Sebastian

anything, even though I'm a trollop."
    Nadia sank into the chair. "Trollop?"
    "I'm a bad person. That's why I ended up in the Den. If I'm a bad person, why can't I have sex with a man who makes my heart feel so strange? When he kissed me, it felt wonderful. I felt wonderful. Like the tigress spell he put on me was still working, and I was still strong and powerful."
    "I think," Nadia said slowly, "that I should put on another pot of koffee. Then you can tell me the whole story of how you came to the Den and about this spell Sebastian put on you."
     
     
    Sebastian waited until they'd fallen into the rhythm of filling the watering cans from the buckets drawn from the well.
    "So," he said while he watched Jeb carefully soak the ground in one of the flower beds, "how long have you been sleeping with Aunt Nadia?"
    Jeb hesitated a moment, then moved over to the next part of the bed. "Don't rightly know that it's any of your business."
    "What about Lee? Is it his business?"
    "No, I don't reckon it is. Nadia is a grown woman, well able to make up her own mind about such things."
    "So you just sneak over here a couple times a week for some—"
    Jeb dropped the watering can and straightened up. "You've no call to be saying things that would shame your auntie. No call . She's a fine woman. The best I've ever known."
    Sebastian gauged the anger in Jeb's eyes. Not the bluster of a man caught doing something he shouldn't but the anger of a man defending something—or someone—that mattered to him. "Do you love her?"
    "I do." With a mild curse, Jeb reached down and righted the watering can, which had spilled out too much water on that flower bed. "I'm content with the way things are between us. I'd like more, but until Nadia's ready, I'm content with how things are." He took off his cap, slapped it against his thigh, then settled it on his head again. "I can't say what Lee does or doesn't know, but if it sets your mind at ease, Glorianna is… aware… of how things stand between Nadia and me."
    "And you're still here," Sebastian murmured.
    "I'm still here."
    It wasn't that he objected to two people—two humans —having sex without marriage. And it wasn't as if he didn't know what men and women did together—and why. But he couldn't quite wrap his mind around Aunt Nadia panting and moaning under a man—or over a man.
    "What about you?" Jeb demanded. "You sleeping with that girl?"

    Already off balance, he felt as if the question mentally knocked him on his ass. "We slept together," he stammered. "There was only one bed in the room, so we slept together. But we didn't… we haven't…"
    He raised a hand as if to gesture, then let it fall back to his side. "Daylight," he muttered. "I never thought I'd be having this conversation."
    "Comes as a surprise to me, too," Jeb admitted. He scratched the back of his neck. "Thought you were an incubus."
    "So did I."
    "Ah."
    Flustered and embarrassed, Sebastian looked around the garden… and remembered why he'd come here.
    "You live far from here, Jeb?"
    "Just a few minutes' walk along that path," Jeb replied, pointing in the general direction. "Have a nice little cottage. Too small for someone thinking of raising a family, but it suits me. And I took it on because the barn makes a good workshop, gives me plenty of room to store my wood and build things."
    "But it's still a distance from here." Sebastian hesitated. Jeb had a bit of a drawl, which indicated that he'd come to this landscape from another place at some point in his life. But his manner still said "country"
    rather than "city," and folks from a country landscape could be earthy and easy or as prim and starched as an old spinster's knickers when it came to men and women. "You should move in with Nadia. You should live here."
    "Now, wait up a minute."
    "Troubles coming." Sebastian glanced toward the kitchen windows and lowered his voice . "Bad trouble.
    Landscapers have died. That's what I came to tell Aunt Nadia."
    "And you think something will try to hurt Nadia?"
    He nodded. "Not only is she a strong Landscaper in her own right; she's Belladonnas mother. So I'm asking you, Jeb. What if being a few minutes away is too far away?"
    "I… I have my work. Wouldn't be easy to move my workshop. At least, not quickly. And Nadia has to tend her landscapes. I can't be with her then."
    "But at night," Sebastian persisted. "Here, at night."
    Jeb looked uncomfortable. "Aurora is a small village. What people suspect and what they know