by Jessa Slade
His lips traveled down her jaw, traced the flying pulse along the column of her neck, skimmed the hollow of her throat. She arched higher, but he needed no such encouragement.
His mouth circled a hot, damp path around her nipple, making her moan with eagerness as the circle tightened, teased, and backed away.
She’d had her share of court affairs, but finding pleasure through the obscuring lies of glamour was a trick. Josh’s big hand wandered places of her body secret from her phae lovers, a surprise even to her: the curve of her lower rib, the back of her knee as he drew her leg up, the fine bones of her ankle.
When he ran his hand along the inside of her thigh, she realized he had dipped his fingers into the salve. The fragrance ringed her, and he slipped one finger inside her at the same time as he finally closed his lips over her nipple.
She bucked against him, a wordless demand, and he obliged with a second torturously slow finger. The flat of his tongue laved her breast in a long, winding caress that echoed the lingering screw of his hand.
His thumb—slick with salve, just a little work roughened—found the exposed center of her yearning flesh. He circled once, twice, ah, the magical three times, and she came apart in a shower of flower petals.
At least it felt like that, like some rogue wind kept blowing her in every direction, higher and higher. She came again and cried out his name, careless of the consequences that came with naming.
When she caught her breath, she had to glance at herself to make sure she was intact and that her glamour hadn’t slipped. But the satiny, drifting feeling lingered as she stared into the arrogance of his grin.
“God, you are so hot,” he murmured. “So damn ready.”
She held her arms open to him. “Let me show you how ready.”
He surged up over her, his hair mussed from her hands, his lips reddened. Flushed and flawed. The scar gleaming across his eye reminded her that all her courtier lovers had been perfect. At least their glamour had always been perfect. She had never revealed her weaknesses either.
But Josh had no such reservations. With his arms braced on either side of her, he was poised exposed, his chest wide open and vulnerable. Like the thrust of his engorged flesh, he had no fear, and she wanted that bold conviction. She centered herself under him, canting her hips to meet his.
She gasped at the slow impalement, and he paused, “Adelyn?” But she rocked up against him and he was sheathed in her flesh, and she forgot where one of them stopped and the other started as they moved together in one motion.
As a musetta, she had teased him. Now he took that power from her, pushing harder and faster than she had imagined, until her back arched and her head tilted into the blankets, offering him her aching breasts and the wild rush of her pulse.
He licked her nipple and rolled the other between his long fingers as he ground his hips into hers. The pressure against her core was her undoing and she came apart again, just as he jackknifed against her with a shout, a wordless cry that nevertheless had a power in it she couldn’t decipher. He thrust again, and one more time, and then he shuddered. He dropped his head to the crook of her neck, his breath heaving, hot over her skin.
The spasms in her own flesh quieted slowly with his breathing. After a long moment, he withdrew and lowered himself to rest at her side, their limbs still entwined.
“I don’t usually do this.” His voice was muffled against her shoulder.
She tripped her fingertips down his chest toward his still-rampant erection. “You are naturally gifted then.”
He pulled slightly away and caught her hand. “I don’t mean...I don’t know what came over me.”
She laughed, low in her throat. “You came over me.”
He gave her a repressive look. “I am trying to say, I don’t usually take a woman to bed on the first date. Not that this was a date even.”
She raised her hand to cup his cheek. The mingled scent of their sex and the flowers followed the gesture. Her heart seemed to skip once. “That makes me feel very special.”
He stared. “Really?”
“Don’t you think it means something that you would share yourself with me, like this?”
“You are some kind of woman.”
“Not any kind you know.”
“Maybe not.” He caught her hand and pressed a kiss to the center of her palm, though his gaze never left hers. “I want you to know I take full responsibility for anything that might come of what we just did. I never...That is, I’m clean, and I always do the right thing.”
Of that she had strangely little doubt. “What might come of this besides our pleasure?”
His brow furrowed. “I guess you’re on birth control?”
Did he sound panicked, or disappointed? She touched the line on his forehead. “My kind rarely have children of our own.” Even with their numbers decimated by iron, the phae were slow to rebound.
“Your kind?” He curled one finger through her hair. “You mean supermodels?”
She hadn’t meant to get into a discussion of her background, so she kissed him again to distract him. He seemed willing if the renewed prodding against her hip was any indication.
Despite her reassurances, he insisted on protection the second time. As if human semen held any worries for her compared to the Hunter and the Ruiner and the Queen.
But when Josh rolled her into his arms, those worries, much like the phaedrealii, seemed far away. For the first time in her phae existence, she did not think about her place or who she had to impress. Judging from his fevered breaths, Josh wanted her exactly where she was, so she gave herself up to his inspired touch.
They showered together afterward and he swathed her wrists again in salve and loose bandages then gave her a gentle nudge toward the clothes she had ignored before. “Get dressed while I make us some dinner.”
He kissed her once, then left, barefoot and barechested. She watched him go with her lips still tingling from the kiss.
She dressed quickly in garments too large for her and smelling of him while the dog Wolly watched her from the doorway. She met the flat brown stare.
“I am not here to claim your human,” she said in the phae’s lyrical tongue. “We have no quarrel, you and I.”
The dog seemed disinclined to believe her and did not move back when she approached. But from the other side of the house drifted the smell of something meaty, and after one more searching stare, Wolly trotted away.
Adelyn followed the dog toward the sound of rattling pans in the kitchen. There was a woman’s touch on the house, obvious in the ruffle-topped gingham curtains framing the windows and the throw pillows that matched the couch in the parlor, but no recent sign of a female presence. Hence the dust, the towering pile of books on only one side of the couch, and the tools scattered on the dining table. Not to mention the pall of loneliness.
She paused at the dining table to look over belt buckles in various stages of creation. The one centered in front of the lone chair had been etched and stamped. Empty settings showed where insets of some sort would go.
A dish of stones sat nearby, and she stirred her finger through the selection. Nothing precious, just an opal, some chunks of coral and turquoise, a handful of tumbled jaspers, but the stones were lovingly polished and a pleasure to touch.
Josh stuck his head through the kitchen doorway. “Ready to eat?”
“I was looking at your art.”
He ducked his head a little. “Ain’t art.”
She lifted one eyebrow. “What do you call it?”
“Messing around.”
She shook her head. “You put your touch on these. Simple—” He snorted and she gave him a hard look. “But strong. Straightforward and true. Quite lovely.”
He straightened. “Definitely not me. Come on in here. We’ll eat at the counter where there’s an actual view.”
She wondered why he was so dismissive of the joy he obviously found in and gave to the work. As a musetta, she was irked that he woul
d deny himself. She followed him to the small kitchen that looked out over a stand of birch trees, banded black and white against the blue sky.
“Every window shows something different,” she noted. The phaedrealii had no windows, just frames where the illusions shifted at the Queen’s whim.
Josh pulled out a stool tucked under the kitchen counter and gestured for her to sit. “A good reminder that every day is something different.”
She stared at him curiously as she sat and let him ease her closer to the counter. “You are a philosopher too?”
He took a seat beside her. “Hardly. Most people would say nothing here changes, but that’s only because they’re so busy looking for something else, they don’t see what’s right in front of them.” His jaw tightened a moment as he stared out the window, then he slanted her a wry grin. “So there I go, philosophizing. It’s taken me about as far as a rocking horse on an oil slick.”
Their thighs bumped in the close quarters. From a skillet between them, he served up a fluffy mixture of egg, potato, sausage, and bright bell pepper bits. She recognized all the ingredients, but when the first forkful slid into her mouth, her eyes widened.
Apparently the tongue was not as easily fooled by illusion. She was halfway through her plate before she realized Josh was smiling at her.
“Your kind don’t eat enough, do they?”
She took another defiant bite before she answered. “Where I come from, a lot is different from here.” In the phaedrealii, every day was very much the same: food that sparkled—and tasted—like sand, views of nothing real, and the fear. Of course the fear.
He must have caught something in her expression because he put down his fork to brush her hair back from her face. “You’re here now, and you’re safe. Unless I recruit you to feed the chickens. The rooster is a cocky bastard.”
Adelyn leaned into his caress. “I think I can deal with one...rooster.” She gave him a slow smile.
He paused with his hand at her nape, then straightened her stool. “Finish your dinner like a good girl. I got dessert if you want it.”
She added a wicked slant to her lips. “I bet I know what it is. But it isn’t for good girls.”
To her delight, hot color stained his cheeks. Had any of her kind ever blushed? She couldn’t imagine a pursuit wicked enough to fluster a phae. No, she would only find such a gorgeous, riotous fever in her flushed cowboy.
He pulled a mock scowl and nudged her plate. “There are seconds if you want them.”
“I do want,” she confessed with another suggestive glance from beneath her lashes. “Maybe thirds.”
When they finished, he made her sit while he cleaned up. She had never seen dishes washed before. The plates from a phaedrealii feast—spun with illusion from bracken leaves or shards of ice or nothing at all—were torn or smashed or disappeared when backs were turned.
She rather thought she preferred the phae method.
She brought herself up short. Of course she preferred the phae way. She was phae. And the only way to get back to her way of life was to end the Hunter’s. The impossible compulsion pressed her harder than Wolly’s insistent stare at the back of her head.
Josh dunked the dishes in lemon-scented bubbles. “I’ll fire up the cell signal booster. I meant to do that as soon as we got home, but I was distracted.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. The intensity of his gaze sparked something in her; not quite a blush, but...”Maybe we can reach the Hunters and find out when they’ll be back.”
Curse the Hunter. Adelyn gripped the edge of the stool as the blood rushed out of her head. “Tell me about them.”
His brows lifted. “You’ve never met them?”
“No. We have...acquaintances in common.”
“They’re good people. They’ll help you.”
They’d kill her if they discovered her intent. And they weren’t people at all. Not that Josh could know that.
Again, her expression must have worried him because he left the soapy water to stand in front of her, his knees bumping hers while his hands dripped. “Whatever happened to you, it happened far away from here. You’re with me now, and I won’t let anything bad touch you again.”
The bad things weren’t far at all, just over the next valley, where the spoors would be growing, where the rebellious phae would be taken by the Queen’s Ruiner. She forced herself to look up at Josh with a tremulous smile. “You are a good man to bring me here.”
Had she ever met a good phae? Glorious and powerful, yes; never simply good. But Josh’s goodness put him so terribly at risk. How would he even recognize phae peril? He certainly hadn’t seen it in her.
By bringing the phaedrealii intrigue here, she was endangering his valley as unfairly as she’d been banished from her place. The knowledge chewed at her with teeth like Bunco’s, dull and grinding, but she didn’t see any other way to get home.
Unable to apologize or explain without betraying herself, she had nothing to offer him except a musetta’s exhilaration. She reached out to tangle her fingers in the waistband of his jeans. “Let me be your dessert.”
He stepped between her spread knees. “You are sweet.” His voice was husky.
“No, but I can pretend for you.”
“Adelyn...”
She slid off the stool to her knees and unzipped his jeans in one graceful move. His erection surged from behind the denim before she had safely cleared the little steel teeth.
She smiled at him as she tugged his jeans lower. “What were you thinking over there at the dirty dishes?”
“About you. I was thinking about you.” He propped one bare foot on the stool, giving her full access.
She slipped her fingers under his sac, caressing the hot, heavy weight of him. He groaned when she breathed across his damp tip.
“Ah, Adelyn. I want you so bad.”
“You have me,” she assured him. For this moment. As for what came next...That too would be him, if the jerk of his hips was any indication. She would give him this. Never mind that the phae only took and never gave. This once, she would be musetta and he would remember her forever, if only in his dreams.
Was that cruel? Perhaps. She was phae after all. But just once more, she wanted to hear him cry out her name.
Chapter 6
The winter evening dark closed in before Josh went out to settle the animals. Wolly glared at him reproachfully as they completed their tasks and made one last circuit through the barn.
Josh grinned. “You’re just cranky because you’re sleeping in the living room tonight.”
He had tried to get a call out with the cell signal booster, which was fairly reliable, but had given him only crackling static. So no word to his hired hands or to Vaile.
He rarely let tech failures upset him—never seemed to make a difference—and this time he has happy to let his cozy world get just a little smaller.
Adelyn seemed content too. She had offered to accompany him on his nightly tour, but he preferred to keep her curled in the comforter, warming his bed.
A man could get used to that.
He wanted to finish the belt buckle for her. He had all the right stones, and the base was delicate enough for a woman.
For his woman.
The thought came out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere really. It came from somewhere behind his own belt buckle, but it was a strange mix of low and high, from cock to belly to heart. All of him wanted to put his mark on her.
And he knew it wasn’t just the sex, fantastic as it might be. He’d never felt this way about a woman. He’d watched his ex leave without a word. But Adelyn...
He might never let her go.
Josh paused under the big barn light that filled the yard outside the stable with a white glow. He took a breath of the cold air to steady his suddenly racing pulse. Just standing there, but he was moving too fast. He was practically branding her as his with a big ol’ belt buckle when a girl like her would be thinking of rings—fine rings, rings with sparkling ro
cks of the kind he would never have the chance to touch.
God, was he thinking of rings? He dragged one hand around the collar of his coat.
He wasn’t going to say anything. That would be stupid. He would wait. He had time. The cattle were fed and watered. The horses and goats were in their stalls for the night. The hens and their damned rooster were battened down. Wolly was...
Wolly was staring out into the night, hackles raised and lips drawn back over shining teeth.
Josh’s fingers twitched. Slowly, he released the belt loop around his knife and let the sturdy wooden handle fill his palm. He had left the rifle in the house. Maybe Adelyn...No, she wouldn’t know how to use it. She’d seemed taken aback by the workings of the shower massager.
Could be one of the usual valley critters, nosing around, but Wolly had a good bark for all those. This was something else. Josh faded back from the revealing brightness of the stable light.
He wasn’t letting anything—or anyone—near Adelyn.
Giving Wolly the stay signal and a hard stare, Josh crept toward the trees, staying out of the reach of the lights.
The quiet of a winter night in the wilds of Oregon had a particular tone, like the silence after a bell was rung, clean and clear. Tonight, a jangled tension—and not just his own—raised the hair on the back of his neck. Something was off.
When everything had been going so right. The coincidence seemed suspicious.
Despite his steady grip, the knife was cold in his hand. And still it wasn’t as cold as the blood in his veins. He had never killed a man, but whoever had bound and burned Adelyn might very well be the first.
The pine needles bent silently under his boots as he threaded between the blackjacks. The moon had not yet risen but the starlight on the remains of the snow gave the scene a ghostly, night-vision cast.
Strangely, he caught the first glimpse out of the corner of his bad eye, but he didn’t have time to wonder about that. He was expecting a man, so when the shape scuttled low, waist-high, and broad, he was almost relieved. A grumpy bear wouldn’t be so hard to run off.