Linus at Large

by Mary E. Twomey

  “If things were different, I might let you.” Tears wet my lashes, leaving pinprick marks of my swollen heart on his cheeks as we kissed. The emotion was too much, the air too thick with things I never let myself think about, lest Jamie catch me in my indiscretion.

  But Jamie wasn’t watching anymore.

  My back arched as my body responded to his, thrilling at finally being alone with Foss, which I’d never fully been able to revel in. Jamie wasn’t big-brothering me over my shoulder anymore, so I was free to be as honest and depraved as I wished. I met Foss’s depravity inch for luscious inch, regretting and wanting in equal measure.

  Foss growled against my lips, kissing me harder and holding me tighter. He dragged his face to my cheek, almost biting the skin as he spoke through gritted teeth. “Then ask Jens to retire. Send him away! Stay in my kingdom. Stay with me.” He kissed me again, and this time I could taste his tears. “Lucy, will you be my wife?”

  At this, I broke, my composure a lost prayer I couldn’t remember the words to. There were a lot of things being with Foss made me forget, and a million ways I felt impossibly lost in his arms. “You know I can’t!” The kissing came to a slow halt as I sobbed in his arms. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I love you, but I can’t. I belong with Jens! I took it too far. I let it all…” I shook my head, disgusted with myself. “You don’t deserve this, me being with you, but not. I love you, and I’m treating you like crap!”

  Foss buried his face in my neck, permitting a few silent emotions to choke him before he steadied himself. He nodded into my skin before pulling back to look at me. He drew in a cleansing breath that elevated his shoulders as he pressed his lips to mine, and then to my forehead as he hugged me. He tucked my head under his chin and dragged his fingers up and down my back in a slow tease meant to calm and stimulate simultaneously. “I never asked the first time, I just told you we were married. But this time I asked. Even though you said no, I feel a little lighter.” He let out a humorless laugh through his nose. “I can’t believe I actually did it. I’ve been working my way up to that for a while.” He tugged down the sleeve of my dress and caressed my naked shoulder with his parted lips, setting every part of me on fire. “Can you picture it? I can. I’ve longed for it every day since our first kiss.” I shivered as he spoke into my shoulder, arching my back and closing my eyes as his touch swept over my body. “You would stay in Fossegrim, help me handle the people as the island shifts while the curse lifts.”

  My tears fell onto his shirt, and for one unforgiveable minute, I allowed myself to consider what life would be if I said yes. “We’d rebuild your house and go on long walks together through the orchards.”

  “The people would call you Tribeswoman, and I’d call you my wife.”

  I shook my head, tracing my finger down the smear of stars he’d stolen from me. They made him look dangerous in that impossibly sexy way I tried not to be too entranced by. “We would argue and make up too many times. We’d butt heads, Foss.”

  Foss jerked my skirt up, revealing my whole leg to the orchard in all of its scandal. He cupped the skin on the underside of my thigh beneath the folds of my dress and traced up toward the land of no return. “We’d make love.” He pulled at one of the stays at my back, loosening my dress ever so slightly as he pressed his lips to my neck. “Let me make love to you. Right here, Lucy. Right now.” Then he ripped my dress open in the back, breathing heavily as the decision rocked back and forth between us like the ship we would surely sink on.

  I shivered against him as his fingers stroked down my very naked spine, knowing that of all our explosions, that would be our biggest one.

  But it couldn’t happen. None of it could. As lost as I was in this moment, it was only a moment. Foss was my moment, not my lifetime.

  Foss needed his kingdom secured for more than a moment. He needed the cure if he was to have at least half the things he wanted. He wanted to rule. That, I could give him. My wedding vows, I could not.

  I didn’t have it in me to examine the irony that when Foss finally offered me a choice in our relationship, I was taking away his. He’d chosen not to take the cure, and like a true Tribeswoman, I ignored his right to a vote and barreled through with my own version of justice wrapped up in a totalitarian rule, taking the spoils of war as Foss’s hands made me feel like a queen.

  His unfocused gaze was buried in my neck, so he did not notice when my fingers dipped in the glass again and dragged the Gar to my lips. I brought his face to mine and kissed him again, letting him taste his favorite drink on me.

  His intake of breath told me the jig was up. He touched his lips as he ripped his face from mine. “You… But I said…”

  I moved my head down to his chest, but he surprised me by dumping my body off his and onto the grass in a sudden rage.

  18

  Foss’s Stupid Choice

  “What have you done?! Lucy, no!” He towered over me as I shrank on the grass beneath him. He was a gorilla in his bulk, and I was a mouse. Though we’d just been swearing love to each other moments before, I feared what he might do now that I’d been found out. I knew by watching the other men that the change was not instantaneous. There would be no immediate conscience that struck him. “It wasn’t your choice to make! It was mine, and you’re trying to take it from me!”

  “Because I love you!” I shouted, holding up my dress that was torn in the back. “Foss, please! Try to understand!”

  “This is what you want? This?” He picked up the shot glass. Then instead of drinking the rest of the cure, he threw it against the trunk of the tree, causing me to yelp. “Are you happy now? Rip my heart out, why don’t you! All that was just for this? Well, I should’ve held out, then! Who knows what you would’ve given me if I’d played my cards right. I almost worked your dress off you.”

  I recoiled as if he’d belted me, which I feared he might actually do. “I meant every word I said to you, but I wish it had all been a lie! I wish I didn’t feel what I do, and that I didn’t care if you wasted away with your precious Depravity! Why are you fighting me on this, of all things? You’re so stubborn! Don’t you see I’m trying to help you?”

  “Help me? How? By making me fall in love with you at every turn, and then forcing me to watch you with Jens? Help me by going against what I told you I didn’t want? This is your help? Well, I don’t want it! I don’t want any of it! You can take your help and march it on back to the Other Side! Go off and marry Jens, laughing all the while at the gullible Grimen you suckered into following you around both worlds like a dog!” He beat his chest with his fist as he roared. “I am not your dog! I’m no one’s dog!”

  I sobbed, one hand clutching my dress to my chest and the other gripping the grass, afraid to look up at him. “I know! I’m sorry, Foss!” And I truly was. I shouldn’t have tried to force the cure on him. I has horrible for taking away his choice in the whole thing. Turns out, I was horrible for all sorts of reasons.

  “I don’t want you to be sorry! I want you gone!”

  Despite my fear, I looked up at his face, raising myself up to my knees before him. “What?”

  I expected the rage. I expected the yelling.

  I did not expect the hand that flung out and struck me across the face. I screamed as my body banged against the nearest tree. I crumpled to the ground in a heap, knowing it was better to stay low than to get back up for more. My head swam as stars blinked in my vision.

  Foss was shouting as if he was in physical distress, though what had bashed him hard enough to make him howl, I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t the one with the violent temper. “What did you do to me?” he roared. “My hand! How did you… What magic is it? Lucy, make it stop!”

  I didn’t know what the smack he was talking about, so I ignored him. If he’d hurt his hand on my face somehow, so much the better. I let him have a pretty loud freak out by himself.

  I had a hard time focusing, and my teeth felt funny. They felt like what I would imagine chewing on power c
ords would feel like. They rang with electricity and a strange power surge I wasn’t certain of. It didn’t hurt like my stinging cheek did, but it was unsettling.

  After Foss finally calmed down from whatever bee sting or nonsense he was whining about that hurt his hand, he knelt next to me. Shaking hands lifted my face, but dropped it in the grass again, banging my chin so I bit my tongue. Something was wrong with my face. It burned and felt wet when I touched my temple. Each time I opened my eyes, the world spun, causing my stomach to roil. I felt like vomiting, but so help me, I wouldn’t degrade myself like that in front of Foss ever again.

  I’d loved him, and I’d been wrong.

  Instead of reaching for him, I grabbed onto the tree, using it to pull myself up. No sooner did I stand, than my knees buckled. I fought to hold onto consciousness as I crawled on the grass, trying to convince myself the earth was beneath me, and the sky was above, not the other way around. My teeth were still ringing, and it was hard to focus on anything else. It was messing with my balance somehow.

  The earth tilted and shifted as Foss shouted incoherent nothings at me. I put too much weight on my left arm, and fell, this time consenting to the lure of the grass as long as it would have me.

  Something was pressed to my face – a shirt. Maybe Foss’s. And then gravity gave up on me. Foss lifted my body off the ground with trembling arms, defying gravity and my wishes for him to leave me be.

  We left the orchard and walked through what was left of the crowd. “Close your eyes,” he instructed. “Let them think you’re asleep. Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.”

  I was in Foss’s arms, cuddled to his chest like a doll without a say in things. I was an idiot to think it had ever been any other way. I closed my eyes and waited for the world to stop working me over and jerking me around. I waited for life to make sense again. I waited for unconsciousness.

  I didn’t have to wait long on that last one.

  19

  The Terrifying Love of Tucker

  I awoke to the smell of sugar cookies and immediately reached out for Jens. My hands landed on a body that wasn’t the one I wanted, and definitely one I hadn’t expected to be in the bed with me.

  “Tucker?” I blinked and tried to refocus my vision, not sure how what I was seeing could actually be true. “What?”

  “In the flesh, and in the latest men’s fashion. You like the shoes?” Tucker wore his usual pressed white Oxford, fitted khaki pants, suspenders and a newer pair of shoes he displayed proudly for me. “Too nice for Undraland, but we were in a bit of a hurry.”

  “Huh? Am I dreaming?”

  “That depends. Am I often in your dreams?”

  “Get out of my bed.” I tried to sit up, but the room tilted on me. Tucker pushed me gently back down into the pillows that were propped up around me. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”

  “I love you, too.” He lifted my hand and kissed my fingertips from his spot on the bed beside me. “We’re back because Jamie sensed something was wrong. He said that even though you’re not laplanded, he can still feel it when you’re very happy or quite upset. Foss is in a state. Did you two have a row?”

  My lips shut before they could confess anything. I didn’t want to talk about that. Foss had struck me. Again. I was embarrassed I fell for it, that I’d fallen for him. Again.

  “That’s a yes, then. Linus was right. Remind me never to bet against your twin.” He pulled a cigar from his breast pocket, guillotined the tip and held it in his teeth, puffing and turning the roll as he lit it with a small flame from his thumb. He took a few hits and offered it to me, helping me to sit up against the headboard next to him. His arm draped lazily around me, pulling me into his nook. He stroked his thumb over the crest of my uninjured cheek as he held the cigar to my lips so I could enjoy it. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like an idiot who should’ve known better.” I relinquished the cigar and checked my teeth with my tongue. They felt normal again, without the ringing electricity.

  He blew out a ring of smoke. “Now, now. Where’s the fun in knowing better? The best adventures come in the mistakes. The best lovers, too.”

  “I’m not awake enough for you,” I groused, touching my pounding head. I felt an adhesive bandage on the side of my face, and another at my forehead. I looked down and saw my left arm was bandaged, too. “What’s all this?”

  “Your blood. Whatever didn’t happen last night got you pretty scraped up. You had stars showing on your face and your arm, so Jens bandaged you up.” Tucker put the cigar between my lips and unraveled parts of the bandage on my arm, revealing small stars that winked at me through the scrapes I’d acquired from the stupid tree. “Still bent on keeping it to yourself?”

  “I fell,” I lied, taking a few more puffs. The smoke was relaxing, or perhaps it was just lounging around with Tucker that calmed me. I didn’t want to admit what Foss had done to me, nor did I want to own up to what I’d done to Foss.

  Tucker scrutinized my face, so I laid back down, turning my back to him. “Ah. I see.”

  “Who dressed me?” I asked, noticing I’d been changed into a red nightgown that cupped my breasts, as every dress Foss bought me tended to do.

  “Erika. I saw the state of the outfit she took off you. Looked positively ravaged, fresh from the honeymoon. I’m sure you wouldn’t know anything about that, either.”

  “That one was on me, not Foss. Did Jens see?”

  “Do you want him to have seen how far things went?”

  “I want a straight answer.”

  “Then you should know better than to talk to me about it.” He puffed the cigar again, amused at the mess I’d made.

  “Seriously, though. How are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be guarding Jamie? Did you bring Clara Barton?”

  Tucker smiled at me. “Our little love child is with Britta. Taking a kanin over to the Other Side only worked because we snuck her in. I admit, I’ve grown rather attached. Didn’t want to risk her getting confiscated.” He rolled me onto my back and kissed my fingertips, addressing my other query as I blinked up at him. “And Jamie sent me because he felt you through the bond. He sends his love. Britta sends a bunch of girly words that all boil down to that she misses you, and is tackling pregnancy like a champ.” He smoked a few beats before speaking. “Not to complain, but is guard duty always this domestic? All they want to do is stay inside and do things I’m not invited to participate in.”

  “Good for them. Finally can be together without me in Jamie’s brain. Lots of lost time to make up for.” I was forlorn, wishing for quiet Saturday mornings in my very own home. Tucker held the cigar for me to suck on. “This is nice. I didn’t expect to wake up to nice.”

  “Any day I get a blonde in my bed is a good one in my book.”

  “Don’t be crass. I had a long night.”

  “Is this you wanting to talk about it?”

  I took a few more puffs. “When are we leaving? Is there a plan for that?”

  “I guess not. What’s the matter? Not anxious to ‘fall’ again?” he teased with a hint of scolding in his tone, taking back the cigar and motioning with it while he spoke. “Foss has been with the chief and Tomas of the Hills all morning. A healer was sent to him last night, but no one’s saying anything about it. The men of all four territories are all on Foss’s property, rebuilding his home. Or actually, your home, Tribeswoman.”

  I scowled. “This is not my home. Don’t even joke about that.”

  Tucker took in my sharpness with a scrutinizing stare. “You fell hard this time. I trust it’s left enough of a mark that you won’t be so clumsy again?”

  “Never again. As soon as Foss is settled, we leave. Heck, we can leave now, for all I care. Foss is here. He’s fine. He’s got his people. He doesn’t need us hanging around.”

  “Fine by me. I’d just as soon never come back to Undraland. Jamie just sent me to watch you.”

  I cast a sideways glance at him. “Weird.”
r />   “Why is that weird? It’s kind of my job.”

  “No, I used to be part of your job, but now that the bond’s broken, I’m not. It’s just strange that Jamie would send you away when Britta’s on the brink of giving birth. You’d think he’d want the extra set of hands in case she needs anything.”

  Tucker shrugged. “They’re still newlyweds. I know how to take a hint. They’ve been apart a long time. Britta probably wants Jamie to tear her dress clean open, too. You and Foss can’t have all the fun.”

  “Shut up.” I tried to accept Tucker’s logic, but it still hit me wrong. Jamie had thought of little else except for Britta’s safety and getting back to her. He’d been worried about the baby, and with his life being threatened by his sister, and then his brother and father, I couldn’t believe he’d send his only guard away.

  “No more threats on his life?” I asked, sitting up and testing my feet on the wooden ground.

  “Not a one. Well, it was rough getting back. I’m not going to lie to you, but no one from Undra likes to go to the Other Side. Too risky with the Huldras. Once we got through the gate, we were fine.”

  I took the cigar from him, growing used to the comfort of how it felt in my hand and the taste of the sweet smoke. “Rough how?”