To make matters undoubtedly worse, she hadn’t been expecting company. It wasn’t like she normally had any visitors to speak of, with the expressed exception of those seeking her help. And even so, she always went to them for any services rendered. Frowning at the glimpse of her underthings hanging over the awning walling off her bathing area, she stalked across the room, collecting the few other embarrassing personal items draped on her grinding table as she went.
She tossed everything into a weathered, leather trunk near her bed and snapped the lid shut, stressed fingers whitening at the tips. “You were saying?”
“The princes have formed a council—a ruling council.” Tenoch seemed unaware of her rancor over his presence, busy wandering around investigating her private abode. “There is a new kingdom being created even now, and this council seeks to have an active hand in its population. To that end, they are approaching couples they believe will offer some benefit to their new kingdom, inviting them to come and contribute to this new world.”
“And if we play our cards right, chere, you and I will be the next couple to bless their precious kingdom.”
He didn’t close the door behind him.
Dominique shoved her hand into her pocket, closed her fist around the string holding the cayenne packet, and with a vicious tug sent it flying through the air straight toward the source of that maddening, whiskey smooth voice. Silver flashed and the packet flew from the severed string, tumbled through the air, and landed soundlessly on the planks of the wooden floor.
Black boots stepped into her line of vision near the useless packet. She followed them up, over a pair of immaculate brown trousers that looked as soft as the coat of a new deer. A belt hugged a narrow waist, anchoring a white shirt that moved with the slight breeze through the still open door.
The neckline was open just enough to reveal a flash of smooth, sun-tanned flesh. The blue jacket that completed the ensemble hung down to mid-calf and was edged with fine gold embroidery. Shining brass buttons glowed like muted suns, so brilliant they almost seemed to give off a heat of their own. He tilted the silver sword resting at his side, and the flicker of reflected light broke the spell.
Julien wagged his sword at her, shining brown eyes bright with male humor. “We will need to discuss this cayenne pepper habit. It is unbefitting of royalty such as yourself.”
The desire to hit him was all the stronger for the other, opposing desire that warred with it. Dominique clenched her hands at her sides. “I told you I would speak with you the final night of the Midsummer Celebration. You have no reason to be here.”
“Aye, so you did promise such a timetable. But then you hit me with your little baggie of cayenne.” Julien’s free hand rose as if to rub his eyes, but he seemed to remember himself and stroked his beard instead. “Not very loving of you, my future wife.”
Dominique backed toward the shelves to one side of her fireplace, careful to keep them both in her sights as she sidestepped the wide table made from a section of a great oak. The polished surface gleamed in the light streaming through the front door, the natural verves created by the oak’s rings humming with subtle power.
She held onto that undercurrent of serenity as she blindly rummaged around on the shelves. “I am not—”
“And if we play our cards right, chere, you and I will be the next couple to bless their precious kingdom.”
“I don’t care. I’m not—wait a minute.” She pointed at Julien with a long matchstick. “You know about this new kingdom?”
“I do.” Julien took a confident step forward. “And I cannot think of another couple who have so much to offer it as you and I.”
Something of Dominique’s thoughts must have showed on her face, because his grin wilted. He took two steps back, eyeing the matchstick in her hand as if expecting her to light it by magic and sending it hurtling at him like a firecracker. Despite her wish to do exactly that, Dominique struck the match against the side of her bookcase, and knelt at the hearth to coax the kindling to life.
“Where is this new kingdom?”
“I don’t kn—”
“I was speaking to Tenoch.”
The kindling caught, a surge of warmth chasing away the chill that seemed to have taken root in her skin. She threw the match into the fire, watching it catch and flare into brilliant light before it withered to ash.
Firelight gave Tenoch’s eyes an unnatural sheen. “The kingdom is betwixt and between.”
Julien frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ah.” Ignoring the pirate completely, she strode past him and opened a cabinet, rattling the bottles and jars lining the heavy shelf-laden doors. “And this council will only invite married couples into this kingdom?”
“Yes. I believe it has to do with keeping the kingdom fertile, helping it grow. Though I can’t speak on the matter with any conviction. I am not magically inclined, nor do I wish to be.”
Dominique paused with one hand on a bottle of kleren. Only married couples. That’s it then. He’ll demand marriage now for sure, just to claim his place in this new kingdom. I should have removed the curse when I had the chance, when that might have been enough to make him leave.
She tapped the glass with one fingernail, the cane alcohol rippling a bit with the vibration. Her throat tightened, strangling the deep breath she so desperately needed and she thunked the vile on her worktable. “Please leave now. Tell your council that I will have no part of the pirate, or their new kingdom. I desire nothing from them other than to be left alone.”
“Chere, be reasonable.”
Julien strode forward, the rhythm of his heavy boots pounding against the floor a mirror to her pounding heart. He took her by the shoulders and she didn’t fight him, didn’t bother to try. A muscle tightened in his jaw like he expected more from her than an empty stare.
“I’ve told you what your curse has done to me and to my men. This is your chance to make it right. My men could have a fresh start, with their families. Are you really so selfish that you would deny them that opportunity? Is your heart so cold?”
His words slid into her heart like acupuncture needles, sharp and painful. Icy logic rushed in to shield her from the heat seeping through her dress from his palms, chilled her voice into the perfect note of disinterested diplomacy. “I did not force anyone into an illegal lifestyle. I did not force anyone to stay with you when logic, if not experience, should have told them what a poor choice that was. I take responsibility only for my life, for my choices.” She leaned closer, meeting his eyes, trying to push him away with nothing more than the force of one long look. “I will not give you one more second of my life. You do not deserve it.”
Instantly, her body felt a hundred times heavier. It took every ounce of her willpower not to slump forward in a mixture of exhaustion and resignation. All this talk of marriage, new kingdoms, and untold wonders, and all she really wanted to do was hide away in her home. She wished with every fiber of her being that she had the luxury of a night spent avoiding all others. The blessing of some privacy to lick her wounds.
Instead, she would have to go into the throbbing mass of revelers, would have to lead the celebration at the water’s edge. Too many people relied on her for this night, relied on the charms she would make for them, and she’d already wasted enough time today. The celebration would start in less than an hour. She had absolutely no time to think about anything else right now, which meant that she had absolutely zero time for a pirate or the near-naked savage encouraging his schemes with all this talk of the future.
“Get out.” She stepped back and Julien let her go, though his hands flexed as if releasing her had been difficult. “If you want to enter this kingdom so badly, find someone else to marry.”
Something flickered in his gaze, there and gone in the blink of an eye. He let her go. His hands falling from her shoulders slowly like releasing her had been difficult. Dominique’s heart stuttered, her stomach tightening. She turned her cheek. No. She d
idn’t care what that look was about, didn’t care why he’d reacted that way to her mention of him finding a different wife.
At some point, Tenoch had made his exit, his passage as sudden and silent as his arrival. She pointed out the door for her only remaining intruder, power riling inside her like a hive of angry hornets. “Get. Out.”
Chapter Nine
Her words were bit out from between clenched teeth, perfuming the air between them with the faintest trace of bourbon. Julien could almost taste it on the tip of his tongue. Caramel and a hint of apricot. Memories swarmed him, distracting him from the angry words he’d been prepared to let fly in response. He couldn’t seem to drag his gaze away from her velvet lips, her ire an annoying distraction, like a hovering insect.
“Are you deaf as well as dumb? I said get out.”
“Do you not want me anymore?”
Dominique’s nostrils flared, the skin over her jaw growing taut. She spun back to the cabinet, snatching bottles and jars in a blur of motion, her back stiff and unyielding. Julien stepped closer, careful to keep her hands in his sight, wary of anything she might choose to make into some sort of powdery, eye-burning weapon.
“You aren’t the only one who thinks of that night.”
Glass bottles rattled violently against one another as she slammed them onto the table. It was hard to tell, but he thought she was trembling. I know you still want me. He took another tentative step.
“It’s true. I think of you, see you every time I close my eyes. That night was not nothing to me, Dominique.”
Her hand stilled on a jar still tucked into the shelf on the cabinet. She withdrew it and gripped the edge of the table. For a moment she was perfectly still, only the muscles standing out in her arm betraying how tightly she held the wooden edge.
“I don’t remember you being this cruel.”
Her words were so soft Julien almost didn’t hear them. Still cautious, he closed more distance between them, until he could feel her body heat against his chest. “I never meant to be cruel. Not then and not now.”
Dominique slowly spun to face him without closing that last inch of distance between them. Her eyes shone suspiciously bright, but her voice came out steady.
“I understand that you have suffered since our last meeting, and I will admit to some fault with that—though not all of it. And I know that you think being part of this new kingdom will solve all of your problems—that a marriage to me will solve all of your problems.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed. “But you must understand that you are not the only one who has people relying on him. I have people here too. And just like your beard has hurt your business, a marriage to you would hurt mine. You are asking me to take your problems on as my own. And I cannot do that. I will not do that.”
“It’s not just—”
“I won’t stand here and tell you I don’t still feel an attraction for you. That would be foolish, and immature. I am old enough to acknowledge such a fact and not act on it.”
Julien’s throat tightened as he felt something inexplicable slipping away from him. Something about her voice, her words sounded so…final.
“It was one night. And that is all it will ever be. I have admitted that to myself. I only ask that you do the same.”
No.
Something inside of Julien howled in defiance and he surged forward, snaking an arm around her waist and corralling her in a fierce embrace. Her head fell back and he dropped his mouth to hers, silencing her, keeping her from saying anymore of those awful words.
Her body folded against him, hands rising to rest lightly on his chest. There was willingness, but no eagerness, no answering passion. Snarling, he tore his mouth from hers, dragged it down the tendon stretching from her neck to her shoulder. He bit down, careful not to break skin, but wanting a response from her—needing a response from her.
The breath stuttered in Dominique’s chest, her pulse fluttering under the skin between his teeth. She swayed, pressing the tantalizing swell of her breasts forward like a silent offering and sliding her arms up over his shoulders to play her fingers over his neck.
Delicious heat flowed down his body like a red tide, setting his nerve endings on fire. He started to run his hands over her back, and her hiss of pain reminded him of her injuries.
“Sorry,” he murmured against her neck, mouth sliding back toward her lips, stopping to brush her cheek.
She smiled but didn’t answer. Her fingers traced little patterns on his skin, the gentle pressure at once soothing and arousing. He wallowed in that sensation, the gentle pads of her fingertips swirling over the top of his spine in lazy, rhythmic loops.
Something caught his eye as he allowed himself to appreciate the simple act of feeling her willing hands on him. The bottles and jars on the table behind her, each of them painted with swirls and patterns, different but similar. Familiar somehow.
Dominique rested her lips against his neck, her fingers still performing their hypnotic dance. He closed his eyes, wanting to lose himself in the sensations, but a little voice in his head whispered that something was wrong, something was…
He opened his eyes, attention zeroing in on the mantle over the fireplace. Holy objects rested there, items he recognized even if he had no name for them. Each one bore some sort of symbol. Swirling lines mixed with dots.
The fingers on his neck tapped once, twice. Dots. Swirls and dots. Her fingers tracing…patterns. Realization hit Julien like freezing ocean spray. He jerked back, but she held on, her jaw tightening, eyes unfocused. Panic flared in his belly, sending tendrils of adrenaline through every vein, every artery. Clenching his teeth, he put a hand on her back and dug into her flesh with his fingers, seeking the wounds he’d so recently cared for.
Dominique cried out, hands recoiling as she stumbled back from him and bumped the table behind her. Jars rattled from impact as he bared his teeth at her, the heat that had been so passionate and pleasant a second ago fanned into a fine, burning fury.
“What spell were you putting on me, witch?”
Her eyes hardened at his choice of words. “A binding.”
“Binding? You would—”
“A binding that would keep you away from me for good. You would not be able to come within five miles of me—a distance that would allow you to run your business, to dock here if you had to, but would keep you from interfering in my affairs.”
She crossed her arms behind her back and dropped her chin. The posture made her look smaller, vulnerable. He needed to act, he needed to do something, but he didn’t know what. She’d tried to put a spell on him, tried to bend him to her will. He couldn’t let that stand, but he couldn’t stand to see her looking defeated either, especially when he was the cause.
Too late, he realized Dominique’s hands had left his line of vision. Her shoulder dipped and he ducked to the side just in time to avoid a spray of liquid as it exploded from a red glass bottle. She threw the empty bottle to the side, shattered against the wall as she quickly doused the room with another.
This time it was a powder, a thin gray dust that filled the air in a cloud and stayed there, hovering like an apparition. She spoke a few rapid words he didn’t understand, and the cloud thickened and rolled toward him. Cursing, he threw his useless sword to the side and quickly disrobed. Part of him knew he should flee, should bolt while he could and come back more prepared. But leaving now would only give her time to perform another ritual. The dust pulsated as if filled with its own energy that expanded and contracted autonomously. Tendrils slowly curling out to rove against the walls, seeking and testing the air as if searching for its target. Gaze locked on what he could see of her through the barrier between them, he undressed, tossing away clothes as he back stepped from the roiling fog.
Dominique didn’t move, only a slight pinch between her brows betraying her confusion about his sudden disrobement.
The change that seized him as he called his other form blinded him to her reaction, kep
t him from seeing her expression as she witnessed for the first time what manner of creature he truly was. Black and white feathers rose from his flesh. His arms flailed and a flood of plumes shuttered from his arms, fanning to form enormous wings.
Julien flapped, powerful wings beating at the air. The cloud snaking toward him slowed against the current, edges disintegrating. Another thrust from his wings ripped a few wandering smoky tentacles away and the entire cloud lost cohesion like a knot of snakes dropped from a net. Wisps of grey fog reached out like fingers, stretching in a dozen directions at once. They stretched farther and farther, growing thinner as they did. Soon there was nothing left of the spell but a slight haze wafting between them like battlefield smoke.
With vision far sharper than his human form could manage, he fixed his attention on Dominique. And waited.
Chapter Ten
Dominique waved absent-mindedly at the dispersed cloud of crossroad dust. Her legs tingled with the urge to walk, a residual effect of the travel spell she’d infused the powder with. It should have enveloped Julien, infused his bones and muscles with the need to go, marched him out the door and away from her home like a marionette on strings. But the spell hadn’t worked, had been dispersed when he’d fanned his…wings.
Where Julien had stood there was now a bird larger than herself. It had the look of some kind of marriage of a phoenix and one of the exotic emus raised in the neighboring villages. A long neck, wide breast, and long legs coated with iridescent salt and pepper plumes. Black eyes pierced her with unsettling avian intensity over a wicked long raptorial beak sharper than any sacrificial blade.
The bird shifted, zygodactyl webbed feet clicking on the wood floors. It coiled its neck like a dire heron as its wings fluttered. The air around them thickened, suddenly filled with the scent of an impending storm, that strange mix of wet earth and damp air.
Blue Voodoo: A Romantic Retelling of Bluebeard (The Hidden Kingdom Series Book 2) Page 10