“No, you were right the first time. Dark Fae are monstrous. We use glamour to fool unsuspecting humans,” Dain said, and he leaned over me.
I fell back, catching myself on my elbows. He kept leaning until I was almost lying down, arms straining to hold me up to keep eye contact. His golden eyes flashed with liquid lightning and suddenly he had wings. He opened them wide, while a heavy weight pushed down on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. He simply had his palm resting over my ribs, but the weight felt so immense that even my heart stuttered against it. I gasped in air like I was locked in a trunk, wheezing against the pressure and time. That was before he fully opened his wings and my lungs and heart gave up, freezing against the power he unfolded.
They were black, unrelenting darkness with a bony frame wrapped in scales that gleamed, a shine like oil over water that revealed the trapped power in every inch of the seven-foot span. He curled one wing towards me, brushing the top of it against my cheek, the scales smooth and warm as snake skin but thicker.
“We are not human, and sickness cannot be passed in our cells. The magic won’t allow it.”
The words seemed to sink into my skin, thick and heavy with power that demanded I bend, accept Dain’s will. I wanted to whimper and beg. The pressure built and built, almost choking off what air I could get in my parched throat.
I closed my eyes and started to count to ten out loud.
“Eve?” whispered Eloden. There might have been a little concern in there for me. Just what had that asshole gotten me into on Friday night at the rink?
“No,” I said. “Make it all go away.”
The feel of Dain’s warm wing on my face disappeared. “Get up,” he ordered me.
I opened my eyes.
“I have to go to work,” I repeated. I was a record skipping on repeat because I didn’t know what else to say. My brain had given up on trying to explain everything away.
They weren’t human.
“Oh, just take her to work and bring her back,” Kheelan suggested. “She needs time to absorb everything.”
“I’ll go,” said Eloden.
“No,” I said. “I can go alone.”
Dain reached out to touch me, but I shied back from him again.
“You are ours to protect,” Dain said. “Pick someone, but you are not going alone.”
“He knows about your neck,” Falin said.
“It was a scratch,” I retorted, shooting Falin a dirty look. What a snitch.
“Made by a knife to your throat,” Falin said.
“You weren’t there,” I said. “I scratched myself accidentally.”
“Eloden already admitted the truth and was punished,” Falin snidely told me.
“Eloden saved me,” I said, pissed off.
“Maybe Eloden should have kissed you in the bedroom. He’s been known to get under the skirts of any lady he wants with his foxy tricks,” Falin said, sounding frankly jealous.
“He’s got prettier hair than you,” I said.
“Fiery hair isn’t going to-”
“Enough!” Dain shouted. His voice thundered, literally. I heard the plates in my cupboard rattle.
“Eloden takes Eve to work and back. No side trips,” Dain said.
“I need to go to the Changs’ apartment,” I said.
“And to the Changs’ apartment,” Dain allowed. “You will take care of any other problems like we discussed earlier,” Dain added.
“What do you mean take care of?” I asked, suspicious.
Aeric sliced a finger across his throat.
I whipped my gaze back to Dain.
“You can’t go murdering the other residents at the Changs’ apartment building,” I seriously protested. They could not mean it literally, although the slain pillow made me wonder. I would discuss this with Eloden in the car. “Let’s go. I’m already so late, I’m going to miss the trial admission period.”
I needed normalcy back in my life. Counting growth plates, making data charts and even the lies in statistics would be preferable to the frightening delusions and hallucinations Dain was trying to force on me.
I hopped off my table and pushed through Dain and Eloden, marching to my bedroom to shut and lock the door, slumping down against it.
What was that?
The wings had to be some sort of trick.
Fae sex? An orgy if I had gotten Dain’s drift, not that he had been subtle. Simple indeed. The only thing they had left out was my permission. Maybe that wasn’t a thing in Faerie where they kidnapped babies and tortured humans for fun.
It sounded more like the hell-realm Matthew had called it.
I wasn’t showering with my apartment so crowded, so I pulled out jeans, a t-shirt and hoodie as well as fresh underwear and a bra, quickly stripping and changing behind the closed door.
Changing the locks would be useless. I had my key with me earlier and they had still gotten into my apartment last night. A chain on the door would be more useful, like the Changs’ apartment. I would call my landlord to ensure he okayed it first, but they seemed standard.
I could always move back home.
The guys hadn’t taken my warning about disease very seriously. Their misunderstanding about my Halfling status was the root of the problem. Did they think I wouldn’t have noticed magical powers during the first two decades of my life? If I was half Fae, then I was a dud. I also had no problem with iron and I lied all the time. No way, no how. I wasn’t sleeping with a bunch of fairies because they told me a pretty tale.
Why was I even bothering to try to logic this out? They were crazy.
Those wings and the way Dain felt over me... the way his kiss had melted away my fears and prudish restraints for a magical moment. It had to have been a spell. That was the kind of magic I believed in.
“I thought you were in a hurry?”
It was Falin outside my door. He was annoying me, so that part wasn’t surprising, but I thought it would be Eloden rushing me since he was accompanying me as my ordered protection. Those lab rats better behave today or they would meet their dastardly ends.
“I decided to go back to bed and try this morning all over again,” I said to Falin, opening the door.
Falin refused to step back far enough to give me room to get by without brushing past him, so I gave him what he was begging for by letting my front half push against his body as I moved sideways through the doorway.
He groaned but didn’t grab me. I swear he did it to torture himself. Falin was displaying definite masochistic tendencies.
I thought for one horrifying second of all the sexy romance books on my phone, many with the darker BDSM themes I secretly enjoyed. It was doubtful they had found them. Messages and email were what people spied on if they broke into your phone, not naughty reading habits. I might refuse to make my fantasies a reality but it didn’t mean I had to hold back on book boyfriends for the long and lonely nights.
“You changed your clothes,” Falin noted, interrupting my thoughts.
It wasn’t something to blush over but I did and hoped he didn’t notice as I turned from him.
“I tend to not go to work half-naked,” I said.
I think he muttered something about me having been more than half-naked earlier, and technically, he was right.
“Dain wants you to have a Mark before you go,” Falin said to my back.
I remembered Dain saying he was going to Mark me on Friday night when he caught me against my car. If that involved getting tattooed, then my answer was a hard no. I looked back at Falin over my shoulder.
“I’m not into permanent art,” I said. “Granny tats are so wrong, and I’m only getting older.”
“It’s a bite,” Falin said.
I tried to run. It was instinct. I should have known better.
“Don’t you dare,” I shouted at Falin. He had grabbed me from behind by my hips and popped me off my feet.
“This is going to be so much nicer for me than you,” he teased.
> My yelling drew attention.
“Falin, don’t play with her. She’s in a hurry,” Dain said. He was in the kitchen and it didn’t sound like he was going to come in to help either of us.
“Do you want me to bind your hands for fun?” Falin asked, bringing me back into the bedroom. “It will only take a second and I know so many wonderful knots.”
“Eat shit and die,” I told him. Not the most original comeback but my brain was fried.
“Humans are so dirty,” Falin said, throwing me onto the bed on my front. He quickly followed me down so there was no escape.
“I thought I was a Halfling,” I reminded him.
“I’d fuck you even if you were only human,” he said. “Just say please, Baby.”
He was hard against my butt and eager to show me, grinding against me as I tried to evade complete capture. In seconds, he had my thighs clamped between his own and my hands stretched out over my head, bound together at the wrist with one of his own hands.
He bared my neck from behind.
I screamed before he even touched my neck with his lips. The shriek I gave when he licked me rivalled the alarm from this morning. When he bit, I felt pressure, but there was no pain. He held me pinned to the bed by his mouth and body for the count of five and then released me, jumping up from the bed.
Falin whistled as he walked out the door.
“I’m going to kill you,” I shouted, wiping the saliva from my neck with the back of my hoodie sleeve.
“Dain?” Falin pleaded.
“No,” Dain said.
I ran out into the hallway and practically mowed Falin down. He had barely cleared the doorway, standing there in the hall and waiting for me. My speed and anger took me to the kitchen entrance before I could hit the brakes.
The guys were drinking from my mugs, every single one that I owned, apparently. Dain had the kitty mug this time. Kheelan arched an eyebrow at my furious appearance and the rest of them ignored me. Falin whistled and strolled right past me.
“You can play with Falin when you come back,” Dain said, interrupting my pounce. That hadn’t been a suggestion.
“I use the kitty mug to spit in when I chew tobacco,” I said.
Aeric choked on his drink. I’d forgotten that he had drunk tap water from it the first time they were in my apartment. A two-for-one hit.
Dain sipped more of whatever he was drinking from the kitty mug, unphased.
“You have beautiful, pearly-white teeth,” he said. “Like a fairy tale princess.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “It’s called bleach.”
Eloden snagged my keys from where I had left them on the kitchen counter.
“Ready to go to work?” he asked. “Do you need to bring your pet?”
I wanted to look at my neck first. It kind of tingled, not painful but a reminder that Falin had bitten me. I wondered if there was a visible mark. At least the bite had woken me from my shocked stupor earlier. I wasn’t going to let these jerks keep pushing me around. It was time I took charge.
“Am I going to look like some animal attacked me?” I asked, giving Falin an accusing look.
“Only other Fae will see the Mark,” Dain said.
“He bit me,” I said.
Dain didn’t look sympathetic.
I pulled my hoodie up and marched over to Eloden, grabbing my keys from his hand. “Leave the rat,” I said. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone, walking out my door.
Eloden gave me a few steps of distance.
“Are you going to puke in my car?” I asked as we exited the apartment building.
“It’s iron poisoning,” he said.
“Not dark enough?” I mocked.
“My strength is glamour magic and iron is toughest on glamour,” he said, waiting for me to unlock the back door. “I have to focus if I’m going to maintain my glamour surrounded by a ton of metal.”
I wanted to call him a lightweight, but that comment kind of put it in perspective. If I wanted more information, I was going to have to play along a bit. “Glamour is tricks, right? Is that why you’re a fox?”
“You’re pretty good at glamour yourself,” he said, getting in.
I got into the front seat. “I don’t have magic,” I said.
“You are good at fooling others,” he said.
I turned Baby’s ignition.
“I have a terrible lying habit for a Fae,” I said.
“Halfling,” he corrected.
“Dain said you found me,” I said, backing up Baby, slow and careful.
“I don’t know how you remained hidden all this time.”
He was seated the same way as the last time I drove him, head down and surrounded by his gorgeous curtain of red hair. My fingers itched to brush it back, so I could see his face. My last touch of it had been pure silk, cool and liquid softness between my fingers.
“You can’t come into my work,” I said.
“I can hide.”
“There are cameras, security and door alarms.”
“I can be invisible.”
“Glamour?” I asked. My heart was speeding up again. I had half convinced myself that Dain’s wings had been a hoax. They had time to prepare something, access to my apartment. If Eloden disappeared in my government-secured lab, I might have to reconsider my magic denial.
“Yes,” he said. “I told you it’s my strength. I can even cast a glamour on you or objects you hold that will last past the change in light.”
Objects?
I glanced down at my keyring. The tracking charm was on it again.
“A little present from you?” I asked.
“Did you really have to throw it out in the garbage? It took a lot of soap to get rid of the smell of garlic.”
That must have been the Chinese I had the night before I had left the apartment for my parent’s house. I tried to discreetly sniff. Were my keys going to smell like leftovers?
“And what does your charm do, other than aid your stalking?”
“It hides your ears, little Halfling,” he said, sounding vexed.
“Pointy ears have never been a problem of mine.”
“Your glamour is still good enough to fool humans, but it was your ears that gave you away to me.”
I looked at him in the rearview mirror, pulling off the highway to the exit ramp.
“Let me see your ears,” I said.
He looked up, green eyes almost fluorescent in the mirror and tucked his hair behind two beautifully pointed ears. His face seemed more angular and his hair was longer, reaching down to mid-chest. When he spoke the harmonic tone of his voice made all the little hairs stand up on my arms like power came from his words alone.
“Fae are too immense for the human mind to behold for long,” he said.
I broke eye contact, concentrating on turning onto the right street. It was a good thing this was mostly muscle memory because otherwise, I would have gotten us lost.
I was chauffeuring a Fae in the backseat of my Baby.
I parked, hands trembling a bit and took a deep breath. Turn the car off. Keys out of the ignition. Grab my ID from my bag and stuff it in my pocket. Put the bag under the seat and out of the sight of thieves. Get out of the car. Open the door for the iron allergic Fae.
“Much appreciated,” Eloden said.
I waited for him to move out of the way and closed and locked his door. I didn’t look him in the eye, turning around and walking towards the security entrance.
“Hide yourself,” I said.
I got through security and went into the basement growth rooms, making record time to mark down all the clinical parameters in the logbooks, light intensity, temperature, humidity and a quick mark of obviously contaminated plates. Eloden, if he was still with me, never said a word.
I took the stairs, mindful that Eloden might not want to travel in a moving metal box when using his glamour. I don’t even know how he managed to get through the metal detector. Knowing security was limited to picture-on
ly cameras in the stairwell, I chanced talking to him.
“Are you there?”
I felt something brush against my shoulder. I stopped and looked back. There was nothing there, but this time I felt Eloden cup my cheek.
“I guess it breaks your glamour to talk?” I said, not expecting an answer.
I turned back around and headed up the stairs another couple flights.
“I need to check in on another experiment,” I said.
The clinical researcher smiled but firmly told me I had missed the check-in time as I huffed from my rush. Stairs made everyone feel out of shape.
“Will you have any other admissions later?” I asked. This drug may only be phase one, but it sounded so promising.
“No, only a couple dozen volunteers were needed.”
Most people did this for the money, and it wasn’t that much, which made me feel bad when I didn’t need financial compensation. This phase one had paid a premium because the drug was an injectable. People hated getting poked.
“Is Dr. Johnston here today?” I asked.
“He’s busy,” she said.
Of course, he was busy, but there were plenty of assistants to run the trial. “I wanted to ask him something about my lab. It’s work,” I said.
She looked at the ID I had pinned to my hoodie.
“I’ll ask him,” she said.
I felt Eloden’s hand resting on my shoulder as Dr. Johnston approached.
“Eve, you missed the admissions,” Dr. Johnston said.
“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “My mother had a bad fall and I was staying at home with her,” I said, only slightly twisting the truth. “Mr. Morrison is worried about her,” I added, knowing he was familiar with my stepfather, although they weren’t friends like my lab boss had been once.
“I didn’t know your mother had started showing symptoms,” Dr. Johnson said. “I’m sorry to hear about her progression.”
“Do you think this drug is going to do well?” I asked.
“It’s a phase one,” he reminded me. “The unique mechanism is promising, attacking the damaging protein itself. We have another drug that may be ready for phase one in a few months.” He looked over to where the clinical assistants were chatting. “Come, walk with me for a coffee,” he said.
No Faerie Tale Love (Faerie Series Book 1) Page 13