How Beauty Loved the Beast

by Jax Garren

  “No, but I fully intend to. David said he had to ‘talk to people’ and he’d get back to me with a total.”

  Hauk turned back to his breakfast. “Well, he’ll be talking to me, and you know what I’ll tell him. If you like those, I can make you more. I didn’t used to do a lot of jewelry, but it sells well, so I’ve been practicing.” The underground shop was the tip of the Underlight’s commercial iceberg. Most craftsman had a storefront online, where they made money for “topside” expenditures like happy hours or to buy things the Underlight couldn’t provide.

  Jolie had hoped to pay Hauk without him knowing it, but with the unpredictable payment system they used down here, that would be a challenge. So she put her hands on his shoulders and her lips right next to his ear. “Guess I’ll just pay for it on Friday then.”

  His fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

  “See you for sparring.” She kissed his cheek and walked away.

  * * *

  Hauk finished taking the bite of whatever the hell was on his fork and about-faced to watch Jolie’s hips sway out the door.

  “G’damn, man,” Travis muttered.

  Hauk turned back to his friend. Travis had a crush on Jolie. Not a bad one, Hauk didn’t think, more like an “I-like-you-and-you’re-hot” sort of thing. Still, it had to suck to lose to the guy with no face.

  Not that Hauk’s winnings were going to last. She’d made that clear last night. While the kitchen had helped him make breakfast, it’d hit him that the more people who knew and got all excited about them as a couple, the more people who were going to sympathize with his mopey ass after Jolie had moved on. When she’d kissed him so publicly, he’d realized he had a decision to make. If she was going to treat him like a boyfriend in the Underlight—even though he wasn’t one—he could either enjoy acting the part, or he could do the smart thing and hold back from playing make-believe.

  Smart had taken a severe beating from the joint forces of hormones and pride. It had been a long time since anyone had seen him get feminine attention. Maybe it was vain, but he missed that more than he cared to admit.

  “Congratulations.” Travis held his fist out. “If I know anyone that deserves her—and can put up with her—it would be you.”

  Did he tell Travis the truth of it or bump fists?

  Hell, honesty was overrated. He didn’t know how long he had to live the dream. Might as well go all the way. He reached out his fist.

  * * *

  Jolie cracked open Hauk’s notebook as Dr. Graves yammered about the socio-political ramifications of corporate involvement in the yada-yada. She should be paying attention, but this was her only professor to still run a lecture class. Usually she sat in the front and played the good student; he was on her dissertation committee, after all. But surely this far into the semester she’d earned a slacker day. She sat in the back and kept her phone in her lap to somewhat follow the class’s color commentary on social media but spent most of her focus getting a glimpse into the inner workings of Hauk’s brain.

  And a gorgeous brain it was. Hauk wasn’t the most accomplished artist with a pen, but the early sketches gave enough of his ideas to see how they would translate into metal, and the renderings grew more detailed and sure as they went along.

  Just as fascinating were the snippets of verse scattered throughout the designs. Some were attributed to bands or the occasional old poet, but some had no author noted. She didn’t recognize any of those from the radio or from works she’d studied in school and wondered if he’d written them himself.

  As the leather-bound book progressed, the art got more imaginative and the writing had fewer attributions. As he’d mentioned, more and more the work tended toward jewelry, quirky necklaces and bracelets or wedding sets for those who wanted something a little different than the standard solitaire and circle. Toward the end she found a page with several careful sketches of a rose ring. The laborious detail in the drawings and the graceful intricacy of the piece made her breath catch. He’d taken special care on this design.

  Jolie had a special affection for roses because of Papa Marcel, her mother’s father. He’d owned a film company, Rosebud Media, which had been his pride and joy. It was because of him she’d moved to Austin and had the wealth, not to mention the confidence, to break away from her father’s control. After Papa Marcel had died this past summer, she’d gotten her first and, at least for now, only tattoo: rose petals blowing away across her abdomen and hips.

  But the rose of Hauk’s sketches wasn’t the baby bud of Papa Marcel’s film company or the decimated beauty of her ink. This rose sat in full bloom at the ring’s center with leaves and thorns wrapped around the finger in delicate detail. A triumphant rose. The unattributed poem accompanying it, however, was anything but triumphant.

  ...For Her

  From sleep she stirs. I wait in

  Simple awe drawn from

  Her courage, cursing my

  Composure, frozen with

  Scars. Her smiles when frail

  Or sure come from a strength

  I lost in blaze and blood.

  But, oh, to reclaim my fire...

  Mouth dry, she smoothed the pad of her finger over the words, feeling the dip where his pen had pressed in, the scratches where he’d crossed words out to change the flow. Her heart picked up as she read them a second time and a third, reeling between discomfort and awe. Maybe they were just a meaningless pretty he’d created, like so many other designs in the book. But the rose, the talk of scars and fire, the title of the poem...these pages had to be more.

  Such profound emotion, more than she’d guessed. He’d said he loved her, but panicked as she’d been, the words hadn’t had half the impact of these pages. It was almost too much to handle. It would’ve been too much in the past. But there was something magnetic in Hauk’s depths, something genuine and precious that she didn’t want to run from.

  Dr. Graves called the end of class. She shut the notebook and followed the others out.

  Had Hauk forgotten the poem was there, or had he meant to let her see it? The work was dated from less than a month ago, just before they’d kissed. Had he made the ring yet? Were his feeling substantially changed now that they had moved forward? If so, how?

  In her fog of questions she nearly ran into Dr. Echelson, her other professor of the day and a fellow member of the Underlight. Usually he was in class before she was, with notes already scrawled across the chalkboard in his old-fashioned, elegant writing.

  “Oh, excuse me, Jolie.” He blinked at her as if walking in his own fog.

  Worry for him rumbled through her gut as she took his arm. “You okay, Dr. E?” He appeared a bit distracted but otherwise clear-eyed.

  “Oh, yes. Fine.” He frowned at a clock in the hallway. “And running behind. My, where has the time gone?” He looked behind him, in the direction he’d come from. “I could swear it was...but no matter. Shall we?” A brief and insincere smile lit his face.

  Dr. E was sharp as a blade, only in his fifties, but she supposed a time gap would worry anyone. Except it wasn’t the first time gap she’d heard about today. In the shop, the women had teased Beth about being too drunk to remember twenty minutes she’d spent alone in the bathroom the last time they went topside. Beth had protested that she hadn’t been drunk. What if Beth was right?

  Jolie gripped Dr. Echelson’s arm a little tighter and didn’t move forward. “How long?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “How long did you lose track of?”

  He straightened his cuffs and pulled one sleeve of his jacket on. “It’s of no matter. We need to get to class.” The white sleeve of his other arm had a pinprick of blood on it.

  “Wait.”

  He drew himself up as if affronted. She pointed at the mark. His eyes turned hard as he pulled his jacket back off. “Help me roll it up?”

  Jolie carefully turned the cuff back, keeping his shirt as pristine as she could while folding it. Sure enough, there o
n his biceps was a prick the size of a needle. “Get LaRoche to test you.” She shouldn’t be telling him what to do; he was her professor and a leader in the Underlight. But they needed to know.

  He bowed his head. “Damnation.”

  “Professor?”

  He sighed a curt breath. “Of course I will. I suppose if I turn up positive, I’ll be stepping down as chairman of The Thing.”

  The Thing was the governing body of the Underlight, and the notion of Dr. E not being on it crushed her. He was one of the people she respected most for his wisdom and his tolerance, and he’d championed her acceptance into membership, despite all the opposition. But they still had no idea what Ananke’s serum did.

  Brayden had been the first one, that they of knew of anyway, to be injected. When nothing had come of it, everyone had assumed the formula was defunct. But if Ananke was still inoculating members of the Underlight, it seemed more likely the formula was either incubating or waiting to be activated. “I think Beth was hit last week when she was topside with friends. There could be others. We need to test everyone.”

  Dr. E shook his head. “We can’t force people to do any such thing.” He sighed. “But we can request it. Get down. Talk to LaRoche and see what kind of circus it will be to have a hundred test subjects in his lab. We’ll need to advertise to anyone who spends a significant amount of time topside and pray this doesn’t turn into some sort of witch hunt.”

  Jolie pursed her lips but nodded. “We’ll do what we need to to protect the Underlight.”

  Dr. E regarded her sharply. “No. We won’t. We’ll do what we must to preserve our freedom. Not the Underlight. If we lose the free society we’ve created, we’ve died more surely than if Ananke killed us—and we’d have done it to ourselves.” He pulled a notepad from his pocket and scribbled something down. “Take this to any representative of The Thing, please. I’ll catch you up on class later.” He regarded her levelly. “And I’d appreciate it if I heard you were the first volunteer for testing.”

  Chapter Eight

  The Underlight had morphed into a zoo during the two days since Jolie had come home with the announcement of Dr. Echelson’s attack. Nothing like a little paranoia to change the atmosphere of a place. Then, of course, some people refused to acknowledge there was a threat.

  Hauk wasn’t sure which side was worse, the fear-mongers trying to ban people going topside or the ostriches insisting people getting shot up with a secret formula by their magic-wielding enemy was nothing to worry about.

  Thankful to be out for a bit, Hauk adjusted his hoodie and resettled his pack over his shoulder as he stepped into the elevator at Jolie’s condo. His bag contained a change of clothes and all the other sundries he’d need for the night. He was happy to be out of the Underlight, thrilled to be here and nervous as hell.

  As he rode up the high-speed elevator, he listened to a silence so profound he could swear he heard his heartbeat. For two days now he’d been good around her—no talk of the future, no repeat of the dreaded L-word—and Jolie had been happy. His feelings were a bit more mixed. Each touch came easier than the last, a little more natural, a little less considered. The way he wanted to be.

  Each touch also made him fall a little harder for the woman, a feat he hadn’t known was possible.

  The car dinged, and the doors opened into Jolie’s palace in the sky. The woman he desired above all else owned a whole effing floor near the top of the city’s ritziest condo. Everything inside was first-class, from the slim furniture in muted colors to the deco artwork to the pool table with tasseled pockets and real felt. What he remembered most though, from his last and only other visit here, were the glass walls that overlooked Austin from fifty-five stories up, putting her view more than ten stories above the city’s next tallest building.

  Last time he’d been here was during the day. Now the city lights glowed below them, blurring the streets and making the goings on below feel distant and small.

  It was a startling contrast to the one room he lived in. He loved his home, but given the choice he’d have a hard time relinquishing this space and that view. As long as he was a fugitive though, he’d always live underground. It bothered him that if he and Jolie got serious, the way he’d like, she’d have to leave this to be with him. He’d take the sky away from her.

  In some ways it was good she couldn’t love him.

  Before the doors finished sliding open, Jolie was there to pull him into her home and into a kiss that wiped his worries away. “Glad you could make it,” she whispered.

  “Where else would I be?”

  Her smile broke like the sunrise across the Afghan desert, beautiful and dangerous. A kitchen alarm sounded behind her. “Potatoes are ready. Come on.”

  The skirt of her purple dress fluttered with every graceful step. White stockings ended in thin heels that might put her over six feet tall.

  In her show, her stockings were always attached with garters. He wondered if that’s what was under her skirt right now. And if so, if they were white like her hose or purple like her dress or some other color entirely.

  He followed her into the kitchen.

  Was she wearing lace? Or something sheer? Another G-string?

  She removed potatoes from the oven with a fuzzy green mitt, lit the burners on the stovetop and set a grill pan on to heat. That done, she pivoted to him with a come-hither smile. “I can feel your eyes on me.”

  He obeyed the smile and took a step toward her.

  She played with her silver necklace, running a knuckle along the base of her throat. “I like that feeling.”

  Another step, and he caught her in his arms. “You’re awfully fun to watch.” He couldn’t help himself; he put a hand on her thigh. When she didn’t protest, he smoothed it up her leg, dragging her skirt up a bit at a time.

  “Whatcha doing?” she purred.

  He grinned. “I want to see if you’re wearing garters.”

  She laughed low then surprised him by smacking his hand hard enough to sting. “Naughty boy.”

  He let go of her skirt.

  She shook a playful finger at him, and he wanted to bite it. “After dinner you can find out whatever you want.” Nose in the air in mock hauteur, she spun back to the stove. “But you have to wait until then.”

  The knitting biddies may call them la belle et le bête, but tonight she made him feel like the big bad wolf—absolutely ravenous.

  Butter sizzled in the pan, and she put two beef filets in.

  “Can I do something to help?” Something to do with his hands other than grab her?

  “You can pour us margaritas. I made some.” She motioned her chin toward a full pitcher.

  “Some?” He poured two glasses, and it barely made a dent. “Is a platoon arriving, or are you trying to get me drunk?”

  She wrinkled her nose with a flirtatious grin. “I wouldn’t put it past me. Getting you drunk, not inviting a platoon. Even I have my adventuresome limits. But you might want to watch yourself. I might try to take advantage of you.”

  He curled around her from behind and handed her a glass. “Please do.” And he meant it. Get him drunk, get him so blazingly horny he couldn’t think straight, she could do whatever she wanted to get him out of his head and into bed with her.

  Although blazingly horny was at the moment doing just fine all on its own. She relaxed back against him, and he rested his chin against her soft hair. “This,” he said, “is exactly what I needed today.”

  “Me too.” She reached back and squeezed his hip. “Hey, I have a present for you. Or a choice or something.” She walked away from the stove and tugged him with her. Out of a drawer she pulled two things and then sat up on the counter and demurely crossed her ankles. “You don’t need to decide right now, or even tonight unless you want to, but I figured we’d go ahead and deal with it before it’s critical.” She held up her hands. In one was an unopened box of condoms, in the other a printout.

  Confused, he took the printout and
read it over. “A blood test?”

  “I’m on the shots for birth control, so that shouldn’t be a problem, and I just had that done.” She tapped the paper, dated from a couple days ago. “I always use condoms. Always. Like, I think there were a couple of times in college when an ex and I were drunk, but that’s it. I should be clean.” She unhooked her ankles to catch a heel around his right thigh, the one that wasn’t metal. “If you’re interested in going without.”

  His body tightened. Making love to Jolie without that barrier seemed like the way it should be between them. He was surprised she made it an option, though. Like her, he’d been scrupulous about protection back when it had been an issue for him. Then again, she knew he hadn’t come vaguely close to sex in five years, so there was no reason for her to worry. Still, he had to ask, “Not that I’m complaining, but why break your rule with me?”

  “First off, I trust you to tell me if there’s something I should know.” She paused expectantly.

  “Yeah. I’m clean,” he assured her. “Second off?”

  Her eyes peered up at him from under those long auburn lashes in a rare shy expression. “I kinda like the idea of there being nothing between us.”

  He tossed the box of condoms out of the kitchen and kissed her. She threw her arms around his neck, the untouchable vixen gone for the moment. He scooped her up off the counter and held her, her shy declaration meaning more to him than he could say.

  After a moment she pulled back. “We should probably check on the steaks.”

  She liked hers very rare. He wanted her to have things just the way she wanted. He could kiss her forever, but grilling meat waited for no man. He carried her back to the stove. She laughed as he shifted her onto his hip so he could turn the thick steaks with her silver tongs.