by Eve Langlais
I let out a pained gasp that coincided with the fist that hit Darryl in the mouth. It should have been mine, but I had to admit, Kane’s bigger one made a nicer cracking sound.
“Don’t you fucking say one more fucking word.” Kane bristled, but he came to my defense too late. The damage was already done.
Darryl had used me. Kane had used me. A race to see who would have sex with me first, not because they truly desired me. I stumbled away, and a shiver hit me hard as the cold real world seeped in.
Everyone had been lying. Pretending. I lifted my chin. “You can both fuck off.”
“You’ll regret betraying me,” were Darryl’s last words as he left, taking his sneer and disdain with him.
I wanted to shout after him that he wasn’t exactly a prize, but I’d not stooped to childish tactics. Not yet, although I reserved the right to change my mind given Kane had yet to flee.
“I’m sorry.”
“Bullshit,” I spat.
“I’m sorry.” He repeated himself, and the asshole actually looked sincere.
“Go away,” I snapped at him, holding on to my dignity and tears by a thread.
“Haven’t you figured out yet that I can’t?”
My laughter was bitter. “I am not falling for your bullshit anymore.”
“I might have lied about some things, but my attraction to you is real.”
“Stop it. Just stop the lying. Let’s both stop faking.” I was tired of trying to be confident. Why couldn’t it come naturally? Why did the actions of others hit me so hard?
Then again, how had such a magical night gone so horribly wrong?
“That orgasm wasn’t fake.”
No. And that rattled me because shouldn’t sex be more than just about the physical? Then again, how could I claim emotion when until recently I’d harbored a grudge against Kane? “I’ve seen the women you date.” Pictures of the celebrity architect who showed off his creations usually accompanied by someone willowy and elegant.
“Vapid women who can’t hope to compare.”
“I am not tight and toned like your usual type.”
“And? Your body is a testament to your journey.”
He made it sound prettier than it was. To me, it appeared more a roadmap of dead ends that showed where you shouldn’t go. Two men now had spoken ill of me. Trashed me and my looks. How was I supposed to believe anyone?
Kane tilted my chin to meet his gaze. “What part of ‘I find you attractive as you are’ do you not grasp?” His hands grabbed my ass, and he yanked me close. Ground me against him. “Do you feel that? Does that feel fake to you?”
The hardness of his erection couldn’t be hidden, a stark reminder that, for all the times Darryl kissed me, I’d never noticed a boner.
“Maybe you’re just highly sexed,” I stated. “Some men can get aroused if the wind blows the right way.”
He snorted. “I assure you I have more control than that, except around you. Do you understand how perplexing that is? How frustrating to want the one woman you shouldn’t? To crave to the point of ignoring common sense?”
He couldn’t be talking about me. It had to be lie. Yet I felt him throbbing against me. I remembered that hardness inside me. Pushing and thrusting.
He’d won the bet with Darryl, so why was he trying to convince me? “What do you want from me?”
“You.”
“Liar,” I whispered, hating how badly I wanted to forgive him.
“Loving you is probably the one thing I can’t lie about.” His fingers gripped my head, threaded through my hair, holding me rapt and breathless.
“You don’t love me.”
“Trust me, I wish I didn’t,” he muttered before dragging me upwards for a kiss. A deep one, with more French in that moment than I’d learned in all my years of taking it in high school.
Somehow, we ended up in the backseat of his car, the leather warming up as he’d started the engine. Yet that didn’t account for all the heat. The chill in me was gone. The moment we touched it was as if passion exploded.
My skirt went up, my panties didn’t get pulled aside so much as ripped. I had one foot on the floor of the car, the other bent and in the air, toes almost touching the roof. Kane kissed me, and I felt him pressing against me.
Wanting me again already?
He thrust into me, and I arched under him. He filled me so perfectly, stretching me and touching me in a place that brought a shudder. His lips found mine in a kiss that never ended as he ground into me, pushing his tip against the spot that had me shuddering over and over.
I clung to him and panted into his mouth. Panted his name. “Kane.”
He pulled out and slammed in, drawing a sharp cry. Again. I welcomed each slam. Squeezed tight. And this time when I came, I screamed so loud there was no sound. Just me arched in absolute pleasure and his mouth sucking at my shoulder where the flesh lightly throbbed.
He let go of me slowly, as if savoring every last tremor.
I shook from the intensity.
Insane. So public.
I glanced around, wondering if anyone watched. Please don’t let me end up with a sex video on the internet.
Twice now, I’d done the wild thing with Kane in the parking lot. What had come over me? Moon madness? A glance to the sky showed the fullness only through a cloudy curtain.
Kane stood outside the car, already tucked away, and there I was splayed like…
I scrambled upright and shoved down my skirt. My panties were gone. My hair a wild mess. Kane held out his hand to me and helped me from the car.
With his cum running down my leg, it occurred to me that we’d not used protection.
I almost fainted.
20
Oh. Shit.
Kane’s expression creased. “What’s wrong?”
“Condom. We didn’t… I’m not… Oh no.”
It took him a moment before his expression cleared and he smiled. “One, I’m clean. Two, I’m tied, so no accidental babies.”
According to him. What if he was wrong? What if he had super duper sperm? I couldn’t become a mom again at my age.
My breath began to frost as a chill moved to beat the heat.
“It’s coming,” I huffed, the syllables hanging like icicles.
“What is?” he asked.
“The Chill. My enemy.” With anyone else that might have sounded odd, but I knew Kane understood.
He lifted his face to the night air, closing his eyes and tilting his head side to side as if listening, sensing, even tasting. The man I’d had inside my body, and still a stranger in so many respects.
“So that’s The Chill. You have nothing to fear,” he stated.
“You recognize it?” The words were so cold I could have shattered them. The freezing nature of the air intensified, and I hugged myself, only to have Kane notice and draw me into his body.
“I do, and while frightening, it’s harmless to you.”
“Doesn’t feel harmless. I’m pretty sure it wants to kill me.”
“Don’t be frightened by it.” His fingers wrapped around mine. The Chill receded. “I’ll take you home.”
“I’m still mad at you.” A stupid thing to say since we’d had sex again.
“Then punish me.”
“You’d like that,” I grumbled.
“If you were the one wielding the whip? Yes. Because it would lead to me worshipping you until you forgive me.”
A man shouldn’t make me almost come again with just words. A liar shouldn’t be so easily forgiven, and yet I found myself softening. “This is all very confusing to me.”
“And I want to explain, but you’re tired.”
“Not too tired to hear this.”
“I will tell you, but I’d rather not do it while trying to drive.”
“Afraid I’ll hit you?”
“Maybe.”
“That bad, eh?” A dry retort.
“Not flattering in some parts, no.”
H
e was being honest, and I admit, I was curious to hear the whole story. And maybe have sex again. As of this moment, I’d turned into one of those confident women portrayed in books and movies, who used men and then discarded them. I’d flipped the script.
“We can talk at my house.” I’d hear him out, let him make me come in apology, then kick his ass to the curb, followed by bacon and tequila to console myself, then off to bed where maybe I’d wake up in the morning to a world that made sense.
I settled into the front seat of his car, a sedan with sleek heated leather seats. I relaxed into the comfort of them.
The stereo played a light instrumental number. Kane didn’t say much as he drove, one hand on the steering wheel, the other laced with my fingers on the shifter. Remembering what he’d done with that hand, I pressed my thighs together.
Enough already. I needed to distract myself. “It occurs to me your date might be pissed she lost her ride.” He’d said he wouldn’t be coming alone. And then chose me to go home with.
“No date. I wasn’t even planning on going until the last moment.”
“Then why tell me you were?”
“Because I wanted to see you jealous.”
Not the answer I expected but he’d opened the door to more questions. “What’s going on, Kane? Why did you and Darryl make a bet about me?”
“Not a bet. And it involved more than just the two of us.”
“More?” I couldn’t help but arch a brow and yank my hand free. “Exactly how many people were involved in Operation Seduce the Dumb Divorcee?”
“No one that matters.”
His lack of reply angered me. “It matters to me. I have a right to know what twisted game you’re playing.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Says you. Or are you agreeing I’m a dumb bitch?” Because I sure as hell felt stupid and could kick myself for getting in the car with him instead of calling for a taxi.
“You are not dumb. You are, however, caught up in events set in motion a long time ago.”
“This has to do with my family?” At his nod, I hunkered in my seat. “I don’t understand why what my ancestors did has to do with me now.”
“Not so much as what they did as what they promised to do. Your family is the key to unlocking—"
A massive moose suddenly appeared in the road in front of us. There wasn’t any time to brake. Kane swerved, missing the moose, but slamming into a tree.
21
I knew I was in a dream because my grandma was alive.
We were standing by the lake, and I could tell I was young by the pink jelly shoes on my feet. Not the most comfortable things, but everyone had them. Including me, because my father couldn’t resist when I begged and batted my lashes.
Grandma was talking about Maddy again and how someday I’d be the one taking care of her because the orcs must never find her.
“Who are the orcs?” Little Me asked even as Old Me wondered.
“They are the enemy, and they must never ever find where the source has been hidden.”
“Is the source a treasure?” I asked with all the wide-eyed excitement of a child who’d exulted over pirate stories.
“More like a curse that, if unleashed, will result in the demise of many. It is up to you, my dear, to keep humanity safe.”
“I’ll be a good witch,” I promised, crossing my heart.
“Hush, little one. Don’t let your father hear you say that.”
Because Daddy got mad when I talked about magic. So. Mad.
But the weird thing was when Mommy said it, he got sad. Always so sad with my loud Mommy. He never got mad at her until the day she tried to kill me.
As if that were a trigger, I moved from that memory into another one.
I was sitting in a canoe, clutching the sides as my mother paddled us out to the middle of the lake.
The dawning sun provided scant light because of the mist that clung to the surface of the dark water. Spooky, even if Grandma said Maddy wouldn’t hurt me. But what if she wasn’t the only monster in the lake?
“Where are we going?” I asked, stifling a yawn and huddling in my sweater, tossed over my nightgown.
Mom, finally out of the hospital again, had dragged me out of bed and hurried me out the door. Judging by the mad squawks in the henhouse, Grandma was getting eggs.
She’d stuffed me into the canoe beached on the pebbled shore, no life jacket. Grandma would have been so mad.
And while I’d been cocky about the fact my mother saw me as mature enough to not need one when we set out, in the middle of the lake, I kind of regretted not having it. Especially as my mother stopped rowing and tossed the oars.
“Don’t we need those to get back?” I asked, eyeing the far shore.
“We need to be here to stop it.”
“Stop what?” I asked.
“The curse. We can end it. Right here, right now.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to, baby.” Mommy cradled my face. “I know what has to be done, and I’ll be with you, every step of the way.”
With that said, she grabbed hold of me, and dumped us in the cold water!
22
The shock of it almost woke me.
My mother had tried to kill me. Her arms and legs wrapped around me as we sank. I remembered it now.
We sank into a darkness that made the tiny pinprick of light noticeable. How could there be light at the bottom of the lake?
As my lungs tightened, I snapped out of my stupor and struggled. Squirming and kicking at my mother until she released me.
But it didn’t stop my descent.
I needed to breathe. I couldn’t. I spasmed. My eyes were wide open, watching the light as it brightened, and within it, something moved.
Something came for me. I opened my mouth to scream—
And then I was over the lake, watching as the light rose to the surface. A glow churned the water. From it rose Maddy, the monster, and atop her snout? The limp form of a child.
Depositing me on the beach, the monster uttered a loud bugle before sliding below the surface. But I saw the beast watching as my father found me and cried out. My ghostly lips wobbled to see him dropping to his kneels to cradle me. Knowing what my mother tried to do, and now having had children of my own, I understood better what drove him. The nightmares that must have plagued him.
Before I could reach out a spirit hand, I was moving again, from the lake to a hospital room. Yet another impossible recollection given that the small shape in the bed, with tubes running out of her, was me. I didn’t remember being intubated. Then again, I’d not recalled my mother trying to kill me either.
My father hunched by the bed where he held my hand. Despondent. Broken. Was this where it began, the mood swings that took my happy dad and turned him into a man who alternated between sadness and anger? The doctors had diagnosed him with depression and gave him pills. I could always tell when he’d gone off his meds. The ranting. The crying. The irrationality where I was concerned.
No, you can’t leave the house. No. No. No. For a teenager who just wanted to live, I felt stifled.
When he was gone, I’d felt such guilt at the relief. Years later, I now wondered if there was more I could have done.
In the vision, my grandmother entered the hospital, clutching her bag. Expression fierce, as if ready to do battle. “Stand aside.”
My father didn’t look up as he said in a dull monotone, “This is where it ends.”
“Naomi doesn’t have to die.”
Die?
How could I have forgotten this happened? This couldn’t be real.
My mom had died in a car crash. I was never hospitalized other than for a broken arm when I fell off my bike.
“Maybe it would be better to let her go, knowing what is to come.” My father cast a bleak gaze at me in the bed.
How could he even think of letting me die?
He glanced at a machine. I’d seen enough
medical shows to know what it measured. Brain waves.
In my case, a flat line. Oh. That wasn’t good.
“Is that what you want?” my grandmother asked.
His inner struggle was reflected on his face. In the end, he bowed his head and whispered, “Can you fix her?”
If I’d drowned and lost oxygen to the brain, then no amount of grandma’s soup could fix me.
“Yes.”
“If she survives, I am taking her away from here.”
Grandma placed a hand on my forehead. “Running never works. She’ll be back. You know the magic won’t give her up.”
“She deserves a chance at a normal life.”
“But she’s not normal,” was my grandma’s reply as she took out a marker and proceeded to draw on me. A healing mark on my forehead, more on my cheeks.
The sigils ignited when Grandma slashed her arm and dripped blood on them. To my surprise, my father roused enough to donate some of his own blood. The body on the bed arched…
Intense pain erupted and drew a sharp cry from me.
“Aah!” I roused to a throbbing agony that radiated in every inch of me. My slitted eyes winced at the bright lights. I could hear a cacophony of noise. Voices. The beeping of machines.
The hysterical voice of my daughter. “Nurse! She’s awake! Nu-r-r-s-se!”
If being awake meant suffering, then I welcomed the darkness, returned to the dreams that felt real. Had I recalled pieces of my past?
How had I forgotten?
As if my mind wanted to answer me, I saw myself again as a child at Grandma’s house, in the bed with the pink plaid comforter. I didn’t sleep peacefully. Nightmares had me thrashing and crying out, “Mommy. No!”
It was my father who rushed in to soothe me, but my grandmother was the one who drew a new symbol and ignited it with a kiss that whispered, “Forget.”
And then I was being packed into the car with my dad. I wore a headset in the backseat, listening to my new Walkman Daddy bought me. Grandma and my father stood outside the car.