“Oh.”Precious? That was disarming.
“What animal am I, Uncle Kas?”
The conversation moved on, and Nes was struck by the fact he was so much... nicer than she first thought.
fourteen
Kas and Nesrina confess.
Kaswasstressed.Hestood alone in his apartment, undressing after his sixth dinner with Miss Kiappa and the twins. He thought the distraction of Nesrina’s presence was bad when he had work to get done. He had been wrong, so dreadfully wrong. And Kas wasn’t often incorrect.
As his breathing grew tighter and faster, his clothes constricted around his middle. Jaw tensing and teeth grinding, he fought with the brass buttons, until, in a moment of sheer panic, he ripped his jacket open, gasping as brass fasteners pinged across the room. Lellin, lounging on the bench at the foot of his bed, lifted her head and huffed before drawing a paw over her nose.
“I’m sorry, old girl. I know,” he grumbled, breathing heavily.
He thought he’d be fine after he got through his latest project, that she was distractinghimfrom work. It turned out, hisworkwas the distraction, offering a moment’s respite from the fascinating creature residing in his walls. She could burn through a book a day, everything from whimsical novels about romance, collected by his mother, to dry texts on histories... collected by him. She could play and get dirty with the children, then clean up for dinner, looking like a goddess. The irresistible siren who—shit.He sat down hard on the edge of his bed to tug off his leather boots, tight around his calves.
Kas chucked his shoes clear across the room, as if the childish outburst would do anything to slow his accelerated thoughts. He annoyed Lellin enough that she climbed down from the bench and went to lie on the sofa. Flopping back onto the mattress, he stared up at the blue canopy.Her favorite color.He sighed.
The Symposium of Prodigious Minds was rapidly approaching, just two weeks away. With a huff, Kas rolled to his feet and tramped over to his bar. Desperation tugged at his shirt tails as he poured himself a whiskey. He needed to extend an invitation to Miss Kiappa, and soon, if he had any hope of her agreeing to attend.But how?
He yanked off his trousers and tugged on a plush robe before throwing open the doors to his balcony and stepping out into the evening air. Lellin joined him for a fleeting head scratch before she trotted off, probably in search of her cousins, Vites and Enoth.
Nes had attended the symposium before—at least the one year—but she half-hated him for sending away that lecherous guard. She might deny him.
“You won’t know unless you find out,”his mother’s old words rang in his mind.
That’s the problem, Mum.She couldn’t be studied. There was noBook of Nesrina. If there was, he’d hoard every copy and pore over the pages.
When it came to drivel and surface-level conversations with the beautiful Miss Kiappa, Kas could handle his own. Exposure therapy over dinner was working perfectly. But when it came to ascertaining her interest in him as a friend—asmore? He didn’t know how to begin, where to begin, how to approach her, or what to say.
For a second, Kas considered chucking his tumbler out into the yard just to see how far he could launch the thing. But as another sip slid down his throat, he decided it would be a waste of a good thing. He rumpled his hair instead.
He was trying his best to enjoy his frustrated nightcap on the patio, trying his best to think of something different,anythingother than her. But in yet another variation on his new normal, he wondered no less than ten times what the odds were that she would walk onto the balcony abovehim—the one off her bedroom.
No,he chided himself.Go to bed.
At that moment, he swore a door closed up there, and Kas decided it was a good idea to send his magic... to check if he was right.Curiosity, nothing more.
If she was outside, he could go chat and finally bring up the symposium. Urging a wide, undulating breeze to the balcony above, he searched for her hands—and inadvertently brushed her breasts.
She shivered, and yelped. “Lord Kahoth?”
Panic seized him. Kas threw his whiskey into the yard, tumbler and all, and raced back inside, his wind, a grumpy little dust devil, whirling behind him.
Thatnight,fueledbythe stress of his magical error, by hisburningneed to invite Nesrina to the symposium, and by all the bits and pieces of his memories of her, he slept.
Kas sat in the duke’s apartment, sharing a nightcap with his father. The duchess, his mother, was off somewhere at the estate, probably reading in her sitting room.
“Kas, when the time comes, you will make a fine duke. You’ve led Kabuvirib well. And Stormhill will be lucky to have you at the helm. Pull your head out of the stars, son. The land needs you, the people need you.” His father’s words echoed in his mind as Kas trudged up the hidden staircase to his own rooms.
He climbed into bed, trailing his finger lazily down the spine of the vixen who lay asleep beside him. A woman? Who? What year was it? There were two options: Ceylan, the banker’s daughter, or Makbule, the healer’s sister. Neither was likely.
Whoever she was, her nightgown was scandalous. He folded down the blanket. Barely there, two thin strips of fabric held up a too-shorttube that stopped midway down her supple thighs.
She twisted, rolling onto her back. Awake? No, still asleep. Her lids fluttered for a fleeting moment. In the pale moonlight he could make out her face. Heart-shaped, freckled, curly-haired. Not Ceylan or Makbule. Someone better, too good to be true.
Kas leaned over to place a kiss upon her rosebud lips. She met him with shocking passion, tugging him down and wrapping him in an embrace. Her fingers snaked through his hair, and one of her legs hooked behind his back.
