The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening (11 page)

MaLeila crossed her arms and stared at Bastet for a few beats before asking slowly, “So you think Marcel is the start of that?”

“No,” Bastet said honestly with a shrug. “I actually think he’s sincere. I was a spy and representative of the council once and I know how to spot someone who’s not genuine. He was too forward and reckless. If he had some other ulterior motive, he would have been more careful, tried to subtly isolate you from us while getting next to us at the same time so we didn’t notice.”

“Then what are you telling me all this for? If you think Marcel is genuine, why do you think I need to know this?”

“Because you need to be careful. Because he may be genuine, but if you two fall out of love tomorrow, the rest might not be, especially knowing that you’d let someone that close to you so quickly.”

MaLeila rolled her eyes. “It’s been four months. That’s not quick.”

“God you’re such an atypical teenager but you still think like a typical one,” Bastet finally snapped. “He may be nice, but did you look up his family? Does he have any ties to anyone outside the Magic Council or is he a lone sorcerer like you looking for a way to move up in the world? And if he does want to move up in the magical world, why would he purposefully ask you to move in with him, more than likely knowing everything I just told you? What do you really know about him?”

Bastet’s blunt appraisals had never bothered MaLeila. When she was twelve, she found it hilarious and by the time she got to an age where it might have offended her, MaLeila shrugged it off because that was just Bastet and no matter how blunt she was, she was always been kind. And though Bastet seemed a little irritated now, it wasn’t the first time MaLeila had been on the receiving end of the woman’s ire. But now, the woman’s appraisal rubbed her wrong, not because it didn’t have some truth in it. Not even because it was any more blunt or less kind than Bastet usually was. It was simply that in light of their discussion a few days ago, it all seemed so hypocritical. And it was in that moment that MaLeila realized how pissed off and upset she was not just at Devdan, but at Bastet too.

Finally, MaLeila replied in a deadpan tone, “About as much as I’ve learned about you and Devdan in six years, all things considered.”

“Alright,” Bastet said hitting the table with her hands. “I get you being angry at Devdan. He probably should have just kept his damn mouth shut, but me? I didn’t do anything to you that I know of. And I can’t read minds. So you’re going to have to tell me why you’re so damn pissy at me.”

MaLeila huffed. “I’m not sure about that.”

“About what?”

“Being angry at Devdan. At the very least I know he’s hiding things. I know he’s secretive. I know he doesn’t tell me things. I know sometimes he can’t stand me. He’s never bullshitted around about that. But if he hadn’t finally said something, you would have went on acting like our relationship is open and honest and based on two people who can mutually trust each other,” MaLeila spat.

Bastet scoffed. “Devdan may be my brother, but we both know he can be an ass. And during one of the times he was acting like an ass, you let him put stupid ideas in your head. Do you think I would have taken care of you and mentored you all these years if you couldn’t trust me and I couldn’t trust you?” Bastet asked.

“That’s what I used to think.”

“His words and revealing what Claude did doesn’t change that.”

“It changes everything!” MaLeila yelled. “Because no matter what you say or even what Devdan says, none of us know what kind of binding Claude put on us. How do I know you don’t care simply because of the binding? How do I know that the reason you haven’t hurt me is because of the binding?”

“Devdan tried to kill you when you first met. I think that more than explains that the binding doesn’t have that much control over us.”

“He was sealed away for almost two hundred years and we don’t know how that worked. How do we know that it didn’t interfere with the binding and it only took a while for it to kick in and subdue him? Maybe the reason Devdan’s such an ass sometimes is that he can fight the binding in a way you can’t because nothing interfered with your binding,” MaLeila argued and as she did so, she began to realize more and more just how much of her life had been out of her own hands. How all the decisions she thought she made and all the things she thought happened by chance were actually orchestrated by someone else.

Before Bastet could argue back, MaLeila continued, “Everything we are, our relationship, our so-called family bond, whatever the fuck you want to call it was orchestrated by Claude. We were forced together and you all knew it and let me think it was natural. Can you look me in the eye and really tell me, that without Claude’s meddling, you’d still be here? That’s you’d still care?”

Bastet opened her mouth to answer, closed it, and then repeated both actions twice more before saying, “I don’t know, MaLeila. There’s no way to find out, so why dwell on it?”

Again, the idea of breaking the bind crossed MaLeila’s mind and just like the other times, a voice whispered that things hadn’t been so bad before she knew about the binding and they could continue on that way. She could pretend to be blissfully ignorant.

Until she decided what she would do, MaLeila decided not to mention that to Bastet. Instead she shook her head and laughed humorlessly.

“And you know what’s really fucked up about it all?” MaLeila asked, looking back up at Bastet. “You knew from the beginning and you decided not to tell me. Probably never would have. Yet you’re sitting here telling me I can trust you.”

“For good reason. Look at how you reacted,” Bastet pointed out.

MaLeila shrugged, remembering the reason she had come to talk to Bastet in the first place before she realized she was angry at the woman.

“At least with Marcel, I know what I could be getting into. At least with him, it’s my own choice and not someone planning it all out for me and giving me the illusion that it was a choice all along,” MaLeila muttered staring out the window behind the table. “For what it’s worth though, I’m not that naïve. I did check the registry. And I did look into Marcel’s family. I’m being careful.”

Bastet just stared at her for a while, in a piercing way that reminded MaLeila of the way Devdan looked at her when he wasn’t sure what to make of something she said. But Devdan had a way of making MaLeila feel like he was seeing right through her. Bastet didn’t.

Finally the woman said, “Seems like you’ve already made up your mind about it then.”

“Yeah,” MaLeila said, the admission surprising herself even. “I have.”

12

Marcel wasn’t home when MaLeila returned to his apartment. Assuming he probably went to do something that had to do with the council, MaLeila walked around his apartment, looking carefully at each room as though she were shopping for apartments and this was one she was interested in. She’d seen the apartment dozens of times, but now she looked at it in a different light, wondering if this was somewhere she could see herself living. Of course, it mattered more if she could see herself living anywhere with Marcel but this apartment mattered too especially after living in one place her entire life. Her home was dark, filled with artificial yellow lights that reflected off the beige walls, with the same heavy curtains on the window that her grandmother had hung up before she died, and steel burglar bars on windows that used to have to be unlocked with a key but that MaLeila’s mother had forced her grandmother to get changed some time ago after her mother argued that if there was ever a fire and the doors were blocked, they’d be trapped in the house. It was also filled with pictures—of MaLeila and Merrick over the years, some with Bastet, and even one that MaLeila’s mother managed to get Devdan to take—and things that MaLeila’s mother hadn’t been able to part with after her grandmother died. Once MaLeila’s mother died, she and Bastet had taken all the plates and antique ornaments off the wall, boxed some of it, sold some of it to collectors and fetched a pretty penny for the case of rifles that used to belong to her long dead grandfather, but there was still a lot of things on side tables and boxed in closets or the shed in the backyard.

Marcel’s apartment wasn’t like that. The walls were white, the furniture was glass and silver metal and white accented with blues and purples, and it sat on the south side of the apartment complex so that light always filtered in through the many windows and Marcel only ever had to turn on the lights when it started to get dark in the evening.  While he had a lot of things, none of it overcrowded the man’s home and there were no boxes stuffed in closets full of things that they either couldn’t sell or wouldn’t throw away. And while it lacked the heavy, but warm and cozy atmosphere of her home, there was a light calm serenity about it. It also looked decidedly unlived in, like it was one of those mock apartments for interested renters to come inspect. The only real personal touches were the pictures of him and his sister on the mantel, but there was no laptop with papers left on the coffee table or the dining table or a coffee pot that was half full with left over coffee that Devdan and Bastet hadn’t finished.

“I could change that though,” MaLeila muttered to herself as she proceeded to busy herself with going shopping and making dinner, something she didn’t do often since that had been her mother’s chore and eventually Bastet once Devdan took over as her primary guardian from the magicians that used to frequently attack her.

She sensed Marcel coming long before he was back in the apartment that evening, so she wasn’t shocked or even a little alarmed when she felt his arms snake around her as she stirred gravy for the mashed potatoes and to smother her fried chicken with.

“This is a pleasant surprise.”

“What?” MaLeila asked. “Did you think you asking to live with you would scare me off because commitment scares the shit out of me or something?”

“No. I just thought you’d still be at home. I was going to call to make sure it was safe to come over.”

MaLeila rolled her eyes. “You act like it’s a war zone over there.”

“It felt like it was about to be when I left a few days ago and judging by your state when you came over here, it was,” Marcel pointed out. He changed the subject and asked, “What is this?”

MaLeila grinned and said, “It’s time you got introduced to traditional southern cuisine.”

“You’re trying to make me fat, aren’t you?”

MaLeila snorted. “Hardly. Don’t get used to this at all. If I move in, I have no intention of waiting at your hand and foot cleaning up and making sure you have a huge meal every night.”

Marcel laughed. “I didn’t think you would be. Besides, if I wanted one of those kinds of girls I could have paired off with one of those nice girls that my mother wanted me to marry back home before she died. You have to admit, it is kind of sexy though.”

MaLeila frowned and swatted Marcel’s hand away from where had been inching under the hem of her shirt.

“Not the only time it’s sexy though. Wish there was a way you could see yourself using powerful magic like when that idiot stole your staff.”

MaLeila scoffed. “Now you’re flattering me.”

“Not at all. Watching a petite five foot two young woman that’s technically not even out her teenage years use magic that some sorcerers three times her age can’t use is pretty fucking impressive. Makes me want to—“

MaLeila swatted his hand again and shrugged his arms from around her.

“Let me finish cooking dinner. I’ve been too anxious to eat so I’m starving,” MaLeila muttered.

“Me too,” Marcel said whispered in a low baritone, lips next to her ear, even though he had let her free from his embrace. “Just not for that kind of food.”

MaLeila suddenly wasn’t hungry for that kind of food either as her heart began to race and heat began to spread through her body, the familiar pulsing between her legs returning. Still, she resisted, turning the burner for the gravy off before moving away from Marcel to grab a cabbage out the refrigerator. Marcel groaned, pouting in a manner that made him look much younger than his twenty-nine years and nearly made MaLeila laugh out loud. He disappeared into his room and only came back out once MaLeila was done with dinner. Then he insisted on cleaning the kitchen by himself since she cooked dinner.

As he was cleaning, he said, “My sister is coming to visit sometime this week.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. She didn’t give a specific date, but she said whenever she’s done with her business at home. She’s been bugging me about coming home, especially since I really don’t need to be here anymore since it seems like Tsubame has no interest in you specifically.”

“I thought you and your sister didn’t get along.”

“We don’t. Bugging me as in pestering me about why I’m still in the states when there should be nothing keeping me here. So she forced me to tell her about you,” Marcel said in a resigned tone.

“I didn’t know our relationship was secret,” MaLeila said as Bastet’s and Devdan’s words played in her head about being the secret mistress, never the woman that would be showed off on her lover’s arm because she wasn’t deemed good enough to show off.

“It’s not. I try not to broadcast it to the council but they know we’re involved and if anyone asks, I tell them, but my sister… My sister is different,” Marcel said.

His voice was steady, but MaLeila sensed his exasperation and anxiousness. He continued without her prompting.

“She’s close to my ex. You know the one I said is to me like you and Devdan are to each other? My sister secretly hopes we’ll get our shit together and take the blinders off our eyes and settle down,” Marcel said with a roll of his eyes. “That’s never going to happen. She’s into what she’s into and I’m into what I’m into. Doesn’t keep Nika from hoping though. So anytime I get a girlfriend, she’s curious, but she’s only flying out to meet you because you’re the first in a long time I’ve been serious about.”

“Did you tell her about the living together part?”

Marcel groaned and rolled his eyes again. “Cross that bridge another time. Besides, you haven’t even said yes yet. Unless this is your way of answering me?”

MaLeila shook her head, to which Marcel laughed while folding the last dish cloth and putting it over the sink. He made his way over to where MaLeila was sitting on the couch.

“Enough of talking about all that though. There’s still one hunger I’m still eager to ease,” he said as he sat in front of her, lips pressing kisses down her neck and to her collar bone on one side before Marcel shifted to give the same treatment down the opposite side of her neck. He lingered near her collar bone, kissing, sucking, while his hands lifted the hem of her off shoulder knit shirt, heavy enough to keep her warm in the cool mornings as winter transitioned into spring but light enough that she was cool enough during the warm afternoons and evenings.

“I was thinking,” Marcel muttered into her neck, “that we could pick up where we left off before our vacation was interrupted.”

MaLeila remembered exactly where they left off on their vacation, but instead of arousing her, it caused her to tense up, to grab Marcel’s wrists and stop him from lifting the hem of her shirt. Without any more prompting, Marcel let go of her shirt and leaned back to look at her, eyebrows furrowed.

“What’s wrong?”

MaLeila paused, looking for a reason to stop, something that would force her to send Marcel away while she slept on the couch by herself. But despite all Bastet’s warnings, her brother’s objections that she was dating at all, and Devdan’s mixed cues, she couldn’t find anything that was wrong, nothing that she cared about anyway. The only thing that did matter was that Marcel was here, that he wanted her, that he was here not because anyone sent him, that he stayed not because anyone forced him to or because there was any magic chaining him to her, but because he wanted to. And after finding out that the two people she thought she could trust to be there regardless of anything were only there because they had to and that it was very possible they wouldn’t be if they weren’t forced to,  Marcel’s desire to be with her without coercion comforted her.

There was still the matter of the fact that he worked for the council and that even though she doubted it, the fact that he could possibly be looking for a way to leech off her magic, and the fact that she didn’t know much about his family or his connections beyond the fact that he had a sister, but she had intimately lived with and put her life in the hands of two people for six years and didn’t know the true dynamics of their relationship until three days ago. Even if Marcel had secrets, so what? Everyone did. And for once, fuck what everyone else thought. This was her choice, unguided and not manipulated by anyone else.

Finally MaLeila shook her head and said, “Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

MaLeila let go of his wrists and took off her knit, throwing it on the floor next to them.

“I’m fine,” she said and leaned forward to press her slightly parted lips against his, pulling away and then kissing them again. She continued to press timid open mouthed kisses against his lips until Marcel pushed her to lean on the back of the couch and kissed the bare skin above the cups of her bra before reaching back up to kiss her lips again.

While one hand reached behind her head and pressed their lips closer together, the other caressed her stomach and found its way to her inner thigh. Even through her jeans, MaLeila could feel his fingers as though they were touching bare skin. The pulsing between her legs began and her heart raced as Marcel’s hand caressed and massaged her inner thighs without touching her pelvic region. His hand moved back up to the waist of her jeans where it fiddled with the button for a while before finally undoing it. Then he slowly unzipped the zipper. He broke their kiss, moving his other hand from behind her head to the waist of her jeans and without breaking eye contact with her he pulled the waist down and lifted her hips slightly off the couch to pull her jeans down over her butt. When she didn’t protest or break eye contact with him, he slid them the rest of the way down her legs. He left them next to her discarded sweater and stared at her for a moment in her black bra with a pink bow and pink hipster panties, undergarments that were a middle ground between innocent and girlish and experienced and womanly.

After visually drinking the sight of her, Marcel took off his shirt and threw it on the floor before proceeding to press kisses down her body, all over her chest, her stomach, her thighs, and then back up again. Every kiss felt like he was kissing and touching every piece of her skin at the exact same time. And though he carefully avoided the ache growing between her legs especially when he was kissing her thighs, every time he kissed her body she felt like his lips or hands were pressing there without trying to relieve it. Finally, once he was kissing her lips again, she hooked a finger in his pants, right behind the buckle of his belt and pulled him on top of her, guiding him as she repositioned herself so that she was lying down flat on the couch with him hovering above her. She pressed his chest flat against hers and even though her bra still obscured complete skin to skin contact, his body heat against her sent chills down her spine, causing her to arch into him and her aching sex, still covered by her panties, to meet the hardness in his pants.  Just the brief touching caused MaLeila to lose her breath and pull away from their kiss and without thinking she moved her hands to grab his ass and keep him attached to her.

Marcel grabbed her ear lobe between his lips, let go, and whispered, “There’s more room in my bed.”

MaLeila couldn’t bring herself to stop and think about the implications of his comments, to contemplate what going to his bed meant. And even if she could, there was nothing that could have convinced her not to nod her head and tell him to take them there. All that mattered was what he had done to her last time he had her on a bed and the promise that there was more. It made the aching worse and made MaLeila acutely aware of wetness pooling in her panties.

He stood up off the couch, helped her up, pressed her to him and kissed her, tongue slipping between her lips and thrusting back and forth. The motion sent tingles through MaLeila’s body and her legs began to wobble as they threatened to give out on her. There was no doubt he could carry her to his room if he wanted to at this point, but instead, he pulled away from her. MaLeila moaned in protest, trying to bring them together again, but Marcel stepped away from her a grin on his face, blue eyes clouded and darkened by lust yet alight with mischief all the same as he turned away from her and went to his room.