by Jaime Samms
“Okay, then.” Sunny smoothed his palm over Emile’s leg. “If I go too fast, just say so, okay?”
Emile almost shifted to nudge Sunny’s hand higher on his thigh when the lurch of the vehicle picking up speed caught his attention. The auto—Sunny had been talking about the auto going too fast. He gulped and nodded.
“Need this just for one sec,” Sunny said, lifting his hand. “Have to shift gears.” He moved the stick again, did something with the pedals under his feet, then settled his hand back on Emile. “Okay?”
Any more okay, and Emile’s cock would be answering for him. He bit his lip and nodded.
“Okay.” Sunny squeezed his leg. “We got this.”
The vehicle slowly but surely picked up speed again, but Sunny only let go of Emile long enough to occasionally shift gears. Each time he replaced it, another snaking coil of his warmth nestled into the knot of Emile’s magic, intertwining and tangling until Emile couldn’t quite tell which was which.
It should have felt alien and unsettling, but Sunny’s sweet attention soon became an integral extension of Emile’s own awareness, part of him, inextricable.
It was entirely too soothing for the path to disaster he knew it was.
SUNNY’S ENTHUSIASM for the trip into the city ratcheted up tenfold with the prospect of Emile’s company. Schoolboy nerves rioted in his gut at the thought of nearly an hour in the close quarters of the Land Rover with him, but they had barely left the secure clearing of the yard when Emile’s nervous tension began ricocheting around the cab.
Sunny made every attempt to ease Emile’s worries. He figured it was natural for his new friend to be scared of the car’s speed if he had lived as sheltered a life as Sunny suspected. He acted like he had no idea what to make of most modern conveniences.
The thought of a grown man not being used to cars or the overwhelming amounts of technology Sunny took for granted gave him pause. Was he ready to take on that kind of learning curve?
One look at Emile’s fascinated expression as he gazed at the trees flashing past made him sigh. He’d been so happy with his little hut in the woods, far from all the people. He should leave Emile in the city once they’d made it that far.
Emile shifted, curling his toes under and chewing on his lower lip. Part fascinated kid, part mystery, part irresistible, magnetic man. All of everything Sunny tried to stay away from.
Shit. You’re in deep already, Sunshine Rainbow. Don’t kid yourself. You’re keeping this one.
The thought was a giddy one, and he gulped down a sudden overflow of anxiety.
“You’re nervous.” Emile instantly fixed on him, intent, demanding a reply with his steady gaze. His brilliant eyes reflected shards of sunlight that sparkled through the cab, brightening the already glaring day with slivers of blue and aqua and diamond brightness.
“No. I’m fine.” Sunny gripped the wheel a bit tighter, blinking Emile’s glitter out of his eyes. He twisted his palms against the neon pink, faux-fur steering wheel cover his mother had given him with the car a lifetime ago.
“Do your people think you’re a good liar?” Emile asked. His tone was so mild Sunny almost didn’t catch the slight tinge of accusation in it.
“What? No, I—”
Dude, seriously. You couldn’t lie your way out of a half-made bed. Something Daisy told him often. Though Sunny still didn’t think it actually made any sense, it did make him smile.
“No,” he conceded. “Daisychain just laughs at me when I don’t tell her the truth. I can never fool her about anything.”
“So what’s wrong?”
“Your accent,” Sunny blurted, cocking his head and completely sidestepping the question with one of his own. The there-and-gone-again nature of Emile’s accent was a red flag Sunny had tried to ignore, but it popped into his head, as good a way to change the subject as any.
“My what?”
“Accent. You had an accent when I first met you. In the shack. What happened to your accent?”
“You… caught me half-asleep,” Emile said, face flushing pink—again—sweeping in under Sunny’s guard to turn his heart over. “It comes out more when I’m tired, I guess?”
“Who’s lying now?” Sunny shot him half an ironic glance, though he didn’t take the other half of his gaze off the road. They were almost to the edge of his property. Traffic would pick up along the highway he’d soon be turning onto. He glanced in the rear-view. Nothing to see but dust pluming out behind them.
Before Emile could reply, something dark and fast charged out onto the road.
Sunny slammed a foot on the brake and swung the wheel hard to the right. “Hang on!” A shadow of ink and smoke roiled in the wake of whatever had crossed their path, but it blew off and over the hood and windshield and was gone. The Land Rover came to rest nose-first in the shallow ditch. Sunny’s knuckles ached with his hard grip on the wheel, and he felt the sharp pressure of the seat belt against his chest. Pink fuzz poked out between his fingers, and he stared at it, heart clogging his airways as it frantically tried to pound its way up and out.
“You okay?” he asked when he got his breath back. He turned to Emile.
The empty passenger seat gaped at him. Emile’s door hung open. His seat belt clinked lightly against the frame as it swayed, caught from retracting into its slot by the plastic clip Daisy used to keep it short enough for her.
Fernforest whimpered against the side of the truck, where he was wedged between the metal and a wooden box of snow cleats and other emergency items.
“Ferny!” Scrambling with his own belt, Sunny fumbled out of the car and ran around to free the dog. No sooner had he shifted the box than Fernforest barged past him and across the road to where the trees swayed and fluttered, the only evidence that something had entered the forest ahead of him.
“Ferny!” Sunny raced after him, then remembered he hadn’t been alone. “Emile.” He scuttled back, but there was no sign of Emile inside the vehicle or out. “Emile?” He spun, his flip-flops making a squishing scrape on the hardpack. “The hell?”
The afternoon glared down, warming his back under the dark T-shit he wore. As he stood there, grasshoppers took up their high-pitched song once more.
Across the road, deeper in the bush, a loud cracking sounded, and Sunny jumped. A crow complained as it flapped up into the blue. Black feathers glinted with an unnaturally vibrant shimmer, gliding sunlight off his back like water.
Farther away, Fernforest barked, the alarm edged with frantic anger.
Sunny ran for the sound, crashing through the underbrush, losing both useless shoes after the first few steps. His feet hit every sharp rock and twisted tree root in his path, but he didn’t slow down. “Fernforest. Where the hell are you?”
Keep him out of trouble for me, huh, Sunshine? In his memory, his mother’s smile was as bright and open as the cloudless sky. You know how he is. You have to keep your eye on this one.
“Fernforest!”
A tree branch took a wicked swing at his face. Sunny had to close his eyes, batting at it to protect himself. A sharp twig dragged across his palm, and he swore. “Stupid dog.” He ploughed ahead, scrubbing the back of his hand across damp eyes. Trees careened past him, branches reaching for his clothes and dragging sharp spines over the skin of his forearms. Trunks knocked into his shoulders like they’d leaned into his path on purpose. Dodging around the huge bole of an ancient white pine, he called after the dog again.
The tree threw up a knobby, razor-barked root to catch his foot, and he pitched forward. And landed smack in Emile’s arms.
“Ungh.” Sunny grunted. “The hell?” He tried to push past, but Emile grabbed him and hung on.
“Stop.” Emile gripped both his arms. “Sunny, stop. You are panicking.”
“I’m looking for my dog.” Sunny struggled to get free, but Emile pulled him close.
“You are going to get hurt. Take a breath.”
The strength of the arms folded around his back took
Sunny by surprise. Against his first inclination, he relaxed, leaning into Emile’s chest. The ironclad hold grounded him. Some of the panic soaked into Emile’s calm, and Sunny breathed in the forest-and-sunshine smell of Emile. “Where’s Ferny?”
The slap-slap of Fernforest’s tail against his leg answered his question. Sunny glared down at him. “You’re an idiot,” he told the animal, sniffling up the residue of his panic and blinking back an unexpected sting. “Since when do you take off into a forest you don’t know?”
“Be kind.” Emile stroked a single finger over Sunny’s chin, drawing Sunny’s attention back to him. For an instant all Sunny could see were the brilliant gems of his eyes and the lush promise of his lips as they curled into a smile. “Everyone is okay now. Breathe.”
Sunny hadn’t realised he was holding his breath. He let it out in a huff and jerked his chin free of the tantalising touch. “Right.” The loss of the skin-to-skin contact ripped a strip of raw nerves into him, and he gasped.
Fernforest yipped, distracting him from that sting to look down. The dog sniffed his toes. Blood oozed between them, and Sunny winced. “That sucks.”
“Come on.” Emile turned him forcibly from the deeper woods back towards the road.
“Never mind the dog. What are you doing running off into the woods?” Sunny asked, limping along at his side as they slowly made their way back.
“I went after Fernforest, of course.”
Of course. He liked the dog. He would do that. There was something wrong with the explanation, but the fog of panic and the overwhelming crush of relief at finding the dog unharmed made it difficult to pinpoint the discrepancy. Then Emile brushed fingers down his arm, chasing goosebumps and a strong shiver, and Sunny let it go.
“The forest has damaged you.” He touched a scrape on Sunny’s palm and another on his shoulder, making Sunny wince.
All at once, all the little indignities the trees had inflicted on him began to burn with sweat and dirt. Sunny glanced down at his feet, and the throb of them was by far the worst of it. “You got better at running in flip-flops than me, I guess.”
But Emile’s feet were also bare. Only he wasn’t bleeding or limping. His feet were filthy—not actually all that unusual for him—but unscathed.
“Come.” Emile took his hand. “Let’s go back and see what damage you’ve done to yourself.” They headed back down what now appeared to be a mostly grassy path leading towards the road. Too bad Sunny hadn’t found this nicely carpeted thoroughfare on his way into the forest.
“What even was that?” he asked finally as they were nearing the thinning edge of the trees and he needed something to distract from his aching feet. “Did you see it? It was huge. And the—I don’t know, dust? Or smoke?”
Emile shook his head. “It must have been a bear.”
“No bear moves that fast.”
“They are faster than you might think.”
“Not Speedy Gonzales fast.”
“Speedy Gone-what?”
“Never mind.” They had made it to the side of the road, and Sunny eyed the hot, stony gravel. The edge, soft and torturous with sharply cut grey scrabble, only led to the more packed brown hardtop, which itself was littered with tiny abrasive stones.
“Let me.”
Before Sunny could utter a breath of protest, Emile had scooped him up as if he weighed nothing and carried him across the road like a child. He stopped next to the Land Rover, and Sunny climbed awkwardly from his arms to the truck’s slightly inclined bed.
Emile knelt in the dust, gripped one of Sunny’s ankles, and lifted his foot. “Let me look.”
His fingers, hot pinpricks on Sunny’s already burning feet, sent a bristling sensation spiking up along his nerve endings. Sunny tried to pull his foot free, but Emile’s grip was iron.
“Stop,” Sunny whispered. Tendrils of fire trickled up his leg as Emile poked and prodded.
“Be still so I can get the grit out.” Emile sounded so different. So hard.
Sunny’s dick muddled with that a moment, stiffening when Emile glanced up through his lashes to offer a brief, stern smile.
“Please,” Emile amended. “Let me help.”
“It’s fine.” Sunny drew his knees slightly together and tugged again at his caught leg. God. If Emile noticed….
“You’re bleeding.”
“A few cuts. No biggie.”
“You need your feet to drive, yes?”
“Of course.”
“So let me.”
Sunny subsided and relaxed the tension in his leg. “There’s a case of water bottles and some clean rags in the box in the back of the truck,” he offered after a moment.
“Good.” Emile finally released him and stood. “You will stay put. I’ll get what we need.”
He stared after Emile, his cock twitching at the tone, and he stayed put until Emile came back.
“Very good,” Emile murmured as he knelt once more. “Now let’s see what we have.”
It didn’t take more than fifteen minutes for Emile to clean and plaster up his feet. Then, while he poured more water into a bowl Sunny kept there for Fernforest, Sunny rooted through the box of odds and ends and found a set of mismatched flip-flops—one orange and one lime green with pink hibiscus all over it—and then they were on the road again.
“We’re going back?” Emile glanced behind them at the stretch of road leading around the bend they hadn’t taken.
Sunny’s reply was a shrug. “Maybe tomorrow” was all he said. The need to visit his sister had vanished, the desire to keep Emile close and under the cover of the forest’s protection imperative.
Chapter 20
EMILE’S MAGIC simmered. He held it with an iron will just below the surface. Having a handle on it now meant it couldn’t sneak up on him, but it was funny how fear and adrenaline worked sometimes. Or maybe it was the anger. He had been hard-pressed not to show the anger at Sunny’s injuries.
He wasn’t sure he had completely succeeded, given Sunny’s meek acquiescence, which had been out of character enough for Emile to notice. And now they had turned for home.
While he was glad they were headed back to their—to Sunny’s—little clearing, he was also disappointed. He would have liked to see more of this world, to discover how his magic reacted in environments more human and less nature. The prospect both interested and worried him. He would have to figure it out sooner rather than later. Much as he would love to stay on Sunny’s little farm forever, that wasn’t practical.
Something in the woods was making that abundantly clear.
It hadn’t been a bear or a cougar or a moose dashing across the road in front of their auto. It had been a creature that had no business on this side of the Fold.
Of course, he couldn’t very well tell Sunny they had just witnessed the mad dash of a runaway salamander. The creatures were wildly reckless distant cousins to his own kind. They could loosely be equated to mountain apes in relation to humans, only salamanders were nowhere near as socially sophisticated as apes, or as mildly mannered. And ones that large were not the wild variety that populated his home forests. No. That salamander came from the old groves where they had once been purposefully created and reared for size and strength, both physical and magical. The groves were no longer used by dragons for their original purpose, but the trees and dryads that inhabited them remained, and the salamanders created there were not the timidly wild creatures of the deep forests.
While they never set out to hurt anything or damage property, they still managed to wreak havoc wherever they went. Emile had tried to catch up to this one, even allowing his magic to pull his feet to scale and claw to increase his speed, but the thing was damn fast. There was no way he could catch it in his skin, on only two feet. He needed full scale and claw and maybe even wing for that.
It worried him to find such a creature here. Most wild beings would shy away from that much unpredictable power, and salamanders especially would prefer to stay away from th
e strong magic energy of the Fold. It was one huge wall of fluctuating power wild salamanders—even a big one descended from those long ago released from domestication—would stay well away from.
Oddly, once in this world, the creature had seemed to bump up against the edge of the wood and careen back in a number of times like it was somehow confined to the old-growth stand. That was something, at least, though again, Emile wasn’t sure exactly what it was, beyond odd.
He could only hope that soon enough the creature would run itself out and curl into a pocket of smog and dust to rest. That would take a few days. Emile might find time to sneak off and hunt it down. If he could catch it resting, he could bridle it. If he could bridle it, he could control it, young as it was, and it wouldn’t cause any more damage or alarm.
He dreaded what might become of a salamander on its own here, where there was no chance for it to find another of its kind and slim chance for it to find a grove of dryads to feed it the flux it required to survive. It would be terrified and all the more dangerous.
“You’re quiet,” Sunny said.
Emile had been watching out the window, but he turned to Sunny now. “I was thinking.”
“About?”
“Wondering about your city.” Not a complete lie, anyway. That had been the thrust of his thoughts before the trip had been cut short. He wasn’t sure there was a good way to explain salamanders and dryads to a human, so he didn’t try. “I grew up isolated from a lot of people.”
“You’ve never been in a city?”
Emile shook his head. The concept of cities the way Sunny knew cities—the way he understood human cities from his scant research—wasn’t the same as communal living on the other side of the Fold.
“Lucky. By the time we came along, Mom and Dad had an apartment in the city. They stayed there all week. We only got to go out to the farm on weekends. They had to be near the office, and they wanted us close. Even though we were homeschooled, there was no hanging with the gramps even while Mom and Dad were at work. We went into the office with them and learned while they worked.”