Pixilated (2 page)

The coach rolled to a halt as close to on
schedule as it ever was in Qets, splattering Kree’s spit-shined
boots with red mud. A farm couple got off, followed by a
blade-sister, who saluted him smartly. Kree returned her
two-fingered salute automatically. His attention fixed on the last
passenger, an exquisite, raven-haired, dark-eyed Wilderkin beauty
gowned in High-Thallasi fashion, but not Thallasi though. Oh no.
This beauty was petite and dark and not at all his usual type. But
something extraordinary about her captured his attention and
wouldn't let go. The Wilderkin beauty met his bold gaze and smiled.
Kree's heart raced. He had the niggling feeling he knew this
female, but this was impossible. No one, not even he, dared dally
with Wilderkin no matter how willing they seemed. Their pesky
mate-bond got in the way.

The beauty swept past Lathan’s family as if
they didn't exist and stretched herself against the long line of
Kree's body. She pulled his head down and pressed an innocent kiss
to his lips. Her lips, rose-petal soft against his, stole his
breath. The vanilla scent drifting from her wild black curls stole
his reason. He felt disembodied, weightless, and then, as the
beauty's identity registered, terrified. Kayseri sighed as Kree
gently held her away. Then she opened her eyes and looked up at
him.

"What’s the matter, My Captain? It’s your
Katie home from Elhar. You look as though you don’t know me."

Kree couldn’t have been more stunned if she
had hit him between the eyes with a war hammer. One side of his
mouth quirked upward in a crooked smile and little beauty reached
for him again, but her family gathered around them jostling him
aside.

Chapter Two

"My Captain?"

Some instinct, call it self-preservation,
urged Kree to ignore Kayseri. His cowardice irritated him. It would
take more than last night's the embarrassing events to make Kree
Fawr hide from a slip of a girl like Kayseri Bruin. She slid the
door wide, stepping into the stable. Standing where the shaft of
sunlight slashed the dim interior, she could not see him, but he
could see her. Too well. Gone was her slinky green gown, replaced
by one of the form-fitting soft leather garments pixies preferred.
Not an improvement to Kree’s way of thinking. He had to admit five
years had worked some delicious and well, disturbing changes in
Kayseri. His throat went dry. Goddess help him, he was in so much
trouble.

Kree forced volume in his soft voice. "Over
here."

Kayseri smiled at him over the side of the
stall where he groomed a golden-coated horse. "I brought your
jacket. You left it at the house when ran off last night."

Ran off? She’s lived around a fort her whole
life, and she doesn’t recognize a strategic retreat when she sees
one. Kree gave a sharp irritated snort. "You wasted your time. I
have dozens of jackets."

Kayseri blinked at his harsh tone. She
tossed his jacket on a nearby hay bale. Instead of leaving as Kree
half-hoped she might, she roamed up and down the sally port,
trailing her fingers over the tack. His gaze tracked her
movement.

"Well...That’s not the only reason I came."
The way she caressed a saddle horn had him choking back a moan.

"Today is our birthday."

As if, he could forget.

Kayseri peeked at him from behind an oak
support beam. "I wish you’d written to tell me mother was
expecting?" She signed dramatically. "Again."

What did that have to do with anything? Why
couldn’t pixies stick with one topic? "It’s not my business." Kree
spoke to the space where Kayseri had been an instant before. The
fine hairs on his arms stood on end. He had a sensitivity to magic,
even low-level magic like pixie-mischief.

Kayseri reappeared atop the wall separating
the stall where he worked from its neighbor. Damnation. He hated
pixie-mischief. It brought nothing but trouble. In fact, he did not
like any magic and magic, other than his Goddess's own, did not
like him. Kayseri tiptoed along the wall like a ropewalker in a
carnival.

"Don’t do that." Realizing Kayseri would not
understand he meant make mischief, he grumbled. "You might
fall."

She made a face at him just so he'd
understand how unlikely falling was. "Mother and father would be a
scandal in Thallasi. Too many children." Kayseri shook her head.
"It’s not the Wilderkin way."

"Too bad, I like children." Kree gave his
attention to the horse in front of him, so Kayseri could not read
his expression. He had wanted a family, children, a wife who loved
him for himself and not for his power and position. It didn't sound
like a lofty goal, but it was beyond his puny ability. Infertility
was a side effect of Goddess nectar it turned out, and one he
couldn't change. Would he change it given the chance? He didn’t
know. His Goddess didn't give him a choice, and he resented the
hell out of it.

"That's because you don’t have to share the
bathroom with them." Kayseri made a smart pirouette, starting back
toward him. "My father’s sole ambition is to remake the pixie
nation in his own image."

Kree laughed. Katie always made him laugh.
And it was true; all of Lathan’s children shared a certain
homogeny. His gaze followed Kayseri’s progress, as he knew she
intended. Her body was lithe and graceful ripe for the taking, and
it would be, he reminded himself, long after he was dust. Why, his
hands could span her waist. As soon as this hypothesis formed, he
longed to test it. He was ten kinds of a fool.

"Please land somewhere, Katie. You’re making
an old man dizzy."

Quick as a cat, she sprang onto the mare’s
broad back, leaned over, and planted a kiss squarely on his mouth.
His body, already aroused from watching her, reacted to the
sweetness of her lips at embarrassing speed, forcing him into
another strategic retreat around the mare’s rump. He would
entertain lusty thoughts about Kayseri Bruin never. He might be a
fool, but he wasn't that big a fool.

She gave him her scolding face. "My Captain
is not old."

Until Kayseri kissed him, he would have
agreed.

"What makes you say such things?"

He felt blood rushing to his face and
cursed. The daughter of his best friend should not be able to make
him blush. Namar’s tears! What was wrong with him?

"You're angry." She pushed out her bottom
lip.

It was all he could do not to kiss it.

"I haven't spent two minutes with you since
I got home. You’re always too busy. You never used to be too busy,
and now you’re angry." She crossed her arms over her chest pushing
her already delectable little breasts higher and raised finely
arched eyebrows in challenge.

Hell yes, I’m angry! You grew up!
Kree felt betrayed somehow. It made him feel foolish and feeling
foolish made him angry. Damn it all. He had expected the little
girl whose charming antics made him laugh, not this alluring
raven-haired beauty whose sweet smiles and bewitching eyes stole
his reason. Two days ago, he'd have sworn no woman could touch his
heart. Then Katie Bruin kissed him and everything changed. "I'm not
angry." He could tell Kayseri did not believe him, but mercifully,
she let it go.

She fingered the pink ribbons braided in the
mare’s silky white mane. "These are odd trappings for a captain’s
horse."

"True, but I intend this mare as a gift for
my best girl."

"You can't mean the blonde beanstalk with
the big bosoms I saw you kissing yesterday?"

Kree glanced up to find her glaring at him
with the exact expression of someone who smelled cauliflower
cooking. "Have you been spying on me with your mischief again,
Katie? Because, we’ve been all over that issue." And they had, so
many times he had lost count.

Rolling her eyes as if to say, who needs
mischief, Kayseri jerked her chin up a fraction. "You kissed her
right on the street in plain sight. She’s ugly and I hate her!"

Kree ducked his head hiding his grin in the
mare’s neck. Katie said what she thought. She was refreshing. She
was adorable. "Watch your tongue, my girl. Good manners cost
nothing, so your papa tells me just about every day."

She pulled a face transforming her into the
young girl it was safe for him to love. Gone was the saucy
temptress flirting with him as though he were a raw boy unable to
see through her clumsy seductions. Kree laughed again. He could not
help himself. She had a way about her that had always reached him.
She was everything innocent and unspoiled, as spirited as a wild
mountain pony. Her vivacity left him lighthearted. He could not
imagine anyone breaking her to harness, and what a shame it would
be if someone did. She needed someone who would protect her
beautiful free spirit not tame it.

"I said this mare was for to my best girl?"
Kree grinned broadly. "Happy birthday, Katie Mae."

Kayseri's face lit up like sunlight chasing
across a wheat field. She leaned over and hugged the mare’s neck.
"Oh, My Captain! Really? What’s her name?"

"Mistral."

Kayseri looked at him with wide shining
eyes. "After a storm? Like one of yours?"

"Yeah, she’s the first of Sirocco’s get. As
soon as I saw her golden coat, I thought of you."

She stroked the animal’s neck, murmuring the
mare’s name. Then she gave another of her long drama filled sighs.
"Father won’t let me keep her."

Kree’s face split into his widest grin yet.
"Contrary to popular belief, missy, muscle and intellect are not
mutually exclusive. I asked him." Lathan had responded, pixies and
horses don’t mix, which wasn't no...exactly.

"Will you teach me to ride?"

The way her eyes sparkled when she asked
this innocent sounding question bespoke mischief, but caught up as
he was in the pleasure of the moment, Kree missed this warning
sign. He touched the space over his heart, bowed. "I live to
serve."

Kayseri swung her other leg over the mare’s
neck, sliding off the horse so fast he had to back up a pace to
keep her from landing on top of him. Flinging her arms around his
waist, she snuggled against his abdomen.

"You are the most wonderful, most generous
man in the world."

Kree felt himself melting. What harm was
there in a little hug anyway? She pulled a small wrapped package
from her belt pouch and offered it him. "Open mine." Before he
could do so, she snatched the package back. "Here let me do it.
You’re too slow."

He went still, starring at a black silk cord
looped with an intricate knot in one end.

"Don’t you know what it is?" Kayseri
teased.

Oh, he knew. Town girls gave lovers' knots
to men they wanted to court them. In his youth, he knew several
lads who made a game of collecting them. He had not. Well brought
up young ladies might giggle at an oversized Goddess-born boy from
behind the sheets on washday or over the vegetable cart at market.
They might squabble among themselves for the chance to dance with
him at harvest festivals, but they did not give him lovers’
knots.

The only proper young lady who had ever
looked twice at him was his late wife, Molly, and look how well it
turned out. Guilt over Molly’s death haunted him. Now, here was
Katie Bruin smiling at him expectantly, looking so damn sweet he
couldn’t have refused her if she’d asked him to slit his own
throat.

"I-I." Instead of, I can’t accept this,
which he knew he should say, he settled for, "I’ve never had one
before."

Pleased by his confession, Kayseri took the
corded silk from his palm. "Bend down. Let me put over your head."
Standing on tiptoes, she slipped the loop over his head, her soft
hands rested on each side of his neck. She leaned in close, so
close Kree smelled the honeysuckle sprig tucked behind her pointed
ear, and she did not step back.

"I love Mistral. She’s just like the horses
the highborn Thallasi ladies ride."

Her breath whispered across his cheek
sending a shiver thrumming through him. "I-I-I." Namar's eyes, she
had him stammering like a green recruit. "I can’t have a bunch of
uppity elves thinking my Katie is some country bumpkin when you go
back."

Still on her tiptoes, Kayseri tilted her
face up to his. "Your Katie is not going anywhere."

She licked her lips setting his blood on
fire. Dark chocolate eyes beckoned him. When had he started
thinking brown eyes were irresistible? His traitorous hands slipped
around her waist. Sure enough, his fingers met. Flexing his knees
to compensate for his height, he lowered his mouth to hers. His
last rational thought was Lathan is going to kill me. Someone
coughed. Kree jumped back about a foot. It made him feel foolish
and that made him angry.

His senior cadet stood in the doorway. "My
Captain?"

Kree rubbed the space between his eyebrows,
a gesture borrowed from Kayseri’s father. He dropped his hand to
his side. "What do you want?" His sharp tone frightened the cadet.
He did not like frightening his people.

"The dailies are in, and the Malachite
Ambassador is waiting for you. You said to come get you when he
arrived."

The Goddess Namar loved all of her sons,
even lost ones like him or so they taught him. It must be true,
because his cadet’s timing was nothing short of miraculous. Kree
gave the boy a reassuring smile. "So I did." Snatching up both
jackets with one hand, he headed for the door.

"But, My Captain, you promised you'd take me
riding."

If he turned to face the disappointment he
heard in Kayseri’s voice, his battle to resist her was lost.
Instead, he barked at the cadet, "Take Miss Kayseri riding."

The lad glanced at the beautiful half-pixie
woman. "But, My Captain, I have weapons practice this afternoon."
Davi's protest earned a sharp look from Kree, and the cadet snapped
a quick salute. "Yes, My Captain."