As his dust settled and began to take effect—Dart had some very potent fellows—Mrs. Henderson relaxed. Her mouth curved into a smile and her hands slid up to her breasts. And then she cooed.
Dart smirked.
They dreamed about him, the mortal women. Nothing wrong with that. Why shouldn’t they have sexy dreams about the man who could take away their troubles and gift them with peaceful sleep?
Fluttering up and away from the king-size bed, Dart wandered aimlessly as his thoughts found him rehashing this morning’s disaster at Sidney’s house.
He’d dusted her. And she’d dropped like a log.
Now there was one female who likely never dreamed a sexy thought about him.
The master of the sleep dust had a little problem. Only it wasn’t so little. Dart dusted women prematurely all the time.
Prematurely? Stones, he shouldn’t even be dusting a potential lover. The last thing he needed was for a half-dressed, almost-ready-to-climax female to drop into a snore.
It was killer to his sex life.
Which was why he dated the twitter-fly flower faeries. Overwhelmed by the sandman’s charm, the giglets went along for anything—just to be in Dart Sand’s bed. So what if coitus interruptus was the name of the game? They just giggled, kissed him on the forehead, and then fluttered away.
And never came back.
He’d heard the scandalous whispers. Made him want to crawl into the shadows. He couldn’t prevent the dusting. He didn’t know why it happened.
Dart swerved to avoid a floor lamp boasting gaudy red beads about the hem of the shade.
They didn’t come back because they were dissatisfied.
Like he wasn’t?
The last time he’d had great sex had been—had he ever had great sex?
And what was with his inability to control his dust? He could dole it out to mortals whenever needed. It wasn’t as though he flew through the air leaving a trail like some of the sprites did.
Yet when he became aroused? Wham! Poof! Snores.
It wasn’t right. A man wasn’t, well, a man unless he could please a woman. But Dart had no idea how to change it.
After he’d left Sidney’s house, Dart had flown through the park and stopped to chat with Steve the Faery. Dart had asked Steve’s advice about pursuing Sidney.
“Are you sure about this? You gotta really want her,” Steve the Faery had said. “ ’Cause that tooth faery is no day in the park.”
Dart had nodded and answered, “Yes.”
He really had a thing for Sidney Tooth, feisty faery extraordinaire.
“Sidney won’t have the patience for me,” he muttered now. “She’s been around. I’m just a player to her. I’m surprised she even let me in the front door.”
Certainly she would not invite him back after he’d dusted her. Again. He shouldn’t have left her lying on the kitchen floor, but he’d panicked.
“Maybe therapy?” Dodging the dangling fringes beneath a drapery valance, Dart searched for the open window where he’d entered the Henderson house. “Do I have some deep-seated childhood angst that makes me want to blow my dust before I can get it up?”
That was just wrong.
Now he was starting to think like those mortals on that TV show he watched religiously. The one with the bald doctor who spoke in anecdotes. Okay, not religiously. If anyone asked, it was only occasionally, but thanks to TiVo, he never missed an episode.
“I’ve never felt this way about a woman before.”
This time he wanted it to be right. To not scare her off. To be able to satisfy her. And to have her look upon him, not necessarily with lust but with respect.
“Tall order.”
You gotta really want her. ’Cause that tooth faery is no day in the park.
So she had a freaky sense of fashion. And her hair could certainly use some taming. And she did like obscene gestures. And for some reason she preferred mortal glamour to her real appearance. But that was outside stuff.
Those grass green eyes. They looked into him. Melted him. And yes, challenged him. Which was a cool thing. Dart had never met a woman like Sidney, one who was willing to challenge his shortcomings.
“She’s one smart lady. And that figure.” He traced the air, drawing her shape as he flew along. “Va-va-voo—ouf!”
Forehead slapping against the window, the rest of Dart’s body followed. Flattened against the clear glass, his body sagged and he slid down the window like a horse fly splattered on a windshield.
Chapter
9
Sidney edged by Cooper Henderson, who stood in the medical section, wielding a book on snoring. She smiled at him, but he tucked the book under an arm and headed to a reading nook.
She’d scanned the children’s mythology section—all books on tooth faeries were gone.
“Non-believers,” she muttered grumpily.
The adult mythology section was bare of tooth faery literature as well. She pondered looking up the sandman when a red-spined book caught her eye. She pulled it out.
“Sex for Dummies. How did this get filed in Mythology?”
Kids. They never ceased to surprise her with their curious minds. It gave Sidney a chuckle.
“Didn’t think the Reverie library allowed books like this. Must have gotten past the mothers.”
She paged through, and though there were no pictures, the subject headings were blush-worthy. “Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks.” “Using Feathers to Sweep Him off His Feet.” “Self-Cultivation 101.”
“Self-cultivation? Oh, toadstools. I’m so tired of doing it all myself.”
Sidney replaced the book and pressed her forehead to the row of book spines before her. “I thought being independent was what I wanted. And it feels great. But . . .”
Lately, alone didn’t feel so great. Alone was this big gaping hole in her chest. Alone got her a mortgage but no love. Alone meant self-cultivation.
“I’ve put him off and pushed him away. He’s probably already on to the next flutter-twit. I had my chance, and I spoiled it.”
A sigh echoed in the quiet library.
Tugging out the book again, Sidney paged through and stopped at the chapter called “Dress Sexy to Catch His Eye.”
Sidney sat through the entire night mindlessly watching a rerun of the Matrix trilogy. She loved the kick-ass moves and tried to incorporate them into her own job whenever a vicious cat decided to take her on.
“My job,” she muttered, and followed with sigh number thirty in an evening of sighs.
She scratched her belly and tugged the white terry bathrobe. Fluffy green turtle slippers eyed her with plastic googly eyes.
No faery would be caught dead wearing turtle slippers.
Dart was right. “I wear mortal glamour like a security blanket.”
Another sigh.
Glancing to the ScryeTracker™ on the arm of the sofa, she eyed the blank screen. No new pickups reported. It was as if the children of Reverie had all started brushing and going to regular checkups, and those darned teeth actually enjoyed chawing Cheez Doodles and sipping corrosive soda.
Sidney knew better. Selfish non-believers, lurking in the dark with lipstick sneers, were tossing any and all fallen teeth.
How could a group of over-combed, high-fashion, Aqua Net– shellacked moms wield such power? Actually, it was just the one mother, and the rest all followed like mindless sheep.
“I’m a classic,” Sidney murmured. “They can’t get rid of me.”
She hated this feeling of lacking control. But how to change things if she didn’t know where the teeth were?
Sniffling, Sidney settled deeper into the array of velvet pillows on the couch. She’d returned home after reading the chapter on dressing sensually, showered, and spent more than a few hours in front of the mirror, plucking, tweezing, and grooming.
The picture of the woman on the cover of the book, wearing a pretty, curve-hugging dress that flounced out around the knees, had been easy enough t
o glamourize.
For all the good it would do. Sidney had gotten all dressed up with no place to go.
“It was just a practice run,” she reasoned.
Keanu Reeves took to the air in his long black priest’s coat, with the villain in pursuit. They soared upward, defying gravity and the logistics of flight.
“That’s not how you fly. Amateurs.” Sidney clicked to another station, then, knowing she wanted to watch the movie, clicked back to it.
Lately she was so . . . uptight. Easily angered. On edge.
Had to be the job security. That would make anyone irritable. But she didn’t like feeling this way. A girl couldn’t sustain uptight for long before she became . . .
“An angry uptight mother who lives to take fun away from her children.”
Was that it? All those mothers. They were uptight. Angry.
“Unsatisfied,” Sidney decided with a nod of her head. “In need of sex? Like me?”
Huh. It made curious sense.
But knowing the underlying reason for the mothers’ bad moods didn’t change things. Sidney was still out a night job. And her sheets were still far too smooth and in need of twisting.
She clicked off the television just as the doorbell rang.
Sidney sat bolt upright. Who could that be? She glanced out the window. The sun had peeked over the horizon as she’d sat muddling in a media stupor.
A whole night had passed without a single tooth retrieval.
Feeling imminent tears sting her eyes, but knowing that whoever stood outside wasn’t going to leave, because now the bell rang steadily, she stomped over and opened the door.
The guy who had left a note stating he wouldn’t bother her again had returned. With lilies.
Sidney cocked an elbow high on the door frame. “Dart.”
“Sidney.”
Did a faery have a right to be so handsome? Sidney felt sure there must be a rule about it somewhere. How was she supposed to follow the no-fraternization rule if the sandman was sexy and pumped, and . . . were his wings the slightest shade of violet?
She looked down and to the side, surprising herself with her embarrassment. Dissatisfied, eh? Just like the mortal mothers who had become her bane. She really was more mortal than faery!
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Er, lose the flowers, will you?”
“Right.” A toss relegated the silly bouquet over his shoulder. “I brought you something else.” Lifting his hand, he displayed a gift.
Sidney snatched the travel-size plastic bottle of crimson mouthwash.
“I’ll have you know that’s not an easy flavor to find. All the stores offer is the minty fresh green stuff with fluoride.”
“Yuck.”
“But I know you’re a cinnamon kind of gal. Fiery and gotta lot of bite.”
The sandman really did know how to treat a girl.
And Sidney reacted. She grabbed Dart by the head and pulled him in for a kiss. No tentative I’ll-take-your-measure-and-decide-if-I-like-you kind of kiss. This one meant business. This one was all about showing him exactly what his moonbeam glow gave her a hankering for.
While not breaking their lip-lock, she stepped back, luring Dart over the threshold. It didn’t take long for him to bracket her hips and lift her up. She wrapped her legs about his waist. The turtle slippers clicked appreciatively behind his back. He walked across the floor while the kiss journeyed to new depths. Stars, she liked tongue dancing with this guy. And he tasted like cinnamon floss. Bonus!
He set her on the kitchen table and Sidney wrapped her legs about his hips to keep him close. A kiss to the corner of her eye felt like a pixie landing on her skin.
“Why’d you come over?” she managed between kisses. “I thought you weren’t . . .”
“Going to come back?” he answered. “Embarrassed?”
“Uh-huh.” She tugged at his shirt, wanting to feel hard muscle.
“I am still. But there are more important things than my pride. I mean—” He broke the kiss but maintained a forehead-to-forehead closeness. “I’ve been thinking about you and your situation all night. You can’t let those ridiculous mothers do this to you. The kids can’t stop believing in the Tooth Fairy.”
The top button popped off Dart’s shirt. She hadn’t intended to do that, but since it had already happened—Sidney quickly unbuttoned the rest. Talk was cheap. She wanted the sandman. Now.
“Sidney, your job?”
“Uh-huh.”
He clasped a wide, strong hand over hers as it landed on the waist of his jeans. Spoilsport!
“Right, my job.” Reluctantly she shook off the ardor that threatened to swallow her better senses. The guy wanted to talk. He had said he wasn’t going to return, so the fact he had returned should caution her to go slower. Not scare him away.
She could do that.
“I’ve never been faced with this kind of situation in all my de cades in the MR,” she said. “I don’t have a clue in a mountain of toadstools. Except maybe . . .”
“I have a clue.”
“Really? So you’ve been thinking of me?”
He pulled back his hair to reveal a good-sized egg at his temple. “I still have a bruise from flying into a window at the Hendersons’ because my mind was on one sweet tooth faery instead of dusting.”
Sidney stroked the tender skin. “Poor guy.”
He took her fingers and kissed them with deliberate slowness. Dashing out his tongue, he tickled the curve of skin between two of her fingers. Did he want to talk or make out? Mixed signals, anyone?
“Ah . . . Dart?”
“Right. You make it hard to concentrate, but I will, because this is important.”
Toadstools.
“So this is what I’ve come up with. We need to go to the head mom’s house. Take a look around. We might find clues.”
“Clues to what?”
“To what her deal is,” he said. “To understand why she feels it’s okay to strip her offspring of childhood beliefs. If this gets out of hand, one day it’s Reverie, but soon it’s the world.”
The immensity of what could happen stymied Sidney. The world could change because of one mother’s misdirected morals. No more tooth faeries meant loss of Belief and confused, disenchanted young children worldwide. How to alter a non-believer’s perceptions?
Look at her! The faery who didn’t believe all that much in herself lately thought she had a clue?
“I have a sort of theory on the subject, too,” Sidney offered.
“Which is?”
Stars, stones, and toadstool circles, the man’s eyes had depth. A faery could hop right in and splash about in those gold pools. No life preserver necessary. Send her in for a good long soak.
Sidney’s jaw dropped. The motion snapped her out of her drooling appreciation of the finer things in life. “Er.”
“See something you like?” he dared coyly.
“More than floss and mouthwash,” she murmured, her body relaxing and her lips moving dangerously closer to his.
Dart’s eyebrow lifted.
“But this theory I have.” Anything to keep her from an all-out attack on the sandman’s oh-so-kissable lips. “The mortal mothers? They’re not satisfied with their lives. They . . . need things.” Like sex. Oh, baby, let me swim in those eyes. “And, and they’re angry they don’t have what they want.”
“You think?”
She nodded. “I know.”
“Sex?”
“Right now?”
“Sidney.” He leaned in and tweaked her nose with a fingertip. “We’re talking about the mothers. You think they’re dissatisfied and taking that anger out on you because—”
“Because the entire town of Reverie needs to get laid. And you—”
He nuzzled a kiss to the underside of her jaw.
“—are responsible.”
“Me? Whoa now, Miss Tooth, I think you lost me somewhere between angry villagers and soft tender kisses. Me? How am
I to blame for the mothers’ trying to take your job away?”
“Well.” It had just come to her. But it made a lot of sense. And Sidney had never been one to sugarcoat things. (Especially since sugarcoating always did a number on tooth enamel. Four out of five dentists agreed.) “You are the best sandman around, aren’t you? The fastest? Most thorough?”
“Yeeesss,” he answered cautiously.
“So, you’ve been too good. You’re putting the entire city to sleep when, well . . . maybe those women need a sleepless night to get them back on track, so to speak.”
“No snoring, more sex?”
“I think so.”
“Huh.” He propped a hand at his waist. “Makes sense. You, Sidney Tooth, are one smart faery.”
“I try.” She fluttered her lashes, but one of them stuck. Too much mascara. But she made a save by flipping her hair over that eye. Awkward sexy at its finest. Oh, you go, Sidney.
Not.
Dart swept aside her hair and traced under her eye, which effectively released her from lash-mesh. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re all made up to go out on a date. Is this eye shadow? Who you planning to seduce, Sidney?”
“Only you.”
“But you didn’t know I’d come.”
“I had hopes.”
Did that sound desperate? Sidney didn’t care. He’d come back. She wasn’t about to let him get off with a note from his mommy this time.
She gripped the sandman by his waistband and pulled him in for another kiss. “I want you, Sandman.”
“Whoa. You are the fastest faery in the Mortal Realm, Sidney. Take it easy. I thought you were concerned about the mortal women of Reverie?”
“They can suck toadstools, er—I mean—oh, Dart. I came to the conclusion about the mothers because I’m in the same boat. I want. I . . . need . . .”
He leaned in and kissed her. Warm, soft, promising. Moonbeams clashing with sunshine. “We’ve got time.”
“We do? Because judging from your propensity to . . . erm . . . well, you know, I’d think the quicker the better.”
Faeries Gone Wild Page 18