by Erica Ridley
He rolled over, pinning her beneath him. With his lips locked with hers and one hand against the mattress for support, he reached down with his other hand to tug off his boxers.
She sucked in a breath to comment and then realized she didn’t really care who took them off so long as he was naked. She was dying to feel every inch of him.
He started a trail of slow steamy kisses from the sensitive skin behind her earlobe, down the side of her neck, around the curve of her breast, along the center of her belly, over the silk of her panties. He licked the thin, wet material, his tongue probing in tantalizing circles.
“Take. Them. Off.” She wiggled against him, her thighs trapping his face even closer. “Please.” She moaned when he slid a finger beneath the silk, then joined it with his tongue. “Or not,” she breathed, arching against him.
After a long, delicious moment of tempting and teasing, his face shifted away. The stubble on his cheek grazed the inside of her thigh as he peppered her skin with little kisses. She lifted her head to look at him and rolled her eyes when she caught him grinning.
“Hurry up,” she grumbled.
He had her panties off and was back on top of her in no time, pausing only for a condom. In seconds, his mouth was on hers and his arousal was between her thighs. She tilted her hips. With a searing kiss, he drove home inside of her.
Her breath caught. Her muscles contracted around him. He felt wonderful. He was wonderful. His teeth nipped at her lower lip. She nipped him back. His hands slid under her shoulders. He turned, rolling onto his back, still buried inside her.
“Straddle me,” he said, “like you were before.” The corner of his eyes crinkled as he smiled up at her. “Please.”
“My pleasure.” She began to ride him. His hands circled her waist, pulling himself upward. She pressed her breast to his lips. Her muscles tightened as she watched him suckle her.
Every moment she spent with him was better than the last. She loved her fingers in his tangled hair, his mouth on her swollen nipple, the feel of him thrusting inside her. He was everything she’d ever dreamed of. She breathed in his scent and moved in rhythm with him, her thighs flexing around his waist, her hips rising and falling with his.
She felt the warmth and closeness of his body through every pore of hers. His heat mingled with her heat, his breath with her breath. He even tasted like he belonged to her. Like she belonged to him.
“You’re amazing.” His eyes locked with hers, his gaze passionate. “And I can’t hold back much longer.”
Neither could she. Not when someone this incredible thought she was amazing.
He slid one of his hands between her thighs to touch where his body joined with hers. Her eyes fluttered shut as his touch focused on bringing her to a frenzy. He rubbed the pad of his thumb against the slick heat, matching her rhythm until she convulsed around him, gasping.
“Thank God,” he muttered and seized her mouth with a soul-quenching kiss. He thrust inside her, urgent, desperate. She rode him, kissed him, until he shuddered and came. They collapsed against the pillows. He pressed his lips to her forehead, then snuggled her to his chest.
Possessively. Not that she minded.
She closed her eyes, her sated body relaxing into a pool of bliss. She loved being in his arms. He cuddled her even closer, wrapping her in his arms and nuzzling the top of her head. She smiled contentedly, her cheek resting against the warm, steady thump of his heartbeat.
For once, she felt like she belonged.
Sunday disappeared in an all-too-comfortable mix of research and lovemaking, and then it was Monday and Trevor should’ve left for work fifteen minutes earlier. After all, he had his papers translated and his job on the line, right? But here he was, standing before a locked aquarium, staring through the glass at a lime green where-frog.
The smiling, bespectacled owner of the where-frog was on her knees, tapping at the glass and murmuring her usual litany of reassuring I’ll-miss-yous and We’ll-be-right-backs.
“Do you want Bubbles back?” he found himself asking.
“What?” Her blonde head jerked away from the glass. She stared up at him, long thick lashes blinking in confusion. “I thought you didn’t want me to leave until I helped you.”
“I am. I was. You did.” He kicked at the briefcase leaning against one leg of the corner table. The briefcase fell over with a thump, startling Bubbles into hopping back from the glass. “In all fairness, I can’t keep the little guy trapped forever.”
“What do you mean?” She sucked her lower lip between her teeth and nibbled, her gaze suddenly wary.
He wasn’t sure he knew. He hadn’t even meant to start this conversation at all.
“I mean, thanks to you I now know that the partial skeleton we uncovered may be much more than a long-buried local.” He nudged the fallen briefcase with the toe of his boot. “You’ve given me an incredible head start toward publishing the paper of my career.”
“I see,” she said, as though she wished she didn’t. “Are you saying I’ve now ‘put things to rights’?”
Why did he feel that was a trick question?
“Well,” he said. “You’ve more than upheld your half of the bargain.”
Lips pursed, she glanced away.
Okay. He stepped next to her and spun the dial on the combination lock. “How can I continue to hold you hostage?”
She let out a soft sigh. “You never were.”
He stopped twirling the dial. “What do you mean?”
“The lock’s a nice touch and all, but come on.” She rose to her feet and gestured at the old aquarium. “I don’t need magic to break glass. Bubbles and I could’ve headed back to Nether-Netherland long ago.”
He paused, fingers still frozen on the lock. She was right. Duh. His chin touched his chest. No wonder he’d never published anything. He was a freaking moron.
“If you could go at any time,” he said slowly, “why didn’t you?”
Her lips quirked into an uncertain half-smile. “Because I’d have to buy you a replacement?”
His fingers fell from the lock. “You chose to stay?”
Her smile faltered. She inspected her fingernail polish.
His heart beat faster. She did choose to stay. That was the only explanation. She could’ve left any time she wanted to, and didn’t. Because she wanted to be with him. A strange emotion laced Trevor’s lungs with hope and then slithered down his spine like ice.
Stupidly believing she wanted to leave, he’d thanked her for a job well done and told her she could get packing. Brilliant.
“Daisy,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”
“You were right,” she interrupted with a wave of her hand. “I did owe you. I knew it, you knew it, everybody in Nether-Netherland knew it. I screwed up your life. You said so yourself. The least I could do was help to put things back to normal, like you wanted.”
Like he wanted? He fought the urge to grab her by the shoulders… and kiss her senseless. Good lord. Did he even know what he wanted?
He thought she’d screwed up his life. But had she? He’d alternately thought she was a spy, a ditz, a saboteur out to get him, and none of those things had turned out to be true. For an anthropologist, he’d sure let his suspicions and assumptions get in the way of objective observation.
Maybe he should publish a dissertation entitled “Boys Are Stupid After All.”
He lifted the now-unlatched lock from the metal hook. Without meeting Daisy’s gaze, he reached in one arm and laid the back of his hand flush on the cold pebbles.
Bubbles shot him a wary “Don’t even think about running off with me” expression before hopping onto Trevor’s outstretched fingers.
Trevor glanced back up at her in triumph and his heart stopped. While he’d been futzing around with Bubbles, she’d apparently been futzing around with clothes powder. Instead of the besuited, professional-looking Daisy he’d come to expect, she was once again barefoot Daisy, standing before him in a somber
expression and a moss green dress.
“So…” was all he said to the woman that he’d curled his body around all last night. So, what? What could he possibly say to her? Hey, stick around awhile? Let’s go for another walk in the forest? Have our where-frog escort us to a candlelit dinner in Paris? What could he possibly ever give her that would be better than the magic of Nether-Netherland?
He stared down at Bubbles, who stared right back up at him as though reading his mind and judging him a colossal fool.
Daisy stepped forward until the tips of her painted toes brushed his black leather shoes. Her small, slender hands slid beneath his, as though helping him support Bubbles’ negligible weight. He was probably supposed to tilt his hands, drop the where-frog into her open palms, step away from them both.
But he didn’t.
His gaze focused on her shoulders, her neck, her mouth, everywhere but her eyes. If she was happy to go, he didn’t want to see it. And if she wasn’t… he wasn’t sure he wanted to see that, either. “Do you have to leave right this second?”
“Maybe.” The word trembled from her lips, as though there was something important he was supposed to say at this point, something that could change both their lives forever.
His temple began to throb. He was a reasonably intelligent anthropologist. Well, most of the time. And he could guess what that something was that she hoped he would say.
But he couldn’t say that.
She couldn’t truly expect romantic words of any kind. From everything he’d seen and heard during his twenty-four-hour adventure through the looking glass, delaying the moment between now and goodbye would screw up her life even worse than his. He had to deal with Berrymellow, sure, but at least Trevor didn’t have any court charges just for having spoken to a stranger. Who certainly wasn’t a stranger any longer.
He cared about what happened to her. If he was a stand-up guy who wasn’t ruled by his own selfish wants, he wouldn’t force her to make that choice. He would let her go. But was it better or worse for her to realize he didn’t want to?
And which was better for him?
Chapter 18
Trevor handed Bubbles over, and then crossed his arms to keep himself from reaching for Daisy. She stared at the where-frog in her hands without speaking or moving.
As the silence stretched into self-conscious stiffness, he knew his next few words would make the difference between whether she stayed another night or disappeared in a puff of smoke. If he had to let her go, he wanted a lot more than just one more night. But that was hardly fair to her. He’d have his memory wiped, but she’d have to live with whatever final words were said between them. The least he could do was make her think it was for the best.
He swallowed, his tongue scraping against the scratchy roof of his dry mouth.
“I like you,” he said softly. “If you were the girl next door, I would’ve asked you out the day we met. But with the… differences… between us, we’d be foolish to keep prolonging the inevitable. It’s time for—”
“The inevitable,” she repeated dully. “By ‘the inevitable’, do you mean getting booted out the door the morning after having sex?” Her eyes were empty. “I can’t believe I didn’t see that coming.”
Frustration raced through his veins. Was it possible to screw up a conversation worse than he was destroying this one?
“It has nothing to do with that,” he said, steel reinforcing his words. Christ, couldn’t the woman see this was killing him? “A few more days of a doomed romance isn’t worth life in a magical jail cell. For either of us. From the moment that crazy judge shrieked ‘ForgetMe orb’ we both knew… this… couldn’t go anywhere.”
Speaking of, where the hell was that thing? At least he wouldn’t remember making a colossal ass of himself.
She stared down at her toes. “So that’s it?”
“That’s it. What else can we do?” he asked, unable to keep the strain from his voice. “Even if you put the tooth fairy thing on hold to explore what’s developing between us, your life back in—”
“Put the ‘tooth fairy thing’ on hold?” Her gaze met his at last, coldly furious. Not a good sign. “Just give up my career goals and personal dreams indefinitely, to pursue a ‘doomed’ romance?”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Yes, yes it was possible to decimate a conversation beyond all hope of actual communication. Outstanding.
He shook his head. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you meant it.” She cradled the where-frog to her chest.
“It’s not even possible. Your laws don’t allow it. Even if you could live on Earth, you’re a tooth fairy. That’s your career and your choice. But magic wands and fairy wings and where-frogs are a no-go around here. You’d have to be… something else.”
“Something else?” She laughed hollowly. “I can’t imagine myself in a human career of any kind. The skills I do have are only relevant in Nether-Netherland, and I would die before living somewhere I’d be even more useless. Back home, I have a chance. I have friends. I have family. I have the opportunity to make something of myself. But it sounds like you’re saying, if the laws were lifted, you’d want me to give up everything I hold dear in order to join you here in your world.”
“I would never ask you to give up anything you cherish. Just like you wouldn’t ask it of me.” He grabbed her shoulders, determined to make her understand. “I love… being with you. But your life is there, and my life is here. My house, my career, my family, everything I hold dear. I’m a paleo-anthropologist. I’m an interdepartmental summer baseball coach. I can’t live in your world, and you can’t live in mine. It has nothing to do with either of us giving up our dreams, and everything to do with the fact that humans and magic just don’t mix. No matter how much we might wish otherwise.” His arms fell back to his sides. “That’s what I meant by ‘doomed romance’.”
“No romance here.” She lifted Bubbles close to her face. “Just a bunch of doom.”
With a tiny pop and an accompanying flurry of pixie dust, he found himself alone in his empty living room once again. This time, with no where-frog to feed, no half-angel to snuggle, and no one to blame but himself.
Daisy materialized in the middle of the Neurophysics Compound, more determined than ever to make a wand that worked. Luckily, they had not yet found someone to replace her. After growling half-hearted hellos at the ex-coworkers who dared to greet her, she stalked directly into her old laboratory and slammed the door.
Not that she was upset over anything Trevor had said. Or not said. It’s not like she was in love, or anything. Not by a long shot. He was nothing. Cute, that’s all. A distraction, really. A six-foot-three-inch, dark-eyed, dimpled distraction. At least she hadn’t humiliated herself by clinging on him or begging him to reconsider or bursting into tears.
Shoulders back and chin high, she configured her lab for a new round of wand experimentation. She tried to think about something, anything, except a certain jerktastic anthropologist.
If she’d gotten all—all infatuated with him, well, that was her own fault and she’d just have to get over it. Get over him.
Daisy twirled the color dial of her latest wand manufacturing machine to lime green and pressed the Start button. Two hours later, she had a new wand. She didn’t need Trevor’s.
Figuratively speaking.
She shoved open the exit doors and stepped outside just as her mother coasted onto the Neurophysics Compound’s front lawn, Dad right on her heels.
So much for having a moment alone to collect her thoughts in private. She shoved her untested wand into her handbag. “How’d you know I was here?”
“One of your old coworkers ran into us at the bi-monthly bazaar and said you—” Mama gasped, clamping a palm over her mouth to stifle the sound. “Why are your eyes bloodshot and your face so splotchy?”
Daisy forced herself not to test her new wand on her mother.
“Did you deliver the teeth?” Dad aske
d, tiny lines creasing his forehead.
“Yes. Not to be rude, but could you guys go somewhere else? I was about to test a new experiment and it’s not safe for civilians.”
“Oh, sweetie, that’s so great.” Mama beamed at her. “I knew you’d give up that silly toothfairying and return to science. There’s no shame in being unmagical. Well, very little shame. Between us. Your father and I don’t care what they say about you.”
“I didn’t ‘give up’ toothfairying,” Daisy ground out. Achilles help her, she did care what “they” said about her. And how it affected her parents. “Why does everyone want me to give up toothfairying?”
“You’re not?” Mama frowned. “Then what are you doing here?”
Her father’s wings unfurled. “You’re not making another mechanical wand, are you?”
Daisy spun to face him. “And why not? Is there some reason I shouldn’t?”
He stared back, eyebrow raised. “It’s illegal.”
“Well… besides that.”
“Because science and magic don’t mix.” Mama patted Daisy’s shoulder and laughed lightly. “Oil and water, sweetie.”
“But I’m a scientist. I’ll invent a way to be magical.”
“Do your experiments, then, if they make you happy. A.J, don’t you give me that look. She deserves a break. No sense dashing off to the High Court the very moment you return. You do remember that you have to give the Elders a post-delivery progress report, right?”
“I remember.” She slipped a hand inside her handbag and ran her fingertips along the smooth wand hidden inside. Please let this one work. “And if I promise to head over first thing in the morning and fill out as many reports as they can conjure, will you let me have tonight to myself?”
