Heartmate (18 page)

The Lovers.

No! She set the two cards and the pack on the table, determined to ignore them. She knew what she wanted. Though the last septhours had given her more options than she'd ever had, though her fondest wish had come true, though her future looked shining, bright, and all together different, she would continue on the path she had planned. She would marry Claif.

T'Ash gave her flowers.

T'Ash gave her jewels.

T'Ash gave her a wonderful future.

T'Ash gave her passion.

But he gave nothing of himself.

Claif didn't give a great deal, either. But she would never expect more than what Claif wanted to give. What he was was what she wanted—a cheerful, simple man. And he came with many related Clovers that would meet her huge need for Family.

Still set on her own way, Danith went to her bedroom, slipped off her weaves, and fell onto her bedsponge, asleep a moment later.

 
 
A soft, murmuring voice woke her. “GentleLady. Gentle
Lady Mallow . . .”

The words insinuated into her sleep, persistently drawing her from slumber. She opened her eyes, blinked.

“GentleLady Mallow.”

She jerked around.

A stranger in her bedroom.

She gasped. Inhaled.

He raised both hands. “Please, don't scream.”

She licked her lips. her scrybowl was in the kitchen.

His smile was too charming to be true, matching falsely innocent brown eyes. He took a step or two back, hands still raised, into a patch of early afternoon sunlight. “I mean you no harm. I merely wish to return an—item—to you.”

He made no sense. And he smelled funny, too. Not unpleasant, but wrong somehow. She inched back to the headboard.

“Allow me to present myself. Ruis Elder, at your service.”

Seven

“Idon't know you,” Danith said to the man calling him
self Ruis Elder.

“Entirely my fault, GentleLady.”

“Miz.”

He inclined his head. “Miz, then. I assure you, I am completely harmless.”

He wasn't. He had the same smooth and charming manner as Holly, but while she sensed it was innate to Holm, she suspected this man used the manner as a mask. He had a hard edge underneath. He was also bigger and stronger than she. “What do you want?”

“Only to return something and have a few words with you.”

“I've lost nothing.”

Another quick, supposedly reassuring smile. “It's for a friend of yours.”

The Clovers? Young Trif was a little wild, and always losing things. Danith had a soft spot for the girl. “Then you won't mind waiting in the grassyard. There's a café table and chairs there.”

His brown gaze sharpened. She met it steadily. For all the controlled power he radiated, he was not nearly as dangerous as T'Ash.

He dipped his mahogany-colored head again. Holding his arms out from his sides, he slowly glided from the room. Danith bolted to the scrybowl, visualizing the guard station nearest her. Nothing happened. She touched the water of the bowl. It was cold, not warm with the hint of magic. Cold and dead.

Damn!

She should run. She should scream. She should do anything but stand and dither.

But she had sensed no threat from him. And she was curious.

She put on her weaves and straightened her clothing.

The back door to the grassyard was open. She stood on the threshold, ready to slam the door and retreat if necessary.

He appeared to lounge in one of her black café chairs set in a close-clipped circle of grass, but tension emanated from his body. He had his gaze fixed on the corner of her fence.

Zanthoxyl perched there. His lip lifted in a nearly soundless snarl. Danith's headache returned.

Elder's far hand clenched into a fist. His face showed nothing of the charming smile he had used earlier. In a flash of insight, Danith recognized the man's power. Rage drove him.

She knew it from the echo of old anger it roused in her. Rage at being trapped. She had been trapped in the Saille House of Orphans, at once angry at being forced to obey institutional rules at all times, and fearful of the outside world.

Timkin, her old playmate and first love, had once contained such rage, greater and more destructive than her own. It had faded when he made a life for himself outside the orphanage.

Destructive anger. This Ruis Elder was a destroyer. His fury would allow him no other outlet. And Danith was as sure as if she saw words of fire circling his head, that in the end, he would destroy himself.

She caught her breath. He turned, and when he looked at her, his face was once more slightly amused—but deeper than that, Danith saw self-mockery.

“GreatSir Elder.”

She hit a nerve. She knew it. He was of the nobility.

“I don't care to be called GreatSir any more than you like GentleLady.”

Heat rose to her cheeks. Perhaps she could defuse the tension a little. “What time is it?”

He looked startled, then glanced at his old-fashioned watch. Danith peered at the piece, fascinated. She had never seen one before, had only used timers herself.

“One septhour past midday.”

“Thank you. Now, your business?”

From a concealed pocket in his shirt he took a long, thin flat box, a jeweler's box.

He placed it on the café table in front of him and snapped it open.

The seduction spell necklace.

Before she even saw the gems, the power struck her, dizzying in its force, its sexuality. T'Ash. She thought of his hard body against hers and the scent he carried of man and hot metal. She felt the virility of the man, and something more, an essence of the man who compelled her. And she wanted the necklace. Wanted his touch. Wanted more.

She made a mewling sound and retreated to the threshold of the back door.

Ruis Elder snapped the jewelry box lid shut and placed long, fine fingers atop it. Somehow that eased the frightening lure of the thing. But now she knew it was here, in the box.

She pressed a hand to her breast, found her heart thumping, and her breath came raggedly. A residual sexual heat flushed her body. She trembled.

The man sighed as he studied her. He smiled crookedly. Now his self-mockery was open. “Yes, I see. I made quite a mistake. All this time with me and it still has that effect on you. That's truly powerful Flair.” He shook his head. “A bad mistake.”

Danith wet her dry lips. “How?”

His smile turned more amused. A pity he had such rage in him; his humor could have saved him. “I took it.”

“You stole the necklace from T'Ash?” Inconceivable.

His brows lifted. “It wasn't protected by spellshield. That wouldn't have mattered, of course. But to see such an extraordinary piece displayed without even the hint of protection . . .” His shoulders lifted and fell. “Simply irresistible.”

He opened the lid, and liquid desire surged through her, settling in her loins. She gripped the doorjamb with all her strength to keep from moving toward the radiant temptation of the necklace.

He shoved the box away, to the far edge of the table, but the tiny distance didn't help. The virile, carnal power of the necklace poured off it in waves.

Elder looked at the thing, ran his forefinger down the beads, redgold links, and gems to touch the roseamber heart. “The magnificence of the piece. Obviously an early work, but the sheer skill it displays! And this, a great roseamber heart with a flaw in the shape of licking flames.” He shrugged again. “Positively too tempting.”

His smile was once more ironic. “I said skill, not Flair. I am blind to that, but not to pure creative artistry. And my blindness ambushed me, as always.” He sent her a slanting glance. “How was I to know it was a HeartGift?”

The last word penetrated the sensual fog enclosing her. Shattered her plans. They fragmented before her.

“No,” she said. That morning she had been able to deny that she'd lost her desired future with Claif. She couldn't now. But even with the potency of T'Ash's necklace—she would not even think “HeartGift”—swirling around her, making her knees so weak she slid down to the floor, she still would not accept that her only future lay with T'Ash. Not T'Ash.

“No,” she repeated.

“Danith,” T'Ash said.

She turned her head. He stood just inside her back grassyard gate. Zanthoxyl sat straight and proud by his side. “Lord and Lady,” Danith prayed. Passion matching the necklace burned in his eyes. He looked large, dark, strong. And very hard. The muscles of his shoulders tensed, his hands clenched, his thighs strained the fabric of his trous. All of him was hard.

She gripped the doorjamb tighter, closed her eyes, and turned her head away.

“Thief.” T'Ash flung the word like a knife.

“I returned it,” Ruis Elder said.

“To the wrong person. She did not know it was a HeartGift. Now you'll pay.”

“Damnation! Just my luck.”

The table crashed. Danith's eyes flew open, she jerked to her feet to see two men fighting on the ground. T'Ash was the larger, the broader, but he fought a man whose checked fury lay beneath a shallow surface.

They rolled. They punched. They grunted and swore.

Danith could almost see the raging emotions pouring into the summer afternoon sky, heating the grassyard. Emotions that were magnified by the necklace.

Zanthoxyl circled around the two, eyes narrowed, as if waiting to pounce on Ruis Elder. Now and again a fast paw would strike out at the thief's leg or back. It only made the man fight harder.

“Zanthoxyl, the necklace! Get it and put it away!”

The Fam spared her a feral look and growled.

“Do it!” Danith ordered, wondering if he'd obey.

His growl rolled louder. They matched gazes.

Danith narrowed her eyes and set her mouth.

With a final snarl, he picked up the necklace with his teeth, the box fell off the table. His muzzle pulled back from the thing.

He shot past Danith and into her house. She ran after him. He knocked over two chairs as he raced to her bedroom. He jarred the bedside table with his shoulder before depositing the necklace square in the middle of her bedsponge.

Then he roared a sound of utmost glee, and shot by her, back to the still fighting males.

Danith slammed the door to her bedroom. One glance in the Mainspace showed Pansy cowering on top of a bookcase, with only the ruby beads and two chains on, peering at the action.

Danith stomped back to the grassyard. “Stop this at once. T'Ash, I will not have you fighting in my yard. The necklace was stolen. Now it's back. You've pounded the man. That's enough! You, Ruis Elder, take your anger away. You pollute my home with it. Stop!”

They paid no attention. She thought of the waterhose. The idea didn't satisfy, not physical enough. She ran over and crouched near. She grabbed a handful of T'Ash's hair, he was on the bottom. He clenched his jaw, but stilled. Elder reared up, and she interposed her body between the men, absorbed a breathtaking blow on her shoulder, and collapsed on T'Ash's chest. Pain threatened darkness.

Zanthoxyl yowled.

“Danith!” T'Ash cried, clutching her close.

She forced her eyes open, sputtered words around the pain as she met Ruis's eyes. “Go. Now. Fast.”

To her amazement, fury drained from his gaze, replaced by regret. He bowed quickly, respectfully. He ran into the house before Zanthoxyl reached him and slammed the door on the Fam. Zanth darted around the house and out to the front. Danith heard her front door slam, and Ruis's running footsteps down the stone sidewalk.

“Danith, dear one,” T'Ash murmured, then lapsed into wordless crooning, cradling her awkwardly.

She turned a moan of pain into a sigh. And though some weak part of her wanted to remain in such strong, tender arms, the changes in her life were too new to be readily accepted. “Please. Release me.”

His jaw hardened, his eyes glinted ice blue. He stood with her, made sure she was steady, and stepped back.

He met her angry gaze with equal intensity. “Now you know. Not an illegal seduction spell. The necklace is a HeartGift, made during my last Passage.”

“No.”

“You always deny it. ‘No.' But it's ‘yes.' A HeartGift. We will be bound together forever, HeartMate.”

She shuddered. “No. I don't want that.”

“Too bad.” His smile looked more than a little like Zanthoxyl's feral one. “I am making another HeartGift, to reflect more of the man I am now. You may be able to resist the necklace, and my Testing Stones, but not the new HeartGift. We've kissed. I've felt your response. Kissed only this morning, yet I've thought of it all day. You'll think of it, too, won't you? I'm making marriage armbands, also.”