He turned her face ever so gently, placing his lips on hers. She melted into the kiss, unable to deny him. After a moment, he rested his forehead on hers. “Come back to me, my Emily.”
She blinked back the tears that suddenly threatened, the sob in her throat choking her voice so she could only nod in response.
Kayden backed off and she fled.
The tears she’d managed to hold back erupted as she walked, head down and hands in her pockets. He wasn’t real.
But he is here.
She wasn’t some magical fucking princess from another world. Couldn’t be.
But she couldn’t remember past a certain point, had never considered it strange. Daphne was right about all that.
She wasn’t this person.
That was the root of it, really. How could Emily believe in him when she didn’t believe in herself? She was boring. She was fat. She was ugly. She wasn’t the kind of woman who inspired lust in magician princes. She was the sort of person who fantasized about that sort of thing.
Proving that walking around with your head down and tears blinding you is a horrible idea, she slammed into Mrs. Cress on the sidewalk.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mrs. Cress!”
Yeah, running your boss down on the day you called off sick.
Great way to keep your job.
“Emily, dear, are you all right?”
And she broke. Like some dam inside her ruptured, she sobbed and her boss pulled her into her warm arms and patted her back. “Oh, Emily.” Mrs. Cress sounded like she understood—impossible, but she did.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cress. I’m just having a really bad day.” As the sobs finally subsided, embarrassment flooded her.
“No need to apologize. Is it something you’d like to talk about?”
Emily choked, not sure if the noise that tried to come out was a laugh or another sob. “You wouldn’t understand.” Understatement.
“Try me. I think I might be able to help.”
“Okay, well, that might be true if I had a mundane problem, but this one? Let’s just leave it at I probably need a Thorazine drip and, other than that, no one would understand.”
“Is it about Kayden, then?”
Blinking, her worldview again shifting, Emily considered her boss as yet another traitor in her world, knowing more than she told Emily.
“It is. And I’m sorry. I’ve been here, protecting you, but not telling you anything because until you faced the truth, there was nothing I could do.”
“Who in the hell are you?” Emily demanded, trying to sound calm but far from it.
Mrs. Cress pointed to a nearby bench. “Sit with me. We’ll talk and when I’m done telling my story, you can tell me yours, if you’re inclined.”
Upon sitting with the woman, Emily’s curiosity won out over fury. “Talk.”
“I was only a girl when I married my Stewart. He was a handsome man, so full of light and magic I thought we could change the world. And we did.”
Mrs. Cress paused, pulled knitting out of her purse and started a line. “Sorry, dear, I hate to have my hands still.” The clicking of the needles was familiar, a sound she often heard at work, and its familiarity was soothing.
“But my Stewart,” Mrs. Cress continued, “He wasn’t happy with just a little power. They say absolute power destroys absolutely and in our case, it ruptured what there was between us like someone sticking a needle in a water balloon. We had two children, Mildred and Mable—horrible names—and they grew up to be horrible children. Partly my fault—I spoiled them. But Mable was the more powerful of the two. By the time I realized she and Stewart plotted to take over the royal family, they’d already married Mable off to your father and your sister was born.”
Shaking her head, Mrs. Cress took a breath and then began again. “Mable had gotten her hands on a prophecy. She and her father had started dabbling in darker arts behind my back, magic that called upon spirits from other worlds, other dimensions, other creatures and I was blinded by what I wanted to see. I wanted a happy and beautiful family. On the surface, we were … and I had a new grandchild. Below the surface, if I bothered to scratch at it, festered the darkness and it was taking my Stewart away from me and via him, my girls.”
“My first clue to the problem was when Mildred died. She had been so vivacious, so full of life. And then she sickened. She withered before my very eyes. I never guessed that her father and sister sucked the very essence out of her, poisoned her and drained her magic away. Who would guess something like that? But that they took that magic into themselves? Yes, I could see the changes, even if I chose to be blind to the reasons behind them.”
“Then Mable had another child, Daphne.” The old woman smiled. “Daphne was spunky, right from the start. She’s a joy and a terror and I adored that child. When she was born, though, Mable didn’t want a thing to do with her. Again, I got distracted, and didn’t watch what was going on around me. I ended up taking care of the baby, because I thought it was some sort of hormonal thing, like Mable was having a hard time bonding with her. I didn’t want one of my grandchildren to be raised by nurses and the help.”
“The darkness grew and I continued to ignore it. Then you were born.” Touching Emily’s hand briefly, she then resumed her knitting. “You were stunning, even more beautiful than the first two. Your mother, she didn’t just ignore you. She hated you. Your grandfather hated you. Your father hated you. I’d never seen logical adults react in such a way to a baby before.”
“Then I found the prophecy. I read of your destiny, your future and I suddenly understood that my Mildred didn’t die of natural causes. I began asking questions, trying to figure out where we’d gone so horribly wrong.”
“My own husband banished me to this world, far away from meddling in your lives. You were little more than a baby, then. My magic, stripped from me by your mother, my daughter, withered my body until I looked as I do now.”
She smiled, her leathery face crinkling in kind lines. “But I knew because I actually read the prophecy, understood because I wasn’t blinded by the power offered by it, that you’d be here too. My family was torn apart, shredded by a desire for power but I knew that you, my chosen one and granddaughter, would put it to rights. With the family, you’ll heal the kingdom.”
“That doesn’t explain a thing. You’ve lied to me for years.” Emily swallowed back the bitterness that wanted to rise up. She wanted to yell, to stomp her feet, to rail against the fact the world wasn’t fair.
“I lied to you because I wanted to be here for today.” She nodded to herself, starting another line in the knitting. “I wanted to be here and tell you you’re beautiful.”
Snorting, Emily slouched.
“You’re beautiful, you’re strong, and you’re not just a chosen one. You were chosen because of how strong you can be. But if you don’t believe in yourself, how can you believe in Kayden? The way I see it, granddaughter, you can chose one of two paths at this point.”
Emily listened, hoping she’d clear up the fog and confusion that she fought inside.
“You can choose to disbelieve all of this. You can walk away and call us all insane. You can pretend this was all some weird dream and go about your life as if nothing happened. That’s the easy choice, however, and destiny doesn’t reward easy.”
Emily nodded. She hadn’t even considered walking away. But she could. She could keep walking and just pretend none of this happened.
It would be just like normal life. She could get a new job. Go back to being invisible.
Go back to a world that didn’t have a magical prince that brought her to life, made her feel beautiful, and cherished her.
She frowned, because it wasn’t even that tempting.
“Or you could choose to take the hard path. Believe in yourself. Believe you deserve happiness and love. A spell took away your memories and tried to take away your destiny and your man. You managed, already, something no one thought was possible—you’ve found ti
me to fall in love with Kayden, to see his world as an outsider and understand how wonderful it is. But that spell was cast. You can break it. You can stop those who tried to stop you. You can challenge them. You can have the hero.”
Mrs. Cress paused, staring at Emily, her hands stilling. “But you have to want it. You have to believe you can. You have to own it. If you don’t and you challenge them, they’re going to kill you.”
Those words, stated so calmly and reasonably by the sweet-faced old woman, sent chills through Emily. “What if I’m not good enough to do all that?”
“What if there wasn’t ever a Kayden? What if you’re really just a librarian and all of this is a dream? What if…it is real?”
And that cut to the crux of the problem.
She didn’t believe he was real.
Emily still believed he was just some dream, something her mind made up to fill in the boring spaces in her life.
She breathed in, slowly, eyes closed.
If he was real, she loved him. She’d loved him before she really believed he was real.
If he was real, she really had magic.
If he was real, his kingdom was real and someone had tried to keep her away from him.
If he was real… she had a lot to be pissed about.
If he was real…
Opening her eyes, Emily decided to do an experiment. In his world, she was magical. She had powers.
Concentrating, she tried to form a ball of light like the one he’d absentmindedly created in her apartment.
When one formed, she dropped it, shocked.
That shouldn’t have worked. But the ball lay at her feet, looking like a glowing blue crystal.
She kicked it and it felt solid.
“Fuck, he’s real.”
Saying it out loud seemed to give her strength. “Fuck.”
She stood up, abruptly, and started to pace down the sidewalk. Turning, she looked back at Mrs. Cress. “Fuck, you’re my grandmother.”
“Yes, and your language sucks.”
Snorting, Emily almost gagged on the laughter that bubbled up. “Yours isn’t much better. I’ve worked with you for years.”
“Yes, dear.” Her grandmother nodded, smiling.
“Fuck. I gotta go, Mrs. Cress. I mean, Grandma. Whatever.”
The old woman nodded, shooing her with her hand.
If Kayden was real, Emily wanted to touch him.
Chapter Eleven
He’d messed up. Funny how he could know he ruined it all and yet not be able to stop the avalanche of events from destroying the one thing he really cared about. And that was the bitch of it. Emily had been the one thing that was his, not the kingdoms, not something he did for a vow…
His.
And he knew it would happen one day. Knew it and yet somehow, he thought they’d have more time. Lying on his back on the couch—too short for him—he stared at the ceiling and just moped. And then the door slammed into the wall. He shot up, ready to battle, to face Emily. She looked like a woman on a mission.
“Hey, magic man.” She grinned. Since she’d left looking broken, he wasn’t sure what happened while she was gone to make this dramatic change.
“Uh,” he tried.
“Look what I can do.” She clasped her hands together and created a ball of light.
A simple spell, one he could remember teaching her. She fondled it and he thought back. On one of her first night time visits, when he’d been hardly more than a boy, she appeared—which freaked him out the first time, but had started to be less shocking by that point. Her hair hung in neat braids down her back each night back then. She’d worn a nightgown—in all the time he knew her, being in this world and the night of the gray silk thing had been the only times he had seen her in anything but a nightgown—and he’d been in the forest, camping.
Well, not camping. He’d run away, come to think of it.
She appeared and as a child, she’d been scared of the dark. He knew she had to be magical. How else could she just appear every night? So he showed her how to cup her hands and call light. Looking back, it’d been the first night he’d realized how pretty she was. Her face, rapt in an expression of awe, lit by the glow of her own magic … and then she smiled at him.
She smiled now, a far more edgy smile than the one he got from the younger version of Emily.
“Yeah, light spell.” He shrugged, not sure what caused her brittle joy.
“I can do magic.” Her face begged him to understand, but he still didn’t get what was exciting about the ball of light.
“Yes, you can do magic.” Maybe if he talked really slowly…
“You’re real.”
Apparently, they were playing a game of state the obvious.
“Yes. You’re real, too.”
“And you want me.”
The words caused his dick to harden in response like a soldier reporting for duty. He still wasn’t sure about her expression, but… “Yes. I’ve wanted you for years.” She stalked to him, like a predatory cat honed in on its prey. “Emily?” She didn’t slow, coming toe to toe with him.
“Kayden.”
“What’s going on?” And then she grasped his face, tugging it towards hers. He cooperated, tasting the sweetness of her mouth. But it wasn’t a sweet kiss. After a moment, she broke it, coming up for air like a mermaid surfacing from the sea. “I needed that.”
He nodded. He liked it, too. Then she shoved him. He dropped backwards, not expecting the push, and landed with a thump on the couch. Before he could comment, he had a lapful of luscious and hungry woman in his arms.
“I need more.”
Usually, he led. When they went on adventures, he chose them. When he kissed her, she responded. When they’d made love, she opened like some delicate flower under his sunshine.
Now she had the reins and her hand found his cock as her teeth nipped his lip.
She wasn’t seducing him, she was taking him. He dragged his fingers up her thighs, more turned on than he’d ever been before. Stripping her fast in rushed and starved movements, he found the flesh he longed to taste. Her hands never stopped moving, scraping his back, tugging his nipples and her mouth shifted between sucking and biting at him until she blinded him with need.
“Emily,” he whispered but this time, it was a plea.
Catching her ass in his hands, he plunged her down to seat her hard on his cock. The feel of her closed around him, so deep and tight, crossed his eyes with pleasure. But she wasn’t still for long, rising and repeating the motion, her breasts jiggling in front of his face a temptation until he caught one and suckled. With his other hand, he guided her hips, grinding his own up and in a wave to better pleasure her until she cried out, clutching his hair with both hands.
“You’re real. This isn’t a dream.” She panted the words, still wringing pleasure from him as she rocked on his dick and he wasn’t sure he could hold on.
He slid a hand between them, tweaking her clit and shoving his magic into the touch to make her cry out, arch, and feel the velvet sheath of her suck at his aroused dick.
Dropping to his knees, he pushed her to the floor, splaying her out like a feast for his eyes. Her large breasts heaved as she panted out the last of her release and her face flushed with passion, lips plump from his kisses.
Pulling her knees over his shoulders, he sped up the pace, thrusting inside her until her hands clutched at him, the floor, and her legs shook. “Kayden,” she whispered again.
Still he pumped into her until she tightened again, watched as her face crumpled with her release and then finally allowed himself to erupt, the orgasm shattering him as it shot shivers of pleasure from the roots of his hair to his toes.
Spent, he rolled, pulling her close. Emily was more than magical. She was his.
He couldn’t bear to lose her.
Raining kisses across her brow, her eyes, her lips, he listened to her ragged breathing as she tried to find her balance again.
“So, the wa
lk did you some good?” he asked. She slapped his arm, her eyes sparkling with peace she’d been missing when she left him.
But it was a familiar smile and he didn’t need her answer. Closing his eyes, he wished he had more time to just enjoy her and not be the king.
Chapter Twelve
“Can’t you just trust me?”
It became quite obvious that her magical prince wasn’t big on the idea of letting her lead. “No.”
Adorably cast in a frown, she searched for sympathy for his grumpy expression and found none. Probably she shouldn’t find his frustration endearing. After years of him playing the role of mischievous and playful man, dominant man, and all around alpha male, it was kind of fun for her to be the one in charge. They were in her world, now. She’d dragged him here, and she would fix it. “Just come on.” He’d halted on the sidewalk and people were staring at him. She’d become used to the sight of him in her dreams, but in this world, well, men in kilts who had chests like linebackers drew unwanted attention.
He followed her into the bookstore. The familiar jangle of the bell made her smile a little. “Mrs. Cress?”
Mrs. Cress peeked out of her office at the back of the store. “You could just call me Grandma, you know.”
Laughing, she let herself feel giddy for a moment. She had family. She had a lover. She had magic.
What a difference a day could make.
“It’s going to take me a minute to get used to that. Anyway, you said you had an idea…” She pointed at Kayden. “I brought him.”
Mrs. Cress smiled and walked out to take Kayden’s hands. He still looked surly as hell. “So you’re the young prince who stole my grandchild’s heart.”
If anything, Kayden frowned more.
“So, the magic is pretty easy with your powers combined. All you have to do is give me a sample of blood—just a prick—on this piece of paper. We use the combination of your soul mate magic and your natural magic and you hold hands and you should pop right back to the land of the setting sun.” Mrs. Cress held up what looked like a diabetic tester strip and grinned.
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