by Holly Bargo
Ignoring the cool look the tall man gave her, the waitress tapped Uberon’s shoulder and said, “Well, y’all can visit me any time, good lookin’.”
An unaccustomed feeling of jealousy surged through Corinne, spurring her to respond, “Get your own man, Tansy. This one’s taken.”
The waitress laughed and leaned forward. “You let me know if he’s got any brothers.” She winked and got to business. “Y’all know what ya want?”
Corinne shook her head and relaxed, not quite knowing why she’d staked her claim to Uberon like that. It simply wasn’t like her. So, she placed a generous order that included a slice of the coconut cream pie that was the diner’s specialty. Tansy looked expectantly at Uberon who simply replied, “I’ll have the same.”
“Sure thing, handsome.” She winked at Corinne with irrepressible good nature and sauntered off to place the order.
“Forward woman,” Uberon commented in an undertone.
“Tansy wants a husband so badly she can taste it,” Corinne explained with empathy. “She barely managed to finish high school and good jobs are scarce around here. But she’s good-hearted; there’s no malice at all in her. She’d make some farmer a devoted, hardworking wife.”
“You are kind.”
Corinne shrugged. “Her prospects aren’t good. She deserves a man who will love her and treat her well—and there just aren’t that many eligible bachelors in Winterset. Most kids here grow up and leave for college and never come back. Those who don’t leave either can’t or they’re tied to family farms.”
She looked around the diner, silently noticing that most of the patrons were a generation or two older than she. She returned her gaze to Uberon’s and held it. “This village is dying. It’s too far from Athens to catch the university crowd.”
Uberon listened as his mate explained.
“About six or seven years ago, the village council decided to sponsor a farmer’s market to capitalize on what this area does have, a lot of vegetable gardens, farms, and old-fashioned handicrafts. The Christmas fair gets in some regionally acclaimed folk artists and visitors from a pretty large area, but it’s not enough to sustain a hotel or do more than add a temporary boost to the local economy.”
Corinne paused and realized she’d been lecturing him. Blushing, she took a breath and apologized. “Sorry, Uberon. I got a little carried away there.”
“You care about these people as a good queen should,” he replied.
“Queen?” she spluttered and shook her head. “I am no queen.”
His eyes took on a far-away look and he added so quietly she had to strain to hear the words, “I lost the caring of my people and left them to my son, who never cared at all.”
“Your son?” she echoed.
“Marog. He is dead.”
Overcome by sympathy as well as confusion, Corinne reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “Oh, Uberon, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
He turned his hand to curl around hers. He lifted it and leaned forward to press a kiss to the knuckles. “You bring me naught but joy.”
“Oh, that’s so romantic,” Tansy commented as she set plates on the table’s Formica surface. She smiled without envy and bade them to let her know if they needed anything else. Leaning over, she whispered to Corinne, “He’s a keeper, that one.”
Feeling charitably toward the young woman, Uberon murmured a few words of incantation in his native language and exerted a wisp of his formidable will. Feeling the cool shiver of power waft through the air, Corinne’s eyes widened and then focused on the tall, handsome man seated across from her.
“What did you do?” she hissed.
“I blessed her,” Uberon replied.
“You blessed her?”
“Aye. By this time next year, she will fall in love, marry, and have a child.”
Corinne’s eyes narrowed. “And will her husband love her? Will he treat her well?”
“Of course,” he replied with equanimity. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a blessing.”
He read her worry. “Don’t fret. She will be happy.”
Corinne took a bit of her bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, chewed, swallowed, and finally asked, “What are you?”
“Yours,” he answered and took a bite of his sandwich. He made a note to have another sometime. It was really quite good, the simple ingredients combining for a tasty meal.
CHAPTER 4
Corinne poured two glasses of iced tea, one for herself and the other for Uberon, and carried them to the miniscule front porch of her cabin. He thanked her with grave courtesy as he accepted the sweating glass. Sitting in her favorite deck chair, she flexed her aching bare feet.
“I should have worn sneakers.”
Uberon reached over, long arms extending to capture one of her feet. He pulled her foot into his lap and began massaging it. Corinne moaned with pleasure and took a drink of her tea.
“I want you to come with me,” Uberon said, his voice easing into the late afternoon heat as though it belonged amid the sounds of birds, insects, and the occasional yip of a coyote.
“Mm, where?”
“To the Unseelie Court.”
“The Unsee—what?”
He met her shocked gaze with equanimity.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered and averted her eyes. “You cannot expect me to believe you’re an evil fairy.”
“Not evil, dark.” He did not mention that the distinction had more to do with the fair-haired characteristics of the Seelie Court than with any tendencies toward evil.
“Evil, dark, what’s the difference? And do not tell me you’re a fairy.”
“I am fae, what humans once called sidhe or sith.”
“This is insane.”
“Why should it be insane?” He released her foot and picked up the other one.
“B-because that’s just myth. You know, legend. Fairy tales!”
He shrugged, the movement of those broad shoulders capturing her attention. “And you are a witch. Why cannot I be fae?”
“I am not a witch,” she muttered, disliking his logic. “I have some extrasensory power that most people don’t. That’s all.”
“The fire-haired women in your matriarchal line each had such power. The talent skips a generation or two, but runs true back to the ancestress who took a fae lover and bore him a daughter.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know the Erlking is your ancestor, for ’tis his fiery hair the daughters of his talent bear.”
“Erlking.”
“He is mated, has been for the past several centuries.”
“No more bastard children?” she scoffed.
“He would never betray his mate, nor she him.” He fixed her with his own mysterious silver gaze. “Nor I you.”
“This is preposterous,” Corinne protested and pulled on her foot. He held it with easy strength. Rather than engage in a futile struggle, she huffed and turned her head away to stare into the wooded darkness.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“Don’t quote Shakespeare at me, Uberon.”
“He was a human of great insight.”
She huffed again. “Okay, let’s say you’re really what you say you are—”
“Fae.”
“—and you want to take me to your home, the Unseelie Court.” She finished the sentence and turned her head to glare at him. “How do we get there?”
His mouth curled in a slow, sexy smile. “Magic.”
“Don’t even go there,” she warned.
“I can wait until you’re ready.”
She leaned her head back and groaned. “This is impossible. You are impossible.”
“I am not impossible,” he rebutted. “How could I be and hold your foot in my hands? You see me, you have touched me. I have eaten food in your sight. What about me is not as real—as possible—as yo
u?”
“Uberon, I don’t have the energy to deal with your sophistry right now,” she muttered and closed her eyes. “And you’re cooking tonight.”
She felt rather than heard his movement. Her eyes flickered open to see his face mere inches from her own. His silver eyes gleamed brightly with ageless intelligence and banked power. She inhaled sharply as he leaned down and pressed his lips against hers.
Corinne expected a quick buss on the mouth, but he brushed his lips against hers once, twice, three times. Each fleeting touch made her blood sizzle. He changed the angle and pressed tiny kisses to the corner of her mouth. His hand came up to slide through her sweat dampened hair and tilt her head so he could kiss and nibble an erotic line along her jaw. She began to tremble beneath him, her mind and body assaulted by a delicious passion which she’d never believed existed outside the pages of a lurid romance novel. She realized her back arched, thrusting her breasts toward him in search of a more intimate touch from the hand that lightly stroked one arm from shoulder to elbow. The soft, delicate kisses sent excitement skittering to her core only to shatter seconds later in a shower of brilliance.
She gasped and shuddered beneath his hands and lips, then slumped stunned and limp in the Adirondack chair. Uberon pressed a lingering kiss to her mouth, then drew back and gave her a small smile filled with triumph, controlled lust, and fierce purpose.
“You are mine,” he whispered. “But I can wait until you are ready.”
He straightened to his full, imperious height and let the glamor fall. Corinne’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped at the naked male standing before her.
His long black hair shifted gently in the light breeze. His pale skin gleamed, flawless over the lean, muscular physique she’d admired the night before. Her gaze locked on the wide, intricate pattern of silver that draped from one collarbone to the other and appeared to flow over his shoulders, except the metal did not rest upon his skin but was embedded within it. Another wide band of patterned silver filigree highlighted the deep vee of the Adonis belt that arced down to the heavy testicles hanging below a long, thick, rigid, heavily veined cock.
She squeaked in alarm, having never before seen a man so endowed. The naughty movies she’d peeked at in college hadn’t prepared her for that. Uberon reached forward to stroke her cheek and reassure her. The movement drew her gaze away from his rampant arousal to his hand, and she noticed the sharp, black claws extending over his fingertips.
She squeaked again and shrank from him. She squeezed her eyelids shut.
He withdrew his hand and replaced the glamor, but she nonetheless felt the echo of formidable power emanating from him, too strong for even the glamor to fully conceal. She wondered why she’d not noticed it before even as she trembled and feared what those sharp claws would do to her.
“You shall never come to harm at my hand or while under my care,” he vowed. “My touch will give you only pleasure.”
She trembled and said nothing as she felt the movement of air that indicated he had walked away. Still shaking, she opened her eyes and exhaled.
No one would believe this. No one.
Even if he did have a damned fine ass.
Her mouth opened, but words stalled in her throat. She closed her mouth, swallowed, and tried again, remembering that she had already asked him who and what he was and that he had answered. She supposed he could have lied to her, but didn’t see why he would have. She inhaled and caught the sweet, musky scent of her own liquid arousal, something she’d never smelled upon herself before.
Corinne averted her gaze to ponder what she had just learned, just experienced. When she looked back at him—or, rather, where he’d been just a moment ago—he was gone, of course. Vanished. Disappeared.
“I should call Great Aunt Helen,” she murmured under her breath, thinking of the only living relative she had who possessed talents like hers. “Maybe she knows something about the fae.”
She listened to herself and shook her head.
“This is crazy. No way is Uberon some short, chubby elf who lives in trees and makes cookies. And no way is he some manifestation of Tolkien’s imagination.”
Her words dissolved into the sultry summer night. Corinne heaved herself from the chair and walked inside the cabin. She rolled her shoulders and inhaled deeply.
“God, I stink.” She looked across the room and headed for the bathroom. “Shower. I need a shower. A cold shower.”
The cold water made her yelp when it hit her skin, but then she acclimated and enjoyed it. Her cabin had no air conditioning, which made cool showers a necessity in southern Ohio’s humid summer heat. She ran her hands down her body, from the elegant, fragile sweep of her collar bones over her modest breasts and down her flat belly to the tops of her thighs for no other reason than doing so felt good.
“What am I doing?” she wondered aloud, having never succumbed to such indulgence before.
With a huff of annoyance at herself, she grabbed the soap and lathered up. In minutes she found herself stroking the sensitive swollen tissue between her thighs, exploring herself as she’d never done before. She simply hadn’t been all that curious, usually disregarding her sexuality except for menstruation when that part of her body gave her more problems than not. Fucking cramps. She felt slightly scandalized as the thought ran through her head, although she honestly acknowledged the truth of the sentiment. She rather resented the imposition of her gender, the pain and the mess that turned her into a sniveling, whining wreck every month or so. Or so. She huffed again, remembering that golden year when she was fourteen and her period skipped three whole months. Of course, she’d paid for that reprieve when her next few periods came hard and heavy and in quick succession.
Female biology sucked. Men had it so easy.
She rinsed and concentrated on washing the rest of her body without undue deliberation over any specific part, except to shave. She supposed she was lucky in that she didn’t have to shave her legs as frequently as her college roommate had. The poor girl’s Italian heritage meant that her body hair grew thick, dark, and fast. Alessia had gone through razors like nobody’s business. She chuckled, remembering that her roommate had prevailed upon her family for a loan and gone into partnership with a dermatologist and plastic surgeon to open a medspa offering laser hair removal—and that Alessia had been its first patient.
Alessia. That’s whom she’d call. Alessia never judged her. She always listened.
Turning off the cooling spray and stepping from the shower, Corinne dried her body and wrapped her sopping wet hair in the damp towel. She shrugged on her bathrobe, kept hanging on a hook on the bathroom door. She walked to her bedroom, kicked the door closed behind her for privacy, and picked up the phone, an old-fashioned landline. Cell phone signals were seldom reliable in the Appalachian foothills, so she didn’t bother with a cell phone. The satellite connection for her computer was expensive enough.
“Hey, Corinne! How’s it going?” Alessia’s bright, cheerful voice answered on the fourth ring. She seemed slightly out of breath.
“Oh, hi, Alessia. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
Her friend laughed in her usual breezy fashion. “Oh, no, I was outside with Gio and Sal.”
“Gio and Sal?”
“Yeah, you met Giovanni when you were here last. Sal’s his best friend. He’s in the Coast Guard, too.”
“Oh, so you’ve got two hot soldiers with you?”
Alessia laughed. “Sailors, baby. These guy are sailors.”
“And?”
“A lady never tells.”
“Since when are you a lady?”
Alessia’s laughter reverberated down the line, followed by a squeal and a “Gio, not now. Corinne’s on the phone.”
Corinne heard a deep, masculine chuckle and a shouted, “Is she pretty?”
“Corinne’s not your type, Sal. She’s intelligent and respectable,” Alessia shouted back. “Sorry, Corinne. Sal’s a real playboy and thinks everything with a
vagina is his to exploit.”
“Except you, because you’re with Gio, right?”
“Oh, honey, Sal and Gio share everything.”
“You—” Corinne gulped, then squeaked, “Both of them?”
“Oh, honey, you’ve got to get out of the stuffy Midwest and come down to Miami. Think of it: no snow. It’s sun, sand, and sea and hot, hot, hot sailors.” She took a breath and her tone of voice changed. “Now, what’s up, buttercup? You never call on a weekday unless you need a sounding board.”
Corinne groaned. “Am I that transparent?”
“Oh, honey, that’s what I like about you—no artifice. Talk to Mama Bonetti.”
Corinne chuckled and, haltingly, began, “I met someone.”
“You did? That’s wonderful! Wait … your brothers hate him, right?”
“My brothers haven’t met him.”
“Well, that makes it easier.”
“Makes what easier?”
“The decision to sleep with him. What the five jolly green giants don’t know won’t hurt you.”
“I’m not sleeping with him.”
“Okay.” Alessia paused and didn’t push her to jump into bed with anything sporting a penis just to give away her V-card. “Tell me about him.”
“Well, he’s gorgeous and older than I am—”
“Older? As in his thirties older? Or even older than that?” Corinne pictured Alessia’s dark eyebrows arrowing downward in a frown. “You haven’t fallen for some middle-aged dad with a couple of teenaged kids, have you?”
“Um … I know he had a son—”
“Had a son?”
“His son was killed.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” Alessia responded with genuine sympathy. “Wait, is he married? Divorced? A widower?”
“He’s not married or divorced. I think he’s either a single father or a widower. I haven’t asked and he hasn’t said anything about the mother.”
“That’s suspicious, Corinne.”
“It would be if …”
“If what?”
“Well, if he were … normal.”
Alessia’s pause before speaking resonated with the heaviness of a gong. “You’ve met one of them, haven’t you?”