Obsidian Prince, page 13
"She was thanking me for telling her the red wolf would protect her husband, not kill him."
Pete grinned. "I appreciate that. It would have been a lot harder to protect Lou if he'd been trying to run from me and the Wolfhounds both."
Liliana hissed a breath in through her teeth as Pete placed the ice packs. The ice was very uncomfortable, but it would bring the swelling down on her ankle and numb the pain in her arm. She wished she could use over-the-counter medicines like Normals could. "Can you do something else for me?"
"Sure, Lilly, whatever you need."
"Can you get the duffel bag sitting by my business door and put it in my bedroom closet? I don't want to lift it right now to put it away myself."
Pete got the bag. He hefted it curiously as he brought it in. "What's in here?"
"A whole lot of money."
Pete hesitated for a moment, then walked into her bedroom to set the duffel bag in her closet.
Liliana watched him with her fourth eyes this time, amused.
Pete gingerly picked up the blood-soaked clothes she’d discarded on the floor earlier. She hadn't had the energy to take the blouse and slippers to the trash recycler. They were beyond any hope of laundering. She should turn on the room-bot to take care of it for her.
He came back into the room, looking concerned. "Lilly, why do you have a bag full of money?"
"The wife of the lion-kin that I killed gave it to me."
Pete ran his hand through his thick red hair. He scratched the back of his neck. "Um, Lilly, did you murder a man last night and get paid for it by his wife?"
Liliana grinned, amused by his discomfort. "Are you going to call Detective Jackson to arrest me?"
"I won't, but I'm wondering if I should."
"Some lionesses asked me for help. The new pride-king was chosen last night. A very unworthy man would have become king. He would have killed many people, including those three lionesses, sparking a pride war that would have killed hundreds more."
Pete's pale skin paled a little more. "Yikes. The pride war in South Carolina in the '20's killed over three hundred people, and a couple thousand were injured."
"They wanted to hire my friend, the Celtic wolf, to kill the unworthy lion to prevent that."
"Why didn't you send them to me, then?"
"I promised Janice Willoughby you would protect her husband last night."
Pete got an "aha!" kind of look on his face. He pointed at her. "I can't be in two places at once."
Liliana smiled at his boots. "I watched you and Doctor Nudd fight the Wolfhound pack. You were magnificent."
Pete knelt beside the couch. He squeezed her uninjured hand. "I had an excellent teacher."
She felt warm in spite of the ice on her arm and her ankle.
"Is there anything else I can do for you?"
"I will be fine, Pete. I am tired now. I would like to sleep."
"Okay, I'll let you rest." He leaned in and kissed her forehead.
Liliana closed all her eyes, smiling.
Pete left.
Liliana dozed.
Another knock on her front shop door woke her. She looked, thinking she would just ignore it, but got up instead. It was Janice Willoughby with enough casserole for the spider-kin to eat for days.
Liliana ate some of the delicious warm casserole, then lay back on her couch, not really sleepy anymore, but not interested in doing anything. She didn't even want to open her fourth eyes. She was afraid she might see something important and feel compelled to do something about it.
The spider seer wondered if it might be nice to have a holovision set, or one of the communication centers people had now instead. She had enough money to get one now. She should at least turn on her room-bot so it could pick up her soiled clothes and clean the dirty dishes she’d left in the sink, but even getting up to turn the robot on seemed like too much trouble. If she had a communication center, she could tell her house AI to turn on the room-bot, but that seemed lazy to her any day other than today when half her body was throbbing with agony.
Someone knocked on her home door before she got settled back on the couch with new ice packs. She looked with her fourth eyes. Doctor Nudd and Siobhan. "Come in!" she shouted. The door was not locked, and she did not want to get up again.
Doctor Nudd and Siobhan brought her medicine. She’d forgotten she had some already. That would have helped. Doctor Nudd brewed chai tea to mix with the powder to hide the bitter flavor.
Liliana drank the medicine-laced tea gratefully.
Doctor Nudd and Siobhan helped themselves to a craft beer each. Once settled on the armchair and the couch arm respectively, they asked her for the story.
By the time she’d explained the essentials, the pain in her wounds had faded to insignificance. She felt rather delighted with everything.
I wonder if this is how my venom makes people feel?
"Thank you, my friends," Liliana said. "You are the best friends in the world, the best friends that anyone ever had."
Siobhan giggled. "Sure, Spider Girl. Glad to see you're feeling better."
Doctor Nudd downed the last of his beer. He patted Liliana's uninjured shoulder. "I'll come back to check on you in a few days to make sure you’re back on your feet." He grinned down at her. "The new pride-king's champion will, no doubt, have duties."
Liliana grinned back at his left ear. There was gray and brown hair growing out of it. Doctor Nudd understood. "I'll have duties in the beast-kin court." She giggled. "Just like the Fae prince's Merlin has, and the Fae court Guardian!"
She raised a hand toward Siobhan, two fingers up and crooked.
The sprite hooked two fingers with hers, then pulled.
Liliana pulled back, straightening her fingers as the sprite did. They pointed them at each other and said, "Pow!" at the same time.
The spider seer found this new social ritual as odd as all the other ones she’d learned, but this one was satisfying in the moment. It was nice to have someone else understand how fundamentally her life had changed.
"Later, Champion," Siobhan said on the way out.
"Later, Guardian," Liliana said back.
She asked Doctor Nudd to leave the door open a crack so that whoever came next could just come in. That way she wouldn't have to get up.
Liliana had never in her life had so many people in her house in one day. She felt like she sort of had a party, just not all at once. She giggled to herself.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked up, confused by the odd change in light. Her clocks said it was past eight. Her windows were dark. She must have dozed off for a while. Doctor Nudd's medicine was still going strong. She felt no pain and no inclination to move.
A deep voice said her name, "Liliana?"
"Yes?"
Alexander Bennett stood in her entryway holding a gun while looking around her house.
She sighed. "I thought we were past the gun pointing thing."
"Your door was open. I thought something was wrong."
"Nothing is wrong. So many people have been in and out of my house today, I got tired of opening the door."
He closed the door. The lock clicked. "Who was here?" He walked into her living room, still looking around warily as if he expected something dangerous to pop up out of her cupboards.
"Nearly everyone I know."
The spider-kin watched him scope out her living space. He was so tall and his shoulders were so broad that her living room seemed cramped in comparison. Strange that Doctor Nudd was even taller and Pete was just as broad-shouldered, yet neither of them seemed to fill up space like Alexander did.
He relaxed after another moment. Apparently, her bookshelves weren't going to attack. He looked down at the spider-kin stretched out on the couch with her bad arm snugged against her belly and her ankle propped on the couch arm. "You look terrible," he said.
Liliana giggled. "I don't think you're supposed to say that, even if it's true. Isn't there a social rule against it?"
"Undoubtedly." He put the gun in the holster at his hip.
"Why are you here, Alexander? Even spider-kin don't heal that fast."
He chuckled. "I wanted to see if you needed anything. It looks like I was last in line."
"I have pie. And a big bag of money. And good painkillers. I am glad you came, though."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"You could kiss me again. I like it when you kiss me." Liliana pushed the melted bags of ice and the dishtowels on the floor. She held out her good arm to him, making grabby motions with her hand.
The prince smiled at her, one of his tiny, real amused smiles, not his broad fake politician's smile, or the hungry shark smile he gave her after she killed Tray Bradley. "Those must be some really good painkillers."
"I like your smile, too, when it's real.”
The prince looked around her living room for a place to sit. He seemed to consider the chair where Pete and Doctor Nudd liked to sit.
He took off his coat and dress uniform jacket. A myriad of colorful ribbons set off the dark blue woolly fabric. He laid them down on the big chair with his hat on top of the neat pile.
His strong arms slipped under the spider-kin's shoulders and knees. Alexander swooped her up off the couch like she was light as a feather. He spun her around and sat on her couch where she had been a moment before, but now her body fitted comfortably against his chest in the crook of his arm.
Liliana giggled. "I like this, too." She snuggled in closer to his broad chest. Her broken left arm was safe in the sling in her lap. Her right hand rested on his chest. She flattened it over his heart where it seemed to belong.
"I'm glad to hear that." His hand stroked her hair back from her face, fingertips gentle on the swollen bruises on that side.
"Are you going to kiss me now?" She looked up at his full mouth with just her human eyes, licking her lips.
"Definitely."
She opened her third eyes as his lips touched hers. He was worried about her. He had been thinking about her all day, both how beautiful and how tiny she was. She’d been so badly injured. He worried that he left her here alone, that if she needed help, no one would know. He should have insisted she go to a hospital. He was both relieved and disconcerted to find she didn't need anything from him.
His concern made her heart soar. Her stoic prince had a heart that she had begun to win.
"You don't need to worry. My friends have been taking good care of me."
"You must have some very good friends."
"I do." The truth of that struck the spider-kin again. She had been alone a long time, long enough that she would never be able to take having friends for granted. "I didn't have any friends at all until I met Pete. I also didn't have to fight widow spiders and really big lions, but I like my life better now."
"Was Pete here?" His body tensed a little. His expression and voice became bland and bored.
"Yes. He moved the bag of money. He put ice packs on me, and he kissed me before he left."
"Pete kissed you? Does Pete kiss you a lot?" His voice still sounded like the answer was unimportant to him, but Liliana wasn't fooled.
She giggled. "You're jealous of Pete."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You told me you wouldn't look in my head unless we were kissing."
"I didn't need to look." She tapped him on the nose with her fingertip. "I just know."
"You didn't answer my question." His lips pursed in annoyance bordering on anger.
He was so quick to anger. She didn't want him angry with Pete. Her prince could be a very dangerous man. "He doesn't kiss me like you do."
"What do you mean?"
Liliana gave his unscarred cheek a sisterly peck. "Pete kisses me like that."
"Ah, I see." She felt his body release tension, snuggling her closer. His face lost its hardness.
Liliana smiled at him, wide and wicked, showing him her fangs. "Normally, jealousy is a problem, but I think I like that you were jealous."
"Why would you like that?” He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Jealousy is an emotion I try hard to avoid."
"You wouldn't be jealous if I wasn't important to you."
He drew up with a blink. "That's ... true."
"You like me because I always tell you the truth." Liliana's hand wandered over the planes of Alexander's chest. She could feel the shape of his large pectoral muscles through his button-down shirt. She loosened his tie until the short end came out of the knot, then tossed the useless piece of fabric on the floor.
He watched, bemused as she struggled to unbutton the old-fashioned buttons on his uniform shirt one-handed and uncoordinated from intoxication. "That's not the only reason I like you," he said, voice so soft it was almost a whisper. He kissed her forehead, but it didn't feel the least bit like Pete's kisses. His lips trailed to her cheek on the side that wasn't bruised, then to her ear.
Liliana wondered if kissing that was not on the lips qualified as kissing that would let her look into him. "I want to know the other reasons. Can I look?"
He chuckled, tickling her ear with his warm breath. "You could just ask."
"I don't always understand what people mean when they use words. When I look inside people, I understand them."
He drew back enough that he could look at her face. "You've already seen inside my head."
"I have seen who you are." Enough of his buttons were undone that she could slip her hand in to feel the heat of his skin through his thin t-shirt over his pounding heart. "I have seen your soul." She ran her hand up his neck to his face, cupping his scarred cheek. "But I only see what you think and feel in the moment when I look. You would have to think about why you like me while I’m looking at you with my third eyes for me to see."
Alexander swallowed as she touched his scars, her fingers careful so as not to hurt when she caressed the bumpy slick skin. His eyelids fluttered closed.
He held her hand against his face. "What is inside my head isn't always pretty. Some of it is dangerous for you to know."
"I already know a great many dangerous secrets, my very dangerous prince, including some of yours. I have never betrayed your secrets. I never will. I try very hard not to betray anyone’s secrets."
He opened his eyes. They were filled with some intense emotion, some longing she couldn't identify.
"Let me in," she asked. Her fingertips delicately touched his scars. She wondered what made permanent scars on a Sidhe who could heal nearly any injury. But she didn’t look. He would tell her when he was ready.
He nodded. “You can look inside me whenever you wish.” Fear flashed in those fathomlessly deep brown eyes.
She looked. He was afraid that each time she looked inside him, she might find something so ugly, so dark that she would no longer want him. But that fear was balanced by a longing, a hope that someone could know him, all the layers, all the secrets and hidden dark corners of his soul, and still want him.
No, not just someone.
Her.
Inside Alexander's mind, Liliana saw herself looking back with exotic eyes like wise and magical jewels. Her head cocked sideways with eyes on the floor, thick wavy dark hair framing an elfin face as she asked him if he would send Wolfhounds to kill Pete. She soared through the air, the essence of grace and power, as if gravity didn’t apply to her. She walked out of a cage, splattered with blood, head high like a queen. She trembled and went pliant in Alexander's arms as he kissed her, right after she danced the deadliest lion in the pride to death.
A tender seriousness filled her face as she told him she desired all that he was. She fully intended to risk her life to fight for him. The raw truth of that still shook him to the core.
This man wanted Liliana. He wanted to possess all that power and beauty, unselfconscious grace and honest desire. He wanted her so much he could hardly think of anything else but her.
Liliana had a hard time believing it was true, but she could see it with her own eyes. She couldn't tell a polite lie to save her life, was prone to sudden violence, and had strange eyes that she hid so they wouldn't make people uncomfortable. He liked all those things. Quirks that others saw as odd or disturbing, he saw as desirable.
Liliana slipped her hand up to pull him closer. The fine short hair on the back of his neck tickled her palm. For the first time, rather than just letting him do the kissing, she gave her prince a proper kiss.
As the kiss deepened, she filled her third eyes with the hot red of his desire. She pulled him hard enough against her lips to hurt, and didn't care. She kissed him like she would die if she couldn't, like she needed his lips and tongue to breathe, to live.
He groaned into her mouth, kissing her back with the same desperation. His hand moved up her bare thigh under her skirt until it cupped her bottom.
She ripped the rest of the buttons off his shirt, so her hands could explore his chest. Her fingernails raked against the thin t-shirt material, wishing she could claw it off him so nothing would separate them.
He crushed her tight enough against his hard body to make her cry out involuntarily from the pain. A shock of horror/disgust ran through him like a bucket of ice water over all that fire. He pulled away from the kiss, breathing hard.
"It's all right," Liliana said. He had hurt her, but between the painkillers and the spectacular need inside his head, she was so drunk she didn't care. No one had ever wanted her that much. It made her feel giddier than any drug.
"No, it isn't." A shuddering revulsion doused his passion. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath and let it out, regaining control. She caught a flash of memories, nothing clear enough to catch more than the impression of pain and sex mixing in a very bad way to make something ugly, before he slammed that mirror of shielding over his mind, shutting her out. "I'd better go."
"I really want to bite you," Liliana said, disappointed. She knew she wasn't thinking clearly with the drugs in her system, but she wasn't sure she’d ever wanted anyone so badly either. This prince of shadows and secrets was the most fascinating man she’d ever met. Waiting until her body healed to claim him seemed like a form of torture.
