“Fine.” He could bide his time. If he really had to. He couldn’t help but notice, though, that Corinne appeared a little jumpy. He wondered what could be causing that. Deliberately, his arm bumped her shoulder. “I’ll walk you home, then.”
She nearly jumped out of her skin. Interesting.
“No! I mean, that’s not necessary. Really,” she said, stumbling over her own words. “Really. I won’t even be walking. I mean, I live downtown. I’ll have to take the subway, or something. Maybe I’ll just head up to the avenue and take a cab. So I won’t be walking. So you won’t need to walk with me. I mean, you won’t need to walk me home. I can do it. Get there myself, that is. Safely.”
Luc watched her fingers clench on the strap of her backpack and felt himself grinning. Her knuckles were turning white, and she seemed to have a newly discovered difficulty meeting his gaze. Maybe she had begun to feel the same energy building between them that he’d been fighting all evening.
Now, though, he was having a hard time remembering why he shouldn’t just give in. If Corinne was his heartmate, then the issue of his magic no longer stood between them. She had seen through his enchantments, so no one could argue that his Fae nature had clouded her mind. If she was attracted to him, it was an honest attraction.
It was a strange twist of fate that humans should find something about the Fae so irresistible when their people had chosen to live so far apart, but there it was. Not even glamours could hide the fact that the Fae were magic, nor keep some humans from sensing it. Usually, when a human woman seemed intent on seducing Luc, he could write it off as a reaction to his glamour, as he had with Corinne’s friend Ava. The other woman hadn’t really wanted him; she’d been drunk on his power, which no matter how beautiful she might be by human standards took quite a bit of the shine off the encounter.
Corinne was the first human woman he’d ever felt this kind of attraction for. He usually gave the species a wide berth. He knew humans and Fae were physically compatible, but he’d grown accustomed to taking the women he wanted without the elaborate mating rituals humans observed, and he didn’t picture a human woman appreciating the bold sexuality so common among his people. Besides, somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d always found it distasteful that with a human, there would be the possibility that it really wasn’t him she lusted for; it was the magic he couldn’t hide, not even behind the strongest glamour.
That magical attraction accounted for all the human stories of the seductive beauty of his race. Tam Lin had indeed been captivated by the beauty of the Queen of Faerie, but at least a little bit of that beauty had come from Her Majesty’s particularly strong glamours. Those very tricks usually proved the undoing of any relationships between Fae and mortal. For some reason, humans tended to get all bent out of shape when they discovered that their perception of their lovers was based on a web of pretty lies.
But with Corinne, he wasn’t lying. He couldn’t. She would—and did—see right through him. The thought brought forth a surge of excitement.
“I don’t mind,” he told her, letting his smile curve into one that would have made a hunting Lupine proud. “I haven’t gotten much chance to see your city, and it’s a nice night.”
Corinne stared at him while inside her lust battled with reason in a fight to the death. Ten minutes ago she’d been convinced she’d have to let herself out of Ava’s apartment discreetly while the two of them jumped each other and screwed like rabid mink. Now that she thought about it, though, it did seem as if Ava had been the one giving off all the signals. Luc had done nothing to encourage the other woman, except be gorgeous and charming, and Corinne didn’t think the man knew of any other way to be. For the first time in ages, a man had brushed off a seduction-minded Ava and turned to Corinne instead. She needed a few minutes to process that information.
Oh, it wasn’t like Corinne didn’t attract her fair share of men, and Ava wasn’t the sort to go after a man she knew one of her friends was already making a play for. Corinne knew she had nothing to be ashamed of when it came to her appearance, either. When she decided to pull out all the stops, she could pull off bombshelllike Sophia Loren in her prime. But Ava was on a whole other level. Men looked at her and saw not a woman, but a fantasy. Except for this man. He saw Ava and wished her a good night, but if the glint in his eyes was any indication, when he saw Corinne he wished for a different sort of night entirely.
So what was it that Corinne wished for?
Three hours ago it would have been to dump this entire mess on the head of the Council of Others and then not set eyes on another non-human being—except maybe Reggie—for at least a week. Now, though, she wasn’t so sure. Her head still told her that the man—or rather, the Fae warrior—standing in front of her would be a lot more trouble than he was worth; her gut, though—and maybe a bit of real estate just south of there—told her that the only way to know for sure would be to try him out.
And boy, she bet he would be one hell of a ride.
While she hemmed and hawed, Luc simply nudged her elbow and began walking, heading up the block to the nearest avenue where the cabs cruised more frequently. “Let’s go.” He glanced over his shoulder and urged her to cross to the other side of the street. “You can make up your mind on the way.”
Corinne wondered if she really could. In fact, she was still wondering when he raised one beefy arm—somehow coming up with two cabs—when he slid into the back of the taxi next to her, and when she gave the driver her address. In her own defense, she had a lot to wonder about. Not just the sex, which she’d already decided had the potential to be stupendous, but also the advisability of getting involved with a member of another species. And an out-of-towner at that. Once he found the Faerie Queen’s nephew, Luc Macanaw would head right back to his homeland and right back out of her life. How would she feel about that? The man didn’t exactly have long-term potentialwritten all over him.
That sort of thing didn’t usually bother Corinne. After all, she’d dated more than her fair share of men, and none of them had lasted so far. But she rarely decided to hop into bed with a man if she knew beforehand that he wouldn’t be around for more than the time it took to deal with the buttons and zippers. She blamed her Catholic roots. Being raised in the church just had a way of making a girl worry about looking like a total slut. Maybe it was the dress code.
And Corinne had to admit, something in the back of her mind looked at the idea of sex with a member of another species with a certain amount of alarm. She’d never slept with a man who wasn’t human before. She supposed the fact that Luc didn’t suffer from the furry form of PMS counted in his favor, but still, were humans and the Fae even, er, compatible?
Instinctively, her eyes dropped to his crotch and her cheeks heated. The evidence suggested they were.
Corinne sighed. Why were all the good ones married, gay, or another species?
Her gut weighed in on that one. It told her that Luc Macanaw could be one of the good ones. Mouthwatering face and body aside, in the few short hours that she’d known him, the man had displayed a sharp intelligence, polished social skills, and basic human decency. Or the Fae equivalent thereof. Frankly, she’d dated men who’d barely scored two out of three on that scale, so why did she hesitate?
She pondered that for a few minutes and could come up with only one explanation: sheer, unadulterated stupidity.
The man made her thighs tingle just to look at him! Time to yell Bansai!and have at it.
Clearing her throat, she angled to face him just as the taxi turned onto her street. “So, um, maybe you and I should spend some time laying out our game plan.” She tried desperately to sound casual and just hoped she at least managed better than totally lame. “You could come up for coffee, and we could compare notes. My building is just up ahead.”
Corinne gestured through the windshield then swore.
Luc cursed. “Before or after the police barrier?”
“After. Damn it.”
“Hey
, sorry, folks, but this is as far as I can go.” The cabbie eased out of traffic and rolled up to the curb four blocks ahead of Corinne’s building. “I dunno what the heck is going on up there, but it looks messy. Good luck getting through.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Luc was handing through the fare before Corinne even managed to find her wallet inside her backpack. She slid out of the vehicle in front of him, almost jumping out of her skin when he helped her with a warm hand on her ass.
“I, uh, I guess you’re going to get to walk me home after all,” she said, shoving her hands into her pockets to keep them from returning the favor and grabbing his ass in the middle of the street. “Unless, you know, you’d rather just wait until tomorrow.”
He grabbed her hand and started hauling her down the sidewalk at a speed that forced her almost to trot to keep up. “I’ll be lucky if I can wait until we reach your bed,” he growled.
“Oh. Then I guess you will be staying for coffee.”
He shot her a glance that all but set her eyebrows on fire.
“I’ll be staying for you.”
Luc decided to take the strangled sound Corinne uttered at his blunt pronouncement as a good sign. Considering the sight that greeted him farther down the block, he could use all the good news he could get.
When the barricades went up, a crowd gathered. That was the way it worked in New York. People wanted to know what was happening. At the moment, the happenings had to do with at least forty protesters gathered in front of a beleaguered coffee shop and angry over the plight of laborers on plantations in Africa and South America. Judging by the broken glass and ceramic littering the pavement, the angry voices, and the news cameras strategically positioned on the scene, Luc could assume that nonviolent protest had gone the way of the dodo sometime in the last few hours. What irked him at the moment, though, was that all these people currently blocked his way between here and Corrine D’Alessandro’s bed.
This had to change. Immediately.
Grasping her much smaller hand firmly in his, Luc set his jaw, firmed his shoulders, and prepared to bulldoze his way through the crowd of protestors, police, coffee shop workers, and onlookers. If he had to knock people over, so be it. His heartmate had just not-so-subtly invited him to share her bed. He’d have knocked over Mab herself if she stood in his way.
Luc was so focused on dodging and weaving that he didn’t even see the blow coming. Later he would curse himself, kick himself, and call himself ten kinds of fool, but he simply hadn’t been paying enough attention. He’d been thinking with his dick, and so he’d never noticed when a form shifted through the crush of bodies just behind him on his left and raised a short length of metal pipe in the direction of his head.
Thankfully, his instincts seemed to operate well enough even beneath the haze of lust that had clouded his other senses. He caught the swing of movement and turned just enough that the blow meant for his head landed on the meat of his shoulder instead.
Adrenaline kicked in before he even had time to think about what had happened. He shoved Corinne away, pinning her between him and the wall of the nearby building and keeping himself between her and the threat. His left hand shot out and grabbed for the man’s arm, the one with the weapon in it, feeling skin and leather before the assailant twisted away and broke free. Even as he raised his right hand to the hilt of his sword, he knew it was too late. Whoever had come at him had already melted back into the crowd.
Luc scanned the faces nearby and saw nothing. Damn it.
“Hey!”
He heard Corinne shout even as the pain of the injury began to resonate, making his breath hiss in between his teeth. His attacker had been strong, very strong; and for the blow to have nearly staggered him, the choice of weapon must have been deliberate. Only a blow from cold iron could possibly pack that kind of wallop.
“Jesus Christ, that guy attacked you! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said, lowering his hand from his sword and pressing it hard into the small of Corinne’s back. “But we need to get out of here fast.”
If he’d been rude before as he’d pushed his way through the milling crowd, now he was ruthless, using a combination of brute strength and magic to move every obstacle from their way. His pace forced Corinne to jog to keep up with him, but he couldn’t worry about that now. The goal was to get her off the street and into the safety of her apartment before their mysterious attacker could double back and try his luck a second time.
“Luc, what the hell is going on?” she demanded as they broke free of the congestion and picked up the pace until she was running beside him the last two blocks to her building.
“Not now. Get your key out of your bag. Have it ready.”
“It’s in my pocket,” she grumbled, but she reached for it anyway and drew it out as they turned for the entrance.
“Inside. Quick.”
He shielded her back as she worked the lock on the main door, his eyes scanning for anything odd in the street around them. Everything looked quiet, but then things usually did just before trouble broke out. He heard the snickof the lock and hustled her inside even before the door was fully open. Hearing the thick glass close behind him made him feel only marginally better.
“Okay, upstairs. Which floor?”
“Fifth.”
Luc bundled her into the elevator and took a last glance around the lobby and out the door onto the street. There wasn’t a soul in sight. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to his heartmate just in time to see her jab the button for her floor with such force he could only assume she was imagining it to be his eye. Or another, equally sensitive portion of his anatomy.
“Okay, what the hell just happened?” she demanded, her voice hot and hard with a combination of confusion, fear, and adrenaline. “Who the hell just tried to bring a lead pipe down on your head in the middle of a crowded street? And why did you react to it by treating me like the damned president right after somebody yells that they have a gun? You’re not the goddamned Secret Service.”
“Actually, I am,” he murmured. “I’m the Fae equivalent, anyway. What did you think the Queen’s Guard were for?”
She looked ready to spit nails, all warm and flustered with adrenaline pinking her cheeks and speeding her breath. Actually, she looked like a woman who had been thoroughly aroused, and the sight went straight to Luc’s groin. He needed to taste her.
He reached out, his eyes narrowing in surprise when she slapped his hands away with a sharp snap.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “You think you’re going to get all touchy-feely after someone just tried to kill you? What is wrong with you?”
God, she really was gorgeous when she was angry. Wasn’t that a human cliché? Luc had never thought he would say this, but in this case the humans knew what they were talking about. Her eyes snapped with temper and her skin flushed with heat. He needed to show her how arousal could be converted from anger to sex in the space of a heartbeat. Maybe less.
“I’m not dead,” he purred, stepping forward to crowd her against the elevator wall, “and neither are you. We’re not even hurt, but that doesn’t mean our hearts aren’t pounding and our bodies aren’t humming. That’s the adrenaline. It makes a body feel alive.”
He lifted a hand, stroked fine dark strands of hair away from her cheek, trailed the backs of his fingers across her smooth, warm skin. He felt her tremble and wanted to roar in triumph.
“Don’t you feel alive, Corinne? Don’t you feel…” He leaned in, breath fanning the soft curve just behind her ear. “…excited?”
He’d never be sure if he’d fallen on her like a starving man, or if she’d yanked him down like a lightpost flyer. When it came right down to it, he’d never feel moved to care. The first touch of her lips felt like home and tasted like brandied cream.
Luc growled his pleasure against her mouth and wrapped his arms around her, dragging her body hard against his. She felt small an
d delicate compared with him, so tiny he could almost wrap his arms around her twice, but she didn’t kiss like a retiring flower; she devoured him. Her mouth bloomed under his, her body stretching and heating, her hands clinging to his shoulders as if she couldn’t imagine a reason to let him go. Lady help him, he didn’t want her to.
Her lips parted eagerly for his tongue and he plunged deep, seeking the unpolluted taste of her, the flavor that lingered in the soft, inviting recesses of her mouth. He could sense in her the same lust that threatened to send him over the edge, which wasn’t helping his struggle for control.
Then the elevator dinged and the doors slid open and he had to drag himself back to reality to keep from throwing her down and taking her there in the hall of her apartment building. He may never have been involved with a human woman before, but he’d heard they tended to frown on public sex. Compared with the Fae, humans were just prudes.
“Apartment,” he said, his voice raw and hoarse and tight with need. “Key. Hurry.”
“Left. Second door on the right.”
He picked her up and ate up the distance with long, loping strides. It would be faster this way, when he didn’t have to wait for her shorter legs to keep up with his. She didn’t bother to protest. She just buried her face in his shoulder, small white teeth digging in to the tight, flexing muscle, even as her fingers fumbled for the key to her door.
“Hurry,” he repeated, following her directions and pressing her up against the smooth white surface of her door. She scraped the key against the lock, swearing when her shaking fingers missed the keyhole twice. Luc rubbed his hips against her in encouragement.
She dropped the keychain.
“Shit!”
“Let me.” He had the key in the lock and the door swinging wide before she could so much as nod. He herded her through, kicked the panel shut behind him, and saw to his great relief that there was enough light in the sparsely decorated room that he could make out the sofa immediately. Picking her up, he tossed her onto the soft cushions and followed closer than her own shadow.
Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale Page 8