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  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."

  Kree crossed the marshaling yard briskly. The urgency of the dispatches quickened his stride not t
he desperate need to put distance between himself and Kayseri Bruin. Sure it was. He entered an office jammed with people all of whom stood when he entered and loudly pressed their cases. While Nadol, his secretary, struggled to regain order, Kree strode across the room to a black oak sideboard and snatched up a silver decanter of well-aged whiskey. He poured a double shot, tossed it back in one gulp, and turned toward the crowded room.

  "Ladies and gentlemen I cannot hear grievances today. Something's come up. Come back tomorrow. Nadol issue markers so these folks don't lose their place in line."

  The town folk filed out, leaving Kree to contend with his Elharan scribe, a handful of troopers, and a fat oily-looking man he assumed was the current Malachite ambassador. He gulped another double shot.

  "You are dismissed." He poured again swallowed, closed his eyes against the burn. When he opened them, the troopers milled around the open doorway, and his secretary stared at him as if he had sprouted another head. The ambassador’s look said he had always suspected Kree Fawr was unhinged and now had the proof.

  "Out!" Pain lanced down Kree's throat. Shouting was outside his damaged larynx's comfort range. In the field, his first lieutenant did the shouting. Kree raised his voice so rarely the effect was like kicking an anthill everybody scurried. In mere seconds, he was alone.

  Damn! Damn! Damn! He almost kissed Kayseri Bruin. He would have if that blessed boy had not arrived. Kree poured another drink and brought it to his lips savoring the smoky taste. What to do...avoid her? Qets was too small a town, and the truth was he did not want to avoid her. Katie made him feel...alive...fun. But he could not be alone with her. Ever. No problem. Didn't he have half a dozen cadets in his personal service?

  Snagging the bottle off the sideboard, Kree carried it into his bedchamber. High-pitched yelps greeted him. A small fluffy white dog turned sightless eyes in his direction. He owed this little dog. Nursing the pup back to health had given him something to think about, besides his own agony throughout that long bitter winter when he struggled to break his lifelong addiction to Goddess nectar.

  It is a well know fact that soldiers love comfort, perhaps because they get so little of it and Kree was was no exception. His love for comfort showed in his opulent, custom-built bed. He threw himself down on plump down-filled pillows stacked four deep against its high brass headboard. His dog draped itself across his lap and dozed off again.

  The problem with the never alone solution was he could not stand people fawning over him all the time. It made him crazy. My Captain. Kayseri started that nonsense as little girl tagging after him in the practice yard. It spread through the garrison and then through the town like a wildfire and now he was stuck with it. No one called him by name anymore except when he took a risky or unpopular decision.

  A wry grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. He was, like it or not, the beacon around which the citizens of Qets ordered their lives, and by the Hells, he had better shine. If their beacon was sometimes afraid of the dark, they did not want to hear about it.

  "Respect is a great thing, Moppet. Papa always said so." Kree sipped his whiskey. "It's damn lonely too." The dog gave a low moan and rolled onto its back in a show of solidarity. Gulping down the remaining liquid in his glass and carefully rearranging his dog, he poured another drink resolving to get sock-eyed drunk if he remembered how. It would not solve his Kayseri problem, but for a little while, he wouldn't care.

  ***

  Back in the stable Kayseri did not know whether to howl with rage or shout for joy. Kree almost kissed her. He would have too if that cursed boy had not arrived.

  At age twelve, she had told her father she loved Kree and wanted to marry him. Her father, who by some accounts was the most powerful wizard in the Kingdoms, tucked her into bed, kissed her forehead, and said she had a crush on the captain. Puppy love, he said. She would grow out of it, he promised. Within a week, father had packed her off to her half-elf grandmother in Elhar some six hundred miles away to make sure she did.

  Presented at the Thallasi Court, Kayseri attended balls. She danced. She flirted, but she did not grow out of it. Only one male spoke to her heart. Today he’d called her his best girl and he’d almost kissed her. Kayseri cut her eyes to the cadet saddling her horse. Her horse. He chattered away, as children do, about what a fine animal it was. She crossed her eyes at him. This inconvenient cadet would soon regret his interfering ways.

  Kayseri was not pixie-stupid. She realized young ladies seldom grew up to marry a childhood crush. The troubling thing was that in all her daydreaming she had not considered the captain's age an obstacle. After all, what were mere numbers to races who aged slowly? Clearly, Kree did not see things in the same light. Here he was at the peak of his strength and prowess calling himself old. He was the perfect age.

  More worrisome still, Kayseri knew exactly what sort of women attracted Kree, and she did not measure up. She was not tall or blonde. Cornflower-blue eyes drew him in like magnets; hers were plain brown. Whereas her skin glowed like sun-kissed caramel, the captain craved pale complexions. And rather than strengthening her claim on him, his connection to her family distressed him. Since his wife’s death, avoiding emotional attachment had become his credo, and getting him over these hurdles would take more than mere cleverness. A kiss would have helped. She just knew it.

  That almost-kiss gave Kayseri hope. It proved Kree felt attraction for her, but his reaction to it proved his attraction to her did not please him. She knew Kree. He would avoid her for all he was worth. What she needed was a plan, some lure he could not resist. But what? Then it hit her, a riding accident.

  Chapter Three

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  The captain slumped across his desk, head cradled on his thick forearms. It was full dark and someone had the colossal gall to pound on his door. Several of the mail packets had fallen off the desk and scattered across the fine Thallasi rug. His blind dog lay beside his foot chewing on the corner of one of them. Kree cracked opened his eyes. He did not feel drunk. At least not drunk enough, and whoever was pounding on his door had just pulled stable duty for the next three cycles.

  He raised his head. "GO AWAY." The stabbing pain that followed reminded him once again why he did not bellow.

  The sound of his voice renewed the offender’s hope.

  BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

  Make that six cycles of stable duty.

  He lurched to his feet. The room made a crazy tilt and he caught himself on the edge of the desk. Maybe he was drunk. Taking a more-or-less direct route to the door, he closed his eyes and paused with his hand resting on the knob. The fort had better be burning down around my ears. He yanked open the door.

  Davi stood in the hallway, soaking wet. Something terrible had happened or this boy would not be here risking his wrath. Kree’s chest started hurting. He thought he might sick up his whiskey. "Where’s Katie?"

  "I don’t know, My Captain."

  I don’t know. Funny, how three little words sobered up a man. I don’t know. Kree envisioned every sort of disaster. In his mind’s eye, Kayseri bled out her life at the bottom of some gully. The vision made him weak-kneed. The simple act of drawing in enough breath for speech was beyond him.

  The cadet filled the silence with explanation. "She seemed like a good rider, My Captain. We were having a fine time. I told her it was coming on dark and we ought to head back, but she said pixies see just fine in the dark. Then something spooked the horses. I don’t know what. I didn’t see anything. But that sand colored she-demon you gave the lady—Wow! It can run. Anyway, the thing is…my horse threw me. By the time I caught my mount, I couldn’t find Miss Kayseri anywhere." The boy gulped. "Do you suppose her father will turn me into a toad?"

  Kree’s head cleared. "Where and when did this happen?"

  "On the north river road, My Captain, not a half-hour ago."

  Kree opened the door and ordered the young cadet stationed there to fetch coffee, hot comfort brought to his world by his patroness in El
har. At the dry sink, he emptied a full pitcher of cold water over his head and came up sputtering. "Go to the stable, Davi. Have Storm saddled. Then get yourself out of those wet clothes, and get something hot in your stomach." Kree stripped off his shirt and struggled into another one. When his head popped through the neck, his senior cadet had not moved.

  Kree had been just six and ten when he assumed captaincy of the garrison younger than the boy shivering in his doorway was. He had needed all the experience available to him back then, and for that reason, he did not stand upon military protocol. To this day, his senior officers were quick to give him large pieces of their minds when they felt the occasion merited, but when he gave an order to a cadet, he expected instant obedience.

  "Is there something else?"

  The cadet drew himself to attention. "Sir, it is my duty to inform My Captain he is deep in his cups and in no fit condition to ride out."

  Kree’s voice was a dangerous flat whisper. "Has there been a coup?"

  Misery filled the cadet’s eyes, and Kree regretted his temper. If something had happened to Katie, it was not this cadet’s fault. He had promised to take Katie riding. She’d be tucked up safe at home if he weren’t scared to death of a little girl. Except Kayseri wasn't a little girl anymore, and that's what had him hiding his his quarters. Her father's words mocked him. Pixies and horses don’t mix. Kree glanced at the ceiling then back at the cadet. Coffee arrived, sweet and heavily creamed, the way he liked it. He waited until the younger cadet withdrew before addressing his insubordinate senior.

  "Your concern is duly noted, Davi. You may rest assured your captain has ridden to combat in worse condition. I’ll admit it has been awhile, but I ought to be able to handle a slow ride up a smooth road." He took a gulp of the steaming beverage, burned his tongue, and cursed roundly. His cadet fled.

  Downstairs, some ten minutes later, Kree found his horse in the marshaling yard as he had ordered. Chana Falconer, whom the men called, Lady Bird, held the reins.