Steal the Sun
Authors: Lexi Blake
Tags: #menage, #vampire, #Erotic, #Thieves, #Lexi Blake, #urban fantasy, #Fae
Steal the Sun
Thieves, Book 4
Lexi Blake
Steal the Sun
Thieves, Book 4
Lexi Blake
Published by DLZ Entertainment, LLC
Copyright 2014 DLZ Entertainment, LLC
Edited by Chloe Vale and Kasi Alexander
eBook ISBN: 978-1-937608-28-6
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank the usual suspects. Much love to my editors – Chloe Vale and Kasi Alexander. Especially to Chloe who put up with the great capitalization debate of 2014. Thanks to my betas, Stormy and Riane, who always do an amazing job. Thanks to the bloggers like Shayna Renee’s Spicy Reads and Kelley at Smut Book Junkies for getting behind this series and championing it. To Liz Berry, Shayla Black, and Kris Cook who have to listen to me whine on a daily basis. And an eternal thank you to my husband, mom, and kids who make it easy for me to work.
But this book is for Lindsey who still believes in faery tales and who I pray always will. I love you, my sweet girl. You can read this when you’re forty…
Table of Contents
Excerpt from Lexi Blake’s Steal the Night, Thieves Book 5, Coming Soon!
Excerpt from Lexi Blake’s Dungeon Games, A Masters and Mercenaries Novella, Coming Soon!
A View to a Thrill, Masters and Mercenaries 7, Coming Soon!
The warmth of the midday sun shone down on the village in Faery. The sun didn’t look different from the one I was used to seeing, but I was no longer on the Earth plane. I hadn’t been for the hours it had taken us to walk from the
sithein
door to the village located close to the white palace, the home of the Seelie royals.
I let my face drift up, closing my eyes and pretending I was back in Dallas, standing on the balcony with Dev, waiting for Daniel to wake up.
“Zoey.” Neil looked at me with big blue eyes from across the table. “They wouldn’t call them brownies if they didn’t taste good.”
“Did you learn nothing from the pixies?” I shot my werewolf a nasty look, remembering the day not too many weeks ago that I scrubbed his scalp raw getting rid of the fleas a certain ruby red pixie had left him as payment for trying to make her a little snack.
I looked over at the next table and saw my other bodyguard. Lee wasn’t even paying attention to the little brownies who were shyly watching the festivities from the doors and windows of houses. Lee and his brother, Zack, were drinking ale and guarding the coffin they'd carried into the
sithein
. Sarah’s husband, Felix Day, was talking to Zack and looking around the town square with a ready smile.
Neil nodded his head vigorously, looking at both Sarah and me as we sat at a table in the middle of Dev’s hometown. “Yes. I totally learned something. I learned not to eat the pixies. Those brownies look mighty tasty and easy to catch.”
Sarah let her head fall to the table, and she groaned heartily about Neil’s fondness for faery creatures. It didn’t bode well for our stay in Faery that my best friend thought most of the inhabitants looked tasty.
I took the time to stare at my husband. Well, one of them anyway. I couldn’t exactly stare at Daniel, and looking at his coffin only made me wonder if he was hot in there. So I stared at the husband who was up and walking around and wondered when I could go home. I’d been in his homeland for approximately half a day and I already wanted to be back at the penthouse. It was selfish, but I was in that kind of mood.
I like to think of myself as a fairly simple girl. I wouldn’t call myself normal, of course. When a girl is married to two men, she can’t consider herself normal. When those men happen to be a faery high priest and a vampire king, she can wave any thoughts of a nice, normal life good-bye.
I’ve gotten used to the fact that my life consists of a whole lot of subterfuge, plotting, and a liberal dose of violence. I live firmly in the supernatural world. My home might be a condo in Dallas, but I’m more likely to come into contact with werewolves than some nice accountant. Since I’m a thief by vocation, most of my human interactions involve the police, but I try to keep that to a minimum. All in all, I have a healthy tolerance for weirdness, but this was beginning to push it.
“I love you, Prince Dev!” a girl with ridiculously long hair called out to my husband. She looked like she was dressed for a medieval fair, but then we all did.
I rolled my eyes for the three hundredth time. I’d stopped keeping count or noting the hair color of the girls who screamed his name as we paraded by. It was like being married to a rock star. Maybe I could have handled that if he was being adored for his ability to play a guitar or his amazing vocal prowess.
That wasn’t what Devinshea Quinn was good at. Nope. My husband was part fertility god.
It had been this way all day. We’d gone through three towns on our way here, each one greeting the returned Green Man with pomp and circumstance and a whole lot of propositions I wish I hadn’t heard.
Dev looked for me across the center of town that was now filled with all manner of curious faery creature. This village was the largest we’d visited and the closest to the palace. Dev and his brother, the future king, had walked me down the main street in a little parade of sorts, but when we reached the center he was bombarded with well-wishers and gawkers.
An officious woman who introduced herself to me as Mara, a member of the queen’s staff, had met us. She was currently directing traffic around the royal twins. She had pushed or pulled the brothers this way or that in an attempt to make the most of their time in town. My group had been told to take a rest break and shoved to the side.
“He has groupies, Z.” Sarah watched the proceedings with an air of shock. “This is worse than a bunch of preteens at a One Direction concert.”
“There’s no comparison, Sarah,” Neil snorted. “Those concerts are filled with screaming virgins. There are no virgins here, thank god.” Neil glanced around, his eyes taking in all the tall, good-looking Seelie commoners mulling about trying to get a word in with the newly returned priest. “Why did I have to go and make up with Chad? I could be having ridiculously hot revenge sex with some glorious slab of man. Look at them. They’re all gorgeous.”
They were. As a race, the
sidhe
won points for hotness. The men were all tall and well built. Their faces would grace the walls of a male modeling agency, and they didn’t understand the meaning of the term pot belly. The women were tall and lithe. Their lovely bodies were made to fit into designer gowns and walk runways. And everyone was serious about their hair. It ranged from almost shock white to that deep, midnight black of Dev’s. Everyone’s hair was long and straight.
I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was the only redhead in the town and they were probably mistaking me for one of the aforementioned, probably-tastes-good brownies. I’m that short.
“Z, you need to tell Daniel to make a new rule.” Neil pulled me out of my self-centered revelry. “Anyone who dates a vamp is also allowed one faery. It’s the Zoey rule.”
“Yes, I’m sure Daniel will get right on that.” It had taken Daniel a long time to get used to Dev. Their first encounters had been violent and Dev almost hadn’t survived them. The boys had settled into a nice friendship with some brutally hot sexual chemistry they chose to ignore and I dreamed about at night. Despite all Daniel’s newfound comfort in his sexuality, I still didn’t think he was going to use his power to get Neil laid.
Sarah let her head drop to her palm as she watched the crowd thoughtfully. “They seem happy to have him back.”
“Yes,” I murmured, watching as Dev stopped looking for me when a lovely blonde tapped his shoulder and requested a moment of his time. Dev seemed to know her but then he probably knew all of them. Biblically. Being a priest in Faery was something completely different than our world. Apparently the Fae believed their bodies were temples that should have lots and lots of visitors. “I’m remembering all the time we spent talking about how much of an outcast he was. You wouldn’t believe the stories he told me. Everyone hated him because he was all mortal. If that’s hate, I suppose love would be a big old orgy.”
“Heh, we regular folk never had a problem with Prince Devinshea,” a voice said.
I found a squat little gnome peering up at me from beneath his red cone cap. It’s nearly impossible to tell age on a gnome because they get wrinkly fast, but if I had to bet, I would have said he was decades my senior. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of travel tips he could give me.
“Because he was the Green Man?” That was the reason his twin brother, Declan, had given me. Dev was an outcast with the royals because of his mortality. His status as part Green Man had made him popular with the peasants. They were the ones who had to farm, so being able to make crops grow was undoubtedly a bonus to his status among the commoners.
The gnome nodded as he looked out over the crowd. “Yes, he was a good Green Man. You have to understand that we went without for many years after his grandfather died. When the prince was found to have powers, we all rejoiced. It was more than that, though. Prince Dev, I guess I should call him High Priest now, was always a kind one. He never looked down on a single creature, not the way the other one did.”
I wrinkled my nose in agreement. He was talking about Declan, Dev’s twin and the future King of Faery. “The other one is an arrogant prick.”
The little gnome looked shocked for a moment but then threw his head back, laughing. His voice boomed and echoed across the courtyard. It was so much deeper than one would expect, but then there were many surprises in this odd land.
“Yes, he is, Your Grace,” the gnome agreed.
My fingers went straight to the gold chain around my neck that marked me as the wife of the High Priest of Faery. It was a dead giveaway. The way I was dressed didn’t exactly help me blend into the crowd. I was dressed as a royal with rich fabrics. It made a stark contrast to the working folk of the village. My husband and his brother had carefully orchestrated my introduction into Fae society. This afternoon was the parade through town, but there was also to be a series of balls and parties welcoming the newest member of the royal family. I doubted it was going to be anything as fun as a barbecue with a nice keg of beer. Of course, if it was anything like this reception, I would be able to slip out with no one noticing I was gone.
“Is there anything I can get you, Your Grace?” the gnome asked.
“Please call me Zoey,” I offered, holding out my hand. I was happy to be nice to the first person who had done something other than gawk at me. The gnome was the first member of Faery to say hello.
