by Kathy Lyons
“You can’t even shift at will. What makes you think having more ability will accomplish anything but land your ass in disaster?”
Nothing. “I’m not seeing any other options right now. Josh won’t even talk to me.”
“Then you’re not looking hard enough.” Laddin abruptly shoved upright and pulled Bruce over onto his back so that they could look eye to eye. It was hard to see in the darkness, and yet Laddin’s light brown eyes still seemed to bore into him. “Going for the apple isn’t the way. It will only repeat the first mistake—only the mistake will be bigger this time.”
“And the first mistake was?”
“Did that cherry help you in any way? Do you feel like you’re on your feet and soaring to bigger and better things?”
No. And yet…. “I just had the best sex of my life. That ought to count for something.”
Laddin blew out a breath. “We could have done that any time. You didn’t have to eat a cherry to do it.”
Except they never would have met without the cherry.
“I don’t know if you can fix things with Josh, but I promise you, that fairy apple isn’t going to do it for you.”
Bruce firmed his chin and glared at Laddin. “I’m not giving up on my brother.”
“Your brother is doing fine. It’s you you’re worried about. I’d look there first.”
That statement hit uncomfortably close to something Bruce couldn’t even name. “There’s nothing here to look at. Nothing at all.”
Laddin touched his face. The fingers were thick with calluses, but his caress was gentle, and the combination of the two set Bruce’s skin to burning. “Do you really think that? That you’re nothing?”
Hell no. He was much worse than nothing. He was the monster his father had claimed Josh was. But he wasn’t going to talk about that—not to a guy he’d just met, no matter how good he fucked. So he shook his head. “I’ve got red in my ledger. I’m trying to wipe it clean.”
He didn’t think Laddin would get the Black Widow reference. He wouldn’t know it except that Marvel comics were one of the few things he and Josh had shared. At least they had, before sports, girls, and their father had gotten between them. But Laddin was smart, and he obviously followed the pop culture reference just fine.
“Don’t give me that movie shit. If you wanted to save the world, you’d become a doctor or a—”
“A fire medic?”
Laddin grimaced. “You really based your life on a Black Widow comic?”
He shrugged. This was the most introspection he’d done in years. It wasn’t his strong suit. But maybe that was a side effect of becoming a werewolf. He started thinking in ways he’d never done before. He started thinking about himself in ways that made him question his entire life up until now. Was everything he was, everything he’d done, all about making up for being an asshole older brother?
He thought for a moment. He remembered all the things he’d done to his brother when they were kids. Things that would get a parent arrested. Verbal and physical abuse were only the beginning. He’d been mean because his father had taught him to be mean, and the older man had praised him the more vicious he got.
The memories made him feel sick, and he flopped back onto the bedroll with a grunt. “I want to make up for being a shit older brother. That’s all.”
“Have you tried saying ‘I’m sorry’?”
Those two words seemed so lame. And when he’d actually used them, he’d been too late. Josh had blown him off with surprising strength. “This apology thing,” he said in the darkness. “It’s a new thought for me.”
Laddin didn’t respond except to grunt. Bruce knew what the sound meant. It was the universal noise of “whatever.” It meant that Laddin was done talking. He’d given his opinion and wasn’t going to belabor the point. That was both comforting and thoroughly frustrating, because Bruce needed to sort this out. He needed to find a way to connect with Josh. And he needed that damned fairy apple to leave his thoughts. Because the more he thought about it, the more it hung in the air right behind his closed eyelids. If he focused on it even a little, he could smell it and feel the tingle of its magic against his tongue.
“Let it go for tonight,” Laddin said as he tucked his arm around Bruce’s chest. Then he dropped his head against Bruce’s arm and inhaled a long, deep breath. “You don’t smell like cheese anymore.”
“Thank God for small favors.” But then he remembered that in the midst of mulling over his own problems, he’d forgotten all about Laddin’s. “You have to talk to the pixies tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Have you set an alarm?”
“Yeah. But I don’t know what I’m going to say to them. I spent half the day searching for answers and found nothing helpful.”
“I’ll go with you. No matter what, we’ll figure it out.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” He didn’t know if it was the sex or the fact that they’d nearly died together this afternoon, but at some point Laddin had changed from being Bruce’s trainer to his comrade in arms. Bruce wasn’t about to leave him hanging without backup against killer cheese fairies. That thought was so ridiculously silly, it made him snort. “I’m there for you, man. We’ll confront the limburger together.”
“Grand Master Cheesy, Great Fetid Feta.”
Bruce felt himself relax, the tension from thinking about things that made him uncomfortable easing because he was focused on Laddin. “I can’t believe you can say that with a straight face.”
“Hey, I’m not just a pretty face. I can tell my Fetid Feta from Smoked Gouda any day.”
“And here I thought you were just a great lay.”
He felt Laddin smile against his back. “I’m a man of many talents.”
They bantered back and forth for a bit, settling into a rhythm of chuckles and quiet breaths. Eventually Laddin drifted off, his soft snores making Bruce think of the atmosphere in the firehouse late at night. He wondered if this was what being in a werewolf pack was like. Did firefighters and werewolves share that sense of family? The idea comforted him and allowed his mind to quiet into sleep.
Rest was beautiful and so welcome.
So the last thing he expected when he woke hours later was to find a fairy army practicing maneuvers on his chest. It wasn’t a dream, and holy fuck, what the hell were they about to do to his dick?
Chapter 13
FAIRY FIRECRACKERS ARE NOT AS FUN AS THEY SEEM
LADDIN WOKE with a start when he heard a strangled cry from Bruce. Their bodies were intertwined, and though he lifted his head, he couldn’t seem to move away from him.
WTF?
Holy shit, he was tied down!
The memory of being suffocated by fairy cheese had him straining in real panic. His head started pounding, his breath heaved, and he fought, fought, fought like a demon possessed.
“Ow! Laddin! Shit!” The words were punctuated with grunts, and somewhere from the edge of his vision, he saw bright yellow lights tumbling and spiraling away. He didn’t care. He needed to get free, and it was working. First a shoulder, then a foot. And then he was grabbing and ripping at whatever the hell was on top of him. Which—now that he was mostly free—turned out to be his bedroll.
He blinked while Bruce took a breath with him. His eyes were dark, his worry clear.
“Can you turn on the light?” Bruce asked, his voice low and quiet.
The light. Right! He’d left a camp light right by the bed. He banged down with his fist to turn it on, and the fury of the motion made him feel better… until he looked around closer and saw the bright yellow lights for what they were.
Pixies.
He rubbed a hand over his face and tried to calm his racing heart. “I told you I’d give you answers at dawn. It’s not fucking dawn.”
“These aren’t the same fairies,” Bruce said. His voice was low and filled with tension. Laddin blinked as he focused on his lover, only to see what the probl
em was.
Bruce was roped down like Gulliver had been by the Lilliputians. Slender stripes of white light lay in even lines across his naked body. Extra layers pinned down his far wrist and ankle, and all of it seemed to sizzle slightly. Oh crap! When Laddin sniffed, he smelled burned flesh. The only part of Bruce’s body that was free of the burning white ropes was where Laddin’s arm had stretched across Bruce’s upper torso and neck. Since Laddin had been in a bedroll, he’d been protected. But Bruce had fallen asleep lying on his back, completely exposed.
Holy shit. He had to get those ropes of light off of Bruce. He reached forward, but Bruce quickly stopped him. “No! Look at your arm.”
He looked, and sure enough, there were white lines like string cheese causing a low-level burn that hurt like hell. The only thing that had protected him was the bedroll. He tried to pull off the line from his arm, but the stuff wouldn’t budge, and it burned his thumb and forefinger where he grabbed hold.
It didn’t matter. He’d freed himself when he shoved himself upright. There had to be a way to haul that shit off Bruce. So he grabbed his discarded T-shirt, wrapped it around his fingers, and tried to pull one of those ropes off Bruce.
It didn’t work, though he kept pulling, even when his T-shirt disintegrated where it touched the ropes. Worse, the more he tugged, the brighter and hotter the ropes became. And hell, the hair on Bruce’s chest and—shit—at his groin was smoldering now. Laddin patted the flame out, but he doubted that would prevent the next spark.
Why the hell had he ever thought fairies were cute?
“Get that shit off him now!” he commanded.
“We have beaten the Windy Wolf in fair combat,” a tiny voice said.
Laddin looked, but he couldn’t see the speaker. What he did see was a dozen lights gathered in a mass at the far side of Bruce’s head. He was trying to sort out some sense of form from the bright things, but it was like picking out individual lights in a firecracker explosion. They moved too fast and were too bright for him to catch. And then suddenly, a glowing ball soared through the air and exploded in bright blue color like a firecracker above Bruce’s chest. It was really pretty, except it burst with real force. Two more launched, and Laddin tried to bat them away. He got the red one quickly, tossing it up toward the ceiling to burst in brilliant crimson. But he couldn’t get to the second one in time, and it exploded against his hand with vicious pain. “Stop that!” Laddin ordered.
“We defeat the Windy Wolf!”
And again, more firecrackers launched. Laddin hit them away as fast as he could, but it was a losing game. There seemed to be no end of firecrackers, and he couldn’t sit here and play defense the whole time. Especially since he was getting the shit burned out of his hands. Every impact felt like a bee sting, hot and sharp on his palm, but at least they weren’t exploding on top of Bruce.
“Stop it!” he yelled again. “Why are you doing this?”
“Acknowledge our win!” the voice said again. “We have beaten the Windy Wolf!”
Finally he found the speaker—a beautiful fairy woman wearing a flower hat larger than her entire body. In fact, it was hard to see her face because she had tilted it so far back to look at him, she should have toppled backward. Except normal physics didn’t seem to apply to fairies.
“Sure, sure. You win—”
“No!” Bruce grunted from the floor. “Find out the forfeit first!”
“What?”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “Don’t you know anything about betting? You can’t let someone win without knowing what you lose.” He blew out a breath. “I thought you went to public school.”
Apparently not the same kind of public school as Bruce. He took a breath and tried to focus. God, he needed coffee. Obviously this wasn’t a simple barroom bet over favorite teams. This was fairy bargaining, and Bruce was right. He couldn’t agree to anything without understanding the terms.
“Stop the… uh… game. We will discuss terms.”
“We discuss!” the female fairy said as she grabbed her flower hat and threw it hard onto Bruce’s belly.
Bruce groaned as the hat seemed to explode. The resulting welt on his belly grew red and hot right beneath her feet.
“Stop that!” Laddin snapped. He was pissed off now, and damn it, Bruce couldn’t take much more of this. And his own hands were already swelling. “What’s your name?”
“I am Dollarback Erin Rodger-Dodger! I run back and fall forward, I rush for yards, and I am in charge of the Superest Bowl there is!”
Well, that was a mashup of random football terms. And even he knew that Aaron Rodgers was male. But again, that wasn’t the point.
“I hail you, Rodger-Dodger. What are you trying to win?”
“Power! Glory!”
In the background, the fairy lights all jumped up and down and cheered.
“Okay—”
“And passage to Fairyland.” She stepped resolutely up Bruce’s chest and hopped onto his chin. “The Windy Wolf has lost. He will give us passage.”
“He doesn’t know how.” Then he looked at Bruce. “Why do they think you can?”
“I have no idea!” Bruce grumbled.
Meanwhile, Erin Rodger-Dodger held up a glowing light—another firecracker. If she spiked that down on Bruce’s eye, he’d lose it. “We will throw fire until he does,” she cried.
Bruce growled in response and strained his head, but those white ropes lay across his chin and neck. His head was pinned down, and the more he strained, the more it burned hot lines into his skin.
“That’s enough!” Laddin said, slapping the fairy away. It was surprisingly hard to do, given her tiny size, and the firecracker exploded against his hand, making him clench it in pain. But as long as he was bigger than them, he would break Bruce free if he had to burn the shit out of both his hands.
So that’s what he did. First he studied the white lines, looking hard to find where they seemed to be pinned to the ground. If he squinted really hard, he could make out tiny pins. Maybe? It was all he had to go on, but there was no way he could pull those out with his fingernails. He needed…
The toolbox. Good thing he knew exactly where it was in the van. He looked down at Bruce and mouthed, “Hold on.” Then, before Bruce had a chance to react, Laddin leaped up and ran straight for the van.
The fairy lights followed him. He knew it because little fireworks explosions kept going off around his head… and because he could smell his own burnt hair. But he didn’t let that stop him as he grabbed the box and ran straight back to Bruce. A moment later he had the thing flipped open, grabbed the pliers, and used them on the nearest rope pin. Then he hauled on it with all his might.
The thing was like concrete. While the firecrackers kept going off, Laddin squeezed the pliers hard and used all his back muscles to haul upward. He felt like a young King Arthur pulling on the sword set in stone. Below him, he watched Bruce flinch. His eyes were squeezed tight against sparks, and he looked haggard. But he didn’t cry out.
And then—hallelujah—the pin gave way. It came out with what felt like a sudden pop, and Laddin almost lost his grip on the pliers as his arms flew up. The white rope flew to the side as well, coming off Bruce’s neck to expose a dark red burn underneath.
Shit, that looked awful. But it didn’t matter. Laddin focused on the next pin, this one tied to a rope that restricted Bruce’s shoulders. Fortunately, this one didn’t take as much work. He wasn’t sure why, but that pin came up faster and easier. As did the next and the next.
Finally Bruce was free enough that he could help, and he started by batting away firecrackers. He levered himself upright and hissed as one of the white lines burned into his belly.
“Don’t move! You’ll cut yourself in half!” Laddin snapped.
Bruce stilled, his abs tight as he held a half sit-up. A quick glance at his eyes told Laddin that he was watching the fairies, ready to knock away any incoming firecrackers. Good. That freed Laddin to go to the next pin. He wor
ked as quickly as he could, pulling pins with steady progression down Bruce’s body. But his hands were swollen, and sweat wasn’t making it any easier to grip the pliers.
“Goddamn fucking….” Bruce swore as he continued to bat aside fireworks, his bulging muscles only making the remaining ropes burn deeper into his legs.
Eventually, after long eons of agony, Laddin got the last rope unpinned, tossing if off Bruce’s right ankle. And when it was done, he whipped around to confront the fairy assholes. Except there wasn’t a single fairy in sight. None. The only thing he saw was the flickering flames of a barn fire.
Fucking hell.
Chapter 14
FIGHTING FIRES AND BUNNY RABBITS ALIKE
BRUCE SMELLED the fire before he saw any flames. It was a scent he had trained for, and he knew just what to do. The problem was, he knew what to do while wearing protective clothing and carrying gear. Right now he was buck naked and cursing from more than a dozen burns. His training told him to get out now. He grabbed a shovel instead.
“Go!” he bellowed at Laddin. “Get help!”
He started shoveling a perimeter around the flames and dumping the dirt on whatever smoldered. The biggest danger in a barn fire was the dust in the air. That stuff ignited like kindling and could bring the whole place down on them in seconds.
Fortunately they’d already had the spring rains, so there’d been some dampness in the air. It was probably the only reason the whole building wasn’t currently ablaze. That meant his main worry now was the straw. So he shoveled and stomped in his bare feet, and he flinched when one of the car alarms started blaring like it was the second coming. The van went off next.
“What the fuck?” he growled as Laddin came running forward with a small fire extinguisher in his hand.
“Getting help,” Laddin said as he pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher.
