Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) - Jim Butcher Page 0,68

gentleman. I wouldnt have expected it." She withdrew her hand and said, "And tall." Her eyes roamed over me in idle speculation. "I like tall men."

I felt my cheeks flush and grow warmer. Other parts suffered from similar inflammation.

Maeve asked, "Is she lovely enough to suit you, wizard? Youve no idea how many mortal men have longed for her. And how few have known her embrace."

Jen let out a quiet laugh. "For more than about three minutes, at any rate."

Maeve drew Jen down until the nearly nude Sidhe lady knelt beside the throne. Maeve toyed with a strand of her curling, leaf-green hair with one hand. "Why not agree to my offer, wizard? Spend a night in the company of my maiden. Is it not a pleasant price?"

My voice came out more quietly than Id intended. "You want me to get a child on her. A child you would keep."

Maeves eyes glittered. She leaned toward me and said, very quietly, "Do not let that concern you. I can feel your hunger, mortal man. The needs in you. Hot as a fever. Let go for a time. No mortal could sate you as she will."

I felt my eyes drawn to the Sidhe woman, trailing down the length of pale flesh left bared between the idle drapes of emerald silk, following the length of her legs. That hunger rose again in me, a raw and unthinking need. Scent flooded over mea perfume of wind and mist, of heated flesh. Scent evoked more phantom sensations of the silken caress of delicate fae-hands, sweetly hot rake of nails, winding strength of limbs tangled with mine.

Maeves eyes brightened. "Perhaps she is not enough for you? Perhaps you would wish another. Even myself." As I watched, Jen leaned her cheek against Maeves thigh and placed a soft kiss upon the tight leather. Maeve shifted, a slow, sensual motion of her hips and back, and murmured, "Mmmm. Or more, if your thirst runs deep enough. Drive a hard bargain, wizard. All of us would enjoy that."

The longing, an aching force of naked need, redoubled. The two faeries were lovely. More than lovely. Sensuous. Willing. Perfectly unrestrained, perfectly passionate. I could feel that in them, radiating from them. If I made the bargain, they would make the evening one of nothing but indulgence, sensation, satiation, delight. Maeve and her handmaiden would do things to me that you only read about in magazines.

"Dear Penthouse, " I muttered, "I never thought something like this would happen to me "

"Wizard," Maeve murmured, "I see you weighing the consequences in your eyes. You think too much. It weakens you. Stop thinking. Come down into the earth with us."

Some mathematical and uncaring part of my brain way the hell in the back of my head reminded me that I did need that information. A simple statement from Maeve would tell me if she was the killer or not. Go ahead, it told me. It isnt as though its going to be painful for you to pay her price. Dont you deserve to have something pleasant happen to you for a change? Make the bargain. Get the information. Get wasted on kisses and pleasure and soft skin. Live a littlebefore that borrowed time youre on runs out.

I reached out with a shaking hand to the crystal ewer on the table. I clenched it. It clinked and rattled against the glass as I poured cool, sparkling water into it.

Maeves smile grew sharper.

"Harry," Billy said, his voice uncertain. "Didnt you just say something bad aboutyou know, taking food or drink from fauh, from these people?"

I put the pitcher down and picked up the glass of water.

Jen rubbed her cheek against Maeves thigh and murmured, "They never really change, do they?"

"No," Maeve said. "The males all fall to the same thing. Isnt it delicious?"

I unbuttoned the fly in my jeans, undid the zipper a little, and dumped the cold water directly down my pants.

Some shocks of sensation are pleasant. This one wasnt. The water was so cold that tiny chips of ice had formed in it, as though it was trying to freeze itself from the inside out. That cold went right down where I had intended it to go, and everything in my jeans tried to contract into my abdomen in sheer, hypothermic horror. I let out a little yelp, and my skin promptly crawled with gooseflesh.

The gesture had its intended effect. That overwhelming, almost feral hunger withered and vanished. I was able to take my