Mona Lisa Craving

TWENTY-TWO

I FELT HALCYON’S presence after most of the crowd had drifted away. The sudden awareness of him was like that of a tuning fork being struck, leaving my entire body vibrating with every part of me conscious of him. I felt him, felt his thoughts, and knew that he was lending me some of his control. I tasted eagerness, concern, curiosity…and nervousness from him.

Why are you nervous? I wondered. Just a normal thought, one that popped into my mind. I was surprised when he answered.

Meeting you again. Wondering if you had changed your mind on becoming my mate. His words sounded as clearly in my mind as if he had spoken them out loud.

I saw him then, a slender man with skin a dark, vivid gold against the white silk of his shirt, his hair a sumptuous fall of black against the white and gold backdrop. Simple. Elegant. Breathtaking.

Your eyes flatter me. I am most common in looks and appearance, he whispered in my mind. But I heard a smile in his voice. My own lips curved up in response.

You are all things but common to me, Halcyon.

Our hands touched, and his fingers wrapped around mine, golden brown skin against fair white. A lovely study of contrasts. What we were.

He lifted my hand to his lips in a gesture that only he could make so naturally graceful. “Hell-cat,” he said, and kissed the back of my hand.

“Halcyon.” I brushed my fingertips across his golden cheek and felt warmth flare up in his mind and along his skin at my touch. Amber and Dontaine greeted him politely, and he responded in kind to them, nodded cordially to Aquila and Tomas.

“It seems I missed quite a show,” Halcyon murmured. But I felt the truth through that connection we shared. He had deliberately waited until it was over so that he would not distract me, though it had been hard for him to do so. To stay away, knowing that I was here.

I was both touched and flattered. And watched, entranced, as a light, scarlet blush touched that gold-dusted skin.

This connection between us both soothes and stings, Halcyon murmured wryly in my mind. Nothing can be hidden when we are thus joined.

Out loud he said, “I have something I wish to give you waiting in my quarters. Will you come with me there?” Silently he added, You can quench your hunger in the privacy of my place.

I nodded. Told Aquila and Tomas to wait for us at the Council Hall, while Amber and Dontaine accompanied me to Halcyon’s abode.

“We’ll meet you in a little while,” I told them.

Bowing, Aquila and Tomas left.

Halcyon took my hand, set it in the crook of his arm, and led me down a path that wound behind the Great House. We passed a few other small, private residences before we finally arrived at his. It was set farthest back, away from the other lodgings, closest to the bordering thicket of woods. His dwelling here was simple and comfortably furnished, smelling like him, I thought, as I stepped through the doorway.

We do not have scents was his amused thought.

Then what do I smell?

What you are picking up is my physic scent. And because he was not used to censoring his thoughts, I caught the rest of it. That it was something that was only normally sensed by other demons.

He caught my distress. “Forgive me, Hell-cat. That was thoughtless of me,” he murmured, earning puzzled glances from Amber and Dontaine.

After we entered, Halcyon lifted his hand and stroked his palm over a stone mosaic design made of individual rocks embedded in the wall. As he passed his hand over it, a small, nondescript gray pebble set near the bottom began to glow, turning emerald green. I felt the thrumming energy slide over me and stretch wide to encompass the entire room.

“You already know what it is,” Halcyon said with surprise.

“A privacy shield. A sound barrier. So that no one outside can hear us.” I knew because Dante and his mother each had a similar stone.

Interesting, Halcyon thought. Kámennae stone are quite rare.

What type of rocks are they?

Have you not guessed yet? They are remnants from our mother planet, the moon. Taken from her core.

“You can speak to each other mind-to-mind,” Amber said, breaking into our silent conversation.

“Yes,” I confirmed, and felt apprehension flit through me. I had not told Amber of my new demon nature. The reason why I had asked him to come here now with Dontaine was so that I could explain it. So that he could see and know.

“I have a small part of Halcyon’s demon essence in me that allows this communication. It is not something he infected me with,” I added quickly, as concern and anger flared up hot and strong in Amber’s eyes, changing his blue eyes into the yellow-gold color of his name. “It’s something I took into myself through my own actions.” And that of another Queen.

“An accident,” I murmured, though it had not been so much an accident as ignorance. When I had sucked Mona Louisa’s light and essence into me, it had been with the full intent of killing her. Infecting me with Halcyon’s demon essence, which she had drank down into her, had just been an unforeseen side effect.

“Halcyon would not have knowingly done this.” I put my hand over Amber’s arm, and felt his thick muscles tighten beneath my grip. “It makes them vulnerable to those like me. They call us Damanôen, demon living, because we can sense them. In fact, it was their past practice to kill all those like me.”

I felt Amber’s energy flare anew beneath my restraining grip. “Halcyon’s trying to save me, Amber, not kill me. One of the reasons why he wishes to publicly claim me as his mate.”

“To give you his protection,” Amber said in a hard, grating voice.

I nodded. “And as a diversion. We want people to think that Halcyon infected me because of my intimacy with him as his mate.”

“Why?”

“To hide the real reason why I have become demon living.”

“And what is the real reason?” he asked.

“I cannot tell you, ever. That is the real secret we are protecting. I’m sorry, Amber.”

Those feral yellow eyes stared down at me. “If the cost of it is your life, then it is knowledge I can live forever without.”

I squeezed his arm in gratitude.

“That’s the reason why you wished to rid yourself of the babe,” Amber said in sudden understanding.

“Yes. Even though the child could be yours, I feared how this change in me would affect it.”

“It is not mine, Mona Lisa.”

Amber’s words startled me with their surety. “You sound as if you know this for certain.”

“I do,” Amber said. “Who have you shared your body with since this new life has sparked in you?”

Actually, I had to stop and think about it a moment. To rerun the past few days in my mind. “Just Dante.”

“Only Dante. Since that first time you lay with him,” Amber said.

“Why do you sound so sure about that?”

“We are the children of the moon. Beings tied close with nature and its rhythms. A Monère woman knows whose seed has taken root in her body. And she will instinctively desire only that man while his child grows in her.”

“Oh.” There was still so much I did not know about who and what I was. But with that explanation, my behavior of the past few days became clearer now. Why I had just slept in Amber’s arms and then Dontaine’s. How I had lain with them without making love with them, without desiring to do so, and why they had not pressed themselves on me. I realized the full significance now of that look in Dante’s eyes when I had taken him into my body that last time of my own free will, of my own instinctive desire. He had known then, for sure. Everyone had known who the father of my child was all this time. Even me, deep inside.

Amber turned to Halcyon. Asked him, “What can we do to protect her?”

“Just be near her” was Halcyon’s answer. “And be willing to donate your blood should she need it. The demon part of her lies dormant until it is triggered by the presence of another demon. Then bloodlust, an almost overwhelming hunger at first, rises up within her. She will be able to control it more as time passes. In the beginning, however, it will be more prudent to simply slake her thirst instead of trying to fight it. A small drink of blood will regain her much of her control.”

“She is in your presence now and has not evidenced the bloodlust you speak of,” Amber observed.

“Because I have linked us mentally, giving her some of my control. I wished to reach the privacy of my quarters before I unleashed it.”

“You can do so now,” Amber said. “I will gladly give her my blood.”

“That is my role,” Dontaine said, stepping up to my side. “She asked us to come with her here so that she can explain this to you and drink from me.” He bent down to me, tilting his neck to the side. And with an abruptness that was like a curtain tearing away, Halcyon’s control was removed.

Need crashed over me in a sudden deluge, and hunger, thirst, flared up inside me. My teeth morphed into sharp, piercing fangs and plunged into the white neck offered up before me. I drank him down mindlessly, reveling in the rich, piquant lifeblood flowing into me, gulping it down greedily at first, then more savoringly. Such bountiful flavor. Such abundant life. The taste was incomparable, and the need it filled beyond description. Dontaine moaned against me, clutching me to him, and I pressed my body against him willingly like a cat rolling sensually in catnip.

Unthinking need receded, and awareness returned. Enough, I thought, and felt the blood slow and thicken beneath my tongue. Reluctantly, I pulled out of that rich vein I had so easily tapped, so easily piercing that soft, tender flesh.

Perhaps it was because I was more familiar with it now that the thought of drinking blood no longer repulsed me. I hadn’t fought it this time, and control and thought had returned more quickly, easily.

I stepped back from Dontaine and looked up at Amber, let him see my fangs, the blood coating them. Another deliberate thought, and I shrank them down, felt them become normal teeth once more.

There was shock in Amber’s eyes, and I reacted without thought to it.

“No, don’t turn away from me,” Amber said, pulling my stiff body back against his much larger one. “It was just the surprise of seeing it. Even after you had told me, it’s not the same as seeing it for the very first time.”

“Let me go, Amber,” I said, my voice low, hard, closed down.

“Never.” His arms tightened around me. “Don’t run away from me.”

“I repulse you.”

“No! It was just…different, new. Forgive me.”

Another pair of arms came around us, glowing with soft light. Dontaine’s blond hair brushed feather-soft across my face as he drew up against me.

“That was wonderful,” he murmured in a thick, dreamy voice, nuzzling behind my ear, positioning his neck a whisper away from my mouth. “Drink from me some more.”

The unfeigned eager press of his body against mine was a soothing balm healing the cracks of my uncertainty. Pulling an unwilling smile from me.

“You sound like a cat that has just lapped down cream, instead of being the one who was drunk down,” I observed.

“What you made me feel was far better than any cream could ever taste.” Dontaine rubbed his face and body against me with a soft, sensuous purr. “Sweet blessed moon. That was almost as good as being inside you.”

“You felt pleasure?” I asked.

“Beyond your imagining.”

“Did it hurt?”

He drew back just enough so I could see his face. “Only when you first bit me. Then it disappeared and all I felt was this amazing pleasure rolling over me, filling me.”

“It will get even better when she gains more finesse,” Halcyon promised.

A delicious shudder ran through Dontaine’s body. “I can’t wait.” And the way he said it brought another smile to my lips.

I patted Amber’s hand, letting him know that I was all right. “It’s okay,” I said softly. “It’s new to everybody. We’re all learning how this works.”

He let his arms fall away. Instead of stepping away from him, I turned and wrapped my arms around Amber, burying my face against that broad chest that made me feel so safe. He was my anchor in this world, and I clung to him as such.

He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then set me from him, crouching down so that we were face-to-face. “I would have you take blood from me next time. It would please me…as Dontaine is making so damn obvious,” he said with a slight smile.

“Next time,” I promised, feeling my world settle once more back onto its axis.

When all was tranquil once more, Halcyon presented me with a beautifully carved, small wooden box, inlaid with ivory and gold. “I brought you here not only to feed, but to give you this,” he said, putting it into my hands.

It was a gift from my mate.

“Oh, Halcyon.” I lifted stricken eyes to his. “I didn’t think to get you anything.”

“You have given me the gift of yourself. All else is immaterial. Do not distress yourself. It is truly not so much a gift as my claim on you for others to see. Open it.”

I did and gasped. Inside was an exquisite cameo necklace with Halcyon’s likeness. It was framed around the rim by scroll-like writing. At the bottom was engraved the image of a fierce dragon. But the most striking part of it was the bright, glittery metal of the necklace itself, something that would catch every Monère’s eye.

“The chain is silver,” I said.

“Yes, I had it made thus in your honor. For the only Monère Queen to whom silver is not a weakness but a strength.”

The touch of silver against a Monère’s skin usually drained them of their power, made them only human strong. I was not only not weakened by it, but seemed to have an affinity for it, able to call any weapon made out of silver easily to my hand.

“Even the demons know this about you,” Halcyon said.

“What does this say?” I asked, tracing a finger over the characters carved around his likeness.

“The character on the left means royal, the one on your right that you are touching means consort. The dragon denotes my lineage and is the crest of our family line.” His dark chocolate eyes met mine. “Will you wear this?”

The picture of him, the words “royal consort,” and the dragon crest all denoted his claim and protection over me. But the silver it was set upon was a tribute to me, to my individual strength. It was a melding of us both, thoughtfully done.

“Of course.” My fingers fumbled a little as I reached behind, unfastening the silver cross I wore. It had been the only thing found on me as an infant. Something left by my birth mother, I had thought, and had been my most cherished possession, something I wore always. Even after I found out it had been Sonia, the midwife, who had given it to me, who had loved me as my mother had not, I had still worn it as a familiar comfort. I took it off now, a symbol of my past, and fastened Halcyon’s cameo in its place.

I smoothed my hand over the cameo, which I left prominently displayed, not hidden under my dress as my other necklace had been. Outside where everyone could see it and know who I was—the High Prince of Hell’s chosen consort.

“You honor me, ena.” Halcyon breathed the last word out like a soft caress. I knew now that it meant wife. And flushed a little at the meaning of it, the acceptance of it. His light kiss was as gentle and tender as the endearment he had whispered.

“Come,” he said, placing my hand once more on his arm. “Let us go attend to Council affairs.”