by Nara Malone
“Do you want to hear this?” She rolled the jar between her palms. It gleamed. Gleamed like new.
“Sorry. Go on,” Ronin said.
“I was hiking. The weather was spectacular. The sunny, warm, blue-sky kind of day that makes you think winter won’t put in an appearance this year. I’d made it to the top of the cliffs to a spot with a view. I swear on a clear day you can see Europe right there where the sky meets sea.”
Ronin pulled out a chair. The legs screeched, wood across tile. He sat and folded his arms, his gaze focused just over her shoulder. Intent, as if he were watching her memories rerun like a movie on the wall behind her.
“I ate lunch there. It was so warm. I was so tired. Good tired. Good and lazy. And…”
“And what?” he asked when she paused.
Fog filled her mind.
“And, I’m not sure. I think I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes there was fog. A gentle spring breeze had turned moody. Grown teeth.”
Cold wind had whipped her body, pulled her hair. With visibility reduced to no more than arm’s length, with only a cotton hoodie she’d tied around her waist…
More than one tourist had gotten lost and died of hypothermia up there on the cliffs. Locals knew you were always supposed to carry clothes to protect you from the cold and wet. No matter how pleasant a day might appear. No matter what the season. The only thing more deadly than fickle weather—falls. Maille had known those facts once upon a time. Lived by them.
Ronin took her hands between his. “Hey, what happened on the cliff? How did you get back?”
Indeed. A better question might be had she gotten back. Logically, she couldn’t have in those conditions, save an act of divine intervention.
Fact—nothing miraculous happened on that cliff. She clamped her mind tight against any but a scientific explanation for unfolding events.
“Sorry, Ronin, I just need the bathroom.”
She slid from the counter and hobbled through the main bedroom where she locked herself in the tiny bathroom.
“Not real,” she told herself as she leaned against the wall. Her eyes burned and her bottom lip quivered as her grandmother’s presence pressed in around her. Fourteen years after the funeral and Gram’s brush was still on the counter by the sink. Her bathroom still smelled of lavender and talcum.
“Not real. Not real,” Maille repeated. As if the mantra could rescue her from the truth she was barreling toward.
When she was calmer, she closed the lid of the toilet and sat down. If this wasn’t real—and it absolutely wasn’t—she had to face what was.
What was one thing Maille could be certain of?
She picked up the silver-backed brush. It gleamed as though it had been polished just that morning. Silver hair, curled between some bristles. Maille plucked it free.
If there had ever been any truth to her grandmother’s powers and forces, and all that talk of inherited callings, Gram would surely have done something when she was sick. If Maille’s “gifts” were more than coincidence and placebo effect induced by powers of suggestion, Maille would have known her grandmother was sick. Could have saved her.
None of that had happened. Case closed.
The hair slipped from her fingers and fell across her exposed knee. Before Maille could brush it away, heat spread from the strand in a glowing circle.
No.
Her heart hammered, beat so loud she was sure Ronin must be able to hear it in the kitchen. Fear stopped her breath.
No.
Maille could see into her knee, a mental x-ray. A fragment of bone gouged from the kneecap and three fine lines spidered out through her kneecap, much like the nick a stone might make in a car windshield. One by one the lines erased themselves and the nick filled in.
She gasped and went from too scared to breathe to hyperventilating. Shaking harder than she ever had, she managed to cup her hands around her knee as the wound closed. When she snatched the hair from her knee, it fell away with a loud pop and hiss, the sort of sound she’d expect to hear when twisting the cap off a new bottle of soda.
She shivered, teeth chattering. The wound on her knee was hardly more than a scratch now. The beating pain in the bone had receded to a stinging twinge. She couldn’t process it. She wanted a world with logical actions and reactions.
Random magick. Reality where nothing could be counted on, where laws of nature had no meaning, equaled insanity.
There had to be a thread of reason, one thing she could latch on to, a key to unravel the mystery of what was happening. She set aside the miraculous healing, choosing to focus on something closer to sanity.
The only recent memory that made sense was waking up on the cliff and realizing she was facing death by hypothermia. Starting there, she reasoned her way forward. Winding up on a beach naked was not a reasonable outcome. Winding up on a beach naked with a man too beautiful to be real was a less reasonable outcome. A beautiful man who couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her, who could do things with his tongue that probably qualified him for a gold medal of some sort, that pushed the current situation beyond all plausibility.
So?
A coma might be a reasonable outcome of an accident. But a dream wasn’t a reasonable outcome of a coma.
It all made her head ache.
She rose and stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Eyes wide, pupils dilated, skin pale as a ghost. Was she a ghost?
Leaning in, she blew softly, moisture fogged the glass. Not a ghost.
She put a hand to the glass, and just over her shoulder, the mirror above the sink caught the reflection of her reflection. A chain of similar reflections unfolded like parallel worlds.
Recursion, like the loop of a computer program replaying. She could be stuck in a loop like that. Lost in a subconscious limbo. That answer felt right. Safe.
Weren’t there always clues in dreams, bizarre elements so out of place they signaled the dreamer was dreaming? Like cairns on a trail, they could point the way back to reality. She just had to search for the markers. They could lead her to a means to break the loop and reboot herself back into consciousness.
And Ronin? Ronin who made her forget her name when she looked into his eyes. Ronin the perfect man, lover, protector. He had to be the trickster. A force for distraction, determined to keep her unaware.
Maille wiped the fog from the mirror with her sleeve. Was he the source of the monster-in-the-shadows dread she’d picked up on when they were making love? Could losing herself in ecstasy with Ronin mean losing her way back to reality for good?
She pushed the bathroom door open, screeching hinges announcing her exit. Was Ronin danger or diversion?
It didn’t matter which—if she wanted to find reality, Ronin had to go.
He swept her up as soon as she stepped into the kitchen.
“Will you stop grabbing me up?”
“Okay.” He kept right on walking into the great room where he’d arranged pillows and quilts on the floor in front of a crackling fire. Where a tray with cookies and cups and a steaming pot of tea were at the ready.
He’d been busy in that little bit of time she was away. Busy preparing more distractions.
She used her firmest tone. “Ronin, put me down. Now.”
He did. Settled her right in the middle of the romantic nest he’d put together.
“Cookie?” He sat cross-legged beside her and offered a plate. Fudge-striped. Her favorite.
Her stomach rumbled before she could say she wasn’t hungry. His towel slid dangerously low. Forcing her gaze upward rather than downward to temptations she was proving lousy at resisting, Maille met his thoughtful stare. Saliva pooled in her mouth in response to a craving that had nothing to do with cookies. She was going down in the black sea of dark eyes, with no one to throw her a line.
She grabbed a cookie but got distracted watching Ronin’s eyes close and his face go slack with pleasure as he popped one in his mouth. He made th
e same sound he made when he tasted her.
He was probably as starved as she was. And while it was ridiculous to worry that a figment of her imagination was hungry, the gnawing emptiness and lightheadedness she felt might subside if she appeased her subconscious and ate the offering. She’d make Ronin leave after that. Really she would.
He filled a teacup and offered it to her. Steam fragrant with cinnamon tickled her nose. Hot and strong, the liquid seared her tongue. Unsweetened and no milk, just the way she liked it. Of course he would know what she liked.
“I tidied up a little, found some packaged cookies and tea in the cupboard. I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to make you comfortable.”
“You didn’t need to go to all that trouble.”
“Trouble? Heating tea and feeding you your own cookies?” His lilt rolled lazily off each vowel. “You’ve gone to far more bother for me.” He slid one finger along the edge of her robe, flipped it back to reveal her knee before she thought to stop him.
His breath caught. The bruise was gone. The oozing wound now the small scrape she had insisted it was earlier.
He inched back. She didn’t blame him.
“The ice worked like magic,” she said. “I washed it. It really is just a scratch.”
“So it is.” He pulled the edge of silk back in place. He didn’t say anything more and she didn’t know what to say.
The room was just dark enough that she could see out the ceiling-to-floor windows in the corner. Moonlight shone on the rippling black of the ocean. In the lengthening silence, the distant boom of water on rocks seemed to count off minutes like a clock ticking down to something important.
“I found a comb in the bedroom,” Ronin said, picking up a towel from the coffee table and producing a comb and a bottle of detangling spray from between the folds.
She put a hand to her hair, realizing she must look a wreck. Hair snarled, huge wet patches staining her robe. She reached for the comb but he pulled back and held it behind him with one hand, crooking a finger at her. Her noisy swallow earned a grin from him.
“I want to comb your hair for you. You’ve hair like mine. Believe me, I know how hard it is to get the tangles out, especially high up the back.”
Maille waited a beat, knowing it was a bad idea.
He repositioned himself just behind her, moved in so his bent knees were on either side of her. Her breath caught when he lifted her hair. Heat moved from his fingertips into her skin when his thumbs traced the line of her spine. He had a unique scent of sea and spice that made her want to bury her nose in his hair when he leaned in to murmur, “Your robe is wet and your skin is like ice. Let’s slip this thing off, love.”
The words came to her slow and soft, as if they had traveled a great distance, but his lips were right there against her ear when he said it. She drew a deep breath to clear her head as he drew the robe down her shoulders, ran heated palms over her shoulder blades. Her mental fog thickened. She could only tip her head back and moan aloud.
“Feel better?” he asked, his tone as sensuous and hot as his touch.
“Better? Moan, sigh, whimper. Oh, yeah, keep doing that.”
He chuckled. “Pace yourself. We’re just getting started.”
He draped a towel over her shoulders to shield her skin from her wet hair. But there was no shield in place for the soaking going on between her legs. She wanted him so bad it hurt.
He sprayed detangler and worked it through her tresses. Each gentle tug triggered a clench deep in her pussy. Fingertips kneading her scalp had her breasts tightening and her nipples burning for attention.
Tea sloshed from her cup, ran over her fingers and dripped on her thigh. She put the cup down, tugged the robe back in place with unsteady hands. She meant to tell Ronin something. Something important they were supposed to get straight.
What…fuck…if he would just slide those hot fingers of his inside her for a minute.
Doing that wouldn’t help her think straight. Her right hand wandered, caressed his calf. Up. Back down. Up again.
His muscles tensed at her touch. She shouldn’t touch. It would only lead to another sexual dead end. She couldn’t resist. Whenever she was close to him, priorities got jumbled. The need to touch outranked the need to breathe.
Maybe that was true for Ronin too. He was holding his breath.
He grabbed the comb, set the teeth to her hair. It went gliding through her tresses in a controlled downstroke. No ripping at the snarls or accidental yanks. He combed hair like he fucked, with calculated skill. Once she made the connection between fucking and combing, she felt every stroke between her legs.
Each repetition was a stripping of defenses, an unwrapping that had her feeling as if she’d been unzipped and all her secrets bared. That he could see her worst and didn’t care.
She shook her head. He dropped the comb. She put her hands over her face. What was in that tea?
“You okay, Maille?”
“I don’t know. I feel a little woozy. Drunk.”
“Ah. It’s me. Has to be. I have that effect on women.”
She laughed and turned. Was about to hit him with a witty retort, but… Those eyes of his were so deep and dark. That stare, so intense. Her lips plastered themselves to his instead. They tumbled back into the quilts and pillows.
The plate of cookies lodged under her shoulder. He swatted it away as he settled over her.
His breath against her neck, the heat of his thigh parting hers, the maddening sizzle of his cock, thick and ready against her thigh—all the things she’d been craving right where she wanted them. It was then she remembered the important thing.
She couldn’t have sex with him. He had to go.
His finger slid between her pussy lips. “Ah, Maille mine, you’re so wet and tight.”
Maybe it was the Irish accent, but his voice had a sexy timbre that delivered every syllable with a trancelike quality. Her pussy clenched at the sound of it, wept at the beauty of it.
He was magnificent. The planes and angles of his face, chiseled. Lips firm. His hair dark and springy, a wild tumble that would take time to tame. Maille tried to keep her hands in his hair. Hold him back. The problem was the rest of her body really wanted him to have his head. Put either of his heads wherever he liked.
“Maille, let go. Relax.”
“I want to.” She rubbed her pussy against his thigh even as her hands tightened in a death lock on his hair.
He pried one hand free and then the other, dragging them above her head.
“No. I can’t touch you if you do that.”
“You’re not touching, love, you’re plucking me bald.”
“I need to touch you.” She wriggled and turned her head restlessly from side to side, caught between frustrated and frightened.
“Here, then.” He eased his weight back. “Turn over on your belly, sweet.” He let her hands free. “That’s my girl.”
She pushed up to hands and knees, thinking… Thinking something important. Something she should do. Something—
Ronin enveloped her, and the thought broke apart on a keening moan as the head of his cock nuzzled the lips of her pussy.
“You can touch what you like now,” he said. He wasn’t waiting for permission, rolling a nipple between two fingers. His other hand cupped her pussy.
Exquisite sensations zapped through her, shredding her breath. She was losing track of what parts of him were where. When she opened her eyes she was facing the fireplace, with Ronin kneeling behind her. Flames wrapped around logs and a sharp pop tossed sparks in an upward spiral.
“That’s me,” she said. “That’s what you do to me.”
Ronin buried his face in her hair. Desire vibrated off him like heat waves off asphalt on a desert road. “Hmm? What?”
“We can’t,” she panted, trying to convince herself. “You can’t stay.”
His voice sounded as drugged as hers. “You want me to leave? You’re sure about that?”
“Um�
�”
His finger moved inside her. Heat pooled in her belly. He stirred it, sent it rippling out through her limbs. Seared her from the inside out.
“Tell me to go, Maille. You don’t want this—just tell me to go.” He wasn’t playing fair.
She whimpered. “No.”
He pulled out the finger, pressed the head of his cock to her opening. Her pussy tightened, slickened.
He nipped her ear. She tried to push herself on him. At first he leaned back, but then he pressed her hand to his cock.
“Touch me now. Put it where you want it, love.”
His erection, sticky with her juices, slid over her palm. Her pussy quivered when she pushed down over the head. They gasped in unison.
“Easy,” he said. “Give yourself time.”
She gulped. Putting both palms on the floor, she prepared to push back and take them the rest of the way.
Something banged on the porch, rattled at the door. Maille drove back onto Ronin’s cock at the precise moment the door flew open and hit the wall.
Chapter Four
“Fuck,” Ronin snarled.
Maille wished they could.
Reality, or whatever this was, had lousy timing. It came knocking at the door with all the subtlety of the morning alarm. Brash and blaring, stealing away a dream she wasn’t ready to give up. Unlike an alarm clock, this wakeup call didn’t come with a snooze button. It was too big to pick up and hurl out the window. This reality demanded they stop or deal with dangerous consequences.
A palomino stallion filled the doorway. His coat gleamed like gold fire. A sleek foreleg pawed. The crack of hoof against floor sharp and commanding.
Bizarre signposts back to reality didn’t come any more obvious than this.
Ronin leapt off her, grabbing the fire poker from the stand on the hearth as he stepped over her.
Maille scrambled to her feet. “No, Ronin,” she said, positioning herself between him and the wild-eyed beast, pressing her palm against Ronin’s chest when he tried to push past her. “No,” she said again.
