12. Cove

Chapter 12

Cove

It was all a waste of time. I’d looked through all the properties and all the accounting, and it was perfection itself. The governing system Olivier had mentioned was both simple and balanced, allowing for quick changes when they were needed, unlike some of the bulkier, more monolithic systems we had in place in Moonstriker lands. I actually wanted to speak to Rain about them, to see if some of it could be implemented back home to make people’s lives easier.

All things considered, Dawnchaser lands were in beautiful condition, their people prosperous and mostly happy, because while I doubted anyone but he and Huxley knew it, Olivier had been the one running things for decades, and he was damned good at it.

There were improvements that could be made, not the least of which was using all those enormous empty houses for something other than testaments to Huxley’s self-importance, but by and large, Dawnchaser lands were in good shape.

Because Huxley? He didn’t have a damned thing to do with ruling.

The man didn’t do anything at all, it seemed, other than lounge around his many properties and threaten people. And mostly not even that much—he lounged around this single property. Hardly ever left it.

It was where most of the family emeralds had been discovered, Olivier had told me, including Soz. Emeralds were still regularly discovered there, down by the river that flowed from a spring on Mount Slate, right through the middle of Dawnchaser lands.

Emeralds and their luck were the lifeblood of the Dawnchaser family, so like a fat ancient dragon, Huxley had sat there on his estate, hoarding them and searching out more, trying to become the luckiest creature ever to exist.

All he’d really managed was making everyone around him miserable, if what I’d seen was any indication.

If that was luck, I’d live without it.

In the hall, a door banged open and closed. The obnoxious cousins? Maybe it was time to see them gone once and for all. I had hoped that one of them might be in contact with Huxley since Florian clearly was not and didn’t want to be. I’d initially hoped to expedite the disastrous situation by allowing them to stay, bringing down Huxley’s wrath and ending him as soon as possible.

The Dawnchaser family had an enormous fucking mess to clean up, inside their family if not their lands, and I already questioned whether they were up to the task at all. The longer it took to resolve Huxley’s fate, the worse things got for them. More infighting started every day, and more of this nonsense where spoiled brats like Adger and his friend thought they were more worthy of ruling the family than Florian.

From what I’d seen, Florian was the only one in their family willing and worthy of ruling anything. Fawn wouldn’t want the job even if she could handle it, more interested in her dolls and flowers than the ruling of a people. I was convinced that Olivier could teach Florian to do the job, though. Florian was clever enough, and more importantly, kind enough to take care of his people.

A slammed door and then heavy footsteps echoed through the hallway, and I rolled my eyes. It had to be one of the cousins. I stood from the desk, crossing toward the door, when Florian came into view.

Florian? How curious.

He was like a thunderhead, dark and fierce and rolling toward me with impressive speed. It almost took my breath away, the intensity in his eyes.

It was the kind of passion that had no place in Moonstriker Tower. The thing that had always drawn me to the Dawnchaser.

Delta discouraged open shows of emotion altogether, and Father hadn’t ever seemed to have any. Mother had, but she hadn’t been born a Moonstriker. No, she had been like one of the tower’s hothouse flowers. Singular and exotic, beautiful, but so very out of place in the frozen north. She’d required special treatment, and none of us had really known how to care for her. So she hadn’t thrived. She’d died when I was twelve, and to this day, I thought it had been from lack of love. Father had called it weakness. Said she simply hadn’t been strong enough to survive.

Sometimes I wondered if I had the same weakness. Oh, I covered it well. Pretended to be a proper Moonstriker, cool and calm and emotionless. But inside, something in me wanted to just...scream. Not at anyone, or even in response to any specific situation, though Huxley Dawnchaser probably deserved a screaming.

I just wanted to express the emotions inside me somehow, but I had no idea how to do it.

And there was Florian, looking like he was about to do so.

Sure enough, he marched right up to me and drilled a finger into the center of my chest, eyes fiery and jaw clenched. “You.”

“Me,” I agreed. “What about me?”

“You lied. You said the estate was yours. You said you were taking it all. You said...you implied...” His face did a strange thing, screwing up like he wanted to cry, but quickly smoothing back over into anger. As though anger was somehow better, or even easier, than sadness. Maybe it was.

I turned, motioning him into the room and closing the door behind him. He complied but spun on me once again as soon as the door clicked shut. “I don’t appreciate you lying to me. Jerking us around. We deserve better than that, Fawn and me.”

For a moment I just blinked, staring at him. Then slowly, I nodded. “You’re right. You do deserve better than being lied to. What made you decide I was lying?”

He paused, glancing back and forth like he was scanning something, then his eyes narrowed. “They wouldn’t allow it. The other families. They wouldn’t allow the Moonstriker to take half the Summerlands.”

It was true, but he hadn’t pointed that out in the moment when I’d made the claim. Olivier might have told him in the meantime, but wouldn’t he have brought it up that first day when we’d arrived? Why now instead?

“You’re trying to make Father angry, to bring him out of hiding.”

He was balling his hands into fists at his side and then releasing them, over and over, like maybe he was thinking about hitting me. That was when I noticed the blood on his right hand. I reached down and grabbed it, pulling it to eye level and holding it up for inspection, but there was no wound, only blood.

Had he fought with one of his worthless cousins? Maybe one of them had brought this concern to the fore.

He snatched his hand away, covering it with the other one, but I motioned to the bathroom that adjoined the office. “You can go wash up if you’d like.”

“Just like that? No answer for me? No excuse? No?—”

“No,” I agreed, shaking my head. “No excuse. Go wash up, then come back and we’ll discuss it. I’ll explain everything. Because you’re right, and you deserve the truth.”

Nothing. No response. He just stood there staring at me for a long time, until finally, with a great jerk, he turned and went into the bathroom. A moment later I heard the faucet come on and water splash.

I took one deep breath, then another, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. I wasn’t frightened of Florian. Even if I thought him a threat, I didn’t think he was a bad person. I didn’t think he had actual reason to attack me. He seemed to hold no more love for his father than I did.

So why was my heart beating hard, and my breath coming short?

He came back in, his hair mussed, face and hands still slightly damp, looking like he’d just rolled around in the grass outside, and that didn’t help at all. If anything, it made the catch in my breath worse.

I took a step toward him and he braced himself, looking up at me as though he expected an attack. Shouting. Something.

Me, attack him?

I’d never attacked anyone in my life who hadn’t attacked me first.

Still, I took another step, bringing us face to face, our bodies so close that I could feel the warmth of him. The way he was trembling just the slightest bit. Frightened of me? Or something else?

Like a man in a trance, I leaned forward even more, into his space. He didn’t back down or pull away. No, quite the contrary, his pupils dilated and his lips parted.

He wanted...he wanted precisely what I wanted. What I hadn’t even realized I’d been thinking about until it was right there in front of me, soft and sweet and yielding.

Florian.

Wrapping one hand around the back of his neck and leaning his head back, opening him up to me, I pressed our lips together.

In under a second it went from a soft tentative thing, slow and asking permission, to a frantic one. Still not pushing or demanding, though. More like begging.

I pulled him toward me, and his arms went around my body automatically, as though he’d done it a thousand times before, pulling me tight against him and leaning up into me, pushing up onto his toes to give me more of himself. Opening up to me, his mouth to my questing tongue, and his whole body to mine, like a flower in the sun.

Slowly, I backed us across the room until my ass reached the desk. There, I sat down, but never broke the kiss. It was too much for that. We couldn’t stop. I could feel it in that moment, that we were both empty inside. Aching. Dying for something to fill the gaping holes inside of us.

I needed Florian Dawnchaser. It was insane, and I could imagine my father’s disapproving gaze, hear his monotone voice asking me if I hadn’t learned my lesson the first time, but this was different.

Florian was different.

Florian didn’t want to be the consort of the next Moonstriker. He already was his father’s heir, which was more important a position than marrying into power could ever be.

I only broke the kiss when I needed to breathe, and he still didn’t pull away. No, he leaned in again, panting into my neck to regain his breath. “Kit Emrys was in the garden,” he managed to get out between breaths. “He said—that is, I knew. I knew you couldn’t just take over, that the other families would protest, but he said it too. Said you were trying to make Father angry. Make him make a mistake.”

Kit Emrys. Of course. “He’s still working for your father?”

“He...” This, finally, made Florian pull away slightly, looking confused. “I’m not sure. He seems to hate Father as much as I do. He said nothing will change his course. But he wasn’t angry with you. He said...he said you were his favorite. That you used to defend him to his mother.”

It struck me like a sword to the heart that Kit might think a thing like that. As though he hadn’t deserved more than I’d given. He’d deserved everything, and I’d failed to give it to him. Failed him in so many ways. “Not enough,” I said, my voice gone hoarse. “She chased him away. Convinced him he wasn’t good enough.”

Florian snorted. “Sorry, not possible. No one has ever convinced that guy he wasn’t good enough. I fantasize about having the kind of self-esteem he has.”

“He left because she wanted him to be someone he wasn’t.”

Florian stared at me, like there was something I was missing. When I didn’t catch on, he sighed. “He left. He knew that he didn’t need to change, and he respected himself enough to walk away from one of the richest families in the world.”

“I’d have supported him. I’d have given him?—”

“Maybe he wanted to support himself.” Florian didn’t pull away, just resettled himself against me, giving a tiny smile when he wiggled his way close enough that his thigh pressed against my straining cock. My cock, which hadn’t gone down at all, not even while talking about Kit. “I think that’s admirable. I was too weak to leave.”

“You’re younger than he is. He’s twenty-nine. He’s had more time to decide who he was and who he wanted to be.” There was no reason to mention that Kit had left home when he was nineteen. His situation had been entirely different from Florian’s. Kit had never had a reason to assume Delta would mistreat his siblings, and Florian had clearly stayed to protect Fawn, at least in part.

I loosened my grip on him, making him frown at the loss of my arms, but when I sat farther back on the desk and pulled him properly atop me, it turned into a small smile. It was so foreign on the face of a Dawnchaser, that almost shyness. How had Florian survived growing up here with these sharks?

“I probably wouldn’t have left anyway,” he said, voice sounding like it was an admission of guilt. “Fawn needs me. I couldn’t leave her alone with them.”

I reached up to cup his cheek. “That doesn’t make you weak, either, and I hope you already know that. Delta was my mother in many ways, and I’m sorry she was forced into that when our mother died, but I’m also grateful she was there when I needed her.”

Sometimes, I thought, I had been too grateful. I’d crushed down my better judgment when I hadn’t liked how she was treating Winter, and in the end, the result was that Winter was gone.

There was only Kit now.

Rain had insisted on calling him Winter when discussing what had happened at Gloombringer Castle, but I couldn’t. If he had decided that he was Kit, who was I to tell him otherwise? Hells, I’d been the one to start telling those damned fox stories when Winter had been a toddler. I’d introduced him to Kit Emrys. If that was who he wanted to be now, then it was what I would call him.

I squeezed my arms tight around Florian, reminding myself what was important in this moment. Yes, Kit was still and always important, but he wasn’t present in the room.

Maybe I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but I did know I needed to focus on Florian. On the beautiful man who’d been angry with me only moments earlier.

“I lied,” I said, matter of fact. “I am trying to lure your father out into the open so that I can do what I’ve promised to do.”

He stared at my collarbone, his lips turned down for the first time since we had kissed. “And then you’ll leave.”

My breath caught, refusing to pass through my tight throat. Was that the problem? He wanted...he wanted me to stay? It sounded awful, staying in Dawnchaser lands forever, but also, did it? Florian and Fawn had been nothing like the other Dawnchasers I knew.

Besides, there was something else more important than what anyone wanted: the future of the Summerlands. “I could...possibly stay a while, to help teach you what you need to know to run your family.”

“Would you?” He stared up at me, green eyes beseeching, hopeful but not too hopeful. As though he fully expected me to snatch away the offer and tell him he needed to handle his own problems. Because he did expect that. He’d grown up with disappointment as surely as I had, and no one but his sister and perhaps Olivier had regularly been there for him.

Delta would be furious if I agreed, for multiple reasons. She disliked the Dawnchaser family, and didn’t much want to help them to begin with. I’d felt the same, before I had met Florian and Fawn. Delta also wanted me back as soon as possible, to continue running the family so that she could hide away in her office doing her math.

I thought the family would be fine under Rain’s care, since I’d already taught him the daily running of a family years ago. And that was ignoring the fact that his future husband, Adair, had been the Gloombringer’s right hand man for nearly a decade before coming to Moonstriker lands. Together, I had no doubt they could run a family, with or without Delta.

If I stayed, though, it wouldn’t just be to teach Florian. It would be because I cared about him. Because I...might have feelings about him. I wasn’t a child, to think I’d fallen in love with Florian Dawnchaser in three days, but I certainly did have feelings about him. Admiration. Lust, if the state of my cock under his still-squirming ass said anything. It could easily bloom into something more if things continued as they were, and Delta wouldn’t approve of that at all.

Emotions were inconvenient, in her mind. They were for children who hadn’t learned better. Surely I, in my forties, should know better than to have emotions. Much less feelings for a man in his twenties. Fuck me, he was barely more than half my age.

And yet, there was something there. Something that, if nurtured, could become even more. Something Delta would insist was a weed that ought to be ripped out right away, before it could take root. But as much as she might have acted the role sometimes, Delta wasn’t my mother. I was a damned adult, and I got to make my own choices.

Florian Dawnchaser, I decided, was no weed, and I wanted to see what he might bloom into given the chance.

“I would,” I agreed. “Moonstriker lands don’t need my constant supervision. Rain can handle things there.”

The smile Florian gave me in return was worth every argument I was going to have with Delta over this, and then some.