Page 109 of Gemini Queen
“I’ve never wanted to fight you, Vasili,” I murmur, low and soothing. “And, despite your dangerous anti-monarchist tendencies, I don’t want to fight you now.”
He studies me with a slow blink, then reclaims the bottle with a sneer. He tips it back and I watch the muscles in his long throat ripple as he swallows. He’s wearing what looks like one of Ronin’s silky shirts, open all the way down the front, and the top button of his ripped jeans is undone.
Unexpectedly, my wolf stirs inside me. But what we’re feeling toward this other alpha is distinctlynotaggression.
When Vasili lowers the bottle and looks up at me, his eyes shimmer like liquid mercury. For no discernible reason, my pulse is spiking.
“Despite your ridiculous royalist loyalties, I’ve never wanted to fight you either,” he says, so quietly even my wolf can barely hear him. “I assure you, I had more than enough fighting back home.”
I know he’s an only child and the only Romanov here. However, to my shame, I know very little about his background beyond his disastrous transcript, his dazzling test scores, and the basic genealogy that’s in his student file. Therefore, I choose my words with excruciating care. “I gather your parents are… distant. Perhaps even… estranged?”
“My parents.” He snorts and turns back to the window. “They’re Old Russian. Which means Russian Orthodox, whichmeansthey believe in a church that makes the Catholic Pope look like a damn radical. I haven’t seen them or spoken to them once in the past five years. My parents disowned me the day I told them I’m gay.”
I’ll admit I was expecting something along these lines, but nothing quite so extreme. I lean forward in shock. “They can’t disown you. You’re the scion of your clan.”
His voice lashes the night like a whip. “That’s the only reason they don’t take legal action to formalize their repudiation. I’m their only heir. Even if I amdefective.”
“You’re not defective.” I pull in a breath to steady myself and quietly say the rest. “Nor am I entirely certain you’re gay.”
There.
I’ve said it.
I’ve been watching him with Zara Gemini since the moment our queen arrived. And ever since I crawled into the close confines of this window seat with him, I’ve been breathing in the rose-and-vanilla sweetness of our queen’s mating scent.
“What am I then? Bisexual?” He gestures wildly, bristling with frustration. “That’s as bad as the other, as far as my parents are concerned. Believe me, Lucius, I couldn’t be any more gay. And if somehow I’m not gay, it’s only withher. The fucking queen. She’s the only woman I’ve ever…”
Gently I supply the missing word. “Wanted?”
“Kissed.” He groans. “Fucked, practically. I don’t know whether she and I shared Ronin, or whether Ronin and I shared her. It was all three of us. All three of us together. And, yes, I fucking loved every minute of it. Loved every minute of…her.”
“Well, Mr. Romanov, that’s hardly a crime.” Secretly, I’m deeply pleased. Despite the electric sexual tension that crackles between the two of them, I’ve scarcely dared hope our rebel queen might claim a third consort, or that Vasili would permit himself to be claimed. With Neo, Ronin, and Vasili all sharing her bed, she’ll be the strongest queen-in-waiting the witching world has known in centuries.
Now if only I can persuade her to conquer her fears and summon the damned lightning.
“And you’d like it to be the three of you again?” I venture.
“Not exactly thethreeof us.” Unexpectedly his ice-colored eyes lock on me. His butterscotch voice drops two octaves. “Lucius.”
The dark spice of his Mogadon pheromones floods the air, potent enough to make a saint drunk. But it isn’t aggression he’s projecting. In fact, it hasn’t been aggression all night. That dizzying biochemical cocktail suddenly flooding my senses is, indisputably, his mating scent.
Without warning, my wolf rises on his back legs and claws at my skin. He wants out, and it’s not to fight.
But I don’t want to hear from my wolf right now.
“Vasili,” I begin, tingling with caution.
“We’ve been talking about Vasili all night,” he purrs, absolutely silken with menace. “Vasili and Ronin. Vasili and Zara. Now let’s talk aboutyou, Lucius. Let’s talk about Vasili and Lucius.”
The sudden heat in his gaze is utterly impossible to mistake. All at once, I’m reeling under the shock of this unanticipated disaster and scrambling to find my footing before we all careen into ruin.
I raise a cautionary finger to halt his words, but he’s well beyond heeding.
“I’ve already said I never wanted to fight you.” He forges ahead with vicious purpose. “And you never wanted to fight me. That’s not why you’ve kept your distance from me and lived celibate as a damn priest for four fucking years. Nor is fighting what you want to do with me right now.” One silver brow arches. “Is it?”
“Vasili, ah, Mr. Romanov,” I fumble, and weather his mocking smirk. “I assure you, whatever I might or might not happen to desire in this moment is entirely irrelevant to the facts at hand. I’m a teacher at this Academy and the headmaster of this residential college. Whereas you, sir, are my student. I’m responsible for your education and your welfare—”
“You hide behind that tweed coat and briefcase and that professorial twaddle because you’re afraid of what you want.” He overrides my decorous protests with alarming ease. “I imagine it’s easier to admit you want Ronin, isn’t it, because there’s no alpha shifter bullshit for you in his bed. And you can pretend all you like that what you feel for Zara is a teacher’s devotion to duty. You can pretend what drives you is some sort of sacred mission to train the next royal. But you’re just as afraid of what you want from her as you’re afraid of what you want from me.
