The temptation hit me to try singing again. It might work…
“To release you we need a little luck. Fairies can grant luck.” Fate looked thoughtfully at my mother. “Queen Mab, would you help your daughter this night and grant fairy luck on this man? He’s a friend of hers taken over by a spirit. If you chose, you could help her. To do so, you must in a way bless the future and agree with a choice your daughter made…something you have not done before. Would you be willing to do this, Mab?”
Before my mother could answer, she went on, and paced as she spoke. “And you, Chance. There is a triad that must be fulfilled before you can ask for my intervention on this man’s behalf. You must all come together and work as a unit for his redemption. Will you also join in the resolution of family conflicts this night? I knew you would call me.”
She paused to smile at us all. Again, though, before anyone could answer she went on. “What must come together is forgiveness of past, focus on the future, and luck. Chance gets the easiest as you have the most to lose now. You called me and you will open the doorway if you choose to do so. I think we know already what you will do, so we will go on to Janie, as she is going by now.”
Her eyes focused on me and I narrowed my eyes. I had caught the ‘going by now’ after my name and knew it to be intentional. Fate knew my real name.
“Janie, you must forgive the past and focus on the future. You have been warned, actually more than I usually warn anyone. I worry that you will not heed the warnings, and I have tried so hard with you. You do realize what a gift the soul threads are, don’t you?”
I sputtered, “Gift? How is it a gift to have no choice? I don’t call that a gift.”
“You must not take for granted that which is given. Know that if you do, it can be lost. But also you must focus on the future and forgive the past. All the past and that means in your own life, as well as the actual mistakes that Chance has made. Your divorce left scars that have had little time to heal, and you act as if they are not there. They wound you, sometimes, more than what Chance has done. But for tonight your task is much simpler. You must forgive the mistakes of the past and allow Chance and your mother to help Sven. As they are here, you have been the key to Harold and Sven’s salvation. You have fulfilled what Old Mother prophesied.”
Well, that ended easily.
“Know that your dream will come true if you continue to judge on the mistakes of the past and you’ll have regrets.”
Usually when someone tells you your dreams are coming true, well, it is a good thing. I thought of the dream of Chance. That dream I really wanted not to come true. I thought of the terror and emptiness and sadness that I had woken with. The sheer grief.
“So, yeah.” My voice was gruff and seemed to draw everyone’s attention back to me. “Mom grants fairy luck and Chance opens a portal and you will change their fate?”
“To sum it up neatly, yes.” Fate knew, I think, that I was going for a topic change.
Chance pulled me closer. What is wrong?
I did not answer him. I slid a hand into his coat seeking his warmth. I did not care that everyone watched, Vance included. I wanted to hold him, to feel him alive and not cold and pale on that stone table.
I turned to my mom. “Will you help my friend?”
She nodded.
She walked to Sven. Her bearing regal. “Harold?”
Sven held his hands together.
My mother stood terribly tiny next to Sven. She lifted one hand to pull him to her level, and he bowed toward her. She smacked him hard on the forehead. She then turned to Chance.
He snorted in laughter. “Was that fairy luck?”
She grinned a terribly evil grin.
He shook his head.
She moved to stand next to me and put her hand on my shoulder. I slid a hand out and touched her arm. The gesture represented a great deal for us.
Our gazes met. It may not exactly have been a mother-daughter heart to heart. It wasn’t really a promise that tomorrow she would not come up with a half-baked scheme to ruin my life or that I would not come up with a completely new way to mess up her half-baked scheme. But as Chance had said…progress.
Chance turned to Fate who smiled on us. I wondered if Fate smiling on us signified what it sounded like.
“So how do I do what I do?” Chance ran a hand down my back as he spoke. “We all have other plans for the evening, and the poor dock guy needs some TLC from the vampire for his memory and—”
Fate cut him off, and he shut up with a quirk of one of her jet brows. “You are still one arrogant son of a bitch. I had hoped she would mellow that.” Fate gestured one hand my way.
He made a noise, and I glanced up to catch his expression but missed it.
“Regardless, I will help you. You will have to come to me and let go of her for a moment. Her link to you will hinder opening the doorway.”
“Not the strands.”
“No the link.” Fate shook her dark head, dark eyes glittering. “We shouldn’t touch the strands.”
“What are you talking about?” I touched Chance’s arm.
“Never mind.” Chance stepped away. “Logistics of how to do what needs to be done.”
“Are you talking about your link with me? She can remove the soul mate strands?” My eyebrows rose in interest. So it could be undone.
I stored this information. Chance had mentioned it but, at the time, I had taken fate to be a general comment not so much a person. But here stood Fate and She could remove the connection. So maybe it wasn’t permanent.
Chance and she did something and then someone walked out of Sven. It reminded me of a movie ghost. A figure, one nothing at all like Sven, seemed to walk right out of him. When he did, Sven sagged, and if Mia and Vance had not rushed him, he may have fallen.
Stunned I stood frozen. I also probably stood frozen from the cold, come to think of it.
The figure, who I made an uneducated guess to be Harold, the Harbor Hammer, walked out of Sven and I could see him and see through him, a ghostly figure. It all felt very Halloweenish.
Amazed, I continued to gape. And then he headed to…a turnstile?
Fate and Chance had somehow created a turnstile on the dock. Once Harold put in the ticket that Chance had given him, he walked through it and vanished.
A turnstile? “There’s a turnstile to the Other side?”
“To each his own.” Frank smiled enigmatically.
I widened my eyes. A turnstile?
Frank yawned hugely. “Okay, folks, show’s over. I am headed home. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
I really thought that man was crazy. “We have only figured things out. And we have to help the poor man that I attacked. And Sven…”
I turned back to see that Vance was already working on the dockworker. I assume he messed with his mind to change his general recall of what he had seen. As to Fate…well, she had vanished.
“Hey.” I turned back to Frank. “Did you distract me so I wouldn’t see her go?”
“He’s gone, too.” Mia shrugged.
Sure enough, the space he had inhabited was empty. “Where did he go?”
“He’s a muse. Hard to say. He comes when he wants and goes when he chooses. Guess we don’t need him anymore.”
“Huh.” I turned again. Chance stood right behind me.
“I ‘popped’ your mom back.”
“Oh.” I gazed into his eyes, which glowed suddenly intense and focused on me.
“The work’s done. Time to play. We have a date.”
I sucked in a breath, and the next thing I knew we were no longer on the dock.
CHAPTER Seventeen
We arrived in a place I had never been before. Lit by the light of the moon with a breeze that blew in balmy and smelled of spring, the room was oddly warm. It was still winter, but the room smelled of Chance. It smelled not of spring but like a storm, or like the air just before a storm, like he did.
He came c
loser, so charged up with excess energy that I smelled ozone.
Suddenly, I became completely awkward. Without conversation, we both understood what the night meant. Everything that started when the bell rang at Niagara Falls two weeks ago, everything that stemmed from the choice of one insignificant yet unforgettable kiss would culminate in that room. Such a small decision to end up meaning so much. He would not allow it to be anything simple. This thing between us bound us in an unbreakable link.
He was something other than anything I had ever seen. He had come to get me. He had nicked away at me until I could hardly breathe for wanting to touch him. But I could not blame him for it. I had caused my own fall in this case. I had opened the door and said “come in.”
My nerves jangled because part of me wondered if I would be enough. Part of me shuddered in fear that I would not be. Part of me really wanted to be.
Another good reason to put it off. So many good reasons not to do something. But we only get one spin around and this was our spin, Chance’s and mine. We had made choices, and they had led us to that night. To why we were there. I only mildly wished I knew where there was.
For someone who dressed simply as Chance did, he had spared no expense on his house. Lush dark colors, so dark that the moon did not reflect much covered the space. Staring at anything but him, I took in the lavish room, the heavy woods, the big bed.
The big bed made my mouth water as I pictured him on it. I went still as the thought hit me, and I had exceptionally non-Puritanical thoughts about my host.
“I am trying to give you a minute to calm yourself, but if you keep thinking like that, well, I am limited in what I can take here.”
Okay, if he got quiet it was pretty easy to forget he could see inside my head and know the bulk of my thoughts.
He moved toward me.
I backed into a wall.
He came to a stop in front of me. He breathed on me.
I closed my eyes and waited.
He did nothing. I opened my eyes and studied him.
“What? Are you waiting for me to ravish you and take the decision from your conscience?” He laughed, his face the mask of the golden retriever like joviality that hid his anger. Then he turned away from me.
He’s not angry so what is he hiding?
He glanced over his shoulder, slipped off his coat, and kicked off his shoes. Next, he began to unbutton his shirt. He watched me, and I watched him. He undressed for me, very slowly. My mouth went completely dry, and I licked my lips. He was beautiful dressed.
He was even better naked.
“We aren’t going to do anything you don’t choose to.” His voice sounded rough and through our connection, I could feel what he needed.
But he wanted me to take the steps. Again, he gave me choices. I wondered if in a way he tried to make up for the ones he had taken from me, or forced me into, by allowing things to go at my pace. A flood of self-doubt that had nothing to do with him crashed on me. Luckily self-doubt and siren hunger are not comparative if you throw them on a scale. If you toss a few coins of lust on the siren side, well, self-doubt didn’t have much of a shot to begin with.
A lean and a beautiful man, Chance revealed himself to me without any shame. He tossed his clothes aside as if they angered him somehow. He was all angles and hardness. In the semi-darkness, as I watched, a memory of him in the shower came back to me. My breath caught, and I leaned on the wall for support.
I wanted him. Wanted him so badly I nearly trembled in my own eagerness. But I resisted. I always resisted. I stood there, still fully clothed and we faced off, with him gracefully naked across the room. I pushed off the wall finally. He wouldn’t to come to me. I had chosen this. I wanted this. Feeling a little like a lamb must right before the slaughter, I closed the distance between us.
He let out a choked noise. “Slaughter?”
I laughed and the sound felt good. It broke some of the tension in the room and allowed me to cross the space and gaze into his face without looking down at the bits of Chance that had drawn my attention prior to crossing the room. “Bad euphemism?”
“Not really what we’re here for.” He brushed a hand into my hair gently. “Nor what I would have you think of now.”
Being so close to him again, two things came into play. I could smell ozone. He ran hot on his own power and I starved. Also, the connection between us zinged to life, and a white light came from his chest, from his heart to my own.
My breath caught. Tears nearly came to my eyes from the relief the sensation caused. My hands moved to his chest and stroked it. His skin was nearly hairless. Did all that power inhibit hair growth in some scientific manner or did it come simply from his genetics? How could something be both so smooth and hard all at once? The second question stemmed from pure feminine perspective and not science at all.
I spread my fingers on his warm skin. He felt nearly feverish. I slid my hands up to his face and drew him down into a kiss.
He came to me, unresisting, but paused before our lips met. “You are sure this time?”
My lips curled in a helpless smile. I tugged him the last bit of distance, and he kissed me so gently at first that I melted into his arms.
“About damned time.” That was the last phrase either of us were able to form for a while.
Then he fell into me and swept me away. His mouth on mine seemed as if he intended to climb inside me and flow down my throat. I made a soft noise of demand, and he began to remove the barriers between us, then the air on my skin was replaced by his hands.
His hands were everywhere.
I was not sure if it he did it by being in my head and in my very soul or if somehow he managed to have more hands than the two he normally had, but it seemed somehow he touched more places than a normal lover would be able to at once. I protested with an inarticulate noise. I wanted more. Somehow, with all that he offered, I wanted more.
He pressed me into the mattress, and his body on mine made me nearly gasp in relief.
His mouth again began to move over my flesh, and my hands slid greedily across his. The textures seemed more than I had ever noticed before. The soft crispness of his curls, the smoothness of his muscles as they bunched under my fingers, the moisture of a tongue became things I seemed aware of on a hypersensitive level.
Soon the movements became more demanding on both our parts. Our moment had been too long denied for much foreplay. Touches became teeth and nail. Whimpers became cries. I whispered his name. I pled for him to do something and, in my blind need, I was not even sure what I begged for.
He rose above me and filled me, and at the same time, began to feed me. The cord flared from cord to cocoon, and light began to pulse around us—when it did, a cave of light circled us and held us. Within it, we were cut off from both space and time. When Chance’s body, finally, joined mine, the light both surrounded us and changed. We stilled for a moment as the brightness became a picture.
The light suddenly formed a landscape. Landscape was probably the wrong word, actually, because I saw a beach and the sea—so seascape perhaps. Over the sea, a storm brewed. A storm of truly outstanding proportions, that no sane person would stand on a beach and watch. I actually heard the roar of the surf, in our cave, surrounded by the vision of sea and storm, and the smells of it.
But what we were doing could only be forestalled for a moment before he began to move, so slowly. When he withdrew so did his power.
I cried out as the sensation burned almost more than felt good. It brought me to a razor sharp edge, and I clung to his arms. Lightning flashed and hit the beach and the waves ran higher from the wind of the storm.
“Oh.” I whispered, having no words for what he made me feel.
He breathed through clenched teeth, jaw tight. It took a lot of control to hold the power in and make such an intimate connection at once. I could sense that. To have control at such a moment.
“Do that again.” I had my voice back.
He smiled and again
came the rush of power when he moved. The storm came ashore. The storm seemed one with the sea, and the wave crashed again on the beach in concert and with the next flash of lightning. White fire hit the sand.
The light flooded me and then withdrew. His body filled me and withdrew. His pace increased.
I began to move with him. I demanded. I needed his light, his life, his body. I needed Chance. At last, I could admit it, if only to myself, and I took what I needed, as did he.
Our lips crushed together and the light around us pulsed with the motion like a giant rainbow strobe so bright that even through my closed lids, I could see it. I moved with him and that long slide of power and flesh kept going in and out of me. The storm around us increased in force, and I felt the rain as it hit the beach, smelled the ozone of the lightning as it crashed. The sea moved with the storm and together they lay siege to the beach like his touch battered at my sanity. The earth and I gasped as the storm took over the sea with its power. The storm seemed to feed the water, bringing it alive as it tossed waves high and gave it renewed energy to survive.
And then I understood. He was the storm. I was the sea. The storm could not exist without the seas, and the seas fed off the storms. We became one. Then, my body shattered under his. The waves shrank back from the beach and drew into the sky.
I cried his name to the stars and arched away from him, but he continued to thrust into me, harder and faster, and his movements became less timed, less controlled. He breathed harshly, and he tried to hold on a little longer.
His eyes searched my face, but I was blind from that first wave of orgasm. I thought I had gone as far as I could when the second hit me from nowhere, and I screamed for him. I cried out and my body bucked under him, and I clawed at him.
He caught my hips, his fingers grazed the siren marks, and I went soundless and breathless as he changed the angle and buried himself deeper yet inside me and spilled himself within me.
Yet another wave of completion crashed over me with that, and I trembled breathless, thoughtless, and mindless. My neck ended up bent against the mattress and my view, once my eyes worked again, was of nothing more exciting than sheets. The sky over the sea became calm as the storm dissipated. I stared at the weird landscape and relearned how to breathe as my body racked with aftershocks. Dear God. And that used up about the extent of my thinking ability.
Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) Page 23
