Cutie and the Beast

by E. J. Russell

  “What does it say about me that I never considered that?” He ran a shaking hand over his rumpled shirt and glanced down past his waist, where a very impressive bulge interfered with his excellent tailoring. “Leave me, please? I can’t face them like this.”

  David’s gaze was still riveted on the front of Alun’s pants. “Uh. Right.” He cleared a throat gone dry. “I’d get the clients settled in your office, but . . .” He gestured at his own groin. “I’m not suitable for family viewing either. I’ll duck into the kitchen.”

  “As you wish.”

  Alun turned, hunching over the copier again. David told himself the little twinge of hurt at the abrupt dismissal was unreasonable. They were at work. Clients awaited them a few yards away. The least he could do was attempt a graceful retreat and allow Alun the same.

  Unfortunately for both of them, David might as well have had klutz tattooed on his butt at birth. For Alun’s sake, though, he’d give it his best shot.

  As Alun escorted his PTSD group into the office, the taste of David’s kiss lingered on his tongue—coffee, mint, and a subtle wild flavor like water from a Faerie lake. His fingers tingled as if he were still trailing them over David’s face. His skin still prickled where David had touched him, his senses alight in a way he hadn’t experienced since Owain.

  Yet Owain had been achubydd. David was human. Was this how it always was when human joined with nonhuman?

  Never before had he been tempted to challenge his fate. Of course, not once since his curse had any man viewed him with less than abject horror, blatant disgust, or stultifying pity.

  Of everyone in both realms, his own brothers included, David was the only man who’d ever looked at him with something as simple as annoyance, and just now—he crossed his legs against the tightening in his groin, so very inappropriate in this setting—with undeniable lust.

  For the first time since he’d begun his practice, Alun felt a thread of empathy toward offending supes who dared risk everything for the sake of a human. And Goddess help him, he was tempted to take exactly that risk.

  Even as the group waited for his opening remarks, he remained hyperaware of David. He could distinguish his scent among a dozen other people, sense his every movement beyond the closed office door—every shift in his chair, every rustle of his crisp cotton shirt, every trip he made across the lobby.

  Nearly giddy with the sensations, alive as he hadn’t been since the day of his curse, Alun had to force himself to pay attention to his job, to listen and respond to the group.

  But as the hour passed, as each client recounted some halting memory of a personal nightmare, Alun’s residual thrill diminished. Every story illustrated how ill-equipped humans were to face the supernatural world, how necessary the Secrecy Pact was for the safety of all.

  By the end of the session, the last pitiful spark of his earlier elation had vanished.

  If he chose to pursue a relationship with David, as curious and obstinate as the man was, Alun held no illusions that he could continue to conceal the details of his nature, or that of most of his clients. David seemed resilient, but no more so than the broken people in this room had once been.

  The notion that he might shatter David’s bright spirit sent his heart into a death-drop to his toes.

  Yet David wasn’t the only one who’d face catastrophic loss. For human victims, the damage, whether physical or psychological, was personal. Confined to the individual. But if the evil or unscrupulous or just plain ignorant learned of these hidden communities, the risk to the otherworldly races was far greater, up to and including genocide.

  The purpose of the pact, the reason the penalty for violations was so severe, was to prevent just such tragedy. Was he reckless enough to chance a punishment greater than his curse? Selfish enough to put his own desires ahead of the welfare of every other supernatural being? Heartless enough to gamble with David’s sanity?

  Goddess help him, the choice was not as easy as his conscience demanded.

  As if Alun’s kiss had turbocharged his blood, David couldn’t sit still. He pinged around the office, inventing ways to occupy himself, to keep his mind off Alun and his hands and his chest and, God, his mouth.

  He washed all the cups by hand instead of loading them in the dishwasher. Arranged the magazines in perfect fans on each end table. Refilled the coffee supplies and stacked the coasters in strict color-spectrum order.

  But no matter how slowly he tried to do each task, when he finished, he’d swear no time had passed at all, as if he’d acquired an unfortunate hyper-speed superpower.

  He actually changed the battery on the digital clock, certain it had slowed to a complete halt.

  What was up with that?

  He nearly put Gareth’s forbidden CD back on, if only to give himself something to do.

  At long last, the office door opened, and the group straggled out. Each of them offered him a smile—probably remembering what a freakazoid he’d been in their earlier dance party—and some of them chatted among themselves, which was a definite change from when they’d all arrived.

  Maybe this group therapy stuff really worked.

  When the last of the clients finally left, David locked up and stalked across the waiting room toward Alun’s door with a single item on his agenda.

  Kissing. Lots of it.

  For that, the love seat in Alun’s office held way more promise than the freaking supply closet. But as he passed his desk, the emergency line lit on his phone. With an inward curse, he picked up the call.

  “Dr. Kendrick’s office. This is David. How may I help you?”

  “Give me Kendrick.” The man’s voice put Alun’s best growl to shame.

  “May I tell him who’s calling?”

  “No. Put me through. Now.”

  Instead of using the intercom, David walked inside. Alun was standing at his window, the blinds open, his face a reflected smear in the black glass.

  Drat. David had wanted to see if that heat was still in Alun’s gaze, if he could steal a caress from those big hands or cadge another kiss before duty called again.

  “Someone on the emergency line for you. He wouldn’t give his name.”

  Alun’s shoulders rose and fell once. He glanced back and met David’s gaze. There. Was that a teensy spark?

  “Thank you.” He lowered himself into his chair, the leather sighing under his weight. “You needn’t wait. I expect to be engaged for some time.”

  David swallowed against a lump in his throat the size of the geode on the corner of the desk. Had he misunderstood? Did Alun regret what had happened? Crap, did David need to revert to thinking of him as Dr. Kendrick again?

  If only the man would look at him, give him a smile, a word, a single freaking clue that the kiss had been as life-changing for him as it had been for David.

  But he only sat, his hand on the phone, his gaze fixed on a point above David’s head.

  “Right. I’ll leave you to it, then.” He backed out and closed the door as the last of the fizz died in his veins, turning him back into his ordinary screw-up self.

  He perched on the edge of his chair, thumbing his worry stone, talking himself down off the mental ledge. It’s only professional courtesy, Evans. Doctor-client confidentiality. Naturally he couldn’t let you stand around and eavesdrop on the call.

  Huddling behind the desk, he willed the emergency line light to go dark. One more word, that’s all I need. Just one.

  Oh, who the heck was he kidding? He needed way more—more of what they’d started with that kiss—but he’d settle for a word, if only that rotten growly caller would shut up and get off the phone.

  After a tedious half hour of sorting paper clips, testing pens, and sharpening already pointy pencils, the light flickered, and he surged out of his chair. But before he made it past the edge of his desk, it lit again. Dang it. He sighed and looped the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder.

  Give it up, Evans. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to
find out what—if anything—this meant.

  Coward. That’s what he was. A thrice-damned, gods-forsaken, bloody-minded coward.

  His “emergency” call—the usual follow-up by the Clackamas alpha, venting about Jackson’s lack of progress—lasted its standard two minutes. When the man hung up, Alun kept his phone off the hook so he’d appear occupied.

  Avoiding the consequences of his actions. Avoiding his inevitable choice. Avoiding David.

  He dropped his head into his hands, his fingers splayed around his oversized skull. He had no doubt that if his group hadn’t been waiting, he’d have taken David right here in the office, on any convenient surface.

  Had he stooped to the entitled conduct of the Sidhe lords of old? He wasn’t that bad, surely. He’d never spirit the man away from his friends and family, behind the gates of Faerie to be trapped by time. And as long as Alun retained the face of the beast, he couldn’t pass the threshold in any case.

  But if he were no longer cursed, if he could convince David to come with him into Faerie, install him in the stone cottage in the willow grove by the lake, present him to the Seelie Court as consort, would Alun be tempted to take that step?

  Goddess, he talked about other people’s feelings for a living, but if he expected this to go any further, he’d have to face his own.

  But how? For all his age, for his degrees and training, he had no experience with this particular conundrum.

  He straightened in his chair, his head lifting as he realized he knew someone who had experience to spare. Mal never had any difficulty finding more partners than was reasonable for one man, although Mal didn’t look like the last refugee from the Demon Wars, either.

  He snorted as he punched the emergency line again, the irony not lost on him that he, the psychologist, should have to depend on relationship advice from his irresponsible man-whore of a brother.

  Mal picked up on the first ring. “What’s wrong?” The rhythmic thump of overloud club music didn’t mask the sharpness in his tone.

  “I can call you for something other than trouble.”

  “You can, but you never have.” Another voice, lifted in question, cut in behind Mal’s. Even though he couldn’t make out the words, Alun recognized the speaker. The recorded version of that voice had lit the fuse for his own personal explosion not two hours ago.

  Before that, this evidence of a brotherly reunion that didn’t include him would have pierced his gut like a poorly aimed sword thrust. Now, he brushed it aside as irrelevant.

  “Can you go somewhere to talk?”

  “I can talk here.”

  Alun ground his molars together. “Fine. Go somewhere I can hear what you say.”

  The background noise faded almost at once, so the infuriating man had already been on the move. If Alun didn’t need his help, he’d have hung up.

  “All sorted, brother. Now spill.”

  After decades as a therapist, Alun considered himself a master of leading up to his true conversational objective by subtle degrees. But all his skill, his years of practice, his professional composure, deserted him, leaving him as awkward as a new-minted page boy.

  “I kissed David,” he blurted. “In the supply closet.”

  “Flaming abyss, Alun. I’d no notion your technique was that pathetic.”

  “Mal . . .” Alun pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting for control.

  “Now me, I’d have kissed him someplace else. That delectable mouth, say, or that spot behind his ear, or—”

  His vision sparked red, and he slammed his fist on the desk. “You will not. Ever. So much as glance at the spot behind his ear.”

  “Or what?” Mal’s voice lost its amused overtone. “You sound like one of the Obsessed.”

  “It’s not that way. It was only a kiss.” Or two. More, if he’d had his way. “But he’s human. I can’t allow it to proceed.” He swiped his fist across his lips as if he could wipe away the memory of David’s mouth. “Right?”

  “Shite, Alun. No matter what propaganda you have to swallow to work with the larger supe community, the fae have never proscribed humans. What’s the bloody problem? You want him. Go get him.”

  “You know why I can’t. The last time . . .” Alun had firsthand experience of the risk of giving in to his desires, his consuming passions. The last time he’d succumbed, the result had been Owain’s death and the massacre of the last known enclave of achubyddion. Genocide.

  “Sod it, you’re not likely to cause the extinction of the human race because you want to get laid.”

  “But—”

  “You’ve got some bug up your arse about self-denial, but there’s nothing in the Seelie code that says because your lover died, you have to be a damned martyr.”

  A tiny seedling of hope sprouted beneath Alun’s sternum. “So you think it’s all right, then?”

  “Hells yes. But so you know,” Mal lowered his voice, “I’ll not mention this to Gareth.”

  The hope shriveled and died. “Probably wise, although I doubt anything could make him think less of me.”

  After the abduction of his human lover by Unseelie fae, Gareth had plunged into a depression so wide and deep that even now, centuries later, he had yet to recover. As a side effect, he’d developed an opposition to fae mating outside their race and class, which Alun’s betrayal of Owain had solidified into outright fanaticism.

  “Alun. You get that I think Gareth’s wrong, yeah?”

  “I know.” Alun wished he believed it as well.

  “Then for the sake of the Goddess, stop wasting time and shag the man already. Just don’t . . .”

  “Don’t what?”

  Mal’s sigh was clearly audible. “Look. I understand the attraction. I liked the lad myself. But don’t get . . . attached. He’s not like Owain. His human life can be measured in the turn of a single Faerie year.”

  “No danger of either of us ending up in Faerie. Not while my curse bars the gates.”

  “It’ll be no different in the Outer World. He’ll age. You won’t. As long as you go into it knowing it’ll be short-term . . . well . . .” Mal muttered an unintelligible curse. “I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

  Alun’s throat thickened, and the corners of his eyes prickled with heat. “I love you too, brother.”

  “Oh piss off.” Mal’s chuckle burred over the line as the music swelled again, signaling his return to the club. “But next time I see David, I expect him to walk like he’s had the ride of his life on your Sidhe-lord dick.”

  He disconnected before Alun could rail at him for disrespect. Damn and blast. He let his head thump against his chair’s headrest, unsure if he was any closer to a decision than before Mal’s dubious assistance.

  He still couldn’t quite believe that David was able to ignore his appearance and perceive the man beneath the monster, more so because his behavior had matched his brutish face since the moment David had walked in his door. But it had been so bloody long. He wanted to take this chance, to see if Mal was right and he could claim an island of happiness in the vast dark ocean of his exile.

  But how long would David be willing to stay with a beast? He was beautiful. Charming. Young and appealing. Even Kristof had noticed. Why would he settle for anything less in a partner?

  Right. Alun would have to work for it, that’s all. Back in the days before Owain had blinded him to all other men, he’d known how to woo a lover. Although in the full flower of his fae beauty, with the glamourie for insurance, he’d rarely done little more than smile.

  He suspected that wooing David—if he had the courage to do it—would take rather more effort, along with a great bloody mountain of luck.

  After a restless night interrupted by enough erotic dreams to make internet porn unnecessary for life, David’s attention was as scattered and uncertain as it had been when he’d left the office. While brewing his aunt’s tea or watering her forest of houseplants or feeding her finches, he’d flash back on Alun’s lips, the warmth and brea
dth of his chest, the heat in his eyes, and he’d zone out. When he came to, he’d be standing in the middle of the room, his fingers tracing his own lips as he remembered the feel of Alun’s kiss.

  But when he’d expected a repeat performance . . . nada. Then that distance in the way Alun had sent him home. Did that mean he had regrets? That last night had been a one-off, never-to-be-repeated slip off his grouchy pedestal?

  What if . . . Crap. Heat rushed up his chest and infused his face. Had he done something, sent some dorky mixed signal, to lead Alun on? Maybe not before they’d hit the supply closet, but once inside, he’d practically offered Alun his ass on a Xerox platter. That was so not the kind of temp agency he worked for.

  When he stopped to consider it logically—yeah, like that ever happened—it made no sense that Alun would be interested in an awkward, wrong-side-of-the-executive-desk temp like him. Disfigured or not, he was still head and amazing shoulders above David. He could do way better.

  But David’s doubts didn’t stop him from taking an extra careful shower as he got ready for work, or shaving super close, or choosing his best-fitting pants and the gray-blue shirt that matched his eyes.

  He was debating the merits of his two favorite bow ties when his cell phone rang. His heart gave a sideways bump like one of his worst dance moves, but it wasn’t Alun. It was Fischer Temps.

  “Hello?”

  “David. Sandra Fischer.” Her voice sounded as if she’d spent the last week at a hookah bar.

  “Ms. Fischer, if you don’t mind my saying so, you sound as if you still belong in bed. Cutting your recovery time short can lead to a relapse.”

  “David. I—”

  “My aunt makes this amazing throat tonic. I’ll bring some by for you. In fact, I could do it today on my way in to Al—Dr. Kendrick’s office.”

  “David. That’s what we need to discuss.”

  David’s stomach tried to duck and cover. “We do? Look, I know you said you didn’t think I was ready for another office job, but it’s turned out fine, right?”

  “No.”