Slightly Spellbound

by Kimberly Frost

  What the heck had been in that mesh? I wondered as I watched my feet walk. I forced myself off Bryn’s neighbor’s lawn and crossed the drive triumphantly.

  At the security buzzer, I busted out laughing. “Made it!” I clung to the post and hit the button.

  “Took your time,” Steve’s voice said.

  “Got a little side-sacked, sidetracked, Tammy-sacked, Tammy in a sack.” I laughed so hard, I doubled over.

  The gate slid open.

  “Come on,” I said to myself. “Pull yourself under control and get inside onto Bryn’s properly—property.” I took a deep breath. “Feet! Get going.” But my feet weren’t interested in the paved circular drive. My toes curled and inched toward the grass. “For pete’s sake . . . and who is Pete anyway? Isn’t he the daytime security guy?”

  One of Bryn’s neighbors’ front doors opened. “Uh-oh. They’ll see me! Get in there!” I hissed at my feet, which weren’t working. I pitched to the side and let go of the post. I fell into a hibiscus bush and crawled through. Happy to be in the dirt, my feet started to work, but it was quite a long journey through the landscaping.

  By the time I got to the house, I was bleeding from rose thorns and sticky with plant juice. I managed to force my feet onto the paving stones to get to the front door. I didn’t want to ring the bell in case Mr. Jenson was resting. I tried the knob, which Steve had apparently unlocked.

  The door swung open and I fell into the foyer.

  “There,” I said, blowing a lock of hair out of my eyes. “Made it.” I dusted myself off. “Now if I were a Mr. Jenson, where would I hide myself?” I scratched my head. “If I were sick, I’d be in my bedroom in my bed.” I forced myself to a standing position. “Now if I were a Mr. Jenson’s room, where would I hide myself?” I looked around, disoriented. I could’ve sworn I knew the layout of Bryn’s house.

  “What the hell?” Bryn’s voice boomed from in front of me.

  “Holy shit,” Steve’s voice said from behind me.

  “Hello, men of Bryn’s house. Can you point me toward Mr. Jenson’s room? I’ve come to check on him.”

  “Mr. Lyons,” Steve sputtered.

  “Tamara,” Bryn said sharply. “Are you drunk?”

  “No,” I said, walking toward Bryn. “But I do smell whiskey. Who smells like the juice of the barley?” I asked. I sang a line from an Irish drinking song that I didn’t even know I knew the words to and pointed at Bryn, adding, “It’s you, isn’t it, who smells like whiskey?”

  “Don’t stand there gaping, Steve. Get a blanket,” Bryn said blackly.

  “Don’t yell at him. You,” I said, poking my finger into his chest. “Don’t be mean.”

  “What is this? What’s all over your skin?” Bryn said, holding me away from him.

  “A little dirt. And grass.” I plucked a couple of rose petals out of the cup of my bra and dropped them. “Some flowers.”

  “Not that,” Bryn snapped.

  “Hey, what happened to my clothes?”

  “Exactly what I’d like to know,” Bryn said.

  I looked down. My tiny undies barely covered my butt. I put my palms over my cheeks to cover them.

  “Well, you know whose fault this is?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s yours.”

  “Mine?” Bryn said, his brows shooting up.

  “Oh boy,” Steve said from behind me as he wrapped a blanket around me.

  “Who do you think bought me all these lacy barely-there underwear? I used to wear plain cotton. When I wanted to get fancy I’d wear some with kiss prints or Longhorn symbols or even once pink-and-black leopard print. Sexy! But they always covered my butt as well as a bathing suit. But you didn’t think that was good enough. And look at me now. I’m almost as bad as a stripper. Actually—” I glanced down inside the blanket, frowning. “I did get stripped. In fact,” I said suspiciously, “I think I may have stripped myself.” I exhaled a sigh. “Good grief. I’m a stripper. Can you even guess how that happened?”

  “I’d rather not,” Bryn said, turning and walking away. “Sober up in the library. Steve, you’re responsible for her.”

  “He is not responsible for me!” I announced, trailing after Bryn, who mounted the stairs. My feet and legs tangled in the blanket and I had to grab the railing to keep from falling down.

  “Steve, close your eyes,” I said, dropping the blanket.

  “Mr. Lyons?” Steve questioned as I darted up the stairs. “You want me to come up and get her?”

  “Now, Steve,” I said. “You and I get along fine because you know your limits. Don’t make me get rough with you.”

  Steve laughed.

  “Don’t encourage her,” Bryn said flatly, walking down the hall.

  “Mr. Lyons?”

  Bryn shook his head. “I’ve got it. Go back to your post, Steve.”

  I pursued Bryn until he paused and took me by the arm. He drew me into his bedroom and then into his bathroom. He pointed at the sunken tub. “Get in.”

  I glanced at myself in the mirror. My skin shimmered, my ear tips were slightly pointed, and my eyes glowed a tawny hazel. Ivy and fern fronds hung from tangled hair.

  “Green’s a good color for me,” I said, touching a vine.

  Bryn plucked the vine from my hair and dropped it in the wastebasket with a frown, then turned to the tub, flicked the drain closed, and spun the knobs, making the water gush. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

  “You’re not the boss of me.”

  “That’s certainly true. But right now, you look like someone crossed a cavewoman with a Bratz doll. In,” he said.

  “What’s a Bratz doll?” I asked.

  “A toy. My client’s daughter collected them.” Bryn dumped in bath salts. The water foamed.

  “I’m not ready to take a bath yet. This dirt helped me out. It had my back. And my front,” I said with a laugh. “And my backside.”

  Bryn reached over and unhooked my bra with a two-fingered pinch of the clasp.

  “Hey,” I complained as it fell on the floor. “I was wearing that.”

  I reached down, but arms came around me and a second later I sat in hot sudsy water. I glared at him.

  “I thought I warned you—” I said, attempting to stand.

  The struggle was brief, but soggy, and when I surfaced, I grabbed Bryn’s shirt and yanked. He pitched forward and fell in.

  “How do you like it?”

  He ignored the question and instead grabbed a loofah thing and scrubbed my skin with it. Pretty soon, the tingling disappeared and the brown-and-gold bathwater ran down the drain. Bryn climbed from the tub and, without a word, stripped out of his soaked clothes.

  I rested my chin on the edge of the tub and admired the view. “I should probably be annoyed that you’re prettier than me, but I actually don’t mind.”

  Bryn toweled his hair with a brief glance over his shoulder. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Lust over you?”

  “Don’t flirt. Not after this morning. And not while you’re under the influence of fae magic.”

  “Fae?”

  “Yes,” Bryn said. “What happened? Find another box of pixie dust and accidentally dump it on yourself?”

  “Nope,” I said, and then launched into a rambling account of my sacking.

  Bryn shook his head with a grimace, then walked out of the bathroom, saying over his shoulder, “Wash your hair.”

  I refilled the tub and soaked awhile, then haphazardly washed and conditioned my hair. When I got out of the tub, I shucked my panties and walked into Bryn’s room. I have a drawer and a small section of the closet, and that’s where I was headed when the open suitcase on his bed stopped me in my tracks.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. My mind darted to the vision I’d had of myself, galloping away from someone who was after me. That dream had been of someplace outside Duvall. What had I been doing on horseback, racing down a lane? I’d been riding a few times, but I
was no Kentucky Derby jockey. That kind of pace would’ve scared me half to death, though I hadn’t seemed scared in the vision. Was I going to learn to ride a horse while on vacation with Bryn? That sounded fun.

  “We aren’t going anywhere,” Bryn said, tying his white terry-cloth robe closed. “I’m taking Jenson to Ireland, and then I’m meeting Andre in Gstaad.”

  My stomach lurched like I’d fallen from a cliff. Bryn leaving? That’s not right, I thought.

  Bryn and I were connected forever by the oath. I wasn’t supposed to ever have to worry about losing him. He tossed a toiletry bag into the case as if he didn’t know the new rules of our relationship, which of course he did since he’d been the one to tell me!

  He clipped the suitcase strap over his clothes, and I was overcome with a possessiveness I hadn’t felt since a girl tried to steal the Edie locket during third-grade recess.

  Like the locket, Bryn wasn’t allowed to disappear. He belonged to me.

  Even as the logical part of my brain tried to argue that you can’t own a person, another louder part yelled, Yes, I can. Bryn is mine.

  I stared at him, practically speechless. The only thing I managed to say was, “No.”

  13

  “NO, NO,” I said again, walking to his suitcase. I scooped out clothes, fighting the tight strap I hadn’t bothered to unclip. Some shirts fell from my arms to the floor. I grabbed them up into a rumpled heap, the buzzed fae part of my nature giving Bryn a defiant look.

  “Get dressed,” he said, grabbing the suitcase and pulling it away from me.

  “You get dressed. I’m busy,” I said, marching into the closet with the clothes I’d liberated. I hung them on hangers, shaking out the wrinkles.

  “Tamara, goddamn it,” Bryn said, stalking into the closet. He grabbed the first thing of mine that he reached. It was a silver and turquoise dress. He dragged it down over my head, covering my body, and then spun me away from him and zipped it up.

  “What are you dressing me in this for?” I asked, giving a little twirl. The skirt flared. “Not like we’re going dancing. You’re not in a dancing kind of mood, are you?”

  “Go down to the guest room and sleep off whatever drugged you. And while I’m gone, you should stay out of the woods. There may be more fae snares. Who knows if you’ll be lucky enough to escape next time?”

  “It wasn’t luck,” I said, blocking him from retrieving the clothes I’d taken.

  “Cut it out and go downstairs.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. If I do, you’ll keep packing. And that’ll just make more work for me to unpack since you’re not going anywhere.”

  “Listen,” he said, lowering his voice. “I’m leaving. If I could take back what happened, I would, but I can’t undo it.”

  “Take back what happened? You mean the fight this morning?”

  “Further back.”

  I sucked in a breath. “You mean the vow?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s not yours to take back. That was my vow. I made it.”

  “And you regret it.”

  “I do not. It saved your life.”

  “But you regret what it cost you.”

  “What it cost me?”

  “Sutton.”

  “Oh,” I said, remembering Zach for the first time. “It’s true that I love Zach. Might always.”

  The look on Bryn’s face just about stabbed me through the heart. He turned and stalked back into his room. In the closet, I still felt his power rolling over me. Magic that was angry and restless and passionate. Magic that made my ears ring and my feet want to chase him to the ends of the earth.

  I don’t love Zach the way I love you. Not anymore, I thought, knowing it was true. Bryn and I had been through too much together. We were the ladyfingers and coffee in a tiramisu dessert. Once the coffee soaked into the cake, there was no way to separate them.

  I moved to the doorway and leaned against the jamb, watching him pack.

  “You’re wasting your time,” I said, making my voice extra gentle.

  “It’s mine and mine alone to waste.”

  “You’ve got a right to be mad. If you still cared a lot about one of your exes, I’d be jealous, too.”

  “You warned me enough times that you weren’t through with Sutton. I should’ve listened.”

  “I hurt you.”

  “Of course you hurt me,” he said, pouring himself a whiskey. The crystal decanter was almost empty. I tried to remember how much had been in it the last time I’d visited.

  “If you’d seen your face when you walked out of that house,” Bryn said. “How much you didn’t want it to be over between you and Sutton. It ripped the heart out of my fucking chest. I’d have done anything to have been spared that. I wish to the stars I’d never gone to that Halloween party.”

  I sucked in a small breath, feeling like he’d dumped ice water over my head. Bryn was always so smooth, able to handle anything. Sometimes I forgot that I had the power to hurt him. I took it for granted that I couldn’t lose him. I’d been so worried about Zach ignoring me that I hadn’t thought about what pursuing a relationship—even a friendship—with Zach might do to Bryn.

  I sat on the bed, folding my hands on my lap. “I’m sure sorry you feel that way. That’s not how I feel.”

  “How can you say that?” His magic snapped like a whip, sending a glass flying. He jerked the power back, and the glass dropped to the carpet without shattering, but reining the magic in had cost him. He vibrated with unspent emotion.

  I spoke softly, trying to soothe him. “Zach was my first love and he’s family. We had almost twenty years together and made lots of passionate promises. That sort of thing doesn’t just go away.”

  “Tamara—”

  “But—” I said, quick to cut him off. “If I had to choose between him leaving town and you leaving town,” I said, shaking my head. “It hurts to lose Zach and I’ll sure miss him a lot, but he can go if that’s what he needs to do,” I said. “You can’t.”

  “What are you saying?” he asked, becoming very still.

  “You know. You’re always two steps ahead.”

  “Tamara,” he warned.

  “I don’t want you to go, and I won’t let you.”

  “You can’t stop me,” he said.

  “You sure?” I asked softly. I stood and walked to him. I took his face in my hands and kissed him. “I love you more than chocolate,” I whispered, breathing in his magic and letting it mingle with mine. I blew against his lips, feeling the tingling warmth spread from my mouth to his.

  He rubbed the kiss away. Had it tasted of the Never? Or was he just upset?

  “If you knew that of the two of us he was the one you could live without, why the hell did you—?”

  “I didn’t know. I figured it out when I saw your suitcase.” I shook my head with an exasperated sigh. “I’ve got recipes and spells and emotions all jumbled together in my head. I figure stuff out when it hits me, like the button popping up on a Thanksgiving turkey when it’s all cooked.”

  “If it’s so chaotic in your heart, maybe tomorrow you’ll see Sutton and realize he’s the one you can’t live without.”

  “Maybe so. Faeries are mercurial, and I’m half. Maybe you’ll never know from one day to the next what I’m going to do. God knows, sometimes I don’t know myself. But I can tell you one thing,” I said, taking a step back.

  He raised his brows in question.

  “If you try to leave, you won’t get very far.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you want to stay, and now you know that I want you to stay, too.”

  “Why do you want me to stay?”

  “Because I love you,” I said.

  “It’s not enough to love me. Obviously.”

  “I love you more than anyone.”

  He scrutinized me. “Do you?”

  “Yep,” I said, putting a hand over my heart. “I swear to God and Hershey and all that’s holy and deliciou
s.”

  “To all that’s holy and delicious?” he asked skeptically.

  “Yeah, I swear on the important stuff.”

  I walked to the drawer, pulled out a pair of underwear, and slid them on. “Unpack, Bryn, we’ve got work to do. Later, if you want, we can make up in a way that’s fun.”

  His hand shook a little as he ran it through his hair. “I’ve never felt this out of control in my life. Not even the times in college when I got dead drunk.”

  “Yeah, welcome to love. It’s a mess.”

  He choked out a laugh. “That’s your expert opinion, huh? Christ,” he murmured. After a moment, he seemed steadier. “Come give me a kiss.”

  I looked over my shoulder at him. He watched and waited.

  “I might still taste like fae magic.”

  “I’ll risk it,” he said.

  I strode to him and planted a kiss on his mouth. His arms slid around me, and I felt restless magic, dangerous and delicious, slide against me.

  I had to wrestle free. His eyes blazed blue with a look that promised the best kind of makeup sex, but I shook off the temptation.

  “Later,” I said firmly. “I need my brilliant-guy Bryn first.”

  “All right.” He retrieved the fallen glass from the floor and set it next to the bottle. “And Tamara?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “If you ever sleep with Sutton while you and I are together, I will kill him.”

  I huffed a sigh. “Don’t you guys ever get tired of threatening to kill each other? There are more important things going on in Duvall than who I spend the night with.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Jealousy’s the reason love’s a mess. But don’t worry. You’ll be okay,” I promised, which made him smile.

  • • •

  DOWNSTAIRS, I PICKED up the security phone in the kitchen. “Hey, Steve.”

  He cleared his throat. “Hey, Tammy Jo. How are things?”

  “Oh, yeah, everything’s okay,” I said. “Where’s Mr. Jenson’s room?” I asked.

  Steve gave me directions. A minute later, I knocked softly on Mr. Jenson’s bedroom door.

  He invited me in, and I heard a deep, wet-sounding cough that worried me straight down to my toes.