Fire and Fantasy: a Limited Edition Collection of Epic and Urban Fantasy

by CK Dawn

  “And round and round we go,” he murmured, hating what he had to do even as his heart thumped several extra beats at the thought of Dragon’s velvety brown eyes dilating as he pressed deep inside her. He’d bring his A game to snag her, he thought. It’s the least I could do.

  Glad for the legitimate excuse that green-lit shooting up, Fel strode out of the bathroom and pulled a pair of well-worn jeans from the closet and a faded, navy T-shirt from his bureau. His hand hesitated over the knob of the drawer containing the last of his stash of undertow before opening it decisively.

  That last rock seemed to glow like a prism, like a holy icon suffused with bright divinity and for a moment, Fel wondered if he was doing the right thing, if he could really let go of this habit that had been a true and diligent friend to him—helped him forget the worst of his sins for days at a time. The seat of his sweats, dried to his ass with Gemma’s jizz, screamed yes and the pile of pubic hair on the floor behind him seconded that emotion. He clutched the baggie and headed for his syringe and the last bit of false healing that would flood his veins

  Fel stood still as a middle-aged, overly tan woman’s appreciative eyes trailed slowly up his jean-clad legs. She hummed approvingly, her eyes glued to his chest and shoulders.

  “Just my style,” the woman in the chair murmured, then loudly encouraged the stylist behind her to notice the “fathomless” intensity of his stark, gray eyes.

  The Hispanic stylist glanced quickly at Dragon’s stunned face then returned to styling the head of red spiral curls in front of her. “That’s gotta be the shortest vow in the history of vows,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Hello,” an avatar of Ganesh said breathlessly, smoothing a few of his unruly blond curls, before flashing Fel a bright smile. “How may I service you?”

  Fel’s eyes widened and he grinned. “You mean be of service.”

  “No,” the avatar said, scrutinizing Fel from head to toe and licking his lips. “I really don’t.”

  “Cut it out, Sage,” Dragon said, approaching Fel warily.

  “Bitch, I will fight you for that,” Sage said earnestly. He tucked his comb and scissors in his apron pocket and took out the three gold hoops decorating his left elephant’s ear in preparation for what Fel could only assume was a fight to the death with his person being the prize.

  A petite Indian woman responded to Sage’s challenge by pulling off handfuls of bracelets and tucking the hem of her flowing silk skirt into her waistband. “Let’s go, bitch.”

  Dragon ignored them both and stepped close enough to Fel so that their conversation couldn’t be overheard.

  He inhaled her scent and forced himself not to gather her close.

  She glanced up into his devouring eyes. “Hi,” she whispered then looked down at her feet shyly. “What are you doing here?”

  “You want a piece of me? You want a piece of me!”

  “Bring it, you lazy heifer, or should I say Loxodonta cyclotis?”

  An exaggerated gasp from the avatar sucked a goodly amount of air from the establishment.

  “You take that back! I heard the bodega on 35th was looking for a genuine, Hindu cashier to help with the slushy machine.”

  “You bastard!”

  “Take it back!”

  Fel looked away from the ridiculous slap fight that ensued. “I wanted to see you. Is that okay?” They both watched as he fingered her belt buckle.

  “Yeah, it’s okay,” she answered, her stomach quivering as his hand brushed against her belly.

  “I just wanted to make sure everything was all right. When you left last night—did I do something wrong?”

  Dragon bit her lip and stared at his dark T-shirt like it held the answers to the secrets of the universe. Her eyes met his, and she squinted, as if what she saw there was too bright. They settled on his mouth, then moved to his right ear. “The consultation included a bit more than I expected.”

  “Yeah, for me too.” He sighed, watching as that gust of breath fluttered the hair feathering her brow. “But I’m all about customer service,” he joked.

  “So, you’ve done that before?” she said with a wan smile.

  “No,” he whispered, giving in to the urge to bury his face in her hair. “Never felt that before.” As his fingertips reverently slid into the strands at the nape of her neck, he met the Hispanic stylist’s pointed look and was reminded that he had an audience.

  Fel inhaled deeply one last time before taking two deliberate steps away from her. “When can you take a break?” he murmured, ignoring both Sage and the pretty Hindu stylist who had apparently mended fences and watched him like he was a person of interest.

  Eight

  The loss of his heat irritated Dragon and she squelched the whine that would’ve brought him closer. It was his abrupt change from sincere desire to seasoned pro that reminded her whose touch she was craving. Still, as novel as it was to be wanted by someone she had no obligation to fix, Dragon simply didn’t have the money, cojones, or heart to employ Fel.

  More than that—and she had him and the previous night’s pleasure to thank for this—for once she wanted to receive something from her lovers besides disappointment, heartache and a bank balance in constant freefall. The next time she gave away pieces of her soul not only needed to be the right time, it needed to be the last.

  She looked up into his clear gray eyes intending to let him down gently then reminded herself that she wouldn’t be this concerned about refusing a perfume sample from a spritzer at Griffith’s or any other sales associate hawking a product she couldn’t afford.

  “I—” She lost herself in his intent gaze and the platitude on the tip of her tongue fell away. She blurted out a bit of truth instead. “I’m coming off of a pretty dysfunctional relationship, as you may remember.” The thought of Ryan embarrassed her now, as did the risks she’d taken with her soul to secure the man he could be for herself. “But I was kinda hoping for a bit more than a paid encounter.”

  “How much more?” Fel murmured, running his fingertips down her cheek and along her jaw. “Affection? Love?”

  “You do love?” she said with raised eyebrows. “Let me guess, only for your high rollers, right?”

  “Hello, beautiful people!” a gravelly tenor boomed from the front entrance.

  “Mr. McLean!” the salon chorused.

  Dragon looked away from Fel’s searching eyes as she returned to her station. She flashed a welcoming smile at Melissa, a plain twentysomething with long, prematurely graying hair sitting in the waiting area, and patted her chair for her to take a seat. “Just a trim today?” Dragon said, fastening a plastic cape around the young woman's neck.

  “No you don’t, Miss Dragon. No work for you. Not until I give you this,” Mr. McLean beamed, holding an origami calla lily.

  “Mr. McLean,” Dragon said with an exasperated smile. “You old flirt.”

  “Your blouse shows off your tits real nice,” he responded with an odd courtesy. His toothless grin ruined the air of civility his courtly bow initiated.

  “Thanks,” Dragon said, used to Mr. McLean’s inappropriate gestures of affection. She plucked a comb from a glass container full of combs and sanitizing solution, and stroked it rhythmically through Melissa’s thick hair. “Carmen’s not in a good mood,” she murmured to him.

  “What else is new?” he shrugged, handing a simply-folded paper daisy to Melissa.

  Mr. McLean had been sweet on Carmen since she first started at Elemental in her twenties. As faithful as a medieval knight, Mr. McLean had pined for Carmen through all four of her marriages and both of his. Now that they were both finally free—his second wife passed away two years ago—he’d stepped up his seduction by strategically incorporating origami.

  “It’s romantic and shows you have slow, meticulous hands,” Saras had advised him with several winks six months ago.

  “Well, I can finger fuck like nobody’s business,” he’d confirmed proudly.

  “Oh my God, r
ough-around-the-edges line three!” Sage had moaned in horror.

  “Who doesn’t like a good finger fuck?” Mr. McLean had asked bewildered.

  “Mr. M,” Saras had said once, dragging him off to a private corner. “Carmen prefers sophistication over rough-and-tumble. Do you know what that means?”

  “Sure. I know I sometimes sound like I don’t know the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork, but even I know that you throw out the old clit stimulator and double-headed vibrator. New lady, new toys.”

  After that the salon, both customers and staff, decided to let Mr. McLean sink or swim without throwing him any well-meaning life-preservers. Carmen could certainly handle herself, but more importantly, in all the years that she’d known him and through all the inappropriate behavior and porn-inspired gifts, Carmen had never once said no—in or outside of Mr. McLean’s hearing.

  “I made this for Miss Baby over there,” Mr. McLean said with a nod in Carmen’s direction. He pulled an origami lotus flower out of his satchel. Made out of a single piece of sky blue paper for the many petals and deep green for the stalk, the flower was so intricately wrought it looked real.

  “Damn, Mr. M, you’re getting real good at that,” Dragon said, smiling at his reflection in her mirror as she parted Melissa’s hair down the middle and evaluated the ragged ends that reached her navel.

  “Hey there, Mr. Fel.” The old Bajan man nodded politely in Fel’s direction.

  “Levi.” Fel nodded back.

  “You know him?” Kristi-with-an-I stood from behind the glass reception desk and hovered next to Dragon, covering her nose with a perfumed hankie against Mr. McLean’s superstitious adherence to Vamp-Away! body wash.

  “Who doesn’t?” McLean said, rubbing the salt and pepper stubble on his jaw and eyeing Carmen, who ignored him with expert level focus. “One of the ‘to be seen and seen with’ people at Urban Jungle back in the day. Ain’t that right, Mr. Fel?” Levi grinned widely, the wrinkles in his face making him look like a pleased Shar Pei. “Queen Meggie gave him her coronation crown for just one night with him and that actress—Liz…damn it, what the hell was her last name? The one who married each head of the hydra beast that lived in Lake Queen of Denial-upon-Avon in separate ceremonies…” He looked expectantly around the room and sighed at the rolling wave of shrugged shoulders. “Anyway, she divorced all ten heads and paid five thousand vens for one night with Mr. Fel. Five thousand vens in those days! Can you imagine?”

  “Hell, five thousand is a lot right now,” Sage groused.

  “You ain’t lying!” Mr. McLean laughed. “Better than winning Mahb’s Stash.”

  “You’re a whore?” Kristi-with-an-I asked, not bothering to stifle her derisive laughter. “Why am I not surprised that Dragon Fergusson’s latest boyfriend is a bona fide prostitute?” She smirked at Dragon, laughed again and went back to her desk with an exaggerated flip of her lank blond hair. “I mean, the one you broke up with five minutes before you found this one was a loser in a long line of losers—”

  “And you would know, wouldn’t you?” Saras sneered. “I’m sorry,” she said with raised eyebrows and exaggerated confusion, “does the fact that your boyfriend—”

  “Lance,” Sage contributed loudly.

  “—Lance,” Saras continued with a grateful smile in Sage’s direction. “Does the fact that Lance takes time out of his busy Music Hut part-time sales associate’s schedule to come here and slap you around during your lunch break make him a loser or prince charms-the-dumb-blonde?”

  For Dragon, Saras’s defense did not mitigate the impact of having Fel, his obvious unsuitability and her choice of him, outed before she could decide if she really wanted him.

  The embarrassed hush that blanketed Elemental was not broken by Saras’s attempt at rescue, the ringing phone or Kristi-with-an-I’s high-pitched perkiness as she answered it.

  “Back to work, you worthless maggots!” Sage bellowed in a horrific British accent. Beside him Edvard squeaked happily as he swung from a rope anchored to the top of his cat tree.

  When the murmur of forced conversation started in the waiting area and spread throughout the salon, Saras approached Dragon.

  “Is he what you want?” Saras whispered from Dragon’s left shoulder.

  “No,” Dragon responded quickly. She shook her head and sniffed with disdain as if the very idea of having the hots for someone she barely knew was completely foreign to her.

  “It would be okay if you wanted him,” Saras said, pasting a smile on her face.

  “Do you really expect me to believe that you’d let me fall in love with a pro no matter how much I wanted him?”

  Saras smile downgraded to a grimace and she shrugged.

  “You, who made me go to six weeks of counseling when I declared undying love to Ken Clayton in the fourth grade?” She motioned for Melissa to stand so she could pull a hank of her long hair taut and clip off the last three inches.

  “Color it,” Melissa blurted out, interrupting their conversation.

  “You sure?” Dragon said. Any sudden movements and Melissa could change her mind as she had so many times in the past.

  “My priestess says it’s okay and I—I’m twenty-four and am ready to look twenty-four.”

  “Ken Clayton would’ve flirted with Goat had she come to school and flipped her tail on show-me-yours-show-you-mine day. Extricating you from his prepubescent clutches was my privilege.” Saras placed a solemn hand over her heart.

  Melissa giggled then contained herself when she met Dragon’s raised brows in the mirror.

  “Seriously, hon,” Saras said staring at her reflection and wiping a bit of flaked mascara from under her eye. “Do you truly want him?”

  Knowing Fel stood stock-still watching her from in front of a shelf full of overpriced shampoos and conditioners, and even knowing that he could be here to woo her or to fleece her, Dragon smiled pleasantly and through tightly clenched teeth muttered, “I honestly don’t know, but I’m tired of my usual routine.”

  Fel’s brow shadowed his deeply set gaze and when he straightened his shoulders, his dark T-shirt showed their breadth to full advantage. As if on cue, Dragon’s stomach caramelized at the picture he presented: tall, dark, and brooding—filled with intensity and angst, sublimely, inherently sexy. Strangely a pair of navy rubber flops and his exposed toes made him approachable somehow, as if that little bit of everyday suddenly put his overwhelming sensuality back in Dragon’s league.

  She lowered her scissors and, despite the many risks to herself, took a deep breath and prepared to see Fel as he could be. She stared at Melissa’s reflection until it blurred then mentally cleared away the copies until the number of Melissas in the mirror lessened from fifty to ten to five to two. The right image was Melissa as she was—prematurely gray, drooping knee-highs, corduroy skirt and plain, white button-up. The left image was her as she could be—would be if the clarity of the vision was any indication.

  The future of Melissa portrayed her as what the old-timers used to call a knockout. Hair still long, the gray as well as the rest of her drab brown ’do had been colored a decadent honey and curled seductively down her back. Her soft eyes had been shadowed to enhance their doe-eyed innocence and her lips lined to reveal their shape. The new Melissa was still conservative as Halo City’s youngest librarian should be, but frumpalicious somehow, the most exquisite combination of brilliance and sexiness.

  Her sight fully operational, Dragon ignored Saras’s potential which put her at a desk in a classroom—as usual—and focused on Fel. His right image watched her intently through the fringe of his dark hair. His left image did the same without any variation. Utterly nonplussed, Dragon tried harder, coaxing his potential as she would a cat stuck in a tree.

  Here kitty kitty. Mama’s got a treat for you, so show Mama what a good boy you are and get your ass over here, you stupid beast.

  Nothing. Nothing unless you counted an overwhelming sense of calm as nothing, which Drag
on absolutely did not.

  She closed her eyes and let go of her hold on the future, allowing it to fade unrealized. Bright, burning pain skipped down her spine like a pebble across a lake and uncharacteristically dissipated before Dragon was obliged to dash to the well-kept unisex at the back of the spa.

  When she finally opened her eyes, all there was, was Fel.

  He smiled at her with straight, white teeth and movie-star glitter. His eyes were wrong, though. They weren’t confident, flirtatious or even engaging. If anything they were anxious, moody. Tired.

  Combined with the artifice of his posture and smile, the eyes told Dragon more than she wanted to know and she repeated her vow, without all the silliness, ten times in a row before turning her mind to Melissa and the hair color that would make her feel like the person she most wanted to be.

  “I’m fine,” she muttered to Saras. “There’s Marie.” She nodded at six-foot tall woman digging around in her purse as she folded herself into one of the tiny chairs in the waiting area.

  “We can talk more later if you want,” Saras said, fitting a welcoming grin on her face as she motioned her tall client to her station. “I paid up my tab at Cassidy’s,” she offered.

  Dragon nodded, distracted: the pain she experienced from using her ability had vanished almost as soon as it started, and the usual urge to seek out bliss hadn’t deigned to make an appearance.

  What the holy everlasting fuck?

  She caught Fel’s dogged gaze, ignored him and continued with Melissa’s dry cut.

  “I’ll come back later.” He approached her casually and bent to kiss the corner of her mouth.

  The muscles of her face clenched into a smile, bumping his lips away from her cheek. “I gotta work,” she said to Fel’s reflection.

  “Okay. Sure.”

  She nodded at him and smiled even as she dusted off a few tried and true excuses to blow him off.

  “Not yet, okay?” he murmured tucking a few strands of her hair behind her ear.

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m not Mr. Right and you’ve had it up to here with Mr. Right Now, which leaves us both at loose ends.”