I was moving to the tent opening but looked to him as I did and assured in a flat voice, “We won’t be long.”

“I’ve been unkind and spoke insensitively,” he admitted. “Please stay. We need to talk.”

I stopped at the flaps and queried, “It doesn’t feel good, does it?”

“Pardon?”

“Speaking insensitively and having the person you did it to not allowing you to make up for it. And more, even if you aren’t very good at that, they don’t give you credit for trying.”

His hard, handsome face grew soft.

“Elena,” he said gently.

It must be noted, Cassius speaking thus with his expression gentling was a beautiful thing. Of a man who was beauty head to foot, that might be the most beautiful thing I’d experienced from him.

“Goodnight,” I bid and moved through the flaps.

I did not want to be the kind of female who made a dramatic statement by swanning away from an unpleasant discussion in the hopes that the male who had caught her eye came chasing after her.

But I could not lie and say it didn’t hurt worse that not only did I arrive at Jasmine’s tent without Cassius even calling out to me to return, he did not waylay us at any time after I discovered she was awake and happy to visit the pixies with me.

So this we did.

“Suck his cock,” Jasmine advised as we sat atop a bed of fallen leaves by the creek bed.

The two female pixies, Twig and Mossy, who were fluttering before us, sparkling dust drifting down from their doubled quadruple (four on each side) gossamer wings (Twig’s sparkles were a gingery color mingled with a pearlescent shade, Mossy’s were a buttery color with more that were the hue of a fern), burst into such gales of laughter, they wafted back several inches.

And Twig actually did an uncontrolled backflip.

In them doing so, for once, I was not captivated by their lean, pale bodies tinted much like their sparkles (in Twig’s case, her skin was gingery pearl, in Mossy’s case, her skin was a buttery green).

I was also not enchanted by their large, but broadly slanted eyes that had no pupil and were also colored with their magic (Twig’s, a gleaming porcelain, Mossy’s, a shining pear). Nor their pointed, distended ears or their thick, long, swept-back hair (Twig’s, a white blonde with gold highlights, Mossy’s, a shimmering chestnut, also with gold highlights)

I further was not charmed by their scant outfits that appeared to be naught but a long diaphanous strip of material expertly twisted and draped about their bodies to cover the pubis with a short skirt-like swathe with free-flowing bits. This enveloped them also at their breasts, with coils crisscrossing at their midriffs and circling their shoulders.