Jumping in Puddles

by Barbara Elsborg

  “What?” Micah didn’t hide his shock.

  “There’s a signed document proving it.”

  “How do you know it was Oberon’s signature?”

  “I…I don’t.” She hadn’t thought of that. “But the date’s right, and no human would sign themselves as Oberon the fifth.”

  “Does Jago still have the jewels?”

  Ellie nodded. “I also gave him the ring.”

  “You’re intending to lead whoever was coming here on a wild-goose chase to the Bowland Fells while Jago does what?”

  “Sells the Kewen. He can complete the deals on Monday. I wasn’t actually going to go to Whitendale.”

  Micah dragged his fingers through his hair. “How does selling the Kewen help us?”

  “We were only tasked with finding it. If it’s on sale in London, won’t that be enough?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “Who are these others that Pixie told? Who’s on their way here?”

  “Four banished fae, two werewolves, and a vampire. Oh and the zombie that’s still obsessed with her.”

  Ellie groaned. “That’s the company she keeps? I thought she wanted to be normal.”

  “So do the banished fae, werewolves, and the vampire. The zombie’s just an idiot.”

  She snorted. “Will you stay here and keep an eye on things if I follow Jago to London? I need to protect him. I’ll go and explain things to Mum and Dad.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  Ellie let out a shaky breath. “Why do I feel so bad? Everything hurts. I’ve done what our family has been trying to do for hundreds of years, and I’ve never been so miserable. What’s wrong with me? Think you should share some power? Maybe that’s my problem.”

  Micah pulled her into his arms and gave her an uncharacteristic hug, followed by an even more uncharacteristic kiss on the top of her head. “It’s not that,” he said. “It’s love.”

  “That’s just great, you bitch,” Jago snapped behind her. “As if what you’ve done isn’t bad enough, you have some bastard helping you. I can’t believe I fell for your act. I’m a bloody doctor, and you still managed to convince me I was fucking a virgin.”

  Micah stiffened, and Ellie swallowed her groan. Micah was so fast Jago didn’t stand a chance. Her brother caught hold of Jago’s shirt at the neck and lifted him onto his toes. The two were about the same height, but Micah had the advantages of faerie power, fury, and brotherly love.

  “Ellie is my sister,” he hissed. “You don’t talk about her like that. You don’t talk to her like that. If I didn’t know how much she cares for you, I’d snap your fucking neck so you’d never talk to her again.”

  She tugged at Micah’s arm. “Micah, you’re choking him.”

  Micah let go, and Jago collapsed to sit coughing with his head in his hands. The bag containing the Kewen lay at his side.

  “Ellie, go and pack,” Micah said quietly. “Wait by my car.”

  “Don’t—”

  “I won’t hurt him. I just need a moment with him.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jago watched Ellie walk away, and pain curled around his heart and squeezed like a snake.

  “Get up,” her brother snapped.

  Jago pushed himself to his feet. He suspected he was going to get another black eye.

  “You’ve slept with my sister.”

  Oh fuck. He nodded.

  “And you doubt you’re her first?” Micah raised his eyebrows.

  Jago clenched his fists. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “You could start with believing her. You were her first. She was supposed to wait. She deserves better than you.”

  “She slept with me to—”

  “Do you honestly think she got into your bed because she needed to find the Kewen?”

  Jago sucked in his cheeks. “No.” I’m an idiot. Nothing new there.

  Micah looked at the bag. “Is that it?”

  “If you mean the jewels and precious stones, yes. Going to try and take it?”

  The guy crossed his arms. “You think you could stop me?”

  “Yes.” Not a hope in hell. “The jewels belong to me. I have a bill of sale.”

  “The Kewen wasn’t Oberon’s to sell.”

  Jago laughed. “Oh yeah, Oberon the faerie king. Right.”

  “There is nothing amusing in this. You’ve hurt my sister.”

  “She fucking hurt me. She came here pretending to help get Sharwood back on its feet, and all she really wanted was what’s in this bag.”

  “Was today pretense? Were the crowds of people not real? Did she try and take the Kewen? She gave you the ring and walked away.

  “Just as you have a responsibility to this place and your family, so Ellie has responsibilities too. It’s her duty as the eldest child to prove our family’s innocence so we can reclaim what we lost. If she should fail in her allotted time, her eldest child must continue the hunt. After three hundred years of searching, we understand about duty and obligation. Your parents are dead. Ours still live, yet Ellie has chosen you over them and over her brothers and her sister by giving you the Kewen.”

  Jago swallowed hard.

  “She could have taken it in the blink of an eye but chose not to. I could take it in less than a blink, but I respect her decision. She thinks she can find a way out of this, and she tried to help you avoid trouble by advising you to sell fast. A firestorm will fall on her for that. Although I might respect her decision, our father will not. Nor I suspect will the progeny of Oberon the fifth. So go and sell your jewels before they’re snatched away from you. Rebuild your fine house, and when you’re living in all that splendor, remember the price you really paid.”

  The way Micah was talking, Jago felt like he’d wandered into some other dimension, the whole Kewen thing, the idea that a family could hunt treasure for so long purely to clear their name. Who cared after all this time? But then if the TV people got hold of the idea that Rupert had sold his kids, and made it the focus of the story, Jago would be very unhappy. The family name—oh shit.

  “I’ve completely fucked this up.” Jago dragged his fingers through his hair.

  A set of car keys hit him in the chest. “Go and make it right. Tell her I’ll stay here in case Pixie messes up and others come.”

  Jago bent to grab the keys, and when he straightened, the guy had gone.

  Ellie had her back toward him, leaning against an E-class Mercedes convertible, her bag at her feet. She turned before he reached her, and when Jago saw her red eyes and the way she shrank against the car, he hated himself. This whole thing with the Kewen was crazy. For all he knew it was a giant scam, though that didn’t explain a rusting box that clearly hadn’t been touched in a long time, a bill of sale that made his great-great-whatever-Uncle Rupert look like scum, nor the way Ellie had given him a five thousand pound ring and stepped away. He had to stop trying to look at things logically and believe his heart, and his heart told him he should trust Ellie.

  Jago stopped in front of her and held out the bag. “Take it.” Did I just give away twenty million pounds?

  “Why?”

  “Because I think you need it more than me. But there’s one condition.”

  “What?”

  “That I come with you to London to sort this out, and then you come back here with me.”

  “Back with you?” she whispered.

  “I don’t want to let you go, Ellie. I…need you, not the money.”

  She smiled, and he showed her the car keys.

  Ellie’s eyes widened. “He gave you his car keys? Micah never lets anyone drive his car.”

  Jago opened the driver’s door, threw the jewels and her bag onto the backseat, and sat inside. “Are we going?”

  He held his breath until she climbed in next to him and clipped on her seat belt.

  “Micah said to tell you that he’d stay here in case Pixie messes up and the others come. What does he mean?”

&
nbsp; He pulled out of the drive and headed for the main road.

  “She’s told…people that I’ve found the Kewen. Better neither we nor the Kewen are here if they come. She didn’t mean to cause trouble. She opens her mouth without thinking.”

  “A bit like me.”

  Jago shot her a glance, but Ellie stared straight ahead.

  “What does Kewen mean?”

  “It’s just a word that describes a special treasure.”

  “It belonged to this guy called Oberon?”

  “Not him personally. His…family.”

  “What relationship was your family to his? Why were your ancestors accused of stealing?”

  “Because they were in charge of the Kewen. They were supposed to guard it, and it vanished while under their protection. They knew it was no longer in the…country and came here to look for it.”

  “What about the children Oberon took in exchange?”

  “I don’t know anything about that. That’s something I have to talk to my father about. We were told the Kewen was stolen, not sold.” She gave a loud sigh. “I’m sorry about all this. I want you to know that from the moment you opened the door of the hall and I first saw you, it was never just about the Kewen.”

  Jago’s stomach lurched.

  “I thought I could look for it and help you at the same time.”

  “You did help me.”

  “If I hadn’t…cared for you, I’d never have…” She let out a shuddering sigh. “I don’t want you to think I slept with you because of it.”

  “I know you didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  She glanced at him and smiled. Oh God, her smile. Jago had begun to wonder if he’d ever see it again.

  If he’d been thinking straight, he’d have seen that she hadn’t needed to get involved with him at all. He reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers. She squeezed back, and Jago’s heart lightened.

  “Tell me about your family,” he said. “What does Micah do?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “What?”

  “Seriously. It’s something secret. We’re not allowed to know. Pixie works at the British Library, and Asher’s a lawyer. Mum’s an artist, and Dad works at the British Museum.”

  “And what about you—apart from business development? Do you really do that?”

  “I mend old jewelry.”

  Jago let go of her hand to make the turn onto the motorway and then reached for her again. “Country house rescue is a bit of a change.”

  “You know, I don’t think it is really. I take old, tired, and broken things and make them beautiful again. It just requires patience, common sense, and hard work.”

  “And money.”

  “Money too.”

  “Talking of hard work, thank you for all you did to make today a success. Until I saw that bloody ring on the bouncy castle, it had been one of the best days of my life. It…still is. I lost sight of that in all the… You seemed to be everywhere, doing everything. I don’t know how you managed it. And those balloons—Christ, I was about to make a small boy cry until you fashioned a tortoise out of my interlinked snakes.”

  “Mum was always making things like that with us. The school holidays were full of activities.”

  While Jago’s mother, love her as he did, had always seemed to not quite know what to do with him and his brother.

  He glanced at a sign on an overhead gantry. “Congestion ahead. Motorway closed two junctions away. We better exit and find a different route. How much farther is it?”

  Ellie tapped directions into the sat nav, and a sarcastic male voice announced, “Oh, you need my help? Go straight. If you can.”

  They both laughed.

  She groaned. “It says we’ll arrive at two in the morning.”

  “Arrive where?”

  “My parents’ house.”

  “So had we better find a place to stop and arrive at a respectable time? Or do you want to keep going? Maybe we should find somewhere to eat.”

  “I don’t have my purse.” She chuckled. “Millions on the backseat, and I don’t have a pound in my pocket.”

  “Pull my wallet out of mine,” he said. “Though I think I know what’s in there, and it’s a lot of nothing.”

  Jago stifled his groan as Ellie’s fingers slid over his hip, searching in the failing light for his pocket. He really hadn’t been thinking of this when he asked her to get his wallet. When she pushed her fingers into the gap, he held his breath.

  “It’s a bit tight,” she whispered. “What have you got in here?”

  His pet snake had been curled up asleep. Now it was very much awake. Jago shifted his hips to try to make it—what? Easier for her? Harder?

  “You sure it’s in here?” Ellie asked.

  “What?” he asked in indignation.

  She laughed. “Your wallet.”

  “Oh yeah. I forgot. Go deeper.”

  Not easy to concentrate on the dark, winding road when all that lay between Ellie’s fingers and his cock were a couple of layers of cotton. She moved closer, her breast against his arm as she pulled his wallet back and forth, trying to wiggle it free. Jago wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to pull it out or not.

  “Got it.” She flipped it open. “Two ten-pound notes.”

  “Which we have to use for fuel. And I’m not sure that will get us there.”

  “So nowhere to sleep. Nothing to eat.”

  “I can think of something,” he muttered.

  “There are two pound coins in here too. Chocolate for me, and if there’s enough change, we can buy a bottle of water for you.”

  Jago laughed. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to make her forget what a prick he’d been. He wanted to make himself forget too. When he saw a closed service station coming up on the right, he pulled in and drove to the rear of the carwash. He unfastened his seat belt and unclipped Ellie’s.

  “Turn around,” boomed the sat nav. “You’re going the wrong way.”

  Jago switched the engine off. “No, I’m not.” He leaned over and kissed her.

  AS HIS TONGUE slipped between her lips, Ellie wrapped her hands around the back of his neck and threaded her fingers in his hair. She didn’t want to think. She just wanted to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him. Jago tried to haul her onto his lap, and then attempted to switch places. It became more difficult to keep their lips together as clothes and body parts tangled with the handbrake and steering wheel. Ellie’s shoulders ended pressed up against the roof of the car, her backside trapped between the headrests while Jago was doubled up below her, trying to unfasten his pants and kiss her at the same time.

  Ellie tumbled onto him as a headrest flicked off, and in a flurry of arms and legs they laughed and tried to straighten themselves out. Ellie’s head hit the console, the windows went down, and the roof of the convertible began to retract. Jago pulled her up to kiss her again and hit the button to squirt the windshield.

  “Sorry. Premature ejaculation,” he said.

  Ellie squealed into his mouth as the seat slid away beneath her, the back folding down until it hit the rear seat.

  “We need to swap places,” Jago gasped.

  Ellie clambered into the back, and when Jago reclined in the passenger seat, zipper down, cock tenting his boxers, she climbed over and straddled his lap. She wriggled against his cock, and Jago groaned. He spread his hands on her back, his thumbs reaching forward to stroke the undersides of her breasts.

  “How did a kiss lead to this?” he whispered. “I’m not sure you should be let out in public. You’re too tempting.”

  Ellie reached for the hem of her dress, lifted it over her head, and tossed it aside. While she worked at the buttons of his shirt, he danced his fingers over her breasts and stroked the limits of the lacy material.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered.

  She paused and smiled before she continued. When she spread the shirt open and exposed his chest in the dim light, the sight of him stole the air from her lungs
. Ellie pressed herself and her lips against him, and her head fogged. He tasted so perfect, his kiss so soft and tender that she had to fight not to cry, because every time they touched from now on might be the last. He tugged off her bra, and she rubbed herself against him. The muscles of her sex had already begun the journey toward orgasm.

  “Oh God. Think you can get your panties off without inflating the airbag?” Jago asked with a groan.

  “Rip them off.”

  He tried, failed, swore, and Ellie laughed.

  “Hey. Stop laughing, or I’ll get a complex.”

  He wrapped his fingers around the material on her hips and tugged. There was a faint sound of tearing, but the panties remained in place. Ellie slipped into hysteria.

  “Let me take them off,” she choked out.

  “No. If I can’t rip them off, then they stay on. I will not be defeated by a slip of material.”

  Ellie freed his cock from the confines of his boxers, rubbed her thumb over the silky head, and her panties snapped on both sides.

  “See? You just needed a little incentive.”

  She curled up, bent over, and licked his cock from bottom to top.

  “That’s it. B movie over. Time for the main event.” He smiled. “I will get better, take longer I mean. It’s just that if I don’t get inside you in the next few seconds, I think my heart is going to explode along with other parts.”

  “Want me to slow you down?”

  “No, I just want to be inside you, feel you clasped around me. I want us joined.”

  Ellie lowered herself slowly onto his cock, drawing in a long breath as she sank down. He tugged on her hips to take her the rest of the way, and a sharp zap of pleasure ran from head to toe as he jammed himself hard against her.

  “Oh Jesus.” His eyes fluttered shut.

  She contracted her muscles around his cock, and his eyes flew open. “Do that again. Ooh that’s so good, Ellie,” he muttered. “Hot, tight, wet. Aaahh.”

  She started slow but couldn’t stop herself moving faster, lifting her hips to drive down harder. Her body raced toward climax, and she couldn’t rein it back.