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I felt as if nothing could lower me back to my usual moping self after the feast that followed my inauguration into Ilyena’s pack. I had been politely asked to take off my cloak and show the court my tattoo. I gladly consented to the numerous shouts and showed the black-winged angel that dominated my back in his dismal midnight black robes with his immense sword of fire.

There was no possible way I would be able to finish what was on my plate. It had been laden with all kinds of food. Ham, turkey, roast beef and chicken fillets, sweet potatoes and peas, greens beans and beets. The variety of the foods served to the Court astounded and astonished me. They had all sorts of puddings and pastries for dessert. Pumpkin and apple and cherry pies, heaping platters of bouillabaisse and flan, sugar skulls and donuts. They even had sweet potato pie. The pumpkin pasties, caramel empanadas and numerous other dishes made me wonder if it were possible for any one person to taste everything and not suffer indigestion.

My new guard couldn’t believe he was taking part in the feast by eating huge plates of fried chicken, crab cakes, and shrimp baskets. The copious amounts of wine and pumpkin juice and milk he was drinking surprised everyone. He especially enjoyed the steak and kidney pie that he tried for the first time.

He asked if he could have a cup of lager but had long forgotten he had ordered it when the tumblers and jugglers came with the trapeze artists and dancers through the double doors of the room. They wore gaudy shirts and bright colors that danced before your eyes, even when they would stand still. Some of the tumblers had brought a rather small ring and set fire to it so their jumps through it would seem more entertaining. The pranksters and mimes came around to the tables and helped bring a laugh to anyone who seemed on the brink of a reprieve from their ceaseless laughter. I had to smile and even chortle at my gurad for eating what we all thought was a sweet plum but was a lemon in disguise. He even laughed at himself for not being able to see through the guise of the food.

By midnight, everyone had had their fill of food and amusement and was getting ready to return to their chambers. I stifled a yawn and leaned towards Mistress Ilyena to ask where I would be sleeping. She arranged for one of her more willing guards to guide me to my room. He was a little shorter than I, but had eyes like molten gold. His skin was the color of white marble and he had ankle length silver hair. He looked as if he belonged in the Seelie Court or was an actual angel.

He said his name was Oreban and that he had been exiled from the Court at Buckingham Palace in England for having chosen the queen’s daughter as his mate after I asked. His lover had been executed after being tortured in front of him into madness and he was forbidden from ever returning to the court. He wasn’t upset about his exile, not even about his mate being killed because they had shared his bed and made love to each other after romancing one another from across the courtroom. He just… didn’t care.

He led me out of the double doors of the anteroom into an undecorated, gray slate and granite hallway, down three sets of stairs, and up two more hallways to a highly embellished rosewood door. As we drew up to the door behind which was my new bedchambers, he turned to me and inquired if I had loved anyone before. Not in a sexual manner, but emotionally loved someone. I told him that if I had let down my guard long enough to fall in love with someone, I’d have never gotten as far as I had. He looked distraught at that and said, “If one cannot find the capacity to love another in his or her life, then they are not alive at all.”

“Should one open his heart to any who pass by, one may strike him down where he stands.” I thanked him for his wise advice and bid him goodnight. While I was closing the door behind me I looked at the furnishings of my bedroom. In one corner, there was a washstand and a bathroom through the door next to it. A large dresser and nightstand stood on either side of the black and red four-poster bed that looked so inviting that I felt as if I could fall into its covers and disappear. There was a desk with a ladder backed chair, both the color of rosewood, and a shelf that held a good deal of books, most ranging from some so small they could fit in the palm of your hand to as big as a car tire. The carpet was a rich burgundy like my hair and the walls and ceiling were a velvety blue. Every piece of furniture was encrusted with rubies and garnets and some inlaid with gold. It was going to take some getting used to since my last bedroom was half of a very small apartment in downtown Los Angeles.

Several minutes after taking my room I was under the warm but light covers of my four-poster, thinking to myself how it would have been if I had grown up among Ilyena’s pack. I probably would have been attacked everyday until I either left or was killed. The creaking of the door being opened interrupted my thoughts. Even though all of the lights in my room had been extinguished, I could plainly see the face of the woman creeping towards my bed in nothing but a full-body slip the hue of pale snow, even after she had closed the door. Her face was fair in complexion and had slightly angled features. Her hair was a dark brown or a black, the darkness hid the color from my eyes. Her eyes were a deep evergreen, a light moss, and a dim lime green. She smelled of crushed pine needles. She had to be a Fey of some sort, or at least partly so.

As she calmly and quietly glided towards the side of the bed and began to remove the full-body slip that was stretched taught across her large breasts but not obscenely so, I felt slightly naughty, as if I were voyeur. She let the slip drop to the floor silently and began to crawl under the covers to where I lay naked as I had always slept. She slid smoothly under the blankets with her long, silky legs, slowly but surely sliding next to me and laid her hand on my chest, gently massaging so as not to awaken me. Then, without glancing at my face to see if I had awakened, she began to move her hand ever so slowly downward, towards my navel and past to where my groin was.

Before she could rest her hand on my lower body, and more private body parts, I seized her forearm in my hand and asked in my soft, slightly hypnotizing voice, “And just what do you think you are doing, my Lady?”

She looked into my eyes, her face showing that I had startled her. Her face also held a small look of disappointment, as if I had kept her from some privilege that she would find enjoyable.

In a soft voice like the morning dew on a leaf she replied, “Why, I am only trying to welcome you to…”

“Don’t give me that bullshit.” To hell with grandiloquence, time for raffish language. “I want to know what your real reason for being here is or why you concurred to coming here. So, tell me why you are here, and be sure it is the truth. I will know if you lie.”

I gazed into the depths of her deep green eyes like they were pools of living light and caught myself imagining the two of us fucking. Not the cute cuddly love making that most people would expect of the Fey, but the hard, agonizing type where the line between pain and pleasure is blurred. The fast, hot, scream-your-lungs-out type of sex. I couldn’t believe that I was thinking of this now, when I had years of walking past women offering me a night of that type of pleasure if I would just consent to their pleas.

The woman thought long and hard before she looked into my dark eyes with hers, smelling more strongly of pine than before and breathing mildly quicker than when she had come in. She studied my face before answering, “The moment you walked through the doors of the anteroom, I knew that I had to be with you, even if for only one night. Ms. Alain noticed and told me that if you would share your bed with me, she would give me to you to welcome you home.”

I had no idea that I could have that effect on anyone. I thought hard about whether or not I should let her stay the night or send her away and risk her being punished for being believed to have not satisfied me. I made up my mind to let her stay, but not have sex with her.

“Ok. I’ll let you stay, but no sex.” She opened her mouth to protest but I interrupted her before she could begin to argue. “Know that this is to protect you, as well as I. If I have sex, I may lose control of myself and accidentally harm you, maybe even kill us both. I have never shared my bed with anyone in my life. I am afraid I wouldn’t even know how to begin. I am sorry, but I cannot have sex with anyone, ever.” I felt sorry for the girl because she had basically said that since she first set eyes on me, she had wanted me. I may have been able to fight demons, change the tide in the fight at the Hellmouth, and maybe take on a demigod, but love was something alien to me.

She accepted my excuse without question and cuddled against my side, resting her head on my chest, her hair cascading over my torso. All I could think of to do was drape my arm over her protectively. Normally, I would have stayed awake for hours, thinking of what I should have said and done, but the silky feel of her hair, her cool fingers lay on my stomach, and the deep pine scent of her began to make my eyelids droop and lull me to sleep. My last thought before sleep overtook me was, she openly confessed her feelings towards me and still accepted an aggravating answer without a question. If she still feels that way after my answer, then, maybe it would be nice to spend the rest of my life with her. Yes, it would be nice to know someone in such an intimate way as she wished. It would…

As I drifted off into sleep, I heard the distant beat of the girl’s heart, her slow rhythmic breathing, and I reminded myself to ask her name in the morning. Then, I knew nothing but a serene peace that I had never experienced beforehand. Yes, it would be very nice indeed. And then, I knew nothing more that night.