by Nina Bangs
Kal seemed to accept the explanation. “It’s lucky you were on the spot or else Eris would be long gone.”
“No, she wouldn’t.” Daria smiled. “I didn’t save Declan. He saved himself. Eris couldn’t lift him off the ground. I don’t know what he did, but I was totally impressed.”
“Then why’d you attack Eris? Why not just let the vampire take care of her? You know Aello will be out for revenge when she finds out you attacked her badass daughter.”
“Haven’t a clue.” She wouldn’t lie to her twin, even if a lie would get her off the hook.
“Be careful, sis.” He looked troubled.
“Sure.” Time to change the subject. “Who do you think the judge is? He must’ve gotten an eyeful tonight. And I’d really like to know who’s helping Eris. Someone here is.”
He shrugged. “Who knows? A man and woman checked in this afternoon. They’re not human, but I can’t make them. I have to believe the judge is already here, but I could be wrong. And anyone could be helping Eris. Probably nonhuman. She wouldn’t lower herself to take help from a human. I’ll see what I can find out.”
As Daria watched him walk away, she realized something for the first time. He’d still made his face ugly, but tonight his nose was a little smaller and his ears didn’t stick out. She wouldn’t bug him about it, but she was curious.
“Oh, good, you’re still here.”
Sparkle’s voice next to her made Daria jump.
“I was going to run this up to Declan, but there’s something I have to take care of in the kitchen.” The cosmic troublemaker’s smile wasn’t as vibrant as usual.
No, she definitely would not feel sorry for Sparkle Stardust. Daria glanced at her index finger. Still into designer bandages. “What is it?”
Sparkle pushed a tube into her hand. “I know he’s a vampire, and I know he’ll heal in a few hours, but right now he’s in a lot of pain.” She waited expectantly.
“And?”
“And he won’t be able to put this on himself without moving his shoulders. I bet that bitch’s talons went all the way through him. The cream will take away the pain until he heals.” Her eyes gleamed with unmistakable challenge.
Daria took a deep breath. “I can do it. And every stroke of my fingers will be impersonal. Got it? Im… per… son… al.”
“Of course.” She widened her eyes. Innocence, thy name is Sparkle.
All the way up the stairs, Daria mumbled and grumbled while the bottom of Declan’s coat dragged behind her. Sparkle was a sex-obsessed, calculating, manipulative opportunist. As a harpy, Daria admired that. As her victim, not so much. Daria almost stopped at her room to put on some clothes, but decided against it. Declan was in pain, and it was sort of her fault. A harpy had done this to him.
After pounding on his door until her knuckles hurt, she thought about going back to her room. No, that would be the coward’s way out. Sparkle would take it as proof she didn’t have the guts to stand eye to eye… Okay, eye to chest with him.
Hmm. She studied the door. She tried the doorknob. Locked. She gave it a little push. It popped open with a splintering of wood. Fine, so she’d given it a hard shove. Harpies didn’t know their own strength.
He wasn’t in the room, but she could hear the shower running behind the bathroom’s closed door. So that’s why he hadn’t heard her knocking. She’d just wait for him to come out. Glancing around, she noticed the suitcase on his bed. It was open. Was it her fault harpies had curious natures? Of course not.
Walking over, she peeked inside. Lots of jeans and T-shirts. All black. Lots of lethal-looking weapons. Useless. Maybe she was wrong, but after reading about Fenrir, she doubted they’d do much good.
When she heard the water stop running, she hurried to the couch and tried to look coolly… impersonal. And if she didn’t stop squeezing the darn tube so hard, it would burst and spew cream all over the room.
She was still working on the coolly impersonal expression when the bathroom door swung open. She smiled, a perky grin that said she was Nurse Daria here to tend the wounded warrior, and nothing else. Stuff that in your impersonal pipe and smoke it, Sparkle Starshit.
Her smile froze, though, as all of Declan filled the bathroom doorway. Naked. Very naked. She swallowed hard. Maintaining impersonal attitude, here. Daria quickly shifted her gaze to a painting of giant sunflowers. Too late. She’d seen him. Sighing, Daria abandoned the sunflowers for more fertile fields. She could stare at him forever. He looked that good. Was that an impersonal observation? Sure. It was an impartial assessment of the male body. Sparkle couldn’t fault her.
“ What’re you doing here?” No attempt to cover himself, no shocked expression. Striding to his suitcase, he rooted through it.
“Um, Sparkle gave me some cream to put on your shoulders to help with the pain.” She winced at the ragged tears in his flesh.
“So do it.” He glanced at the door. “Wanted to get in here badly, didn’t you?”
He didn’t sound mad, he didn’t sound glad, he sounded neutral.
“Yeah, okay.” She took the top off the tube with shaking fingers. Good thing his back was to her, because she wasn’t neutral at all. “Sorry about the door.” She searched around for a plausible lie. “When you didn’t answer, I thought maybe you’d passed out from loss of blood. I figured I’d better check on you. But when I heard the water running, I knew you just didn’t hear me.”
Before she moved up close behind him, she allowed herself one sweeping ogle. Looking at what Eris had done to him made her a little queasy.
Why? She was a harpy, for Hades’s sake. She didn’t faint when she saw mangled bodies. She’d earned an A in Blood and Gore 101. Maybe the sight bothered her because he wasn’t just anonymous prey to her anymore. A disturbing thought.
But once she got past his shoulders, it was smooth sailing. The powerful line of his back narrowed to lean hips, with strong thighs and legs. And his butt was as close to perfect as she ever wanted to see. Anything more perfect would probably stop her heart. Really. Tight, firm, rounded in a totally male way, and made for a woman’s hands to clasp. She knew what they felt like. She wanted to hold them again.
And talking about holding parts of his body, she could see the shadow of his heavy sacs between his slightly parted legs. From the look of his wounds, she’d have to put the cream on front and back. She sighed. Did a nurse’s work never end?
Daria gave herself a mental head-shake. What was she thinking? She was using his injury to indulge herself. Sure, a harpy ought to take her pleasure where and when she wanted, but no judge was around, so she could admit that thinking about his body when he was hurting didn’t feel right.
“Put on your jeans, and then I’ll take care of your shoulders.” Good. She’d gotten that out before she had time to think about it.
He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “I know what you’re thinking.”
Startled, she stared at him. “No, you don’t. My shields are up.” Then she realized he was teasing her. She relaxed and smiled back. “But if imagining makes you feel better, go for it.”
His laughter was husky and sensual. “Oh, it definitely does, sweetheart.” But he did pull a pair of jeans from his suitcase and step into them.
Once at least half of the temptation was covered, she stepped close to his back and smoothed the cream gingerly over his torn flesh. The wounds already looked like they were closing, but they must still hurt.
His muscles tensed beneath her fingers. She slid her tongue across suddenly dry lips. Don’t read anything into it. You just hurt him when you touched the wounds. So why then did she lean forward and slide the tip of her tongue the length of his spine? And why didn’t her action shock her even a little? Because it seemed the perfectly logical thing to do.
He shuddered. “You know how to take a man’s mind off his pain.”
“Turn around so I can put some cream on your front.” What was in that stuff? It had a slightly sweet scent that made her w
ant to lick it right off his yummy skin. She resisted the urge. Barely.
He obeyed, and for the first time she got a good look at his face. She’d been wrong. He wasn’t neutral either. His eyes proved that blue could be a sizzling color. And when he smiled, he showed lots of fang. He was excited, she was excited, so what was wrong with them both being excited together?
No judge was hiding under the bed, marking her down for passing up another chance to get her vampire. Sparkle was nowhere around to see her touch him with a whole lot of lust.
The scent of aroused male and sweet cream combined to make her feel sort of drunk. Sure, she was operating a dangerous vehicle with impaired faculties, but just this once wouldn’t hurt.
Dutifully, she spread the cream onto the front of his shoulders. She bit her lip, concentrating on the tactile sensation of the cream sliding over warm skin and hard muscle. The scent of the cream upped the level of her awareness until she wanted to climb inside him and lick her way out.
She settled for dragging the tip of her fingernail lightly around one male nipple before kissing a path over his awesome pecs and abs.
Daria swore their arousal was making the air heavy. That’s why her breaths were coming in hard gasps. He’d buried his fingers in her hair and was holding her head to his stomach. She could tell him that if he was going to hold her head somewhere, she had a much better suggestion.
His jeans rode low on his hips, exposing his navel. She pounced on it, twirling her tongue round and round until he groaned.
Pulling away, she fumbled at the button on his jeans. With all that pressure building up behind it, unbuttoning him wasn’t easy. But hey, a determined harpy could do anything.
For a moment, she glanced past him. Just in time to see one of the sunflowers in the painting wink at her. She froze. Wink?
Declan sensed her sudden tension and turned to follow her gaze. “What’s the matter?”
He’d dismantle anyone or anything that interrupted what she was doing to his body. Oh, what the hell? What she was doing to him.
Over the centuries, he’d gotten in the habit of categorizing sexual pleasure as something that affected only his body—like a great massage or a hot shower. If he believed all of these physical sensations never touched his inner self, were just surface things, he didn’t give his emotions a chance to get involved.
His version of reality had worked for a lot of years. It allowed him to coldly ignore pain in order to kill what was hurting him. And it kept him from mistaking sex for love. He’d been around too long to get tied up in the love knot. But he wouldn’t lie to himself. Daria was tunneling through his surface layer and was dangerously close to a center he feared was a little too soft and mushy where she was concerned. He’d allow it. For now. But when it was time to leave, he’d walk away as he’d done so many times before. It might be a little harder this time, though.
She was still staring at the sunflower painting.
“You don’t like sunflowers? I can make them go away, and then you can continue soothing my fevered… whatever.”
“It winked at me.”
His first instinct was to laugh. His second was to realize she must’ve seen something. Daria might be many things, but delusional wasn’t one of them.
Delusions? He sniffed the air. “Sparkle gave you that cream. I don’t recognize the smell. What’s in it?” The troublemaker had been a little too insistent about Daria putting the cream on him personally. He knew she wanted the two of them to hook up—hooking up people was her thing—but would she be sneaky enough to give human nature a chemical boost? Sure she would.
“I thought of that. The smell of the cream along with… other scents was making me feel weird.” She met his gaze. “In a really good way. But I’m not imagining what I saw. What’s on the other side of that wall?”
He shrugged. “Another guest room, I guess.”
“Let’s go see.” She headed for the door.
Leaving the room, he glanced at his door. Ganymede would have to fix it before Cindy and Thrain got home. He thought about Fenrir. Then again, if there was no inn to come home to, the door wouldn’t much matter.
“I don’t think this is a room. It looks like some kind of closet.” She reached for the knob of the door adjacent to his. “Anyone who was in here is probably long gone.”
He raised one brow. “And you suspect what?”
“I think someone was watching us through that sunflower.”
“The sunflower. Right.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Why would anyone do that?”
Without warning, someone flung open the door, nearly knocking Daria down.
“Someone would do that so they could make sure Daria wasn’t cheating on our little bet.” Sparkle smiled sweetly as she strolled from the linen closet. “Once I realized you would head back to your room, Declan, I raced up here and drilled a hole through the closet wall into your room. It was too easy.” She frowned. “I was disappointed. I thought they made these old houses better than that. Anyway, then I went into your room, drilled a hole in the sunflower, and made sure the hole in the painting lined up with the hole in the wall.”
Declan swallowed his rage. Sparkle would enjoy it too much. Instead, he mentally strung together five of his favorite expletives. “Don’t know for sure, but I think that’s illegal.”
Sparkle widened her eyes at him. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the law.” She held up a small container he hadn’t noticed before. “That’s why I’m going to fill in the hole right now.”
“I hope you have enough in that can to fill in the hole your head will make when I smash it into the wall.” Fury made Daria’s voice shake.
It took a lot to intimidate Sparkle Stardust. “Oh, get over it, Daria. I had to make sure you told me the truth about touching him with lust. Besides, I didn’t see anything spectacular. Since all you have on is that stupid coat, you could’ve at least taken it off.” She looked grumpy.
Declan let his temper slip a little. “Want to tell us why you think you have the right to spy on us? I’ll need to explain it to my lawyer.”
That got her attention. She shot him a considering look.
Daria moved toward Sparkle. “She’d better talk fast, because it’s sort of hard to communicate after someone rips your tongue out.”
“Hmm, I guess I’ll have to write You’re Fired on a piece of paper, then.” Sparkle studied her index finger. The message, Have Sex Often, was spelled out in what looked like tiny rubies on her bandage. “Look, I don’t know why you’re so upset. I mean, you can’t tell me you Wouldn’t jump at the chance to cheat on the bet if you could.”
He expected Daria to explode all over Sparkle. Instead, she shifted her gaze away from the troublemaker. “Well, I wouldn’t drill a hole through someone’s wall so I could peek at them.”
Sparkle radiated sly triumph. “You cheated last night, didn’t you, Daria?”
“Nope. No lustful touches for me.” Her glance at Declan said, “Keep your mouth closed.”
“I’m a paying guest, and you drilled a hole in the freaking sunflower so you could spy on me. Ever hear of invasion of privacy?” Now he was really getting ticked.
It looked as though Sparkle had defused the situation with Daria, so she turned her attention to him. “This bet is important to me. She was so sure she could keep from touching you in a sensual way. I mean, that’s a total insult to your sensually charismatic self.”
Sparkle’s gaze slipped to Daria for a moment. “Things were heating up in there. Way to go, sister.”
Then she looked back at him. “The winner each night gets to change the other’s appearance in some way. Hello? That’s a biggie for me. My image defines who I am.” She cast Daria a resentful glance. “Last night she won. Or so she claims. She made me break a nail. Tonight I won.” Her eyes glittered with malice. “Am I a vengeful witch? You bet. I’m planning on major payback.”
Declan decided not to react until he’d
thought things through. But he did have one more thing to ask. “What was in that cream you gave Daria?”
Now it was Sparkle’s turn to look away. “Oh, a little of this and a little of that.”
“I bet lots of that.” Daria’s grumble promised she might be down but she wasn’t out.
“Sparkle, if you were still speaking to Ganymede, would you have told him before you did this?” Declan remembered Ganymede’s concern that she’d do something crazy. This qualified. “Would he have gone along with it?”
“No.” Sparkle looked uncomfortable. “He’d worry about making Cindy and Thrain mad.” She tried to look defiant. It came off a little sad. “But I’m in his rearview mirror now, so he doesn’t get to give advice.” Sparkle stared at the container in her hand. “I’ll do this later.” She went into the closet and set it on a shelf.
He raked his fingers through his hair. “We have to get those two back together again. Ganymede really is a steadying influence on her.”
Daria offered a fervent “I hear you.”
Silently, they watched Sparkle come out of the closet and close the door behind her.
Okay, time for him to beat feet out of here before his temper snapped. He’d leave the females to it while he put on a shirt and went looking for Ganymede. Afterward he’d figure out how to make love to Daria without someone watching them from the nearest painting.
“Ganymede and I have a few things to talk about.” He looked at Daria, and he hoped his gaze told her they had a bunch of unfinished business.
Then he smiled at Sparkle, making sure he showed lots of fang. “Fix my wall and never let me find any holes in it again. Because if I do, I’ll lose my temper. A pissed-off vampire can do lots of damage to a place. Thrain and Cindy might not invite you back.”
Some of the satisfaction seeped from Sparkle’s expression. “When you see Mede, tell him I threw away all the candy bars he had in my room. He can stay in the broom closet for all I care.”