Page 9 of Fool's Bargain

Deva stood and came around the table to settle on a cushion by my side. Bodhi’s eyes went wide. “You’ll frymybrain ifyoukiss her, angel,” he said.

Deva’s sly smile back at him made me like her even more. “Your brain will survive.” Then she looked at me with a solemn expression and I was transfixed. She was less of a sexual threat than Llyr, sure. But I swung both ways, so I wasn’t immune to the charms of females, especially when they were as gorgeous as the woman who knelt in front of me. My skin heated all over and my mouth went dry.

She rested a cool hand over mine. “This isn’t sexual. The nymphaea are capable of learning a person’s secrets by tasting their bodily fluids. Kissing you will tell me what I need to know. Will you let me?”

This close to her, I was surrounded by a sense of possibility. Looking into her strangely variegated eyes, I knew without a doubt that she meant every word she said, that she understood my soul more than anyone I’d ever met. It had been her voice in my head earlier that day, not a dream, and that sense ofconnectionto something bigger than myself flared bright in my mind.

She was someone I could trust.

That didn’t make it easier to say yes to her though. Because one thing was crystal clear to me after seeing this group together: I wanted what they had. I’d even go so far as to say I wantedthem, but I got the sense they were a closed system without room for more, and I wasn’t foolish enough to try to break in. Not when the person who’d broken my heart all too recently was part of it.

In a raspy voice, I said, “What if I want it to be sexual?”

Her long, thick lashes lowered and she smiled a little. “There are better options for you out there than us, I promise you. Let this be what it is. A kiss and no more. But feel free to enjoy it as much as you would like.”

I took a deep breath and smiled back. “Ready when you are.”

Deva lifted a hand and rested it on my shoulder. As she leaned in, she looked even more nervous than I felt, and I stopped her. “You’ve never kissed a girl before, have you?”

A shaky laugh escaped her. “Never. The sum total of my sexual experience is sitting in this room right now. We’ve done a lot, but as you can see, none of them have breasts.”

“Sweetness, you know I can be whatever you want me to be,” Llyr said. “If you wanted to kiss a girl all you had to do was ask.” He gave her a grin and his features transformed suddenly into a lithe, beautiful woman in a man’s clothes. His T-shirt clung to her just as enticingly but in an entirely different way. My eyes widened and I took her—him?—in.

Deva just shook her head. “I like you the way you are and you know it.”

He shifted back into the sexy-as-sin man he’d been and made a little hand gesture as if to say, “get on with it.” Deva gave me an apologetic look that only served to emphasize her nervousness. I took pity on her and cupped the back of her head.

“I’ve got this,” I whispered, and slanted my mouth across hers.

5

Zarya

Deva’s hesitation dissolved once our mouths met. She leaned into me, hands coming up to bracket my jaw with a gentle hold while she parted her lips and swept her tongue along mine. My core pulsed with that gentle glide and I entertained the briefest fantasy that this could go even farther than a kiss. That I could be part of the magic that she had with Bodhi and the other four men.

But she didn’t continue the kiss for long and it wasn’t until she pulled away with an introspective look that I realized the kiss hadn’t meant the same thing to her as it had to me. My heart sank and I covered it up by settling back onto my cushion and refilling my glass.

Llyr studied me closely, his aqua gaze making my nipples prickle disconcertingly, then he shot a look at Deva. “What’s the verdict?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I turned to Deva anyway, heart pounding. She licked her lips and closed her eyes. My gaze remained fixed on her mouth and I swallowed hard at the memory of her whiskey taste—with something far more potent beneath.

When she opened her eyes, she frowned. “You’re open to women as well as men, right?”

I blinked and opened my mouth but all that came out was a surprised laugh. Wasn’t it obvious? “Yeah, why?”

“Maybe there’s another member of the bloodline out there strong enough for you. That would be the easiest match, but chances are there isn’t. There are millions of bloodline, but only a small percent have such a strong concentration of higher-races blood. That usually means your best match is one of the higher races.”

“As you have said. I sense a but.” I braced myself for disappointment. Why had I even let myself get caught up in hoping she’d be the answer to my loneliness?

She took a breath and I felt like she was swinging an ax. “What I tasted was nymphaea through and through, which explains your command of the ink you use to create your tattoos.”

She glanced at Bodhi, who leaned his elbows on the table, eyes wide. “No shit?” Then his face fell as he seemed to realize something. “Oh... shit.”

“What? You guys make it sound like it’s a bad thing. Am I doomed? Because I’ve been alone awhile. It’s not like I don’t know how to keep doing it.”

She took a deep breath and I hoped like hell what she said next would clue me in. “We don’t normally knowwhoa person’s match will be. There is an element of Fate to it. A mechanism that determines who you are meant to be with. It may seem random, because none of us can predict it with any degree of certainty, but I assure you it is far from random. In this case, options are rather slim. There are only three unattached, adult male nymphaea in the universe. I just wanted to warn you of that fact because you might not end up with one of them, but with a female instead.”

“The female nymphaea aren’t so rare, I take it?” I asked, tamping down a spike of disappointment as I glanced toward Llyr. But I’d seen him as a woman just moments ago, and my intense curiosity returned. A mate who could change shapes like that would be the best of both worlds. “Can you all change shapes like you did a minute ago?”

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