She's No Faerie Princess

by Christine Warren

  In this case, Walker weighed his options and decided that if he stuck to the alleys on the trip back to his apartment and didn't get too close to any streetlights, he'd be better off going as he was. If he shifted back to human, he might not risk psychically scarring a wandering human observer, but he did risk spending the night in a cell with a public-indecency citation hanging over his head. Given the way his night had been going so far, he didn't have time to go to jail.

  He reached the borders of the park and scanned the street from the cover of the last few trees. He didn't see much movement, which did occasionally happen even in New York, and at three-something in the morning the streets of the metropolis were about as deserted as he could ever hope to see them. It was now or never.

  Taking a deep breath and immediately regretting it because of the crack the demon had left in his ribs, Walker bowed his head, clutched the woman tighter against his chest, and dived into the shadows. His long strides ate up the ground between the park and his neighborhood. At a dead run, a werewolf could move faster than a sprinting racehorse and might even give a cheetah a thing or two to think about. Luckily, Walker could maintain his speed for distances closer to those of the equine than the feline, because it was a good couple of miles to his apartment.

  He made it without incident, ducking into the alley behind his street and breaking his speed, slowing to a walk for the last hundred yards to his building. It took him a second to catch his breath, but both he and the woman had made it in one piece. And, he hoped, without being seen.

  Hitching the unconscious woman higher against his chest, Walker scanned the area before he rounded the corner, balancing her carefully in one arm while he paused outside his apartment door to retrieve his spare key. He kept it hidden for just this sort of emergency. In his line of work he never did know when he'd be coming home without pockets. The fact that his door was set down half a flight of stairs as a basement entrance made those times easier, too, by offering a bit of concealment from the odd passerby.

  He let them inside and kicked the door shut behind them. Though the entrance to his apartment looked like it led to a basement, he actually occupied two floors of the narrow old building, and he used the bottom floor as a workroom and Spartan home gym. His living space was upstairs. He carried his guest up and directly to the sofa, depositing her on the soft cushions before he straightened and shifted back to his human form.

  He felt the sting and then the easing as his genes reformed his body, knitting together the crack in his ribs, sealing the scratches he'd gotten wrestling around the forest. When the change was complete, his shoulders rolled in instinctive adjustment.

  The woman never moved, and he frowned down at her, crouching beside the sofa to examine her limp form. He'd felt the steady beat of her heart and the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing as he'd carried her home, so he knew perfectly well she wasn't dead. And that was what had him frowning. No human woman or witch should have survived the demon attack, which meant she must not be human. He knew from her scent that she wasn't Lupine or any other sort of shifter, for that matter. There was nothing earthy about her, nothing animal. She smelled too pure for that, and the fact that he could smell her at all meant she wasn't a vampire. Her skin felt too warm and smooth and elastic to belong to any other nonliving life-form, and she looked too much like a human for him to identify her origins by sight.

  He didn't like that his sense of smell had failed him here. One good sniff ought to give him all the information he needed to place her species, but instead it only gave him a raging erection. He didn't know what the hell was the matter with him. Sure, just like any other male in existence, a good brush with death tended to bring out the horny in him, but this felt like more than that. He didn't just want sex; he wanted sex with her, with this woman—or whatever she was—and he wanted it now. In fact, he seemed to want it more with every breath full of her scent that he inadvertently inhaled. He struggled to block the tantalizing aroma from his mind and pushed to his feet. If he didn't get control of himself, she would end up getting a hell of an awakening. Maybe from the inside out.

  Gritting his teeth and taking slow, shallow breaths through his mouth, Walker braced himself against his uncontrollable arousal and forced himself to take stock of her wounds. Starting at her feet seemed safest, and the ragged puncture marks in the leather of her high boots looked pretty nasty. He dealt efficiently with her laces and tugged the boots off, setting them aside under the coffee table. Without the heavy covering, her feet looked tiny and fragile beneath their veil of sheer black stockings, which were dotted with blood around her left ankle. The demon's claws hadn't bitten deeply, thanks to the leather, but the punctures would need a thorough cleaning.

  His gaze moved up the length of her slim, graceful legs, which did totally inappropriate things to his libido, but they appeared to be free of further injury. The only other wound he could see was a slash across her stomach, and that was the injury that worried him. Carefully, he reached out to lift aside the hems of her skimpy tank tops, one eye on her face to be sure she hadn't woken up. Her eyelashes didn't even flutter, and her expression remained tranquil. Walker wished he could say the same for himself, but one good look at the ragged gash in her pale, freckled skin had him cursing a blue streak and gritting his teeth against the urge to howl in anger.

  The cut bled sluggishly, much less than he would have expected, but it looked nasty all the same, with jagged edges darkened to black by the poison on the demon's claws. Jaw clenching, he dropped her hem and headed straight for the first-aid supplies in his bathroom. On the way back, he paused in the bedroom to grab a pair of jeans and ease himself into them. No reason to scare her to death by having her wake up eye to eye with the part of him most anxious to make her acquaintance.

  He stepped back into the living room with his hands full of disinfectant and bandages, and he froze. The blue-haired punk he'd left on his sofa had been replaced by a dark-haired goddess with skin like whipped cream and a torn and tattered gown of a fabric so light, if it hadn't been for the pale lilac color, he couldn't have sworn it even existed. The clothes she had been wearing had disappeared, and she slept on as if nothing had happened. Now he had proof she wasn't quite human. A witch, maybe? That would explain her human appearance, since technically witches were humans who just happened to have evolved the ability to use magic, and a spell fading would explain the change in her appearance. At least, he thought it would. He wasn't all that up on the rules of magic.

  And none of the rules he had heard before explained why the very scent of her made him want to strip her naked and introduce himself to her womb, up close and personal.

  Forcing his mind off his crotch, he returned to the sofa and knelt on the floor at her side. Her wounds took precedence over his curiosity at the moment. Until he did find out who and what she was, he'd be better off treating her injuries than speculating about the effect she had on him. When she woke up, he'd get his answers.

  Still, he was frowning as he poured disinfectant liberally onto a sterile pad. He parted the cut in her dress, ripping it slightly wider to get at the injury. When he pressed the cotton to her skin, the muscles in her stomach clenched reflexively, and he heard a soft gasp whisper between her lips. His gaze shot immediately to her face, but her expression remained relaxed and tempting in sleep. Reluctantly, he looked back at his task, only to see that the wound in her abdomen appeared to be a lot less serious than he'd thought, now that he'd cleared the dried blood and dirt away. In fact, it almost looked as if it had begun healing even before he'd washed it.

  Oh, this wasn't good.

  Swallowing a curse, Walker leaned back from his unconscious guest and took a really good look at her. One that had his stomach sinking into his toenails. He took in the moonlight-pale, velvet-smooth skin, the miraculously healing wounds, the magically transformed appearance, and saw that his bad day had just gotten a hell of a lot worse.

  "Aw, shit."

  Muttering to himself
and whatever god currently watched and laughed at his predicament, Walker took a deep, bracing breath, eased his hands into the tumbled mass of the unconscious woman's raven black hair, and lifted it gently away from the delicate shell of her ear. An ear that swept gracefully up from small, unadorned lobes to a distinct and elegant point.

  Fae.

  The woman currently passed out on his sofa, bleeding from an unexpected and determined demon attack, was Fae. As in full-blooded, non-Changeling, born-and-bred-beyond-the-gates-in-Faerie Fae. And high sidhe from the look of her. This wasn't a sprite but one of the aristocratic race. So what the hell was she doing in his living room?

  Okay, he had carried her there, but that wasn't the point. The Fae weren't even supposed to be in this world. Their ruler, Queen Mab, had made that longstanding custom a law after some kind of incident a few years ago, but the end result was that Walker could count on one hand the number of Fae he'd met in all of his thirty-five years. This one made number three. Not his lucky number.

  Pushing to his feet, Walker shoved a hand through his already-rumpled hair and began to pace across the quiet room. He didn't need a Lupine sense of smell to know this whole thing reeked of trouble, and he wasn't just talking about the demon stench. He already had enough on his plate trying to keep the Others in the area from inadvertently starting a war with the humans. The last thing he needed was the Fae and demons putting in an appearance and throwing everything into chaos.

  Walker bit back a curse and looked over at the sofa, directly into a pair of sleepy, darkly lashed eyes the color of African violets. It felt like taking a stone giant's fist straight to his gut. Even the demon hadn't packed this kind of punch. Asleep, the Fae woman had been beautiful. Awake, she stole the breath from his lungs and the brains from his head. All he had left was the blood in his veins, and that was sure as hell easy enough to prove, considering it had all rushed right to his groin the minute she opened her eyes.

  While he stood there, blinking like an idiot and probably drooling like one, his guest raised her arms over her head and arched her body in a lazy, feline stretch that left him cross-eyed and half-delirious. Then she collapsed back into the cushions and her full lips curved in a sensual smile.

  "Hi." Her sleep-husky voice had the same effect on his dick as the average Lupine female in heat waving her tail in his face, only magnified exponentially. He probably had zipper marks running up and down his shaft. "My name is Fiona. Who are you?"

  Walker groaned and rubbed his hand over his eyes, quickly discovering that the image of Fiona stretching had been burned indelibly into his retinas.

  "Shit. I'm screwed."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 4

  Fiona felt her lips twitch, but she figured it might be considered rude to laugh at someone who had saved her life. "Ah, all right. Do you have a nickname?"

  The werewolf scowled down at her. "Tobias Walker. But I think the more important question, lady, is what in the hell are you doing here?"

  Pursing her lips, Fiona swung herself into a sitting position and winced when the movement pulled at the slash in her belly. The wound had begun to heal, but with as much magic as she had expended, she guessed it would be a couple of days at least before she did any dancing. Which was a shame. The idea of performing one of the seductive, erotic, hip-grinding dances of Faerie for her erstwhile rescuer held a definite appeal. And judging by the current fit of said rescuer's jeans, she thought he might turn out to be an appreciative audience.

  "Lady," he growled, jerking her attention off his pants and back to his face. "You want to answer my question?"

  "Not particularly."

  She bent her head to examine the wound on her belly, so she couldn't see his face, but she could definitely hear his biting curses.

  "Do it anyway."

  Fiona looked up, saw the edge of a ruthlessly controlled temper looming, and sighed. She'd been raised around her aunt's warrior guardsmen and knew a dominant man in a snit when she saw one. In her experience, it was always better to humor them. "I'm taking a vacation."

  He opened his mouth, looking for all the world as if he planned to huff and puff and blow her house down, then snapped his jaw shut in confusion. "A vacation'? What? Was the Fae Riviera overbooked?"

  She blinked innocently up at him. "No, but I just hate getting all that sand stuck in my hair."

  "Oh, right. I see." He glared at her, the sarcasm dripping off his tongue. "I'm sure that as soon as she hears your reasoning, Queen Mab will personally drape you in a lei and sing you a chorus of 'Bon Voyage.'"

  This time it was Fiona's turn to pull up short. She eyed the Lupine warily and offered a soothing smile. "Really, Tobias. Let's not be childish. There's no reason to bring Aunt Mab into this—"

  "Aunt Mab?!"

  Fiona watched with fascinated horror as the top of the werewolf's head seemed to lift off and hover atop a molten-lava eruption of furious disbelief. Maybe she shouldn't have mentioned the family connection? But of course, he'd latched onto it with the ferocity of a pit bull and was shaking it for all it was worth. Which, in Fiona's book, wasn't a whole hell of a lot.

  "Queen Mab, High Lady of the Sidhe, Queen of the Summer Court of Faerie, Mistress of the Living Forest, and Empress of Earth and Water, is your bloody fricking aunt?"

  Now seemed like a good time for Fiona to stand up. And take a few steps back. And maybe make sure she was standing somewhere far away from corners and close to an obvious escape route.

  "Um, a little."

  "A little? She's a little your aunt. So I suppose she'll only make my life a little miserable when she finds out you're here. That's just fabulous."

  "Don't you think you're overreacting just a tad?" she laughed, not really amused. "Mab can be a little bit… temperamental, I grant you, but she's not entirely unreasonable. She's not going to get all bent out of shape with you just because I took a little trip."

  Walker crossed his arms over his chest and pinned her with his stare. "So then you got permission to visit before you crossed through the gate from Faerie that no one on either side is ever supposed to use except in direst emergency?"

  Fiona made a face. "Not exactly."

  "Then what the hell makes you think Mab isn't going to pitch a royal Fae fit?" he snapped, stalking toward her until she could have sworn the force of his irritation blew her hair back like a hurricane wind. "You broke the goddamned law, and not only that, but you picked the worst possible time in history to dump your pretty little troublemaking ass into my lap, sweetheart. I've got enough to worry about without trying to prevent an interdimensional incident with the Summer Sidhe!"

  Fiona's curiosity leapfrogged over the protestation of innocence she had been about to make. Rumor had it, there was a sprite somewhere back in the branches of her family tree, and it was moments like this that lent credence to the story. Eyes glinting, her need to know everything hurled her right into the provocative part of his diatribe. "How is this the 'worst possible time in history'? Is something going on?"

  Walker teetered back on his heels, his expression slowly shifting from anger to confusion. It looked like he'd just hit a brick wall after accelerating to full speed. "What?"

  "What's going on at this particular moment that makes the timing of my vacation so bad?" she asked, ignoring the bark in his tone. "There must be something major going on. You seem stressed out. Is there something I can do? Anything I can help with?"

  "You've got to be kidding me."

  "Well, there's no need to sound so astonished. Just because I'm Fae doesn't mean I can't be useful. Not everyone who grows up at court is a dilettante. Just tell me what the problem is, and I'll be happy to lend a hand."

  The werewolf stifled another curse that had Fiona wondering about the extent of that particular portion of his vocabulary. It seemed quite amazingly comprehensive.

  "The only way you can help me," he grumbled, abruptly backing up a few steps and resuming his earlier pacing, "is by doing whatever it is you do to m
agic yourself something to wear that looks less like it came out of a Victoria's Secret catalog. Then you can follow me back to the Faerie gate you came in through and get the hell home before anyone important realizes you were ever here."

  Fiona blinked and raised an eyebrow. "That was a little harsh. Is that what passes for manners in the mortal world lately? No wonder we have so many jokes about the irony of mortal civilization where I come from."

  His head snapped around, and he scowled at her through fiercely narrowed eyes. "Now is not a good time for you to lecture me, sweetheart."

  The predatory glow in those wolfish eyes caught Fiona by surprise and sent a shiver of awareness skittering down her spine. All at once her senses seemed to register the power of his muscled body, the breadth of his lightly furred and distractingly bare chest. The heat that radiated off him in waves along with something subtler, deeper, and infinitely more unnerving. Typically, Fiona reacted to the warning of her instincts not with a strategic retreat, but with a slightly suicidal tug to the tail of the beast.

  "Oh? What time would work better for you?" she asked, opening her eyes wide and guilelessly, even as her subconscious streak of self-preservation had her backing up another step or two. Or four. "I'd be happy to take a look at my calendar and work you in—"

  By the time she heard his warning growl, it was already too late. In the time it took for her synapses to fire, the werewolf had leaped across the distance separating them and slammed bodily into her, sending her careening into the wall five feet behind her. She hit the drywall with a thud and a hiss, the air in her lungs whooshing out and into the mouth of the beast.