his little situation was beginning to grow tiresome. Andras sat in front of her, attempting to placate the situation; the apologetic smile and pacifying Caera was just a touch on the condescending side for Eve's taste. Andras wanted something. Why else would he be here, going to so much trouble to insert himself in to her evening?

Eve didn't believe in coincidences. Not with Andras. There was never a benign moment between them. When he got what he had wanted, he had simply disappeared. No word, no note, just an empty void of what had once been. Eve had been a young naïve girl all those years ago. Unable to understand what had been done to her and why; a broken doll that needed an escape from her cage. Andras had eager to oblige. There was something electrifying about hiding their illicit tryst from Marek, Eve's way of taking something back that Marek had taken from her. Eve would never admit how much it had wounded her when he had left her to her cage and that he had been able to hurt her. She would eat her own tongue before she admitted she felt anything.

It was Caera's comment brought her out of her thoughts and back to the present. An amused smirk curved her sanguine lips, as Caera demanded Marin order a drink. "Loitering? But it is what he does best." Eve offered the comment in a dry sarcasm, laced with disinterest and waning tolerance. As Caera laid out her terms of 'handling' her arrangements, Eve merely nodded in dismissive agreement and added a flick of her slender hand to punctuate her glib attitude. There were advantages to dealing with the proprietor of the establishment verses staff. Caera could see to her arrangements personally, fewer mistakes made and no surprises. Caera could believe she had her valued control and Eve was catered to all the same.

Eve never bothered to even glance towards Caera's retreating form, instead she ordered Marin to find a seat somewhere and give her and her guest some privacy. Those strikingly blue eyes pinned Andras in a gaze for a long moment before she finally spoke again. "I z'ink z'at is ze first time anyone has referred to a fairy as burly, no?" The words were so strangely thoughtful yet drenched in sardonic humor as if it had taken her a minute to digest what the vampire said. Most were broad shouldered and tall but still thin. Fairies had a refined build and sharp features. Even Marin looked like a stereotypical fairy male, though he had a little more around the middle that had come with age.

Her long, delicate fingers wrapped around her scotch glass and brought it to her lips for a first taste, allowing the reddish brown hued whisky to slip over her tongue and down her throat. The whisky felt warm and inviting, for just a moment her expression softened to pure indulgence much like a feline stroked in its favorite way. However, her expression hardened again as she listened to Andras when he finally spoke. Eve arched a perfectly shaped brow as he gave her some hollow line of indulging himself. She knew him better than he probably liked to think and she remembered his vices. After all, she had once been intimately acquainted with them... and him. However, she supposed men could change. When he revealed his true reason, her expression turned to dark. He wanted a court and a power base. Quite a fascinating turn of events. He hadn't been interested in a court all those years ago, he had only been interested in her bed. Now? He wanted a crown.

"What? No foreplay?" She responded in a purr at his no beating around the bush comment. "Have you not heard z'at foreplay gets you more play?" The words purred out as her plump lips curved in a coy smile. This seemed to be their dance. Getting what they wanted from each other and if they could perhaps enjoy each other in process, it was merely a bonus.

Eve leaned back against the high wing-backed chair as she contemplated what he was saying, her elbows resting on the arms and her fingers laced together. There it was... his real reason for wanting to seek her out. He wanted a court and he wanted her to manage the peons. His flattery might have affected her once; she might have swooned and given him what he asked from her without thought. But Eve wasn't that naïve girl anymore. "I have always had quite the skilled tongue, no? Or had you forgotten?" She said in a lyrically unabashed tone; an elicit tease as she tipped her chin up in defiance.

Her first instinct was to send him away... far away. Perhaps have Marin ditch his corpse in south for the wolves as a gift. What stinking mutt didn't like a free and easy meal? He was baiting her, goading her in to answering him now or be left to her own devices until he deigned to return to her for an answer. He was offering her the city but on his terms. Memories of Marek surfaced, for the first time in years she could remember his face. A frown curved her lips shattering for the first time her apathetic expression. The day she had first visited the garden after she had ordered his head, Eve had promised she would never be ruled by another man.

Eve leaned forward towards Andras, across the small cocktail table that was barely separating them now. They were close now, almost face to face. She could smell his cologne and the liquor on his breath. "I say... Control of a city that you deign to give me..." She spoke thoughtfully, pondering his proposal. "Out of the goodness of your heart, I don't z'ink." Eve murmurs the words as her striking blue eyes search his handsome face for a clue, hint or a shred of truth to his words. "What is it z'at you want from me, Andras?" She purred his name in that exotic accent the way she used to. "And when you get bored and walk away again? What then?" A low blow but Eve never pulled punches, even to a man offering her a whole city.

"Talks like this"

THE QUEEN OF THORNS