"Can you tell me what the hell is going on?" I bark loudly. "What did you do? What are you doing here?"
He smirks. "Come here," he says, amber eyes boring into mine.
I want to, yet I don't want to. I'm excited by this man, but terrified too. Not terrified of him, but terrified of the way he makes me feel.
So, I hold back, my eyes stretching as I look at him. I shake my head slowly. "I can't," I say. Because it's a bad idea to get closer to this many who terrifies me, right?
"I'm for you," he says in his grunting, accented English. His eyes are tender now, he is no longer smirking, and I'm starting to be pulled in by the amber eyes.
I shake my head again. He is not for me, and vice-versa, I am not for him. We are not mates. We are not meant to be. He's just a hot Viking djinn who has found the one person who can see him, and he and I are both assigning too much meaning to this little...thing we share.
It's also possible that he doesn't actually exist. That I've conjured him out of whole cloth, my invisible Viking lover. I admit, I have a gift, but a lot of what I do cannot be explained, and it's quite possible I'm more than a little nuts. In fact, not only is it possible, it is probable.
Either way, whether he is real or not, Gunnar is leaving. It would be foolish to get caught up in this guy.
My rational mind lectures my heart and soul to be cautious. Prudent. Don't get carried away because this whole situation is weird and maybe even a little wonderful.
So, I shake my head and begin to inch away. I really should not have followed the cat in here. I don't need this kind of hassle.
"Come here," he repeats himself. My feet start moving me closer to him. He drops his meaty arms to his sides. Have I mentioned that Gunnar has amazing guns? He's really quite attractive for a figment of my imagination. And I have to say, I love how he looks today.
I don't know how he's able to change his look on a dime like he does, but of the three personas I've seen him adopt, this is by far the best one. He looks like a fucking Viking marauder masquerading as a rock star. I want to jump him, have him hold me with those big guns of his, and plant my pussy over his rattlesnake. I want to grind on him, brace my hands against his muscular chest, and fuck him until my hip sockets are so sore I cannot walk for a week. I want him to fuck me against every surface, every wall that we can find. I want to have twelve babies with him.
My body has unexpectedly gone up in flames. My stupid nipples harden and poke at the lace of my bra. My pussy drenches the crotch of my underwear like a fever just broke.
I reach for him. He reaches for me. He yanks me into his chest, tips my head back, and slants his lips over mine in a bruising kiss.
My body explodes with sensation. I realize keeping my distance means I have been taking only tentative sips of all that is Gunnar, but I don't have a choice any longer. He forces me to take all of him. He takes my mouth as his possession. His tongue invades my mouth, licking inside, and although I shouldn't be doing this, I return the kiss for all I'm worth. I grasp his arms and hold on desperately, my nails digging into the firm muscles of his biceps. We kiss each other desperately, grope each other as if it's perfectly normal to make out in the back of a hardware store, and keep going until I am completely out of breath.
"I've been walking the earth for so long," he whispers in my ear. His voice breaks a little with his emotions. It is thick and raspy. "I help others find their way to each other. But I think I was really looking for you. I was working to make myself worthy of you. And you are the first woman to make me come alive in all these years."
His breath fans the side of my face. It tickles the shell of my ear, and I lean forward, trying to catch his lips with my ear. We are body to body, and I only reach to his shoulder, but our torsos mostly match up, our legs positioned front to front, and something big and hard presses against my belly.
"Oh," I say stupidly. I tug away from him.
He lets me go, and we break apart. and I'm trembling, because, well, what the fuck? My mouth opens and closes soundlessly, and I stumble into his body, dizzy and sucking in great gulps of air, trying not to collapse.
Finally, when I can breathe again, I look up at him.
"It is time for me to leave," he says, stroking my cheek with a large thumb. "I wanted to say good-bye." His voice is deep and husky, clouded with lust and regret. His amber eyes are bright and a little sad. His hand slides around the back of my neck, teasing my sensitive skin with his fingers. His eyes glide over my face, and he thumbs my bottom lip, stroking it until I open wider.
Leave? And go where?
I blink at him. "Um, what?" I am so, so thoroughly confused. I wanted him to go, but now I want him to...stay?
"I have to go," he says. But I will return because we are fated,” he says this with the tone of one reporting a change in the weather.
I blink at him repeatedly. He gives me another kiss, a light, lingering touch of the lips, and as I watch, he disappears in a shimmery puff of smoke.
Eighteen months later...
I'm puttering around the apothecary, arranging an end cap of clearance Easter candy, when I feel vibrations. Spring is late coming to Perdition this year, so I'm wearing shoes, a pair of red beaded ballet flats that are a little worn. I avoid shoes whenever I can, both for the sake of comfort, and also because I would miss things like the vibrations I'm feeling now.
Vibrations often mean something is about to happen, usually something big. The last time I felt them was when Phelan Cermak and Lola Black came to town. In that case, the vibrations portended the arrival of the two of them and set off a chain of events that ended with the departure of Dennis Lauder, who was the chief of police, and his father, who was the Pack Alpha. Both men are now banished from Perdition.
I kick off the red shoes, the better to feel the vibrations. They travel up my legs in a steady hum, then I feel a thumping sensation. I rush to the window to see what's going on. I see a large moving van lumbering past. I step out on the sidewalk and peer down the street.
The truck stops way down the road and a tall, good-looking black-haired dude with a beard gets out of the driver's seat. I can tell even from many yards away that he's a tall, handsome bastard, and my mind immediately goes to "shifter." He rounds the front of the truck and enters the empty storefront down the street. It is exactly across the road from Richards Hardware. There is something so familiar about this man. I continue to peer at him, trying to place him.
I realize I have been dreaming of this man, the kind of dream that is vividly real in the moment, but fades like smoke the moment I awake, leaving nothing more than vague unsettled feelings. When I have off-the-wall dreams, they are usually premonitions of things to come. His name is...
"Duff Harrigan," I say out loud. Because that's his name. Duff Harrigan—he went by Duffy in my dreams—is a wolf shifter, related to Phelan Cermak's mother, and therefore, a cousin. He's Irish, I remember, as my dream starts to return to my conscious mind. He's moving to town, for reasons I do not recall from my dream. Also, he is soon to meet his fated mate.
He goes into the storefront and comes out again a few minutes later. He gets back in the van, closes the door behind him, turns the vehicle on, but the van doesn’t move. I imagine he is moving the van to the back of the building so that he can move in. The van sits there for longer than it should take to put it in gear and pull away.
He pokes his head out of the van, turns his head this way and that, and tips his head back, pointing his nose up to catch a scent that eludes him. I smile to myself, thinking he's going to figure out what the scent is, and why it intrigues him.
Duffy doesn't know it yet, but he's scenting his fated mate who runs the local diner. He sniffs the air and tries to find the origin of the scent.
A truck on the street honks loudly and Duff snaps out of his fated mate trance. Surely, all that moving will make him hungry, and he will make his way to the diner soon enough.
Twyla Turner is his fated mate, I think to myself.
She’s a friendly blonde lady with a teenage daughter. She is stable and has her shit together, is a little older than Duff, and somehow, I know they are a perfect match.
I sigh happily and head back into my shop. I'll be opening soon.
It took me weeks to accept that I wouldn't be seeing Gunnar ever again. Jasmine and AJ have completely forgotten about Fat Joey, almost as if he hadn't existed in the first place. Apparently, this is how his enchantment works. I remain confused by the whole situation, both because he annoys me and I had been determined to stay annoyed, until that last day in the back of the hardware store.
That day, and that damned kiss.
It doesn't matter, I tell myself. It's time to move it along. He will not be coming back, and that is that.
I have a chalkboard a-frame sign I place on the sidewalk to bring in foot traffic. I hand letter my Easter clearance sale, position the sign on the sidewalk, and turn to walk back inside the shop when something catches my eye. Something short, fat, and orange.
Fat Joey.
Chapter Five
Gunnar
The weeks following my time in Perdition are routine. I roam the city of Dallas and its alleys as I try to find my next assignment, which turns out to be a minotaur and his human mate.
Would you believe the two of them lived across the hall from each other for months before I had to intervene? This sort of scenario happens far more often than one might imagine. Fortunately, once I got involved, their love connection happened quickly. By my calculation, I have just one more match to make, and then I am free of my curse. I plan to make the final match, wherever it may be, return to Perdition, and claim Auntie, my mate.
My plan is cut short when, after minotaur Blake and human Sophia are mated, I find myself automagically returned to Perdition in my Fat Joey persona, courtesy of Astrid's curse. After all these years playing matchmaker, I no longer find the mode of transport jarring. I'm in the middle of the sidewalk, a few yards from Auntie's Apothecary.
And there she is, placing a sign on the sidewalk in front of the shop. She's wearing her usual long, colorful skirt and snug t-shirt. Even though it is well into spring, the bite of winter lingers, but she is not wearing shoes. In fact, I have yet to see her in shoes. Even when she visited Jasmine, she removed her shoes before stepping inside the cottage.
I look at her, taking in the bronze of her skin, her colorful braids, and the luscious curves I long to appreciate...with my hands. Auntie Greene is crunchier than a bowl of raisin bran, but she is also hot as fuck.
She is so different from the girls in my old village. Her skin is dusky, and the planes of her face are generous and exotic. The girls in my village all had fair or red hair, sharp facial features, and pale skin. When did Auntie’s type of beauty become my ideal? Probably the day I discovered she was the woman who made my body come alive again.
That alone is a thing of wonder. When Astrid placed her curse on me, my bodily functions became suspended. I have not aged past the age of twenty-nine, long in the tooth for the Viking age, but only early adult in the 22nd Century. I don't need to eat to stay alive. I don't need to sleep, pee, or shit either. I also don't get erections. That is, not until I met her.
Down the sidewalk, Auntie frowns, straightens, and looks around. I suspect she senses I am nearby. My suspicions are confirmed when her dark gaze lands on me. She is momentarily taken aback to see me, and surprise registers on her beautiful face. Her eyebrows come together in a frown. Her luscious lips are slightly parted. She shoots daggers of disdain at me from those beautiful black orbs of hers.
Then she turns on her bare heel and enters the apothecary.
Okay, not the reaction I had hoped for, but at least she still sees me, right? I know from centuries of mostly low-key matchmaking that any reaction—even a negative one—is something to be built on. I had helped along innumerable matings born of animosity.
I have no idea who I am here to help. Lacking anything else to do, I decide to go after Auntie. I go to the front door, scratch at it, then curse my lack of opposable thumbs, which prevent me from opening the door myself. I look up at the doorknob, meowing piteously. If Auntie can hear me, she is ignoring me. I sit there, swishing my tail, pondering my next move, when I hear a car door slam across the street and none other than Jasmine Greene, Auntie's niece and the assignment that first brought me to Perdition, jay walks across the road to the apothecary. She blinks at me in surprise.
"Well, hello there, sweetie," Jasmine says. She flashes a tight, nervous smile with plenty of teeth. "Who do you belong to?"
She gets down on her haunches and tentatively offers the tips of several fingers for me to sniff. She is cautious with new, possibly feral animals. I rub the side of my face against her hand and purr. Her smile relaxes as she warms up to me. Now she has the look of a woman recently head over heels in love, and I am pleased to take credit for putting her together with AJ.
Although, I have known her for almost a year, Jasmine is unaware that I used to be her house cat. It's how the curse works: once my work is done, no one who has encountered me remembers having done so. To Jasmine Greene, I am not the critter who helped her escape her abusive ex and find true love, but some rando stray cat of questionable origin. She gives me one last scratch, then turns to the door and knocks on it.
Auntie comes to the door, and when she spots Jasmine through the glass door, her face erupts into a radiant smile. I have never seen her smile before, and it literally stops my heart. Like Jasmine, Auntie has a radiant smile with plenty of white teeth, apple cheeks, and dimples. Have I mentioned that since I don't have a human voice, I can only express my emotions with meows and purrs? Well, I don't meow at the sight of Auntie's smile, but I do purr like a well-maintained automobile engine.
This attracts Auntie's attention, but when her eyes land on me, sitting on my haunches at Jasmine's feet and purring loudly, the smile falters and is replaced by a look of utter irritation. I slow blink at her.
Still giving me the hairy eyeball, she waves her niece into the shop, then closes the door in my face before I can sneak in.
If I were able to roll my eyes in exasperation, I would. Instead, I opt to trot around to the apothecary's back door. When I am certain I won't be observed by passersby, I materialize inside the apothecary. Auntie is behind the counter, focused on whatever it is she's doing with her mortar and pestle. I am behind her, out of her line of sight, and for the moment, she's not aware of me. In my human form, Jasmine cannot see me. She leans against the other side of the counter and peers into the mortar.
"Thanks again for this," Jasmine says, offering a small smile. "I can't tell you how convenient it is to have a conjure-woman in the family. None of the sleep aids I've gotten over the counter have worked for me."
I remember Auntie gave Jasmine a sedative that necessitated her niece being escorted home by AJ. Before that incident, the two had been remarkably difficult to get together.
"My pleasure," Auntie says distractedly, waving a hand dismissively. "What's family for?"
Jasmine offers a warm smile. "If I hadn't come to you for sleep aids that day AJ and I got together, I'm not so sure we would have figured out we liked each other."
Auntie waves off this proclamation, still focused on her work. "No problem."
"I've been thinking..." Jasmine says. She draws circles on the butcher block counter. It is clear she is working up to say something she's not sure Auntie wants to hear. There is a pregnant pause, during which Auntie reaches under the counter and extracts a small brown bottle and a tiny funnel. She places the funnel in the bottle, fusses with the powdery mixture in the mortar, then proceeds to fill the bottle from the spouted side of the glass mortar.
Jasmine bites her bottom lip. "You know, the town is starting to expand, and the police department is hiring more deputies."
Auntie nods. "Mmm...hmmm..."
"I was talking to Vanessa Cermak the other day when we were volunteering at the Foundlings Thrift Store."
> Bubba and Vanessa are the Alpha pair for Perdition. From what I've overheard of the Perdition citizens, Vanessa threw herself into the role of Alpha Female when she and Bubba were mated, a match that, by the way, I had nothing to do with.
"That's nice," Auntie says.
"Well, she was telling me her brother-in-law's cousin applied as a deputy enforcer and got the job," she says in a faux off-handed manner. "He's supposed to be moving here today. He's going to be living in one of the apartments over that empty storefront. I'm pretty sure Vanessa's sister-in-law is going to be taking that space for her clothing business."
Auntie finishes putting the concoction into the bottle, pops a cork into the opening, and attaches a label.
"Here you go," Auntie says. She hands the bottle to her niece with a smile. Then she sits her round ass on the stool she keeps behind the counter. Jasmine offers another tentative smile.
"Anyway," she says, and now it's her turn to wave her hand. "I've seen his images. He's way good-looking, and he has a cool Irish accent. It was pretty clear when we chatted that Vanessa wants Duffy to...you know..." Jasmine flaps her hands in a gesture that says, "let your imagination fill in the blanks."
At the mention of the name "Duff," Auntie furrows her brows and stares at Jasmine. "What does Vanessa want?" Auntie's eyebrows are up, and she bristles, shoulders back and a hand on her hip.
"Vanessa wants to find him a girlfriend," Jasmine says in a rush. Auntie sighs heavily and hops off her stool.
Jasmine also gets my attention, and I frown, because I'd like to know more about this "Duff" person. I also bristle at Jasmine's gushing over the dude as "good-looking" and having a "cool accent." Because I know I'm good looking, and there is nothing cooler than a Viking Age accent. I remember how Auntie’s eyes lit up when I talked to her. Some of that reaction had to be my accent.
That Time She Broke Her Viking's Curse Page 4