KNIGHT'S FORK

'Rhett, aka Prince Djarrhett, is cleaning up after a late night murder, while the rest of his rogue royal family sit around, sipping drinks and wondering how to amuse themselves next.

'Rhett's aunt is a fortune teller (not a very good one) but her tarot readings are a front for a brothel, which in turn is a cover for a very efficient intergalactic spying operation.

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Hey, Father—he glanced at the seven-foot-tall Saurian Dragon—you’re in a brothel, for heaven’s sake! Why don’t you call it a night? Are you afraid that you’ll miss something if you leave? That your character will be assassinated if you go upstairs?

’Rhett’s gaze dropped to some scattered, mismatched tarot cards on the thickly carpeted floor.

Someone should pick those up.

The killing of Django had been tidier than the cleanup. The cards had been knocked from a table by a contingent of Tarrant-Arragon’s Star Forces as they otherwise efficiently removed Prince Django-Ra’s corpse into the gaudily lit, everlasting night on the Dark Side of Eurydyce’s Pleasure Moon.

Having set aside his glass of something-like-tea, ’Rhett sighed and went down on one knee. Leave it to the male Cinderella of the family to clean up!

The first upturned card was prominently labeled THE LOVERS. Many of Aunt Tarra's tarot decks depicted a nude male and a female entwined with a large, phallic snake, suggesting an Adam and an Eve.

This Lovers card wasn't like that. The lone male was fully clothed, as if Prince Paris of Troy might have been hunting when the three scantily clad goddesses waylaid him and insisted that he should judge their charms—and weigh the attractions of their bribes—and award a golden apple to the loveliest of the most powerful and vindictive goddesses in the pantheon. It must have been the most depraved beauty contest of human Greco-Roman mythology.

What is it about this version of the Lovers card that infuriates me? ’Rhett’s lips tightened in disapproval; his pulse sped up.

Although his three half brothers jeeringly called him a killjoy and a cold-heart, he wasn’t the type to go into a sexually repressed lather over a vision of a female flaunting her considerable charms. What pushed his buttons was that the myth behind this particular card glamorized the vices he found most abhorrent. Bribery. Corruption. Adultery. Sexual exploitation. Irresponsible sex…

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Tarrant-Arragon flash a glance at him, then look away.

The beribboned Goddess of Love was holding out the promise of her body—which she’d no intention of delivering—to inflame the judge’s lust so that he’d give her what she wanted.

I can’t stand females who try that! It reminds me of Electra-Djerroldina. Damn. I didn’t mean to think about her!

He was too much of a gentlemale and a diplomat to dwell on Electra’s shocking indiscretion not four months ago. Since that time he’d never mentioned her or her grossly insulting proposition. Until seeing this card, he’d never thought of her. Not deliberately, anyhow.

The goddess looked like Electra. Not that ’Rhett wanted to see Electra ever again, let alone wearing no more than a wickedly knowing smile and rumpled ribbons fluttering between her legs and around her perfect breasts.

Disquieting memories flashed under his guard.

“Prince Djarrhett, you…” Electra had cooed at the aborted Mating Banquet, the first time they’d come within speaking range of each other. Her bee-stung lower lip pouted as if she were blowing kisses on the oooh sounds.

She’d spoken for his ears alone, but her smoky gaze had been directed out across the banqueting throng. Anyone watching might have supposed that she was mouthing a silent greeting to someone else.

Damnable female! She’d asked him to knock her up, and she hadn’t had the decency to look at him. How insulting was that!

“You…are discretion itself.”

She’d left her mouth open an instant too long on the L of itself, letting him glimpse the glistening pink underside of her tongue as it touched the back of her teeth.

It’s high time someone taught Electra a lesson. Being a Queen, she seems to imagine that she can drive a male nuts and get away with it. One day—or one night—she’ll push the wrong male too far.
He couldn’t recall what he’d said at that point. His reply would have been discreet and noncommittal. As a diplomatic spy, he could hardly demur and say that her secrets were not safe with him.

Beneath the high table, her long, slim fingers had brushed the inside of his thigh. Apparently, he hadn’t been sufficiently noncommittal.

“You are at least part Djinn.”

She was correct. He’d neither confirmed nor denied her allegation, and wouldn’t have done so even if he had not been stifling a groan at that moment.

If his guess about her age was correct, Electra ought to have been one of the last, rare products of the Island School for Princesses. Her curriculum would have included Diplomatic Dissimulation, Lineage and Genealogy, Mothercraft, Masturbation, Art of Conversation, the Science of Pleasuring, Concubinage, and Sexual Anatomy.

She must have excelled in at least some of her studies.

“I require a sperm donor,” she’d said.

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