Perfect Shadow: A Night Angel Novella Read Free

beneath her body to emerge at her bare back, which it covered in an artful golden lattice of bondage. Her beauty made his breath catch and his mind slow, and he needed his mind with this one. “I’m one of the Nine,” she said. “The Mistress of Pleasures.” It was not a secret to be casually shared. “Young to be – ”
    “I have a plan, and I need you for it.”
    He thought about it. Gaelan Starfire was supposed to be forty-five years old now, and he looked at least a decade younger. Gaelan was famous, but he had few real friends, and many enemies. Maybe it was time to move on, let that name die. There were worse things than to ally yourself with a beautiful, intelligent woman.
    “What’s your plan?” he asked.
    She turned. “There’ll be time for that. First, we need to take care of something.” She extended her hand. He took what was in it.
    It was the golden key she’d been wearing on her choker.
    He cocked an eyebrow, trying to ignore the shock running to his loins. Having the body of a young man meant having the reactions of a young man, too. “Why?” he asked.
    “Because if we don’t fuck tonight, you might fall in love with me. But if we do, you’ll probably still desire me – in fact, I’ll consider it a professional failure if you don’t; this is my work, after all – but you’ll never trust me. You’ll know that I’ll do the same with any other man who catches my fancy. It’ll make things simpler.”
    ~An honest whore. A rare woman in a dozen ways. She’s poisoning the well and telling you, Acaelus. Is that really what you want?~
    “And you?” he asked her. Are you in no danger of loving me?
    She came close, slowly, gently, into his arms. The scent of fine perfume and the insidious softness of silk and skin. Cold gold chains on his skin and a warm breath in his ear. “I intend to enjoy my work tonight.”

    * * *
    In their little farmhouse, Gaelan held his wife’s bare ass, balanced on the edge of a table he’d made himself. She held his shoulder and the back of his head, her pupils wide, hips trembling against him with the aftershocks of their lovemaking.
    She dug her fingernails into his shoulder painfully, playfully. “You know Ali could be home any minute.” But her eyes were shining, and she didn’t uncross her ankles from behind his butt, didn’t push him away.
    “There’s worse things than a girl finding out her father still finds her mother irresistible.”
    She grinned, and squeezed him with her thighs.
    “Your smile is a century of solace,” he told her, trying to lock her face in his memory.
    She was beautiful, hair atumble, face flushed with sex and joy. Content and content with him. It was a treasure. She would grow old, die, and he would remain, young, immortal, following the directives of a long-dead king. A long-dead friend.
    “Flattery already got you everything you’re going to get,” she said.
    He laughed and pinched her ass.
    She swatted his hand, eyes aglow.
    “Why is all our happiness doomed?” he asked her.
    She looked into his eyes, loving, gentle. “You are a cipher, my lord.”
    “No, I was Samon Cipher six lives ago,” he said, winking, trying to salvage the moment.
    “Mother!” a girl’s voice called out, right outside the door to their little cottage.
    Gaelan pulled back, hiked his trousers up, yanked his belt tight, and slapped at his hair, trying to flatten it. Seraene hopped off the table, smoothing her skirts, grabbing a rag so she could pretend to be cleaning.
    The door opened and Alinaea stepped in, carrying a basket of fresh-picked herbs in one hand and the day’s eggs in the other. If she’d been much older, he and Seraene would have been totally caught. The smell in the cottage wasn’t exactly subtle, and neither was the sex flush visible on Seraene’s chest, or the stubble-burn from his whiskers in the bit of cleavage her dress showed. But Alinaea was eight years old.
    Innocent. She was the light of Gaelan’s