Prior to a few days ago, James had considered himself a patient man. And then Sabine had blazed her way into his life. Any modicum of patience he once possessed had been tossed over the edge of the cliff in which the coterie was situated.
He paced his chamber, waiting for her to make her appearance, and knowing damn well she was deliberately taking her time. He knew because he could feel her, damn it. Or at least her emotions. And her emotional state was conflicted. She knew he was angry, but she was convinced she had done the right thing by giving the shifter her magic.
The problem was, James couldn’t exactly say he disagreed. If she had said no, he was certain the shifter would have killed him, if not both of them. Sharing her magic had saved his life, of that he had no doubt. She had possibly saved the entire coterie. She had given them a future, the opportunity to live in peace.
So why was he so bloody angry?
It was the kiss. The fury he’d felt had been enough to propel him to his feet, despite the blood he’d lost, the pain that had him fading in and out of consciousness. He’d staggered toward them with only one goal: to kill the man who dared kiss his queen.
“What in the world?”
James swung around, expecting to see Sabine standing in the doorway to his private chamber, even though he knew the shrill voice was not hers.
“Mother.” He resisted sighing as anticipation switched to annoyance in a matter of seconds.
The woman who had birthed him and to this day insisted upon trying to manage his life glided toward him in her smooth, manicured glory. Not a strand of white-blonde hair was out of place, not a wrinkle would ever be seen in the woman’s dress. Her brows were perfectly arched, her lips a shade of pale pink complimentary to her skin tone.
She cupped his cheek and he felt the telltale sign of her healing magic. He pushed her hand away. “I am fine. Selma has already tended to me.”
“She did a fine job. She is not mated, is she? Perhaps she would be a—”
“Do not start. Not now. Preferably not ever, but I am particularly not in the mood right now.”
She crossed her arms and frowned, and he turned away, strode over to the cabinet near his desk, poured a hefty splash of milky, white pulque into a glass and tipped it to his lips. How his mother did not notice she constantly drove him to drink, he did not understand.
“Why are you so upset? I believe this might have been the first time ever we escaped a shifter attack with absolutely no casualties. Although I presume you will soon give the directive that we must pack up and leave.”
If the shifter with whom Sabine had shared her magic was to be believed, they no longer had to flee. “I am not sure yet. Maybe not.”
“What do you mean? While I am thrilled no one was killed, I do not for a moment believe it was not purely luck, and a Lightbearer’s luck runs dangerously thin when shifters are present. I will alert the coterie and begin to make preparations at—”
She broke off when Sabine pushed aside the cloth covering the door and stepped into the chamber. Her kinky blonde hair was as unruly as ever, her dress looked as if she might have slept in it, and her eyes were stormy. She was ready for battle—with or without swords. He, on the other hand, could not decide if he wanted to lash out at her or toss her onto the bed in the next room and ravish her until they fell into an exhausted sleep together.
Neither of which was an appropriate response with his mother standing in the middle of the room, staring at Sabine as if she were a particularly repulsive bug.
“What do you think you are doing, barging into your king’s chamber without so much as an announcement of your presence and a request to enter?” his mother demanded of the breathtakingly beautiful woman.
“Responding to my king’s summons,” Sabine replied.
Yes, he most certainly wanted to kiss her. His mother, on the other hand, looked as if she would like to summon a sword of her own and run it through Sabine’s guts. The older woman turned to him, her eyes as stormy as Sabine’s.
“You summoned this woman? Why?”
“He is the king. As such, he does not even need a reason.”
James almost laughed at the woman’s audacity. His mother’s face reddened and she sputtered, clearly unable to formulate a proper response. “Why, I never—”
“Mother, please excuse us. I have business to discuss with Sabine.”
His mother’s eyes narrowed. “Sabine? The female who summoned a sword and killed a shifter?”
Rumors spread like wildfire within the coterie.
‘The one,” he said.
The elder woman managed to compose herself. She straightened her back, unnecessarily smoothed the front of her dress, and nodded curtly at he and Sabine in turn, before sweeping from the room in a style fit for a queen. Perhaps that was why she was determined he should mate with a particular type of woman. Someone like her, since she had never had the privilege of calling herself Queen.
After she left, he lifted his glass, silently asking Sabine if she would like a drink. Few female Lightbearers drank the pungent, heady liquid without diluting it with berry juice, but Sabine was not like any other females of his acquaintance.
She shook her head and then indicated his fresh linen shirt and clean brown pants. “I see a healer has tended to you, your grace.”
He touched his chest where the wounds inflicted by the shifter were no more than fading red marks. “Yes. She insisted I should relax for the rest of the day as well. And stop calling me ‘your grace.’”
She arched one blonde brow and pursed her lips.
“Fine.” To hell with trying to play nice. “You clearly want to fight. Let’s do it, then.”
Surprise flickered across her face. “I did not say—”
“You gave him your magic.”
“Enough to appease him, yes. But not enough for him to ever use it against us.”
“It doesn’t matter. What if he figures out how to make it grow? What if he figures out how to share it with others of his kind?”
“He will not.”
Her utter confidence infuriated him further. How could she be so confident, unless she had some connection to the other being? James strode across the room, while Sabine held her ground, her chin lifted, her gaze defiant. She had no fear of him. It was a strangely arousing reaction.
“You kissed him.” He spat the words, stopping so close to her that his erratic breathing ruffled the hair around her face. He could see the storm swirling in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks, the way her bosom rose and fell with each angry breath.
“He kissed me,” she protested.
“You did not pull away.” That was the crux of it. She had not attempted to break free of the kiss. “It was as if you enjoyed it.” Admitting as much out loud made him feel vulnerable. A king did not admit to his fears, not to anyone, except perhaps his mate.
“You cannot speak for my feelings,” she said, and James’s deflated feeling turned into a painful, festering wound where his heart should be. She turned away and strode to the sofa, sat, and immediately leaped to her feet again, clenching and unclenching her fists. She appeared to be struggling with some internal demon.
“I have been kissed three times in my entire life. The first was Brody, whose breath could have knocked me over it was so hideous. All I felt was an overwhelming need to get as far away from him as possible. The second was you. And it was so very different from that first experience, I had no idea what to do. I wanted—I wanted to do other things. And yet I wanted the kiss to last forever. The third was the shifter. When he kissed me, I had expected him to try to kill me, and I was too startled to immediately pull away. And no, I did not enjoy it,” she snapped, as if she knew he was about to ask.
“The only kiss of the three I wish to repeat is the one I shared with you.” She threw her hands into the air and paced to the wall and back.
James was dumbfounded. “You—you want to kiss me again?”
She glanced at him through her lashes. He liked t
he way the flush of her cheeks spread down to the teasing expanse of skin above the neckline of her dress. He wanted to lift his hand, stroke it along the latticed edge of the material, then down, to tug at the ties hiding her breasts from him. His body hardened. Anticipation was thick in the air, and he knew it was not entirely his own.
Yet he could not quite let go of his anger and frustration. Not yet. “There is a connection between you and the shifter. Especially now that you’ve shared your magic. And we both know, despite what you said to him, you cannot take it back.”
Her shoulders straightened, her spine stiffened. “I did what I felt I had to do, to save you. Whatever connection there may be between myself and the shifter, it is not his emotions I feel right now.”
Something inside James snapped. He needed to touch her. His magic flared, drawing her gaze to his hands as they reached for her. Her eyes widened, but she did not step away. He wrapped one arm around her back and slid the other under her knees and lifted her off her feet. She made a sound of surprise and grabbed his shoulders while staring into his face.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was a whisper.
He strode toward the bedchamber. “The healer told me I should spend the rest of the day in bed. I suspect you were told the same thing. Seems to me we should follow their instructions.”
Chapter 6