Excerpt: Working Title: Devilrun

“If you lean any farther out that window your liable to fall out.” Diana jerked back inside to glare at her brother, smirking at her from his study chair in the corner.
Dammit, she was blushing. She crossed her arms beneath her rather new cleavage and tried to look stern, but she knew her rosy cheeks were destroying the effect. “I'm just checking to see what they're up to, brat.”
“Checking to see what Phillip is up to, you mean.” Windlyn twisted his fingers through the long black hair hanging down past his shoulders, clearly enjoying watching his sister squirm with embarrassment. “You've got to either get over this thing or say something, Dee. It's getting a little bit silly.”
Shouldn't having a tan this dark hide things like blushes, Diana wondered frantically? “I can't just...blurt it out, Windlyn. I mean, these things take...subtlety, right?” She bit the end of her own long black braid nervously. “Dammit, Windy, I haven't done this before.”
“Dammit, Dee, don't call me Windy, ok?”
Diana nodded, hanging her head a little. “Yeah, yeah.” She'd done it on purpose, and she knew it. She didn't want to talk about this – she wanted to talk about anything else, in fact. But she also needed to talk about it, and today the subject of her desperate blushes was working the vegetable patch with both her parents while she took care of the (ugh) housework and Windlyn caught up on his studies.
When Phillip had arrived seven years ago, boys hadn't even been on Diana's mind yet. To be honest, they still weren't – except Phillip. She'd watched him fill out over the last five years with interest – and often quite a bit more than interest. She'd gone through her devoted puppy-dog phase when she was thirteen, and she knew now that her “subtle” crush had been every bit as embarrassing and uncomfortable for him when he was seventeen, as remembering it was for her now.
But dammit, she wasn't just a lovesick kid anymore – she'd filled out herself these last two years, and she had enough curves to be more than a stick-figure embarrassment to him now. The problem was, he hadn't shown any signs of noticing them.
At one point, during her lovesick puppy phase, she'd tried to pretend that he was just obsessed with his work around the farm – that he was too serious to think about girls - but that excuse gave out three years ago when she accidentally caught him rather a great deal less than half-dressed in the bushes with a girl from one of the other farms. She'd stammered an apology and fled the scene, mortified. Come to think of it, that incident had rather abruptly cured her of her constant drive to follow him around wherever he went.
Well, most of the time anyway. She craned over the counter, peering out the kitchen window again to catch a glimpse of him, shirtless and shining with sweat even in the chill spring air, as he helped her parents dig out the garden.
She knew that there had been a half-dozen other girls since then, but she hadn't asked how serious they'd been, and he had never volunteered anything at all, beyond a quiet apology for surprising her that first night.
“Am I his sister?” She asked Windlyn plaintively, “Have I just been his “baby sister” too long for him to see me?”
Windlyn, who had gone back to his reading, sighed and marked his place before putting the book aside. If Diana had restarted this particular conversation, it wasn't going to be just one question. “Maybe. Or maybe he feels indebted to Mother and Dad, and doesn't want to do anything they might not approve of.”
Diana's lips twitched, and Windlyn knew she was fighting not to pout. Phillip had teased her about pouting last year, and she'd been making a concerted effort to stop ever since. “Or maybe he just wants to be able to do things. With this stupid virginity restriction...”
“I think Mother and Dad are actually relieved about that one.” Windlyn gave a lopsided grin, “I'll admit, though, that it's chafed more than a few times.”
“I'm not a kid anymore, dammit! My friends are getting married, having babies, but I'm trapped on this stupid farm with an-an oblivious nit and some sort of magical requirement that I stay a virgin. Indefinitely!”
“Only until Wind shows up and one of us completes the pact – it's not forever.”
Diana glared at him, putting the full force of her frustration behind her bright green eyes. “And exactly when will that be?”
Windlyn shrugged expressively. “Damned if I know – but it shouldn't be much longer. Mother's stories said that Wind usually shows up “when the heir comes of age” - whatever that means. But we're grown, and it can't be much longer.”
“But how does he know when we're old enough? We've never even met him – even Mother hasn't seen him!”
“I dunno, Dee. He just does.”
“Aaah, what is wrong with me?” Diana flopped down at the kitchen table, arms hanging limply beside her. Windlyn cleverly deduced that she was returning to her earlier complaint.
“Can't be too young,” Windlyn observed cynically. “Lisa Fletcher was your age, right?”
Now he was baiting her; Lisa Fletcher was one of Phillip's more recent girls, though he hadn't seen her for long. Diana kept her eyes closed, refusing to rise to the bait.
But Windlyn wasn't done yet. “Black hair? No, Jess Turner has hair just as black as ours. And Jenny Baker's tanned as dark as you.”
Diana opened one eye to glare at him without moving, and Windlyn made a great show of pondering the question. When he made an exaggerated “A-ha!” and punched his hand, she knew it was going to be bad.
“Maybe he just doesn't fancy being caressed by a woman with more sword callouses than he has!”
Diana threw the dishtowel at him.