TraceyAnn was more than willing to dish more judgmental gossip. “She’s part of the Staff Caff, and she seems to take on every shift, most likely to stay away from her kids. I also hear she lives in the trailer park a short drive away.” She said “trailer park” as if it was an outhouse with beds.
It only made Lily want to help the twins more. She decided to change the subject, before TraceyAnn spiraled into more venom about the kids or their parents.
“So the owner’s pretty cool, to have this available for his employees.”
It worked. TraceyAnn’s face split with a wide grin. “The Faire really put the town on the map. It brings in so much business, and it’s turned into a world-wide destination. He’s also been a stickler for authenticity, even though I couldn’t say where things like that car exhibit out front fit in.”
“Car exhibit?”
TraceyAnn got to her feet, her medieval skirt swishing about her legs. “Yeah, come with me.”
Lily followed her to the large windows that overlooked a large lot that during the day was filled with parked cars. At this hour it was a more of a well-lit thoroughfare for people coming or going to the tavern nearby.
TraceyAnn directed her attention to a mass of cars that she could barely make out to the left, looking out through the glass. There was a sign above that said “Steeds through the Ages: Horsepower Maketh The Man.” A floodlight shone on the cars, and in the distance, Lily could discern the shapes of horses, which she hoped were statues and not taxidermied Mr. Eds.
“Probably so the sports cars are tax write-offs, but who cares? We can forgive Simon his few eccentricities, when he’s the best employer I’ve ever had—or heard of.” TraceyAnn’s voice bordered on worship —albeit at high volume— but it was infinitely preferable to the gossip. All of a sudden her breath hitched, and Lily turned her head to where TraceyAnn was focused raptly.
“There he is, and oh, he’s with his new Security detail!”
A group of six—no, seven men had exited a large luxury SUV, no doubt parked so it would be within view of the security booth stationed right by the Staff Childcare Center. She guessed Simon was the most….the most average looking one. He was probably considered a tall man if he were standing alone, but the others dwarfed him either in height, muscular build, or both.
Simon was the only one who wore glasses, and he looked incredibly young for someone who owned such a vast enterprise. She would guess that he was maybe a few years older than she was, if that. An older man flanked the rear of the group. He was only slightly taller than Simon, and his brush cut and military carriage gave him away as someone who served the country. But the other men — they drew in attention without effort. They were larger than life, with their builds stretching out the cotton knit of their t-shirts, tapering into perfect Vs and poured into denims that clung to their muscled legs. One had long blond hair, his ready laughter proclaiming him the extrovert of the group. Two were dark haired, dark browed and exuded intensity. One had toffee-colored hair, with the face of a leading man in a Rom-com, on top of the body of an action star. But the last…
He also had a brush cut and a military carriage, like the older man. His t-shirt was cerulean blue, that seemed to be the right shade for his auburn hair. He turned at that moment, and their eyes met.
And held.
And sizzled.
Lily felt a sudden flush of warmth flooding through her body, and her mouth went dry.
Holy cow. There was something electrifying in that moment, before she reflexively broke off eye contact, the heat filling her face.
“He looked at me! Did you see that?” TraceyAnn’s voice was now a high-pitched squeal. Lily quickly composed herself as the older woman gushed. “He was definitely checking me out!”
Sure he was.
“Did you say that they were Simon’s Security detail?”
“Yes.” TraceyAnn confirmed, giggling like a schoolgirl. Lily knew exactly how she felt. “They must be heading to Ye Olde Taverne. I heard some scuttlebutt that they come from some foreign country, but they fit right into the Medieval theme, don’t you think?”
“Er—yes.” Lily was still shaken by that look. All the men were attractive—hot, if she were honest. But that one—
It had to be part of the aftermath of being with Rey. That must be it. Her body was recalibrating to what it was like to respond to good-looking men. After spending the last few years with Rey, she had forgotten what it was like to be attracted to anyone.
That had to be it.
But… holy cow. Her heart was still racing as if she’d run a marathon, and she felt a strange, urgent pull, to the point where she had to actively concentrate on not walking out the front door and looking for the man whose eyes had seized hers and held her prisoner.
“Uh-oh, here comes trouble,” TraceyAnn muttered, the spell broken. Lily looked up as the door to the center swung open and a short, strawberry-blond girl with a round, freckled face and slightly stooped shoulders came in. She was wearing a tee shirt that read OPS STAFF and cargo shorts. Based on her and Gabe, it would seem that the Ops staff were exempt from wearing costumes. That would make sense, as she couldn’t imagine doing car repair work, or whatever Gabe did, while wearing a corset and long, voluminous skirts. Or in Gabe’s case, a tunic and tights.
“Yo, you Katie?” the blond girl said.
A quick image of a cartoon mouse trying to act tough flashed across Lily’s mind, and she shook it off, thinking it was mean of her.
“Yes, and you are —”
“Jordy.”
“Hadeez.”
Both TraceyAnn and Jordy/Hadeez spoke at the same time, with TraceyAnn rolling her eyes.
“My last name’s Hayden,” the girl said defensively. “Everyone calls me Hadeez.”
“Who, exactly?” TraceyAnn’s voice took on a cutting edge.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Hadeez,” Lily said. Hey, if she was going to ask people to call her Katie, she’d return the favor and call them whatever they wanted to go by.
The girl lifted her chin. “I’ve got your packet from HR right here. You can go pick up your clothes to wear,or go to the Staff Caff. Both close at midnight. We’re also roommates, all the info’s inside, but I’m not off duty until about 2 a.m., so settle in whenever you’re ready.”
“Thanks, Hadeez.” Lily pulled out the card identifying her as Katie, a staff member with Staff Childcare, and a neon yellow lanyard that had the word STAFF repeating every few inches. It wasn’t very medieval, but her new roommate seemed to anticipate her thought.
“Puma insisted that staff should be easily identifiable from regular attendees who might be also be wearing costumes.”
“Puma’s the head of Operations.” TraceyAnn helpfully explained.
“Which means he’s everywhere and knows everything going on.” Jordy/Hadeez’s voice took on a bragging tone, as if Puma’s importance and power was her own. “The Ops crew is responsible for making sure the entire Festival runs smoothly.”
“Good person to know.” Lily said, and TraceyAnn’s eyes narrowed. Lily hastily added, “Of course I’m lucky that TraceyAnn has been giving me the scoop on everything.”
The older woman’s face relaxed into a smile, as she boomed, ”I’ve certainly been here long enough.”
Lily smiled at her, and Jordy/Hadeez rolled her eyes. “Well, I’ve gotta get back. See you later, Roomie.”
“Thanks, Hadeez.” Lily said to her disappearing stooped shoulders, as the girl slipped back out.
“Watch out for that one,” TraceyAnn muttered, glaring at the door. “She’s only been here a couple of weeks, but I have a bad feeling about her.”
Lily only smiled. TraceyAnn had a bad feeling about everyone, as far as Lily could tell. She doubted very much that the freckled girl with slumped posture who stood about a whisper over 5 feet had anything on the menace that was Rey.
Col tried to settle into his seat, his fingers tapping on the wooden table in front of
him. His fellow Bredhren, except for Tybalt, were already happily “wenching”, chatting up women who wore odd combinations of ancient garb with contemporary touches such as the war-paint that modern women wore on a daily basis.
Ye Olde Taverne had been made up to resemble a place where Conan the Barbarian would kick back a microbrew while listening to the lamentations of his enemies’ women. Some nights, they had live music, from the minstrels that wandered throughout the Faire during the day, or bawdier bands with lyrics that were decidedly less family friendly.
Miller was seated in the bar area, where there was a modern television screen overhead, although it was cleverly camouflaged as were other pieces of technology. Miller had said something about a sports event he wanted to watch, and share in the camaraderie of likeminded folk who supported his team.
The dark wooden beams, with even darker metal accents, helped add to the cozy atmosphere, and the wooden tables and chairs had the look and feel of being crafted by hand, which in fact they were.
Col leaned back against the wall. His warrior training would not tolerate him exposing his back in these types of spaces. From where he sat, he could survey any threat coming, from any direction. He was always alert, always vigilant, and trusting in his senses. Until recently.
There was more to his discomfort than just the abduction attempt the other day. As he’d walked to the tavern a little while earlier, he’d felt a strange compulsion to look at one of the buildings in the parking lot – and his eyes had met those of a woman looking through the window.
He could barely even make out her form from where he stood, with the streetlamps shining in his eyes, but suddenly, he’d felt as if he had been struck by a thunder-bolt. His heart raced, and every nerve in his body came alive.
And a most unwelcome arousal pumped through his body, taking up residence between his legs.
He shook his head, trying to distract himself from the faint worry that chewed at the edges of his consciousness. His senses had been going haywire for days now. And he’d allowed himself to be captured, by mysterious means. And now – he was strangely fixated on a woman who he’d never even met face to face.
When he’d agreed to the long sleep, he’d been warned – as they all had – that there was a chance he would wake up not in his right mind, or that his senses and powers might decay over time.
Could that be happening now?
If that were the case, he’d ensure that he died in glorious battle before he allowed himself to pose a threat to his War-Pack.
He took another huge swig of the cold ale in his glass tankard, letting the herbs and spices of the gruit settle on his tongue. It was another example of Simon’s thoughtfulness, in finding alemongers who took pride in crafting beverages that were reminiscent of an earlier time. Across the low wooden table, piled with emptied bottles and glasses courtesy of the other Bredhren and their doxies, he saw his Vixar, in conversation with Simon.
He felt pity for Simon, who had said he would have to convert his living room into something equally sturdy as the Taverne. Simon had grumbled about having learned “the hard way” that glass and chrome furniture was a bad idea around the Bredhren, but he didn’t explain.
Col wished there was an easy way to learn the ways of this New World. All around him, he saw a mixture of styles, some which looked less foreign than others, but none were exactly as they were in the time from whence he came. He was still unused to people wearing words on their clothing, as Simon did. Many in this Taverne were wearing tee shirts that proclaimed “Gardendale Medieval Faire” as if they needed the reminder as to where they were.
Aylwyn of course was charming wenches right and left with his open, jocular demeanor, and his grasp of the common language, which even Simon did not command. Although right now he was grasping parts of the two wenches seated in his lap that had little to do with speech.
Merek was already leading a wench to the back room, ready to tumble her and return with enough time to perhaps tumble two others. Barric’s rich, deep voice carried over the crowd to make a jape at Merek’s expense, something about Merek’s having forgotten how zippers worked the last time he returned from the back room.
Although that seemed only to add to Merek’s appeal to the wenches.
Tybalt was similarly attractive to the females, and some males too, who found his features pleasing, and his annoyed rejected was even more of a lure. Only the Bredhren knew his sorrow cut the deepest of all. He hid it well most of the time, but he had confessed to it once, after persistent questions about why he refused to go wenching.
He was the only one who’d met his Destine, although he never revealed her name to them. It was too painful for him to speak of. His mate, his Destine, his truest love was but dust now, lost to all the centuries that had passed while the last Waryeors slumbered.
Col finished the dregs that lined the sides of the tankard, and set it down on the table with a crash. Simon looked at him and winced.
Col had apparently failed to act “modern” again, although he failed to see how.
“Another, Brohder?” Tybalt’s glass was similarly drained. Col didn’t even have to answer him; one of the serving wenches appeared with fresh tankards, filled to the brim. The sides were still cold to the touch as the two took their drinks.
“Penny for your thoughts, big guy?” A cloud of strong perfume hit his faculties, chasing away the subtle notes of the ale. The soft form of a woman slid in the seat beside him, pushing up into the space between him and the wall.
He looked at her, and was struck by a surge of disappointment. She was attractive, perhaps even beautiful. But the energy rolling off of her felt all wrong to him. Her eyes were not those that held his so magickally through the glass, across the grounds. Her body…did not cause his body to seek union, even though he had been assailed with its urges earlier.
And although he did not quite comprehend her strange words, he did recognize that she was offering an exchange of some sort, with coinage involved. She had an eager, expectant look on her face. He remembered the polite phrase he had been taught.
“No thanks.”
She recoiled as if he had blasphemed, and called him a body part that was also one of Barric’s first and oft-used words in this new language. Col took no offense; her ire at being denied commerce in sexual service was understandable, as the other wenches were supplying his Bredhren for free. A penny, of course, was very small coin indeed; perhaps she held herself in low value.
She left his side hastily, in a cloud of cloying fragrance and even heavier resentment.
Simon was staring right at him, his brows knitted with puzzlement. Col shrugged. He felt like wenching before, and now he didn’t. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The woman whose eyes he’d met earlier…of course, that was madness. He couldn’t even say what she looked like. Could she have been?
No. There were none of them left. And yet, the way she inflamed his senses with but a mere glance…
Perhaps his brows knitted with puzzlement, also.
Just as Simon opened his mouth to speak, he too was beset by a wench, also drenched in a fragrance that aggressively filled the air and invaded the nostrils. “Hey sugar, I hear you’re the one to get to know. Are those your cars, out there? Those are some fancy cars. How much did they cost?”
Simon’s face flushed, and his lower jaw weakly flapped up and down, much as a fish landed on a water-less place, as the wench pressed into the space in between him and Tybalt. The Vixar lifted his eyebrows, and slid to make more room, as he continued drinking his new ale.
The wench took Simon’s lack of speech as encouragement, as she began a stream of patter that Col could not follow. Simon looked at Col, his eyes wide and beseeching.
Col knew of Simon’s incapacitation around most attractive women, where his tongue refused to work, and the very air around the male seemed to thicken and hold him still. Col could not sit by and watch him act the small animal, frozen in fear as a large predator picked at him.
And so he helped.
“Waste not your breath, he is unwilling and not in need of your services. ‘Twould be a better use of your efforts to ply your trade elsewhere.”
“Ply my trade—wait, are you calling me a hooker?” The woman leapt to her feet in indignation, her ample bosom heaving in the shelf formed by her tight corset. Around them there was a sudden hush, and then the woman’s hand swung to where Tybalt had set down his glass, snatched it up and hurled its contents at Col’s face.
He dodged it reflexively, although some of the liquid splashed back from the wall and hit him as he instantaneously rose to his feet, adrenaline surging in his 6’6 body as the correct response to an attack.
But absolutely the wrong response here, as the woman’s eyes widened with fright and she quickly freed herself from Simon’s side.
She screamed a curse at him as she scurried away, to much laughter and the shouts of “You tell him, girl!” and “Striiiiike out!” The Taverne came back to life again, as everyone resumed what they had been doing before interrupted by the little show.
Col sat back down, and Simon regained his voice enough to mutter his thanks.
“You are welcome,” Col replied. “Although I am perplexed as to why she would say I fornicate with my mother.”
Simon had a tight smile. “Miller will explain it to you later.”
Tybalt laughed. “No need. It is a popular phrase that is one of Barric’s favorites.”
Col and Simon both snorted. Barric had many favorite phrases, none of which were to be taken literally, and in some cases quite impossible even for the most gifted in flexibility.
“But I am surprised that this is not a concern of yours,” Simon said, now that a companionable mood had been reestablished.
“What is?” Tybalt took a replacement glass of ale from an ever-vigilant serving wench.
Simon blushed, stumbling over the word. “Fornication.”
Col raised an eyebrow.
Simon cleared his throat. “Make the beast with two backs. Tumble. Swive. Make Love. Do the Nasty.”
“You mean have sex?”
Col: His Destined Mate Page 6