The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes

by Jennifer Crusie Eileen Dreyer Anne Stuart

  He was making no sense at all. ‘Safe from what? From me? I’m no threat to you.’

  He moved so fast she doubted it was by human means. One moment he was across the room from her, the next his hands were gripping her shoulders as he shook her.

  ‘Are you that blind, Lizzie? Do you really have no idea what’s going on here? I know you’re not a virgin, even though you might as well be, considering how clueless you are.’

  She wrenched herself away, moving farther back, to the very edge of the bed, against the wall. ‘Okay, I get it. I’m clueless and blind, life as we know it will cease to exist. Exactly what has caused this Armageddon?’

  ‘We fell in love.’

  She couldn’t help it - she had to laugh. First, because he seemed so angry and resentful at the thought, and second because it was patently absurd. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘You’re incapable of it.’

  ‘That’s what I was counting on,’ he said, almost sounding sullen. ‘I happen to like my life very well, indeed. I have a castle in Spain, a house in Provence, a flat in London. I have friends, I have lovers, I have a rich full life and there’s no room for you in it.’

  ‘I don’t want to be in it.’

  ‘Liar.’

  She’d been feeling hot, angry, ready to explode, but suddenly she felt cooler, as if a breeze had washed over her skin. She looked down and jumped. He’d somehow managed to change her sensible jeans and T-shirt into the clinging silk nightgown from the night before.

  ‘Hell, no,’ she said, furious, and a moment later she was wearing a nun’s habit, a puff of purple mist shimmering around her. She only had a moment to be pleased with herself, before he moved.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ he said, and the voluminous folds of cloth disappeared, leaving her in skimpy underwear that might have come from some cosmic Victoria’s Secret. Her slightly small breasts spilled out of the lace bra, and the thong was riding up, both arousing and uncomfortable.

  She growled, and a moment later she was frozen, immovable, and something was pinching her butt a lot harder than the strip of lace. She tried to move, only to be rewarded with the sound of clanking metal.

  ‘Armor, Lizzie?’

  She was totally immobilized. She threw her weight to one side and fell over, pinned to the bed by the weight of the metal.

  It didn’t help that he was laughing. ‘Let me help you with that,’ he said in a kindly tone, and a moment later she was lying on the bed without any clothes at all.

  She shrieked as she dove for the covers, wrapping the silk sheet around her.

  He knelt on the bed, moving toward her as she huddled in the corner with the covers wrapped around her like a shroud, and he was lean, feral, and the hottest thing she’d ever seen. He was also clearly out of his mind, and even for the sake of great sex she wasn’t going to sleep with a crazy man.

  And it would be great sex - she had little doubt of that. Bone-melting, soul-shattering sex, hot and wicked and everything she never thought existed.

  She pulled her knees up to her chest, one more layer of defense. ‘Go away, Elric. You’ll get over this if you try. You think I’m a scatterbrained idiot, and I’d drive you crazy if you had to spend much time with me.’

  ‘You already drive me crazy,’ he said. ‘The fact of the matter is, we don’t have any choice.’

  ‘You may not have a choice, but I do. Go away or I’ll start screaming, and one of the neighbors will call the police.’

  She had no place to retreat to, and he knelt in front of her, grabbing her hands as she clutched at the sheet. ‘Look at me, Lizzie,’ he said in a gentler voice. She closed her eyes tightly, shutting him out.

  He was holding her prisoner and she didn’t like it. Except that the hands encircling her wrists were oddly gentle, and she knew she could break free any time she wanted to. And she knew she should want to.

  ‘Look at me, Lizzie,’ he said again, and she couldn’t resist the wry note in his voice. She opened one eye, cautiously, then the other.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ If she sounded sullen and childish she didn’t care. He’d already said that she was a disaster of epic proportions - she had no intention of encour­aging his delusions. Even if she had the almost overwhelming urge to put her mouth on his flat, golden stomach.

  ‘Sex. Companionship. True love. Take your pick.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she said, appalled.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Let’s start with sex.’

  She should have said no. Her entire life had turned upside down, all thanks to the man kneeling in front of her, and he seemed to regret it even more than she did. And it wasn’t helping that every time he touched her she could feel light and color flooding through her body, and she was tired of being gray and ordinary.

  But she wasn’t going down without a fight. ‘Okay, let’s look at this logically. You’ve got some delusion that we’re trapped in the curse of true love, though I’m not sure I understand why it’s a curse. So if I sleep with you, it’ll either free you from that delusion, which would be a relief, or convince you that it’s true, which would be revenge. If I sent you away right now, I know that you’d go, and sooner or later you’d realize it was only temporary insanity and you’d forget all about me, and I’d marry Charles if he ever gets back from Alaska and remembers who I am, and I’ll have a safe, ordinary life, which is everything I always wanted. The trouble is, I don’t want to marry Charles after all.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said weakly. ‘Do I have to marry you, too?’

  ‘Revenge is sounding good to me,’ she said, half to herself. She scooted down on the bed, the purple sheets pulled up to her armpits, and closed her eyes. ‘Have at it.’

  If Elric had any doubts as to the scope of this catastrophe, looking down at Lizzie as she lay on the bed, swaddled like a mummy in purple satin, her blond curls tangled around her pale face, her eyes tightly shut, convinced him it was all too terribly, horribly true. He was in love with her. He didn’t need the purple rim around his eyes to prove it - all he had to do was look at her and he was lost.

  She was fighting it even harder than he was, but then, she didn’t know it was hopeless.

  He leaned over her, taking the edge of the sheet and tugging gently. She quivered for a moment, keeping her hands at her sides, effectively keeping the sheet over her, but he was a lot more experienced than she was, and he simply pulled it down, away from her body, tossing it on the floor beside the bed.

  She was the most luscious thing he’d ever seen in his entire life. Smooth, creamy skin, smallish breasts, soft and small and sleek. A far cry from the experienced, sophisticated women he tended to sleep with, and she was absolutely, shyly irresistible.

  He put his hand on her ankle and she jerked, her eyes opening for a minute and then shutting again. This was probably the way Charles did it - with Lizzie lying passively, missionary style, while he groaned and sweated over her. He might have to kill Charles.

  Or at least turn him into a moose. Moose did well in Alaska, didn’t they? Maybe a polar bear would eat him.

  But he wasn’t interested in thinking about Charles at the moment. He kissed her ankle by the side of her brand-new tattoo, tasting the rose-scented soap she’d bathed in. He kissed her behind her knee, and he could feel the tremors run through her body. Fear or arousal? Or a heady combination of both? He kissed the inside of her thigh, the soft skin at her hip, and she was trembling in earnest now, her eyes tightly shut. Poor baby, she had no idea what was in store for her.

  He kissed her other ankle, moving up her legs with slow, lingering kisses, and his hands cupped the full sweetness of her hips.

  ‘Open your legs for me, Lizzie,’ he whispered. She opened her eyes instead. ‘What?’ she demanded, shocked.

  ‘This doesn’t work with your legs together, sweetness. Hadn’t you figured that out yet?’

  ‘But...’

  ‘Open your legs for me,’ he said again, helping her, pushing them apart and moving be
tween them, and she braced herself, expecting God knows what. He hadn’t even taken his pants off yet.

  She really was the most adorable, pathetic creature right now. So frightened, so needy. So why was he shaking, too?

  He pulled her toward him and put his mouth between her legs, because he needed to, and she let out a shriek loud enough to rouse the neighbors. Her hands left the bed to clutch his shoulders, pushing at him. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said, a thread of desperation in her voice.

  He looked up at her. ‘Why? Is it sinful?’

  ‘You shouldn’t... I can’t. . . you wouldn’t. . .’

  ‘I like it,’ he said, touching her. She was slick and wet, even before he’d gone down on her, and she was wound up so tightly she might burst. He wanted her to burst. To split apart, into a thousand pieces, and then he could pull her back together again.

  All it took was the touch of his tongue, and she began to spasm, her body contracting in helpless pleasure. He held her there, for long, endless moments, letting the waves of her release fall around him, and as each one began to subside he would bring it on again, with his fingers deep inside her, with his tongue, his lips, his teeth, until she was sobbing, rigid, gasping for breath, and then he took her further still, into a dark, hot place that even he seldom reached.

  When he sat back on his heels, kneeling between her legs, she tried to curl up, in on herself, hiding her face, hiding her body, sobbing, and he knew if he let her she’d keep hiding. He pushed her back against the sheets, gently, covering her body with his and kissing her mouth. And another orgasm caught her body with weary pleasure.

  He hadn’t even realized how fucking hard he was - he’d been concentrating so intently on her response that he hadn’t even realized he was about to explode. He’d barely started with her, hadn’t gotten to the sweet perfection of her small breasts, the smooth curve of her back, the softness of her butt. He wanted to touch everything, inside and out, he wanted to take her places he barely knew himself, and he shoved the loose white pants off, leaving him naked and so painfully aroused he didn’t know if he’d ever manage to get off.

  ‘No.’ The voice was no more than a plaintive whisper, and yet it was like a death knell. He could change her mind, all he had to do was touch her and she’d forget that she ever said no. But her hands came up to push at his chest, and he fell back, away, onto the bed beside her, barely able to catch his breath. If she really wanted revenge she couldn’t have picked a crueler one. He closed his eyes, trying to control the tension that drummed through his body. He didn’t know where he’d get the strength to move, to leave her, he only knew he had to, because she’d said no after all, and maybe he’d been wrong about the purple in her baby blue eyes, and maybe . . .

  Her mouth touched his, her lips feathering across his with sweet, soft kisses, and he stared up into the lavender shadows of her eyes, confused and so damned needy he thought he might never walk again. She’d gotten to her knees, leaning over him, her scattered curls falling in her face as she kissed him, his mouth, his eye-lids, the pulse in his throat, moving down his chest with slow, delicious, torturous bites and licks and kisses, and he needed her to just touch him, just lightly, please, so he could die a happy man, as her tongue touched his navel, working downward, and he knew he was going to die and he was happy to do so.

  Her hands were cool, soft, as she touched him, encircling him, holding him, and he wanted to teach her, tell her what to do, but her very helplessness made it even more powerful, and when she leaned down and put her unpracticed mouth on his cock he felt the power of it through every cell in his body.

  And he knew he certainly wasn’t going to last long at that rate. He let himself absorb the sweetness of her mouth for a moment, then gently lifted her away, ignoring her sound of protest.

  ‘Later,’ he said, sliding her onto her back. ‘We have time for everything.’ And he pushed inside her, filling her tight, clamping sweetness with his cock, pushing in so deeply that she gasped, her breath catching as he filled her.

  They both froze, staring into each other’s eyes. Lavender into violet, wizard into wizard, and it was so right he would have cried, if he was a man who cried.

  She reached up and smoothed the moisture away from his eyes, her fingers shaking, and then she pulled him down to kiss him, and he lost the last tiny bit of control he’d been clinging to. He pulled her legs up, tight around his hips. He tried to move slowly, deliberately, but her fingernails were digging into his back, she was shivering and shattering in his arms, and he could feel her body clamp around his, and there was no holding back. He followed her down the dark slide into eternity, feeling it burst around them in a flame of colors. And there was nothing left at all.

  Dee told herself she was on a mission from God. She couldn’t just sit in Salem’s Fork waiting for Xan to bring disaster down on them. She had to try and prevent it, and the only way she knew was to find her aunt before she had a chance to act. Xan was close, metaphysically. Dee could feel it. So she searched for her like Tommy Lee Jones tracking a fleeing felon. She refused to admit that she was using her search as a means of avoiding Danny.

  He’d bought her Nutter Butter bars. He’d fed her onion rings. She hadn’t even been able to dredge up the courage to so much as kiss him thank-you. After all, how gracious would it be to respond to such kindness by sending the man into therapy for the rest of his adult life? Especially a man who’d just said that he loved her.

  What if Xan was right? What if Dee actually had found her true love, only to have to give him away again? She’d never had to survive that kind of alone before.

  So, she ran. The problem was, Danny James refused to be left behind.

  ‘Butterflies make me hot,’ he whispered as they stalked the halls of the General Lee Motel. Dee was trying to be surreptitious, but she knew she looked like a German shep­herd sniffing out bombs. Come to think of it, if she weren’t so distracted, it might have been easier to shift into one. Nobody stared at a dog that sniffed the air.

  ‘From what you’ve told me today,’ Dee said, ‘breathing makes you hot.’

  ‘If you’re the one breathing.’

  Dee flushed, unaccustomed to the flirting. Terrified to anticipate anything beyond his escort through motel halls.

  There was no Xan here. Not that she should have been surprised. It was one of those brown-and-gold-paisley kinds of places with a pool smack in the middle so the chlorine clogged up your nose. But even chlorine couldn’t mask cinnamon and sulfur. At least not Xan’s mix. And there wasn’t a trace of it.

  Dee had only caught her scent once, at the Peaceful Garden B and B down the road in Martinsville. The owner swore the only guest she’d had was a shy librarian sort who’d checked out that morning. Dee had nodded and moved on to the next place. She wasn’t going to give up until she’d checked out every hotel, motel, and rented room in a ten-mile radius.

  Danny held open the General Lee’s front door. ‘Why don’t you just meet with her?’

  ‘I did.’

  Danny frowned at her. ‘Then why are we chasing her around town?’ Dee struck the General Lee off the list she’d scrawled on the back of deposit slips and stepped out onto the cracked parking lot. ‘Because I can’t let her get another jump on me. Next time, she could really hurt us.’

  ‘She hurt you?’

  ‘Not enough to matter. Not like my parents. I was right. She killed them. So I’m not going to let her kill my sisters.’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘She did, actually. I shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess. She said it was their fault, of course.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything else?’

  Dee considered him a moment, with his clear honest eyes and his untested power. ‘Not yet. I’m sorry’ Danny nodded. ‘Okay’ He steered her to the bike. Dee stopped. ‘That’s it? Okay?’

  He shot her a bright smile that could make a girl forget her name. ‘Sure. Witch hunts make me hot.’

  He bent far enoug
h that his lips fluttered over the shell of her ear. ‘Especially when the hunter is a gorgeous redhead with a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder’

  Dee damn near melted into a puddle on the spot. God, she wished he’d stop doing that. He was driving her insane. Already she felt as if she needed to borrow one of Mare’s bras. Hers suddenly seemed so tight. He handed her in and out of doors, on and off the bike, and always managed to find a bit of exposed skin to brush against. Wrist, throat, the gap between her jeans and T-shirt above her hip. She felt as if he’d stroked a live wire over her. And he kept riding her back and forth across those godforsaken cobblestones. How did he know?

  ‘I’d say I should dye my hair,’ she challenged, ‘but you’d tell me that brunettes make you hot.’

  ‘Do they have tattoos?’

  She giggled. She couldn’t help it. He was keeping her in an agony of ambivalence. He tempted her so much, with his mad blue eyes and sly smiles. But he terrified her even more. She’d seen the horror in men’s eyes. She couldn’t bear to see it in his. For all the brave talk in her studio, all she wanted was to put off the inevitable as long as possible.

  They stopped by a Dollar Dayz and got Dee a small spiral notebook to replace her deposit slips, a package of rubber bands for her hair, which Danny immediately snatched, and ten more Nutter Butter bars. Witch-hunter supplies. They also discovered that Xan had been in. Of course everybody in the place remembered the stun­ning visitor from the day before. Staying over to Bicksburg, they thought. Two of the men even pulled out phone numbers. Dee would have told them how hopeless a return call was, but Fred Norton had tried to bully Mare in high school. Mare had knocked two of his teeth out, of course. Dee figured Xan would make him grovel like a serf. She tucked her new notebook in her purse and headed for the door.

  ‘Can we have sex now?’ Danny asked, following. Dee patted him like a toddler. ‘After Bicksburg.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Don’t you ever think of anything else?’ she demanded as they walked across the parking lot.