I stared at the strange assortment of creatures that had been facing off with Chance before he had spun us to switch positions. At the front of the pack stood a small long nosed elf and a hobgoblin with green skin and warts. They and other assorted creatures stared at me with almost as much surprise as I felt looking at them.
When Chance’s speech registered, I spun to thump him on the back with one fist.
He glared at me over one shoulder.
“I have not come to you.” Lifting my brows at him, I dared him to argue.
He gave me a look that reminded me that we were on the same side. It told, rather than asked, me to clam up.
I shoved past him to glare at my mother. Avery stood behind her. He was almost as tall as my mother, as I said, height not being an attractive feature amongst their kind. His hair remained thick as I remembered and, as an immortal, he had not aged. His eyes had a glittering sheen to them and his very skin seemed to call me. Fucking fairies, I thought again. He tried to use glamour to diffuse the situation. Typical, just typical.
I glared harder at my mother and told her the truth. “You cannot force me to marry anyone. I will fight you and any you send for me. You may manage to destroy me, but what you seek to accomplish will be destroyed as well. How you thought to force an arranged marriage on me, or even force me back into Fairie, is just—”
My mother stepped closer with a glare. “I wouldn’t try to tell me what I can and cannot do if I were you, Janie.”
Power began to gather around my mother like heat waves. I sucked in a breath and held it.
Chance’s hands rested on my shoulders and the cord tugged at my middle. I tried to snap it off, to ignore him, but I felt vulnerable and he seemed so much stronger. I resisted leaning on him when I needed so much to lean. I couldn’t make the connection snap off clean. Lingering tendrils remained to lick at my soul, or so it felt. Almost as if he had merged to become a part of me. Like I could lie back, physically and emotionally, and he would catch me. I wasn’t sure I appreciated the sensation.
A part of me wanted to rely on him. I wanted none of this to happen, but then again, none of that was exactly true because I wanted Vance too. To have Vance, I needed all of this craziness. Without it I would never be free of my mother’s control, could never choose who I would love or not. My mother continued gathering her power. Avery lurked behind her like a dark, shining shadow. I studied her glittering throng while Chance held my arms, solid if unbidden support.
“You will at least try out the engagement, Janie, soul mate or no, for one week or I will bring my granddaughter here to stay. She would be safer in the Court than in the land of mortals.”
I sucked in a breath and glared at her. A week. That wasn’t long. “One week?” A week I could do to protect my daughter.
“If after one week you still do not want to marry Avery, then you do not have to. I personally believe if you take him topside with you, you will see that like calls to like. He would make you far happier than this towering—what the hell is he anyway?” Her wind chime voice went sharp at the end and she peered at Chance from under her nearly eyelash free eyes.
I looked over my shoulder at him. Framed against an impossible sky, surrounded by creatures that could not be, things from every nightmare and dream that anyone had ever had, Chance stood more alien than any of them. I smiled at him, he winked back, and I sighed. “I haven’t exactly figured out what he is yet. And he won’t tell.”
He nodded and quirked a brow at the answer. I apparently had gotten it right.
“One week with him topside, and I can bring him back, no harm no foul, right? The engagement will be broken, and you’ll release me from the Fairy Court? Forever?” I tried to word it in a way that she could not back out. Not that it would matter—fairies always found a loophole.
My mother sighed and her power uncoiled a little. She appeared to be thinking. Avery stood, puffing his chest a little. Apparently, he felt the conversation had swung his way. I was not terribly happy with the way things had developed, but I could perhaps control the situation within established limits. I had resisted Chance, who I actually felt physically drawn to, for very nearly a month since we’d first met. Avery would be a piece of cake, compared to that connection. I could not see myself feeling physically or otherwise attracted to a Ken doll, even if he was a very nice looking tiny plastic man.
“If I return him in a week, do we have an agreement? Here, in front of your council?”
If she agreed in front of the court, she would be forsworn. A fairy, queen or not, forsworn, could be hunted down for not keeping his or her word. If she accepted her own terms, I could get out of both the engagement and the court just by putting up with the mini man for a week. Not a bad deal.
“Janie, I don’t think this is a good idea.” Chance tried to stop me but my mother was faster.
“Agreed.” My mother trilled it in her ringing voice. “If you take Avery topside and, with all that he and Fairie has to offer, he does not win you to our cause in one week, your arranged marriage and reinstatement to the Fairy Council will be revoked. If not, your marriage will occur as planned, and you will take your place at my side. With your man.” She tacked the last bit on with a sly smile.
I tilted my head at her, and Chance’s nails bit into my shoulders in a feeling that hovered between pleasure and pain. I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out. I maintained eye contact with my mother, but it was harder with him doing that. “My man? Vance?” My head cocked in confusion.
“Vance? I thought you said…?” Mother looked confused. She glanced to the back of the crowd to where my cousin, Santino, one of her lesser Fey, stood now.
He shrugged, trying not to get me into more trouble, and glared at me. He wouldn’t answer her if he didn’t have to, but she could force the issue if I proved recalcitrant and we both knew it.
Chance breathed in my ear. “She means me. She wants us as a package.”
I shivered both from his words and from the feel of his breath on my skin. The scent of him surrounded me, drowning out the exotic magic smells of the raft with his special blend of stormy man. “My man?” The redundancy stemmed from complete confusion.
“He claims you as soul mate. If you have any sort of bond at all, he could be of some use to you. If you can control him and call him into the mounds, perhaps he can be useful to us as well. Anything that makes you more powerful will, of course, be beneficial to our kind.”
I leaned back into Chance, accepting his grip on me since it meant I’d keep track of where he was if I pissed off Mom. “I cannot swear him into servitude based on my actions.”
“Janie we need to talk privately.” Urgency hummed in his tone. “Now.”
I glared up at him. “We are not in a place that allows privacy, dude. We are in the middle of the Fairy Courts. Everything here is alive and answers to her hand. The very air can hear us and will tell tales to the queen.”
His nails bit back down on my shoulders, making me gasp as the twisted pleasure pain of his touch caught me by surprise. “We can make privacy wherever we want.”
I glanced away from his hypnotic eyes. My mother’s gaze had shifted from me to him, so I quirked a questioning brow.
“Remember the cocoon of light?” Chance grinned in the rakish way that fronted his friendly mask, but I could see the dangerous creature lurking beneath it, even if the fairies couldn’t.
I thought of how when I fed off him at the bar and before, that strange light, like an upturned snow globe, surrounded us. It shattered whenever I broke the connection. Without giving too much away to our audience I merely gave a half nod.
“Kiss me.”
I breathed out. “Damn it, Chance.”
He released my shoulders and I spun on him with a glare. “I am not doing it. You said I was always the one doing the kissing. For once, I don’t care if there is some greater good, I am not—”
He cut me off as he covered my lips with his.
For the first real time, C
hance kissed me. He took my face in his hands and captured my lips masterfully. Every other time when I had kissed Chance, I had been weak. Nearly dying, starving in some way or another, always feeding off of him and his supernova of power stores. Never had our lips met when we were equally strong. This was nothing like any of those other times, and yet part of me found the embrace oddly familiar at the same time.
He was all male. My equal in every way, though stronger, demanding I answer him. Maybe he demanded that I admit my weakness as a female and he was dominant over me.
All of this flashed through my mind in the first moment our lips touched. That was the kind of power Chance wielded.
Then he really took control. His mouth molded mine, merging the two, welding them, our lips open, tongues dueling with each other before I so much as thought about anything else…about whether or not I wanted to respond to his kiss.
I clung to him, my one arm around his waist, pressing into his back, the other across his shoulder, fingers digging into his scalp as if to hold him in place. My leg circled his waist, scrabbling for purchase to pull higher against him. He captured my waist with one arm, the other under my ass helping to hitch me closer. Light burst from the line that connected our hearts, chest to chest, to blossom around us in a cocoon that protected us from the outside world as my essence came into my throat like a live thing to rub against Chance’s soul.
In that instant we united, one creature, rent apart at the beginning of time, and even I could not deny while we were so united how it felt to be with him. When our mouths merged, need drove us to complete the union, to become one as we had been. A whimper came from my throat, and I rubbed my cheek against his, wanting closer.
“It gets worse every time.” My voice sounded thready, needy, even to my own ears. I kept my eyes closed. I hated him for this, even while I reveled in the sensations storming my system. On the upside, this part became somewhat more expected with familiarity. Not that I could be expected to anticipate such a life altering connection any more than someone could adjust to the feeling of falling off a cliff simply because they may have done it before, but still. I rubbed against him like some cat trying to mark with scent. Every touch, every brush sent joy shivering through my system.
“I know. Harder to stay sane.” His voice was nearly as rough as my own and he rubbed back against my nudging face in answering movements. “Harder to stay you and not give in to us.”
He almost echoed my own fears exactly. I hadn’t expected he would feel that way, especially since he seemed so gung ho for the soul mate bit. “You want this, though?” I wouldn’t have asked the question, not even seconds before that, since I’d been so sure he at least knew what he was doing, even while I fumbled and struggled to deny what I felt for him. For the first time, in this state, I was able to look into his eyes, those alien eyes, and not shatter the illusion of light around us. His beautiful eyes shone a green so pure that they seemed lit from within. If I was really honest with myself, I could be very happy just looking into them for the rest of my days. Framed by black lashes except for where they first grew out from his heavy eyelids. There they shimmered, pale amber as if dipped in ink after they had grown or like he had put on mascara, but nothing about Chance said artifice. Everything about him was natural, even his honest to the point of evil selfishness. Even as I looked, I traced my fingertips across his features, gobbling them up with my touch and hungry gaze.
He stroked a hand over my hair, like the physical touch could balance the emotional upheaval and I curled into the stroke, allowing myself the trembling pleasure of it for a moment as he pulled me close again. “Perhaps I want you. Perhaps I want what we are, but don’t think I’m not terrified that you’re going to eat up who I am. When we’re together like this, when we become one, I am as scared as you are. Anyone would be afraid. It’s too huge not to be scary. Unlike you, I want it because it feels too damn good not to. Also unlike you, this time I remember we did this for a reason, and we have an audience.”
“They can’t see us in here.” Suddenly I knew that for sure, though I wasn’t sure how. I wrinkled my brow, concern shattering a bit of the wonder. “How exactly do I know that?”
“Same way I know things about us,” he murmured into my neck, lips brushing the tender skin as he spoke, and sent a delicious shiver down my spine. “You just do. I also know, now that you mention it, that we’re messing with time.”
As soon as he said it, I knew it too. So long as we stayed in our private circle, albeit minutes or hours, it would only be moments of real time. It would blur for them. All they could see was our light. “We are outside the space-time continuum?” I nibbled my way down his earlobe. He groaned in response and I ground my body against him, needs ratcheting up the longer I resisted taking more of his skin and claiming it with my own.
“Yes.”
I wasn’t entirely sure if he answered my question or responded to me physically. I wasn’t sure how much longer I would care. Being so close to him quickly became a double-edged sword. “We can’t stay in here forever. We have to talk, Chance.” I gasped the last as he managed to get a hand under my shirt and find skin, liquid fire searing me and pleasing me because of the trace of his fingertips on my side. I suddenly needed more skin on skin contact, unable to settle for his neck and face any longer. I pulled off his shirt, eager for him. Only after we shed our shirts, ground our half-naked bodies together and fell to the ground breathless for a moment did we speak again. Panting, I lay next to him, trying to resist the pull of all his glowing flesh and hoping closing my eyes would bring a measure of sanity in the whirlwind of needs and ratcheting passion.
“You have to stop.” I whispered because I could not make full sounds. “Fairy Court. You have to help me. She wants to bargain with me for you. Help me.” We could save each other, I knew it.
“Help you. Yes.” He pulled us both to our knees. He forced me to my feet.
I thought he was assisting me up so we could talk reasonably. Then he dropped before me, his fingers tugged down one cup of my bra, his mouth closed over my breast, and I arched back in his hands as my body became boneless. “Chance!” His name left my lips as both a benediction and a curse.
“I am helping you.” His thumbs found my tattoos, one per hip, one with each thumb, and rubbed, hard. Harder than Vance would have dared. Hard enough that it should have been painful. I screamed for him and wound my leg around his shoulder. “Yes, yell for me,” he ordered, his voice gone deeper and rumbling across my breast.
He dropped me, none too gently, to the warm grass by the sea of fairie and crawled up my body to pin me with the weight of his own. His jeans were rough on my flesh as he rubbed the heaviness and length of himself on me. He pressed my arms to the ground, pressed me down, and held me with both his power and weight.
I couldn’t think or speak. I stared at him. I wriggled my arms but he did not free me. “Talk Chance. We’re talking. I, oh, God.” His eyes, they glittered and begged and I couldn’t resist their call.
I writhed up against him. I needed to. I rose up of my own volition and shoved my tongue down his throat. He pinned me again and kissed me as he had before, taking control. I ceded it, ceded everything, feeding off the passion only he awakened. My brain ceased to be useful beyond thoughts of more, yes, and now.
When he came up for air again, I shuddered, quaking with the force of my growing needs. “When you kiss me like that, I feel like I am coming alive.” I pinched my eyes closed and turned my head from him. A few snowflakes of light fell like glitter around us. Saying it reminded me I should shove him away. How could I admit to liking kissing him? How could I be here, in his arms, doing this like a traitor? Chance didn’t force me. I allowed his touch. I practically crawled all over him, without thought of Vance, of the world, of anything but what we felt together.
Selfish. No matter how clearly I called myself selfish and evil and wrong, I wanted nothing more than to sink into the tempest and be lost forever to it.
> Chance saw the light begin to crumble, or sensed me pulling back because he took my lips again, more gently. He rubbed his face on mine. “We should talk while we can hold on to the bond. You’re already trying to tear away from me.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak or look at him and not break the bond of light that kept the fairies out. He seemed to know, he probably did know.
“I still need your skin. I can’t hold the bond between us if you pull away and we don’t touch. You have to work with me.”
I closed my eyes tighter. “It’s hard. I want…” The last whisper trailed off to nothing. I had melted into a ball of need. What I wanted was not what I wanted. Not at all. But my body wanted Chance so badly it throbbed. It ached and burned. It wept for him. “I’ll try. It’s hard. I mean. You know. Vance.” Saying his name seemed like failure on my part.
“Vance. Of course.” A quiet edge sharpened his voice. I could sense his anger, this close, this connected. Not only did I refuse to be his, but I had brought Vance up, in a place that was ours, Chance’s and mine. That I could even think of the vampire inside that bubble pissed Chance off.
I couldn’t even blame him. I was the one who was cheating, leading them both on, I guess. I hated myself a little in that moment.
He turned me away from him, and cupped me in a spooning position. I molded into him as he ran his hands from one end of me to another. “What are you doing?” The question came out as a whisper. It was hard to hold onto my guilt with the shivering wonder of his touch filling my mind and wakening more hungers.
His teeth bit down on my shoulder.
I screamed again, and I nearly shattered against his hand as he pressed it into the most intimate bits of me.
He held me, and the light around us throbbed as I saw a thousand colors behind my eyes. He forced light and power into that bite. He had bit down on my third tattoo, the one on my neck. His hands roved my body, but I could barely reach him.
I writhed against him. “Chance, what are you doing?”
Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) Page 6
