Tabitha - Royal Rebel, Kiana Dreamfairy [best adventure books to read .TXT] 📗

question?”

“Not particularly.”

She bent her head to examine the wound on her belly, so she couldn’t see his face, but she could definitely hear his biting curses.

“Do it anyway.”

Tabitha looked up, saw the edge of a ruthlessly controlled temper looming, and sighed. She’d been raised around her aunt’s warrior guardsmen and knew a dominant man in a snit when she saw one. In her experience, it was always better to humor them. “I’m taking a vacation.”

He opened his mouth, looking for all the world as if he planned to huff and puff and blow her house down, then snapped his jaw shut in confusion. “A vacation? What? Was the Fae Riviera overbooked?”

She blinked innocently up at him. “No, but I just hate getting all that sand stuck in my hair.”

“Oh, right. I see.” He glared at her, the sarcasm dripping off his tongue. “I’m sure that as soon as she hears your reasoning, Queen Trinity will personally drape you in a lei and sing you a chorus of ‘Bon Voyage.’”

This time it was Tabitha’s turn to pull up short. She eyed the Lupine warily and offered a soothing smile. “Really, Hex. Let’s not be childish. There’s no reason to bring Aunt Trinity into this—“

“Aunt Trinity?!”

Tabitha watched with fascinated horror as the top of the werewolf’s head seemed to lift off and hover atop a molten-lava eruption of furious disbelief. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the family connection? But of course, he’d latched onto it with the ferocity of a pit bull and was shaking it for all it was worth. Which, in Tabitha’s book, wasn’t a whole hell of a lot.

“Queen Trinity, High Lady of the Sidhe, Queen of the Summer Court of Faerie, Mistress of the Living Forest, and Empress of Earth and water, is your bloody fricking aunt?”


Now seemed like a good time for Tabitha to stand up. And take a few steps back. And maybe make sure she was standing somewhere far away from corners and close to an obvious escape route.

“Um, a little.”

“A little? She’s a little your aunt. So I suppose she’ll only make my life a little miserable when she finds out you’re here. That’s just fabulous.”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a tad?” she laughed, not really amused. “Trinity can be a little bit…tempermental, I grant you, but she’s not entirely unreasonable. She’s not going to get all bent out of shape with you just because I took a little trip.”

Hex crossed his arms over his chest and pinned her with his stare. “So then you got permission to visit before you crossed through the gate from Faerie that no one on either side is ever supposed to use except in direst emergency?”

Tabitha made a face. “Not exactly.”

“Then what the hell makes you think Trinity isn’t going to pitch a royal Fae fit?” he snapped, stalking toward her until she could have sworn the force of his irritation blew her hair back like a hurricane wind. “You broke the goddamned law, and not only that, but you picked the worst possible time in history to dump your pretty little troublemaking ass into my lap, sweetheart. I’ve got enough to worry about without trying to prevent an inter-dimensional incident with the Summer Sidhe!”

Tabitha’s curiosity leapfrogged over the protestation of innocence she had been about to make. Rumor had it, there was a sprite somewhere back in the branches of her family tree, and it was moments like this that lent credence to the story. Eyes glinting, her need to know everything hurled her right into the provocative part of his diatribe. “How is this the ‘worst possible time in history’? Is something going on?”

Hex teetered back on his heels, his expression slowly shifting from anger to confusion. It looked like he’d just hit a brick wall after accelerating to full speed. “What?”

“What’s going on at this particular moment that makes the timing of my vacation so bad?” she asked, ignoring the bark in his tone. “There must be something major going on. You seem stressed out. Is there something I can do? Anything I can help with?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Well, there’s no need to sound so astonished. Just because I’m Fae doesn’t mean I cant be useful. Not everyone who grows up at court is a dilettante. Just tell me what the problem is, and I’ll be happy to lend a hand.”

The werewolf stifled another curse that had Tabitha wondering about the extent of that particular portion of his vocabulary. It seemed quite amazingly comprehensive.

“The only way you can help me,” he grumbled, abruptly backing up a few steps and resuming his earlier pacing, “is by doing whatever it is you do to magic yourself something to wear that looks less like it came out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Then you can follow me back to the Faerie gate you came in through and get the hell home before anyone important realizes you were ever here.”


Chapter X

Tabitha blinked and raised an eyebrow. “That was a little harsh. Is that what passes for manners in the mortal world lately? No wonder we have so many jokes about the irony of mortal civilization where I come from.”

His head snapped around, and he scowled at her through fiercely narrowed eyes. “Now is not a good time for you to lecture me, sweetheart.”

The predatory glow in those wolfish eyes caught Tabitha by surprise and sent a shiver of awareness skittering down her spine. All at once her senses seemed to register the power of his muscled body, the breadth of his lightly furred and distractingly bare chest. The heat that radiated off him in waves along with something subtler, deeper, and infinitely more unnerving. Typically, Tabitha reacted to the warning of her instincts not with a strategic retreat, but with a slightly suicidal tug to the tail of the beast.

“Oh? What time would work better for you?” she asked, opening her eyes wide and guilelessly, even as her subconscious streak of self-preservation had her backing up another step or two. Or four. “I’d be happy to take a look at my calendar and work you in—“

By the time she heard his warning growl, it was already too late. In the time it took for her synapses to fire, the werewolf had leaped across the distance separating them and slammed bodily into her, sending her careening into the wall five feet behind her. She hit the drywall with a thud and a hiss, the air in her lungs whooshing out and into the mouth of the beast.

She would have felt a lot better if she could have thought of him as beastly, if she could have mustered up something like outrage or indignation or even some judicious fear. But no. Instead, all she felt was a wave of intense dizziness and a weakening of every muscle in her body as it melted against his. Her lips put up no resistance as he forced them apart with his own and surged inside like a conquering chieftain. His tongue claimed her mouth with bold strokes, marking the sweet territory as his. His teeth nipped sharply at her lips, before soothing the brief pain with suckling kisses.

Moaning, she sank into him, letting her knees collapse. He didn’t seem to need any help keeping her upright. He had her pinned against the wall like a canvas, held in place with the weight of his body. It worked for her, leaving her free to do nothing but savor the surprising, intriguing, intoxicating flavor of him.

He tasted of rich, dark coffee, thick and heavy with sugar. Traces of spice and forest filled her senses and made her tremble as she dissolved in pleasure. Her hands slid up the cool surface of the wall and tangled in his hair, curling into fists and holding him tight against her lips. He didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere else, but at this point, Tabitha didn’t want to take chances. She wanted to devour him. Or let him devour her. Either option would work so long as he never, ever stopped kissing her.

A low rumble, half growl, half purr, vibrated between them as he leaned more heavily into her, into the kiss, nestling his hips into the cradle of hers, pushing against the flimsy barrier of her gossamer gown until she felt the rough scrape of denim against the center of her need.

She moaned and wriggled against him, wanting to magic the barriers of cloth away, but she had used up her magic in the demon attack, and stars knew when she’d be able to get a refill. Probably not until she got back home.

Chapter XI

Even as the thought brushed through the edges of her consciousness, Tabitha became aware of the passion between them, shifting, changing, and becoming something more. Sheer, teasing tendrils of magic began to form from the energy of their mutual desire. The tendrils swirled and danced in the pit of her stomach, then spilled out, finding the wound in her flesh and smoothing over it. The magic knit skin and muscle back together, found foul, oily molecules of poison, and wrapped around them, insulating and separating them from her bloodstream and dissolving them into individual atoms that could be benignly flushed from her system.

The healing magic filled Tabitha with a rush of warmth and energy, replenishing her depleted stores of magic until her wish became a reality and the barriers of clothing between her and her werewolf disappeared, leaving him pressed hot and hard and naked between her thighs. She moaned and clutched him tighter, canting her hips invitingly, seeking to draw him inside her body, into the hot, moist depths that ached with emptiness only he could assuage.

Unfortunately, the brush of molten heat against the crown of his shaft seemed to snap him into some hideously noble sort of sense. He tore his lips from hers and grabbed her wrists, jerking her hands from his hair and setting her bodily away from him. Far enough that her