Rogue's Paradise

by Jeffe Kennedy

  I chickened out and sent my mother an email, amazed that my Gmail account still worked. The password was easy to recall—too easy, really—”Isabel,” my treasured cat. Lousy encryption. Perfect reminder.

  Keeping it brief, I told her that I’d traveled overseas and that it was impossible to explain—ha to that!—but that I was well and in love. And that she had a granddaughter. I also said I’d be in touch, that we’d visit. I made a wish that it would come true.

  We wrapped up the baby and Blackbird assured me that she’d explain to Frank why I’d had to take his things. He’d consider it a fair trade, she thought, for us sealing up the gate and saving this place that was sacred to so many.

  “I don’t know that I know how to close it,” I told her as she folded up my Anne Taylor dress, as she’d done for me before, so long ago.

  “If you know how to open, then you know how to close.”

  “A nifty saying that ultimately means nothing.”

  She winked at me and handed me a bag with my dress, shoes and things for the baby. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

  Puck took us on the snowmobile, much more slowly after I thumped him over the head and told him I’d turn him into a pink chipmunk if he made me drop the baby. The Black Dog romped alongside, big as a pony, but otherwise like any other dog.

  I couldn’t contemplate that Rogue wouldn’t come back from it.

  He had to.

  We left the snowmobile in the parking lot and walked the reverse path to the aspen grove. I superstitiously almost insisted that we take the long way around, circumnavigating the sunny side first, but practically it wasn’t good for the baby to be out in the cold longer than necessary.

  Maybe I could make a list of motherly habits and start practicing.

  Meanwhile I worked out my wish, aligning the components like an integral equation. Each piece needed to work in sequence and, if one bit failed, it couldn’t jeopardize the others. Simple, precise and with all variables eliminated, that I could foresee. An elegant design, even. One, two, three.

  So much rode on this.

  Puck held the baby while I found the totem tree and got the things ready and the Dog sniffed around, flushing out a squirrel. I wasn’t sure how to manage them all at once. “Can you...” I started to ask Puck, then hesitated, worrying about the potential bad juju. Fuck it—I couldn’t do it all myself. “Can you carry my daughter through?”

  “Of course.” Puck bounced her in his arms and made silly noises, sprinkling her face with kisses. “I love to carry the babies. She looks just like you did.”

  “Really?” That gave me pause. “Except for the eyes, which are all Rogue.”

  “True. Perhaps the next one will have your green.”

  “Save your curses, imp,” I growled at him and he giggled. “Rogue!” I called the Dog, feeling silly, but what else could I call him? The Dog bounded up and I held up the handle of the bag of things. He took it in his mouth, clamping gently with those white fangs that had carried our daughter miraculously without harm. I cut the hair, bloodied it and tucked the knife away. Putting a hand on the Dog, I gestured at Puck to come close. Then I looped the hair over the tree limb and executed my wish.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Once Upon a Time

  Understanding why I was drawn into all of this may change nothing, but it’s good to know.

  ~Big Book of Fairyland, “Rules of Magic”

  I awoke on soft grass.

  Then sat up with a stab of panic. The extraordinary emerald green of Faerie greeted me, the same view as that first time and, for a horrible, endless moment, I thought none of it had happened. That I’d never left this hill or that I had been trapped in some sort of psychotic fugue state.

  One that had just looped around and started again.

  A baby’s cry wafted up the hill and Puck appeared, somehow carrying my daughter while dancing a complicated jig. “Oh good, you’re awake. She’s hungry as a pig in a poke.”

  “I think that’s a very messed-up metaphor.” I levered myself to my feet, sweating in the winter clothes, shouldered the bag and took my daughter. “Welcome home, sweetheart,” I murmured to her and kissed her on the forehead with love and relief. At least she’d come through fine.

  That was one. “And the Dog?”

  “Chasing the cat.” Puck shrugged elaborately. “You know how dogs are.”

  Then he was not himself. I steeled myself against the reality that I might never truly have him back again. As a form of insurance, of fulfilling all my promises, I felt through the gate I’d gone through so long ago. It anchored to me in that way, to my initial entrance to the other side. I pulled it gently closed behind me, locking it to me, to the girl in my arms.

  With a pointed wish, I imagined Stonehenge and created the ring atop the hill, the gate itself beneath the capstone. That should hold it.

  And if not, I would know.

  I could only hope I could do right by Rogue as well.

  “Show me?”

  We walked down the hill, then up another, me sweating bullets. Kicking myself, I tested the magic. It flowed in with a rush, green as the hills. My daughter waved her fists, blue eyes sparkling. “You like that? Me too.” I vanished my winter clothes and replaced them with a sundress and did likewise for her and her blankets. I sent the bag of things to our bedroom along with a mental message to Athena that we’d returned and would be home soon.

  Home. It sounded like where I wanted to be. With my family.

  Holding on to hope that my dying wish—it counted as that, right? Since I fully believed I’d die when I made it—would come true, in all the best ways.

  Let everything come out okay.

  Two hills over, the Black Dog saw us and came leaping over, then ran back to show us our other traveling companion. Isabel had made it through. Hissing and thoroughly unhappy, but just as she’d always been. I handed the baby back to Puck and crouched, letting Isabel catch my scent. Suspicious, she sniffed, then a purr welled up and out. She pushed her head against my hand and I rubbed her blue-smoke fur, tears dampening my eyes. Happy ones, for once.

  There was two.

  Finally, I turned to the Dog, capturing his great head and staring into his amber eyes, so unlike Rogue’s. But I’d pulled Rogue back from this before, when we had far less connection.

  I reached for it, throwing my faith and belief into the hope it would be back, the strong golden cord of our connection. So much had changed in the mass mind. As if the absence of Titania had reworked the system, causing all the connections to reset. Like a brain recovering from injury, releasing bad synapses and recreating new ones.

  So, when I found it, it had moved some.

  But there it was. I poured all the mental magic I could muster through it.

  Rogue.

  Rogue.

  In my mind, a boy swam to the surface, hopeful, seeking light and life. He struggled for shore and I fed him the magic he needed. Anything and everything for him. Had I done this before? Not possible, and yet...

  He made it to the beach, running. I took his hand.

  And the fur under my hands changed to skin, the black of the Dog condensing and intensifying into the inky lines embedded in Rogue’s skin. Amber eyes deepened to midnight, then sharpened with intelligence. Rogue gazed back at me with some bemusement, then growing insight and remembrance.

  “And you said you couldn’t bring someone back from the dead, magical Gwynn.”

  “You promised me you couldn’t die.”

  He stood, pulling me into his arms and I reveled in being able to simply be close to him again. “It’s good to know you’ll hold me to my promises,” he said against my hair. He cupped my chin and raised my mouth to meet his. I kissed him back full of happy greed for him and everything about him.

  “I have someone for you to meet,” I told him.

  I took the baby from Puck, who gave me a jaunty salute and wandered off to tempt Isabel with a yellow flower. Our daughter, w
ho’d been working her way up from fussing to the full-blown bellow I now recognized, stopped in midcry and stared at Rogue with fascination. The two pairs of unearthly blue eyes met and fused.

  “Your firstborn child, Lord Rogue,” I said formally. “As I promised.”

  He smiled, in pure delight, and caressed her cheek with one finger, just as he did with me. “She’s perfect.” Then his gaze flashed up to mine. “But don’t think this finishes things between us.”

  “No?” I kept a straight face, though I bubbled over inside, with love. With joy. With utter relief that everything had come out okay—at least for this moment. “I’m quite certain this means all bargains between us are settled.”

  He snagged an arm around my waist and pulled me close, the baby between us making happy noises. “Then I shall have to trick you into new bargains.”

  “You can try.” But I couldn’t keep my arch attitude and gave in and kissed him. “We need to name her.”

  “Yes. Names are powerful things.”

  “You were well named, it turns out. The rogue, the wild card that brought a tyrant down.”

  “And you, my queen for a new and golden era.”

  “I can only hope. Though ours are portentous names. It might be nice for our daughter to have a simple one.”

  “That’s easy. She is what I hoped for all those long, empty years. What you have brought to me.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Eden.”

  “So be it.”

  And that made three.

  * * * * *

  If you loved Rogue’s Paradise, you’ll want to read books one and two of the Covenant of Thorns series, available now!

  Rogue’s Pawn

  Book two of Covenant of Thorns

  This is no fairy tale...

  Haunted by nightmares of a black dog, sick to death of my mind-numbing career and heart-numbing fiancé, I impulsively walked out of my life—and fell into Faerie. Terrified, fascinated, I discover I possess a power I can’t control: my wishes come true. After an all-too-real attack by the animal from my dreams, I wake to find myself the captive of the seductive and ruthless fae lord Rogue. In return for my rescue, he demands an extravagant price—my firstborn child, which he intends to sire himself...

  With no hope of escaping this world, I must learn to harness my magic and build a new life despite the perils—including my own inexplicable and debilitating desire for Rogue. I swear I will never submit to his demands, no matter what erotic torment he subjects me to...

  Rogue’s Possession

  Book two of Covenant of Thorns

  A human trapped in the world of Faerie, in possession of magic I could not control, I made a bargain for my life: to let the dangerously sensual fae noble known as Rogue sire my firstborn. And one does not break an oath with a fae. But no matter how greatly I desire him, I will not succumb. Not until I know what will happen to the child.

  Though unable—or unwilling—to reveal the fate of human-fae offspring himself, Rogue accompanies me on my quest for answers. Along the way he agrees to teach me to harness my power, in exchange for a single kiss each day and sleeping by my side each night. Just as I am about to yield to temptation, I find myself in a deadly game of cat and mouse with an insane goddess. Now my search for the truth will lead me to the darkest of all Faerie secrets

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  About the Author

  Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author with a writing career that spans decades. Her works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook.

  Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera, which released beginning January 2, 2014. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, will hit the shelves starting in May 2014 and a fifth, the highly anticipated erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, will release starting in July.

  She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

  Jeffe can be found online at her website JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular Word Whores blog, on Facebook, and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Pam van Hylckama Vlieg of Foreword Literary.

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  ISBN-13: 9781426898907

  Rogue’s Paradise

  Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer M. Kennedy

  Edited by Deborah Nemeth

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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