Once Upon a Fairy tale: A Collection of 11 Fairy Tale Inspired Romances
Page 41
Then the spell binding them to stillness shattered.
“You look wonderful. You must be doing well.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. He wore jeans, a plain worker’s tunic, and walking shoes. Nothing fancy, but he looked better than ever. She was so hungry for him.
His new eyes must be faulty because she did not look wonderful by any means. Her own eyes had bags and her smile seemed lost forever. Despite the toll time had taken on him, he did indeed look delicious. But she wouldn’t tell him so. “Why are you here?”
“I have my duty.” His answer straightened his back and took away any softness. The blank and superior expression of an Islander fell over his face.
“I meant here.” She swallowed the dryness in her mouth. “The tower.”
She’d moved closer. That’s why she could see something flash across his face before it was gone.
“Privacy.” He mumbled the word and his gaze dropped. “The boys make so much noise.”
“And what are they doing here?”
“Mère had ordered them. I found I couldn’t rescind it, not knowing where they’d go. So I took them.”
“What will you do with them?” A trembling started in her hands so she tucked them behind her back.
His gaze darted to her face then dropped, pausing on the most apparent change in her body—her breasts which ached with the glance. Their newfound fullness pressed against her too tight suit. He licked his lips and answered. “I’m sorry. What were we discussing? I lost my thoughts…”
His voice trailed off and somehow she was right before him. She could reach out and touch those sinful lips. “What are you doing here?”
“I deserve to be. You were stuck in here and I didn’t get you out. I will stay until I’ve served my own time.”
She swayed a little on her feet but didn’t reach out to him. Her hands fisted tightly behind her back. “I’m to investigate Gothel Island to deem whether or not GOoSE will revoke the flight license.”
This was an empty threat. GOoSE was largely powerless. Mother did most policing actions behind the scenes. Incarcerated criminals from the megacorps went to rehabilitation facilities, barely a step below the floating islands themselves. Usually, if Mother got wind of outrageous acts, they took apart the megacorp from the inside, if they could. Nothing overt to cause the other megacorps to protest.
“As I told Bovine, I will cooperate fully. All security codes by Mère have been cracked and the pertinent files are at your disposal.”
His eyes had shuttered and he spoke in a chill voice. In a stiff move, he sat behind the desk and spoke into an intercom built into the flat surface. “Mona, show Ms Denmark to the office we’ve set up for her.”
He didn’t look up.
Despite the stiffness of her limbs, she soon found herself back down the stairs, to her immense relief, and in Langley’s suite of rooms which had a grand entry area, a waiting room, and office on the first level. She wouldn’t think about what was assuredly on the level above. His private quarters. His bedroom.
He’d put her in his personal space while he sat above in the tiny room she’d been held in for twelve weeks.
From his desk, larger than the pallet where she’d slept in the tower, she scoured through tablets of data. Shock and disgust at Madame Gothel’s seminal research made her nauseous. She sat back, too moved to continue.
Langley’s chair held his clean, masculine scent. It both soothed her and made her nervous. She twirled the comfortable chair to the side and stared out of the window. He had a phenomenal view.
Wispy clouds floated by in the clear blue sky. This blue didn’t exist on the ground. The continual smog hid it. In the distance, another floating island drifted. They kept a permanent and consistent flight pattern around their grid. Langley would’ve seen this island from this window all of his life. He might not know which megacorp owned it, but he’d know every detail of the façade facing out. This one seemed to have nothing but glass, everywhere. With a telescope, she’d be able to see right inside.
So clear, it could almost disappear in the sky. The way she had. She’d been up here for weeks and nothing had changed below. Except for Bovine, no one had missed her. A few of her instructors had asked after her. And her botanical findings had contributed to Mother research even as she’d been stuck up here.
Langley had missed her. He’d shown her a cold, remote side of himself, but their matching bruised eyes told the truth as nothing else did.
There was more truth shown to her today. Within these files of Gothel research, Langley had created a clear case against his mother. He’d documented the heinous research project that had brought Madame Gothel fame. In addition, he exposed part of Gothel’s plans for Rapunzel’s hair. The plan had been to make the most advanced prosthetic arms and legs ever created. The boys downstairs escaped the fate slated for them, to have parts of them removed and replaced with technology created from Zel’s own hair. The thought sickened her.
Langley had locked all other research down. With the requisite signatures from Madame Gothel, he’d also filed all the necessary papers and was now the head of Gothel Island. Madame Gothel was no longer in a position of power. The man Zel loved, the father of her child, was the owner of a dirty megacorp.
And it didn’t matter. She still loved him.
On the lower level of the island, he’d cleaned out all the research labs housing more than twenty men and women, all creations. Their meticulous medical care to return them to a semblance of health, their employment papers filed with GOoSE, their financial package to get them started in life, and in reparation of harm to them. The boys had started an education here and lived in the main house with a tutor. A boys’ school was built in the bottom level of the mansion.
All of it pointed to Langley setting to rights what his mother had wronged.
Yet, he’d sealed most of his mother’s work. In her heart, she couldn’t imagine Langley would become what his mother had been, but he covered it up when before he’d been ready to fight. She was here to be sure Gothel Island didn’t continue its corrupt ways.
She had to face him again.
The stairs up the tower had been such a struggle before. Now, she climbed them as if they were nothing. The moment she decided to confront him, she seemed to appear before his turned back. He leaned over the sill of the tower room window and didn’t turn as he spoke, as if he knew her mind exactly and she didn’t need to ask her questions.
“I made a deal with Mère. If she signed over the island and cooperated in rehabilitation, then I would seal away all her wrongdoings and help her retire when she gets out. Exposing more of her than the one experiment would help no one. In fact, it would open her research to the same kind of disreputable scientists who’d continue it.”
His solution was flawed but perhaps it was the only one. She nodded and took a breath, intent on telling him she understood. Instead, she blurted, “I’m a Mother agent now.”
Langley turned with an expression of surprised pride. He halted a move toward her and quirked a small smile as the light in his eyes dimmed a bit. “I’m glad for you. You have my heart, my life. My commitment. I’ll be proud of all you achieve down there. Always.”
“Your heart?” Zel whispered.
“If you ever need anything, no matter how small, I’ll always get it for you. I’ve set up a fund for our child. He’ll never want for anything. If he wants this island one day, it’s his. Until then, I’ll safeguard it. I’ve started weeding out projects that use people as if they were commodities and will continue my own bio-research, but without living subjects. When my methods prove true, I hope to convince other megacorps to do the same.”
Pride filled her chest. “That’s wonderful, Langley.”
“It’s what I was trained to do. Bio-research.” He stared at her lips. She licked them and his gaze darkened, but he didn’t move. “I am no longer comfortable working with NOMBIO. Their view of creations is not much better than Mère’s.” His chest ex
panded as he took a deep breath. “I stayed away from you until I set everything right. Until I could get my own head on straight. You deserve a whole man.”
Zel’s body shook. Her anger had subsided when she’d seen he’d felt the passing weeks as keenly as she had. It started to crack open when she’d read what he’d been up to. Now, with the intent written his features, it split asunder and laid her heart wide open to this man, this uppity ass Islander who had the power to buy and sell people like her as if they were a new pair of shoes.
“I am angry at you for staying away.” She’d meant to rebuke him, but he took it as encouragement as his beautiful lips lifted in a smile that brightened the room around her.
“I had to stay here. As you had. To pay for what I did to you.” He didn’t sound very contrite. He sounded sure of himself, determined.
“Has it been twelve weeks?”
“No. But it seems longer.” He stepped toward her and she locked her knees to keep from stepping back. “So very long, every day, every second.”
“You didn’t talk to me.”
“Every night. In my dreams. When I could sleep on this pallet still holding your scent. Other than that, I couldn’t contact you. I had to be as trapped as you were.”
Ignoring his sweet words, she snorted. “You’ve been working. I had nothing to do but stare at these walls.”
He grinned at her and stood so near his clean, masculine scent wrapped her and sent her mouth to watering. “You had a few things to do.”
Leaning forward, he claimed her lips in a soul bewitching kiss. She let the cocooning touch soothe her hurt even as it enflamed her body, remembering the things they did, together.
She’d not wanted to love Langley, but she did. She couldn’t even control her heart. It had mourned every second of his absence. Her entire life had never been hers, but this love was. She wanted Langley. She wanted to be with him the rest of her life. The desperation to reach for it thickened around her and made the sound of her breathing echo in her head.
With a groan, he stepped back, taking the heaven of his mouth with him. He crossed his arms across his chest. The bulge of his muscles stretching his tunic sent another lick of heat through her. Her senses reeled.
To keep from jumping him in desperation, she couldn’t look at his hungry expression. She stared at her shaking hands. Dirt stained beneath her nails. The roughness of her skin, calluses, and an old scar from a digging trowel marked her as a lander, someone who did not belong with Langley.
Langley knelt in front of her. “When my twelve weeks are done in this tower, I’d like to build a new life. With you.”
Her heartbeat thundered erratically in her ears.
“But I…” She stopped. She what? She’d trained to be a Mother agent. Now she had it, but realized she enjoyed her gardening more. Finding rare specimens surviving on the polluted ground had given her such fulfillment.
“I have plans to turn this tower into a greenhouse.” He spread his arm, encompassing the room and inspiring a vision of what could be. She could almost see flowers blooming along vines clinging to the walls.
She blinked. Stunned pleasure flowed through her veins. “My prison.”
Once again, he proved he read her mind. “Your prison will be transformed into a garden. And whatever else you need to make this your home, we’ll do. Working for Mother as a megacorps wife will put you in a position to help them as no other agent has.”
“I love you.” She couldn’t hold it back.
His strong arms circled and swooped down around her knees. He lifted, picking her up and carrying her the few steps to her pallet.
He was on her, between her legs and she’d spread them in an instinctive move.
Slowly and methodically, he pulled off his tunic, worked on the fastenings of her suit, and finally pressed against her skin to skin, kissing every inch of her flesh this mouth could find. All the while, he mumbled over and over against her, “I love you.”
The bliss and pleasure made her feel drunk.
“Be my wife, Zel.” He palmed her breast and pulled back, staring down with such yearning it pulled at the heat blazing in her belly.
She opened her mouth but only a moan came out.
“I can’t help myself. I have to touch you, and you won’t get out of this bed until you answer me.” He pinched her nipple—sending a delicious current of lust to pool in her belly—before he stroked her peaked breast in a maddeningly slow thrumming. Need tightened low and hot. “Say yes.”
She shook away the languid passion and concentrated to speak clearly. He had to understand. “My choice is for you. But what’s the point? What will happen to you, associated with a creation? I can’t legally marry you. I don’t have a birth certificate.”
“Say yes, and we’ll be married the only way that matters. Between us. Our commitment is our own. We belong with each other by our words and heart. We’re legally connected through our child, our children. And you can use your position, if you want, to work as an agent. The other megacorps don’t need to know your status, unless you want. I’ll proclaim to all of New Castle, I love you, no matter where you were born.”
She didn’t know if she could live through the happiness bursting inside her. She smashed her lips to his. The warmth infused her from the inside out, burning where he touched. Like she turned a corner from the smog-filled cities and into a broad meadow, sun-filled and bursting with life. He chose her. As much as she chose him. Could anything else matter?
He chuckled and hugged her tightly. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes,” she croaked through her joy tightened throat. “Yes.”
They belonged to each other, no matter the way they were born, or the papers forming their legal identities.
“I love you.”
His hands ran through her new hair, and he kissed a handful of strands. “I’ll always love your hair. It brought you to me.”
For the first time in her life, she thought she might love her hair, too.
Langley ran a hand up her thigh and her breath caught. “We have a few weeks to catch up on.”
“We have a lifetime to do it in.” With a hand fisted in his silky hair, she pulled him back down and kissed him the way she meant to do every day for the rest of her life—with all her heart.
Her body blazed as he entered her and set a steady rhythm, tormenting her as much as brought her to new heights.
Zel and Langley didn’t leave the tower until his self-imposed sentence was up, and then, forevermore, they climbed those steps when they needed time together, alone, and enjoyed the love that bound them as tightly as braided silk.
The End
Author Bio
As a child, Ella read books under the covers with a flashlight. There she found a special love of elves, dragons, and knights. Now that she’s found her own knight in shining armor and happily ever after, she loves to write tales of fantasy hot enough to scorch the sheets. No flashlight needed.
If you’re interested in more dark paranormal and science fiction romance from New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Ella Drake, you can find her on Twitter and Facebook. For new release announcements, sign up at elladrake.com/announce. Or visit her website to contact her directly at www.elladrake.com.
Braided Silk is the second story in Future Tales, a series of futuristic retellings of fairy tales. Each story is standalone. The first in the series, Jaq’s Harp, is available from Carina Press.
Also by Ella Drake
The New Guardsman series
Desert Blade
River Arrow
Badland’s Edge
Demons of Florida
Scent of Cin
Wolf-Bitten
Demon Branded
Future Tales
Jaq’s Harp
Braided Silk
Wild Seas
Captive Dragon
Reckless Dragon
Standalone Novels
MetalMark
Silver Bound
/> The Forbidden Chamber
Novellas/Short Stories
Firestorm on E’Terra
Dragon Rodeo
Loving a Fairy Godmother
Danielle Monsch
Once upon a Time, in a Kingdom that was just a little twisted (oh yeah, and kinda far away), Fairy Godmothers Rule! Elf Kings drool, and a Knight was having a bad time with a Dragon.
Too bad he didn’t realize the Dragon would be the least strange part of his day…
Fairy GodMOTHER. As in female – it’s right there in the name. With those divine dimples, killer blue eyes, and hard muscled body, no one’s going to be mistaking Tiernan for a female anytime soon, but due to a wish gone wrong, Tiernan is now the only Fairy Godfather in existence. Strangely, most Fairy Godmothers don’t have a problem with this change in the status quo… all except the one Fairy Godmother who he’d go and win a kingdom for.
Reina has never been like the others. Organized, efficient, logical – and liking the status quo, thank you very much. After all, the FGs do not need a stubborn, infuriating, feckless male messing up tradition, and she wants him gone…like yesterday. Circumstances arise that just might let her get her wish, but in a way even she never wished for.
Tiernan’s employment status is called into question and he is given the task of getting a woman named Cinderella a Happily Ever After or lose his position as a Fairy Godfather. So Cinderella will get to the ball and get her Prince if he has to dress her down to her shoes himself. Reina will be there to supervise, but if Tiernan does his job right, Cinderella won’t be the only one getting a Happily Ever After.
Books by Danielle Monsch
Entwined Realms