by Michele Hauf
“You weren’t nervous about the flight, either. That surprised me.”
“Didn’t have time to freak out. And I think because it was wide-open, and I wasn’t stuffed into a tin can, I lost most of my fear. It was like...free-flying.”
“Not even close. But I’ll give you that one.”
“Thanks.” She lay down and he opened one eye. He could see her bare legs stretched over the folded-back coverlet. She smelled like the hotel’s orange shampoo, and it made him hungry. But not for food.
She turned to her side, and he knew she faced him, so he tilted his head and met her gaze in the darkness. He could still see quite well in the dark, even without his wings.
“You know that kiss?” she asked. “Not the one at the lake but the one in the Darkwood.”
“Uh...yeah?”
“In that moment, when the tree was sucking me into the ground, I thought I was going to die. And...I haven’t kissed another man since.”
That had been four months ago. Really? She hadn’t kissed another man? Kelyn mumbled a noise of assurance.
“I wanted you to know,” she said. “I haven’t felt like dating since then. I know I have no right, and I promise I’m over with the apologies, but I’ve sort of carried what happened as a heavy burden. But I think I’m ready to shuck it off my shoulders now.”
By rights? She should have carried that burden. For a little while anyway. And that was his angry, pissed-off self thinking that. But it was a real emotion, and he owned it as it tensed his muscles and chased away any thought of touching her sweet-smelling, wet hair.
Now she rolled to her back. “I’m tired,” she said. “Good night, Kelyn.”
He nodded, knowing she couldn’t hear that motion. He didn’t know what to say or how to act around her. Because he wasn’t sure what was happening between them. While he had every reason to hate the woman, every fiber of his being wanted to reach out and pull her to him and hold her close.
And while he stared at the back of her head and willed his arm to reach for her, no part of his body moved, save for his heart, sinking a little deeper into his chest.
Chapter 10
Valor woke to bright sunlight. She’d forgotten to pull the heavy curtains, and, man, did the sun look high in the sky! It must be noon. She’d slept not so long, though, because they’d gotten in early in the morning.
Wondering about room service, she pulled down the sheet to get out of bed and realized a man’s arm was holding her against his body. A warm body. Rigid pectorals hugged her back. And a relaxed arm braceleted with a ring of silvery scars about his wrist hold her prisoner.
Hmm...
Attempting to move the arm would surely wake him. How had she gotten into such a position with her back against Kelyn’s bare chest and him holding her as if they were lovers? His curled fingers rested below her breast on the bed, not touching her. But still...
Nice. The wish to turn back time so she could have been awake to enjoy their closeness more thoroughly ended with a sigh. It was probably a natural movement he did in his sleep when lying next to a woman. Surely such a good-looking man as Kelyn Saint-Pierre had slept with many. She wasn’t special. And they did not have an exclusive thing.
So. She’d have to do this like the proverbial Band-Aid. Rip it off and risk waking him to save her the embarrassment of simply lying there until he decided to wake up.
Not that anything could embarrass her. There was nothing wrong with snuggling with the guy. And he smelled great. The orange-shampoo scent they shared had dissipated and now all she smelled was him. The man oozed an alchemy of earth and air and something ineffable. Perhaps a masculine sort of surety. So she remained there a few minutes longer, enjoying the contact. Was it so wrong to steal the pleasure of an embrace even if the guy wasn’t aware of it?
She didn’t think so.
After five minutes she decided this was getting weird. Much as she enjoyed it, she also felt squicky about stealing the guy’s empathy. Which was what it had felt like since they’d gotten together on this adventure. Like he was being nice to appease her. When, really, why didn’t he yell at her? Accuse her? Get out the anger he had to have for what had happened?
Blowing out a decisive breath, Valor nudged carefully at Kelyn’s arm and, as she did so, glided forward on the bed, which effectively lifted his arm and allowed her freedom. When his arm dropped and she sat up, he startled awake.
The guy eyeballed her, closed his eyes and smiled. “Morning.”
“It is. Or maybe it’s noon. Or possibly even later. Didn’t mean to startle you, but we were, uh...not sure how I ended up snuggled against you like that.”
“It was nice,” he said. Pushing his hands back through his hair, he again opened his eyes. The bright sunshine found his violet irises and danced there. “You snuggled up to me.”
“Uh, no. I don’t think so. I’m sure it was you who wrapped an arm around me.”
Valor slid to the edge of the bed, prepared to stand, when suddenly Kelyn grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her down. Her head landed on the pillow, and the faery moved in for a kiss. A kiss! It was a quick one, as far as kisses being clocked went, but it was fun and landed on her lips just long enough for her to regret not snuggling with him longer.
“Okay, I wrapped an arm around you,” he said. “The witch wins again. Now, get dressed. We need to forage for food. Then onward.”
He got up and strode into the bathroom, while Valor could only lie there, touching her mouth. His kisses got better and better. Even the short and admonishing ones. And he took them whenever the moment seemed to strike him. She couldn’t think of a reason to argue with such blatant thievery.
Had he actually kissed her silly?
“Yes, Marcus Welby, he did.”
* * *
They managed to find another buffet restaurant, which seemed to be the witch’s favorite eating style. Plate heaped with an assortment of meats, veggies, cheeses and something blue and jiggly even Kelyn couldn’t identify, she was in heaven.
“I like a woman with a healthy appetite,” he said while buttering the toast, preparing to smear the fried egg with the runny yoke over it. He was a vegetarian, but cheated with eggs and butter.
“I like a man who’s not afraid to be weird,” she said. “Eggs on toast?”
“You think this is weird?” He pointed to her blue concoction in challenging comparison.
“Hey, it’s one of the food groups. Sugar. But first, veggies.” She scraped up a forkload of peas and scooped it into her mouth. “Did you book a flight for us? Wales is our next destination.”
“I will do that as soon as I’m done eating. Can a person fly into Wales or do we need to hit England first?”
“Not sure. Never been out of the States before, remember? And I will need to do some serious drinking before we get on another plane.”
“Yes, because that worked so well for your flight here. Unless you don’t mind me carrying you on as extra luggage?”
“Hey, if I could not be nervous I would. There’s not a spell in my arsenal that’ll chill me out, so you’ll have to deal with a drunk witch.”
“I have no problem with that. You’re cute when you pass out and snore.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t cease her eating.
“Do you think if the airplane had no sides, and all the seats were open to the elements, you’d be good? You were with the helicopter.”
“I... No. We didn’t go very high in the sky. Maybe it’s that in the airplane you go so high and you can’t see how high it is. Just...accept me as I am, okay?”
“I do. I appreciate everything you’re doing for me,” Kelyn said because he felt the need to soften that dig at her snores. “So, can you remind me of what’s the next thing on the list?”
“Uh.
..” She sipped the black coffee then made a great show of stirring in more cream and tons of sugar and swirling it with the spoon. He couldn’t quite make out what she said when she mumbled, “Mermaid’s...’iss.”
“A what? Something about mermaids. And I know they are not the nicest of all this realm’s creatures to deal with.”
“You need a mermaid’s kiss,” she said heatedly. “Did you hear that?”
Right. He had read that on the list. Hadn’t thought much of it at the time, though. Kelyn sat back and set his fork aside, no longer hungry. From the tales his mother had told him as a kid, he knew mermaids were vicious and feral. No smart man, werewolf or even faery liked to go near them.
And then there was that other issue.
“I don’t know how that’s going to work,” he said. “I mean, first you have to find one. Depths of the ocean? And me not being a swimmer?” He shrugged. “But even if we do manage success, how does a person store something like that?”
“Don’t you worry about the storage process. All you have to do is get the kiss. I’ll take care of the rest. There could be an issue with you not being a swimmer, though.”
“You think?”
Lake Hillier had been shallow, at least, as far in as they’d waded. And he’d floated like a dream. But searching for a mermaid could mean greater depths, and diving, and actually knowing how to breathe underwater. His brothers had always teased him about avoiding the waterfalls out in the back of their family land and that someday he’d surely want to know how to swim. It wasn’t that water frightened him or he feared drowning. He had tried to swim on many occasions. But lighter-than-air bones did not make for an easy swim. He had always floated on the surface like deadwood.
No way could he manage a dive into the ocean. It would be comical, to say the least.
“We’ll figure something out.” She lifted a fork of the blue jiggly stuff before her. “Here’s to mermaid kisses and keeping the faery all in one piece.”
In one piece? Reluctant to toast to that, but ever up for a challenge, Kelyn lifted his egg-smeared toast and tapped it against Valor’s fork. “And to one wily witch who intends to dangle the faery from the end of her hook.”
She winked at him then, and he couldn’t help laughing. The witch did have a way of sneaking in an irresistible challenge. Feminine wiles? Kind of. Sort of. Valor was a tomboy to the bone. But he had lain with his arm wrapped about her through the morning and he knew she was soft and sensual, and her hair had smelled like oranges. He wanted to touch more and more of her. And steal another kiss.
And maybe next time he wouldn’t have to steal it.
It might be a good idea to up his seduction game before they got to the mermaids. Because that was one situation he wasn’t sure he’d come out of alive.
* * *
Kelyn hauled the drunk witch over one shoulder and onto the plane. Once again, he’d procured first class, knowing they’d have more room and privacy for Valor to revel in her drunken nervousness. He smiled and complimented all the stewardesses as he made his way to their seats.
Depositing Valor on the seat next to the window startled her awake. She curled up her legs and tucked her hands under her chin. He settled next to her, pulling the blanket from its plastic bag and tucking it over her. “You’re doing good, witch. It won’t be long now.”
The flight was twenty hours and included a quick layover in Cardiff, but she didn’t need to know that.
“You’re so good to me.” Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled drunkenly. “I love you.”
“I love you when you’re love drunk,” he stated, knowing it was the booze that had delivered such effusive adoration.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about us, what we could have been, since the forest,” she confessed.
“Me, as well.” Kelyn tilted his head against hers and pulled in his long legs to allow others to get by in the narrow aisle. “I think it’s time we make a go for what could have been.”
Valor sighed. “If you say so.”
And then she passed out.
* * *
The layover in Cardiff was more like a sprint. They had ten minutes to hop on the plane to Anglesey. Valor had made the dash on her own, but, teasing the last vestiges of intoxication for all she could manage, she had grasped for sleep again as the plane departed. With Kelyn’s hand clasping hers she’d survived the flight across the ocean and Europe.
Now she thanked the stewardesses profusely as the plane landed. She’d been awake for about twenty minutes, had washed her face with a warm hand towel—man, did she love first class!—snacked on some grapes and cheese, and listened to Kelyn snore softly beside her. Bless the guy for putting up with her crazy-ass phobia.
He was too good to be true. What guy put up with stuff like that, and after having sacrificed his wings for her? She didn’t deserve any of his kindness, but she wanted to earn his respect. And had he said something about them making a go for it?
A go for what? She couldn’t remember what they’d been discussing when she was tilting twenty sheets to the wind upon departing the Sydney Airport. Hawkeye Pierce, that seemed like something she should have remembered.
Kelyn startled awake and looked around. The rest of first class had disembarked; the seats were littered with magazines and plastic water bottles.
“We’ve landed and can get off anytime,” she said, “but I wanted to let you sleep. Coach is deplaning right now. How do you feel? Did you get some good rest?”
He snarled at her—actually snarled—and stood to get his bag out of the overhead compartment. “Come on,” he muttered, and wandered off.
O...kay.
“Guess it’s someone else’s turn to be grumpy,” she muttered. And instead of teasing him about it, she decided he deserved to act however he wished.
Valor followed Kelyn through the airport, loving the British accents that buzzed about her. There was something about a foreign accent that made her happy. It was so out of her usual realm. The Australian accent had pleased her, as well.
A taxi took them into town and Valor directed the driver to a hardware store, where she intended to pick up some supplies for this leg of their adventure. She’d thought about it on the plane and had come up with as short a list as possible, yet still the essentials.
Down aisle nine, she grabbed a coiled green nylon rope and handed it back to Grumpy Kelyn. Sunglasses in place and hair tousled messily, he’d followed her into the store without a word. If he’d had a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth, he might have looked silver-screen cool. As it was, he was just plain annoying.
He slung the rope over a shoulder and shadowed her quietly down the aisle. The guy had a right to let loose his inner grump—why, his downright anger—toward her. It had to have happened sooner or later. So she wouldn’t make a fuss and she’d try to stay out of what was surely a laser-beam glare radiating from behind those sunglasses.
Though, it took all her composure not to suggest she had a spell for his pouty face. And she did. She could whisper a man into a smile with but a few words. And that wasn’t even a love spell; it was simply a cheer spell. Such a thing came in handy at the brewery when she sensed a fight was on the verge of erupting.
Down another aisle she sized up the harnesses and assorted safety gear used for climbing roofs. Holding one up before Kelyn, she checked the size, nodded and handed him the find.
They hadn’t been able to carry weapons on the plane, and while she hadn’t thought to look for a weapons shop along the way, she did manage to find a nifty jackknife in the hunting aisle. There were no rifles in this store, mostly traps and some camo gear. Generally she wore a thigh strap. A girl should never leave home without a blade. This folding blade was so small she could tuck it in a front pocket. It would have to suffice. When she asked Kelyn if he wanted a
weapon, he merely shook his head.
So the grump continued. Fine. He’d be cursing his bad mood later if and when he needed to defend himself.
With hope, no defense would be necessary. How dangerous could a slimy chick with a tail actually be? Valor crossed her fingers and whispered a prayer to Liban, the goddess of the Irish Sea, for an easy task ahead of them.
Heading for the checkouts, she eyed Kelyn from the corner of her vision as he grabbed bags of chips and jerky from an array of brightly colored impulse items. So the guy was hungry? By the time they hit the register, he’d amassed four bags of snacks and a six-pack of bottled water.
“Good plan,” she commented. “We’ll need the fuel.”
“Did you want something to eat?” he asked.
Valor turned her head to gape at him. “You’re not going to share? What happened to you over the airspace between Australia and the UK? Dude, try a freakin’ smile.”
She might have actually felt his laser glare this time.
With a frustrated sigh, she handed over her credit card to the cashier, noticing Kelyn didn’t offer, as she expected he might. Instead, he grabbed the stuff and headed out to the cab, leaving her to wonder if she’d done something wrong. Had she muttered something in her sleep about him?
Generally her own snoring woke her up, but she’d never been known to be a sleep talker. Hmm...she had never thought of herself as a mean or nasty drunk, either.
Must be a faery thing. Yeah, she would go with that.
* * *
Rain beat the tarmac and the sides of the hotel building as if it had a vengeance wish against the world. Kelyn paced the hotel suite, which featured two queen beds, a coffee maker and microwave and a narrow—and cracked—hot tub. He’d dropped the bag of supplies inside the doorway and was relieved when Valor said she was heading down to check out the restaurant and would bring up some food.
Thankful for a few minutes alone, he paced before the window that overlooked the weed-overgrown parking lot. This tiny town twenty miles out from the city where they’d landed reminded him of the proverbial quaint foreign village where assorted characters always got into loads of trouble with the craziest yet most down-to-earth acts. A movie set if ever he’d seen one.