by Amie Gibbons
I shoved my hands forward like I was pushing him. Like he was right in front of me.
And my hands plunged through a hole in the universe.
A hand grabbed mine.
And pulled.
I went through the hole, and it felt like being pulled through jelly more than anything else.
And then I was staring up into the heartbreaking face I’d only seen in dreams since last November.
“Sorry, lea,” Carvi said. “I should’ve realized you’d be angry with me. But at least the emotion broke through the dimensions.”
I sobbed without sound, threw my arms around his neck and jumped up, wrapping my legs around him and resting my forehead against his, hugging him with my whole body.
Chapter TWELVE
Carvi hugged me back, then pulled me off him like removing a barnacle.
I never wanted to let him go.
But I put my feet on the ground and stepped back.
“Lea, what the fuck happened? Where were you?”
He wasn’t tall for a guy, maybe five nine, but he made up for it in sheer force of will. He had broad shoulders and strong features. Wide, square chin, high cheekbones, sharp Roman nose, and hard gold eyes.
His hair was a dark blue last time I saw him and now it was died dark purple.
He stared me in the eyes and I stared back.
“Lea?” he said after a moment.
Oh, right!
I opened my mouth and nothin’ came out.
Oh… right.
Crap on a cracker!
“They took my voice,” I thought at him, and he blinked.
“Who?” he asked.
“The Fae.”
“Fae!” His face took on that dark cast that always made my stomach flip, cuz it either meant sex or pain was about to follow.
Or, knowing Carvi, both.
“Didn’t you get AB’s message?” I asked. “She said she explained it all to you. And was asking for your help.”
“Message? What fucking message? No! I, Ariana…”
He ground his teeth, lookin’ for all the world like he wanted to yank answers straight from my brain cuz he’d just run outta patience, and I gulped, taking a step back.
I didn’t exactly trust Carvi when he got like this.
And we hadn’t spoken in months.
So it wasn’t like I could count on his feelings for me keeping him in line.
“How did you know I was in trouble?” I asked, mental voice as calm as a pond in spring.
“Pyro told me. He said he couldn’t sense you anymore. I’ve been trying to reach you for hours now.”
My mouth fell open.
“Tell me what happened.” He stepped forward, grabbing my arms. “Or I’m going to take a dive in your brain.”
“Might be faster,” I said, staring into his eyes. “And you’ll see what happened, instead of me telling, which might help, cuz I’m not sure of everything I saw. But make it fast. AB and Ed are still there. And Grant! I still can’t find Grant. I mean psychically. I guess I could try now, but-”
Carvi kissed me hard, shutting even my mental talk up.
I kissed him back, sighing in my head as I jumped back up on him and he held my butt as we kissed like…
Well, like we hadn’t seen each other in months.
I opened my eyes in the astral plane, in the lobby of Carvi’s hotel down in Miami.
Or at least one of them.
He owned quite a few.
But this was the lobby I’d been to a few times in my mind. It was the hotel he called home.
Carvi let me go in here, but I still felt him in the real world, and like he’d hit play, the scene started playing in front of us on a room sized screen in the lobby.
It was on fast forward.
At least, that’s how it looked to me.
Carvi seemed to be able to get everything though.
And the adventure spun out pretty fast.
He turned to me a few times, giving me a look like he wanted to murder me.
And when it was over, he didn’t say anything, just took my arm.
I opened my eyes in the real world, taking my lips off his.
“You idiot!” he growled in my face, grabbing a fistful of my hair and staring me in the eyes. “You don’t go off into Fairy without me… No, actually, you don’t go off into Fairy at all. Ever! You got that?”
I gaped at him.
“You… I’m so mad at you I can’t even think. We have to rescue AB.”
I nodded my agreement at that.
“I’m going to kill you after all this,” Carvi said. “I’m going to fuck you hard. Then I’m going to kill you.”
I was speechless…
Like, more than I was before, I mean.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Carvi said. “It’s only been a few minutes. But Fairy time can jump. We… how do we get back over there? You’ll be depleted.”
“Where are we?” I asked, finally looking around.
It was a hotel room. A nice one, with paintings on the wall that said it was one of Carvi’s high class hotels since he didn’t like generic ones with the same décor in every room.
“One of my hotels in Murfreesboro,” Carvi said.
Just southeast of Nashville, near the small airport Carvi liked to use when he flew in.
“How did you get up here?”
“My fucking jet. Pyro said he couldn’t sense you when he looked after he got home for the night, and couldn’t find you, and nobody you were with was answering their phones. He said he flew out to your conference, but by then the place was closed. Shit, got to call the carpet.”
He grabbed my hips and put me on the ground.
“What time is it here?” I asked as he pulled out his phone.
How long had passed in Fairy?
“It’s about four in the morning,” Carvi said, hitting a button on his phone. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours while I flew, then about an hour here, but I didn’t get through until right then.”
“Probably cuz that’s when I was trying to break out,” I thought at him.
He nodded once before clearing his throat. “Pyro, I have her. She was in Fairy. We’re at the room. I’ll open the window. Tap buttons for minutes of ETA.”
Pyro must’ve, cuz Carvi nodded. “See you in three.” And he hung up.
The look he gave me as he put his phone on the kitchenette’s counter made me back up.
And it wasn’t even like I could scream while he did whatever that look promised.
I kinda wanted to jump him and make the most of those few minutes.
Carvi met my eyes with heat and I nodded, licking my lips.
“Do not give me that look, lea,” he said in a low voice. “It is taking all of my self-control not to throw you down on the table and fuck the stupid right out of you.”
My mouth fell open and I glared at him.
“Oh, yeah, that was fucking stupid!” he yelled, grabbing my arms and shaking me. “You not only went into Fairy without an army of backup for some dumb mission, you took AB with you! A mortal! You not only put one woman I care about in danger, you put two! And neither of you are equipped to protect yourselves. Not there. And you should’ve known that!”
He shoved me back.
“But I didn’t know that!” I yelled mentally, stabbing a finger up at him. “I didn’t know cuz my teacher abandoned me!
“You fucking asshole!
And I couldn’t stop. After everything I’d been through tonight, this was the last straw. The dam broke, and I was ready to pour it all over him.
“You don’t get to comment on how stupid it was! You don’t get to say anything about me doing somethin’ stupid, cuz you’re the one who was supposed to teach me not to do stuff like that. You know I don’t know what I’m doing in this world, you were supposed to be teaching me cuz I’m a baby in the magical world, and you just left me to figure it out!
“So no! Fuck you! You don’t get to say any
thing about me, what I did, how stupid I was, or whatever.
“You abandoned me!
“You say you care? Yeah right! You don’t leave people you care about. And you don’t get to say anything about me bein’ stupid and how I should’ve known, cuz the person who swore he wouldn’t ever leave me, left me!”
I burst into tears, bending over and wrapping my arms around myself.
I’d been fighting calling him up and screaming exactly that for over ten months.
And there was no taking it back now.
I half expected him to wrap his arms around me.
Or to say something nasty.
But the next sensation to break through my cocoon of self-pity was a warm cloth wrapping around me.
Pyro swaddled me as tight as I’d hugged AB in the bathroom… whenever that was cuz I honestly had no sense of time right now.
Pyro let me go and I stumbled outta his embrace and smiled at him.
He slapped me across the face with a tassel.
It wasn’t hard enough for the ropes to really sting, surprised me more than anything.
If he had eyes, they’d be flashing as he thrust his phone at me.
I took it with a gulp.
And my mouth fell open as I read it.
“How dare you go into Fairy without me! Next time, you call me. I don’t care if I’m not up yet, you wait for me. You got that, young lady? You do not do that ever again. I’m your carpet. You’re my person. It’s my job to protect you, and you left me wandering around for hours thinking everything was perfectly fine! I finally checked for you when I went home and you weren’t there. I knew you weren’t at Quil’s since he’s out of town. I seriously thought you were dead in a ditch or something. You don’t do that! You call me next time. Got it?”
Now, you may have been scolded by a woman in your life. You may have even been scolded by a Southern one. But you have not been scolded until you’ve been taken to task by a flying carpet who’s imprinted on a Southern woman.
And wow, that was a lot, he’d probably been typing this while he flew over.
“You know you shouldn’t text and fly, right?” I said before I remembered I couldn’t.
“Sorry, baby,” I typed, holding it up for him to see.
He looked in his eyeless way between me and Carvi.
“The Fae stole her voice so she couldn’t enchant them with song,” Carvi said, waving a cigarette before taking a deep puff. “Fucking Fae.”
“I did call you,” I typed and held it up.
Pyro shook his top third like a head.
“And you said AB called me?” Carvi asked, smoke puffing outta his mouth.
It vanished, same as the smoke coming from the cigarette.
Huh. No wonder I wasn’t smelling it.
I nodded, handing Pyro’s phone back to my carpet.
Where in the blazes was my phone?
With the rest of the stuff the Fae had taken off of us, probably.
“Must’ve been a spell to make it seem like the call went out and just went to voicemail,” Carvi said. “Not too hard to do.”
My mouth worked, and he nodded with a shrug.
“How do we get back there?” I asked mentally.
Could Pyro hear me like this?
“You can rip back in,” Carvi said with another drag. “That’s not the problem.”
“What is?”
“Getting in without you losing too much energy. Getting AB. Finding Grant, if he’s alive.”
“He’s alive!”
I surprised myself with the viciousness in my mental tone.
Carvi looked at me and I crossed my arms.
Pyro typed and held it up.
“You talking mentally?” I read.
I nodded.
“Guess he can’t hear me?” I asked Carvi.
Carvi shook his head. “No, your brains are too different. It’d be like you mental speaking to any other species, like demons or Fae.”
“I was talking to the Fae queen like this.”
Carvi’s smooth mask slipped, and shock shone in those amazing gold eyes before the humanity clamped off, blank arrogance slamming shut over his real expression like a pair of French doors as he took another drag and threw the cigarette to the ground, stomping it out.
“I shouldn’t be able to?”
“Not unless she’s part human.”
I shrugged. “Must be, then.”
Maybe that’s why the others couldn’t hear me!
“A queen who’s part human?” Carvi asked. “Not sure I can believe that. Unless…”
I blinked at him, finally snapping, “Unless what?”
“Oh, unless she’s hiding that she’s part human. Like if her father isn’t whoever they think he is, and he was human. That’s not something any Fae royal would let get out.”
“Could be why she was freaked when I was talking to her mentally,” I said. “Could be leverage. But we still gotta get back. You got any potions to boost powers?”
Carvi’s arrogance grew like a bubble around him.
“I’m made of it. And I built up on the way here. I was fucking most of the time I was calling for you, to boost the power. They’re in the other room. I had them leave when I finally made contact.”
I blushed.
Hard.
Carvi’s tastes were wide and varied, and he had no problems with full on orgies.
In fact, he’d been the cause of a few of them over the time I’d known him.
“So you can take some power from me, lea,” he said. “And then we’ll go in and rescue our people.”
He grabbed my hips, pulling me into him hard, staring into my eyes.
My stomach lurched.
My emotions had been through the ringer so bad they’d basically shut down.
But now, at least one was rearing and ready to go.
“Pyro, could you give us some privacy?” Carvi asked.
His attention being divided was enough for me to break my eyes away and turn my head to look at my carpet.
Pyro crossed his tassels and stared at Carvi.
Again, don’t ask me how an eyeless carpet can stare, he just does.
“Don’t worry,” Carvi said. “We don’t have time for that. I’m just going to give her some blood. But it is intimate, as you know.”
I swear I heard Pyro sigh as he flew out the window.
Probably as grossed out as I’d be if my Mama was about to do something dirty.
I mean, she had five of us. I know my parents obviously do stuff.
But nobody wants to think of their parents that way.
Carvi pulled me in, kissing me as hard as he’d yelled, anger clear in the way he grabbed onto me.
I’d have bruises on my hips later, and I didn’t care.
I opened my mouth and kissed him back, and he scooped me up, turning and dropping me on the little dining table, pushing me back so I was lying flat with my legs hanging off.
“Carvi!” I yelped as he unbuttoned my shorts. “You just said…”
Right. He couldn’t hear me.
“Carvi!” I yelled mentally. He pulled off my shorts and panties in one movement and grabbed my leg, putting it up on his shoulder before leaning over.
Givin’ me a nice stretch.
“Bite me, lea,” he said.
Rubbing the hardness under his soft slacks against my nub.
We had friends in serious trouble.
So he knew we didn’t have time for anything.
But he’d get power from sexual activity with me.
Though whether the activity itself created power or it was drawn outta who he was with was still a little fuzzy to me.
“Bite me, now!” Carvi commanded, rubbing harder into me and lowering his neck.
He was keeping his clothes on so this was safe.
As safe as Carvi ever got.
I bit into his neck, hard as I could with human teeth.
Carvi grunted, squeezing my thigh hard enough to m
ake me gasp with pain.
Which just made him grab harder.
I worked my teeth, digging them in, putting all the pain and frustration and fear of the night into him.
And broke skin.
Carvi screamed and I sucked as hard as I could, pulling as much of him into me as I could, power flowing through me.
Carvi pinned my free hand down as my other held his head against my mouth.
I heard his pants unzip and couldn’t even object as he pressed against my opening.
All the buildup back then.
Never quite crossing the line into real sex in the real world.
All this time not seeing each other.
This wasn’t supposed to be how we finally made love.
Or any other way you wanted to say it.
But I’d missed him.
And I needed this.
Needed the release.
I sucked on his neck harder, biting into the wound.
“Fuck me,” I said mentally, grabbing his member with my mind and pushing it against me.
“Not. Enough. Time,” he grunted, letting my hand go to grab himself.
He put his penis against my clit and vibrated it, letting my leg go so he could slide fingers into me.
He was fast and rough, and I came, tossing my head back off of him with a gasp.
It was too fast, and not nearly enough.
I needed more.
After everything, I needed to really feel him.
Be held. Have him inside me. Have him take me.
He gulped and stared me in the eyes.
The mental battle clear.
“Carvi, I need it,” I thought. “Fuck me fast and hard. You have to get off anyway. It’ll be just as fast inside me as out.”
But the Fae said…
Excitement shot through Carvi, making him harder.
If that was even possible.
And it was like a dose of cold water.
Cuz he knew.
Read it outta my mind, since I was so open to him right now.
His eyes flashed and he was on top of me in a flash, tearing my cheap tee-shirt as he yanked it over my head.
The bra went next, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t gonna be wearin’ it again either.
He grabbed my breast and kissed me hard.
Then dragged me to the edge of the table, putting my feet up on his shoulders and staring in my eyes.
“I’m not ready to be a mom,” I said.