The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening (6 page)

“Do you know how weird it is for the neighbors to see you sitting on the roof in the middle of the night? They might think you’re a thief or something,” MaLeila said to him.

Devdan made a sound that might have been a scoff or a snicker. MaLeila wasn’t sure which. Instead he said without looking at her, “Stand over there in the shadow of the tree.”

MaLeila did so and a few seconds later, she was standing on top of the roof in one of the shadows created on it by its angles.

“Thanks,” MaLeila said as she walked to where to Devdan was sitting with one leg outstretched and the other bent with his arm resting on it. Carefully, she sat next to him.

For a while they were silent and MaLeila knew that if she didn’t say anything, they would both sit in silence together all night and nothing would be solved. Eventually Devdan would certainly get over himself and stop giving her the cold shoulder, but sometimes it was better to get things out in the open. There was enough resentment festering between them for other reasons MaLeila wasn’t quite sure about as it was.

“Sorry for bringing up Claude. I shouldn’t have thrown that up in your face knowing how uncomfortable it makes you.”

A while back, if MaLeila had mentioned that talking about Claude made him uncomfortable Devdan would have snapped that it didn’t make him uncomfortable and that it was just none of her business. Now, he didn’t deny it, but he would never acknowledge she was right either. Not that MaLeila needed him to. It was obvious.

“I just wanted you to…” MaLeila trailed off. This was how they ended up not talking to each other in the first place.

“You just wanted me to what?”

MaLeila regarded Devdan out the corner of her eye. He was still, too still even for him as he looked down at his lap, staring at nothing in particular. She sighed.

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just forget about it. Whether you trust me or not, I trust you. And that makes you my friend. And I’ve missed you these last couple of weeks.”

Devdan did laugh a little that time, his lips curved into a small smile. It was the closest thing to him saying, “I missed you too,” as MaLeila was going to get.

“Anyway. All that aside, since Merrick is so eager to make sure Marcel won’t take advantage of me or isn’t trying to get next to me for the council’s sake, Marcel suggested we have dinner at his place and he’d like it if you came.”

“Why would I care what Marcel would like me to do?” Devdan asked bluntly.

MaLeila sighed. She didn’t even feel like wasting her breath trying to convince Devdan to go. It wasn’t worth them not talking again.

“Whatever,” she said in an even tone. “I thought you’d say no. You hate things like this.”

“I’ll go if you want me to go though.”

MaLeila turned to look at him. He was still sitting with one leg propped up and an arm thrown over his knee, head looking downward.

“You would?”

Devdan shrugged. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me all week.”

“You knew about it.”

“I heard you on the phone.”

“And you couldn’t have just told me that?”

“I was waiting for you to ask me. I figured if you wanted me to come, you would and if you didn’t you wouldn’t,” Devdan said simply.

MaLeila groaned. This man…

“You’re so fucking difficult,” she muttered.

“Do you want me to go or not?”

“I…” MaLeila trailed off upon seeing that his coal-grey eyes were upon her. MaLeila felt her face heat up as she tried to avert her gaze and then looked back. Devdan rarely, if ever, looked directly at her or anyone, but when he did MaLeila felt like he could somehow see right through her, read her thoughts, and figure out her every desire, particularly the ones about him.  The fear that he could made her finally look away from him even though she could still feel his eyes on her. She was pretty sure his magic didn’t give him that power, but just in case it had and she didn’t know it, she rather not risk running him off again.

“Yeah,” MaLeila finally breathed. “I’d like that.”

7

“Word of advice,” Bastet whispered to MaLeila right before they went to the dining table. “A man who can cook is a keeper.”

MaLeila gave Bastet a wry look as they made their way to the glass dining table in Marcel’s pristine apartment, filled with lots of white, silver, gray and black furnishing and décor.

“Are you talking about Marcel or Devdan?”

“Both,” Bastet confirmed, “but while Marcel is nice, you know I’m biased toward Devdan, right?”

MaLeila huffed as she sat in her seat next to Marcel and across from Devdan at the spread the two had prepared. When they arrived at Marcel’s apartment earlier that evening, they found him in the kitchen preparing dinner to which MaLeila pointedly reminded that she asked if he needed them to bring anything to which he replied that he told her he didn’t need them to bring anything but themselves. When he said that, MaLeila had assumed he was ordering dinner in for them, not cooking it. At that point, he did say that he could use a little help in the kitchen and asked who the best cook was.

At best, Merrick could boil water and both MaLeila and Nina could do little more than make macaroni and cheese. Bastet blatantly said that she cooked all the time and for once, she wasn’t cooking a damned thing but that since Devdan never cooked, he could do it. Both MaLeila and Merrick laughed while Nina tilted her head and asked, “Devdan can cook?”

Devdan eventually wordlessly agreed to help Marcel in the kitchen with minimal grumbling to MaLeila’s surprise. Then again, Devdan had too much pride to sit and allow people to laugh at him. For an hour, Devdan and Marcel moved seamlessly through the kitchen as they cooked together. Marcel engaged in conversation with them from the kitchen to where they were in the living area, while Devdan worked in silence though he was certainly observing everything around him.

“Well damn,” Nina said using her phone to take a picture of the spread. “He can cook. Who knew?”

Once Nina was done taking all the pictures she wanted to put on her Instagram, they all began to pass food around. Merrick wasted no time asking Marcel all the questions he tried to ask MaLeila when he first found out about him and then some. Marcel took it all in stride, sometimes answering immediately and sometimes raising an eyebrow at Merrick as though he couldn’t believe he was asking a question before he answered it anyway.

“Alright,” MaLeila finally said. “I think that’s enough interrogating him.”

“I would have stopped a long time ago, but he seems not to mind. Why not take advantage of it?” Merrick said with a shrug.

“It’s no problem. My sister did the same for me when I was younger.”

“You have a sister?” MaLeila asked. “You never mentioned that.”

“You never mentioned you had a brother,” Marcel said with a shrug. “Honestly, it just never crossed my mind to mention her. There’s a picture of her over there on the fireplace.”

MaLeila had seen that picture earlier, of a tall woman with straight black hair and dark eyes.

“You don’t look alike,” MaLeila said.

“Everyone says that. Blame it on genetics.”

“So you dated someone older than you when you were younger,” Merrick asked.

Bastet sighed and said to Devdan, “I though you explained this to him.”

“Well he said his sister did the same thing for him,” Nina said.

MaLeila looked at Nina and said, “Marcel invited you here to be on our side.”

Marcel laughed. “It’s okay. No. I didn’t date anyone older than me. I just… I had a very tumultuous relationship with a girl when I was younger.”

“Tumultuous? In a good or bad way,” Merrick asked.

“Both. It was actually more dysfunctional, but I was trying to put it nicely. If she were here, she’d probably say it was more than dysfunctional. She’d probably say we were fucked up.”

“You still talk to her,” Devdan asked, the first thing he’d said all evening.

“Yeah. We’ve been good friends since I could remember. We just realized we weren’t good at the monogamous relationship thing together. We needed space. We get along better this way. Actually, you and MaLeila remind me a lot of the two of us,” Marcel added.

MaLeila and Devdan both looked at each other and then at Marcel before asking together, “What do you mean?”

Marcel shrugged. “You just relate to each other in a very unique way, in a more than siblings but less than lovers kind of way. If I didn’t have a relationship like this with someone already, I’d probably wonder if I had something to be worried about.”

MaLeila sensed the shift in Devdan’s aura, flaring from calm and relatively demure to dark and pulsing, defensive even. She looked at him from across the table, hoping to meet his eyes for once, but he was still looking at Marcel, more like glaring at him really.

MaLeila wasn’t sure if Nina noticed that Devdan look ready to lash out or if she just happened to decide to open her mouth, but either way MaLeila was glad her best friend decided to use that moment to ask about dessert.

Eventually, Devdan stopped glaring at Marcel and went back to being quiet at the table. But Devdan was nothing if not somewhat unpredictable, and MaLeila breathed a sigh of relief when dinner was long over and everyone was about to leave. She decided to stay a little while longer, assuring her brother that Marcel would bring her back later.

“I think that went well,” Marcel said as he put the chairs back at the table once everyone was gone.

“You sure? My brother didn’t make you uncomfortable did he?”

“No. He’s your brother. I expected it,” Marcel replied as he went to his cabinet and took out two wine glasses and a bottle of wine. “I saved this for us.”

“I’m not twenty-one.”

Marcel rolled his eyes. “And how many of your peers has that stopped? Besides, in Italy, drinking is legal once you’re sixteen. A glass won’t hurt you or get you in trouble.”

“It won’t get me in trouble,” MaLeila said taking a glass and allowing Marcel to pour the wine. “But you’ll get in trouble for offering it to me.”

Marcel smiled as he poured his glass and set the bottle aside. Once he was settled next to her he asked, “So what are you and Devdan fighting about?”

MaLeila stilled and then brought her wine glass from her lips and held it in her lap.

“What makes you think we’re fighting?”

“When I first came to your house and you two came in, he kind of… I guess the word would be hoovered. And you both kind of naturally fell in place next to each other. Today you both seemed to be keeping your distance from one another.”

“He’s just trying to be mindful of the fact that you’re my boyfriend,” MaLeila shrugged as she took a sip of the wine.

Marcel smiled. “If that’s what you want to believe.”

“Why so interested in Devdan?”

“Because I feel like more than your brother, he’s the one I have to impress.”

MaLeila tried not to cringe as Marcel’s words brought Devdan’s promise to shoot Marcel if he felt the need to back to her mind. When MaLeila told Marcel as much he laughed and asked if Devdan had brought his gun with him to dinner.

“More than likely,” was MaLeila’s reply.

Deciding that was enough about Devdan, Marcel asked more questions about her brother, which led him to asking about her mother.

“She wouldn’t have liked the idea of us dating,” MaLeila finally said.

“Why? Would she have called me a perverted old man for being interested in a little girl?” Marcel joked.

“She didn’t want me to be part of the magical world. She even forbade me from using magic at home or when I didn’t need it. It caused problems between her and Bastet. Bastet always argued that it was dangerous for me as a lone sorceress not allied with the council or a prominent family to not put my magic to good use and learn it. My mother seemed to be of the belief if I didn’t use magic, anyone that was dangerous to me would leave me alone. Lucky for me, I was intuitive enough with magic to be able to use it to defend myself when the time came.”

“You think she ever would have come around to it?”

MaLeila shook her head and said, “Knowing my mother, she would have used the attacks as even more of a reason for me not to use magic.”

“So she essentially asked you to deny who you were?”

“Magic isn’t who I am. Not all of who I am anyway.”

“That may be true, but that’s like saying the ability to fly isn’t one of the things that makes a bird a bird. Unless it was already flightless anyway, once a bird can’t fly, it’ll die. Magic is like that to a sorceress. We might be able to live without it for a while, but what kind of life would it be?” Marcel asked. “I think if your mother understood it like that, she would have come around.”

“Maybe,” MaLeila said with a shrug as she put her wine glass down, still filled with half the wine Marcel had given her.

“As it is though,” Marcel said setting his glass aside also, “You can’t keep living like your mother is holding you back. What’s the use of having an ability if you don’t use it to get ahead in life?”

“And how do you suppose I do that?”

“Just stop being afraid on it. If you stop looking at everything to do with magic as an intrusion, you can learn to make it work for you instead. Just learn to go with things, MaLeila,” Marcel advised, face only inches from hers now rather than the arm’s length it had been a few moments ago.

MaLeila took a few deep breaths and said, “Are you still talking about magic or us?”

Marcel didn’t answer her question immediately. Instead he kissed her once on the lips and then again and once more, all the while tugging her into his lap by her arms.

“I was talking about magic mostly, but if that’s how you want to take it,” Marcel finally answered.

He buried his face in her neck and then began to run kisses down towards her collar bone. Once at her collar bone, he sucked on the skin there. MaLeila tilted her head back to give him better access to her neck and let out a low moan. Then he stopped and took a deep breath, inhaling her scent.

“You’re so beautiful. You know that?” he asked.

He lifted his head and pressed his lips to hers, not giving MaLeila a chance to answer or be embarrassed. They were soft a first, gently and slowly moving against hers and guiding the movements of her own lips. Then, as though realizing that they weren’t outside her house, the movements of his lips became faster and more aggressive. MaLeila shifted until she was straddling his lap so she wouldn’t have to awkwardly crane her neck and could better return his kisses. In response, he used both hands to firmly grip her thighs and pull her closer to him and when that didn’t seem close enough, he grabbed her butt and pulled her as close to him as she could. For the first time, she didn’t stop his wonton hands.

He thrust his tongue between her lips and used his tongue to play with hers and touch along the roof of her mouth. He pulled his tongue out and his lips away, giving MaLeila just enough time to suck in a gasping breath before his lips were upon hers again.

Her body became hypersensitive to his touch, so when he dragged his right hand away from her butt, around to her stomach and up to her breast, she felt it not just on her breasts, but her entire body.

MaLeila hadn’t had many boyfriends like many of her peers had, so she didn’t have much experience to compare Marcel to, but without a doubt she knew they hadn’t been able to make her feel like this; like her clothes were too constricting and too hot; the acute awareness of the pulse throbbing between her legs.

Then she felt his hand crawl under her shirt, further up her torso until he slipped his hand in her bra and touched her nipple. The touch sent a jolt through her body, right to her core, causing her to simultaneously jerk her head back from Marcel and gasp. She leaned back in his lap, making panting breaths. He simply stared at her, blue eyes dark and clouded with lust, lips swollen, hair in disarray from where she had been running her hands through it, hand still in her bra and touching her nipple. The thought made MaLeila’s face heat up in embarrassment and avert her gaze. At seeing her discomfort, Marcel pulled his hand from under her shirt.

“Was that too much for you?”

MaLeila nodded, breathing out a sigh that Marcel seemed to automatically understand what she couldn’t find the words to say.

“Sorry,” she said as she started to move out his lap.

He held her in place though and tilted her head up to look at him as he said, “I think I should be the one saying that.”

Then he gave her one final kiss and said, “I think it’s time to take you home.”

******

To her surprise, Devdan was sprawled on the couch when she got back, having apparently been waiting for her. If she didn’t know him as well as she did, she would have thought it was sweet. But Devdan waited up for no one just for the sake of making sure they got in the house.

MaLeila had known something was coming about their dinner with Marcel the moment she saw Devdan glare at him earlier, but still on her high from her tryst with Marcel she hadn’t stopped to wonder if Devdan might be waiting on her. Rather than cutting to the chase, she decided to play dumb, even if it would annoy Devdan.

“You didn’t have to wait up for me.”