gentry, pounding their silverware on the table. With the way everyone danced around Dorian’s moods, however, I had no doubt they’d wait hours if need be.
“If you’re going to pretend to be my lover, it will involve more than just say-so. You’ve seen how free we are with our affections in public. If you keep ten feet away from me, no one’s going to believe it.”
I froze, suddenly remembering that other dinner. I hadn’t entirely considered the implications.
He chuckled softly, a low and dangerous sound beside me. “Oh, yes, you didn’t think about that, did you?”
He was right. I’d figured Dorian and me disappearing into his bedroom for lessons would be convincing enough. But now I had to picture sitting on his lap, letting him touch me and kiss me. I had trouble with the image. He was one of the gentry, the beings I’d hitherto kept a wary eye on and tracked down my whole life. Discovering Kiyo’s true nature had been a shock to my system, one I was slowly starting to reconcile. How could I handle someone who was completely of the Otherworld?
Yet…the more I hung around Dorian, the easier it became to think of him as just a person. Weird or not, there was something comfortable about being with him. So, yeah. I could handle this. Maybe. It was just a little making out, right? It wasn’t sex. And wasn’t it a small thing to ensure I didn’t tear anyone else apart inadvertently?
“I’m not going down on you or anything,” I warned, using flippancy to cover my discomfort.
He laughed again. “As saddening as that is, it might actually be too much. You’re human enough that they’ll expect some modesty.”
Small blessings. “All right. I’ll hold up my half if you hold up your half.”
“Well, in distribution, I think I’m actually doing three-quarters of the work here. But yes, I’ll do the same. Shall we shake on it? Isn’t that how you humans seal a deal?”
I extended my hand in the darkness, and he took it. Suddenly, he pulled me to him and kissed me. I immediately pulled back, aghast.
“Hey!”
“What? You don’t expect to have our first kiss in public, do you? We want to be convincing, remember?”
“You’re a sleazy bastard, you know that?”
“If you truly believe that, then maybe you’ll feel better finding another teacher.”
I thought about that. Then I leaned forward and tried to find his lips in the darkness. I didn’t realize I was shaking until his hands gripped my arms.
“Relax, Eugenie. This won’t hurt.”
I took a deep breath and calmed myself. Our lips found each other. His reminded me of flower petals, soft and velvety. Whereas Kiyo was all about animal passion and aggression, Dorian seemed more about…precision. I suddenly remembered his metaphor about the difference between slapping paint on a canvas and fine brushstrokes.
Don’t get me wrong, Dorian wasn’t exactly sweet and chaste. There was heat in those soft lips. He seemed to want to draw out the experience, almost in a taunting way, so much so that I found myself impatient and eager when his tongue finally darted in between my lips. He pushed it farther into my mouth, the rest of the kiss intensifying. He smelled like cinnamon and cider, like all the good things in an autumn night. Finally, he pulled away.
“You’re still afraid of me,” he noted, amused by that fact just like everything else. “Your body still won’t relax.”
“Yes.” I swallowed. It had felt good, the kind of good that sends heat down your body and makes your toes-and other parts-curl. But my fear had underscored it all, that fear of gentry and otherness that I still couldn’t quite shake. It was a weird combination, physical pleasure mingling with fear. Very different from the way it was with Kiyo-physical pleasure mixed with a larger, all-encompassing sense of chemistry and mutual affection, despite my unease over his half-kitsune heritage. “I can’t help it. This is all still strange for me. Part of me says it’s wrong. It’s hard to change what I’ve always believed overnight, you know.”
“Do you want to go back on the deal?”
I shook my head. “I don’t go back on my deals.”
I could feel him smiling in the darkness. He leaned over and kissed me again.
Chapter Seventeen
To his credit, he didn’t really manhandle me too badly that night. At dinner, he kept a hand on mine or an arm around my shoulder but little more than that. As he pointed out to me in a quiet moment, anyone could make a brazen display of fleshiness. What really indicated intimacy was how two people interacted with each other, what their body language said. So I worked on looking comfortable and happy in his presence, and from the shocked expressions on people’s faces, we must have done a pretty convincing job.
He took me to his bedroom after that, looking smug and presumptuous to those watching. But when we got there, he actually gave me my first lesson. Honestly, it was a bit disappointing. I’d been ready for fireworks. What I got was a lot of practice on quiet meditation and focus. He claimed if I couldn’t control my own mind, I couldn’t control the power.
So I spent the next couple hours with him working on this and found my most difficult challenge was in not slipping into trance or astral travel. Those behaviors came so automatically to me in still moments that I kept lapsing. The kind of meditation he wanted me to do involved turning my senses outward rather than inward, which seemed strange to me since I had thought magic came from within.
We finally ended the lesson with him giving me a heavy gold ring that he’d put part of his essence into. It was an anchor. Now if he left the Otherworld through a thin spot, he could transition to mine without appearing in a corresponding thin spot. He would simply travel to wherever the ring was. It would save both of us extraneous travel time.
What it also meant was that he planned on coming to my world for some of the lessons. I had mixed feelings on this. Certainly it would be more convenient for me. But the fact that he could even jump with an anchor like that indicated how powerful he was. That realization was just a teensy bit unsettling, as was the thought of him in the human world at all. And yet, by being there, his powers would diminish. He would be safer-or rather, humanity would be safer.
Back home, the following couple of days were more of the same: fights, fights, and more fights. Yet, as Dorian had predicted, some of the traffic dried up. I liked to think this was because my reputation was scaring would-be suitors away. More likely, my new connection to the Oak King made my assailants think twice about incurring political fallout.
As it turned out, I had to deal with my own share of fallout over this alliance-from Kiyo.
“Are you sleeping with Dorian?”
He stood in my doorway, his dark hair backlit by the late afternoon sun. He wore a white lab coat with KIYOTAKA MARQUEZ, DVM on the pocket. He must have driven here straight from work.
“Good news travels fast,” I said. “Come on in.”
I offered him a drink and a seat at my kitchen table, but he just kept pacing around restlessly. He reminded me of a wolf or a guard dog. I didn’t really know anything about fox behavior.
“Well?” he asked.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and gave him a sharp look. “Don’t take that tone with me. You have no claims to what I do.”
He stopped pacing, and his expression softened. “You’re right. I don’t.”
It wasn’t exactly an apology, but it was close. I sat down in a chair, folding my legs up underneath me. “All right, then. No. I’m not sleeping with him.”
His face stayed the same, but I saw visible relief flash in his eyes. It was petty, I realized, but knowing he’d been jealous made something warm flutter up inside of me.
Grabbing a chair, he turned it around and sat down so that his chin rested on its back. “Then what’s up with
