by Kate Pearce
Tess tentatively returned her hand to Harvey’s wrist. When nothing unusual happened, she projected, “What the hell was that?”
“No idea. We’ll talk about it in a moment.”
“Right.” Tess waved Erin over.
Ollie grabbed the tray from her and eyed her warily.
Harvey couldn’t blame the guy.
“How long have you worked here, Erin?” Tess asked as the girl backed toward the door.
Erin giggled. “Oh, I don’t work here. Chef’s my dad. Kitchen was a bit of a mess because of the banquet last night, so I came to help him out. There are a lot of extra guests here right now, and I guess, you don’t really want to hire out to a temp agency or anything like that. They’d be too nosy.”
“How large is the staff?” Tess projected to Harvey.
“Full-time, oh, I’d say less than twenty in this building. Usually, it’s just right. You may need to increase it soon. I’ll look into it for you.”
“You spoil me.”
“Happy to try, sweetheart.” He looked over Tess’s head at Ollie once again. Ollie was still giving Erin a curious look. Was he catching something that Harvey wasn’t? He had no idea what those big apes out in Fallon were capable of. What he did know now, though, was that this particular big ape didn’t mean Tess any harm. He’d felt that when they were connected in that brief moment. He’d felt it, not heard it. The Afótama link didn’t work that way, so this…this was something else.
Erin took her leave and shut the door behind her.
“They’re really not pairing off?” Ollie asked quietly.
Tess shrugged. “That’s not one of the issues that has been brought to my attention, but it does seem that’s the case. Neither my brother nor Nadia have taken mates and they’re both past quarter-life. Why?”
“We’ve got a problem like that in Fallon. The same, but different.” He pulled the napkin off his hearty meal of bacon, eggs, fruit, and toast and reached for the fork. “Matches aren’t taking. The link’s not right or something. People are treating relationships far more casually than they used to. The reverence is gone.”
Harvey was going to make an acidulous retort about Ollie’s lack of reverence for his and Tess’s relationship, but he held his tongue. This was information they all needed, regardless of the reason they’d come together like this.
“I wonder if it’s all related,” Tess said.
“How could it be?” Harvey asked. “Up until you touched Ollie last night, the two groups had a tenuous association at best. There was no strong link between the two. Yeah, there are folks on the fringes of each group who openly associate, but it’s a weak tie.”
Tess scoffed and picked up her cereal spoon yet again. “Was a weak tie. They’re all in my head now, but I get a different kind of buzz from them than I do from Afótama.”
“You feel all of them?” Ollie asked, and the color seeped from his face. Why did that appall him? That particular skill of the queen should have been common knowledge.
“I think so,” Tess said. “But it’s hard to discern because unlike with our group, I don’t know how many there are. It feels…whole, though. The group. Like I’m getting all of it and not just bits and pieces. I’m not sure if it’s a two-way connection and if they can feel me too, or if I have a finger on their collective pulse without them knowing it.”
“Fuck,” Ollie whispered. He dragged a hand through his short hair and slumped against the headboard. “Something’s up. I shouldn’t be able to communicate telepathically with Mr. Lang since he’s a stranger, and yet I can. I thought it was because he was just wide open. A weak psychic. I don’t think it’s that, though.”
As if it were some sort of reflexive response, Tess, reached for him. She hugged his left arm and leaned her chin against his bicep. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, baby, you did everything right.” He brushed her hair back from her eyes in such a tender way that Harvey found hating him somewhat harder. Ollie meant it, this affection. He wasn’t just trying to win her for a prize because she was queen, but because he truly wanted her.
Just like Harvey.
“I just worry that if word about that gets out, there’ll be a lot of confusion for all of us. Some would believe it to mean that the gods have granted you sovereignty over us outcasts.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?” Harvey asked.
Ollie stared at him for a few moments, but there was no hostility in his gaze. Just open curiosity. Finally, he said, “With me as her consort? No, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. They’d accept it because she’s my true mate, and harming her—even in small ways—would disturb me as well. They would know she wouldn’t try to uproot or upend us. She’d keep things more or less the same. With you as her consort?” He picked up one his thick bacon strips and folded it in half. “Well, you probably wouldn’t survive the riots, pretty-boy.”
“Hear that, Tess?” Harvey said flatly. “Paul Bunyan said I’m pretty.”
“Know what?” Ollie cracked the knuckles of his right hand one by one. “I can easily fix that.”
11
“For fuck’s sake, quit it.” Tess scrambled over Ollie and crawled to the edge of the bed. She shook her head as she walked to the bathroom. “I swear, being around you two is like being in fifth grade around the little jerk kid who wouldn’t stop picking on some girl because he had a crush on her. Put a stopper in the testosterone leak, would you?”
When they didn’t respond, positively or otherwise, she turned and saw the two shooting death glares at each other from either side of the bed. They probably hadn’t even heard her, and she wasn’t going to concern herself with whatever they were mentally bandying. Her imagination didn’t have to be particularly spectacular to guess what they were saying to each other.
Sighing, she closed the door and reached for the shower knobs. What was she going to do with the two of them? Leaving them to work it out on their own would likely end with spilled blood, and depending on the winner, a political fallout. The last thing Tess needed was more skepticism from the splinter groups or a rift within the Afótama. Things had been running smoothly until she came along.
Wasn’t that her life, though? She had the magic touch when it came to fucking shit up.
She shucked off her nightshirt and stuck her arm beneath the shower spray to check the temperature.
The door behind her creaked open and she nearly jumped out of her skin. She grabbed one of the fluffy monogrammed towels from the rack and threw herself away from the opening.
“Calm down, sweetheart. It’s just me.” Harvey slipped into the steamy room and leaned his butt against the counter. “Didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Tess put her hand to her chest and took a few deep breaths. When she could no longer hear her elevated pulse in her ears, she tightened the towel around her chest. “It’s all right. I forgot to lock it. Nadia doesn’t come in anymore when she hears the water, and I fell out of the habit.”
“I was sitting right outside, Tess. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.” He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “And I hate to admit it, but I doubt Paul Bunyan out there would, either.”
Good to know her gut feeling wasn’t completely bogus.
“It’s not a rational thing.” She pulled the shower curtain around her and dropped the towel to the floor before stepping over the tub side. “It’s just an ingrained response. If I go into a small space, I lock the door behind me. I can’t have someone walking in, or it triggers…” She stepped under the spray of water and let it drench her hair.
“Triggers what, Tess?”
Eyes closed, she patted the shelf for the familiar shape of her shampoo bottle. “I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”
He was silent a while, and then Tess heard him shifting against the counter. “I won’t push you. I do wonder what happened to you, though. Don’t mistake my respect of your wishes for aloofness. You’ve never wanted to talk about those things that made you so squi
rrelly as a kid, and that scares me because my imagination runs wild and I think awful things. I don’t want to think those things happened to you and that you didn’t tell anyone.”
Oh, she’d told everyone she was supposed to tell. They just hadn’t done anything about it. “Don’t mess up a good thing,” they’d said. “Make this one stick,” they’d said.
Maybe one day she could lay it all bare for him, but right now, the wounds felt too fresh to rip open. Besides, she didn’t want him pitying her, even though she was long overdue for some. She needed someone to feel sorry for her so she could go ahead and fall apart. Maybe once she put herself back together, she’d be stronger than she was before. She certainly couldn’t do any worse. The “fake it till you make it” routine was exhausting.
She cleared her throat and tried to put a little sunshine into her voice. “Did you need something, darlin’?”
“I like it when you call me darlin’, but give me a minute to remember what it was, will you?”
She couldn’t help but to laugh as she lathered her hair. Goodbye to all that mouse and hairspray. There were probably a few bobby pins left in there, too. Detangling was going to be a motherfucker, and she didn’t even have time to do it. Maybe she’d do it on the plane. Queen’s prerogative.
“While it’s on my mind, you do know I’ve seen you naked, right?”
The draft against her wet backside warned her that he was seeing it again, whether she liked it or not. She squashed the compulsion to turn around and face him, because a view of her ass was a lesser evil than a full-frontal display.
“What you did see, you saw in the dark.” Her fingers caught on one of those missing pins and she flicked it onto the soap dish.
“You confuse me. You go from being this irresistibly bold siren, to this shy, overly conscious thing who obviously has a skewed perception of how she looks.”
“Are you suggesting I seek therapy?” She dipped her head under the water again and watched the shampoo suds flow down her body to the tub floor.
“Of course not. I don’t want any shrink, whether they be Afótama or outsider, knowing that much about you.”
Good thing, because she didn’t need therapy. She always knew the reasons for her reactions, even if she lacked the will to change anything. She’d been withdrawn with Harvey and more daring with Ollie because one knew her too well, and the other, she had nothing to lose with. Ollie knew very little about her, and he’d had only a first impression to judge her by. He didn’t know about all the baggage. Harvey knew too much. He could probably read her body like a history book if she let him get close enough. Both men were appealing, yet not, because of what they knew and didn’t know.
“Are you always going to hide from me?” His voice was a whisper now, and she wouldn’t even turn to look at him.
“I don’t want to. No.”
“Then that’s good enough for now. Listen, I came in here to see how you felt about both me and Ollie flying with you to Santa Fe. It seemed a ridiculous scenario to me, but Ollie insists that it’d make more sense if we both go. Right now, no one outside of this building knows anything about your consort selection. If both of us go, people won’t assume that it’s either of us. They know me to be your friend, and they’ll think that big fucker is your bodyguard. He says the fair thing would be for us to have equal access to you until…”
“Yes, until.” He didn’t need to say it. She patted behind her for the conditioner bottle, still not turning.
“Does that suit you?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it does. Don’t misjudge my restraint, sweetheart. I’m a man with a sizable ego. I’d like nothing better than for you to put your foot down and tell him it ain’t happening because you’re with me.”
She sighed. “You know I can’t.”
“I do know. That’s why I’m trying to be civil. Usually, that’s easier for me.”
“Come now, you’re not really trying that hard,” came a deeper voice from just the other side of the doorway.
Now Tess did turn around. Growling, she swatted Harvey’s hand away from the curtain, and shouted, “Fuck, get out!”
“You heard her,” Harvey said.
“I’m talking to both of you. Unless you want to hit that light switch and turn on some music, that is. This bathroom isn’t really big enough for a full-bore orgy, but as long as one of you doesn’t move too much—”
The door closed.
Tess grinned and turned up the heat on the water. They were probably out there thumping their chests at the very insinuation they should be in a room together at the same time with their clothes off.
She didn’t realize her hands were inching closer and closer to her sex as she thought of them. Ollie had left her unfulfilled last night, and any opportunity they would have had for an erotic good-morning were dashed by Harvey and Nadia.
“Could have sworn we’d locked that door.” She threw her head back as she worked her fingers over her clit, her pussy clenching around nothing.
Fuck, with a good night’s sleep and last night’s stressful social torture put behind her, climbing onto that big hunk of man for a good morning ride would have been the perfect way to start the day. And she just knew he’d be so gentle…until she begged him not to be.
“Mmm.” She slipped two fingers between her folds and rocked on them as if they were her big Viking’s—
The pounding on the door made her yank her hand free and reach for the curtain. “Shit, is there a fire?” She stepped out, grabbed a towel from the rack, and unlocked the door.
Harvey pushed the door in. His tan skin bore an unusually red flush and his breath came out in shallow pants.
She knotted the towel at her breasts and pushed her soggy hair out of her eyes. “What happened? Did he try to kill you?”
Now she noticed Ollie in the doorway, too, and he looked equally aggrieved.
“Tell me!”
Ollie’s gaze trailed down her body and stopped in the general vicinity of her pussy. “When you…when you do what you must have been doing a minute ago, you transmit your arousal on broadband.”
“To just you two, or…”
Harvey groaned. “Probably, but does it matter? What the fuck were you just thinking about?”
Chagrined, she rocked back on her heels and crossed her arms. “A dick in each major orifice. I guess we’re short one.”
Harvey blanched, but Ollie, after a moment, laughed, and walked away adjusting himself.
Harvey spun her around, gave her a sharp swat to the bottom, and nudged her back toward the shower. “You deserve that and more. Rinse the conditioner out of your hair and quit torturing the peons, or queen or not, I’ll bend you over my knee.”
She wriggled her ass at him and grinned over her shoulder. “You promise?”
The glint in his eye before he reversed over the threshold said, Yes, I most certainly do.
She closed the door and locked it case he decided to come back, then rubbed her thighs together hoping to distract from her sex’s continued emptiness. “They’re going to drive me insane.”
She stepped back into the shower and immediately yelped. The fucking water had gone cold. “Somehow, this is all their fault,” she muttered and quickly rinsed her hair.
Delicate laughter floated into the room, and Tess forced her stinging eyes open and pulled the curtain back.
No one was there.
She turned off the water and poked her head out slowly, scanning the room for unaccounted-for air vents. Maybe there was some ductwork that tread into staff workspace downstairs, not that she liked that idea at all, because if she could hear them, they could hear her.
“No, no, look inward, not around,” came the voice.
It was in her head, but not. When Afótama communicated telepathically, their words boomed in her head the same as if they were speaking with their voices. But this voice was sort of half in, and half out of her head. It was sort of a whisper that wasn�
�t spoken beside her ear, but just inside it.
“We should speak more often so you know my voice.”
Relief freed the tight band around Tess's lungs, and she sucked in a calming breath. She wrapped a towel around her body and sat on the open toilet seat. “Ótama. I thought you couldn’t talk to me anymore.”
“Close your eyes. Come to me. I can not come to you.”
“Where are you?”
“On the ship, silly. Where else would I be?”
“Of course.” Tess closed her eyes, felt around in her head for a few seconds, then gave it up. “I’m not exactly sure how I should come to you.”
“You are connected to all Afótama queens going back to me. Can you feel it?”
“I don’t know what I feel. I feel…so much of everything. It’s because of Ollie, I think.”
“Yes, because of Oliver. Speak quietly or your men will pound down the door. That will not do.”
Nope, it wouldn’t. They probably thought she had enough missing marbles as it was, and they were being kind enough to hide that condition from the world. If it weren’t for her previous twenty-eight years of life experience, she’d say she was a lucky girl in having the two of them.
“Just imagine our network as a mighty web in which each silk is a ladder rung you may climb on. Climb back from one queen to the next until you find me.”
“You just made that up, didn’t you?”
“It is that obvious?”
“Yes.”
“Try anyway. What you construct in your mind in your realm becomes real in mine. Our mental playgrounds merge. Hurry. We are short on time.”
Tess drew in a deep breath to center herself. There was no harm in trying, silly as it sounded. She didn’t really know what she was capable of. Hadn’t Ótama said that each queen’s gifts were different? Tess still didn’t know what hers were.
She closed her eyes and imagined a giant web. In her mind, it was made of rope and stretched up as far as the eye could see at a forty-five degree incline. She grasped tentatively at a section at eye-level and found it shockingly solid. It was real in this place, and she’d constructed it. Planting her foot into a lower rung, she began climbing.