My lion rumbled, again, but I brushed him aside. I had come to write a story about a hotel, and that had changed. My article would be about its owner who denied a magic so strong, the hair on my arms rose when I passed her on the way into her home. How had she managed to deceive everyone in her life? The information in the folder in my pack clearly said she’d been an embarrassment to her family in that cultish town she grew up in. So what on earth?
Karina Jewel. A name as beautiful as the woman who wore it. But there was no point in my lion getting excited, or me, either. My life lay far away from this mountain retreat. And I had no need in my life for a conflicted witch. Was it possible she didn’t know her power? No, of course not. She positively vibrated with it.
I was only going to be here a day. Perhaps two, if the party tomorrow went late because I had not changed my mind about driving that road in the dark. How had the magazine’s travel coordinator screwed that up? Sent me here a day early?
Too many questions and I’d had one heck of a long day. Perhaps the best thing to do was just share whatever snacks her associate brought out and fall into bed. Then get up early and take advantage of the opportunity to observe the witch in action. If she was aware of her powers, they would most certainly come into play as she prepared for the big event.
“Tinsley, do you have the refreshments?” she called, leading me into a living room that could have come right out of the late nineteenth century. Tasseled draperies pulled back from tall windows, polished floors scattered with tufted carpets, a marble fireplace topped by a magnificent mirror. And everywhere, fabrics in rich jewel tones enhanced by the standing lamps the helper must have lit when she preceded us into the house. A chandelier hung overhead from an embellished ceiling. I didn’t know a lot about decorating, but I knew quality. And this home had that. Textured wall coverings completed the picture.
I perched on the edge of a deep-rose velvet settee and Karina sat next to me. Perhaps I should have chosen a chair instead. With my lion all riled up and the subtle perfume the outdoor air had masked winding its way into my brain, a real danger existed that I’d make a move on this woman, this witch. And it was likely to be the biggest mistake of my life.
“Here we are,” Karina said, standing to take a heavy tray from the ogre/fairy whose wings fluttered in stark contrast to her big, flat bare feet and faint greenish color. Her parents must have made quite a pair, back in the day. Different groups were more likely to marry now, but twenty, thirty years ago... They would have had to live in a cave by themselves, likely, dumped by both their families.
With the silver tray settled on a small table in front of the settee and Tinsley gone again, I settled back against the somewhat stiff cushions and watched Karina pour tea into china cups and offer me one. “Unless you’d like something stronger?”
“I’d kill for a beer,” I said, almost sorry to disappoint her, but craving the suds with a passion I’d never before felt. “That is, if you have one?”
“Of course, I should have asked.” Karina rose to her feet. “We have a full bar selection for our guests.” She fixed me with a serious stare. “Of which you are but the first.”
“I can get it...”
“I will, but if you’d like to see something interesting?” She crossed the room to a tall cabinet and flattened her hand on the door, which popped open to reveal shelves of bottles and glasses and, below, a bar-size refrigerator. “Imported? Domestic? Local microbrew?”
“That is clever. Hidden until you need it. I’ll have a micro...but won’t you join me?”
“I shouldn’t,” she said. “I almost never drink and must be up early tomorrow.”
“Just one?” Maybe two or three? This could be the key to getting her to open up, let me know what was going on in this strange time and place. “Come on, Karina, even Victorian ladies enjoyed their sherry, didn’t they?”
Karina approached me with a dark-amber bottle and a glass in her hands. She set them in front of me and hesitated. “I can stand sherry,” she finally admitted. “But what many people don’t know is that the Victorians loved their cocktails. And not just the men. I am particularly fond of the gin sling. Have you ever enjoyed one?”
That’s what I wanted to see. A few gin drinks and she’d be telling me all her secrets. “No, I haven’t. I’m a beer man, but you go ahead.”
Back at the bar, she fussed with some sugar cubes, a beaker of water, and a bottle of gin before facing him. “I’m particularly fond of the gin sling. They actually were popular before cocktails as we know them. And they are an American invention, which is also appealing to me. Are you sure you want to stick with beer?”
“Oh yes,” I replied. “But bring the beaker with you in case you want to freshen your drink.”
“What a good idea!” She did just that.
Several times.
By my fifth beer, even the rather unusual snacks Tinsley had brought looked good, and I was spearing pickles, cheese, and dates on toothpicks, although I declined the fried gizzards. Never been into those. Usually I could hold a lot more than a six-pack without feeling it too much, but usually I hadn’t flown across the country, driven a long distance on chancy roads, and then been subject to some kind of odd paralyzing magic. Oh, I’d experienced almost all of those things in the course of my work, just not all in the same day. I could barely remember waking up that morning.
On the other hand, the more Karina imbibed, the more in control she seemed. Not a fizz of magic escaped her. And she responded to his questions with offhand remarks that seemed designed to put him off. So crafty of her. Finally, she piled the glasses and dishes onto the tray and stood, lifting the silver with its debris.
“Well, as lovely as this evening has been,” she announced, “I have to get up very early and prepare for the grand opening.”
“Won’t your assistant be doing a lot of it?” I asked, aware of the slight slur in my words. Wisdom told me to head for bed, but beer insisted I continue the chat. See what I could get Karina to reveal. Why would a witch want to conceal her magic? What could she gain? And did she have any pizza or other ordinary food? “After all, she works for you.”
“She’s my late brother’s widow and doesn’t officially ‘work’ for me, although she’s been very generous with her time.”
“She’s not the cook. Thank goodness because—”
Karina pressed a finger to my lips. “Ssh. Don’t let her hear what you were about to say. Ogres don’t take criticism well, if you haven’t guessed.”
“But your brother married her?” She was such a dichotomy of both her sides.
“My brother adored her the moment he met her. He could see her beauty.” She disappeared into the back of the house and returned. “Come with me, and shh.”
Asking me in my current state of inebriation to be quiet was like asking an elephant not to galumph...or something like that, but I rose and tiptoed after her, managing to bump into only a few pieces of furniture and a vase that Karina snagged before it hit the floor and shattered.
She bent close and looked into my eyes. “You can’t be drunk on a few beers, can you?”
“Of course not,” I assured her.
“Okay.” She gave me a doubtful look then reached out and took my hand, sending a charge up my arm. Not magical, my ass. “Just be careful, okay?”
I nodded, trying to look competent to at least walk and let her lead me down a hall hung with paintings of grim-faced Victorians—her ancestors, or did they come with the house?—and into a kitchen lit only by a single light over the stove. “Nice but—”
“Shhhh!” Her finger pressed to my lips, and I breathed in her scent, now with a little sweet gin edge. “Over by the window.”
I had no idea what she wanted me to see, but as long as my hand was in hers, the electrical charge continued to run up and down my arm into my torso, and I wasn’t about to let go. Karina pulled back the lacy curtain and pointed with her free hand, now no longer on my lips, to my sorrow.
Outside, a patio stretched for a couple of dozen feet, but beyond, there was a garden. White flowers were everywhere. The moon was rising behind a row of mountains, full and golden, eclipsing the stars but bringing the blooms to life. Beyond stood aspens, and past them tall looming pines, dark sentinels of the night. But that wasn’t what she wanted me to see. No...amid the delicate flowers and white gravel paths flew the woman who I’d earlier seen clumping around the house. Off the ground, her admittedly small wings served to carry the half-fairy half-ogre in a dipping, swirling flight out of a children’s storybook. She’d shed her blouse and jeans in favor of some kind of floaty dress that completed the picture.
“She’s beautiful,” I breathed.
“That’s how Roy saw her first. We were out walking one night, it was summer and warm, I remember. It wasn’t long before he was due to report for his military assignment and we were talking about, oh, I don’t know, ordinary things. I was already missing him and he hadn’t even left yet.”
Tinsley flew straight up and then plummeted, catching herself just before crashing into the ground. I gasped.
“She is good, isn’t she? Usually someone with her parentage wouldn’t get off the ground, but she’s worked hard at it.”
I rested my other hand on her shoulder and she leaned in, sighing then continued. “Anyway, Roy stopped, I didn’t even notice at first, just kept on talking then I realized I was alone. When I turned back. He was frozen in place in front of a house with a white picket fence. One of our neighbors, who had very pretty flowers that bloomed mostly at night. A lunar garden, they call it.”
The beauty outside, the beauty leaning against me...inebriation faded, overtaken by a sense that if I moved too fast, made any loud noise, it would all disappear and leave me back in my regular life.
“I started to call out to him, but something told me not to. I moved closer and I saw her, too. She was visiting an aunt, we learned later, and Roy was witnessing her first real flight.”
I was still entranced by them both. The fairy and the witch. “So what happened then? Did he talk to her?”
Karina tipped her face up to me and the moonlight glowed on her pale smooth skin. The tip of her tongue peeked out and swiped her lips, leaving them shining, sweet, kissable. “Not then. He watched for a while then her aunt came outside and caught her in the air and chastised her.”
“What? She didn’t want her to fly?”
A grin revealed pearly white teeth. “Ogre side of the family. I guess they didn’t approve. Anyway, Tinsley went inside, Roy came out of his trance, and rejoined me and we finished our walk. He didn’t say anything about her, and so I didn’t, either. But the next day, he went to her aunt’s house with a bunch of white roses and jasmine, and two weeks later they were married by a local priestess.”
I hated to bring up anything sad, but needed to hear the rest. “And then? You said she’s a widow?”
“Yeah. He left not long after their wedding, a few weeks later his ship left port and then there was a storm...”
“I’m so sorry.” I stroked a lock of hair back from her face. “Did you plant the garden for her.”
“Yeah.” She gave a tiny shrug. “And me. It reminds us both of that night. I suppose we should move on, but...”
I rested my lips on her smooth forehead for a moment, wanting to offer comfort. “Love doesn’t work like that, does it?” Not that I knew. I dated a different girl every week, mostly in different towns. I traveled everywhere on assignment. And my parents were nice but distant. Sure, they loved me, but they weren’t demonstrative.
“No, it doesn’t.”
The garden outside was probably not going to look like this long, in the fall in the mountains. And it wasn’t warm out there, like in her memory, but I got it. The tops of the pines tossed and as a gust rolled through, some of the petals tore free and flew away. Before too much could change, before the delicate creature outside came to earth and galumphed into the house, shattering the moment, I enfolded the woman, the witch, in my arms, and kissed her.
Chapter Five
Karina
His lips were smooth but firm, the bristles of the scruff I’d examined earlier rough against my face when he brought me against his body. Tall...so much taller than me but leaner as well. Muscular but not like a man who worked out at the gym, more like he came by it naturally or just got a lot of cardio. Maybe he liked to hike or bike...swam? But when he released my hand to hold me, my fingers found their way to the cap of dark hair and twined into it, holding him close to me.
I didn’t know what I was doing, perhaps the gin had been too much for me, that I allowed such liberties from someone who I not only didn’t know well, but who had been downright snarky about my business. But he felt familiar. I had only kissed a few men, and most of those hadn’t been very good experiences. Certainly had not lit my body on fire from the core out. Or evoked a sense of longing so strong I wanted to climb him to wrap my legs around him and beg him to take me.
He urged my mouth open with the tip of his tongue, and when I complied deepened the kiss, dominating, dancing with my tongue, twining and lapping, and it was as I’d dreamed. Dreams I never even remembered until now, but there they were.
I knew how to kiss this man, and he knew how to kiss me. The rumble from deep within him, I knew that, too, that lion with its fierce roar and tender purr. Early shifted me closer, adjusting so his knee butted between my legs and I ground down on it. Wanting to shred our clothes off and fall to the floor in a tangle of passion this sedate house might never have seen.
His lips left mine and glided over my jaw, down the side of my neck to suckle gently over my carotid then down to my collarbone. My breathing grew harsh, my fingers in his hair and his knee between my thighs holding me upright. Because his hands were between our bodies, covering my breasts, which were as sensitive as if there were no robe or nightgown between his palms and my peaked nipples. He spread the robe’s lapels back, revealing my very sexy flannel nighty. His kisses and sucks on my neck trailed down into the neckline and, to my shocked pleasure, he bit off the buttons, spitting them to the side until he could spread the sides open, and I thanked the goddess for front-closure bras. Although I did question why I’d worn one to bed. Just too tired to finish undressing.
A flip of his finger and my more than generous handfuls spilled out. He lifted them in his palms, as if weighing them, and growled before closing his mouth over one nipple, snarling as he worked it, sucking and nipping, teasing me while he pinched the other between his thumb and forefinger, tugging and twisting.
For once, I didn’t think my breasts were too big or hung too heavy. I was glad to present him with so much, for his pleasure. He switched sides, and I clung to his shoulders, riding his knee, holding on through the storm of erotic sensations, and something more.
The door banged open and slammed closed, and Tinsley stumbled over something and cursed in true ogre-style.
“So much for the gossamer-winged fairy,” Early muttered under cover of her loud voice as we stood very still, hoping not to be noticed.
I pressed my fist against my mouth to stifle the giggle as Tinsley stomp-hopped to the door, still cursing but in a lower voice. She paused just inside the hallway. “And I see you guys. I’d say get a room, but we got nothing but. Good night.”
“Night,” I called, cheeks flaming and giggles effectively suppressed.
“Night, Tinsley,” echoed Early.
My sister-in-law’s flat feet slapped down the hall toward the carpeted stairs where the sound was replaced with thuds, and finally a slamming door.
“She isn’t mad,” I hastened to explain. “It’s how she closes all doors. Sometimes she doesn’t know her own strength.”
“Sure, I get that,” Early replied. “I did a whole series on Old World Ogres and never saw a door closed any other way.”
“Oh, good.”
A silence stretched between us, standing there ha
lf-dressed—at least I was—limbs tangled, and whatever energy had surged between us completely gone. I extricated myself and pushed back against the wall, trying to hook my bra while holding my robe closed. My face was so hot now, it must be glowing red in the darkness. Early stood in front of me, hands at his sides, probably feeling every bit as awkward.
It wasn’t as if I could be angry with him for participating in something just as eagerly as I had. But how to walk away now without making the next day completely impossible? Or implying that I wanted to take this to the bedroom tonight?
I searched his face for the familiarity I’d felt, but saw only a complete stranger. A handsome complete stranger, but not someone I’d ever met before.
“Well, Karina, I uh...”
I waited to see what he’d say, praying with his more experience in these things he’d know a graceful way out. Or at least not push me into something I didn’t want to do. Well, I did want to but it would be a terrible idea. I hadn’t waited all this time to jump into bed with a stranger. “Yes?”
“I’d better get my bag from the car and head up to my room, if you’ll show me the way?”
The bastard! Not only wasn’t he pushy or begging, which I secretly might have liked, he had totally lost interest.
Enraged, I slipped past him and stomped out of the kitchen to stand by the staircase. When Early joined me, I didn’t allow him to say anything, just pointed up. “I’m going up to bed. Once you’ve come back in, just go to the first door on the right and make yourself at home.”
His lips moved, but the red fury didn’t allow me to hear him if any actual words emerged. I turned and fled. More rejection, just what I needed to build confidence for the grand opening. He’d probably write a terrible article, too, about our little backwoods inn.
And what if nobody did come? Had he cursed me?
Stupid lion.
This time I slammed the door, no ogres needed, then flung myself across my beautiful, high, four-poster bed, pulled off my robe and slippers, and tossed them to the carpeted floor before yanking my not exactly period bed curtains closed. I needed to hide.
Witch Way Inn Page 3