“Anything?” Ryker scanned the groups of people around.
The entire way I kept a sharp eye out for fae who thrived in gardens and nature, but my seer sight never found an aura to clasp onto. I shook my head.
“Maybe by the water.” Ryker headed inside the entrance of the garden.
The ground was wet from the rain overnight, slicking the trail. It was another mile hike to the waterfall, and I got lost in the smells and beauty of the rainforest. Dense green vegetation cascaded down the mountains, carpeting every inch of space. Strange plants sprouted bigger than my head, finding their way to the sun through the thick foliage. Huge banana leaf trees lined the trek, making me feel like I stepped into a prehistoric land.
Ryker noticed I was more into investigating the pretty scenery than searching for fae, but he didn’t say anything.
When we reached the waterfall, I couldn’t help but sigh. Everything about this place was beautiful. Except the crowd. Several groups of tourists hung around the cascade. Ryker immediately locked up, folding his arms, his expression growing dark. Like me in reverse, his dislike of humans didn’t disappear because he could tolerate me.
“Come on.” I nodded to a trail leading away from the waterfall. We followed it to an isolated part of the river.
Seeing a perfect spot to sit and relax, I stepped on a stone, glossy with water. My feet slipped from underneath me. “Whoa.” Hands came down on my hips, holding me in place. His warm fingers gripped at the bare skin between my pants and top. I straightened up, regaining my footing, and glanced over my shoulder. “Thank you.”
He nodded and let go. I climbed a bigger rock, settled myself down, and placed my bag next to me. Sprig’s snores were drowned out by the river, but the bag pulsed with his breathing. I inhaled a deep breath, the soft rush of water flowing down the river, soothing me. The heavy, sweet smells of flowers, fruits, and plants growing around filled my nose. Sunshine trickled through the leaves. A ray fell across my face, and I turned to its warmth. It was cooler by the water, but higher in the forest moisture clung to the earth, heating it.
Feeling a body settled next to me, I opened one lid and looked over at the Viking next to me. He kept his attention on the river, but he knew I was watching him. We sat in silence, listening to the sounds of water and forest.
“I’m sorry about earlier.” I hugged my knees to my chest. Ryker ran a hand over the top of his head then rubbed at his beard, not able to settle down. “What’s up with you?” He still didn’t look over at me when I spoke. “You’re the one acting odd now.”
A long exhale of air blew from his lips, and he stretched his legs out, leaning back on his elbows. It was still a full minute before he finally spoke. “As you probably know, fae aren’t big talkers... at least about feelings or anything.” No shit, really? “It’s seen as a weakness, guaranteeing it will be used against you.”
“Doesn’t sound much different from how I grew up.” I let my folded legs drop, my knee hitting his thigh. Neither of us moved away from the contact.
A slight grin tilted his mouth. “Yeah, strange how different our worlds and experiences are, but we still have a lot in common.”
“Unfeeling criminals who like to rob and beat the crap out of people.” I smiled, stealing a glance at him. His eyes flickered over me, watching me. My stomach clenched.
When did this happen? When did his gaze start knotting my stomach and halting the air in my lungs? My focus went back to the water.
“You’ve been through a lot lately.” He stared out at the forest across the way. “If... if you need to talk about it or anythi—”
“No.” I cut him off, detaching myself from Sprig’s carrier. I rubbed at my shoulder where his weight sat, then let my arms fall to my lap.
Ryker gave a quick nod. “All right.”
I watched as my fingers coiled around themselves. I sucked at talking to people, letting them in. The DMG therapist told me it was the way I protected myself from being hurt. If I didn’t let anyone in, no one could hurt me. The problem was the two people I actually did let in were dead. My heart was already broken. But not even Lexie or Daniel knew all of my past. Ryker did. At the time I felt secure talking to him. Almost like speaking to a pet. Someone who wouldn’t judge or care about what happened to me. Simply listen. Now his presence looped around me like rope. He no longer seemed safe.
We stayed quiet for a long time, but Ryker’s shoulders never relaxed. Then his deep voice broke the silence.
“I didn’t tell you the complete truth about the day I lost my family. The fire. I didn’t go and save my family first like I told you.”
“What?” I jerked my head toward him.
“That day... I also lost the woman I was going to marry.”
My mouth fell open.
Ryker pulled his knees up; his hand clasped the other wrist, locking his arms around his legs. “Even though the village knew I was different, I’d grown up among humans, and I naïvely thought I could have a normal life. A human one.” He stared down at his hands. “Her name was Tanvi. We were quite young and thought ourselves in love. Her father did not approve of our relationship, already seeing what I didn’t want to—my life and world was never meant for her. But try telling that to young lovers.
“Her father and mine banned us from seeing each other, but of course this made us even more anxious and careless. She became pregnant...” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “This was back in a time when shame in a family would get you killed, but she would not get rid of the baby. She hoped it would get her father to relent and let us marry. It did not.” Ryker closed his eyes briefly before continuing. “On the day of the fire, I was out hunting. She was supposed to meet me in the woods. We were going to talk about running away together. But she never came.”
“What happened?” I twisted to face Ryker, feeling the dread of where his story was going.
“When I saw the fire and ran back to the village, it was her house I went to first. Her father was standing in front, watching it burn. He turned to me and said, ‘She brought shame on this family. I no longer have a daughter because you took something which never was supposed to be yours. You do not belong to this world, Wanderer, and nothing in it belongs to you.’”
“He let his daughter burn to death?”
“Yes.” Ryker nodded. “In some cultures, shame is the worst sin. Death is the only way to redeem yourself or your family.”
I laid my hand on his arm, understanding his sadness. His eyes darted to my touch, but I didn’t pull away. His stare lingered on my hand then slowly rose to my face, causing heat to flush my cheeks. The intensity of his gaze was like a boom in my chest. I quickly pulled my hand away, breaking the contact.
I heard him clear his throat, his focus shifting to the water. “I heard later he had caught her trying to sneak out and locked her in her room. He set the fire.”
“What? He started the fire? He wanted his own daughter to burn to death?”
Ryker nodded. “It was only meant to kill her, but he lost control of it. It took the whole village.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Trying to save her was the reason I didn’t get to my family in time and why my little sister died. In the end I lost them all.”
Including his unborn child. My heart ached for him. Even if it wasn’t his fault, he felt every death as though it was. I understood his resistance to humans even more. “I’m sorry.”
Ryker’s lips pressed together, then he slid off the rock, his feet hitting the riverbank. “Since then I’ve lived away from humans. Grown to hate them. I accepted I’m fae and believed humans should not coexist with fae beyond being their energy and food. Even if none of the villagers died that day, they would have eventually. If the baby took after Tanvi, and was human, it would be dead now too.”
The thought of Ryker having a child did something inside me. I felt torn between empathy for Ryker’s loss and a strange sense of jealousy that he would have had a baby with someone else. This notion did
n’t sit right with me.
I scooted to the edge of the boulder. I knew human lives were a blink compared to a fae’s, but I wanted nothing more than to change his mind. To show him caring for a human was still worth it.
His demeanor changed. Ryker picked up a rock and threw it into the riverbed. It bounced off another rock and burst into pieces, shattering into dust and coating the top of the water before it washed away. Anger rose off his skin, coiling the muscles in his back. “I was happy with hating humans. Content,” Ryker yelled, spinning around to face me. His eyes were full of fury.
I blinked and slid from the rock. “Wait. Why are you mad at me?”
“Because.” He shook his head, forcing his heated gaze from me, his voice low. “You changed everything.” He turned away from me, my hand automatically grabbed his. He stopped but didn’t look at me, keeping his head down.
My body felt out of my control as I moved in front of him and reached for his face. He tensed as my fingers slid along his jawline and cupped his cheeks. “Look at me,” I whispered. When he did this to me, it centered me.
He resisted, but I didn’t move, nor did I ask again. I stood there waiting for him. Finally, his lids flickered up. Our gazes latched on to each other’s. There wasn’t much I could say. It would not change the past or the fact I was human and would eventually die. Actually, now that I had his attention, I felt at a total loss. I wanted to comfort him, ease his pain, thank him for revealing something so private from his past. Most of all I wanted to kiss him. This impulse was as strong as my fear to do it.
His brow cinched, his hand came up, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Fuck you for screwing everything up,” he whispered hoarsely, letting his hand glide down my face.
“And fuck you, Wanderer, for wreaking havoc in mine,” I responded in the same breathy tone.
He pulled me in, and my heart dropped to my knees. He tipped his forehead against mine. “What am I going to do with you?”
Only one response came to my lips, and I swallowed it back. When the hell did this happen? It was so gradual I could not really pinpoint a moment, but they were there... feelings.
Dammit. I wanted them to go away.
No, that was the problem; I didn’t want them to go away, which made me wish they would. Emotions between us, or even purely on my side, were pointless and stupid. They could lead nowhere. I didn’t want them to. Deep down, we both knew fae and humans didn’t belong together. And when I thought about the fact I wanted a fae to kiss me... Except he wasn’t only fae. Ryker was the man who put a candle in a bread roll a couple nights ago to celebrate my birthday. Who came back from the dead, fighting everyone in his path to get to me. Who held me when my dreams turned to nightmares.
I stepped away from him, staring at the water trailing between the rocks I was standing on. “Maybe we’ll find fae on the way back.” So far the day had been a bust.
He cleared his throat and placed his hands on his hips, peering back at the trail. “Yeah, we should get back before it gets dark. The fae who come out at night in these forests are not ones we want to run into.”
I grabbed Sprig and was up the path before Ryker could even take a step. I was hoping the faster I walked, the quicker I would leave those newfound emotions behind, drowning them in the rushing water.
I should have known once you open a sealed jar, it can never be truly closed again. Feelings and thoughts bled into the cracks and seeped in. Modifying, changing, corroding what had worked perfectly before.
SIX
During the next couple of days Ryker, Sprig, and I went out searching for fae. Ryker said Regnus was not going to be an easy man to find, but finding fae who could help us was also becoming a challenge. After the first day of nothing, I spotted a lot of fae around the area, but mostly mountain trolls, river fairies, and various small shape-shifters. Ryker felt they wouldn’t know anything.
On the fourth morning of searching, Ryker was hitting the end of his patience. “Mountain trolls literally live under a rock. Stupid fuckers. But the water fairies might be useful.”
A laugh burst from my mouth. Of course Ryker would be interested in talking to them. In my Collector days I had dealt with quite a few of them. Seattle was almost surrounded by inlets and rivers. Water fairies were the tramps of the fae world. Always horny. They got their energy from the power of the water and the life in it. They were charged and naked all the time, sex was their release. From what I studied, they had to have sex. It took the edge off the enormous amount of magic flooding them daily. They’d go insane if they didn’t, and they weren’t particular if they did it with humans or fae, though they definitely preferred strong, gorgeous males.
Understandable.
Humans often confused water fairies with succubi or sirens. Succubi needed to live off the energy produced by sex, and from what I read, sirens didn’t actually have sex with any of their victims. Their beauty itself would make any man or woman plunge to the bottom of the sea. The sirens lived off the energy of sacrifice, which came from the person’s willingness to die.
As we traveled to the upper part of the Rio Aguas Calientes, the water fairies were not hard to find, especially when they caught sight of Ryker. From a distance and with a normal human eye, the water fairies appeared to be locals—men, women, and children—fishing or playing in the water and mixing in seamlessly with the true residents among them. Unless they wanted you to see them in their other form, wanting to ensnare a male traveler passing by.
What I saw were sexy, partially clothed women splashing around in the water. Four women danced around in thigh-deep water, the cream cotton blouses they wore were so tattered and see-through they barely covered their voluptuous breasts, which bobbed around like small toddlers in a bouncy house. Their long brown skirts were thin and slit up the sides, letting you see the outline of their shapely legs. Each one had hair past her waist, full lips, and bright blue-green eyes.
No guy, straight anyway, could resist them. They were a typical cliché for a reason. Perfect bait to lure in their next sex victim, though their victims probably wouldn’t consider themselves too much of a victim.
“Gee, I wonder why you were eager to talk to them,” I grumbled.
Ryker grinned. “You’d be surprised by what they see and know.”
“Amazed.” I rolled my eyes.
Ryker and I walked over to them. The women stopped, turning to us. Their eyes went straight to Ryker like he was a deity rising from the water.
“I was hoping you ladies could assist me,” Ryker said, low and commanding. He was naturally carnal and imposing, but he was upping the charm.
A tall brunette, legs up to her ears, stepped from the water. She pulled up her skirt to her knees as she stepped onto the bank. “I will assist in anything you want.”
“I am hoping you can help me locate a shaman or someone who might know of one.” Ryker’s eyes trailed over the woman. She brazenly walked right to him, pushing her chest into his. Her hand met his torso and slithered around him as she circled him.
“You are so masculine and virile. Sexy.” She purred into his ear. “And primal.”
“Thank you.” Ryker smiled, making no move to prevent her fingers from exploring his chest and arms. “But I really need information.”
The brunette’s hand curved over his ass.
A snarl raged in my chest, but I swallowed it back. Where the hell did that come from? Am I jealous? Oh no... nononono. I didn’t do jealousy. For one thing, I was terrible at it, with a tendency to hit or take the item causing the green-eyed monster to emerge.
“So... do you know of any healers in the area? An elder, perhaps?” Ryker’s voice sounded low and sexier than normal. Besides Amara, Ryker felt the only people who might know of Regnus’ whereabouts would be another high-ranking shaman. Or at least someone who could get word to him.
Another water fairy came to his other side, this one had long red wavy hair. Her smooth porcelain skin stood out next to the brunette’s ol
ive complexion. “No, but I can help tend to your needs.”
I rolled my eyes. Could they be more of a cliché?
Ryker glanced over at me, then cleared his throat and stepped away from them. “Thanks anyway.”
“Wait. Don’t go.” Two more dark-haired girls ran to him from the water. “You are far too magnificent to let go. A mind-blowing specimen.”
“Seriously?” I threw up my hands.
Ryker’s gaze drifted to me, a smirk flickering on his mouth. He was enjoying this. “Just looking for a shaman, ladies. A particular one named Regnus.” He took a few steps toward me when all four girls encircled and trapped him.
“I might know of someone,” a woman’s strong voice rose from the middle of the waterway. A blonde goddess of a woman stepped onto the bank. I almost wanted to cry. Where the hell did she come from? It was as if she rose from the depth of the river.
She stood over six feet tall, long, lean giraffe legs hooked out from the slits in her skirt. Her golden locks tumbled down her waist in glistening waves. Her face was so perfectly proportionate, it was almost doll-like. But it was the way she held herself that seized your attention. She embraced a confidence and a cleverness even more than the other girls.
I couldn’t have felt tinier, more boring, or more insubstantial, which only made me want to fight her.
“You know where he is?” Ryker pushed through the girls surrounding him. They stepped back, sending Ryker longing stares. The way the blonde woman moved and the response of the other girls to her told me she was their leader.
“I did not say that. I said I might know of someone.”
“Either you do or you don’t. Damn, you fairies love to play games.”
“Oh, I think you do, too, Wanderer. Kinky ones. I can feel it in you. I can guarantee you will love playing them with me.” She looked him up and down, her eyes undressing him. “Yes, we know who you are. You are a legend among us fae.” Other than Amara, this gorgeous, confident woman was one I could picture with Ryker. “Maybe we can work out a deal.”
The Barrier Between (Collector Series # 2) Page 5