“Didn’t think there’d be next time,” I said, and I realized that my voice was hoarse from screaming their names.
He smiled more widely, and his eyes held that knowledge that a man’s eyes can after they’ve been with you in that most intimate of ways. “You ordered us to fuck someone else as soon as possible. You didn’t order us never to fuck you again.”
I couldn’t argue with that, though it seemed like I should have, but I wasn’t thinking quite clearly yet. My body still felt loose and liquid, as if I was only half inside it. I hadn’t passed out, but it had been a near thing.
The vines began to unwind from my arms and legs, rolling away like they had muscles and minds of their own. I smelled flowers, but it was neither roses nor apple blossoms.
I looked past Brii, where he still lay on his side against the glass. There was a tree growing against the glass, just a few yards away from us. It had gray-white bark, and it rose at least ten feet above us. It was covered in white and pink blossoms, and the whole room smelled sweet with it.
I fought to support myself on my elbows enough to get a better look at it. I realized that the bark was the same ash-white color as Briac’s skin. I’d always known he was a vegetative deity of some kind, but his name gave no clue. I stared up at the blossoming tree, then down at the man who was apparently passed out at my side.
“It’s a …”
“Cherry tree,” Ivi finished for me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WE WEREN’T SURE IF THE VINES AND THE TREE WOULD LAST, OR IF they would fade away like the apple tree had at the main house after Maeve Reed and I had had sex there. So, without really discussing it, we had breakfast in the formal living room around the table, under the spreading branches of the cherry tree with its blossoms and its breath of spring.
It was a longer walk for Galen and Hafwyn to bring the food, but everyone helped, and no one thought it a hardship as the first petals fell onto our plates. Before we had finished breakfast we were sitting in a room full of pink and white snow formed of petals, and where the blossoms had been there was the beginning of leaves, and the barest beginnings of fruit.
We talked quietly under the fall of blossoms and the growing greenery. And nothing we had to share seemed as bad, or as harsh, or as dangerous as it might have been, as if the very air were sweeter and calmer, and nothing could upset us.
I knew it wouldn’t last, but while it did, we all enjoyed it. So, where Doyle and Frost might have been upset that they had slept through the night, they weren’t. Rhys and I shared the dream about Brennan and his men, and we all discussed what it might mean, and what it meant that the soldiers whom I’d healed were healing others.
We talked of hard things, but nothing seemed that hard while the tree grew above us, and the light spilled across the sea. It was one of the most peaceful Sundays I’d ever known, full of quiet talk, touching, and being held, and even the news that Rhys had a sithen of his own here didn’t cause alarm. It was as if we could have given each other any news, no matter how important or grim, and it simply wouldn’t have been that important or that bad.
We had a blessed day, and though we’d planned on going back to the main house that night, somehow we didn’t. None of us wanted to break the spell, for spell it was, or blessing. Whatever magic you wished to call it, we wanted it to last. It did last all that day, and all that night, but Monday morning always comes, and the magic of the weekend never lasts. Not even for fairy princesses and immortal warriors. More’s the pity.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I WAS SNUGGLED AGAINST THE SWEET SCENT OF FROST’S BACK, ONE arm across his waist, my hips curving around the firm roundness of his ass. Doyle lay against my back, spooning me just as perfectly. They were a foot and an inch or two taller than I was, so spooning meant we had to choose if we wanted our faces next to each other, or our groins. There was no way to have both.
Doyle snuggled in his sleep, one arm flung across me and over Frost’s side. Of all the men, they touched each other the most in their sleep, as if they needed reassurance that not only I was there, but that the other man was, too. I liked that.
Doyle moved a little more and I was suddenly aware that his body was very happy to be pressed up against my ass. The sensation pushed me further out of the drowsy sleep. I couldn’t see a clock, so I didn’t know how long we had until the alarm sounded, but however long we had, I wanted to use it.
Music sounded. It wasn’t the alarm. It was Paula Cole’s “Feelin’ Love,” which meant it was my phone. I felt Doyle and Frost wake instantly. Their bodies tensed, muscles ready to spring out of bed for some emergency. I’d noticed that most of the guards woke like that, unless I woke them with petting and sex, as if anything else always meant some crisis.
“It’s my cell phone,” I said. Some minutia of tension slid away from their tensed muscles. Frost reached one long arm down to the side of the bed and began to rummage in the clothes pile, which was where all the clothes had ended up last night.
One of the interesting things about the Treo was that it could play an entire song, and that’s what it was doing as Frost fumbled through the clothes. For me to reach the ground someone would have needed to steady me so I didn’t fall out of bed, but Frost could reach the floor easily. There was no tension in his body as he finally held the phone back up in the air in my general direction.
We were far enough into the song to make me debate once more on the song as my main ring tone. It was fine until it played too far into the song in public. The sexually explicit lyrics didn’t bother me, but I kept waiting for some little old lady or mother with small children to protest. So far no one had, or maybe I’d just gotten to the song in time.
I unlocked the phone and was suddenly talking to Jeremy Grey, my boss. “Merry, it’s Jeremy.”
I sat up, searching for the glowing face of the bedside clock, afraid I’d overslept. The blackout curtains in the main bedroom made the light not helpful. “What time is it?”“It’s only six; you’re hours from needing to be in the office.” He sounded grim. Jeremy was usually pretty upbeat, which meant something was wrong.
“What’s wrong, Jeremy?”
The men had both rolled over on their backs and were watching me. They were tense again, because they, like me, knew that Jeremy wouldn’t call this early for anything good. Funny how no one ever wakes you up with good news.
“There’s been another fey murder.”
I sat up straighter, letting the sheet pool in my lap. “Like the other one?”
“I don’t know yet. Lucy just called.”
“She called you, not me,” I said. “After the mess my presence made of the last murder, I think I’m probably persona non grata.”
“You are,” he said, “but if I feel I want you and your guard’s opinion she’s left me a very explicit message. She said ‘Bring whatever employees you think will be the most helpful on this. I trust your judgment, Jeremy, and I know you understand the situation.’”
“That is an odd way for her to ask.”
“This way when you show up, it’s not her bad, it’s mine, and I can make the case for needing you better than she can.”
“I’m not sure Lucy’s superiors aren’t right, Jeremy. Her having to come save me made her lose the only witness we had.”
“Maybe, but if a fey, especially a demi-fey, wants to run they will. They disappear better than almost any of us.”
He was right, but … “That’s true, but it was still a mess.”
“Bring only guards who can do enough glamour to hide in plain sight. Bring more guards; two wasn’t enough from what I saw on the news.”
“If I bring more guards, it’s more people to hide,” I said.
“I’ll have some of the other people meet us there, so we all show up in a mass. We’ll hide you with numbers, and leave Doyle and Frost at home. They don’t do good glamour, and they’re too damn noticeable.”
“They won’t like that.”
“Either you’re Princess or you aren’t, Merry. If you are going to be in charge, then be in charge. If you’re not, then stop pretending.”
“The voice of experience,” I said.
“You know it,” he said. “If I need you, meet Julian here.” He gave me the address to meet so we wouldn’t show up in a car that was associated with me.
“They won’t let this many of us inside a crime scene, Jeremy,” I said.
“Some of us don’t need to be inside the crime scene to do our jobs, and it won’t hurt our reputation to have more of our people on camera milling around with the police.”
“Thinking like that is why you’re the boss.”
“Remember that, Merry. You have to earn the right to keep being the boss. Get off the phone, enjoy a few more hours with your boyfriend, but be ready to go earn the title Princess. Leave your two shadows at home, and bring ones who can blend in better when I call.”
I hung up and explained to Doyle and Frost why they were not going with me if I had to go. They didn’t like it at all, but I did what Jeremy had told me to do. I was the boss. He was right. Either I claimed the role or someone else would. I’d almost lost it to Doyle before, and now Barinthus. There were too many leaders among us and not enough followers. Doyle and Frost dressed in jeans and T-shirt and suit respectively. I chose a summer weight dress and heels. The heels were for Sholto who was coming to help guard me today. He was as good at glamour as any and could travel instantly from his kingdom to the edge where the sand met the surf because it was a place between and he was the Lord of that which passes between. He and King Taranis were the only sidhe left who could do magical travel.