Scarlet Tempest, #1

by Juniper King

  “I know it won’t help much,” I began. “But… I hope you can think of me as a friend. Someone who knows who you are on the inside, even when you can’t show your real self. Someone who cares about you—a-about your wellbeing, I mean.” My eyes dropped to his mouth, unable to hold his intense contact. “I just want you to know, you can confide in me, be yourself around me.”

  After a few seconds of silence, I glanced up to see his reaction. His beautiful obsidian and clover green eyes glittered in the afternoon sun as they stared down at me, his lips curved into a genuine smile. My own lips broke into a matching grin. It was just bizarre to me that people thought deydre looked monstrous. Aksel was the furthest thing from a monster.

  He reached a hand towards my face, his thumb stroking my cheek. Heat rose in my stomach and began spreading lower. I tiled my face to meld into his hand.

  “I’m lucky to be the one who found you.”

  I was lucky too. Maybe Jess had been right after all; maybe I just needed to wait for the right someone to find me.

  His hand slid from my face and rested on my shoulder, his thumb brushing against my collarbone through my light shirt.

  I reached a tentative hand towards him, my fingers tracing the largest of his horns. I don’t know what I had been expecting, maybe for it to feel entirely foreign, like something from another world, but it didn’t. It felt familiar, like the smooth bark of a tree. I moved my fingers along to the shorter horns, following the curve of his outermost horn all the way down to the side of his face, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead and behind his knife shaped ear.

  A sigh escaped him. His features had softened even further into a contented daze as I traced the edge of his ear. My stare trailed down to two metal beads under his left eye. Much like the scar, it was an element of himself he kept hidden under his shimmer.

  Aksel had this double piercing under his eye and Ayre had a double piercing under his bottom lip. “You and Ayre both have similar piercings. Is that just a coincidence or does it have a deeper meaning?” My fingers lightly brushed over the metal studs.

  “No deep meaning, just a little something to commemorate our first successful job together. Getting pierced in another realm is more exciting.”

  “What makes it more exciting?”

  He shrugged, “Different fashion. Some are the same, ears are pretty popular among us as well, but facial piercings are very ‘human realm’.” His voice was airy like his attention was focused elsewhere. But soon his gaze seemed to lock onto my lips, looking predatory in their languid contentment.

  A sudden rush of nerves and desire clashed inside me like waves against a rocky shore. Oh no, ohno, ohno. The last time I had seen that look things had ended badly. I didn’t want to—I couldn’t ruin everything we had just fixed.

  “This one time,” I blurted out, causing him to flinch. “There were these two girls in the orphanage, and they wanted to pierce their ears.” My voice was fast and clipped as I rambled on, unable to control myself. “They used a thumb tack; can you believe it?”

  “Uh-huh,” Aksel acknowledged my words with a subdued smirk, his predatory stare still on my lips. His wandering fingers began tracing their way up my neck. I shivered, fought to ignore it, then continued. “They were even nice enough to offer to pierce mine too, they said it would make my ears more normal, but I was too chicken,” I laughed nervously.

  My laugh was cut off by his lips on mine.

  The embers that had been smouldering in my stomach for the past two weeks erupted into an inferno.

  My hands jumped to his shoulders, fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt, pulling him into me. All my reservations vanished in a puff of smoke, now I just couldn’t get enough. I wanted more of him—all of him.

  His hand around my back crushed me into him, his tongue taking full control of mine as it burst through my lips, fast and feverish. I slowed the pace only for a moment, tracing my tongue gently over one of his fangs and pulling us apart so I could watch his reaction. The carnal expression he gave me seemed to have a direct line to my core, ecstasy sizzling through every nerve of my body. The look in his eyes, the unbridled heat and want. I slid my hand behind his neck and crushed our mouths together.

  His fingers found the bottom of my sweater, fumbling in their unrestrained need. He caught the edge of the fabric and worked it up my stomach. Breaking apart, he ripped the shirt over my head and tossed it aside.

  He kissed his way down the column of my throat, lightly dragging his teeth over my pulse. I moaned and squirmed on top of him.

  His dexterous fingers traced the top edge of my camisole and, in one quick movement, pulled it down to reveal my breasts. I gasped as his mouth latched on to my nipple, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin.

  “Oh my gods,” I breathed, and he chuckled against my skin, the reverberations teasing me as much as his skilled tongue. I ran my fingers through his hair and grabbed onto his horn to hold him in place.

  His hand slid up my thigh, thumb brushing the apex tantalizingly close to where my legs met. He caressed the bundle of nerves between my legs, kneading and teasing through my pants.

  Every nerve in my body was vibrating with pleasure. I was strung so tight I could snap with just a bit more. I wanted to snap. I wanted to flow over the edge of the basin and let the rush carry me away into ecstasy.

  “Aksel,” I moaned, “I need you.”

  His fingers stilled between my legs and his mouth broke away from my chest. A beat passed between us as we sat frozen in time, before he forcibly rolled me off his lap and marched a few paces away, furiously running his fingers through his hair “What the fuck is wrong with me,” he grumbled furiously.

  “Aksel?” I was haunted by déjà vu. A cold, lead weight settled in my stomach, making me feel ill.

  He turned towards me and I could see the deep sadness and regret reflected in his eyes. “I’m sorry.” He snatched up his pack and walked in the direction of the river.

  13

  Ayre had returned to the campsite in the early afternoon the day after his little excursion, looking refreshed and satisfied. That is, until he came upon the cloud of tension that had been produced by Aksel and I while he’d been away.

  After our… moment, Aksel had left the campsite for about two hours and I’d been left alone with only my negative and destructive thoughts as company, leaving me fully bereft of the mental acuity needed to build the tent.

  Once the sun was low in the sky and the shadows reached across the forest floor, Aksel returned carrying two dead rabbits. While I monitored the cooking meat over the campfire I had managed to build, he’d set up the tent without a word.

  Dinner had been an experiment in torture. We sat in awkward silence as the fire crackled and popped. I’d tried thanking him for hunting and setting up the tent, but he had only responded with grunts and one-word answers.

  I slept alone in the tent that night, excusing myself directly after dinner even though it was still early. I woke up in the middle of the night and Aksel was still outside by the fire. He couldn’t even bear to be in the same tent as me.

  Over the next two days we’d pushed ourselves hard to make up for lost time, Aksel pushing himself to exhaustion misting everyone even farther distances, and Ayre trying his damndest to pick up the conversational slack and assuage some of the silence and awkwardness.

  The only thing left between us and the town of Korinth now was a range of mountains. Ayre placed a hand on Aksel’s shoulder and wrapped an arm around my waist. “Hold on tight,” he said, holding me snuggly against his side.

  Aksel gave no warning before misting the three of us into the void. I clutched Ayre’s t-shirt with a vice like grip, burrowing myself into his side and scrunching my eyes closed. Even after nine days of travel like this, I still hated it. The passage only took a matter of seconds, but it always felt so much longer.

  We landed at the edge of town, just within the tree line of the forest. Much like Woodburne, Korinth had been
built right to the edge of the forest but left even less open space in between. Smatterings of trees were practically growing right on top of some of the buildings that lay at the very fringe of town.

  Once Aksel had taken some time to recover after the short jump, we slipped off our packs and left them at the base of a tree where we could come back to retrieve them after our business was concluded. With just a few steps we were in the dimly lit streets of Korinth, joining the many shadows that crowded and milled about the thoroughfare.

  When I’d asked earlier why we had to wait for night to come, Ayre had answered with: ‘Korinth isn’t a daytime kind of place’. I was starting to see what he’d meant.

  “Are you sure this place is safe?” I asked as we walked through the streets. Everywhere I looked I could see Supers with fangs, wings, tails, horns, and more. I’d never seen so many in one place before. Aksel fit right in with them, his tail swinging behind him as he strode down the busy street. Even though we were currently in a weird place in our relationship, an involuntary smile stretched across my lips as I watched him walk confidently in his true skin.

  The smile didn’t last long, however, as I took in more of my surroundings. Trash lined the roads, and the smell of waste and urine permeated the air. Every alley we wandered by seemed to have shady activity going on. With my attention distracted, I would have tripped over a body lying in the street had Ayre not lifted me over it.

  “Is he…” I glanced back as Ayre ushered me forward, completely nonplussed.

  “Doubtful. He’s probably just homeless with nowhere else to go,” he said with the air of someone who had seen this kind of thing dozens of times before. They had warned me that Korinth was poor and rundown, but this place was downright squalid.

  I had heard about this town dozens of times from mercenaries and merchants at The Sluggish Nymph. I think at this point nearly everyone knew of the infamy that was Korinth.

  It hadn’t originated as a Supernatural town, but due to environmental isolation and poor planning from the humans who’d built it, that’s what it had become.

  In addition to the vast forest stretching across the Northern border of the town, there was the range of mountains that we’d passed over to the East, and an ocean stretching from West to South, all natural obstacles that had made hunting and scavenging for food in the earlier days rather difficult. The humans couldn’t even fish because of the threat of a particularly nasty colony of Supers who lived just off the shore.

  Over the decades, newer towns have popped up within a few kilometers of Korinth, but during the time of its original construction, even trade between towns had been extremely hard to come by. Eventually, much of the human population relocated to bigger towns or cities and the place was just left to deteriorate.

  A few years after our two species had made peace, Supers made use of the abandoned town as a kind of hub area while visiting the human world. A place where Supers could come and mingle outside of their own realm, where they didn’t have to adhere to human sensibilities.

  From a human perspective, Korinth was a den of seedy dealings and immoral lowlifes.

  The deteriorating buildings and transient atmosphere only enhanced those opinions. Few people lived in Korinth, it was mainly only inhabited by the few humans or Supers who ran the many inns and taverns. Everyone else was just passing through.

  I glanced around at the scattered groups of Supers and humans and made accidental eye contact with something that looked aquatic leaning on the wall of an inn. In the light from the roof overhang, his skin looked bluish and had a strange quality to it, not quite translucent, but not fully opaque either. His attention was drawn away from the Super he’d been talking to, which only served to draw his attention towards me as well, and he grinned at me, showing off a set of razor sharp, shark-like teeth. I shuddered and drew closer to my companions.

  “You know,” Ayre said quietly to me, “If you stopped looking like a terrified little lamb, they wouldn’t be so interested in taking a bite out of you.”

  “A physical bite or a metaphorical bite?” I murmured back, only to get a cryptic smirk in response.

  After my conversation with Aksel, and the fact I’ve faced quite a bit of discrimination myself, I tried not to be too scared or judge-y towards the assembled Supers, but some of them were indeed looking at me like I was a piece of meat.

  We finally arrived outside of a rundown building, one that looked no different than all of the other rundown buildings in town. This one, however, was quite a bit larger and had raucous conversation and music pouring into the night streets.

  “This is where Kue spends most of his time,” said Aksel.

  “Remind me again who this Kue person is?”

  “He’s an information dealer. If you have something you want to know, he’s the one to ask. He’ll be able to tell us who put the bounty out.” Aksel didn’t even look at me as he spoke.

  “Oh, and I know this might be tough for you, but be sure to mind your manners,” Ayre smirked.

  My attention turned to him. “First off, my manners are impeccable when I want them to be, and second, why?”

  “Kue is a daemon,” Aksel said, fully deadpan.

  “A daemon?” I choked out. “And you’re just telling me this now?” It was rare for a daemon to be seen in the human realm. Many of them were monarchs and rulers of the supernatural realm, they had no time to be dallying among humans, let alone selling them information. “What’s a daemon doing here?” I asked.

  “That’s his business, I suppose,” Aksel said with a shrug, shutting me down.

  They escorted me inside the building, keeping me close between them. The inside had a similar feel to The Sluggish Nymph, bar near the back, an assortment of tables and booths throughout, but it was way more rowdy than The Sluggish Nymph had ever been in my eight years of working there.

  We walked to a back corner of the tavern where it was a bit less crowded. Aksel guided me into a tiny table with two chairs. “Wait here, I won’t be long.”

  “What do you mean ‘wait’, I’m coming with you.”

  “Kue is a lot more dangerous than you might think. The fact that he’s a daemon aside, he uses information as a weapon, and it’s best if he doesn’t see you. Ayre will stay with you.” I think that was the most he’d said to me in two full days.

  As much as I didn’t like not being included in things that very much concerned me, he made a valid argument. As quiet as the last few weeks had been, there was still a bounty on my head, I didn’t need to draw anyone’s attention or spread new rumours of my whereabouts. “Fine.”

  Aksel gave me a strange look.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, I’m just not used to you being so agreeable.”

  I flipped him off and he smirked at me for the first time in two days.

  When I peeked over my shoulder for the third time, Aksel was still at the bar talking to that busty Super with blonde hair. Didn’t he have a daemon to see?

  My leg bounced up and down, my chin falling into my propped open hand. I was well beyond trying to deny my feelings. Just the thought of him, his torrid gaze or his heartfelt smile, brought a warm flush to my belly. And seeing him with a gorgeous woman who was so clearly interested in him sent a wave of stomach-turning jealousy through me.

  “You look a little agitated. I happen to know a great cure for that.” Ayre gave me his most seductive smile from across the table. I must have finally built up an immunity to his charms after being together for so many days. I rolled my eyes, in no mood to joke, or even talk about sex.

  “Didn’t say it had to be with me,” he added.

  “I have no interest in a random bar hookup, thank you very much.”

  “Cute, Sel, but you know that’s not what I was suggesting.” Ayre leaned in closer to be heard over the noisy conversations around us. “I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

  “You’re imagining things.” My gaze drifted over to the bar as I pretended to ignore
him.

  Aksel and the woman were both gone. Somehow that was worse than seeing them talking together.

  “He looks at you the same way, you know.”

  I turned back to see Ayre grinning at me, chin propped in his interlaced hands.

  I huffed through my nose. If that were true, why did he always push me away? Why would he all but throw himself at me then back off only when I showed any interest in being intimate?

  The stale smell of beer and sweat was beginning to make me sick. I wanted to get up for some fresh air, but the thought of weaving my way alone through the crowd filled me with a new anxiety.

  “Can we go get some air?” Before waiting for his response, I slapped my hands on the table and pushed myself right into someone walking by, cold liquid poured down my back.

  “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry!” shouted a voice over the clamber of ambient voices.

  After getting over the initial shock, I turned around and I saw a young human woman, not much taller than myself and probably a year or three younger standing in front of me, eyes wide as a frightened doe. Her petite body and cherubic face made her look like a little, porcelain doll with beautiful bluish-green eyes.

  “I’m the one who should be sorry, I should have watched where I was going,” I replied. “Are you alright?”

  She nodded and took my hand in both of hers, a gesture that was unexpectedly genial. “Come on, I’ll help you clean up.”

  I turned to see Ayre making a move to get up. I waved a hand at him, “I’ll be back in just a sec.”

  His gaze floated from me to look over the girl. After a moment he agreed with a slight nod and settled back down. That was easy, I’m glad he didn’t put up a fight about me going off ‘on my own’. With my hand in hers, the girl ushered me towards the restrooms.

  The din of music and chatter was dulled to a drone as the door thunked closed behind us. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was so much louder than The Sluggish Nymph even on our busiest nights.