There. I said it. I cannot be tied down. Not by offspring, not by a spouse, and certainly not by one, single apprentice no matter how attractive or intriguing I found him.
No, no, and no.
We continued to sip at our drinks and survey the other’s emotional landscape. Alabastair’s need tugged at the crumbling walls of my denial. I could give him what he wanted if only he would—
“Then let me be the one restrained, Mari. Restrained, not possessed.”
His pupils enlarged while the color of his eyes darkened to pewter. Every other sound inside the room faded, including my parents’ voices, low and urgent as they consulted with Diego. All of it ceased to be a distraction from the man in front of me as the last of my resistance fell away. I set my snifter aside and stood, offering Alabastair a hand.
My life was about to change.
Our lives were about to change.
The foreign sensation driving me likely meant the Demesne was taking hold. I had no will to hold it at bay.
As my apprentice and I walked in silence down the wide hallway to my wing of the house, the God of Death noted our passing and said not a word. I gripped Bas’s hand harder and walked on. My door opened at the touch of my thumb. Once we crossed the threshold to my quarters, Bas closed the door and engaged the lock.
I took a deep breath. “My brother mentioned there is one requirement of the Demesne we must…engage in as soon as possible.” Scanning the room, I directed my apprentice to the windows where the moon could act as our witness.
“What does that requirement entail?” he asked.
“Sex.”
Alabastair swallowed. I watched the rise and fall of his throat. He would look stunning wearing one of my brother’s collars. Naked, singularly adorned in a band of hammered gold, with loops to which I could attach any number of accouterments.
It was my turn to swallow. My potential mate looked more like a nocturnal animal caught in the glare of a floodlight than a lover desiring to explore my body. I reached up and placed my hands on his shoulders. “We leave our roles of teacher and apprentice here. Our joining must be as mutual an experience as we can possibly make it under these circumstances.”
“I understand.” Alabastair didn’t move a muscle.
Chapter 8
Maritza made to go. I grabbed her wrists without checking my impulse and sank to my knees. “I need a minute,” I said. “More than a minute. Please.”
“Alabastair, release me. Now.”
Mortified, I let go, adding this moment to others where I had stumbled socially. In my darker hours, I’d replay it over and over again until I was reduced to ash.
“Take as many minutes as you need,” she added, not unkindly. “I will wait for you in my bedroom.”
The witch stepped away, her feet silent on the plush rugs, leaving me in a pool of moonlight, assailed by doubt. I unrolled my shirtsleeves and rested the side of my head and shoulder against the soothing coolness of the tempered glass.
While at university, fellow students had thought my libido tame. Others didn’t offer comment, one way or the other. Throughout my adult years, I’d had a short list of amenable lovers—male, female, and other—and discreet liaisons were arranged between myself and one or more when the need arose.
It all felt very mature and responsible, prior to this night.
I came to my feet and shrugged out of my shirt. Folding it in half, I matched the shoulders and the ends of the sleeves and draped the garment over the chair in front of me. Mari’s feet had left ghostly imprints over the carpet, a pathway for me to follow.
Or not.
Mari.
My heart came undone as I freed the top button of my linen slacks, then the inner button. Perhaps the lifelong restraint I placed on my sexual proclivities had more to do with the burden of expectation. I was on a non-stop trajectory to reach the potential my parents had seen in me from the time I was five or six.
I was not stopping for serious dating, I was not stopping for marriage, and I was certainly not stopping for children.
At some point, I would halt my ascension or at least tap on the brakes. Choose a city to call home. Purchase a house. Furnish the house. Occasionally sleep in the house.
I sighed heavily and finished lowering the zipper. Sliding my trousers down my thighs, I folded my pants, placed them over the chair atop my shirt, and went to the coatrack I’d been provided.
I needed more than the summer-weight cape I’d steamed and hung as soon as I arrived. I pulled a midnight-blue cotton velveteen one off a shelf, shook open its generous proportions, and twirled it around and over my shoulders.
Fresh air—and a sky that refused to go fully black until who-knew-when—greeted me on my deck. I’d asked the witch who made all of my capes to give this one an extra-roomy hood for those times when I wanted to disappear. I sat cross-legged on the weathered boards, pulled the sides of the garment snug to my body, and held tight to my catalog of shameful moments until the little beast stopped wiggling.
Maritza’s voice startled me out of a final round of absolution.
“I had no idea you were the one for me, Alabastair. No inkling, no prophetic dreams. Nothing about this was premeditated on my part.” She cleared her throat. “We have the option of severing the Demesne. The process is painful but possible. It would require us to end our Agreement of Apprenticeship and for you to leave. Tonight. You would have to make every effort to never again be in my presence until—and unless—I am in a Demesne-sanctioned relationship.
“Or, you can stay.”
If the god of time had handed me a clock at that moment and given me the option to rewind the entire evening—or to go back
