FOREVER KNIGHTS: #16 To Keep Her

Elsabet had a mission at the Trysting Ball. And it was certainly no tryst. She stood assessing the crows. A riot of long red hair parallel to her face. She’d used clay dust to tint her hair for many fortnights now until the color was deeply imbedded disguising her features and making her seem far plainer to the eye. Less striking with her blue gaze contradicting silvery white hair. She wore a dress two sizes two large to hide her shape.

So, she could more aptly blend with these women. Women who hunted male hunters like starved creatures. She watched them with a sort of contempt. Her eyes flicking over them.

She felt a sudden surge of magic walking in the door. Power strength. Confidence. Magic that flooded over her. Strong and familiar.

Gasping she ducked behind the wall. Breaths heaving as she tried to control her panic. Working hard to subdue the energy rising from her. The white light Sebastian often referred to. She was concentrating hard on concealing it.

She poked her head out from around the corner of the wall. And glimpsed him standing a head taller than anyone in the ballroom. But to her chagrin the moment her head protruded he turned, drawn to the light.

Everything else in the room stopped the light’s glow softened to hazy gold. And she recognized his movements with absolute certainty.

She withdrew around the corner and steadied herself in less then a microsecond to bolt across the room and out the side door to the garden.

Her first leaping step was intercepted by a hand around her waist. Turning her in a full circle to slam her back to the wall she’d just fled from.

He snarled slightly and rolled his neck and people instinctively moved from the corner without even realizing their instinctual reaction. Without disturbing their festivities.

Blue eyes were huge. And her body quaked.

He immediately eased his grip. Giving her a microcosm of space. He drew a long heady breath.

“Elsabet…”

“How’d you know?” She breathed.

“How could I not?”

“How?”

“Your light.” He tilted his head. “Your scent.” He lifted it to scent the air above her. “I could track you by that…”

“Not in a field.”

His head lowered. Intrigued.

“As you say I smell of flowers.”

“Not in a field in the spring. Any other season…” He eyed her dangerously. Putting a hand against the wall near her head.

She jerked to the side, seeing the trap closing but his other hand slammed to the wall on the other side.

He growled in his throat.

“What do you want?” She asked.

His long unblinking stare was answer enough.

“You let me go…” She answered in confusion.

“I could not keep you…”

“But you did for years.”

“Because I needed you…”

“And now?” She asked. Heart racing and breath quickening.

“I need you more…” He whispered against her lips. Before consuming them in a breath-stealing kiss. A forearm snaked behind her back to pull her tight to his body.

She moaned into his mouth and her body turned to molten lava against him. Warm to the touch, heating every inch of his soul with warmth he’d been missing.

His other hand reached to thread his fingers through her hair, scooping the back of her head.

“Come home to me.” He broke away to whisper against her.

Feeling her answering hunger in her every heartbeat.

But the second the words left his mouth she wrenched away. Flattening against the wall. Eyes flitting like a scared doe.

“That is my home no longer…Never was. It was a gilded prison you kept a pretty flower in.”

“The prettiest flower.”

“To lock it away in darkness.”

“To protect from a world of it.”

“You protected me from nothing. You’re the reason my baby is dead!” She cried. Face wrenched in agony.

I know.

“Our baby.” His brows drew together in answering misery. “I’d give my soul to give her back to you.”

“Would you?” She straightened. Sadness turning to bleak rage. “I don’t think you give a lick for my happiness. For the happiness of anyone but yourself.”

He reared back. Shocked at the wrong in her words. “How could you, of all people, think that? You knew all the days I left you I went-”

“In search of other women. You who’ve spoken yourself of your great love for women.”

Not where I went. You know that.

“Great love which became focused on one.”

“Two.” She corrected. Bottom lip quivering.

“Two…” He admitted.

She and Sebet.

“I will never go back with you.” She slapped his hat back knocking it off his head. Gushing in an adoring tone he’d never heard her use. “Sebastian! Oh, Heavens me, the great, Lord Bodane!”

No. To his horror every female head in the house turned to him. And he felt the swell of their attention as they reacted to the animal magnetism he generated on sight.

“Good luck.” She mouthed. And as the women swarmed him, she made off through the crowd.

He tried to follow her but their cloying, tearing, hands, held him back. “No…”

He reached out for her, catching a ruffle on her skirt. But his arm was drug down by three women trying to pull him in several directions. Nearly wrenching it from the socket. His hand tearing a small bit of fabric free as she escaped him.