Sunny - Mona Lisa Craving

My men were learning how to handle me.

But at the thought of someone moving into Gryphon’s quarters, my heart twinged painfully. He’s dead but not really gone, I told myself. Just moved to another realm. And it would hurt my new lover more were I not to let him use that empty room.

I nodded my consent.

“Thank you,” Dontaine said in a soft rush of relief, and brushed trembling lips across mine. I felt his weariness then, beating down upon him as we touched, as that electric spark of sensation jumped between us almost sluggishly.

“Did you sleep?” I asked, pulling back.

He shook his head and smiled sadly. “How could I when no one else was watching? When someone could lure you out? Or you could simply wake early, before others, and wander out as you just did.”

“I’m used to taking care of myself, Dontaine.”

“You did not even scan your surroundings. You were not aware I was outside with you until I spoke.”

I flushed. “Very careless of me, I know. I just feel…safe here.”

“And we can make it so, if you will allow us. With but a few simple measures.”

I’d refused it before when he had suggested it. “There’s no need, with three warriors living in the house. Four now with you.”

“There is every need when they are all sleeping and you are not.” Some of the bite leaked back into his voice. “Please, do not hinder me in my duty. A simple rotating watch, that is all I ask.”

“Not much, just moving into the house and setting up a watch guard,” I grumbled, but pecked a light, affectionate kiss on his lips. “Very well. Anything else you might want to ask for while I am in the mood to give in to any and all requests?”

“Not at the moment. But I’m sure I shall think of something later when I am less fatigued.”

“Silly me, then, for wanting you to get some rest. Come on.” I pulled my weary master of arms to his feet. “You need to sleep.”

“Lie with me?”

“Hah. See? You’ve already thought of something more to ask for,” I teased gently as we walked back to the house.

“Just rest beside me for a while. Until the others awake,” he asked softly as we made our way to the guest room on the lower floor.

“Sure.”

Of all the things he had asked for, that was the easiest to grant.

I LAY QUIETLYin Dontaine’s arms as he drifted off to sleep, finding a different sort of comfort with him. The comfort of bringing my warrior rest, easing his soul temporarily from the burden of my care entrusted to him by Halcyon and by his own heavy mantle of responsibility as my master of arms. He’d tiptoed around me. They all had these past few weeks after I’d returned to them once the storm of my grief over Gryphon’s death had broken and passed. But I was stronger now, less fragile, and they were treating me as such, making demands once more.

“You eat that, now. All of it,” Rosemary said at dinner that night, after all had risen to break fast, even Dontaine, who had managed to catch a few hours of sleep. Rosemary had been a cook at High Court. She had left her coveted position there to follow me out to this hot and humid southern clime because of her Mixed Blood children, Jamie and Tersa. Because she knew I would do my best to protect them. At least you’ll try, she’d said. No one else will do even that .

She was a natural, caring mother. And let me tell you, that was a rare thing among the Monère, at least toward their Mixed Blood offspring, which were often looked upon as little more than garbage to be gotten rid of.

She turned the brunt of her mothering nature on me now. “Eat,” she said, and I did. Not a hard thing to do when the food was so delicious. Tender roasted lamb with mashed potato, rich gravy, and the light salad greens that I enjoyed. Rosemary had taken over the general management of the household upon our arrival here. Good thing, because I wouldn’t have known what to do or who to ask to do it. Though she no longer cooked, she oversaw the kitchen, her first love, with a keen, critical eye.

I ate to please her and myself, and because it was wisest not to go against her in this matter that fell in her domain—a domain over which she ruthlessly presided, and which basically stretched to include any and all sundry matters pertaining to the household. Not only did I fear her tongue lashing, which could be quite blunt and biting, but one tended to fear her physically as well. She was huge, both in height, almost six feet tall, and in girth. She was built like an Amazon, with strong, capable hands that could wring a squawking chicken’s neck with one easy twist. I’d seen her do it once.

Only when I cleaned my plate, the last one to finish, did she release us from the table. Hard to believe that cheerful, freckled Jamie, reed tall and slender, and tiny, petite Tersa, walking beside me, had come from her massive body.

“Is Wiley all right?” I asked Tersa now. Wiley was actually short for Wild Boy—what I had called the feral Mixed Blood that the previous Queen had left behind as a snarling welcome present for me. He’d been half-starved and completely wild, having grown up in the swamps, abandoned there by his Monère mother.

Wiley, who was no older than thirteen or fourteen, had bonded with the tiny Tersa, trusting her as he trusted no one else.

“He was upset but unhurt,” Tersa said in that soft way she had of speaking. “He led us to where you were taken in the forest and did his best to tell us what happened.” Meaning that he had come to the house, dragged Tersa out into the woods, and the others had followed.

“He can talk?” I asked with lifted brow.

“A few words that I taught him. He learns quickly,” Tersa said with a smile. That was one of the changes the wild boy had wrought in her, those smiles. “He showed us what happened, mostly through gestures. Then he left. He didn’t stay.”

“He’ll be back,” I assured her. He was drawn as irresistibly to quiet, solemn Tersa as she was to him.

“I know,” she said with simple confidence, and quietly slipped away.

Our guests, the Morells, following behind us, watched our small byplay with interest. I sensed curiosity from Quentin, watchfulness from Dante, and puzzlement from Nolan and Hannah. Couldn’t blame them. The dynamics in this household were puzzling even to me, always shifting as we all tried to find the harmony that was necessary for a happy home. And that was what I was trying to make this, a happy home for all of us…adding one more to the mix this morning—Dontaine. Rested and fed, he was much more cheerful, eager to see to the new arrangements we had agreed upon.

As good a time as any to debrief him on the past day’s events, and to talk to him about Nolan. Amber and the rest of my guards needed to be debriefed also.

Our meeting took place in the front parlor, and if Hannah was unsettled by all the male testosterone squeezing the large room small, she didn’t show it. I guess she was used to it, having spent the last twenty years being the sole woman in a household of men. She sat serenely as I explained to my guys what I should have explained the previous day but had been too tired to. I told them about the snatch, my breaking free, falling into the river, and the fight with the other group of outlaw rogues.

“They were in our territory?” Dontaine asked, frowning.

“Yes, near the border fringing Texas,” I said.

“I’ll bring some men and see to them tonight,” he said curtly.

“Have they bothered us or disturbed any humans?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“Then there is no need to.”

“They are rogues,” Dontaine said. As if that statement said it all.

“Who have harmed no one,” I returned.