“Was Forest Moss killed?”
“The domana? No. He wasn’t here. He had been out with Windwolf. He totally lost it, though, when they got back. He wandered off screaming.” The man gave a vague wave toward downtown. “Completely out of his head.”
Forest Moss was on the top floor of Kaufmann’s. She’d found him only because of the concentration of Pittsburgh Police, EIA and Wind Clan elves gathered around the department store. Olivia apparently missed Tinker domi by minutes. In her wake, the elves and humans were trying to come to an agreement about what should be done with Forest Moss. None of them were happy about the elf lord occupying Kaufmann’s but no one wanted to risk trying to get him to leave.
She cautiously worked her way through the store, dodging the Wyverns who were searching the aisles. Judging by their speed, they were using it as an excuse to keep a distance between them and their charge.
Forest Moss was in the back corner of the children’s department. He’d collected all the mannequins around a child’s tea table with a toy china tea set. The dolls gathered around him, smiling brightly, holding out stiff white hands to welcome him. Somehow Forest Moss had reduced a half-dozen various mannequins to plaster dust. It hazed the air and covered everything with fine white powder.
Why was he here of all places? Why was he destroying the dolls even as he treated them to tea? There was so much she didn’t know about him, not even his age. From the photos she’d seen of him, she knew that his hair was always pure white, even without the fine dust. It poured down over his shoulders and was gathered in a loose ponytail just about his hips. She couldn’t tell his age from his profile, it was so marred by the scars encircling his empty eye socket. His eyelid had been sewn shut, the scars vivid white as his hair against his dusky skin.
“It’s all your fault,” Forest Moss wailed as he clutched an eight-year-old girl mannequin to him. “You were supposed to protect them. They whispered little lies to you and you believed them all. Our beautiful lovelies, all dead, because you failed them.”
She took a deep breath as she felt a wave of sympathy toward him. She still felt responsible for Tyler’s death even though she had been helpless to prevent it. She’d been overruled at every turn. His “real mother” let him play with the rough older boys. As “men” the teenagers didn’t need to listen to her arguments that Tyler was too young to play in the hayloft. She couldn’t talk her husband and sister-wives into taking the four-year-old to the hospital after he’d fallen. In everyone’s eyes, she was old enough to fuck, but too much a child to make any demands on how her “children” were raised.
How much more guilt was Forest Moss feeling because he hadn’t been helpless?
Maybe Forest Moss needed her as much as she needed him. Certainly she would have given anything for someone to reassure her that she had done everything she could to save Tyler and that his blood was on other people’s hands.
Taking another deep breath to steel herself, she closed the distance between her and the tea table.
Forest Moss whipped about to see her, hand pressed to his mouth, fingers cocked oddly. He paused, his brow knitting together. Unlike his hair, his eyebrow and eyelashes were dark brown. Judging by what was left of his face, at one time, he’d been very handsome. And he seemed much younger than she expected. If he were human, she would have guessed him to be in his mid-twenties.
She’d spent days trying to arrange for this conversation but she hadn’t considered exactly what she would say. At least, not in Low Elvish. When she ran through this moment in her head, everything was in English with a lot of slang and curse words thrown in. “I heard that you—you—you want a someone to be your domi? A human domi. I’m—I’m—” Willing sounded too much like a marriage vow. “I want—I need you.”
He stared at her for a full minute as if he couldn’t see through the dust that drifted through the air. His good eye was dark brown, the eyelids almond-shaped in a way that looked almost Asian. “What magic is this that all that I want suddenly lives and breathes? Do I dream? Ah, if I do, I wish to die before I wake.”
He still had his right hand up the shirt of the girl mannequin, the buttons straining.
She reached out and cautiously unbuttoned the brightly flowered blouse, exposing the large brown hand against the white plastic skin. The dark eyebrows rose in surprise.
She wet her mouth against her nervousness. He was just another male, like any other john. Normally she wouldn’t allow a free touch but there were language barriers to cross. Elves normally didn’t have to pay for sex with humans; there were too many elf-obsessed women willing to give it away. And Olivia wanted something more than just money.
His good eye went wide as she guided his right hand to her hip. She had on low-rider jeans and a midriff; his hand rested on bare skin. He breathed out shakily, his gaze riveted on where they touched skin to skin. His large hand made her look like she wasn’t much bigger than the mannequin he’d been molesting. He swallowed and put his other hand on her and watched vividly as he ran both hands over her stomach. The half-naked girl mannequin teetered from its sudden abandonment and then toppled over.
With a low moan, Forest Moss dropped to his knees in front of Olivia. He pulled Olivia close so he could mouth her belly as he pushed up her shirt.
Weeks of selling her body and Olivia still wasn’t used to that moment of when the protection of clothes was pushed aside, leaving her exposed and vulnerable. She swallowed hard on the fear that surged through her, as if it was a wild beast that wanted to scramble up her throat and come howling out her mouth. She locked down on whimpers.
She had learned the hard way that it was dangerous to close her eyes. She forced herself to watch him carefully, watch him for the start of an attack. He cupped her bared breasts reverently, tears streaming from his one good eye.
After several heart-stopping minutes of worship, he murmured, “Water to a male dying of thirst. Nay, heavenly cream. Once I start to lap it up, will I be able to stop? Do I dare? If the thirst is not quenched, then does the tentative sip make the need all the more torturous?”
It seemed the best time to open up negotiations. Normally she wouldn’t let a guy get this far without talking price, but this time, she was asking more than twenty bucks. “I’m not just for the taking. I need something in return. Make me your domi.”
He leaned forward, his lips nearly touching her. It made her wince despite the fact she should be well used to this by now. “But I have suffered this thirst so long, I think if I do not drink deep and long, I will die.”
“Make me your domi.” She hated every word coming out her mouth. It was ironic she’d fled to Pittsburgh to get out of the mockery of marriage that she’d been forced into. “Promise me that you’ll make me your domi and you can do what you want.”
He looked up at her, his one eye searching her face. “This sweetness could be for one as wretched as me?”
“Only if you take me as your domi.”
Fear filled his face. “I—I am not prepared for pavuanai wuan huliroulae. I have nothing to give you.”
She didn’t know the phrase but she was afraid it meant he was broke. “You don’t have money?”
“Money?” With shaking hands, he pulled out a small beautiful silk pouch. Undoing the drawstrings, he poured several large coins into his hand. Elf bullion. Her heart leapt at the coins. According to yesterday’s newspaper, they were trading for five thousand American dollars per coin. She expected him to give her just one but he spilled all the glittering gold into her palm.