by Celia Roman
“No phone.” It was still in Riley’s Range Rover. Reckon I’d never get it back now. I tucked the burst of fresh pain away for another day when I was better able to deal with it without blubbering my fool head off. “Thank you.”
“What’re friends for?”
He kissed me gentle on the mouth, then stood and walked away, silent and stalwart and ever thing David weren’t. Soon as the door clicked shut behind him, I closed my eyes and fell into the dreamless sleep of the broken hearted.
A warm body snuggled behind me, spooning me.
“Riley?” I murmured, then my brain caught up with the previous night’s events and I knowed without a doubt it weren’t Riley in my bed.
I shot a sharp elbow back and connected with hard flesh. A soft male oomph wheezed outta the intruder and a hand scrambled along my side in a futile attempt to pin down my flailing arm.
“Sunshine!” Teus snapped.
I wiggled around and faced him in the bed. My legs brushed bare flesh and something hard what shoulda been soft, and my cheeks flushed hot. “What’re you doing nekkid in my bed?”
For that matter, what was I doing nekkid in my bed? A vague memory of David sliding a t-shirt over my head surfaced, and I knowed I hadn’t taken the dang thing off during a dead sleep.
Teus tucked an arm under his head and smiled, smug and knowing. “I’m here to accept tribute.”
I snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, right.”
“You killed my pet.”
“It was trying to kill me!”
“It was delivering you to my home.”
“Same thing,” I muttered.
Teus shrugged a bare shoulder. The sheet covering him slithered down his side, finally halting at his elbow. “I can afford to be lenient in the matter. You did learn the identities of those polluting my river.”
I arched a single eyebrow. “Your river?”
“The Tallulah. I won it in a card game in 1807.”
“That was before Georgia was even a state.”
His sigh was as long suffering as his expression. “Sunshine, love, Georgia became a state in 1788.”
“Well, it was before the county was formed, leastwise.” I tucked the sheet under my chin. Let him show off his skin if he wanted. I was fine all covered up. “Time to go, Teus. You found your way in. You gotta know the way out.”
“Not yet.” He brushed a finger down my nose and tapped it for good measure. “You belong to me now.”
I shook my head. “Oh, no. I weren’t a willing tribute and I ain’t no virgin. Pretty sure I gotta be one or t’other to measure up.”
“I can afford to be lenient,” he repeated, only this time his accented voice was low and husky. He leaned forward, angling his head like he was gonna kiss me, and I scrambled away from him and outta bed, taking the sheet with me. It slid off him, revealing toned muscles under sun kissed skin and an erection the size of my forearm.
My eyes went round as dinner plates. “Holy cow, Teus. Put some dadgum clothes on.”
His smile widened. “When I get what I want.”
“You don’t want me,” I retorted. “You just want somebody.”
“You need me.”
I clamped my lips together. If Teus was who I thought he was, and all indications pointed in that direction, he was a deity of some sort. It never hurt to have a god on your side, ‘specially with a life like the one I lived.
“I can hear your thoughts.”
Ugh. A sea god what could control monsters and peek into my head? What a combination.
Teus sighed and rolled off the bed. “Very well, Sunshine. In lieu of tribute and as penalty for murdering my pet—”
I clapped a hand over my mouth, silencing a protest. Might need him someday, I reminded myself, and that was enough to hold my tongue.
“—I will accept the mark of servitude.”
My hand dropped away from my mouth and I gaped at him. “What?”
“Eight marks, to be precise. I was quite fond of the catfish.” He strolled around the bed and settled in front of me, then cupped his hands over my shoulders. When he spoke, his voice was softer and a mite less cavalier than I ever heard him. “The marks can be removed over time through voluntary service to me.”
I eyed him warily. “What kind of service?”
“Whatever I deem appropriate. Bare your left breast.”
I shook my head, protesting at last, but he ignored me and tugged the sheet down.
“This may sting a little,” he said, then his mouth come down on mine and his hand covered my breast, and searing heat stung ever inch of my skin. I screamed into his kiss, high and sharp, and just like that, the pain was gone like it never was.
I jerked my head away from him, breaking the kiss, and clamped a hand around his wrist. “You better move that hand ‘less you wanna lose it.”
He twisted his hand around and met mine palm to palm. “I have what I need. Until we meet again, Sunshine.”
His figure grew hazy. I blinked against the sudden moisture and gaped slack jawed as he morphed into a slow whirling dervish comprised, if my eyes could be believed, of mist. I blinked again and he was gone, and in his place lingered the scent of the ocean and the promise of his return.
Soon as I recovered from the manner of Teus’ departure, I yanked the sheet off and sought out the bathroom mirror. Sure enough, eight swirling marks the color of Teus’s eyes was etched into the skin surrounding my left nipple. I scraped a fingertip along one, testing it, and yelped as a remnant of pain pierced me.
Guess that’s what I got for killing his pet.
I near about laughed, caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror, and gasped. My eyes. I squinched them closed for a minute. No. Weren’t no way he coulda changed the color of my eyes, but when I opened ‘em up and checked again, aqua blue stared back where once dark brown was.
I was gonna have to get my driver’s license fixed. Soon as the thought popped into my noggin, I winced. Like that was the biggest problem on my plate.
A knock hit the front door. It squeaked open, then Missy’s sweet voice called, “Sunny? You in there?”
Missy. Blessed relief sagged through me. Something good at last. “Be out in a jiff.”
I scrambled for a t-shirt and a clean pair of jeans, and yanked ‘em on one handed while the other sorted through the dirty clothes, searching for Missy’s ring. Nothing wet hit my hand. My heart sank. I just found the blasted ring. Surely I hadn’t lost it again already.
“When did you get new carpet?” Missy said.
I glanced down and sighed. My carpet was the same color as Teus’s eyes, ocean greens twined through aqua blues. Damn it. Was a woman’s home not sacred no more?
More important, how was I gonna tell Missy I broke my word about Teus? Unintentionally, sure, but a woman’s word was her bond, the foundation of her reputation. I always made good on my word to Missy, always, and now look what Teus done.
Her footsteps swished through the newly refurbished threads. A minute later, she poked her head into my bedroom, one hand raised in front of her. “You found it.”
Missy’s ring glittered in her outstretched palm. Oh, thank the good Lord above. David musta taken it outta my pocket at some point last night and set it out in plain sight in the living room. “Belinda Arrowood stole it.”
Missy’s lips pursed together into a disapproving moue. “I hope you turned her over to the police.”
“Even better,” I said, cheerful like. “I broke her nose right before she confessed to another crime.”
“Do tell.”
I laughed. “Like you ain’t already heard.”
“I have,” she agreed, then her lighthearted tone dropped away, replaced by a concerned frown. “Your eyes.”
I glanced away, shrugged. What could I tell her ‘cept the truth? “Teus done it. Seems like I owe him service or something ‘cause I killed his pet catfish.”
She gasped and pulled me into a tight hug, and I was struck once again by her
unique scent, grass and the tomb and a battle all rolled into one.
“It was self-defense,” I mumbled against her shoulder.
She squeezed me tighter, stealing my breath. “Oh, Sunny. You could’ve been really hurt. I told you he was a dangerous man.”
And boy, had I learnt that the hard way. “Ease off, Missy. You’re choking the life outta me.”
She let go, just enough to cup my face and tilt it toward hers. “Thank you for retrieving my ring.”
I placed my hands over hers and held ‘em there, grateful for her understanding. Without Missy, Fame woulda been lost a long time ago, driven under by the coon crazy what run in our blood. And with Fame gone, no telling what woulda happened to me and Trey and Gentry. Missy saved us, about like Riley saved me.
I shrugged the hurt away. Time enough to deal with that later.
“Any time,” I said.
She slipped her hands out from under mine, then pressed the ring into my palm. “Keep this close, Sunny. Not around your finger, but close.”
I tugged at my hands, trying to break her grip. “C’mon, Missy. I can’t take your ring.”
“It’s not mine any more. Remember that.” She patted my hand, then let go and stepped away. “I hear a car coming up the road.”
Just then, the crunch of gravel under tires filtered to me and I groaned. What now?
Missy kissed my cheek and tucked my hair behind my ears. “Come to dinner tomorrow and tell us all about last night’s adventures.”
“I can come tonight,” I said, and she shook her head, her violet eyes dancing with laughter and love and all the good inside her.
“You’re going to be busy tonight, darling.”
She whirled away and was down the hallway before I could utter a word. A minute later, the front door squeaked open and her voice drifted to me, mingling with the low tones of an achingly familiar voice.
My heart clenched into a tight knot behind my sternum. Riley.
Somehow, I managed to stumble down the hallway toward him, scarce able to believe it, but there he was, tall and broad and handsome, standing in my living room looking around like he never seen the place before.
I followed his gaze and understood exactly why he might feel that way. Ever thing was fresh and new, painted by Teus’s hand in the blues and greens he favored, save for the creamy white walls. The stove and fridge was deep blue, the sofa seaweed green, but what really caught my eye was the cussing jar. It was no longer half full of quarters. Natural pearls lived there instead, a whole jar full.
A disbelieving laugh huffed outta me. Reckon the preacher man’d have a high ol’ time figuring out how to convert them into cash.
“Sunny.”
Riley’s rich voice drew my attention back to the here and now. I stood where I was, torn between running to him and running away.
He held out a hand. “C’mere, baby.”
And that settled it. I raced across the room and jumped, and he caught me to him, murmuring soft words I couldn’t quite catch.
“Missed you,” he said at last.
I eased away from him and placed my hands on his chest. “Sorry I couldn’t be at the hospital when you woke up.”
“Mom and Dad were there.” He searched my gaze for a moment, then wrapped me up tight in his arms again. “Dad was ugly to you.”
I mmphed out an agreement against his chest.
“I’m sorry, Sunny. He had no right.”
“He loves you.” I felt more than heard Riley’s sigh, and added, “He does.”
“I know.”
We stood like that for a long time, long enough for me to absorb the smell of hospital antiseptic clinging to his skin under the mountain air scent of clothesline dried laundry.
Finally, my impatience got the better of me. “You can let go now, Riley.”
His laugh was a gentle rumble under my cheek. “Not if I can help it. Brunch?”
“Your treat?”
“Better. My place.”
A slow smile worked its way outta my heart onto my lips. “Lemme guess. Steak and baked sweet potatoes.”
“Eggs and bacon, smart ass. We can do the steaks for supper.”
And we did.
The Deep Wood
A Sunshine Walkingstick Novel
Celia Roman
Published by Bone Diggers Press, Clayton, GA.
© 2017 C.D. Watson. All Rights Reserved.
Cover © Domi Hlinkova, Inspired Cover Designs.
ISBN 978-1-943465-2-24
Description of The Deep Wood:
When my boy Henry was killed, I tracked a pooka through the deep wood for three days with no food in my gut and only my daddy's hunting knife for comfort. Was what got me into the monster killing business, that pooka, and I ain't regretted a single day of it since.
The day I stumbled on a four-legged critter with human eyes, the rightness of my revenge begun to unravel, leading me to a clan of two-natured shifters what'd been living under my nose the whole time. And when the two-natured started showing up in odd places, stalking humans in a very unnatural way, weren't nothing I could do but dig to the bottom of it.
And what I found turned my world and ever thing I knowed upside down.
Chapter One
paint·er (pānt'-ǝr) n.
Slang used in the Southern Appalachians
to describe a panther or mountain lion.
Wind whipped around me, blocked none a’tall by the man steering the motorcycle I was on. When David Eckstrom invited me out for a ride, I couldn’t hardly turn him down. Me and him was friends of a sort, and my friends was few and far between.
‘Course, that weren’t the only reason. I was partly responsible for David’s current emotional slump. A coupla weeks back, we learnt David’s significant other, Gregory Hightower, fell in with a business venture led by Phillip Oliver and Belinda Arrowood, joined by Hal Woodrow and Faith Renault. Together, the Greenwood Five, so called as they all owned homes along the shores of Greenwood Cove on Lake Burton, was now under investigation for dumping industrial waste into the local streams as part of that venture.
Gregory swore up one side and down t’other he knowed not one speck about them illegal activities. He was a good sort, a right stand up guy, so I believed him. David didn’t, and therein lay the problem.
Couldn’t argue with a broke heart. I tried cajoling instead, first by pointing out how much Gregory loved David and vice versa, then by simply coaxing him into talking about it, hoping he’d figure out on his own how much they needed each other. Weren’t working, what I could tell, but I kept trying anyhow. I knowed what a broke heart felt like and I sure didn’t want one of my friends falling under the same spell.
David slowed his Kawasaki KLR 650, a monster of a motorcycle. I peeked around him, sucked in a breath, and tightened my hands on his waist. The road ahead rose sharp and steep, then curved outta sight, and in between, worn ruts deeper’n the bike’s tires pitted the packed dirt.
I closed my eyes tight. What’d ever possessed me to get on the back of this thing anyhow?
“Hold on, Sunshine,” David said softly right in my ear, and I flinched. First time I ever wore a helmet. Took a bit of getting used to, ‘specially with a mike system wired into it. Them was too fancy for me and my daddy way back when I was a kid and he used to take me out riding on the back of his old beater, a Yamaha Enduro Daddy bought off a desperate neighbor for fifty dollars and a cord of split firewood.
I smiled as memory woke. That thing was older’n me when Daddy got it, but man, did he love that bike. He tore the roads up with it, half the time with me on the back and neither of us wearing a helmet or protective gear of no kind. I smiled into the memories, of Daddy’s laughter mingling with the air roaring past my ears, of burying my face in his back when I was scared and wallowing in the scent what was his alone. Laundry detergent, Old Spice, and love. That was my daddy, and about the only thing I had left of him besides his IROC, a stand up LP collection, and the huntin
g knife I wore strapped to my right ankle under the stiff leather of my boot.
The motorcycle lurched upward. I leaned forward into David and bit my tongue, holding back the curses popping into my mouth. I done give the church as much cussing money as I intended for a while. The last gallon jar full I give, the quarters, one for each dirty word, was changed to pearls by a minor deity going by the name of Abercio Okeanos, Teus to his friends. He seemed to’ve taken a liking to me, more’s the pity. Last time we met, he left me with a redecorated home, eyes the color of the ocean, and eight marks of service circling my left nipple, each one a multi-colored swirl matching my new eyes.
My cheeks heated, and for once, I was glad of the helmet’s coverage. Them marks was embarrassing. Thankfully, nobody’d seen ‘em right yet, but with the rate me and Riley Treadwell was stepping out, them being discovered was just a matter of time. Him and me went way back, but it was the here and now what concerned me. What was he gonna do when he discovered them marks?
Likely have a conniption, judging by how he reacted ever time he thought another man wanted me. Which was plumb ridiculous. Me and him was a-courtin’, and he was as much man as I could handle. About the only one I wanted to handle, truth be told, and he knowed it.
David revved the motorcycle’s engine, and we crested the hill onto a plateau. “Uh-oh,” he whispered.
I peeked around his helmet and frowned. A black painter lay partway across the road, a big’un, too. I glanced up. Three turkey buzzards circled overhead, their wings spread. They’d be down here soon, pecking away like the carrion they was. Best take a quick look-see before that happened, in case that painter run afoul of something in my line of work.
Monsters made just as good food for buzzards as wildlife, and got rid of some bad in the world at the same time. Two birds, one stone. Hard not to admire nature’s efficiency.
I patted David’s waist and said, “We need to stop.”
