Prince Charming Doesn’t Live Here

by Christine Warren

  Reaching out with his inner senses, he searched the atmosphere around them until he found the pulsing heat of the power just their need for each other had already raised. Pulling the barest seed of it to him, Mac caught her gaze and winked, and in an instant the garments between them disappeared. They blinked out of existence as if they had never been, leaving nothing separating his skin from hers.

  “I promise you, Danice, this is about more than power,” he murmured, loving the way her skin flushed and softened and her eyes went all hazy and unfocused with desire. “But the power can come in very handy. Don’t you think?”

  Twenty-two

  Danice gasped, but her legs shifted instinctively, parting just enough to allow his erection to nestle against the warmth between her thighs. She could feel exactly how genuine was his need for her, and the thought threatened to drive her crazy.

  She closed her eyes when he lowered his head, moaned when his tongue stroked over the curve of her jaw, danced down the side of her throat, and flicked over her collarbone. Then he set teeth to skin and started nibbling, and a violent shudder quaked through her.

  “The power is nice, and you’ll be glad of it later,” he assured her, stroking his hands along her sides, following the dip and rise of her curves, making her ache for more intimate contact. “But power is the least of the reasons why I want you. In fact, I would love to show you all the reasons I want you, Danice, but I’m afraid the task would take me a very long time.”

  His lips curved against her skin, feathered over lush curves, and invaded sensitive hollows.

  “I’d like to show you how incredible it is that our bodies fit together so perfectly, every inch and angle in precise alignment. I’d like to show you how the heat we generate in each other could warm the surface of the earth during the coldest part of night. I’d like to show you that nothing else will ever feel as perfect as your skin against mine.”

  Danice arched her head back and moaned. The man had the voice of a snake charmer, low and rhythmic and relentless, vibrating through her belly and thighs and up into the deepest, hottest part of her.

  “But I’d also like to show you why you should appreciate the power we create together, not because of what we can do with it, but because of the way it feels building inside you.”

  He nipped the side of her neck, then laved the small sting with the flat of his tongue as Danice struggled for breath.

  “I want to show you the difference between a man and a changeling. The way subtle magic can make your skin come alive with feeling, or the way it can amplify each sensation until your nerves scream for respite.”

  His hands shifted, stroked over her shoulders and beneath her body to cup her hips and urge them higher against him. “I want to teach you how to hear the voices of a thousand choirs of the Fae singing songs of ecstasy and want.”

  His tongue flicked across her nipple, and the nub immediately swelled and tightened for him. Between her legs, another nub began to swell, this one coated in the thick, sweet honey of her need. “I want you to know that for the Fae, arousal is not a biological imperative, but a spiritual one. I don’t need you because I’m hard; I’m hard because I need you.”

  His thighs urged her legs to part, and Danice gave up pretending to protest. She spread her legs in wide welcome and wrapped her calves around his lean waist. She hooked her ankles together behind his back and fisted both hands in his hair, pulling the length of it forward over his shoulders. The scent wrapped around her as surely as his body did, redolent of sandalwood and clove, moss and man. She brought a handful to her face, breathing in the scent of him before rubbing the strands against her cheeks like a yard of living silk. He chuckled, but she decided he could laugh at her all he wanted. She was too far gone to care.

  Mac’s chuckle rumbled into a moan when she rubbed the sole of one foot high against his inner thigh, and became a growl when she untangled one hand from his hair and closed it over one firm cheek of his behind. She raked her fingernail lightly over the inner curve, and he shuddered, yanking her hard against him and positioning himself so his cock knocked against her entrance, trembling for a chance to be inside her. She could almost hear the way he gritted his teeth in a desperate bid for self-control, and it gave her a small sense of satisfaction. At least she wasn’t the only one in this bed who would kill right now for the sensation of his hard length sinking to her eager depths.

  Arching her hips to take the very tip of his shaft inside her, Danice opened her eyes into narrow slits and looked up at Mac with clear demand. “If you want to do all those things to me,” she said, her voice raw and low with need, “why don’t you stop talking about them and start doing them!”

  Digging her heels into the small of his back, she clenched her hands in his hair and thrust her hips up toward him, hard and fast, forcing him deep into the very heart of her.

  “Lady!”

  His hoarse shout sounded as if it had been ripped from his throat, but it didn’t sound much like a protest. The way he threw back his head and braced her for the quick shove of his hips didn’t feel like a protest, either. It felt like heaven as he forced every last inch of himself deep, filling her until she thought she could feel him nudging against her heart.

  “More.” She breathed the plea, barely a whisper, but he answered with a slow, intense rhythm that wound her tighter and tighter with every driving thrust. Her hands abandoned his hair and gripped his shoulders for support. She could feel the mattress shaking beneath her and the slick sheen of sweat coating his muscles and hers. She expected to see sparks where their bodies rubbed together, especially where the base of his shaft massaged her clit on each stroke. When he grunted and adjusted his position to slide a fraction deeper, her eyes flew open, and she swore she did see sparks.

  She cried out, and he grunted an answer.

  Her chest felt squeezed tight. She struggled just to breathe, struggled not to lose herself in the intensity of the sensations. She felt as if her very identity, her soul, her essence, were dissolving and being drawn from her into the hot space above them. She swore she could feel the power building, not just within her, but around her. This was more than the tension coiling in her womb, more than the clawing need for orgasm; this was raw energy, the stuff that moved the planets through the heavens and the earth on its axis and fed the spark of life into all the creatures under the stars.

  This was creation, distilled into the purest, most intense haze of shifting, swirling magic.

  And it had come from inside Danice.

  From within her and the man above her, around her, inside her. The knowledge exploded inside her mind, blinding her, deafening her. For an instant she felt as if she had seen the heart of the universe and watched it beating in time with her own.

  Pleasure returned her to consciousness.

  The shock of it, the knowledge of it, of being there at the edge of the precipice waiting to dive in and let it consume her, pulled her back. Her body arched beneath Mac’s, her lungs expanding to draw in one last, desperate gulp of air. She clung to him, their skin sliding and slipping under sheening films of heat and moisture. He felt like the only solid anchor in a vortex of power and pleasure, and yet she knew that in another moment, even he would dissolve, and they would each become a single, united atom in the explosive charge of power.

  His breath soughed in her ear, rough and hoarse. His body strained against her as he gave himself up to the inevitable ending.

  “Agh!”

  “God!”

  He roared.

  She screamed.

  The world imploded around them, a star collapsing in on itself in a cosmic burst of immeasurable intensity. His big body tightened above her, and Danice bucked and quivered in the vastness of eternity, her own muscles spasming, body clenching to milk the last drop of liquid heat he poured inside her.

  His weight settled on top of her in a hard, sweaty heap, but she surprised herself by not caring in the least. Frankly, she didn’t think she was capable of
caring. She wasn’t even sure she still existed. At least, not as the same person she’d been before. Not only had the universe shifted around her, but Danice had shifted inside herself, and in that moment it was all too fresh for her to make the slightest bit of sense out of it.

  Drawing in a shuddering breath, she decided not to try. She couldn’t think about this yet, couldn’t think about what had changed. Right now she needed to pretend—to herself, if that’s what it took—that everything was fine; nothing had changed and the world still made sense and Danice Carter was still an up-and-coming lawyer from Brooklyn with some odd friends and a wonderful family.

  And the most amazing lover ever to grace a set of sheets.

  She felt herself grin at her own thoughts. But hey, when she was right, she was right.

  McIntyre Callahan had just—quite literally—rocked her world. The man might be part of the weirdest experience of her life, but he made a damned good blanket. She could have fallen asleep right there, if not for the nagging thought that there was still something she had to do. Something other than get up to pee to stave off the otherwise inevitable UTI.

  Romance, she mourned silently, would forever be sacrificed on the altar of cold, anatomical reality.

  Groaning, she mustered every last ounce of her strength and lifted a hand just far enough to poke Mac in the hip.

  “Nngh.”

  She frowned. That had hardly been helpful.

  She poked again.

  “N-nngh.”

  Damn it. He was making her do this the hard way.

  She frowned as she tried to force the synapses in her brain to resume firing in the proper sequence for speech. And it was exactly as exhausting as she’d feared it would be.

  “Wa’n’t there s’mething we’re s’pposed to do?” she managed to ask, though the words came out kind of garbled due to the fact that her face was pressed into the shoulder of the man on top of her.

  Mac grunted again. Then he drew a massive breath and let it out in a gust that could have caused a tsunami in another part of the world. Or at least, it could have in the human world.

  “Did it,” he muttered, not sounding pleased that she had required a verbal response. “Now ’m gonna sleep.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Reassured, Danice let her eyes drift shut and her consciousness float away toward dreamland.

  For about a minute and a half. That was how long it took her brain to reboot far enough to tell her what they had been supposed to do.

  Her eyelids flew open and gazed at the night sky visible beyond Mac’s right shoulder. Enough adrenaline spiked through her to give her the strength to shove her arms hard against his chest.

  “Mac, where the hell did you put us?”

  “With any luck?” he muttered against her shoulder, where his face was currently buried. “Far enough away from the castle that we won’t immediately be spotted and recaptured. Because if we are, it’s going to take me at least three or four years before my heart will be strong enough to try that again.”

  She shoved again, which made him grunt but didn’t budge him an inch. “Well, would you take a look around, please, because I have no idea where we are, but my personal fantasies do not include finding myself in a compromising position in the middle of the Faerie equivalent of Yankee Stadium.”

  “Don’t worry. The Fae don’t have stadiums. They’re not much for team sports. Or for teams, really.” With a groan that indicated the expenditure of a great deal of effort, Mac finally lifted his head high enough to peer at their surroundings. Two seconds later he dropped it right back into place. “You’re fine. We’re in the middle of the forest. No one can see us.”

  “Good, then you have time to get us some clothes before anyone does.”

  She could feel his scowl against her skin. “I just told you no one could see us.”

  “Yeah, at the moment. But did you forget that even as we speak, the king, his hunting party, one unknown individual who may or may not be the one we’ve been searching for for the past week, and who knows who else, are currently running around this forest trying to find either each other or a way out? And I, for one, would like to have some pants on if any of them stumble across us.”

  One last shove (and, she could admit, likely Mac’s own conscience) finally managed to roll his weight off to the side, allowing Danice to draw breath. And shiver. After all, it was the middle of the night. In a forest. In other words, it was damned chilly.

  Mac heaved a gusty sigh and blinked up at the stars peeping through the canopy of leaves. “You know, it seems somewhat impractical that the sidhe method for raising large amounts of magical energy should leave you with so little physical energy that you can barely manage to use it.”

  Danice sat up and wrapped her arms over her chest. She glared down at him through narrowed eyes. “You’re not going to tell me you can’t get us clothes, are you? I mean, you made them disappear, earlier. It would be totally unfair for you to tell me you can make clothes dis-appear, but you can’t actually manage to make them re-appear.”

  “No, no. I got it.” With a negligent wave of his hand, Danice felt the warmth of her own jeans, top, and leather jacket surrounding her in their familiar comfort. She blew out a relieved breath. “Thanks. That helps a lot.”

  Mac heaved himself to his feet, wearing the same jeans and shirt he’d left Manhattan in as well. Holding out his hand, he helped her to her feet and brushed a kiss against her forehead. “Don’t thank me. It’s actually quite a bit harder to make things appear than it is to make them disappear, so I really couldn’t have done it without you.”

  He stepped back and this time took a good look at the small clearing in the trees where his attempt at sidhe magic had landed them. “You know, here’s a small problem, though. I was so concerned with getting us out of Dionnu’s little guest room, I didn’t really stop to consider how we would find Rosemary once we did escape. I don’t suppose you have any ideas.”

  Danice refused to give in to the rush of helplessness that beat against the back of her mind. That and the panic. She didn’t have time for either of those emotions at the moment. She had not come this far and gone through all this shit to give up or give in now. Not when the end of this entire miserable experience felt so damned close.

  She looked around her and frowned in thought. “If we were in Manhattan, I’d use my cell phone and start by calling her cell. Her grandfather gave me the number, and even if she didn’t answer, he said he’d registered it with a GPS company so he could track her.” She made a face. “Which, come to think of it, makes me understand a little bit better why she felt compelled to run from the old bastard.”

  Mac stared at her, an odd look on his face.

  “What?” she demanded, when he remained silent. His intense expression made her a little nervous.

  “Did you bring your phone with you last night? I didn’t see you bring a purse.”

  “Do you really think I would have carried a purse to a midnight rendezvous I knew was intended to culminate in a transdimensional excursion?” She shook her head. Men could be so clueless, even the smart ones. “But of course I brought my cell. I always carry it. In my pocket, when I have one. Which, considering what I’m wearing, I obviously do.”

  He made an impatient gesture. “Check and see if it’s still there. Sometimes modern electronics don’t react well to passing through the veil.”

  Danice cursed under her breath and unzipped the jacket pocket where she’d stored the small device. “You’d better be joking with me. My whole life is on this phone. If it’s toast, I’m going to be blaming you. Personally.” Her fingers brushed against the familiar heavy shape and she sighed with relief. “It’s here.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Why?” She handed it over, but she was confused as to why he’d want the thing. “I wouldn’t have thought installing cell towers was a big priority over here. It won’t get any reception.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”


  Danice watched while he powered the phone up and stared intently at the screen. She could feel his anticipation and what felt like excitement rising in him, but she had no idea what he could be thinking. She’d seen no evidence of technology of any kind during her short time in Faerie—no computers, no phones, no televisions or satellite receivers. Even the plumbing in the bathroom where they’d cleaned up that morning had seemed to work by magic. They had faucets and toilets, but no pipes. Water just appeared silently on command, and God knew what happened when you flushed, because Danice certainly didn’t.

  It took a minute for the phone to settle into working mode, but Danice knew the second it did, just by watching Mac’s face. When he handed the little device back to her, he was grinning smugly.

  “Take a look at that, sweetheart.”

  “Look at what?” But her eyes were already on the main screen, looking for something unusual. “It looks the same as it always does.”

  “Exactly.” His tone dripped with satisfaction.

  She made a noncommittal gesture. “And?”

  “And how many service bars do you see there?”

  Danice looked back at the screen, and her eyes widened. “It says I have full service. How is that even possible? Faerie doesn’t actually have cellular network towers, does it?”

  He shook his head, still grinning. “Nope, but they have something just as good: ley lines.”

  Twenty-three

  Danice just blinked at him. “Huh?”

  “Ley lines,” he repeated. “Think of longitude and latitude lines, invisible straight lines that circle the earth and intersect at different spots. Ley lines are a kind of similar concept on a magical level. They’re invisible lines of magic, only instead of all moving in the same direction, parallel, at regular intervals, from pole to pole, ley lines move across Faerie between points of particular magical significance. Between ancient monuments and sacred groves or streams. Things like that.”