Cerulean Sins   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

"You know what I would do to you if you harmed her," Belle said.

"I know that according to our own laws, the laws you helped enact, that no one is allowed to simply enter a territory without negotiating safe passage. Musette and her people are here three months before we gave them permission to enter, which means, in effect, they are outlaw, and have no rights, no safety. I could slaughter them all and council law would be on my side. You have too many people on the council that fear you, Belle, they would think it a good joke."

"You would not dare," she said.

"I will not allow you to harm Asher, not anymore."

"He is nothing to you, Jean-Claude."

"You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, magnificent in your lust; I am humbled by your power, awed by the political maneuvering that you do so effortlessly. But I have been long away from you, and I have learned that beauty is not always what it seems, that lust is not always better than love, that power alone is not enough to fill the bed or the heart, and that I don't have your patience for the politics."

She reached out a slender hand towards him. "I showed you love such as no mortal ever could."

"You showed me lust, mistress, sexual appetite."

" Oui, amour " she said, her voice sultry enough to cause goosebumps on my arms.

Jean-Claude shook his head. " Non, lust, not love, never love."

A look passed over her face, like a badly designed mask moving liquid under Musette's skin. It reminded me uncomfortably of watching the beast glide under the skin of a shape-shifter before it springs forth. If she changed into Belle completely, I was trying for her heart while I had the chance.

"You loved me once, Jean-Claude."

" Oui, with all my heart and all my soul."

"But you do not love me now," her voice was soft, there might even have been a trace of loss.

"I have learned that love can grow without the touch of sex, and that sex does not always lead to love."

"I would love you again," she whispered.

" Non, you would possess me again, and love is not about possession."

"You speak in riddles," she said.

"I speak truth as I have come to know it," he said.

Those pale honey brown eyes turned to me. "You have done this. Somehow, you have done this."

I was beginning to feel positively silly with the knife still in Musette, but I was afraid to take it out, because I was half expecting Belle to stand up and say, aha, that was what I was waiting for. So I kept the blade in and tried to think what to do.