Eye of the Tempest (Jane True)

by Nicole Peeler

  Who needs expensive salons? I thought, closing my eyes firmly against the firm chaff of the swirling grit.

  Feels so good, I thought, turning over so that I was lying on my belly, my face toward the Sow. So very good… And if this feels good, think how much better it would feel to be even closer.

  There was something about the way the water soothed against my flesh—undulating and gentle—that made me want to move forward. I wanted to feel more, to feel how it felt right over there. So, inching forward on my belly, I kept moving closer to that magnetic pull.

  Until I saw rough, black-nailed hands grab me by my wrists and haul me backward till I was sitting quite a distance away.

  What the hell were you doing? Trill mouthed at me. I’d gotten very good at reading lips underwater since I’d started swimming with the kelpie.

  In response, all I did was blink at her in confusion. What did she mean, what was I doing? I thought. And then I felt the pain.

  Looking down, I realized that I was covered in small cuts and bruises. What had, at the time, felt like the gentle exfoliation of a little grit must really have been the pummeling of decent-sized rocks.

  Trill’s hands on my shoulders shook me until I looked up at her face. You were going right into the Sow, she mouthed. I had to shift underwater. What were you thinking?

  Trill hated shifting underwater; she must have been really worried about me. Which, in turn, made me worry about myself.

  I don’t know, I mouthed in response. And I didn’t. I hadn’t felt the pain of the rocks hitting me, hadn’t felt anything but pleasure and curiosity.

  Concern was etched all over Trill’s feature as she mouthed, Let’s go home. I nodded, numb.

  What the hell is up with me? I thought, as we turned back toward the shore of my cove. It’s like I was possessed or something.

  We swam together, Trill keeping me at arm’s length while I tried to figure out what had just happened. On the one hand, I hadn’t felt any overt magical influence. But, on the other hand, I’d learned that there were all sorts of magic out there, not all of which I recognized.

  But whom have I met who has such power and wants to hurt me? Blondie was apparently an ally, as was Terk, the brownie who worked for Capitola’s family back in the Borderlands. They were the only two beings with nonelemental magic, the type that my kind and I used, that I knew.

  Which means we might have another new, unknown enemy, I thought with a mental sigh. I was being rather dramatic but, in my own defense, it is rather tiring having strangers constantly trying to kill my friends and me.

  But before I could dwell on that thought, I felt Trill nudge me with her elbow and point forward. I peered through the water until I saw what she was showing me.

  There, way ahead of us, stood a pair of legs standing waist high in the water. I squinted, swimming forward a bit more till I could see that the legs were big, bedenimed, and wearing motorcycle boots.

  Anyan, I realized, and my whole body tingled at the thought. I looked at Trill, who rolled her eyes.

  He’s all yours, she mouthed, giving me a mocking salute before signaling I should swim ahead of her.

  Where will you go? I asked her, trying not to smile when she motioned toward the beach quite a ways up the shore. After all, I didn’t want her to think that I was abandoning her—hos before bros and all that—but I did want to ascertain that she’d be well away before I launched my vagoo at Anyan’s face.

  And speaking of my lady business, I am bare-assed naked, I thought, pondering that fact. Nell had—I assumed—apparated my clothes to their usual place in my cove, leaving one eminently fuckable (and, from what I could see, fully clothed) barghest standing between me and my modesty.

  Luckily, I thought, shrugging for no one’s benefit, I’ve never been particularly attached to the concept of modesty.

  And then I swam as fast as I could toward those long, lovely legs. All the worry I’d been suppressing since waking up that I’d been too slow and that Anyan was dead urged me on. I’d been told he was fine, but being told something and seeing it for myself were two entirely different things. So I rushed toward him, needing to feel him—healthy and whole—against me.

  At the last moment I kicked off the shallows, breaching the water with a tremendous splash. I landed, wetly, smack dab against Anyan’s T-shirted chest, causing him to rock back on his heels before regaining his balance.

  But his arms had wrapped around me immediately, and they never let go.

  He held me there, partially in his embrace but also buoyed by a little surge of power from both of us, for what felt like hours but could only have been a handful of seconds. I was as limp as seaweed in his arms, my head cradled under his chin, my own arms draped around his neck. We were both breathing hard—in my case, from a combination of exertion, nerves, and desire.

  I barely registered when Anyan started to move, although I did feel the retreat of the water from around our bodies as he walked the both of us up the beach. It was only when I felt him start to sit—presumably on my cove’s resident ancient beached tree trunk—that I pulled my thighs upward, wrapping my legs about his waist so I could remain in his lap.

  We stayed like that, me wrapped around him like a little leech, the only sounds that of our breathing and the steady drip of water from our ocean-drenched bodies. There were a thousand things I needed to ask him—a thousand things we needed to talk about. But all I cared about, at that moment, was the feel of his body against mine.

  Everything else could wait.

  “Thought we’d lost you,” he said, eventually. His voice rumbled through my body and I shivered. In response, he moved my hair aside and stroked a large, warm hand all the way down my back.

  I shivered again, but for an entirely different reason.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” I replied, feeling my voice hitch at the memory of him lying there, bleeding from everywhere.

  Anyan left his one hand on the small of my back while the other knotted my hair in a rough queue, tugging my head back so that my face came away from his chest and I was looking into his eyes.

  I gotta admit, it took everything I had not to moan. That hair-pulling thing he did really peeled my bananas.

  “You saved my life again, little girl,” he said quietly, his eyes searching my face as if he were lost and I was his map. In response, my own throat worked uselessly, gone dry and tight from a combination of nerves and lust.

  “Nothing you haven’t done for me quite a few times,” I only just managed to croak out in a voice about four octaves lower than usual. I hoped the barghest found my sudden plunge into man-voice as sexy as I found his hair pulling, but I wasn’t about to bet on it.

  As if he knew what I was thinking, Anyan’s reply was to pull my hair again. Only this time he tugged outward, rather than up, moving my chest away from his. I was still astride him, our hips flush, but he’d pulled my shoulders back so that my upper body was bared to him. Cradling my neck and the back of my head in his large hand, his eyes swept over said upper body, which I quickly remembered was very naked except for the two wings of crow-black hair that, having escaped his grip, fell alongside either side of my face and down over my breasts.

  Thank the gods I currently resemble Cousin It, I thought, my face reddening under his scrutiny as that long, crooked nose twitched once, hard.

  He ignored my embarrassment, stroking the hand that had been at the small of my back across my buttock and the outside of my thigh, raising goose bumps all over my flesh. His nose twitched again and lord and lady did I want to nibble the tip…

  “You’ve hurt yourself, already,” he said as he harrumphed, his iron-gray eyes taking in the multitude of cuts and bruises I’d accumulated near the Sow.

  I was about to spill the beans about my sort-of possession, and had even opened my mouth to do so. But all that came out was an only partially stifled groan as Anyan raised his free hand to run it down my cheek, to my neck, and down each arm, trailing healing warmth.
His power pushed through my body—warm and strong—and I ground down on another groan. I also may have ground down on the barghest a bit, but under the circumstances, who could blame me?

  Anyan, for his part, didn’t seem to mind.

  Instead, he grunted softly, his gray eyes spearing my black ones as his generous mouth pursed in concentration. At the same time, his hand on my hip clutched convulsively, squeezing nearly hard enough to hurt before his grip relaxed. Then that same hand reached up ever so slowly to insert itself under the hair on the left side of my face. Anyan spread his fingers, trailing his thumb across my jaw as he used his hand to push my concealing hair back away from the left side of my body. Without looking down, he reached across me to do the same thing to the hair covering my right side, leaving me naked before him. But he still kept his eyes on mine.

  “Is this all right?” he asked, his voice husky with desire.

  “All right?” I asked, wondering how on earth he could think it was anything but. Then I saw the concern on his face, like he was genuinely afraid I was about to say no. I immediately put his worries to bed.

  “Of course it’s all right,” I said. “Unexpected, but all right.”

  “Unexpected?” he asked, his turn to make me feel nervous.

  I paused, unsure how to answer him. “You’re Anyan,” I replied, finally. A response that made perfect sense to me.

  The barghest looked at me like I was speaking Flemish, but he started talking anyway. His hands were still where they rested on my forearms, but his eyes swept over me possessively.

  “You lay there for weeks,” he said, “and there was nothing I could do. I thought you were going to die, and there was nothing I could do. You were so small and still, and there was nothing I could do.”

  With that, he stopped talking, and his eyes glistened suspiciously. The thought of Anyan tearing up, and over me!, nearly did me in. Without thinking about it, I flung myself forward, wrapping my arms around his neck and holding him tightly.

  “I’m okay, now,” I murmured into his ear, his coarse jaw rasping against my cheek. “And I’m here. I’m fine.”

  Anyan’s only response was to hold me tightly, his huge hands warm and strong where they gripped my flesh.

  It felt wonderful. I felt safe, protected, and cared for. Nevertheless, I’ve always been greedy.

  I wanted more.

  So I pulled back from Anyan, just enough so that my nose nuzzled against his gorgeously long schnoz, just as I’d fantasized about doing so many times.

  “Bad puppy,” I murmured, my voice husky.

  His hand on my hip pulled my pelvis in snugly against his, just as I leaned forward, my lips just brushing Anyan’s…

  “If I knew it was going to be this kind of party, I’d have brought some towels,” came an oily voice from the crack in the cove walls, causing me to yank Anyan’s hair in surprise.

  The barghest winced, and as I pulled away I growled, “Trill!”

  “Don’t huff at me, Nell wanted you,” the kelpie chortled, as she stepped from the shadows. She was again in her pony form, and was prancing with mischief. Her pearlescent flesh glimmered in the moonlight. “How was I supposed to know Anyan was planning on jumping your bones the minute you woke up?”

  “Leave them alone, Trill,” came Nell’s kindly voice from behind the kelpie. The little woman stepped up from behind the sea-pony. She didn’t seem at all discomfited by walking up on us practically in flagrante.

  “We’re sorry to interrupt,” Nell said. “But everyone’s waiting for you at the Sty.”

  I gave Trill the traitor a sharp look. She should have warned Nell that Anyan and I were, um, having a reunion. One with no clothes, at least on my part. Trill just gave me her horrible pony grin in response.

  I gave her the finger.

  “So if you’re finished, we can get over there,” Nell said, levitating my clothes a bit closer to where I straddled the barghest. Then the gnome looked Anyan full in the face, giving him her sweetest, most heartfelt grandma smile.

  “We won’t tell anyone we caught you jumping Jane’s bones.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  As I walked through the door of the Sty, I was hit with the familiar smell of the bar: beer and burgers, mixed together with a faint undertone of Pine-Sol. And there, around the large, square bar that jutted out onto the edge of the Sow’s small dance floor, sat all of my Rockabill chums. They were clustered around Tracy—she and Grizzie were taller than any of my supernatural friends—and not paying any mind to the front door.

  Nell and Trill, blanketed under the gnome’s heaviest glamour, walked toward our group. For some reason, Trill had a hard time glamouring herself, especially if she interacted with humans at all. I think it was a concentration issue. So for the very, very occasional times she was away from her own kind, she kept her pony shape and let Nell glamour her to look like a wolfhound. If I let my gaze unfocus, I could see the large dog’s shape padding over the clopping form of our little kelpie.

  Before following Nell and Trill, I moved over to Anyan’s side, peering up at him speculatively. I wasn’t so slow that I didn’t realize there was something happening between us, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t opposed to reassurance. After all, the last thing I remembered was that Anyan and I had been just a possibility. And while Anyan had had a month to think past those stumbling first steps—and leap all the way to bone-jumping, the ambitious sod—I was still lurking in a corner of square one.

  The barghest, as if sensing my insecurities, reached out to cradle my jaw in his warm, dry palm. His skin was rough against my soft cheek, but that just turned me on even more.

  “You have no idea how happy I am to see you upright,” Anyan’s low voice growled. Then he leaned in to kiss my forehead, before moving his lips to my ear. What he whispered next made my poor, overtaxed libido nearly faint: “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to want you flat on your back again as soon as possible.”

  His teeth nipped my ear and I whimpered, a million Anyan-related fantasies suddenly swarming through my brain like overstimulated honey bees. When I didn’t budge, my gaze turning inward to enjoy my own naughty thoughts, he chuckled before putting his hand on the nape of my neck to steer my dreamy ass away from the front door.

  As we neared our friends, they turned away from Tracy to see us. When their eyes lit upon me, I felt my own prickle with tears at the joy on everyone’s face.

  As usual, Grizzie broke the silence. “Jane!” came a shout, as over six feet of omnisexual goodness came darting toward me. For a second, I felt like a vole targeted by a peregrine, but then I realized that a mere falcon would never have the chutzpah to wear that tank top. It was white and sported, in effigy, a tanned body with huge boobs encased in a Confederate flag bikini.

  Giggling, I allowed my friend to sweep me up in a dramatic hug. Anyan squeezed past us to get to the bar, and then the prickles turned to real tears as I felt a bunch of other arms around Griz and me. I felt like a rugby player in a scrum, but one made of love and acceptance. It was glorious.

  “How was Belize?” Grizzie said, when everyone had moved a few steps back and I could breathe again.

  “Um, Belize?” I frowned, looking around at the group.

  Amy Nahual’s normally placid, slightly stoned expression frowned as she nodded sharply, warning me to go along with Grizzie.

  “Yeah, um, Belize was great. You know Belize,” I said, my brain scrambling to recall exactly where Belize was. “Always hot?” I hazarded, smiling back at Grizzie when she grinned.

  “That’s great! Although you don’t look tan at all.”

  “Yes, well—” I started to say, but allowed myself to trail off with relief as Amy pulled me toward her for a hug.

  “We told the humans, except for your dad, that you were in Belize. Just roll with it,” she whispered in my ear.

  “Will do,” I replied, squeezing her tightly. “You doing well?”

  Amy chuckled her loose-throated, laid-back la
ugh. “Always copacetic, sister. You know me! Glad to see you up and at ’em.”

  Then she allowed me to be pulled away by first Marcus and then Sarah Vernon, the nahuals who owned the Sty. They each gave me a hug, Sarah promising to go right into the back and rustle me up the biggest burger with extra cheddar she could make. I didn’t protest as Sarah rushed off to fulfill her promise.

  My big shock came when Tracy, Grizzie’s life partner, went to give me her own hug. Right before I left, Grizzie and Tracy had announced they were pregnant with twins. Tracy had already been pretty big for someone who was only three months gone, and now she was…

  “Huuuuuuge,” I whispered, my wide eyes latched onto her belly, before clapping a hand over my mouth. Tracy’s being so much bigger than the last time I saw her meant I finally realized I truly had been out for a month.

  “I see Belize didn’t improve your tact,” my friend replied, drily, before pulling me as close as she could get me in a hug.

  “Um, no. But I got you some baby clothes!” I blurted out, panicked by that evening’s second mention of a country I couldn’t quite place geographically.

  Shit, where am I going to get baby clothes from Belize? I thought frantically, as Tracy’s face lit up.

  “How exciting!” she squealed, as I cursed at myself. Luckily, before I could dig myself any more holes, my attention was riveted to the figure standing awkwardly a few feet away, waiting to be noticed.

  “Iris!” I shouted, nearly choking on my overflowing emotions. I was feeling things I didn’t even know how to name. The last time I’d seen my succubus friend had been after relinquishing her to the care of strange healers. She’d been kidnapped by Jarl’s minions both because she knew me and because, in her past, she’d given birth to a halfling son. I’d been made to believe she was dead, although she’d really been kept alive as insurance. That fact was a mixed blessing. I had been so happy she was still alive, but she’d endured horrific abuse before we’d rescued her from the evil Healer’s mansion-prison.