“Well, doesn’t water, you know, get in the way?” I asked with a little shrug.
“Water gets only where I want it to be.” He flicked his hand in the air, and small jets shot from the sea surface. Arching over us, the streams created a water gazebo, with moonlight twinkling in every droplet above.
“So beautiful,” I whispered, wrapping my legs tighter around him as he held us upright inside the lattice of streams arching above.
“Nothing and no one is more beautiful than you,” he murmured in my ear, pressing the tip of his erection to my opening. I flexed my thighs, bringing us closer and taking him in.
“I love you, Ivy.” He nibbled the edge of my ear, moving smoothly inside me.
“I love you, too,” I whispered, breathlessly, as pleasure rose inside me, anew. “I’ve always loved you, Zeph.”
We were meant to be together.
Another orgasm hit me like a tsunami, and I clung to him, riding the waves of pleasure as he pumped his hips into me, reaping every last shudder of ecstasy from my body. His thrusts turned erratic and his breathing hitched the moment he came, too.
“You’re mine,” I breathed out, as languid bliss settled over me. “For as long as I shall live.”
“Much longer, Ivy.” He kissed my neck, my cheeks, my lips. “A human mate of a Fae lives as long as we do. Will you have me forever?”
I leaned back, needing to see his eyes. He met my gaze, straight on, his expression pensive as he waited for my reply.
“I will, Zeph.” The promise came straight from my heart, as strong as a marriage vow.
“I belong with you,” he whispered, kissing me again.
“Forever.”
From the author
For more of Madame Tan’s peculiar exhibits, including many kinds of sexy fae, please don’t miss Marina Simcoe’s brand-new series, Madame Tan’s Freakshow, launching on August 27, 2020.
Marina Simcoe loves writing romance with ordinary human heroines and non-human heroes who just can’t live without them.
She has lots of fun exploring how her out-of-this-world characters with their own set of beliefs, values, and aspirations fit into our everyday life.
Please keep in touch.
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Copyright © 2020 by Alice K. Wayne
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Chapter One
Arturo came to me like a nightmare, finding me like the plague. His arms were dark and tempting like a scorned lover’s.
I had run out of places to hide from him; there was nowhere left to go.
He wanted to possess me, always, and I had no strength left to fight him.
His family ruled the court of the Western Fae, my people, but to get the throne we had been overtaken, my family rooted out. They had let us all live, and for many of us, we kept our lands and titles, but we were indebted to them in forms of forced servitude I couldn’t stomach.
To keep the peace between the Fae still loyal to my family and the Fae following their new leaders, as an infant, I was promised to marry their eldest son, allowing us to rule together.
My entire childhood, I spent with his sisters, watching him from afar. He was beautiful and strong, but I hated myself every time my eyes lingered on him. I wanted to consider his sisters friends as I played with them every day, as I grew into womanhood with them by my side, but behind each of their smiles, I couldn’t help but imagine malice. Never once had they mistreated me, but I just couldn’t bring myself to trust them. Even when I saw other members of our families together, seeming like friends, acting as though nothing had ever happened, I couldn’t help but feel like I would be betraying everyone by accepting their friendship.
They had to be waiting to stab me in the back the way that their parents had stabbed mine. The whole bloodline was rotten just like the man I was promised to marry.
All his rugged handsomeness was worthless because it had been spoiled by the blood beneath it. His pewter silver hair and light silver eyes had stopped the breath in my lungs more than once, but I always quickly reminded myself of what he was. I couldn’t help but feel ashamed like I was somehow betraying my family for lusting after him.
He wanted me to stare though. He wanted me to want him. I knew this in my heart because every time I looked at him, he was already staring at me. There was no guilt or embarrassment in his eyes when ours locked, however. He was the opposite of me. He didn’t blush the way that I did, all the way down to my collar bone, when we passed each other in a corridor. Instead, he was a proud appraiser of me. His eyes roamed my body, his thoughts of what he saw before him always leaving his lips in a luscious smirk that made my heart pound harder.
I never wanted to love him, never even wanted to feel connected to him, but I couldn’t help what I felt every time my gold eyes connected to his. Back and forth, my nights were spent in a torturous battle between guilt and acceptance where no matter the result of that night, I always hated myself for it. Either I was betraying my family or betraying myself. It was a brutal place to be for a fragile heart like mine, and I blamed him for that too.
My teenage years passed in nights filled with thoughts of his body, of his harsh wicked voice in my ear, and his lips covering mine. Night after night, it became an addiction until I couldn’t sleep without imagining his body covering mine. Every morning, I woke up hating him more for cursing me.
The days to our marriage ticked down slowly, each one passing like a harsh, resounding drum beat. With each singular thud of one that passed, I felt my throat getting tighter.
No amount of self-loathing was going to part me from my feelings for him. When I forced myself to face them, I knew that I had fallen in love with the evil prince. The only thing I could think of to do was run from it all.
Escape and get as far away as possible from the Fae of Western court. Let the prince choose another bride, and let me live a different life. A life of my own choosing.
I had never been away from my people and never strayed beyond our lands. It was time for me to go out, spread my translucent wings, and find myself. Somewhere out there was a strong woman who was going to write her own story of love, not just settle for the one that had been handed to her.
Leaving was far easier than I imagined it would be. I expected guards to be at every post, protecting the lands, but with what must have been a stroke of luck, I was able to slip past everyone unnoticed.
I knew of a place called the Nuit Rouge, an exotic, supernatural safe haven that took in runaways from all creatures, trained them in performance pieces, or allowed them to use their individual talents in shows of their own. For decades, Fae had been going there to either experience their wiles or to begin a new life of their own.
It was an untouchable place recognized by all. No violence or outside business could be conducted here. It was magically protected by a pact honored from all supernatural creatures. Even the most elite humans were allowed to attend though the price for their entrance was much steeper, and they were heavily monitored.
There were many “safe” facilities like these created among the realm, for many different reasons, but the Nuit Rouge was the one that my heart called out for. From all the stories I’d heard, it was the epitome of decadence, and once I arrived, I knew that the stories were all true. In fact, I dared to say the stories had been understated.
The club started as a love child between the Horsemen War and the Witch Queen of the White Flame. It wa
s rumored that their romance had gone on for nearly a century but that they had always been kept apart. And so they created this grand haven so that even though their love was a torturous one, they still had a home they could run away to together.
Everywhere you looked in the Rouge, you could see the deep red of the Horsemen melting with the stark white of the witch queen. Lush leather furniture, with overstuffed, crisp, white pillows, and thick, plush, red carpets adorned the massive interior. The Rouge could easily hold two hundred patrons surrounding the enormous performance stage. Then, of course, there was the equally massive bar-restaurant in the back, filled to the rafters with the finest alcohols and delicacies for every creature in the realm. Only the most well-connected and reputable were allowed into the Rouge.
None of the riff-raff and trouble makers of other entertainment facilities would be found here. With such a high standard and reputation to uphold, that also meant each act had to be absolutely unbelievable. Patrons must leave the club with stars in their eyes and awe in their hearts. Any performer who couldn’t deliver on such a steep promise was cut.
When I had first arrived, being surrounded by such luxury and important people caused a nervousness within me that I’d had never felt before. In my home, I was someone of importance; everyone knew my name. But here, I would have to earn my keep and prove my worth or be out on my ass. The thought of it exhilarated me. Never before had I had to earn anything. My nerves were on fire to be sure, but I knew I had something up my sleeve that they had never experienced before.
My family line had a meditative dance that had been perfected over the course of our bloodline.
I could put the entire room into a peaceful trance where they were slightly aware of the environment around them but, for the most part, were completely at ease, their brains completely going into autopilot and becoming one with the earth around them. Every stress or worry in their lives would melt away, and instead, they would connect to the wind, the slow rotation of the planet, the heartbeat of every living creature around them, the rise and fall of the tide, and suddenly they would experience a clarity like nothing they had ever experienced before.
For millennia, every warlord, politician, king and queen of almost every creature had come from faraway lands to bring precious gifts and promises to my family for one night of this magical clarity. They swore that the only way to win a battle or raise a kingdom was to see your life and your plan through the eye of such clarity.
I, myself, was far too young to understand such a gift and such a clarity, and to be completely honest, I knew that my gift was not nearly as strong as the elders of my house. However, I knew that what I could do would be strong enough to grant me access to the Rouge. All Fae houses passed on gifts to their children, but none of their gifts had been as highly sought after as what I could perform.
Not only could I put the audience in such a desired trance, but I knew I could also put my own personal style on it, to make the experience unique and more stylish and fun than the serious trances my elders would conduct.
Over the few short years that I spent at the Rouge, I perfected my dance in its own way. I made it seductive, as sexual as I dared it to be. I wasn’t a brazen person, but if I didn’t push myself, I would never know what I could grow into.
Chapter Two
“Isla, you need to be getting ready, darling.” A hard rap came against my bedroom door. I looked up at the clock and realized that Kaia, the Elven manager of the club, was right. I had drifted off too far down memory lane, and now I would have to rush down to join the others in preparing for tonight’s show.
I shrugged off the creeping feeling that Arturo had found me. It was nonsense. By now, he would have been married to another Fae with royal blood, probably starting his own family line, not sparing a moment to remember me.
In the dress rehearsal room, males, females, and others, from all species and realms, sat together, piecing together outfits, gossiping merrily, painting their faces in thick dramatic makeup, or practicing their acts on one another. It made me feel at home to be around such talent and so little judgment.
Things were so very different here than in my own lands. At home, I always put an immense amount of pressure on myself to be the perfect royal and to always represent my family line exceptionally.
Here in the Rouge, as long as your act was gripping and astonishing, no one cared how sexual, depraved, or pure of heart it was. The most modest but awe-inspiring act could come right after an act where a fully leather-covered, studded demon chose volunteers from the audience to torture on stage with cursed objects until they found a refined sense of euphoria.
Nothing mattered here except the experience of the audience. Talent was the currency here, not bloodlines.
I chose a lilac-colored lipstick that matched perfectly with my waist-length hair and applied it while watching a witch, covered in red leather, practice an act with her familiar; an enormous black bear that she literally rode on, out to the stage.
In one moment, I was admiring the bond she and her familiar shared, and in the next, I felt my irises narrow and my breath shorten.
“Are you okay?” one of the long-horned demons asked me from across the room.
I must have blinked out for longer than just a few seconds because when I looked up, half the room was staring at me. My hands shook, and my heart raced. It couldn’t be him. I couldn’t be feeling this.
“Yeah,” I muttered, my voice sounding far away. “I just remembered something important that I forgot.”
With a fake cheerful smile and a little wave, I watched everyone in the room go back to what they were doing.
Navi, my best friend in the Rouge, a small but very tough, little pixie, made her way over to me. Her skin was ebony night with glittering diamonds across her collar bone, down each of her arms, and ending at the very tips of her middle fingers; a signature that all children in her particular clan of pixie were born with.
“What’s really wrong?” she asked. Her electric blue eyes were like two orbs piercing through me to find the truth.
“He’s here,” I whispered as lowly as I could. “He’s here to claim me.”
“How romantic,” she sighed, the opposite reaction to mine.
“It is not romantic. It’s horrifying,” I looked around the room wildly as if Arturo would burst through the door at any moment and throw me over his thick shoulders.
“But you love him, and he’s here to claim you,” she purred, walking around me in a circle like a panther.
“I used to love him. Now, I’m free and committed to my life here,” I replied, knowing how flimsy my excuse was.
Of course, I had never stopped loving him. Any woman who laid eyes on Arturo would have those pewter eyes burned into her heart forever.
Then, to think that he had come all this way just to take me back… I shuddered. I didn’t want to love him, but I did.
“I bet you’re hoping he takes you in front of everyone, just throwing you over his shoulder like in a movie,” Navi laughed.
“I’m hoping for a claiming a little rougher than they show in the movies,” I couldn’t stop myself from speaking the truth. If I was finally going to give it up to this man, I wanted him to take it.
“Not in the movies that I watch.” She winked at me.
“What am I going to do Navi? Betray my people, leave my new life here, all for some dick?” I let out a little of the frustration I was feeling.
“Has anyone in your family actually told you not to marry this man? And you’ve had a few years here to sew all your wild oats. You could have slept with a hundred men in that time, and you’ve never so much as considered taking one back to your room even though you get a dozen offers a night. What does that say to you?” Once again, Navi’s orb-like eyes were on me like spotlights. I couldn’t lie to her.
“It means that I’ve been in love and waiting for him to come to me all this time, and now that he’s here, I’m back to being a chicken shit who can’t
commit to anything,” I sighed, knowing exactly what I was.
“I’m not saying your feelings aren’t valid, Isla. His family did overthrow yours. They took the kingdom from you. That’s real, and I’m sure it fucks with you. On the other hand, how many times, just in your family line, has that throne probably changed hands? It’s what we all do. Peace can only last so long before one of us gets a stick up their ass about another one, and we fight and fuck until it’s all out of our systems.” Navi kindly rubbed my back, and I was once again reminded of how much I truly appreciated her friendship.
She had saved me from the perils of myself more than once. I overthought every decision I ever made, sometimes to the point of embarrassing myself or crippling myself with the sheer extent to which I found myself thinking in circles. It had always been a terrible habit of mine but one that I never seemed to be able to quit.
Today would be no different for my thought patterns.
“What am I going to do?” I chewed my lower lip, already knowing what she would tell me and hoping that hearing it coming from her strong voice would give me the strength to actually do what I needed to do.
“Go out there and dance for him.” There was no hesitation from her. “Yes, you’ll be dancing for the entire room. Yes, you’ll put them into your relaxation trance, but focus on him. Think about him. Hell, put yourself into the trance as well, and see what comes out of your clarity. I’ll bet any amount of money you want on the guess that you’ll come out of it wanting him more than ever and knowing that your family will just get over it.”
Once again, I knew that she was right, but I couldn’t help but feel my knees trembling at the thought.
“If I know what I need to do, and I know what the right decision is, why do I feel so weak and terrified about all of it?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Am I just that afraid to commit?”
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