“But the biological imperative . . .”
“You know, funny thing about that. Check this out.” Mal drew on the One Tree and nipped the bond as neatly as Bryce with his pruners.
Bryce’s eyes flew wide. “Oh.” He rubbed his chest. “It’s gone.”
“Yeah. Cassie was all about ‘till death do you part,’ but I figure the elder gods never imagined a druid would catch a high fae in his familiar net. My full powers are near equal to yours.”
“Balance,” Bryce murmured.
“Yeah. So I can neutralize the bond if I want. Thing is . . .” Mal rescinded his command, and the delicious certainty, the trust that Bryce could take him, keep him safe, let him rest, was back. “I don’t want. I mean, who gives a shite what other people think? If this works for us, it’s a bloody miracle. Question is, do you choose? I’m a right handful, or so I’ve been told.”
Bryce’s eyes turned black, and Mal shivered. “You are. But that’s what I love about you. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.”
A tiny noise like a kitten coughing snapped their attention to the side. Heilyn was standing there, a glass bottle stoppered with brass in its paws. It bowed, and where once there had been three bloody divots, now miniature versions of the bauchan nestled, peeping at them with wide golden eyes.
“Your back,” Bryce said. “I thought you’d been tortured.”
“So I was, separated from my little ones, when they need me to rest and grow.”
“Faerie.” He lifted an eyebrow at Mal. “Remarkable. A whole new ecosystem.”
“Shall I bar the doors, masters?”
Bryce laid a hand on Heilyn’s shoulder, much to the interest of the young. “We’re not your masters.”
“I choose too. Masters.” It offered the bottle to Bryce and scuttled out the door to the kitchen.
“Well, mate, your fan club just grew by three. What did the little bugger give you?”
Bryce opened the bottle and sniffed. He tipped a little of the contents into the palm of his hand, then dipped his finger and thumb into it. He started to laugh.
“What’s the joke?”
“It’s oil. About a quart of it.” He sniffed the puddle in his palm, and his eyebrows rose. “Scented.”
Mal grinned. “In Faerie, we call that lube, mate. Now . . .” Mal dropped to his knees to finally use both hands on the fly of Bryce’s tactical pants. Let me show you a few tactics of my own. “What do you say we start using it up?”
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Thank you, thank you, thank you to my awesome editor, Rachel Haimowitz. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner on this journey.
As ever, my undying gratitude to the wonderful team at Riptide Publishing: Sarah Lyons, Amelia Vaughn, L.C. Chase, Alex Whitehall, May Peterson, Kelly Miller, and Kelly Hidlebaugh (among others). Thank you, Lou Harper, for the fabulous cover art—you’re amazing (and incredibly patient)!
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Fae Out of Water
Cutie and the Beast
Bad Boy’s Bard (coming soon)
Legend Tripping
Stumptown Spirits
Wolf’s Clothing
Geeklandia
The Boyfriend Algorithm
Clickbait
For a Good Time, Call . . . with Anne Tenino (a Bluewater Bay story)
Shadow Painter
Sun, Moon, and Stars (in Magic and Mayhem: Fiction and Essays Celebrating LGBTQA Romance)
E.J. Russell holds a BA and an MFA in theater, so naturally she’s spent the last three decades as a financial manager, database designer, and business intelligence consultant. Several years ago, she realized Darling Sons A and B would be heading off to college soon and she’d no longer need to spend half her waking hours ferrying them to dance class.
What to do with all that free time?
A lucky encounter with Jim Butcher’s craft blog posts caused her to revisit her childhood dream of writing fiction, and now she wonders why she ever thought an empty nest meant leisure.
Her daily commute consists of walking from one side of her office to the other, from left-brain day job to right-brain writer’s cave, where she’s learned to type with a dog attached to her hip and a cat draped across her wrists.
E.J. is married to Curmudgeonly Husband, a man who cares even less about sports than she does. Luckily, C.H. also loves to cook, or all three of their children (Lovely Daughter and Darling Sons A and B) would have survived on nothing but Cheerios, beef jerky, and satsuma mandarins (the extent of E.J.’s culinary skill set).
E.J. lives in rural Oregon, enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.
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