn’t entirely surprised when Arlan’s mood also changed. She could sense it, strong in her mind, like a psychic connection.
“I have to tell you something. I can’t lie to you anymore.” His expression had gone from playful to deadly serious. “I love you. I have to stop being a… I have to tell you the truth right now.”
“What?”
“You may hate me. You may rip that necklace off and throw it at me.”
“I didn’t hate you when I caught you with Jay.”
“No, you didn’t. You were amazing.” Arlan took a deep breath and leaned back against a stone wall. “I was one of the kids. I was one of the teens, one of the half-fae kids your mother babysat so other half-fae could go see tourist attractions in New York. I saw the games your mother played.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “Wait?
What? What?”
He looked up at the sky. “I told my father about what your mother was doing to you the day I was there. He wouldn’t listen. No one listened.”
Humiliation burned her face like fire, making her body shake. “What did you see? Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I didn’t want you to hate me.”
He heard the names your mother called you. He witnessed your shame. He did nothing. Like everyone else, he did nothing.
She shook her head and backed away from him, her hands out in front of her. “How old were you? No. I don’t even want to know.” She turned, ready to run.
“August, no. For God’s sake!”
She kicked him in the kneecap. As he swore, she bolted. She could hear him behind her. He caught her easily and grabbed her arm.
Angrily, she turned to face him. “Go away! I’ll walk home alone.” “No. Give us a chance. Talk to me.”
She struggled to think, to find a way to express herself. “I don’t even remember you. I don’t remember your face.”
“A lot of kids passed in and out of your house, right? Your mother did a lot of babysitting?”
He watched her expression go dark at the memories. When she turned and looked about to run again, he pulled her into his arms. Though she shoved and strained against him, he held her firm against his chest. Her heart kicked against his as she struggled. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, Gus.”
“Don’t you dare call me that. Let me go.”
“No. I won’t. You’ve been let go too often, and by too many people who should have been there for you.”
A sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh burst from her throat. “I had my father’s love and my grandmother’s. I wasn’t alone. I don’t need your pity, you asshole.”
“Why didn’t they stop Duvessa? Your grandma? You father? Someone in the neighborhood?” She didn’t answer him. But he saw it on her face. He understood. They were weak. They were afraid. Everyone had been weak and afraid of the terrifying, wealthy dark-fae princess. Everyone was weak, and everyone sucked ass, including him.
August shook her head. “I don’t remember you at all. How old were you when you saw…it?” “I was twelve.”
She stopped. Some of the bitterness left her expression, and his heart lurched back to life. “Twelve? That’s a baby. You would have been in middle school then. I thought you were older.”
“I’m just a year older than you, August. You were eleven at the time, and I was twelve.”
Her voice was a soft whisper. “What could you have done? You couldn’t have done anything.” Tears shone in her eyes, and he pulled her closer. She whispered into his chest, “I have nothing to be mad at you for. You were a baby.”
“Yeah, you do. I’m an asshole. I should have told you sooner.”
She shrugged, and he brushed the hair back from her face. “Can you forgive me? Can I make this right between us?”
“Arlan, I’m not going to hold something against you that happened when you were so young. I’m horribly embarrassed that you saw that, though.”
“Your mother is the one who should be ashamed. In fact, the bitch should be in jail. You realize that, don’t you?”
“I doubt a mortal prison could hold her anyway.”
“You’re too good for me or Jay.”
Again, she simply shrugged and shook her head.
“August, I have to ask you… What I saw… I saw your mother had you tied up. So, it bothered me when I first saw that Jay had tied you up.”
She patted his arm. “It’s okay. Really.” She gazed up at the sky, then looked him in the eyes again. “I’ve talked to my counselor about it back home. I don’t think it’s unhealthy. Maybe it’s a way of redefining that experience and the abuse, but, whatever, it turns me on, so I really don’t care.”
She smiled at him again. Joy warmed him. She really did enjoy it. She really wanted both him and Jay, and she didn’t care that they were Doms, or that they loved each other. Arlan pressed his lips to her neck. “Are you okay, now? Are you ready to start home? We can talk more about it all when we get there.”
She nodded. He took her hand, and they started on the long walk back toward his house. The sun was a big red ball low in the sky, guiding their way. But when she spotted a bench under a Musasa tree, all she wanted to do was sit down on it. Her legs shook and she realized how weary and numb she was from such an emotion-filled day.
“Let’s sit down for a while here.”
“Sure, sweetie. Hey, I’ll tell you what. I can get you a coffee, one with milk this time. There’s another mobile shop we passed a little way back that has good coffee.”
“Tha
nks, I could use some caffeine. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was.”
She sat on the bench, and he kissed her forehead and smiled. “I’ll be right back.”
August leaned back and gazed up into the branches of the tree. Cicadas chirped and somewhere nearby she heard a bullfrog croak.
She shuddered as she remembered his confession. Arlan had been there and witnessed her humiliation. Witnessed her being treated like nothing, like less than nothing by her own mother. But he still respected her. He cared for her regardless.
She touched her new earrings, then the pendant. The gifts were beautiful, and she loved what they represented to Arlan, even if he was mistaken that the two or three of them had any kind of preordained connection. But what she loved most was getting to know him more. What an amazing personality he had, so kind, so strong. She’d met him when she was a child although she didn’t remember it. A tear slid down her cheek, and she brushed it away. She’d been so friendless, perhaps if things had been different, if her mother had been different, she and Arlan might have been friends.
“Well, well, if it isn’t little August.” A menacing voice cut into her thoughts.
Ice-cold horror lanced through her. The man before her was huge, well over a foot taller than her, with a chest that spanned a wide breadth. He had unusual eyes. Glittering, jewel-colored eyes. Fae eyes.
The hands on her shoulders from behind the bench were enough of a shock. But the voice sent tremors down her spine.
“You bad girl. You never do what you are told.”
A rough cloth covered her mouth, a taste and smell she well remembered, so chemical, yet so sweet. Panic shot through her. She thrashed more, tried to turn her head, knowing it was hopeless.
Spots formed before her eyes, her vision dimmed, graying, edging toward black.
Chapter Seventeen
August hadn’t really expected to wake up, so when she did, it was a great shock.
Heart racing, she opened her eyes and wiped the grit from them. She was lying under a blanket on a thin mattress with a hard floor beneath. A dull throb pounded at her temples and the base of her skull, making it difficult to concentrate and get any real idea of where she was. The effects of the dark dust were worse this time. Kneading pains poked between her shoulder blades and deep inside her hip, knee and elbow joints.
Pinpricks of light seeped through sheer curtains from a window very high above her. That was the first place she looked. Up and toward the light. When she glanced down again, a scream tore through her mind. The thick metal bars of her cage stood at two-inch intervals. A large water bottle hung on the side with a metal straw hanging down. There was a toilet. A prison toilet. No seat.
They intend for me to be here for a long time. Or someone’s been kept here before.
Panic swelled again with the need to…do something. Then the sense of hopelessness returned. Why was Duvessa doing this? Why now?
A soft whimpering came from somewhere in the room. August’s blood froze. She willed herself to calm down and slow her breathing. As she adjusted to the dimly lit room, she noticed there were two other cages rigged up like hers with water bottles on the side. Arlan was asleep inside one of them.
Was he also knocked out by dark dust? Or had they used some other drug?
Oddly, the other cage contained a man who looked no older than maybe…seventeen. The boy pressed his fist to his mouth as though trying to stifle a scream. Tears ran down his cheeks.
Other than the three cages, the room was like your typical basement, filled with old junk. It was a huge mess, with a couple of old tables also stacked with more junk, and many things she might have used as weapons if she could have reached them. She scanned the glass bottle, the umbrella, the lamp, then crawled off the mattress and searched the interior of the cage again for something, anything she could use…
Among the mess and the junk, she saw them. A huge bulk multipack of her mother’s favorite brand of cigarettes lay on the table. The brand name caused her memories to flash back. August’s stomach clenched. Every muscle in her body went painfully rigid.
Mother will punish you.
Her mother would punish her with them as she had when she was a child. The glowing tip would sting, the pungent smell of burning flesh would combine with the stale cigarette smoke and…screaming.
The sharp click of heels tapped against the floor outside the room, and a key scraped in the lock. August choked down rising bile. Her gaze automatically dropped to the floor. The shoes were black patent leather, six-inch heels making her imposingly tall mother even taller. August steeled herself and forced her eyes upward to gaze at her mother’s face.
Her mother’s beautiful, Grace Kelly face wore that ridiculous TV newsreader smile. The one she put on when she really wanted something. That smile that had charmed so many of her half-fae acquaintances into doing whatever she wanted. As if that could possibly work now on her daughter, whom she put in a cage. Duvessa was crazy.
A flood of memories transformed August’s fear into a haze of rage. “Mother, why did you do this?” If she focused on the rage she could forget the memories of violence. She could forget what it felt
like to have her arms burned by cigarettes, or the humiliation of her mother slapping her face, in a roomful of other children. She bit her lips so she wouldn’t cry.
Duvessa said not a word, just scanned her up and down, and after a couple of minutes of silence, the rage faded. August reverted to the age of ten, trembling, panicking, her mother’s frosty silence weighing on her like a stone.
A whimper came from behind her, and she jerked her head around to stare at the teen boy, now awake. Arlan was still out cold. “What’s wrong with Arlan?”
Duvessa glanced over at him. “I had to knock him out with chloroform like I did you.”
“Why?”
“Well, look at him. His shoulders are as wide and broad as a doorway. Must be nice for you, putting your hands on that. Hmm?”
“You’re disgusting.”
Duvessa smirked and stepped closer, then stuck a finger through the bars, touching August’s chin. The change in her mother’s expression was almost tropical, the cool newsreader gone, the evil seeping through. Duvessa started to hum. A tightening sensation under August’s forehead, then between her temples made her wince. Mother’s trying to use magic to break into your thoughts. August jerked backward, slamming a mental door between them.
Duvessa gripped one of the bars of the cage, pointing at August with her other hand. “There, ha. Ha! You see? You slammed me out of your mind just now. You couldn’t do that if you were really as mundane and human as you pretend to be. Even after all I did to try to drain you of magic, you still have a little power.” She shook the bars, frustration on her face. “You must have had so much to begin with. Why didn’t you choose to cultivate it and join the dark path with your own mother? I could have made you great. It didn’t have to be like this.”
August blinked in surprise. Duvessa gestured around the room. “You could have simply worked with me. Been a proper daughter. Your father and grandmother ruined you.”
“They nurtured me.”
The two women stared into each other’s eyes. “You’re not even mortal.” Duvessa whispered.
August raised her chin, her voice shaking. “No, I guess I’m probably not mortal. But how do you even know that? You tried to kill me, didn’t you? That illness that May and Dad and I had… You?”
Duvessa went silent again, still, her face cold and blank like the dark side of the moon. “Caused that? Yes. I caused that. I put it in your food. Yes. I was curious.”
“You put what in our food? You were curious about what?”
“Dark dust. I was curious which of you had inherited the immortal gene. If any of you. Of course, I know I have it. I’m the daughter of Princess Zenia. But with your father’s genes in the mix, well, I didn’t know.”
Dark grief mixed with bright rage. “You killed him? You made May sick when she was
only four years old. And you killed him!”
“Your father didn’t love me. He made me signa prenup.”
“With good reason. You knew you could get around it by…killing him and making it seem like an illness.”
She pushed back from the bars of the cage. “Your father killed himself. The fool shot himself in the head. That was not my fault.”
August leaned forward, her head against the cool metal of the bars, remembering the bloodstains on the plush white carpet in what had been her sister’s perfect bedroom. “He was in unbearable pain, and the doctors told him his baby girl was going to die.”
Duvessa’s lips quirked in a sardonic smile. “And they were wrong. She was immortal. She survived. But the idiot shoots himself in the head. And now your immortal sister May is off in some ridiculous place pretending to be a cowgirl or something.”
“Montana.”
“Alive and well in the state of Montana, so your father was a huge fool.”
“You would have killed him anyway?”
“Maybe.”
August’s mind raced, trying to comprehend what she was hearing. Trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. “But you never did any of it to June or April. You never tried to poison them?”
Her mother pressed up against the cage again so she was face-to-face with August. Her eyes became yellow, the pupils turning to slits—the eyes of a salamander, a fire fae. Fear bubbled up to the surface again. “Your older sisters always gave me the respect I deserved. They worked on their magic every day. I knew they were both superior. I knew they’d be dark fae. So, I never doubted they’d be immortal too, any more than I doubt I have the gene myself. Besides, I had no reasons to want to get rid of them. They never gave me a moment’s grief, either of them.”
Her stomach dropped, hollowed. It still hurt to be rejected. It hurt that her two older sisters knew how to tiptoe around her mother, how to please her. June had chosen the dark path herself. April didn’t really have any ambition to be dark fae. She was just clever. At least she and April were friends. “Why did you even marry my father? You despised him.”
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