Seven Black Diamonds (Seven Black Diamonds #1)(67)

“I need you. Help me.” He lowered her feet to the ground, realizing as he did so that she was dressed up like a Gothic doll. Soft strips of gray silk hung in faux tatters from her waist to her calves. The winding cloth illusion was continued by the fact that some of the sections were slit high enough that decency was barely met. The top of the dress was lace with an overlay of silver—not material made to look like it, but actual silver that had been twisted into a corset. He stared at her as they stood in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by gawkers and under the watch of three of their friends.

Violet was dragging Roan and Will to the dance floor. Despite the probability of being photographed, the boys weren’t refusing. They might not know what was going on, but they were at his side.

“I just need to hold you. If we’re on the dance floor, it’s safe. If we’re anywhere else, I don’t think I can follow the rules tonight. I don’t even want to try.” Zephyr pulled Alkamy closer again. What he really wanted was the sort of silence he could only find when they’d been intertwined together. All of his reasons for not touching her were still valid. He knew that. Right now, he didn’t care. “Tell me to stop or take me out of here or just let me hold you here.”

“I’m right here with you.” She rested her cheek against his chest. Her arms wrapped around him, keeping her as close to his body as they could be with clothes between them. She didn’t reply to his admission that he wanted to go where they could be together as they once were, but she vowed, “I’m always here for you, Zeph. Always.”

The tension that had held him like a coiled spring loosened slightly at her words and touch. He drew a deep breath, drawing in the soil and sunlight scent of her like it was the air he’d been denied. Alkamy was air and soil. She was every calming thing he needed.

In a voice so low that no one else would hear, he told her, “I met the joint court’s heir tonight, and her betrothed, and the fae who might be my father.”

Alkamy looked up at him. “Your father?”

“He has my eyes,” Zephyr admitted aloud. “Or, I guess, I have his . . . and I have his mother’s hair . . . and both of her affinities.”

He must’ve sounded as overwhelmed as he felt because Alkamy didn’t ask questions, didn’t push or even offer foolish words of comfort. She simply asked, “What do you need?”

“You.”

She stretched up to kiss him. Her kiss wasn’t the desperate clash of teeth and tongue that his had been. It was the way they’d kissed before he’d been told that relationships among them were forbidden by order of the queen.

When their waitress came out to the floor with their usual drinks on a tray, Zephyr took Alkamy’s and downed it in one go. The vile taste of alcohol burned down his throat, but as with any fae—or fae-blood, since that’s what he apparently was—the effects were quick and intense. He felt the languor seeping over him, and tonight, he embraced it.

“That was hers,” the waitress said as he put the now empty glass on her tray.

“Great,” he said. “Bring me Creed’s too.”

The girl looked around. “Is he here?”

“No,” Zephyr said. “But once you return with the drink, I’ll take care of it for him.”

Roan stepped forward like he was going to intervene, but Violet and Will both reached out and stopped him.

With the show that Zephyr and Alkamy were creating, it probably wouldn’t have mattered if the boys finally did dance together in public, but they’d decided long ago to keep that much of their lives private. Violet danced with them, providing the same cover she usually did.

Zephyr’s hands slid up Alkamy’s spine, and cameras flashed. One of New Hollywood’s darlings was newsworthy; two of them back together would earn even an amateur photographer a check.

By the fourth drink, Zephyr’s face was buried against her throat when he wasn’t kissing her.

They stayed on the dance floor for the next half hour, but when he attempted to grab another drink, Alkamy stepped back from him. “Me or it. You don’t get both.”

With a shaky hand he held it out to her. Instead of drinking it, she handed it back to the girl. “He’s done. Take this to the back. Not the VIP section. We want a private room.”

Then Alkamy nestled against Zephyr’s side. “Come on, babe. We’ve put on enough of a spectacle. Let’s go where it’s quieter.”





twenty-seven


LILY

After Zephyr left, Lily grabbed Creed’s hand to follow him, but Creed shook his head. “He needs space.”

Lily didn’t know Zephyr as well as Creed did, but she wasn’t sure that letting anyone as angry as Zephyr run out was a great idea. She wanted to follow him, but Creed squeezed her hand in his and kept her there with their three fae guests.

Torquil said to no one and everyone at once, “That one has the sort of temperament that would make me believe he’s the queen’s line even without proof.”

Rhys scowled. “I thought he handled it well.”

“Precisely. You thought that.” Torquil folded his arms and waited.

Rhys’ hand strayed to his sword hilt, seemingly without conscious thought. The brush of his fingertips on the weapon appeared to bring him back to himself. “Point noted.”