Chapter 38 On the Road Again
On the Road Again
Azul woke her some time later, by raining kisses on her face. “Feeling better?” he asked on a laugh when she swatted at him.
“I don’t feel like a beautiful butterfly emerging from that cocoon,” she informed him groggily, sitting up and stretching. Her body felt amazingly good, however. “I’m the caterpillar that got stepped on by the big bad fae.”
He actually rolled his eyes at her before striding naked into the bathing chamber. The sight of his adorably tight ass framed by the deep purple points of his partially mantled bat wings did a considerable amount to wake her up.
“What was that?” she called, following him, but not quite hearing what he’d muttered in response.
“I said you’re more like Katu in animal form, lacerating me with your claws,” he answered, glancing at her in amusement as he went to an open corner of the room with a lacework floor.
“You’re the one with the claws,” she replied, but absently, quickly forgetting the thought as purple rain commenced showering over him.
Amethyst water drenched him as he stood, his head tipped back to allow it to sheet over his body, his wings stretching and angling to be evenly rinsed.
She wanted nothing more than to lick every drop of moisture away.
He cocked a brow at her and curled a wing in a come-hither gesture. “Care to join me for round five?”
“Do we have time?” she asked, knowing the answer.
Even she could tell dusk had gathered outside the shaded windows.
As she asked, the shades lifted themselves, baring windows that revealed a landscape illuminated by pearly twilight.
“No,” she answered for him, being her most responsible self.
The choice wasn’t even difficult—worry for Dy chewed at her and her lustful self sprawled in satiated somnolence, like a drunk after a five day feast.
“I’ll let you shower alone,” Azul agreed ruefully, “as I don’t trust myself to keep my hands off of you.
” The water stopped and he shook himself, wings rustling musically.
As he passed her, he paused and framed her face in his hands, wings arching in an echo of the embrace.
He kissed her softly, even affectionately, then searched her eyes.
“It’s been an honor and a true pleasure, Arantxa,” he said solemnly.
“I’ll never forget this interlude. Or you. ”
“Yeah, well,” she extracted herself lest she give into the craving to hold onto him, “you can’t, right? That life debt and permanent connection and all.”
“Not what I meant,” he said quietly.
“How do I turn on the water?” she asked, ready to be done with the uncomfortable conversation. “Oh!” she exclaimed as the water sheeted down the moment she stepped onto the lacework flooring. “Thank—” she started to tell him, turning back to smile.
But he had already left.
*
Azul delivered on the clothes, though they were—why didn’t she see it coming?
—all deep shades of that dark purple that looked black in most lights.
Form-fitting to the point of hugging every line and crevice of her body, the pants, shirt and jacket clung to her skin with a sensual warmth that reminded her far too much of the feel of Azul’s skin.
Cha also couldn’t tell what they were made of.
Nothing that existed in the human realms, that was for sure.
“What is this?” she demanded, plucking at the decidedly low neckline. “Fairy skin?”
“Disgusting concept,” he chided her, batting her hands away and adjusting the neckline, hands casually brushing her breasts as he did. “Leave it now. You look incredible.” He circled her. “Coming and going.”
“Yes, well, I still need a sword,” she reminded him. She’d fetched Monat’s nose ring from the shreds of her former clothing and pocketed it.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Azul replied lightly. Suddenly, a sword lay across his outstretched palms, glowing with golden light, a distinctly orange-red quality to the metal.
She peered at it, hesitant to touch. “Is that…”
“Cinnabar magic,” he confirmed, deftly spinning the blade to offer her the hilt. “A bit of assistance for you, just in case. Since you seem to be in dire need of assistance in keeping your skin intact.”
She eyed him. “That sounds quite a bit above my pay grade. Just a plain mortal, remember?”
“I wouldn’t give you something that could cause you harm,” he replied with strained patience.
Apparently trusting him at least that much, she wrapped her hand around the hilt.
It felt good, solid, exquisitely balanced, and maybe a little weirdly alive, but she could live with that.
Most important, it didn’t immediately fry her nervous system and send her into paroxysms of death.
She didn’t really think Azul would do that to her, especially having gone to so much trouble to heal her, but old cynicisms die hard.
“Cinnabar magic just in case I need to level up over someone from, say, Amethyst?”
He regarded her gravely. “We’re not out of Moonstone yet. And who knows when you might decide to hare off in Obsidian and save some child with foolish parents from an Eloko.”
“Some child…Hey, how do you know about the Eloko?”
Feathering fingers over her cheek, he smiled. “I kept track of you. You big softie.”
“Watch it with the insults, Your Highness.” She danced back, pointing the tip of the sword at him. It was an outrageously good weapon, like holding sunlight—fast, bright, weightless, and powerful. “Besides, I’m a big sharpie now.”
“And may you save many mortals with it,” he replied solemnly. “But do be careful. That is a powerful weapon you have currently pointed at my heart.”
She rather thought he didn’t mean only the sword, but she couldn’t allow herself to fall into the implications of what he might mean. Carefully, she sheathed it, feeling as if she also put her heart away. “We should go.”
With a courtly gesture, he waved for her to proceed. “After you, thorny one.”
*
Katu was beyond delighted to see her, the jaguar in animal form came galloping over the grass and leapt fully onto her, knocking Cha onto her back with big soft paws on her shoulders, pinning her down while he licked her face with his raspy tongue.
“Aw, baby cat, sweet kitten,” she said to him, scratching his whiskery muzzle and chin.
“I missed you, too. Now stop, stop…” she began laughing helplessly as he continued to lick her.
Finally she levered the happy cat off of her, struggling to her feet to find an amused Azul watching her. “I would never have predicted you’re a giggler,” he remarked.
“I do not giggle,” she replied with dignity.
“You giggled just now.”
“That was laughter.”
“Giggling.”
“I’m happy to see my cat. Which way to the slow white?” She refused to be embarrassed, walking in the direction he indicated, a hand on Katu’s head as he sawed quietly, nudging her thigh with affection. “He looks good,” she offered, grateful that Azul had seen to the cat.
Azul dipped his head in acknowledgement, both that she couldn’t thank him and in ironic understanding that she appreciated his care, for her and her own.
They reached the slow white and Cha, giving Katu a last, long chin-skritch, triggered the enchantment to send him into carriage form.
The transformation went fast and slick, barely any transition, and she whistled low, impressed.
“Is that the Moonstone dust or the high-quality ambrosia you clearly fed him?”
Azul set a hand on her back, kissing her cheek. “A bit of both.”
She checked out Katu’s jump seat and boot, sighing when she noted everything that hadn’t been attached was gone. Not that the cooler of food and ale mattered now, but it hurt her mercenary heart to lose all those gems of Phinny’s. “Fucking Sugarplums,” she muttered.
“Everything all right?” Azul asked.
“Just a bit of highway robbery,” she answered on a sigh. “But I have my skin intact.” Because she couldn’t thank him, she gave him a kiss, lingering as she should not. “We should go.”
“Shall we then?”
“Let us shall,” she answered in a plummy voice.
“I do not sound like that,” he told her, his wings vanishing.
“Awww… do you have to?” He looked plenty delicious without the wings, but…
“They’re awkward for sitting in a carriage and for explaining to authorities, so yes, I have to.”
“You’re the Prince of Amethyst,” she pointed out, sliding into the driver’s seat. Oh yeah. This felt good and right. The last bits of herself still out of place from her ordeal settled. The Bandit is back. “Which authorities could possibly bother you?”
He slid her a look. “Recall that there is discretion involved, Arantxa. Out there, I’m not even fully fae, or even mostly fae.
” As he spoke, his appearance shifted subtly, his ears rounding, his sharply elegant features softening, the iridescent blue of his hair and eyes dimming.
He still looked like himself, but also much more like the frivolous human noble playing at being fae that she’d first thought him. The change was a bit disconcerting.
“I always thought glamour was supposed to make people prettier,” she grumbled, sending Katu down what looked like a stately drive through a manicured park, “not the reverse.” Though evening had fully fallen, the light remained bright enough to make her squint.
She had to admit, if only to herself, that she could not have endured full daylight in Moonstone.
Azul picked up her hand, turned it over, and kissed her palm, sending a sensual susurrus through her body, arousing that which had been fully sated not long before, her lustful self shaking off the sleepy bloat and sitting up with renewed interest.
“I appreciate the compliment,” he said, with a sly smile. “But ‘glamour’ in the original sense meant enchantment. It’s only the humans finding the fae beautiful and enviable that gave the word the sense of making something more attractive.”
“Well, losing the wings is definitely the wrong direction, but that could be my personal kink, as you say. So if glamour means enchantment, does that mean they are actually gone, not just invisible to human eyes?”
He considered, and she knew his expressions well enough to know that he was calculating how to explain within the constraints binding him.
“Yes,” he answered, grinning when she glared.
“Invisible to all eyes, however,” he corrected, “and touch, as you know.” His smile turned intimate, reminding her of when she’d thrown herself at him and generating that answering pussy sparkle she no longer had time to indulge, no matter how alert and now yammering for satisfaction her lustful self might be now.
Probably they’d never get to indulge again.
And didn’t that just figure. Fuck her life.