Page 17 of Light Fae's Love
I realize I’m looking at a mountain of blooming field-flowers where there was only summer grass before. It’s the same spot where Lucca’s Bloodsign was—obliterated now by our magic as our bright and dark rainbows eat the last of that Bloodsign up from our glorious lovemaking.
Flowers growing in a riot in their place.
“Lucca…!” I say in amazement, sliding off him and sitting up.
“I see it,” Lucca says with awe as he sits up also, both of us blinking at the place in the field that had been so dead and barren before. Now, we watch the very last of the deathly-dark Bloodsign vanish as it’s eaten up by shimmering rainbows of light and dark magic. More flowers sprout in its place, flowing up out of the ground and blossoming in a riot of colors as we watch.
Before I can kiss Lucca, however, amazed at what we just accomplished and what it might mean for our trio’s power, another thought from Quinn hits me.
Like a lance of fire and darkness right through my head.
Ariana! I need you both back at the Hotel, now. Enough dawdling! Come to me.
The quick message is typical of Quinn’s dominant yet secretive ways. This missive, however, is like a punch right through my mind as Quinn demands our presence now, rather than requesting it. As I nearly fall over from my seat, Lucca catches me with a quick hand. A bright flash of fury lances through Lucca as the Summer Fae Prince’s blue eyes darken until they’re the color of bruised thunderstorm skies at midnight.
“His Subtleness calls. Again,” Lucca says as he sets his jaw, hard.
“That’s definitely urgent now.” I try to smile, though I have to blink away a fugue from the intensity of Quinn’s second mind-sending. “I guess we’d better get off our asses and go see what Quinn wants.”
Whatever he needs us for can no longer wait; I massage my temple as the image of a catacomb hall from the Red Letter Hotel Florence flashes through my mind. It’s a mind-sending from Quinn, of where he is beneath the Hotel. I know the hall; as Lucca eyeballs me, I nod.
As he heaves a deep sigh, Lucca stands from the crushed grass of our lovemaking; offering me a hand, he hauls me up to standing with him. But before we reclaim our steeds from where they’ve wandered off beneath the trees, or our discarded clothes from the rumpled picnic blanket nearby, Lucca crushes me close.
He kisses me deep, claiming me as his.
Before we send our steeds leaping back towards Florence and our bonded Master Vampire.
Who never lets us in on his damnable secrets.
7
CAUGHT
As Lucca and I ride back through Florence’s cobbled streets in the early evening, Fae frolic in the myriad fountains and lounge on wrought-iron balconies dripping with vines. Everyone is enjoying a reprieve as the day’s heat finally wanes; Lucca and I are still hot for each other, though, as we arrive at one of the Hotel’s entrance quadrangles, still sneaking glances and smiling from our earlier endeavor.
We dismount now beside gleaming Maseratis and Porsches of the Hotel’s elite patrons, keeping our steeds well away from the fierce-tempered manticores that pull the Hotel’s carriages. One of Quinn’s Vampire grooms in black takes our reins as we step up inside the Red Letter Hotel Florence’s vaulted porticos.
And the Vampiress Devina Scarlotti instantly greets us.
If Quinn has attitude, Devina has ten times that. Quinn’s Second in the Dark Haven of Florence and his Associate Head at the Hotel, Devina has more irritation than a person could shake a stick at, and all the elegant Italian beauty to go with it.
Throwing up her hands with her long crimson nails, she rolls her eyes as Lucca and I arrive. She hustles forward in her supermodel-chic raspberry silk cocktail dress and spiked black stilettos, flipping her immaculately curled dark brown hair back.
Taking me by the arm as she hauls me into the Hotel.
“There you are! Finally.” Devina huffs as she lifts a sculpted eyebrow at me. “Since when does it take you two hours to get back to the Hotel after Quinn summons you, when your Summer Fae lover can fly?”
“Since we were out for a nice country ride today, Devi, and wanted to finish it.” I quip back, though her correct insinuation that Lucca and I had sex today has me blushing hard now.
The reminder that Lucca and I just had our first lovemaking, however, makes me sneak a glance at him. He’s all smiles as he responds to Devi’s ire with his perfect princely manners. His blue eyes twinkle with a luscious, mischievous light, though, as he deftly liberates my arm from the Vampiress, escorting me himself as he nods us down a set of curved marble stairs into the Hotel’s underground.
Where we can both feel Quinn waiting for us—churning with impatience now.
“So what’s this issue Quinn needs us so urgently for, Devi?” Lucca asks as we come to a long hall of pastoral paintings in a nighttime Italian Renaissance style.
“Quinn will explain.” Brusque, Devi hustles us along the Gothic-Baroque halls of the Hotel with their beautiful details. Massive Italian Renaissance landscape paintings and luscious royal blue drapes dominate the stone walls; all down the vaulted hall, blue-gold torches burn without fuel, giving a strange light to the paintings in their vaulted alcoves.
Turning in to the hall that once contained the Bloodstone of Florence, I’m not surprised to see the Bloodstone has been cleared out after it shattered from the magical feat done by myself, Quinn, and Lucca a week ago.