"Please, come in," said a woman's soft voice. She had stepped back and was hidden within the interior darkness and behind the door.

Wishing I had brought a winter coat along, I stepped into the cold foyer and turned back to face my host as the door closed. Blinking against the darkness, my eyes took a moment to adjust after my walk in the bright afternoon sun.

When my eyes focused, I felt like I had been hit in the gut. The woman standing in the golden sunlight pouring through the slender window beside the door was stunning. Her skin was pale but perfectly flawless as it stretched over high cheekbones on a lovely oval face. She had dark eyes that could have been either dark brown or dark blue, but I couldn't tell in the shadows. Her exquisite mouth spread into a warm smile when I realized that I had been staring, but even with that knowledge I couldn't stop myself.

A black silk tank top clung to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and revealed long, white arms. Her black pants hugged her long legs and were molded to her shapely hips. Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy was not a thin, waiflike creature like so many that filled fashion magazines and action movies. She was lush and curvy, leaving me aching to fill my hands with her.

I cleared my throat loudly and jerked my eyes from her, if only so I could get the blood to flow back from my pants to my brain. "Are you Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy?" I asked.

"Yes, I am." Her voice was silky smooth and left a slow burn in my chest like good Kentucky bourbon. A part of me wanted her to go on talking, but the little sane part that wasn't my libido was screaming to never let her open her mouth again.

"I'm Gage. The queen . . . the queen of the Summer Court sent me."

"Oh, yes. She's in town, isn't she? Is she well?"

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath. There was a hint of something in the air. Almost like flowers. Soft and cloying. I couldn't identify it without getting a stronger whiff, but I didn't want to draw more of it into my lungs. Something was off in this house.

With my eyes closed, some of the fog was clearing from my mind and I could think a little better. I was becoming more aware of the slight tingle of magic in the air. It was nothing aggressive and may have been nothing more than a defensive spell or two, but I hadn't even known the magic was there when I had stared at the woman. I tried to focus on the feeling of the magic, see if I could identify the spell. Was the spell muddling my thoughts, making it impossible to think about anything beyond this woman and s.e.x?

A whisper of fabric was my only warning that Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy had moved closer to me.

"Oh, you poor dear," she cooed in that intoxicating voice. "You've got something in your eyes." A hand as cold as ice slid along my cheek, chilling my skin while sending a fresh shot of hot l.u.s.t straight to my d.i.c.k, which was now rock hard.

I jerked away from her touch, slamming against the nearest wall. My breath exploded from my throat in hard, jerky gasps. She had been about to wipe off the dandelion water. Holy s.h.i.t, if this was how I was reacting without falling under her glamour, I was totally f.u.c.ked without it.

"Mint! The queen needs mint!" I shouted at her, sounding like an idiot, but I didn't care. I needed to get the mint and get the h.e.l.l out of there before I lost control. I didn't know what it was. Her beauty, her smile, the sound of her voice, the scent in the air, the magic-maybe all of the above-but whatever it was, it was driving me toward one thing. Even with my eyes squeezed shut, all I could think about was pinning this woman to the floor and f.u.c.king until we both died of pleasure.

With some effort, I pulled up a pleasant memory of Trixie and clung to it like a life raft bobbing helplessly in the middle of the ocean. I loved Trixie. I wouldn't betray Trixie with this woman. Trixie was my happiness. Trixie was my sanity. Trixie . . .

Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy gave a little laugh, proving she wasn't disturbed by my idiotic shouting. "Of course. Come to my greenhouse and I'll get some for you." I wanted to tell her that I would wait outside on her front porch in the warm sunlight and fresh air. There were other things I wanted to do to give me some physical relief, but I didn't want to do them with her. Never with her.

Regardless of what my brain was screaming, I found my body following her through the opulently decorated house to an open, two-story room filled with windows. Sunlight poured in, seeming to glint over her pale skin, but there was no warmth in this room either.

As she picked up a pair of pruning shears, I watched her out of the corner of my eye, but was careful not to look at her directly. My thoughts were sluggish, but at least my mind was working now. Despite my reaction of mindless l.u.s.t, I knew she wasn't a succubus. I had a good friend who was an incubus, which meant that I'd met a few succubi in my time-I knew the difference. Noire de Gruchy was perfect in every way but ice cold to the touch. Both incubi and succubi were warm, their body temperatures naturally running a little higher than humans, like most shifters.

Standing beside the long table filled with a wide variety of potted plants, I noticed that the magic felt stronger here. If this woman was fey, it made sense, since the fey got the bulk of their power from nature. But this was different. I held out one hand toward the nearest plant, taking in the stronger feeling of energy, when the plant shivered.

I jerked my hand back, my heart pounding in my chest. Holy f.u.c.k! That plant was human. Unlike the low energy that comes off many plants with magical properties, this one had a pulse and consciousness. I could feel the slight hint of a soul.

Demoiselle Noire gave a little chuckle over the sharp snip of her shears. My eyes jumped to her face and the horror helped knock the l.u.s.t back. She smiled at me and I could now see that her eyes were black, matching her lush, coal-black hair.

"Finally figured out what I am, have you?" she said in that same low sweet voice that poured over me like warm maple syrup. She could be talking about peeling my skin off with a cheese grater and my brain would imagine hot, sweaty s.e.x.

"The plants. They're humans," I said roughly, tightly gripping to my horror as an anchor.

She placed the snippets of mint in a little white envelope and folded it shut. "They were." Turning toward me, she slowly approached. I backpedaled a step for each of hers. "Former lovers that I've grown tired of. So are the magpies on my trees." She paused beside a large yellow rosebush and gently caressed the glossy green leaves. The bush shuddered and I could feel the hint of intense pleasure from it.

She continued approaching until I was pinned against another wall. Stopping a few feet away, she extended the hand holding the white envelope with the mint. I stared at it, confused. That was it? No attack? No bitter struggle for freedom?

She laughed again and I clenched my teeth against the sound as it throbbed through my body. "Go ahead. Take it. No strings attached."

My hand was shaking, but it flashed out and s.n.a.t.c.hed the envelope from her fingers before she could draw it back.

"I've promised the queen that I wouldn't kill you. The damage has already been done."

"What do you mean?"

"Rowena knows you were sent to me. She knows that no man has ever escaped me without visiting my bed. Even if I never touch you and you proclaim your sweet loyalty to her, she will always have a doubt eating away at her happiness in the back of her mind."

And thus the queen has her revenge on us both. Trixie would spend the rest of our relationship thinking that I had wanted someone else, and I would lose the person I loved most in the world.

My head fell back, hitting the wall behind me as my eyes closed. I had been afraid of the queen kidnapping Trixie, having her put to death, torturing her physically. h.e.l.l, I had expected some kind of physical attack on me. I had never thought of an attack of this sort and I had no defense against it.

"You know, if she's going to think you had s.e.x with me, you might as well have the pleasure," Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy said.

Lost in my own misery, I couldn't put up any kind of defense. She plastered her body against mine in a heartbeat. I grabbed her left hand and held it out, while my other hand caught her shoulder as I tried to pry her away from me. Every nerve ending trembled as I struggled against both her and a host of angry instincts that were snarling for s.e.x with this creature. The scent I had picked up earlier came back, thick and heavy, so that my mind was lost in the growing fog.

Straining, I managed to hold her upper body off my chest and keep her from kissing me, but her pelvis was pressed to my groin. She was icy to the touch, but I was putting off so much heat that I was confident that I could have melted an iceberg. Her leg slid up mine and a shudder racked my frame as she ground herself against my erection. This was not how I imagined I was going to die, but my heart wasn't going to be able to take much more of this.

Her free right hand slid over my chest, dancing over my pounding heart. I dared a glance down at her face and she flashed me a wicked smile. I sucked in a sharp breath before her hand slipped back down my chest and slid inside my pants and boxers. Her long, soft fingers circled my d.i.c.k and I moaned at the exquisite feeling before I could stop the sound. My hips jerked once, sending her hand over the head and down along the length, pushing another long groan past my lips.

I tensed every muscle in my body as sweat beaded at my temples and dripped down the sides of my face in the strain. I was teetering painfully on the edge, but I refused to give in. This beautiful creature was a monster. She lured lovers to her bed, and when she had sucked them dry of all they had to offer, she turned them into plants and animals so she could remain in control of them. The pleasure she offered wasn't real. It was an illusion of magic. There was no love, no tenderness. Only Trixie could give me that.

"It's not real," I moaned, trying to gather the strength to push her off me.

"This doesn't feel real?" She squeezed my c.o.c.k so that I nearly came.

"Trixie is real. I love Trixie," I said between clenched teeth.

"It's okay. She doesn't have to know. Just come for me now. You're so close. Give yourself that little release. It'll be our little secret."

"No!" I roared. Releasing her shoulder, I grabbed her right wrist and pulled it as quickly and carefully out of my pants as I could. When my d.i.c.k was free of her, I gave her a hard shove across the room. I didn't see where she landed. Bending down, I grabbed the white envelope I had dropped and ran through the house. Demoiselle Noire's furious shriek sliced through the air, chasing on my heels. As I hit the hallway, I pulled the hawthorn branch from my pocket and waved it with a quick burst of power that blew the front door off its hinges. Charging down the porch stairs, I started to run across the sidewalk when a rush of power swept across the front yard. The hawthorn hedges shifted and shivered a second before long branches lashed out at me. All the magpies took to the air at once, filling the silence with their loud cries. Ducking my head down under my arms, I kept running, a scream escaping me only when one branch hit my back and dragged the long thorns across my flesh.

I barely missed being hit by a car as I darted across the street, but I didn't stop until I was back in the park. Struggling to catch my breath, I dropped to my knees in the soft gra.s.s before I fell on my face. Muscles screamed and my f.u.c.king d.i.c.k was throbbing in time with my racing heart. You'd think with the pain burning in my back from the thorns that the d.a.m.n erection would go away, but I had been so close that some part of me was still crying for s.e.x. For half a breath I thought about stumbling into the nearby woods to finish what had been started, but why give the elves watching me a show? Instead, I dug the fingers of my left hand into a large cut on my right biceps, sending a fresh wave of pain through my body that in turn washed away the last of my erection.

The reasonable part of me knew that the queen had watched her people slaughtered by the Towers. I knew that she had to be hurting over the betrayal of her husband. I knew these things and that reasonable part could understand why she would attack Trixie and me like this. Yet the larger part of me that was in pain, and still trying to get over the horror that I had very nearly been raped by something evil, was pretty f.u.c.king p.i.s.sed at the queen.

12.

WHEN MY BREATHING had slowed to normal again and I was no longer worried about setting Demoiselle Noire's house on fire, I pushed to my feet and walked to the white gazebo beside the concrete lake. Anger bubbled inside of me, helping to dull the worst of the pains in my back and along my arms. Before entering the gazebo, I was of half a mind to do a little Tower-style threatening to get Trixie free of the Summer Court, but there was no need.

Trixie gasped. She was already pale with worry, but her wide green eyes filled with tears at the sight of me. I was sweaty and b.l.o.o.d.y, but for the first time in my life, my soul felt dirty. Logically, I knew that my body's reaction had been the result of magic and that I had been loyal to Trixie in my heart and in my head, but that logic failed to scrub away the gritty feeling on my soul.

She rushed across the gazebo, her arms open to embrace me. I opened my mouth to tell her not to touch me. That I was dirty. But the words never came up my throat. She crushed against me on a sob, her arms wrapping around my neck as she pressed her face into my throat.

"I love you," she cried. She repeated the words over and over again, teary and soft.

They were the balm I had been looking for, healing the cuts on my heart and washing away the filth covering my soul. My arms came around her like a vise, clutching her as tightly as I could.

"It's okay. I'm okay. Just had a little trouble with a hawthorn bush, that's all," I said in a light, teasing tone that was completely undermined by the ferocious hold I had on her.

"I love you," Trixie repeated.

I closed my eyes and let those wonderful words sink into me again. She didn't ask any questions. She didn't say anything besides those three words, because it was her way of showing that it was okay, that we'd get through whatever happened. Trixie knew who, or rather what, I had met, and by my appearance, she knew that at least I put up a fight. I wasn't sure if we'd ever talk about what occurred while we were separated, but I liked to think that she'd at least try to understand.

When I opened my eyes, I looked over Trixie's head at the queen. She was sitting stiff on her little bench, one delicate hand pressed to her open mouth while tears glistened in her wide eyes. She was also looking pale.

"I'm sorry," she whispered in a wavering voice. "I've made a terrible mistake."

Regret. Not because she had attacked a warlock and was now afraid of retaliation. She regretted what she had done because she had hurt two people who didn't deserve her venom. There were some people in this world who were born to be villains. They killed and tortured with no remorse. The queen of the Summer Court was not one of them. She had been carrying centuries' worth of pain and anger around. It drove her to strike out and now she regretted her action.

A frown tugged at the corners of my lips. Trixie's love and the queen's regret had cooled the last of my anger so that I was ready to block the event from my mind.

"I forgive you," I said in a rough voice as the words were lodged in my throat.

A thousand times over in my mind, I had thought that if the world was to ever find peace with the Towers, two things would need to happen. The warlocks and the witches would need to express regret and the world would have to forgive. How could I ever expect the world to do such a thing if I couldn't do it myself?

Trixie loosened her tight hold on my neck and pulled back so that she could look up at me. I smiled a little at her shocked expression before pressing a quick kiss to her forehead.

"Shall we continue with our meeting?" I asked.

Trixie released me and we returned to our places before the queen. Reaching into my back pocket, I pulled out the white envelope and dropped it on the little table holding her teacup and saucer.

"Your fresh mint, Your Majesty," I said.

With a slightly trembling hand, she reached forward and picked it up. Placing the crumpled, blood-streaked envelope in her lap, she gently ran her fingers over it while keeping her head down.

"What do you need of me next, Your Majesty?" I said, and her head popped up with a look of surprise. "I will do whatever task I must so that Rowena will no longer be pursued and barred from her people."

The queen looked down at her hands in her lap and her shoulders slumped slightly. For a moment she looked uncomfortable, but it pa.s.sed and her shoulders straightened again as she lifted her narrowed eyes to my face. "I'm older than I look to you. I remember back centuries, to a time when the warlocks and witches didn't try to crush the races of the world. They were scholars and . . . healers."

I nodded. "It's sad that the Towers strayed from such a role."

"When I spoke with Eldon, he intimated that you might be willing to lend some a.s.sistance in exchange for some leniency toward Rowena," she said carefully.

"I would be honored to lend Your Majesty any a.s.sistance that I possibly can," I said with a slight bow that had me grimacing as the movement caused fresh pain to shoot through my back. "However, I must interject one thing. While you're correct in that I have a past with the Towers, certain choices I have made in that respect have resulted in . . . my hands being tied in a way."

Her lovely faced twisted as she frowned. "What choices? In what way?"

I shoved my hands in my pockets and sighed. "The Towers ruled that if I was going to be permitted to leave, I had to give up magic."

"But you . . ." Her voice drifted off as she motioned toward the gazebo entrance and a fresh look of horror slipped across her face. Yes, she had sent me to Demoiselle Noire de Gruchy with the idea that I would use magic to escape and now she was realizing that I had been in even more danger than she had believed.

I considered letting her twist with that thought for a moment, but tossed it aside. "I've found ways to do some quiet magic. It's the big stuff that's going to get me killed."

The queen sat back against the little bench and stared at me for several seconds, confusion written on her face as she tried to puzzle something out. "And if what I required was not such a little quiet thing, would you do it? Would you risk your life for Rowena?"

"Yes," I immediately replied.

"No," Trixie snapped at the same time. She turned and laid her hands on my cheeks. "No, this stops now. You're not casting any more spells, no matter what she asks."

I placed my hand over one of hers, rubbing my thumb over the soft skin on the inside of her wrist. "As she's pointed out, the warlocks and witches have done horrible things to your people. Isn't it time a warlock did some good for your kind?"

"Gage, you weren't one of the warlocks that hurt us. d.a.m.n it, you weren't even born yet!" she said, blinking against the fresh tears gathering in her eyes. "You don't have to pay for the sins of other people."

"Then let me do it for you."

Trixie's hands slipped from my face and she wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing close. I winced but held her, laying my cheek against the top of her head. "After all the hate and anger and fear, let me do this one thing out of love," I whispered.

"I can't lose you," she said, her voice m.u.f.fled against my chest.

"You won't. I haven't agreed to anything yet. We're talking."

"You . . . love her, don't you?" the queen asked in amazement.

"Very much," I said, meeting the queen's cool eyes.

"You are a strange one," she murmured, bringing a chuckle from Trixie.

I smiled while hugging Trixie, easing the last of the tension that had been hanging in the air since my reappearance. "It's one of my many charms."

Raising her hands, the queen clapped loudly twice. "Chairs!"

I twisted around to see the guard at the entrance step aside as two elves entered carrying a pair of comfortable chairs, which were set before the queen. As the two newcomers left, she raised her hands again and made a little shooing motion. "Everyone leave me with my guests." The three guards hesitated for several seconds, staring at me, before leaving the gazebo. I had no doubt that if I made one wrong move, they were going to be on me within seconds. They were gone, but not far.

I ushered Trixie over into a seat before slowly sitting beside her. Muscles were sore and my back was killing me, but it felt so d.a.m.n good to sit down. To my shock, the queen pulled a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and offered it to Trixie.

"Thank you, Arianna," Trixie murmured as she dabbed her eyes and dried her cheeks.

The queen chuckled at my confusion. "You will be further surprised to know that Rowena and I used to be close friends many years ago. When I could pull her away from her murals, she was one of my closest companions." The queen looked away, blinking back tears before she turned back to us.

"It's what made this mess an even bigger tragedy." Trixie's voice wavered. "I felt like I was betraying our friendship when I realized that I would be his choice for a consort. I had to run. Not just because I didn't want him, but I didn't want to betray you."

I slumped in my chair and ran a hand roughly over my face. Why either woman hadn't killed this a.s.shole yet was beyond me. He throws aside his beautiful wife so that he could chase after his wife's best friend? I had heard of women shooting their husbands for less.

"But it doesn't look as if love has been any kinder to you," Arianna said, drawing my gaze back to her.

"What do you mean?" I said, a little more harshly than I had meant to.

She smiled. "An elf falls in love with the most despised creature on the planet, the scourge of her people. And to make matters worse, one who is despised even by his own kind. If I had to choose, I would keep my indifferent husband. He may not want me like he wants Rowena, but at least he won't get me killed."