BloodFever by Karen Marie Moning

Author:Karen Marie Moning [Moning, Karen Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-26T04:25:31+00:00

Page 89

I lunged for him without hesitation.

He vanished.

"I sought only to remind you of what you and I might share, MacKayla," he said behind me. "It is

extraordinary, is it not? As befits an extraordinary woman."

I spun and lunged again. I knew he would only vanish once more, but I couldn't help myself.

"What part of 'no' don't you understand? The n or the o ? No is not maybe. It is not I like to play

rough. And it is never, never, never yes."

"Permit me to tender my apologies." He was in front of me again, clothed in a robe that was a color I'd

never seen before and couldn't describe. It made me think of butterfly wings against an iridescent sky,

backlit by a thousand suns. His eyes, once molten amber, burned the same strange hue. He could not

have looked more alien.

"I'll permit you nothing," I said. "Our hour is up. You dishonored our deal. You promised you wouldn't

sex me up. You broke that promise."

He regarded me a long moment and then his eyes were molten amber, and he was the tawny Fae prince

again. "Please," he said, and from the way he said it, I knew there was no such word in the Fae tongue.

To the Tuatha Dé there is no difference between creating and destroying, Barrons had said. There

is only stasis and change. Nor to these inhuman beings was there any such thing as apologizing. Would

the ocean apologize for covering the head and filling the lungs of the man who fell in it?

He'd used the word for me. Perhaps learned it for me. He'd used it in supplication. It gave me pause, as

he'd meant it to do.

"Please," he said again. "Hear me out, MacKayla. Once more I have erred. I am trying to understand

your ways, your wants." If he'd been human I would have said he looked embarrassed. "I have never

before been refused. I do not suffer it well."

"You don't give them the chance to refuse. You rape them all!"

"That is untrue. I have not used the Sidhba-jai on an unwilling woman in eighty-two thousand years."

I stared. V'lane was eighty-two thousand years old?

"I see I have made you curious. That is good. I am curious about you as well. Come. Join me. Let us

talk of ourselves." He stepped back and waved a hand.

Two chaise longues appeared between us. A wicker table between them offered a plate with a pitcher

of sweet tea and two ice-filled glasses. There was a bottle of my favorite suntan oil stuck in the sand next

to the chair closest me, near a pile of thick pastel towels. Sheets of brilliantly striped silk wafted from

nowhere, billowed once in the breeze and draped themselves over the chairs.

Salt air kissed my skin. I glanced down.

My catsuit was gone and I was again spearless. I was wearing a hot pink string bikini, with a gold belly

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