Opal's Wish: Book Four of The Crystal Warriors Series

by Maree Anderson

  She trudged up the path. Nearly there. A few more steps. She jabbed her key into the lock and shouldered open the front door. Once inside, she dropped her overnight bag and flexed her fingers. The familiarity of her sanctuary enveloped her, and the tension drained from her muscles. It wasn’t much, but thanks to her modest inheritance and the cash she’d squirreled away throughout her truncated modeling career it was all hers. And it was just as well she’d been careful with her money. The struggle to provide for her daughter would be far worse if she had to cover rent or mortgage payments on top of unexpected expenses she couldn’t budget for. Like medical bills and prescriptions.

  Lights from the street pierced the filmy net drapes she’d hung in the sitting room, gilding the dim room with a brassy haze. Opal yawned wide enough to crack her jaw and staggered toward the barely discernible human-shaped lump on the couch.

  Guilt reared its ugly head again. Poor Liza. She probably had school tomorrow, and she must be exhausted.

  Opal had reached out to gently shake Liza awake when her brain clicked up a gear. The “lump” was taking up the length of the couch and then some. Which meant….

  The lump couldn’t possibly be Liza.

  She froze, paralyzed by indecision. Shriek like a banshee—provided she could force a sound from her mouth. Run like hell. Back away quietly as possible and head for Sera’s room. Call the cops on her mobile. OhGodohGodohGod—

  She caught the gleam of his eyes beneath his lids. He was awake. And she could only stand there like a gawping idiot as the memories slammed back into her brain with such brutal force she staggered.

  Danbur. He had helped Sera. He’d kicked Liza and her boyfriend out of the house. Desiree’s friend Roth had dropped him off at a shelter. And… and…. Opal’s elderly neighbor Peter had convinced her to leave Sera again—supposedly in Peter’s care. Which had seemed like an excellent idea at the time, but was so uncharacteristic given how worried she’d been about her daughter’s wellbeing that Opal wondered if she’d temporarily been out of her mind.

  “Wh-wh-where’s P-P-Peter?” For his sake, he’d better be in the bathroom. Or even in her bedroom taking a nap atop her bed. Because this time she would tolerate no excuses from him for leaving Sera with a stranger—this stranger.

  In a smooth, graceful movement Danbur rolled from the couch to his feet.

  Opal backed up but he kept on coming. And before she could free the scream lodged in her throat he raised a finger to his lips. “Hush. You will wake the little one. She was overtired and I had quite a time convincing her it was past time to sleep.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him to get the hell out of her house but damned if she could voice even the first word of the demand.

  “The old man is not here,” he said, finally answering her question.

  She tried again. “G-g-guhhhh.” Her breath eked out in a whoosh. Damn it!

  “I am not going anywhere for the moment,” he said.

  Huh. Apparently he could translate gibberish at least as well as Desiree. Good. With any luck he would take the hint and leave. With any luck the door would smack his handsome ass on the way out.

  “You and I need to talk about Sera,” he said.

  She stared at him. He had to be kidding her. He was a stranger. He’d invaded her house without her permission—again. He had no right to be here, no right to care about Sera. What was there to discuss?

  Opal threw back her shoulders to expand her lung capacity, silently counted to three, and let him have it. To her dismay only a hiccup burst from her throat. And that was that. She’d reached the limits of her ability to communicate.

  Frustration prickled her skin. Talking. Having an actual conversation rather than spitting out truncated or barely comprehensible versions of what she truly wanted to say. That most basic of human abilities had been stolen from her, and it would take more than speech therapy or breathing exercises to restore it. Her eyes burned with furious tears and she ducked her head, not trusting the darkness to hide her vulnerability from this too observant man.

  She sensed him moving. Strangely, his arm was a comforting weight about her shoulders as he ushered her to the couch. And when she stood there, dazed, fighting a sudden, wholly ridiculous desire to collapse against his broad chest and weep like an overwrought child, he swept her into his arms and lowered his butt to the couch.

  The couch springs protested their combined weight. Opal blinked once. Twice. But it wasn’t a dream. She was sitting across his lap, propped against his chest, safely anchored by the big palm curved against her hip. And damned if it wasn’t a comfortable place to be. Damned if it didn’t feel right, and meant to be, and all those wonderful clichés that only happened in romance novels or rom-coms. Damned if she wasn’t so tired and worn down that she indulged herself just this one time, and accepted what he offered.

  She didn’t scramble from his lap… or knock aside the big hand that stroked a lock of hair back from her face. And she didn’t flinch when he bent his head to murmur, “We are victims of a curse, you and I. Sera, too. We have been manipulated, tugged hither and thither like infants on leading strings. Tears would not be shameful in this instance.” A soft, wry-sounding snort. “I am sorely tempted to shed a few myself.”

  She was so caught up in indulging, burrowing into the crook of his shoulder and nuzzling a wrinkle in the soft fabric of his sweatshirt with her cheekbone, that it took a few moments to process his words.

  Victims of a curse? What the—?

  His arms caged her, reacting to the coiled tension of her muscles as she geared herself to fight free of his embrace. “Pieter revealed many truths today,” he said. “Truths I must share with you. For Sera’s sake. Will you listen, Opal?”

  The unvoiced “please” throbbed between them.

  Could Danbur, too, be a victim? Because begging was the last resort of the weak and powerless, who pleaded to no avail. It represented everything she wanted to erase from her past but couldn’t. Bile rose in her throat and as she choked it down she shuddered.

  She reached back to switch on the table lamp beside the couch, and as the small pool of light flooded their space she examined his face. He’d uttered a noise that suggested he’d been startled, and he was blinking at her as his eyesight adjusted. But now his expression revealed nothing more than a desperate need to speak his piece.

  She could relate to that.

  “Yes,” she finally said. He deserved to be heard after everything he’d done for Sera while Opal had been off playing top model wannabe for the weekend.

  The rocklike thigh muscles beneath her rump softened to mere hardness. She thought about climbing from his lap—didn’t think he would stop her this time. But he spoke so very softly she had to strain to hear his heartfelt, “Thank you,” and so her decision to remain cuddled close to him had nothing to do with an abruptly awakened craving for… for… the intimacy of gentle kisses upon bared skin. For seeing desire darkening a man’s eyes when he looked at her, and knowing absolutely it was a healthy desire—one that would result in mutual pleasure rather than terror and pain. She told herself it was merely easier to stay put rather than move away and risk the humiliation of abortive requests begging him to speak up.

  “You know him as Peter Stone,” Danbur was saying when Opal tuned in again. “But his true name is Pieter.”

  He pronounced it peeTUH, with the accent on the second syllable.

  “He was named for the crystal pietersite,” Danbur continued. “He is a sorcerer of great power. Centuries ago, with the help of a goddess he cast a spell trapping my tehun—my troop and its commander—in our namesake crystals. And the ‘wishing crystal’, the piece of danburite Pieter gave your daughter, is the very same crystal that became my prison.”

  Opal didn’t try to refute this outrageous claim. She’d spent years gauging expressions and body language, learning to read unconscious “tells” and nuances of tone, minutely observing everyone she was forced to interact with so she wouldn�
�t be deceived and betrayed again. Danbur believed what he was telling her. She doubted even a compulsive liar could be so congruent. And her heart ached for this beautiful man whose mind was so damaged that he dwelled in a fantasy world.

  No wonder Sera was so drawn to him. She adored fairy tales and Danbur, with his tales of goddesses and sorcerers, crystals and curses, would have enchanted her from the get-go. Hell, Opal was well down the path to being enchanted herself.

  “Somehow Sera called me from the crystal and we now share an immutable bond. But despite your daughter’s affinity with crystals, and despite her being named for one, she was not my intended savior.”

  Enough. Opal couldn’t remain still—or silent, for that matter—any longer. She had to put a stop to this heartbreaking fantasy.

  Thankfully, Danbur didn’t try to prevent her clambering from his lap and settling at the opposite end of the couch. She rubbed her arms, abruptly chilled, inside and out. “Sera’s n-n-not—”

  “Not named for a crystal?” One eyebrow rose in challenge. “You named her Seraphine.”

  “M-M-M-means ‘a-a-angel’.” She hadn’t been able to settle on a name but when the attending nurse had commented on the “sweet little angel,” the name had popped into Opal’s head. And she’d only had gaze at her newborn’s cherubic face to know it fit her.

  Danbur’s brow crinkled. “Angels. I recall mention of such creatures. They are immortal beings created by gods, are they not?”

  Close enough. Opal nodded.

  “Nevertheless your daughter is also named for a crystal. Seraphinite. In Styria ’tis rare, and few know of its existence.”

  Of course he would have an explanation. She suspected if she dragged him to the library to pore through a stack of books about crystals and not one of them mentioned seraphinite, he would still find a way to rationalize his tale. Ditto with an internet search on the library’s computers.

  “You do not believe me,” he said.

  Embarrassed that he had read her so easily—again—she shook her head. Little point in lying.

  “I harbor no grudge that you do not. If you had stepped through a portal to my world, and regaled me with tales of steel conveyances such as Roth’s SUV, latrines attached to walls, and devices such as this cunning lamp that needs neither wick nor fuel to provide light, I would have thought you sun-touched.”

  Opal nibbled her lower lip as she mulled his descriptions. Anyone would think he’d never seen an electric lamp.

  Her mind snagged on something else he’d said. “Wh-wh-who—”

  “Who is my savior, the woman selected as my potential bond-mate? The woman who might, gods willing, have helped me break free of this curse?”

  She nodded, now beyond surprise that he could anticipate her questions. He was an intuitive, intelligent man… for a semi-delusional storyteller.

  “She is also named for a crystal,” he said, his gaze so intent on her face that damning heat rose to sear her cheeks. No man had ever looked at her like this—as though he wanted to know every inch of her…. Intimately. Body and soul.

  “Pieter claims she is named for a fire opal—a powerful crystal indeed.”

  The heat spread, creeping down her body to coil in the pit of her belly. And lower, in intimate places that made her bite her lips to keep from gasping. He couldn’t be suggesting that she—?

  “You, Opal. You were chosen for me. But something went awry and now the bond has been initiated with another. Your child. Sera.”

  “Sera!” Opal bolted from the couch and headed upstairs at a run. God, what was wrong with her? So caught up in the allure of escaping the drudgery of everyday life that she’d left Sera first with a sitter affected by raging teenage hormones, and then with an unreliable old man. So caught up in this man and his fantasies, she hadn’t even thought to check on her daughter. Danbur had been right to claim she was an unfit mother.

  Sera’s bedroom door was ajar. Opal barreled through and skidded to a halt beside Sera’s bed. Her baby was asleep, lashes fanning her cheeks, soft little mouth gaping slightly, her precious toy fox tucked beside her.

  Opal watched Sera breathe and counted each breath until her heart stopped pounding in her ears and she could think again.

  She glanced up to see Danbur leaning against the doorjamb, his gaze fixed on Sera. “She is well,” he murmured. “Her health is good. I sense it through the bond.”

  Opal brushed her lips across Sera’s forehead and tiptoed from the room. As she passed Danbur she grabbed his arm and tugged him away from the bedroom. Away from her daughter. Enough already with this bond crap. Didn’t matter that Danbur’s presence stirred yearnings that had lain dormant inside her, prodding her hormones to awake with a vengeance and do the happy dance. Didn’t matter that she felt sorry for him, that every instinct cried out for her to get him the help he needed. Bottom line? He was living in a fantasy world, and he was obsessed with Sera. And that was not a good thing in any way, shape, or form.

  “Y-y-you have to l-l-leave,” she said. “Now.”

  “I understand,” he said. “And I will leave if you promise me one thing.”

  She didn’t feel up to battling with her vocal chords so she trusted her expression to form the question mark.

  “Promise me you will tell Sera I am sorry I had to leave before she awoke. I regret not being able to tell her goodbye in person.”

  She nodded. Sera would be upset but it couldn’t be helped. Opal would explain it to her. Somehow.

  “I have thought of one more thing,” he said.

  No. No “one more thing” allowed. She’d opened her mouth to try to communicate that to him when he did it: cupped one big hand around her nape, and the other over the curve of her butt—all the better to urge her flush against him and lower his head to her upturned face….

  To kiss her.

  Opal stilled, too startled to react. For such a big man he was surprisingly gentle. His lips brushed hers so lightly she might have thought she’d imagined the gesture if not for the pleasure fizzing through her body. And then, while she was still deciding what this kiss might mean, he did it again—touched his lips to hers oh-so-gently, lingering a little longer, giving her dazed brain time to realize his lips were smooth. Soft. And she knew from observing him far too closely that they were full—a marker of the same genetics that had gifted him that rich, lusciously dark cocoa-brown skin and those high slashing cheekbones.

  A third feather-soft kiss. And by now she was so focused on his lips that she barely registered him threading his fingers through her hair, and when she did notice, there was no accompanying dart of fear, no sickly rush of panic slicking her spine.

  His lips left hers. Her eyelids had drifted closed but she knew he hadn’t raised his head, knew that his mouth hovered above hers… waiting….

  For her to make the next move?

  The clumsy overtures of the one semi-serious boyfriend she’d had before being put off men for life didn’t help much when it came to kissing. Her boyfriend had been too sweet to press her, and she’d been too shy to experiment. The only other man who’d kissed her had used kisses as weapons, wielding them to prove to Opal how weak and powerless she truly was—if thrusting his tongue down her throat until she choked could be termed a “kiss”. So this was unchartered territory. This was….

  A gift.

  Danbur wasn’t forcing her to do this. He wasn’t forcing her to do anything. Whatever happened next was her choice, her decision.

  Opal could choose to embrace this moment—this unexpected gift. She could choose to immerse herself in Danbur’s kisses, hold them close to her heart, dust off the memory of them, and the pleasure he’d given her, next time the nightmares came. It was suddenly, shockingly, an easy choice to make.

  She rose onto tiptoes and pressed her mouth to his. This time his kiss was everything she’d hoped for. And more. It was his lips hungry against hers, his tongue licking the seam of her lips, coaxing. His moan—or maybe hers, she didn’t know
or care—as she parted her lips and let him in, tasting him, becoming bolder, sipping and licking and sucking… until her breath was reduced to little gasping pants of want and need.

  When he lifted his head she was limp and wobbly-kneed, her body sparking with the awareness that she wanted more—everything that a man who desired a woman could give. Everything that he could give. So it took all her willpower, all her strength to say, “Y-Y-You h-h-have to g-g-go.”

  Part of her desperately wanted him to refuse, to announce that he was staying and dare her to take what he was offering. And it took every last ounce of control she could dredge up to negotiate the stairs, walk to the front door and yank it open, to stand aside and not call him back when he brushed past her. If she’d been in her right mind, not devastated and miserable and already mourning his absence, she might have summoned a shred of pride that it wasn’t until his shadowy form was swallowed by the night, and she had closed and locked the door, that she dissolved in tears.

  There was no logical reason to cry. This was what she wanted—him, and the complications he represented, gone. He’d only done what she asked. So why did she feel so bereft? So broken?

  She didn’t remember climbing the stairs and walking to her room. Or kicking off her shoes, shedding her clothes, and crawling beneath the covers in her bra and panties. But she must have done those things because that’s how she woke the next morning. And it was only while she was helping Sera get ready for school that Opal realized she’d slept right through the night. No nightmares. No waking up drenched in sweat and shivering with remembered fear.

  She raised her fingertips to lips that still felt sensitive and swollen from Danbur’s kisses. And wished with all her heart that she was a different person—one who wasn’t damaged and mistrustful of men, incapable doing normal things like dating, and getting to know a man she was attracted to, and maybe having a mutually fulfilling relationship. And she wished that Danbur was a different person, too. One whose mind was as sound as his body.