Valerie thought that ‘this life’ suited Gabriel Larchmont just fine, but she kept her lips closed.
“And I don’t want to be married to someone I barely know,” she told Celine. “But that’s the hand we’ve both been dealt.”
Celine’s eyes cut back to her. “Why are you doing this? For the money? For our family name?”
Valerie didn’t answer.
Instead, she asked a question she’d long wondered. “Do you care about him? About Ravu? You visit him almost twice a month. Every month.”
The color from Celine’s face drained, her eyes going stark.
“There you are!” came Gabriel’s voice from the doorway of the conservatory.
And all at once, their reality came rushing back around them.
Gabriel sauntered into the conservatory, as if he hadn’t been fucking Madame Allegria on a desk upstairs just moments before. He grinned at Valerie, like they shared a little secret now, and it made her flesh feel like it was crawling.
Celine turned to her son and reached up to brush a dark lock away from his forehead. Her touch was gentle, loving.
“Father sent me to find you two,” he told them both. “Dessert is waiting in the sitting room.”
Then he wrapped his arm around Valerie’s waist, his other going around his mother, as he steered them from the conservatory.
His grip on her was possessive. Valerie stiffened under his touch, especially when she caught a whiff of her aunt’s perfume.
“Shy?” Gabriel murmured to her when he felt her stiffen, whispering in her ear so his mother wouldn’t hear. His hand squeezed her hip, his palm hot through the thin layer of her dress. “You’ll get over it, bride.”
Chapter Fourteen
Five years ago…
* * *
Dravka was tired.So fucking tired.
He was coming out of a Rut, a particularly intense one at that. All Keriv’i males in their prime were plagued by them, like clockwork.
Khiva was standing at the window in the sitting room of the Cluster, staring out across the space colony of Everton. Whatever he was looking for, Dravka didn’t know but Khiva often stared out that window.
Unlike them, Khiva still had hope. To find his lost brother and mother, somewhere among the stars. Dravka wondered what that felt like. Hope. He couldn’t remember feeling it for a long while.
Ravu was lounging across the space in a wide armchair while his brother read from the single Nu tablet they all shared.
By all accounts, it was another normal day. In a few hours, they would go to their respective mating rooms, where they were visited by their clients every night. They would fuck them until they were satisfied and then they would return to the Cluster, where they’d bathe and perhaps sleep. But mostly, they waited.
For what?
Dravka didn’t really know anymore.
But on that particular late afternoon, they heard the light tread of footsteps in the hallway outside of the Cluster. There wasn’t a knock, not that Madame Allegria ever knocked, before the door pushed open.
And there stood a human female. Lithe and beautiful with light hair and piercing green eyes.
Sad eyes.
She wore a simple dress, a dark green in color that matched those eyes. The lines of it were stark, though they ran over the slight curves of her body perfectly. He swallowed and though his Rut was over, he swore he felt something awakening within him again.
Khiva was the first to react, approaching the door. In a calm, even tone, he said, “I think you are lost, little one. We are not seeing clients until the evening—”
