The Wildest Woods

by S. K Munt

  I nodded slowly, reaching out to touch his lips, and they parted around an inhalation as his eyes fluttered shut. My fingers remembered the touch of his skin, and my other senses were drunk on his scent, and although my mind was screaming that it was all in my head- that there was no good here- the sight of his thick, black eyelashes resting against his olive skin did things to me that were so illicit that he didn’t have to touch me at all for me to feel his charge. Damn Satan for making what felt so wrong feel so right!

  ‘Really…’ I whispered. ‘And when you pushed me against that tree, there was nothing tender about it. It was hot, and breathless and thrilling and… oh God…’ Kohén’s eyes snapped open as I staggered back, clutching my heart. ‘No! No this was exactly why I didn’t want to talk about this! How dare you just bust into my life again and make me feel this way? I have to go, now! Before you can make me feel one more thing for you that you don’t deserve!’

  ‘Erika, wait-’

  ‘No! Captain Kingslater takes wonderful care of me, so I’d be the cruel one if I allowed myself to be tempted into your bed!’

  ‘No! Please, don’t go!’ Kohén caught my wrist and dragged me back, searching my eyes with his. ‘I know I don’t deserve you and you’re making it very clear that Cairo does. But I want you, Erika- I’ve scarcely been able to think straight since I first saw you. I’ve had six glasses of wine since then, but I’ve been drunk since the second we met and I don’t want to sober up!’ he lifted my hand to his lips, kissing it. ‘I know you’ll laugh when I say that this behaviour is out of character for me, but it is! I’ve had the chance to go to other girls but I’ve lacked the desire to actually solicit a Companion’s services… until now.’

  ‘Is that so?’ And something inside my chest felt all wobbly when he nodded. This wasn’t the first time that he’d used that kind of line on me and it had turned out to be true the last time, so was that still the case? Did Kohén still struggle to get aroused by anyone but me, even with the amnesia robbing him of his memories of Larkin? Incredible!

  ‘It is,’ Kohén said earnestly. ‘Look, I don’t have much gold on me now, but I know that I’m wealthier than Kingslater is, and I can defend myself just fine if he takes an issue with you agreeing to partake in such a transaction-’

  I pulled my hand back, fanning myself again. ‘I find it hard to believe both claims. Cairo’s a giant, and your own powers have been depleted-’

  ‘I’ve taken out men scarier than him before in worse shape than I’m in right now,‘ Kohén said, and his eyes flashed dangerously. I fanned myself harder, and told me that he hadn’t just completely turned me on.

  ‘Regardless of your self-declared might, I know about the financial strife your kingdom is in and would wager that we have more in the treasury here- thanks to Captain Kingslater, of course. There’s no way you could offer me even a fraction of what he can!’

  ‘I have two thousand on me now!’ he cried, and my eyebrows lifted in shock. Two thousand was four times the going rate for an evening with a highly ranked companion. ‘Will that buy me a night in your chamber? An hour? A kiss? Please… I usually hate being called Prince Kohén but every time you say it, it makes me that much harder...’

  My stomach sucked in under my corset. ‘You’re out of your mind!’ Well, at least my going rate has gone up from when he threw a silver coin at my fucking feet after our first kiss… ‘There are three other girls here that will cure what ails you for two hundred and fifty an hour and if you’re as exasperated as you say you are, a minute and a half ought to-’

  ‘No one but you will be able to cure me of what ails me, I know it, and even once you have, I fear that I’ll be twice as drunk on my feelings for you after,’ Kohén moved after me, reached over me and pulled the french doors shut behind me, and I cringed as one of those bad suppressed feelings of being trapped by this man resurfaced in my soul. ‘Don’t run from me, beautiful girl… just tell me- what will it cost me to secure some time in your company? Everything I have and broken legs for Kingslater’s peace of mind after? I’ll pay whatever price you set!’

  I looked down at his perfect, panting mouth and then up into his perfect blue eyes. ‘Even if I was inclined to sell them, my affections sure as hell can’t fight their way through a locked door, and neither can your reputation!’

  Kohén blinked and then sighed, reaching around me and opening the door again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his expression conflicted. He turned away and rubbed his face then tore at his hair, looking like he was crawling alive with ants for the aggravation, and they were sparking around his knuckles even though Sam had pronounced him sapped. ‘Shit! I guess I’m every bit as obsessive once obsessed as they say I am right? Fuck… I’m… I’m just sorry.’ He waved his hand, and a comet’s worth of sparks shimmered from his fingertips. ‘Please, just go.’

  I arched an eyebrow, intrigued. The old Kohén would have kissed me anyway, especially once I’d looked at his mouth- and I’d sort of been counting on him doing just that. Did the new Kohén have a stronger sense of self? Or was he just being more careful with me because I’d threatened his reputation? Confused, thrown off my own course and afraid that he was going to call it a night, I sighed and began flapping my stupid fan again, wondering how to proceed. I hadn’t been counting on him showing restraint… how was I going to get him to believe that he was the one doing the seducing while he was trying so hard to rise above it?

  ‘I cannot take you to bed without hurting Captain Kingslater, or leading every man in Raphael to hope that I’m willing to prostitute myself out after all…’ I said softly, leaning against the door. ‘But you just acted like a gentleman even though it’s clear that it’s the last thing you feel like doing, and that has earned you a bit of my trust, Kohén. My trust… and perhaps a dance or two? If you’d like to dance with me, that is.’

  Kohén looked over his shoulder and smiled at me. ‘Why would you want to dance with me, Erika? I’ve just made an absolute fool of myself.’

  ‘Because dangerous or not, you’re still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, Prince Kohén…’ I bit my lip as I rolled off the doorway, giving him a coquettish look over my shoulder as I moved back towards the ballroom. ‘And because though I lack the courage to say it to the man in my life… I very much want your hands on me, even if it only is to spin me around the dance floor. What will it cost me to secure a dance or two in your arms?’

  Kohén’s eyes sparked, and a foolish, utterly disarming and boyish grin made his face crinkle up with joy. ‘For you my lady? It’s on the house.’

  ‘That’s very generous, your highness. Just don’t keep me waiting, all right?’ Then, with a wink, a smile, and another flutter of that ludicrous fan, I sashayed off into the ballroom walking my Companion walk, safe in the knowledge that he was following me.

  42.

  Château Aztaroth, Raphael

  Kohén Barachiel

  I was having the absolute time of my life and I never wanted it to end, and once all of my able-bodied friends had joined me in the ballroom and had toasted our survival we were all in agreement: I had led us to paradise. Not just any paradise, either, but a bold one unlike any other. To a place where the lights flashed in colours and the music throbbed so hard and loudly that you could feel it reverberating right through your being. It was like nowhere I’d ever been before, and given how formal the banquet that had preceded it had been, I was completely shocked. We’d never thrown a ball like this in Arcadia, never! Where did they get this music from? How had they learned to dance like that? Why were kids permitted to attend given how wild everything was, and what had influenced this place? Outside everything had looked like a fairytale, but inside, everything was like a fantasy, and I couldn’t bring myself to believe that the demure, soft-spoken and kind-eyed archangel Raphael had dreamed it all up. The stone cottages, yes- the bare-breasted Artisans allowing people to do shots off their stomachs in the dark ante-room, no.

  I wanted to spend every seco
nd at Erika’s side, inhaling her scent and listening to her breathy giggle that did things to me that no woman’s touch ever had, but regardless of how meek and frightened she’d seemed when we’d first met, I discovered that she was quite the butterfly, and flitted from one group of people to the next, making conversation and accepting offers to dance in a dizzying swirl of spring pastels and sparkling eyes, and every time she swirled my way, I found myself breathless. I tried to follow her as much as I could without making it look like I was gearing up to commit another sex crime, but as much as people gawked me, and as often as I received the odd poisonous look from behind a mask or two, no one seemed to be paying me or Erika much mind, and all appeared to be as swept up by the thrilling festivities as I was. Mind you, it would have been pretty hard to keep a close eye on anyone with those lights bouncing around like that, palpitating between splashes of colour, to shadowy darkness and back again at the speed of eyelids fluttering in REM.

  ‘You’re not dancing,’ the beautiful Companion remarked at one point, sidling up to me with her stunning friend Emm on her arm with Sam trailing glassy-eyed behind. At first I’d thought he was making a play for Erika seeing as her date hadn’t yet returned, but it didn’t take me long to realise that it was Emm’s tail that he was chasing, not the Companion. Not that the pretty redhead seemed to notice though because like Erika, she’d been fluttering from group to group, paying her redder-haired shadow no mind.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I nodded to the complicated-looking dance that the people were doing behind her in the centre of the room, to music that was unlike nothing I’d ever heard, to a tempo that no one in my division was in any state to attempt to keep up with. Back home most of our music was slow and performed by string instruments but this kind of music was more percussive and amplified so loud that you almost had to shout over it, and though my fingers had been itching to go pick up one of the guitars that a musician was using, I knew I wouldn’t be able to play the way he was, and I certainly wouldn’t be able to sing given how raw my throat was from yelling, so I kept my hands in my pockets and my wistful eyes on the bandstand. ‘I wouldn’t know how to join in on all of that. But I am enjoying watching, my lady.’

  Erika glanced behind her, then back to me and grinned while Saul-Yin bounced over to us, so high on Ambrose’s attentions that she was practically vibrating with vitality. ‘It’s quite the sight, isn’t it? It took me a long time to learn, but it’s less graceful and technical than the dances that we had to learn in Mossgrove, so it’s easy enough to pick up on- you just sort of have to fling yourself in and move to the rhythm and eventually, it all falls into place.’ Erika turned to Saul-Yin, and extended her hand. ‘Hello. I’m Erika, and you are...?’

  ‘Saul-Yin, Kohén’s 2IC.’ Saul-Yin lifted Erika’s hands top her lips and kissed it. ‘And you’re lovely!’ She elbowed me. ‘I can see why Kohén here hasn’t been able to shut up about you all afternoon.’

  ‘I’m lovely? I’ve been green with jealousy over your hair since you walked in!’ Erika stepped forward and ran her hand down Saul-Yin’s sleek black hair while Emm smiled shyly at my petite friend, and I lifted my champagne to my mouth, not missing the way that Saul-Yin’s eyes sparkled with excitement. Damn her for putting the idea of sharing the lovely Companion with her, and damn Erika for being too high to notice that Saul-Yin was looking down the front of her dress. ‘It’s so smooth and long- like a mermaid!’ She pulled back and gave me a funny look when I started choking on my bubbles. ‘Are you all right, Guardian Barachiel?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ Saul-Yin beamed up at Larkin as Emm reached over and brushed her fingers against Saul Yin’s knee-length curtain of hair as well. ‘Just a little overwhelmed, I think. It’s been a while since any of us were invited to a ball, so we’re not used to people this pretty, food this good, or music this amazing.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Forever. Well, forever for most of us, about two years for this one.’ She lifted her chin. ‘We’re mostly ex-cons or imports in our division, you see, so we’re not really welcome anywhere back home even though legally, we’re supposed to be.’

  ‘Well, most of us are ex-cons or imports here too, so consider yourself welcome, and please, enjoy yourself as thoroughly as possible, and as equally as the other citizens are!’ Erika responded without batting an eyelash, and I saw Ambrose and Jent stand a little taller and smile a little more widely before the Companion winked at me. ‘See you on the dance floor later, Guardian Barachiel?’

  ‘So long as it slows down to a pace I can manage,’ I said, feeling tight in the chest. Goodness, this woman was bewitching me!

  ‘I don’t like your chances of that happening! This is a Raphael party- you keep up with everyone, or step aside!’ she said, and then she snatched Martya’s hand, whispered something in her ear that made them both giggle before taking off again, leaving four dumbstruck morons gaping after them in her wake. Not Raithe though- he’d been doing shots at the bar with the people that had been our waiters two hours before that had actually turned out to be our guards from earlier. Now that they’d clocked off, a bunch of women dressed as witches had taken over as the servers, and were handing out exotic-looking cocktails and shots at a rapid rate.

  ‘She wants you,’ Saul-Yin said, not taking her eyes off Erika until she’d been swallowed up by the crowd. ‘I don’t care what arrangement she has with this invisible pirate… that girl wants you bad. Can’t you feel the energy and body heat radiating off her? She’s so hard up that if you don’t go dance with her soon, I will.’

  I reached for one of the shots that was being bussed by us, watching with amusement as Sam actually yanked Emm away from her prospective partner and dragged her over to the edge of the crowd, looking like he was lecturing her while she laughed and fiddled with the amber pendant that she was wearing.

  ‘You feel that energy too? Well, I guess that’s a good thing, I was starting to worry that it was just me projecting how fucking badly I want to…’ I groaned and threw the shot back before I could finish that sentence, gasping when it burned a path down my throat that tasted like roses and rum but with a creamy aftertaste. Erika was dancing again, this time swinging herself around on the arm of an older, black man, before she was whirled into the arms of a gangly teenage boy with snow white hair that had dressed up like an explorer. The boy frowned up at her as they went through the couply-steps, and though Erika’s expression creased in consternation at whatever he was saying, she eventually leaned down and kissed the boy’s cheek before shaking her head and saying something in a very firm but obviously assuring tone.

  ‘Everything will be all right,’ I saw her mouth as her turn came to be spun away again, and though the boy still looked troubled, he nodded and then turned to smile tightly as he caught his new partner- a girl that was actually his age, and I wished I knew what had been said- I wished I knew how King Raphael had made this place work; a kingdom where a boy of about sixteen could be concerned for the welfare of the most popular Companion, and where she would care enough for him in return to treat him not like an under aged admirer, but like a dear friend and an equal.

  ‘I feel your pain,’ Saul-Yin said, watching Erika as closely as I was while smoothing the pencil skirt that went with her own formal uniform. ‘She’s really something, isn’t she? In fact, if it weren’t for the brand and the outfit, I’d assume that she a noblewoman or a school teacher, not a Companion. She’s so warm and evidently admired- have you seen how many people have turned to invite her into their conversations? It’s not like that back home, is it? They’re treated with reverence, but they’re never really included, and you rarely see them embraced by women and children!’

  ‘She’s a princess,’ I agreed. ‘Though mind you, she’s got a mouth on her. I don’t imagine she talks to those women and children the way that she talks to me…’

  ‘Lucky man. What’s she said?’

  ‘In a nutshell? Come and get me, but don’t touch me,’ and Saul-Yin chuckled
.

  ‘Well… what are you going to do? Go and get her and try to make her instigate the touching? Or are you just going to give your money to one of the other girls and pretend that you’re not falling madly in love with Miss Untouchable?’

  ‘What other girls?’ I asked, taking another shot off the busboy/witch again before I strode across the dance floor and after Erika, desperate to see if I could feel like I belonged here too. I watched peoples’ feet carefully, wondering if my own could keep up to the rhythm that was pulsing through me in a more familiar way now. ‘There aren’t any, are there?’

  My friend’s laugh followed me across the room, and because she was laughing fondly and not in derision, it gave me the push I needed to break into the pack of bodies, and catch Erika just as she was spun my way, tinted pink all over by the fuchsia light.

  ‘Oh!’ she breathed in sharply when I crushed her to me, and I could see the whites of her eyes behind the eyeholes in her mask. ‘Guardian Barachiel! I thought you were going to wait for a slower song?’

  One of my hands caught hers as my other flattened across the flat of her back. ‘I decided that I’d waited long enough. Besides, the last time I waited too long for a girl, I drove myself right off the deep end, and I don’t want to put anyone in danger, so here I am, flinging myself into the fray as requested!’

  Erika laughed, and I fought to keep my eyes on her face even though her cleavage was practically bouncing with every light step that she took. ‘I’m glad that you’re thinking so rationally regardless of how many shots you’ve had.’

  I cocked my head. ‘How do you know how many shots I’ve had?’

  Erika wriggled her eyebrows. ‘Because every time you take your eyes off me I feel it, and then I can’t help but take advantage of the opportunity to watch you.’ She giggled when I blushed in pleasure. ‘And I like watching you do shots. I like watching you eat, too, and laugh with your friends... you’ve got such a sensual mouth…’ she dropped her eyes to my lower lip and just like that, I was throbbing. ‘Damn. Maybe I’m the one that’s had too many shots, hmm?’ she looked up at me bashfully through the mask and from beneath her lush lashes. ‘Sorry. I’ll try to watch my own mouth from now on.’