“I couldn’t wait,” he answered, and the look he gave her then was so smoldering that her previously satiated pussy sprang to immediate and eager life.With a smug and knowing smile, he squeezed her hand.
They ascended several flights of stairs, winding up through a graceful central atrium so bright it made her eyes water.With an impatient sigh, Azul grabbed the shades from her jacket pocket—second-favorite jacket as Ram’s Horns had taken her favorite along with the platinum coin and she was sure which she was more mad about—and pointedly handed them to her.Oh, right.“Seems wrong to wear shades indoors,” she defended.
“I happen to like your lustrous dark eyes,” he commented.“I’d prefer they not become seared out pits in your eye sockets.”
“Sweet-talker,” she replied.“And that’s not how it works.”
“In here,” he directed, sweeping a hand at a pair of ornately gilded doors, a pair of very tall, very muscular, and very intimidating guards stationed outside.Their golden horns spiraled like fancy antelopes, so tall and heavy looking, Cha wondered how they kept their heads upright.But then, their necks were the size of her waist, so they clearly had the musculature for it.At Azul’s gesture, the doors swung outward, the guards unmoving except to give her the hairy eyeball.She wondered if their job was to protect the people inside Azul’s apartments—or prevent unauthorized exit.Hesitating at the potential trap, she glanced cautiously inside.It looked nice enough.
Azul tugged her hand and she let him draw her into a plush receiving room.Sweating pitchers of what looked like wine sat on various end tables with convenient, spectacularly delicate glasses invitingly next to them.The banquets around the room bore platters of delicacies, all enticing.Her stomach growled and she sternly told it to shut up.The only windows in the room looked out over the atrium, so there wasn’t an exit from the palace there.“Is it safe to talk—”
“There should be a bath prepared through there,” Azul interrupted, indicating an ornate bathing chamber through an open doorway.
Guess that was a no.Figured.More and more, however, it was looking like Azul’s status there hovered between prisoner and honored guest.
“Aren’t Dy and Katu here yet?”she asked.The transfer shouldn’t have taken that long.Hopefully nothing had gone—
“Right here,” Dy answered emerging from an adjoining chamber, Katu trotting before her and gliding up to welcome Cha with sinuous weaving around her knees.She crouched to pet him, catching the scent of expensive soap, his fur glossily clean.He seemed happy and had clearly been fed, something she was beginning to envy.
Dy wore a gorgeous ballgown of ombre lavender, darkest at the feathery silk brushing the thick carpet and nearly white at the low cut neckline, which displayed her prodigious bosom to excellent effect.Her golden curls had been tamed into glossy corkscrews and caught up in a tiara of pale amethysts.Matching teardrop jewels dangled from her earlobes and delicately circled her wrists.She looked like a fairytale princess.
“Everything all right?”she asked, intent blue gaze going from Cha to Azul and back again.
“Yes, fine,” Cha answered.“You look fantastic, but…” She turned to Azul.“I’m not wearing anything like that.”
“Of course you aren’t,” he replied smoothly as if the thought had never occurred to him.“Once you bathe, you can approve the outfit selected for you.”
She didn’t miss the wording on that.Apparently she’d wear what she was given and like it.Considering a tart rejoinder, Cha instead threw up her hands and stalked into the bathing chamber—though she wasn’t above throwing a last glare at Azul, who smiled sweetly at her in angelic innocence that made her want to throttle him all the more.
The bathing chamber was nice, of course, if overly gilded, and staffed by a pair of waist-high pixies with black and yellow butterfly wings.Their slim bodies were devoid of gender and they never spoke to Cha, though they did giggle frequently and in a soothing range of notes that reminded her almost of birdsong.They deftly assisted her in undressing and bathing, even washing her hair and toweling her dry.They oiled her skin, too, giving her a massage that banished the last of the aches leftover after Azul’s healing of her injuries.
All the same, she couldn’t help reflecting on the last fae bathing chamber she’d been in, the one in Azul’s diplomatic island of Amethyst inside Moonstone territory.That had been a restful, low-key place, especially with the windows blacked out to shield her mortal eyes from the too-brilliant Moonstone day.She and Azul had shared an idyll of very hot, rawly intimate sex—over the course of hours—and even though she’d fully expected that to be a one-time deal, she’d let herself immerse in that time.Maybe she’d been able to let go of her usual caution not to get too close with a lover exactly because she’d thought it would be a one and done.
Now they’d been together again and—while not as intimate as that first time—it had been deeply erotic to the point of turning her inside out.Seeing him again was everything.She practically vibrated with the echoes of being with him, and found herself yearning to go back out in the main room just to be near him again.Which was bad.Very bad.
“You are so fucked, Bandit,” she muttered to herself in the mirror while one of the pixies did her makeup and the other styled her hair.They’d trimmed her bob here and there—it had needed it—and managed to make the sleek shape look the best it had ever been.Magic, doncha know.They were currently weaving in amethysts so dark they were almost black, which she grudgingly had to admit was the right direction to go, as opposed to Dy’s pretty pale gems.She gazed back at her image in disdain, those dark eyes Azul said he liked hard and accusing.“What happened to you?If this got out on the racing circuit, you’d be a laughing stock.”
Really lowering that she could feel like a kicked, lovelorn puppy and simultaneously want to throw herself into Azul’s arms again for more and more and more.I couldn’t wait, he’d said and then berated her for being an idiot.What if he only wanted her for the sex?
So what if he does?The internal voice that matched her mocking gaze snarled.You’ve always been fine with that.Preferred it!
She’d love to blame it on enchantment, but Azul had wormed his way under her defenses and had lodged himself in her psyche like a brain worm you could only eradicate through death.But that didn’t mean she had to be a helpless ninny about him.Just because she wanted to be with him all the damn time, and just because some nameless prodding made her want to make contact with him, however briefly, didn’t mean she had to give into that shit.She could pretend to be as nonchalant as he was.She’d let him drop her off and dismiss her as nobody once before.
She could do it again.
And she’d do it with the satisfaction that she’d saved his idiotic ass from whatever this mess was.
There.She nodded at herself in the mirror.That was better.Not only did she look more like the confident, bad-ass Bandit of legend, the makeup suited her.The pixies had done it dark, sharp, and dramatic.Cat’s eye liner extended in lethal-looking spikes, deep violet shadow accentuating her deep-set eyes.Her brows had been blackened to glossy black wings and dark purple lipstick turned her mouth into something both cruel and sensuous.She looked fantastic.
Better, she looked powerful.
The pixies helped her into deep purple undergarments.Cha wasn’t on fire with delight over the lace-up bustier, but it did amazing things for her cleavage.Nothing like Dy’s, but considering how much less Cha had to work with, the transformation was practically magical.She shimmied into a tight skirt so short she’d be flashing the court if not for the form-fitting briefs beneath.Thigh-high boots, again in that dark purple that stopped short of black, finished the look.She was pleased to note that the boots came complete with amethyst encrusted daggers in built-in sheaths.The pixies also buckled on her sword and wand, now moved to a low-slung belt that matched the outfit and conformed perfectly to her hips.
Instead of delicate bracelets like Dy’s, Cha received coiling armbands inset with more of the black-amethyst jewels.And cuffs like dark vines blooming exotic violet flowers wrapped around her ears.If all of this was Azul’s doing, then he’d noticed she didn’t have pierced ears.In truth, she looked so very badass in this outfit, she really hoped he was behind the choice.She liked the idea—more than was probably wise—that he saw her this way.
The pixies fluttered their wings in pleasure, then escorted her to the bathing chamber doors, and flinging them open, flanking her with flourishes.Good entrance.
Azul and Dy looked up from the sofa where they’d apparently been having a cozy conversation.Cha narrowed her eyes at that, wondering if they’d been discussingher.Never mind that the thought was painfully narcissistic—they could be discussing smuggling, or escape plans or sorcery or any number of much more interesting and useful topics—she had a feeling otherwise.