Page 134 of Gemini Queen
However, she’s always made that impossible.
With her showgirl curves encased in the couture cocktail gown I chose for her, eyes wide and lips parted as she drinks in the scene, lightning-blue hair swept into that ponytail I want to wrap around my fist and rebel queen attitude on full display, she looks like a punk-rock version of Marilyn Monroe. She has more curves than a cyclone, this girl does, and more balls than a Spanish bull. This is her Purgatory, she’s standing beside her worst tormentor (that would be me), and there’s a queen killer on the hunt for her head.
Yet she’s defiant and determined and utterly fearless.
And the electrifying sight of her wearing the clothes I arranged for her is flipping every switch on my alpha male circuit board. If I get my way (and I typically do, darling), I’ll soon be buying her entire royal wardrobe and styling her daily.
Admittedly, since that singular moment last night when I swiped my tongue through my own spunk and kissed her, since she kissed me back and sucked on my tongue like she wanted to ruin me, I’ve been a mental case.
I can barely manage to keep my psychic barriers airtight—because this queenisa wicked telepath, humming with untrained power—and my frisky hands to myself. The only way I’ve been able to maintain my distance (literally, the only way) is by provoking Zara so badly with my bratty antics that she’s barely willing to suffer my proximity long enough to make our grand entrance. All too clearly, she can scarcely wait to be rid of me. Whereas I’m burning to drag her into my arms and brand my claim on that pouting Hollywood mouth before the entire astonished Academy with a scorching kiss.
Well, well, well. Just look who turns out to be fucking bisexual.
Apparently, that would be me.
Fuck.
At our side, Ronin and Neo make their own grand entrance. Both of them look impossibly luscious, Ronin’s sleek black mane sliding down his back and his lithe body poured into those leather pants that cup his traffic-stopping ass precisely the way I’ll shortly be doing myself, Neo’s broad shoulders and corded thighs encased in that pristine tux I’m ready to peel off his beefcake body with my teeth.
My virginal housemate’s blushing a bit under my heated attention, peering bashfully at me with his wide eyes under those soft curls, and clearly wondering just how far I’m planning to take this littledetentebetween us.
Well, join the club, Mercury. I’m rather wondering that myself.
They saunter in with hands linked, Ronin and Neo, which also makes tonight their public debut as a couple. Already, the entire student body is agog. They suspect I’m playing one of my elaborate nasty tricks on the little queen. Now they’re waiting for me to lower the boom so they can swarm in and devour her. The dog pack is likewise concluding Sir One and Done has made another casual conquest and added another tick, this one the hapless First Boy, to his impressive sexual tally. Neo, too, these dogs are slavering to disembowel.
Pity these junior witches and baby warlocks haven’t any notion what’s truly going down. This Gemini queen is claiming her harem.
If I’m not careful, she’ll be claiming me.
But, God, I want that. I want that more than I want my parents’ nonexistent love. I want to workwithher, not against her, to secure the survival of the witching world.
Beyond all these Darwinian geopolitics, I simply want…her.
And none of these spotty prepubescents clustered in their Sunday best around the apse, where the Dean’s droning on interminably about duty and honor and tradition, has the first fucking clue.
About any of this.
The four of us sashay straight into the lion’s den, my heeled bootsrap-a-tap-tappingnicely against the flagstones to draw the eye (which, naturally, I thrive upon doing). The underclassmen, like livestock in a Nativity play, stand about looking decorative and eye the four of us like we’re the witching world’s Messiah. My numerous boot lickers and sycophants practically genuflect, now they’ve gotten past the shock of seeing me pal around with the royals. While the royalists who’ve always despised me see their queen on my arm and yearn to sink their knives into my back.
I merely smirk at all the attention.
Having been violently rejected by my entire clan at barely sixteen for the so-called sin of my sexuality, I’m fairly impervious by now to social stigma.
At my side, Zara seems equally impervious. She’s staring down thehoi polloiwho’ve been hazing her all week in open challenge, lightning flashing in her gaze. Under my hand, my girl’s literally humming with psychic voltage.
She’s untouchable here, in this public setting, with the whole school still buzzing over the flashy pyrotechnics she unleashed earlier on the lighthouse. (Blizzard or no blizzard, those were a bit hard to miss.) And I know precisely what it means that she’s summoned her lightning. This queen is here to stay.
Unless the queen killer has his way.
Danger prickles down my spine and raises the hair down my nape, where my ruff would be if I could shift. Oh, he’s here, quite near, whoever he is. Our queen killer. And he too knows Zara’s come into her power.
She’s no helpless Guinevere, Neo’s no Arthur, and God knows I’m no Lancelot. But I am Vasili fucking Romanov. I slide a protective arm around my queen’s waist and draw her tight against my side.
I’m claiming this queen.
I’m claiming her whether she wants me to claim her or not.
She’s mine. I’m hers. And this entire Academy had better fucking get used to it.
