by Anna Durand
"Porter!"
Travis's voice bellowed through the woods. He burst out of the trees and stopped twenty feet away, breathing hard, his face red from exertion. "Why the hell'd you run?"
"You were going to arrest me. I can't go through that again. I won't."
Between huffing breaths, Travis said, "I wouldn't do that."
"You took out your handcuffs."
"Force of habit. I wouldn't arrest you."
"But you'll haul me in for questioning."
"Had to, and I kinda thought — " He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again, while his fingers plucked at the strap on his gun holster. "Never mind. I'm sorry."
I fumbled for a response but came up empty.
A shuffling noise jerked me out of my confusion. Nevan traipsed around me, planting himself between me and Travis, who leaned sideways to keep an eye on me. Every couple seconds, he'd shoot a dagger glare at Nevan, but the sylph ignored it.
Nevan, shoulders back and head held high, gazed down on us mere mortals with austere confidence. I was struck once again by the power he exuded, his aura of otherness, beautiful and yet so far beyond my reach.
Realizing with a start Travis had spoken again, I blinked rapidly and tried to focus on him. "Huh?"
The sheriff stared at me for a few seconds, then his gaze tracked to the loincloth-clad elemental being stationed between us. His hand on his holster, he tapped one finger on the Sig berthed inside it. "What's this freak doing to you? Drugs? Hypnosis?"
Travis stalked toward me, veering around my self-appointed protector.
Nevan thrust out an arm, blocking him.
"Outta my way," Travis snapped.
Nevan regarded Travis with remote interest, like a scientist observing a microbe — and preparing to squash it.
A minute ago, I'd reveled in his incredible power. What had I been high on? The last thing I needed was Nevan pummeling the county sheriff. I'd get blamed for it, for sure. "Nevan, cut it out."
He ignored me, though a single, dark brow ticked upward.
I shot for a reasonable tone, despite my hammering heart and the sweat dribbling down my temples. "Please let Travis go by. He won't hurt me. Will you, Travis?"
"Course not." Travis raised a fist at Nevan. "But if this freak don't get outta my way, I will pump six rounds of hollow-point ammo smack into his brain."
Great. That would defuse the situation for sure.
"Let's all calm down." I directed a serene smile first at Travis, then at the sylph. "Please, Nevan."
He stepped aside, but kept his steely gaze on the sheriff.
Travis rushed toward me, seizing my shoulders. "Wake up, Lindsey, shake it off. Let me help you."
Nevan's mouth angled into a cool smile. "Perhaps she doesn't trust you."
Travis slung a sidelong glare at Nevan. "Stay outta this."
"Afraid I can't, son."
Travis tore his hands away from me to stab a finger in Nevan's direction. "I am not your son. For one thing, you aren't old enough to be my dad, and believe me, I'm real grateful for that." His hands fisted so tightly the muscles in his arms bulged. "Back off. This is between me and Lindsey. I don't know who the hell you are, but I guarantee I will find out."
"Highly doubtful." A derisive smile tautened Nevan's mouth. "But go on and try, son. It'll be amusing."
Travis shook his fists in the air, his face flushing bright red. "You son of a bitch — "
"Gah!" I shouted. "Enough. You two are acting like cavemen."
Both men swung their gazes to me. Expectant. Questioning. Irritated.
I huffed. "Don't give me that look, either of you. I do what I want, remember? It's called free will."
Nevan looked suitably chagrined, but Travis stared at me like I'd grown three extra heads — tiny gargoyle heads that were making rude faces at him.
Travis scrubbed a hand over his face, straightened, and held out a hand to me. "Listen, I know we ain't exactly been friends, but I never lied to you. Come back with me."
Something flickered across Nevan's features, something reminiscent of disappointment, but it dissipated too fast for me to be sure. He slackened his shoulders, cocking one hip. "Do what you want."
Despite his aloof pose, he fixed his gaze directly on mine. The metallic hues in his irises blended and twirled, diverging and joining, hypnotizing me for a second too long. I neglected to notice he'd moved closer, edging up beside me, until I realized — thanks to a muscle spasm at the base of my skull — I'd craned my neck back to maintain eye contact.
"Lindsey," Travis said, in his most commanding cop voice.
I ripped my gaze from Nevan, returning my attention to Travis.
The sheriff held his arms stiff at his sides, fingers coiled into his palms. "I know you don't trust me. Why would you? I shoulda believed you about Calder, shoulda supported you, but I couldn't accept my brother had turned into some kinda… monster." He tugged at his shirt collar, rolling his shoulders in jerky movements. "I shouldn't have arrested you three years ago. I won't do it today. You gotta believe me."
"Am I supposed to be grateful?"
Travis shuffled up to my other side, scowling at Nevan, his anger easing up as he snaked his hand around mine. His skin was cool, his hold awkward. "We can fix this together. Just stay."
Though Nevan said nothing, his lips had flattened and his nostrils flared the tiniest bit. When he curved one corner of his mouth into a faint attempt at a grin, the expression stopped short of his eyes.
I glanced back and forth between the two cavemen before me. How could I turn away from Travis, a man I'd known for five years, in favor of someone I met yesterday? Travis had always despised me — or so I'd thought. As for Nevan, I had no clue what he felt.
Standing rigid beside me, Nevan spoke in a low voice. "You know I am the only one who can protect you."
Travis had turned his back on me three years ago, when I needed a friend the most. In the past two days alone, Nevan had aided me more than anyone else in my whole life. Anyone except my family.
I slipped my hand into Nevan's. He squeezed gently. A genuine, if muted, smile relaxed his lips.
"No," Travis said, shaking his head vigorously. "You can't be serious. Stay here."
I moved closer to Nevan, my shoulder bumping his chest. "I can't stay. Nevan's right. He can help me a lot more than you can."
"Are you kidding me? You can't run off with Kevin the jungle fairy."
Nevan shot ramrod straight, his gaze narrowing on Travis. "I am not a fairy."
Travis ground his teeth. "I ain't letting you take her."
What drug was he on? Travis had treated me like a criminal until abruptly deciding to help. "I'm going with Nevan."
Travis bolted his hand around my arm and I flinched at his steel grip. "I won't let you go, Porter. You're a suspect in a murder."
"You're giving me vertigo with your constant one-eighties. Make up your mind, Travis. Hate me, help me, you have to pick one."
Spittle spraying from his lips, he snarled, "I'll do whatever it takes to keep you away from — " He punched a finger in the air toward Nevan without looking at the other man. "Away from that thing."
Confronted with Travis's vehemence, I sidled closer to Nevan. Travis's behavior had grown so erratic I had no clue what he might resort to next.
He wrested the cuffs from his belt. "This is for your own good, Lindsey."
Nevan flicked his wrist.
Travis's feet flipped out from under him and he sailed backward through the air. His body thwacked down at the far side of the clearing. Prone on the ground, Travis jacked his head up, grimacing, his eyes dull and his hair mussed.
I wrested my hand free of Nevan's. "What are you doing? You could've killed him."
"The sheriff is unharmed." Nevan grazed his
knuckles across my cheek. "He threatened you."
"Now who's jealous."
"I said I'd protect you and I keep my promises." He dragged one fingertip down my jaw, a faint smile on his lips. "I seem to recall a certain mortal screaming my name, begging for my help."
Crap. I had. Worse, I didn't regret it. But still…
I studied Travis. He'd pushed up into a sitting position and was fingering the back of his head.
Nevan hauled me into his arms, pressing me into his body, suffusing me with his primal heat. He had hidden layers to his personality and I didn't know if I could or should accept his darker side. In this moment, though, he represented my best hope.
He spanned the small of my back with his large hands, tethering me to him. "Ready?"
"For what?"
"To cross the veil."
Sheesh, his world had screwy terminology. "To what the what?"
"You'll see."
The world evaporated into a roiling mist, the ground fell away beneath us, and we plunged into blackness.
9
Ice clawed at my flesh. I clung to Nevan with both arms around his neck. His biceps flexed and tautened around me as he adjusted and strengthened his hold. I tried to speak, to ask where he was taking me, but couldn't. If my body still existed, my mind must've detached from it. I rocketed through an abyss, numb except for the pinching, slashing ice.
Whump. My feet touched down with a gentleness incongruous with the noise I'd heard. Or sensed. Or something. Sunlight swaddled me in its delicate warmth. A forest encircled us and I understood, on a visceral level, we had teleported to another spot in the same woods, in the vicinity of the falls. I strained to hear the rumbling of the water, but detected nothing more than birds twittering.
Nevan's embrace crushed me. No wonder I couldn't catch my breath. With my face mashed against his chest, I croaked, "You're squishing me."
He loosened his hold. "Sorry, love, I don't often travel with a passenger. And I assumed ye wouldn't appreciate it if I dropped ye."
"Absolutely not."
"I will never let you go." He combed his fingers through my hair. "Are ye all right?"
"Yeah." I propped my chin on his chest. "Glad to be back on the ground."
A relieved smile accompanied his sigh. "As am I."
I hesitated for a moment, entranced by the odd safety of being in his arms, before I pushed away. "Travis found the dead guy. In the trunk of my car."
A vein throbbed in his forehead. "Did he now."
"Could Skeiron have put it there?"
"I've no idea. Can't imagine why he'd bother mucking about with a corpse." His brows cinched together. "Someone else must've killed the poor fellow and waited for the right moment to plant the body, to place the blame squarely on you."
"Great." I rubbed my arms, scratching my elbow. "I have at least two mortal enemies. I love being popular."
"Your enemies aren't mortal. I'm quite certain, given the body thief's actions, he or she is no more mortal than Skeiron is."
"Thanks for the awesome pep talk."
His forehead wrinkled. "Pep talk?"
"Forget it." I surveyed the vicinity, arms belted around me like a straitjacket. "I shouldn't have run. It was stupid, I know. I should've trusted the law to straighten out this mess. That's what normal people do."
Nevan harrumphed. "The innocent often suffer at the whim of any legal system."
"Do elemental beings have a legal system?"
"Of course." He canted his head, lips parted slightly. "When you mentioned the law, were you referring to the sheriff?"
"Not sure. Travis did seem halfway sincere when he offered to help."
With a hmt noise, Nevan began to scraped his finger across his thumb in repetitive jerks.
It was my turn to smirk. "Jealous much?"
"Of a human? Bah." He waved a dismissive hand.
If he wanted to swim in denial, fine. "You said you can help me. How?"
"Hmm," he said, with a teasing glint in his eyes. "Let me think."
"You don't have a plan?" I was in no mood for jokes. Panic amped up my volume and elevated my pitch to a higher octave. "You swept me away, promising to fix things, and you don't even have a — "
Nevan snared me in his arms. I sucked in a sharp breath. He cradled my face in one hand, his thumb caressing the corner of my mouth, eliciting wave of heat that bloomed out into my whole body. "Hush, darlin'. I have a plan."
The intimacy of our position had me squirming against him. "You do?"
"Resurrect the dead fellow."
"You can — I mean, you seriously could — bring someone back from the dead?"
"I cannot do it personally, mind you, but I can access the magic." He pulled me hard against him, both arms folded around me. "We've got a journey ahead of us."
"A trip? Where to?"
"Through the veil. Into the Unseen realm."
"I thought we already crossed the veil thingy."
"Not quite. I brought us a short ways from the scene of the crime, as it were. We have yet to pierce the veil — the barrier between your world and mine."
My head throbbed, most likely from information overload. More than my head throbbed, thanks to the disconcerting way he'd bound our bodies together. The way Nevan exposed my deepest needs, inflaming them beyond reason, scared me more than being framed for murder.
"Are ye ready?" he asked.
Too many discomfiting layers to that question. I ignored all but the most obvious. "Take me there."
Nevan studied me for a moment, apparently uncertain whether I meant what I'd said or if I comprehended the gravity of my decision. Maybe I didn't. He'd explained and presented me with the option. I'd granted my permission. More than that, despite vowing never to do it again, I'd made the decision to trust a man.
A breeze fanned over us, feathering my hair across my shoulders and my chest. A stray lock flew across my lips and spilled down again to tickle my collarbone and stray over Nevan's hand, where it still rested there on my bare skin.
His gaze skipped down to my breasts, then blazed straight into my eyes. His chest heaved once. The swelling length of his erection strained against his loincloth but somehow stayed contained beneath it.
A bolt of searing need tore through me. Images rolled past my mind's eye, vivid to the point of making my skin tingle and my sex throb. I hungered for him to see me exposed before him and lay those big hands on my naked body. I craved the rasp of his tongue on my —
Noooo, I would not finish that thought. Passions of all kinds, sexual and emotional, must be restrained or bad things would follow.
His tongue rolled over his lower lip. "Tell me one thing first. Why does the sheriff call you ice princess?"
"You have to know now?"
"I would like to know, that's all."
I knotted a lock of my hair around my finger. Why not tell him? Maybe the truth would squelch his desire and I'd be safe again. Do you want to be safe? I wound the lock tighter, until it strangled my finger, then shook it off. "After I shot Calder, I told Travis everything that happened. Everything. Even the incredibly personal stuff, because I thought he needed to know in order to help me. Back then, I still believed he would help."
Nevan turned his hand over, skating the back of it down my breastbone until it encountered my T-shirt's neckline. He hovered his hand there, a millimeter from my skin. "He arrested you."
"Yeah." I linked my hands over my belly, only to let them drop away. "Weird thing is, he didn't yell at me about murdering his brother. He started calling me ice princess instead."
Nevan withdrew his hand. "Why?"
"Because I… well… " Spit it out, you coward. "When I told Travis what Calder had done to me, I also told him what I am. For some reason, it enraged him."
"And what precisely are you?
"
My stomach churned, but I took a deep breath and told him what I'd never told anyone else except Travis and Calder. "I'm a virgin."
Nevan's mouth fell open and quickly clapped shut. His brows arched before knitting together. As the lines smoothed out of his forehead, he gave a slow nod. "That explains quite a few things."
"Really. Such as?"
"Why you forbade me to kiss you, for one. And why you're uncomfortable with my lack of clothing."
The ache in my head spread to my neck. Once again, he'd bared my secrets without the slightest effort. It made me feel as transparent as glass.
He rubbed his chin. "But your virginity hardly makes you cold and remote, as the term ice princess implies."
I stuffed my hands in my jeans pockets. "According to Travis, I string men along with tacit promises of sex, only to shut them down when they make a move." I cast my gaze to the ground as the old knot cinched tight in my gut. "He said I like to torture men and that's how I drove Calder over the edge. I deserved what happened, he said. I'm a rotten tease."
Was that my voice, so small and pathetic? I'd thought I could bury the past, but it kept rising up like a zombie to terrorize me.
Because I let it. Because keeping it alive gave me a fantastic excuse to hide inside myself. Never a victim again.
"Lindsey — "
"Forget it." I lifted my gaze to Nevan's and swung my hands at my sides. "I told you I'd cross the veil with you. Take me already."
His lips twitched with suppressed humor. "Well now, I thought it'd take far longer for ye to beg me to take ye."
My rebuttal turned into a choked grunt. After a few seconds, I managed to speak. "I didn't mean it like that. And I was not begging."
"I heard a note of… " He gave a soft chuckle, his mouth forming a slight smile. "Desperation."
"What you heard was frustration."
His smile broadened into a grin that set off glittering sparks in his eyes. "I'd be more than happy to assist ye with your frustration."
Cripes, I'd done it again. I had to start thinking before I spoke. Maybe I ought to write the words down and read them three times first. "Let's get this veil-crossing thing over with."