by Molly Harper
“Curbside service,” he told her, opening the door and catching her before she tumbled out.
“Thanks for driving me home.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
While he hovered rather close, he didn’t try to hold her elbow or support her as they walked to the door. She struck him as someone who wouldn’t appreciate being condescended to, even when she was almost comatose on her feet.
Zed took the keys from Dani’s hand on her fourth try to get them out of her purse. “I’m glad you came tonight. It would have been boring without you.”
“I’m glad I didn’t stay home in my pajamas.” She admitted. She slipped her arms around his waist and hugged him. He hesitated for a beat, his hands poised over her shoulders, before pulling her close. He tucked his nose into her hair and smelled lavender and clover. He inhaled deeply and felt himself melt against her.
“Next time, maybe you’ll let me drive the bike?” she mumbled into his shirt.
He burst out laughing, throwing his head back. “Nice try, cher.”
“It was worth a shot.” She snickered. “Good night.”
He stared down at her mouth, so soft and full and bent his head toward it. He brushed his lips against hers, gently and when she answered by swallowing his next breath, kissed her properly. He approached her with tentative nibbles, followed by bolder licks and swipes. His hand slid down the curve of her back, settling over her hip. He squeezed, reveling in the soft, supple shape of her.
She bit lightly at his lip, parting his mouth with her tongue. He groaned and pulled her tight against him. She tasted like home and his favorite pie.
“You had the blueberry?” he murmured against her mouth. Dani nodded and Zed leaned in for another kiss. “I fucking love the blueberry.”
Dani giggle-snorted into his mouth, but never stopped kissing him. She slid her hands into his mess of hair and he rolled the crown of his head against her touch. He pushed her gently against the door of the maison. She fumbled blindly for the handle and popped the door open. She pulled at Zed’s shirt, guiding him through the door, but he put his hands on either side of the frame, stopping himself.
“I think this is where I leave,” he said, not quite trusting himself not to throw her over his shoulder and run upstairs at a gallop. As much as he wanted to see what was going on under the llamas, he was half in love with this girl already, and if he had sex with her now, he’d give her the mating bite and they might not leave the house for the next week. And he had a small mountain of paperwork and half a dozen meetings to go to this week.
Though she looked vaguely disappointed, Dani nodded and gave him one last quick peck. “Thank you.”
“Dormez bien,” he whispered. Dani stepped back and let the door close in front of her. As the door locked, Zed hung his head. Sometimes being a grown-up really sucked.
6
Dani
Dani was pretty sure she was dying.
Wading through the waist-high ferns on the outskirts of the Afarpiece Swamp felt like fighting through quicksand that took her intrusion personally. She’d hiked mountains in Peru and jungles in Malaysia and she’d never felt the heat pull on her physical strength like this. Zed clearly wasn’t struggling with the exertion, but he probably did considerably more cardio than she did. Her only consolation was the pretty picture he made, shoving the vegetation aside like unwelcome paparazzi to make way for her. Seriously, the man had a back side like a Greek marble sculpture. She would know because one of her favorite tacky souvenirs was a fridge magnet from the Bode Museum in Berlin, that was a framed close-up of a Greek marble sculpture’s butt. And it looked exactly like Zed’s.
Women would gladly give up their entire 401K’s for a ticket to this show. She just had to keep the goal (and not Zed’s formidable hip-to-shoulder ratio) in mind. She was here to work. As attractive and funny and cinnamon roll sweet as Zed was, she was here in Mystic Bayou to earn the money her Grandad needed. And yes, while she enjoyed Zed and his ridiculous body and the brain-melting kisses he’d bestowed on her under the almost-dead Spanish moss tree, she could not get distracted by them. Zed was a probably relationship guy, the most dangerous variety of potential hook-up partners. And a relationship would slow her progress down, and that would provoke Jillian’s anger, which could get her fired, which would mean her Grandad would lose his farm. So there would be no boning of Zed. No matter how much she wanted to.
And she really, really wanted to.
Dani paused to adjust her backpack straps. She was wearing her sensible boots, nylon hiking pants, and a purple athletic shirt that wicked the sweat from her skin, and yet she still felt like she was swimming through a thick pudding of humidity. She’d carefully packed the backpack with water, snacks, sunscreen, bug spray, and camera equipment, but she was starting to wonder if she should have included a second set of clothes, because these were starting to feel particularly swampy.
She’d been pleasantly surprised when she’d mentioned going out to the rift over the morning coffee she’d taken to sharing with Zed on her back porch before either of them started their days. Rather than trying to convince Dani that she wasn’t ready, Zed told her he’d brought a hiking pack for just such an occasion and he would gladly escort her to the site. She might have objected on principle, but Jillian had mentioned passing out, so she didn’t want to take a stupid risk based on pride.
True to its name, Afarpiece Swamp was on the opposite side of the bayou from the maison de fous. The forest floor was carpeted with a thick layer of soft moss. Cypress and pine trees grew taller here than any spot Dani had seen anywhere in Louisiana. Honeysuckle blossoms the size of church bells hung from the trees, their scent so thick it almost felt unpleasant. Dani noted that the noises she normally associated with the swamp—the call of birds, chittering from small animals, splashing from underwater predators claiming a meal—were all pointedly absent. Nothing lived here but the plants. No animal could stand the constant pulse of energy from the rift.
Frankly, Dani was starting to feel a little unnerved by it. Like hauntings, each rift had its own personality. Some were angry, aggressive, like a drunk guy yelling, “FIGHTFIGHTFIGHT!” in a bar, encouraging others to violence. (Hello, Altamont.) Others were sad, the heavy, cloying weight of misery seeking to drag every living being around it into its haze of melancholy. This rift felt . . . lonely. It was calling Dani and Zed and every being in Mystic Bayou to it because it craved company. It was probably what drew the shifters and fairy folk in the first place. That made Dani wary. She’d never experienced a longing for attention from a rift before, and certainly not at this level. And yet, every time Zed said, “Just a little longer,” she felt the prickle of anticipation along her arms. The weight of the heat and humidity lifted and she could feel the rift charging her cells with a welcome frisson of excitement.
Zed paused at a long line of moss-covered rocks that stretched as far into the woods as Dani could see. “Okay, abeille, this is as close as humans can get, without getting sick.”
“Abeille? That’s a new one.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Means ‘honeybee.’”
She laughed. “What about me reminds you of a honeybee?”
“’Cause I like honey, more than I like most things. And I like you more than I like most things.”
She tried not to blush. She really did. But it was probably the sweetest thing that any man had ever said to her. “Thank you.”
He snorted and held up the pair of hunting binoculars he’d taken out of his pack. He pushed back some tree limbs so she could see the water about five hundred yards away. “So you see through the woods and the clearing, over the water? That sort of haze floating a few feet in the air? It kind of looks like the wavy lines you see over asphalt during the summer.”
Dani didn’t need the binoculars. Her hands reached toward the spectacle, though there was no way for her touch it. “I don’t see that at all.”
What she saw was like the a
urora borealis if it came down to Louisiana to play five feet over the swamp’s surface. The blending and swirling of colors was so beautiful it almost made her eyes hurt. And yet, she was called to move forward, get closer. Her head whipped toward Zed and a smile broke out over her face. “Don’t you see it?”
“Not really. It just looks a little foggy to me. I just feel, content? Settled, like this is where I’m supposed to be, even though there’s enough pressure to make my ears pop a bit.”
“Can you access it from the water?
“What, like canoe up from behind it? I have no idea. No one’s ever been crazy enough to try it.”
“How close can magique get?”
He pointed to an area far beyond the treeline, in a clearing between them and the water. “There’s another rock line about two hundred yards in.”
“I’d like to see how far in I can go.”
Zed frowned. “I don’t know, cher. I don’t want you to wear yourself out on your first trip out here. What if you get sick? Or you hurt yourself and you can’t do the work you’re here to do in the first place?”
“And how am I supposed to know what my limits are if I don’t test them out in a safe fashion with a partner who can get me medical treatment if I need it?”
“Damn you and your logic.”
Dani raised her arms in triumph. “Scientific method, bitch!”
Zed chuckled. He crossed over the rock line and showed no signs of distress, except for staring back at her as if she was stepping over a trip wire.
“It’s going to be okay,” she reassured him.
Zed grumbled under his breath and if she wasn’t mistaken, those gray eyes of his were slowly changing to a tawny gold. She stepped over the rocks, expecting some sort jolt to her system, but like Zed, all she felt was contentedness. It felt like she was slipping into a bath with just enough heat to bite.
“If you start feeling off, I’m carrying you right back,” he warned her.
“Agreed.”
They kept a slow pace over the relatively even terrain, through thick moss and grass heavily perfumed with wildflowers the size of dinner plates. She walked right up to the magique line with no problem. When she stumbled over a patch of purple vetch that had formed a sort of rope across the ground, he caught her hand to keep her upright. And then he refused to let go, his fingers with their growing claws gripping her own gently as spun glass. Zed started shaking his head occasionally as they moved closer, twitching in mild discomfort, but Dani felt downright leisurely in her enjoyment of the rift’s pulse.
“It’s so beautiful,” she sighed as the lights writhed in the distance. “Can’t you see it?”
“No,” he sighed, pulling her a bit closer to his side. “I wish I could see it the way you do.”
“Imagine the most beautiful painting ever created, only it lives and breathes.”
“Okay.”
“And then another even more awesome painting busts through the wall Kool-Aid-Man style and kicks that painting’s ass.”
Zed threw his head back and laughed. “Finally, someone explains la faille in a way I can understand.”
Dani stood, silently, letting the waves of the rift’s energy wash over her like the tide. Blocking out Zed’s discomfited chuffing, she closed her eyes and felt out the edges of the rift’s space, and felt it leap to respond, throwing itself against the barriers of her gift like an overeager puppy against a pet shop window. It had so much to share with her, so much to show her, if she would only come closer.
The separation in the “fabric” surrounding the rift was immense, though it wasn’t something Dani could measure in distance or even explain to someone who couldn’t feel it inside their head. But something about the tear felt forced and manufactured, which didn’t make any sense. Rifts were natural accidents and this felt like vandalism. Something was wrong here.
“I want to see if I can get closer.”
“No.” The smile slid right off Zed’s face. “I won’t be able to go in and get you if you pass out.”
Dani reached into her backpack and pulled out a coil of climbing rope. “That’s why I brought this.”
“Your fancy scientific method is that I’m going to tie a rope around your waist and drag you back to safety when you push yourself too hard? Like in Poltergeist?”
“It worked in Poltergeist.”
“Just when I think you may the smartest person I’ve ever met, you go and say something like that.”
Shrugging, Dani secured one end of the rope around her waist in a double bowline knot and handed him the coil.
“I do not feel right about this,” he told her.
“Duly noted.”
Zed’s eyes were fully golden now, as bears apparently started shifting when they were anxious. Dani would have to remember that. She didn’t want to stress him out while riding on the back of his bike and end up riding shotgun with a bear, like something out of a circus.
Dani hopped over the magique line, turning to Zed and showing him that she was just fine. He was holding the rope like it was the only thing tethering him to the planet. And she wiped the cheeky smirk off of her face because he didn’t seem to be amused at all.
She walked slowly toward the lights, her hands shaking from the amount of push-back she was receiving. Every step seemed to require super-strength.
“I’m going to talk to you, so I can determine whether your brain is being scrambled.”
Dani nodded as she crept toward the rift, her body overwhelmed by all of the signals it was receiving. “That seems sensible.”
“Any idea of what it is? What caused it?” he asked. “I mean, I’ve lived near it my whole life, but no one really seems to know why rifts happen. And please try to explain it in Kool-Aid-Man terms again, because that seemed to work.”
“Okay, imagine you’re making the universe, but all the pieces don’t line up, like mismatched print seams in a dress, creating a weakness in the piece.”
“This is not up to your Kool-Aid-Man standard, but I get it.” He nodded.
“Rifts are not that unusual, actually. You can find spots like this all over the world—Stonehedge, Machu Pichu, this really sketchy convenience store in Parsipanny, New Jersey. But they’re not quite as dramatic. Those rifts are like when you don’t quite seal a plastic baggie and a little fruit juice seeps out. Your rift is like the elevator scene in The Shining.”
Zed shuddered so hard it jerked the rope around her waist. “Why? Why would you bring that up?”
Dani grunted against the strain of moving forward. The closer she walked, the lighter she felt, but in a less fun, “barely holding on to consciousness” way. She could feel the force of the rift pushing at her, like two massive hands were shoving at her shoulders.
“Look, energy is forever. You can’t destroy it or create it. You can absorb it and move it somewhere else. You can remake it into another form, like that ball of light. The problem is your rift is one big interconnected system and I don’t want to pull on the wrong bit and bring the whole thing down on our heads.”
“I know we would all appreciate that. Do you think you’re going to be able to bring the rift back under control, keep it from leaking?”
“I have no idea, but I hope so.” She huffed out one last breath. “Toss me a rock!”
He selected one of the stones, yanked it out of the ground and rolled it toward her like a mossy bocci ball. She stopped it with her foot and marked her spot. “Okay! This is as far as I can go!”
“Great, now get that cute little ass back here before I stress myself into an early grave.”
Dani laughed, and catching her breath, moved away from the rift and all its charms. The farther she walked, the better she felt, until she was running full tilt at him. Grinning, she leapt into his arms and Zed almost bobbled her, before he caught a double-handful of her ass to grip. Chuckling against her mouth, he dropped onto his back, and she landed on top of him, straddling his hips.
“So I take it you’
re feeling okay?” he asked, smirking up at her.
“I’m feeling great!”
Zed propped himself on his elbows to grin up at her. “Obviously.”
“How would you feel about having sex right now?”
Zed made a sound that was between a laugh and a cough, clearly caught off-guard. “You’re a direct little thing, aren’t you?”
“No sense in tip-toeing around it. I want you. I think you want me. And the rift mojo just reminded me of how short and potentially awesome life is, and how stupid it would be to put off something we both seem to want, when the opportunity is right here.”
She tore her shirt over her head, revealing a turquoise sports bra that was a wonder of modern brassiere engineering. She kicked off her hiking boots and shimmied out of the prison of her nylon pants. Fresh air on her skin never felt so good. Zed grinned even broader at the sight of her panties, a cute blue cotton print showing llamas prancing all over her generous ass cheeks.
“So what do you think?”
His face was very serious as he said, “I think you’re one of the greatest philosophers I’ve ever met.”
She beamed down at him and bit his bottom lip, making him moan and thrust his hips against her. How long had it been for her? Tribal customs had been too difficult to navigate in Mongolia for a casual partner, and she’d been there for two months. The Seychelles? No, she’d been so drained by that job that she didn’t have the energy for blinking, much less sex. Alaska, that burly lumberjack guy who had turned out to be a werewolf. Sam something. Hell, that had been six months ago.
“If you don’t catch up, I’ll start without you,” she told him, making him toss his head back and thwack it against the ground while he laughed. She lunged forward, licking at the hollow of his throat. He struggled to kick off his pants and his own boots.
She wasn’t shocked to see that he was going commando. She couldn’t imagine he liked being restrained, carrying something like that around in his pants. Maybe it was a bear shifter thing? But he put the werewolf to shame.