“Ellie, Ellie.” He groaned and shoved his hips up to meet her downward slide. The sound of their bodies slapping together echoed around them. If anyone had appeared, Ellie wasn’t sure she could have stopped. His fingers flexed around her waist as he pulled her down.
Both panting and flushed, they surged together in a frantic rush toward orgasm. They called out each other’s name at the same time, came at the same time, their bodies freezing taut at the pinnacle of arousal. Staring into each other’s eyes, they melted together and let their mouths kiss them down.
I don’t want to give him up. He wanted her to go back with him to Sharwood, and Ellie wanted that too but feared it couldn’t happen. Jago clung to her so tightly, Ellie wondered if somehow he understood the uncertainty of their future.
“No more secrets,” he whispered in her ear.
Ellie mentally winced.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he said.
“I don’t want to lose you either.”
He smiled. “Well, you’re about to lose one part of me. Tissue?”
“No. Use my panties. Can you find them?”
He helped her rise from his lap and catch his cum before it dripped on his pants. Ellie stepped out of the car and wiped herself down. She slipped the panties into a trash bin and reached into the car for her bra and dress. Jago was back in the driver’s seat, shirt fastened, pants zipped, and watching her.
When Ellie sat beside him, he leaned over and whispered, “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Then he kissed her, and Ellie tried to blank her mind to the fact that she was likely to be the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
Chapter Seventeen
They reached her parents’ house at seven thirty the following morning, having stopped to sleep in the parking lot of a motorway service station. Jago had tucked the Kewen under his shirt as they napped. They shared a bottle of water and a bar of chocolate and used the rest of the money for fuel. Jago hoped Ellie’s parents would lend them enough to get back to Yorkshire. They’d limped the last few miles on fumes.
He parked on the paved drive and looked at the large detached house. It stood adrift from its neighbors in a sea of flowers. Unlike Henry’s precise planting, these gardens were a riot of color. It looked like a rainbow had exploded.
Once the engine was off, he turned to her. “Anything I should know before we go in?”
“Yes…but better if you don’t.”
For someone bringing her family a fortune they’d spent generations looking for, Jago thought she seemed more anxious than excited, and it was catching. He’d like to have met her parents when he wasn’t wearing creased clothes and in need of a wash and a shave. He was trying not to think about the fact that Ellie’s panties lay somewhere back on their route. Hopefully, her parents wouldn’t take one look at them and know what they’d been up to.
Ellie took his hand as they walked up the path. Jago held the bag with the Kewen tightly in his other. As they stood on the doorstep, he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled at her.
A tall slim guy with blond hair opened the door. He looked to be barely forty, not old enough to be Ellie’s father. “No key, Ellie?”
“Quick exit. Forgot my purse. Jago, this is my father. Dad, meet Jago—er Lord Carlyle.”
“Jago is fine.” He held out his hand. This guy looks too young. There was something he wasn’t getting here.
Ellie’s father hesitated before he shook it. “Nev Norwood.” He looked down at the bag in Jago’s hand.
“Ellie!” An older version of Ellie came rushing to the door and hugged her.
Jago had the uncomfortable feeling that Ellie might be younger than he’d thought. Either that or this family had good genes. These three could have been siblings.
“I’m Caitlin.” She shook Jago’s hand and smiled at him. “I’m so pleased to meet you.”
His cartwheeling heart bounced on his stomach. She might not be so pleased if she knew he’d taken her daughter’s virginity.
“Come in.” Ellie’s mother ushered them into the house.
“Did Micah call and tell you we were coming?” Ellie asked.
“No. The last we knew, you were on your way to Whitendale,” her father said. “Though I assumed that was to mislead anyone listening. I called, but you never answer your phone.”
“Out of juice.” Ellie pulled Jago through to the kitchen. It was a huge room with a wall of glass looking out onto a brilliant green lawn and more swaths of color down the sides.
“Toast and coffee?” Ellie squeezed his fingers.
“Great, thank you.”
“Take a seat.” Nev pointed to a bench.
Jago tipped the bag out onto the table, letting the contents tumble free, and Ellie’s parents gasped. Caitlin reached for a necklace, and her husband snatched her fingers away.
“Better not touch,” he said.
“I never thought we’d ever see it,” Caitlin whispered. She grabbed a tattered book from a drawer and opened it.
Jago could see drawings of the jewels that lay on the table.
“It’s all here,” Caitlin said.
Ellie put a mug of coffee in front of Jago.
“Show them what was with it,” Ellie told him.
Jago took out the bill of sale and unfolded it on the table. Ellie slid onto the bench next to him with a plate of buttered toast and her coffee. They ate while her parents read, and Jago watched their faces pale.
“I’m not sure we were ever meant to find it,” Ellie said. “I wonder if we’re being punished not for losing it but for something else. We were only charged with finding it, not returning it, so I told Jago to bring it to London and sell it quickly. But I thought, what if those who buy the pieces end up being targeted? It isn’t fair on them. The only way to settle this is to speak to Oberon and show him that document, and prove Jago is the rightful owner.”
What was she talking about? Oberon had to be long dead.
“I don’t want it,” Jago said. “Jewels in exchange for children? I’d never feel right about spending any of it. In any case, the descendants of those children have more of a legal claim than I do.”
“How?” Nev asked.
“Rupert, the father of two of the children, died, and the estate and title passed to his brother, which is the reason I’m now Lord Carlyle. I don’t suppose there’s much chance of tracing the children, but I should try.”
“It mentions a third child,” Caitlin said.
“I only know about two going missing. Henry had the ring, so it might be a child from his family.”
“Who’s Henry?” Caitlin asked.
“He’s in charge of the gardens. He’s been at Sharwood since before I was born. I think his grandfather worked there too, and his grandfather before that. Oh God, I think the third child must have come from Henry’s family. If my bloody great-great-whatever-uncle was here, I’d strangle him myself.”
“Does he know what we are?” Nev looked straight at him across the table.
“No.” Ellie sipped her drink.
Jago paused with a slice of toast on the way to his mouth. What they are? What did that mean?
“But he’s seen the signature,” Caitlin said.
“He doesn’t understand,” Ellie muttered. “I want to tell him. I think he has a right to know.”
Her mother gasped and pressed her hand to her mouth. Jago was lost at sea with no land in sight.
Nev gave him a sad look. “He won’t believe you, Ellie.”
Jago dropped the toast. Ellie’s fingers slid onto his knee and squeezed.
“You only have one chance,” her mother said. She opened the book and pointed. “See what the elders say? Is this the right time? The right person?”
“Jago is the one.” Ellie turned to face him. “Open mind, remember?”
He stared at her.
“Remember everything else too,” Ellie whispered. “Everything we’ve done togethe
r. Everything I’ve done. I’m not mad. This isn’t a trick. It’s the truth, and I…I love you. Okay?”
She loves me? His heart thumped all over his body. What the hell was she going to say? She chewed her lip; her fingers slid over his and clung tight.
“One chance, Jago. If you don’t believe, then I—”
“Ellie!” Her mother’s voice held warning.
What were they so frightened of her saying? Jago’s anxiety fed from theirs, and his stomach churned.
Ellie straightened and looked straight at him. “Think before you speak.”
He nodded.
“I’m a faerie.”
He had to repeat the phrase in his head several times before he could convince himself of what Ellie had said. Not furry. Not fairly. Faerie. A faerie king had signed that bill of sale. Was this some weird cult of crazy people? Faeries did not exist. Because if they did, so did vampires and werewolves and the Easter Bunny. But…
Ellie needed him to believe. So did her parents. They sat waiting, watching him. Something bad would happen to Ellie if he didn’t go along with this. Jago thought about just saying he believed and suspected that wouldn’t work. A faerie? He had to think before he spoke and remember what she’d done.
She’d transformed his room and that bedroom in a ridiculously short space of time. Picked an unimaginably large number of strawberries and made balloons float in the air with no helium. The way her eyes changed. The unlocked door to the baron’s hall. The biggest miracle of all, she’d made him happy. Why shouldn’t he believe? What did it hurt to believe? Who would it hurt if he didn’t? He’d seen miracles happen in hospital. People he’d thought would die who hadn’t. He had no explanation for their recovery other than their sheer strength of will. Because they believed in something.
He took her hand in his and felt her fingers trembling. One chance to tell him? What happened if he didn’t believe? He had to.
I’m in love with a faerie.
Why not?
He pulled her close and whispered in her ear, “Do you come with a magic wand?”
Ellie let out a nervous laugh.
“I love you,” he said quietly.
It was as though her parents and the kitchen dissolved around them. All Jago could see was Ellie, his perfect, kindhearted Ellie with her lovely smile and gentle eyes. His world was already crazy. What was a little more craziness?
The sound of something hard being dropped on the table brought him back to his senses. Ellie’s father took his hand from a piece of slate.
“Careful, Nev,” said Ellie’s mother. “Sweetheart, I’m not sure you ought to take all the Kewen back.”
“She has to. Those are the rules,” said Nev. “It says in the book.”
“Maybe we could copy the bill of sale,” Ellie suggested. “Just in case.”
“Good idea.” He mother took the paper over to a printer in the corner of the kitchen.
“What’s the slate for?” Jago asked.
“It’s the way to take the Kewen home. For each seeker in every generation there’s a different method inside the slate. Dad’s was jumping from a plane without a chute, and he’s scared of heights.”
“My God,” Jago gasped.
“I can’t look out of an upstairs window without feeling queasy,” he said. “I only had to do it if I found the Kewen. I’d jump from the plane and land in Faerieland. I think it was the final act of revenge, to make us do the thing we most dreaded.”
“Did you know that was what you had to do while you were looking?” Jago asked.
“Not until I passed the baton to Ellie. After I’d looked for fifty years, it became her turn.”
“Hang on a minute,” Jago said. “What about Ellie’s suggestion that this was never about punishment? Maybe the king didn’t want the Kewen found because that might have revealed he’d purchased children. Perhaps his ancestors don’t even know. You could have jumped from the plane and died. I’m not letting Ellie jump from a plane with or without a chute.”
“Mine’s unlikely to say that.” Ellie exhaled. She put her hand above the stone and then pressed down.
The gray slate faded to white. When Ellie lifted her fingers, they read what it said there. To bring the Kewen home, jump into the Thames from London Bridge.
“But you can’t swim,” Jago blurted.
“I think that’s the point.” Ellie squeezed his fingers. He could feel her shaking.
“I’m not letting you do it.” He gritted his teeth.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Okay, let was the wrong word.” I’ll tie you up so you can’t get anywhere near the river were the right words. “But you won’t do it alone. I’ll jump with you, and if you need help to get to the side, I’ll be there.” This was not going to happen. Those jewels would take her down.
“We need the others home to talk about this,” her father said. “That bill of sale gives you a chance to negotiate our return. I don’t want us seen as thieves when we weren’t.”
“We used Micah’s car,” Ellie said. “He’s keeping an eye on Jago’s place in case those so-called friends of Pixie’s turn up looking for the Kewen. We could Skype him on his phone.” She sighed. “We’re pretty tired. Do you have any clothes Jago can wear? I thought we’d have a shower and go to bed for a few hours.”
“I’ll get something out,” said her mother.
Ellie rose to her feet and pulled Jago with her.
Her father tugged her into his arms. “I still can’t believe you found it. You’ve made your mother so happy. She’ll be able to see her family again. Keep the Kewen with you.”
Jago held the bag while Ellie put everything back inside. Funny, but Jago didn’t think Ellie’s mother looked that happy. Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
ELLIE CONCENTRATED ON putting one foot in front of the other as she walked upstairs. She was amazed she made it to the top step without stumbling, because fear had wrapped its tentacles around her heart and was squeezing hard. Taking a breath was impossible. Jump into water from a bridge? OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod.
Jago wrapped his arms around her. “I won’t let you do it on your own,” he whispered.
She melted into him and sucked up a ragged breath.
“Which is your room?”
Ellie nodded down the corridor.
Jago’s eyes widened when he went in. “Wow, Ellie. Did you do this?”
“Yes.”
He tugged her to the bed, and they lay on their backs. She’d painted the walls and ceiling to look like the sky with different types of clouds.
“That’s cumulus, right? The one that looks like a cauliflower,” he said.
Ellie pointed to another. “Altocumulus.”
“As if someone’s tipped out a bag of cotton balls.”
She smiled. “And the celestial brushstrokes of cirrus over there.”
He rolled on his side to look at her. “Why do you still live at home?”
“I like it here. I don’t like to be on my own… Do you really believe? No, don’t answer that.”
There was a tentative knock on the door, and Jago sat up.
“Come in,” Ellie called.
Her mother entered with a pile of clothing. “I’ve put a new toothbrush and a disposable razor in the bathroom.”
“Thank you,” Jago said.
“Mum?” When her mother turned, Ellie saw through her false smile. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything’s fine. We’re going home. Fantastic. Shout out if there’s anything else you need. I have a lot…a lot to do.”
The door closed, and Ellie turned to Jago. “She doesn’t want to go.” She shook her head in disbelief. “All these years while Dad searched and then me, and she doesn’t want to go back. It’s going to break Dad’s heart.”
Jago’s hand crept over hers. “What about my heart?”
“I want to stay with you.”
“What if you can’t?”
She shook her head.
“Oberon won’t want it known one of his predecessors bought children. I’ll threaten to tell if he doesn’t let us decide whether we want to stay or not.”
“And when he throws you in a dungeon and gets dragons to guard you? How are you going to threaten him then?”
“There are no dragons left.”
Jago raised his eyebrows. “I take it there are plenty of dungeons.”
“Probably.”
“You need a plan.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t jump into the river with the Kewen. What if I lost it?”
“But without it, why would you be offered a way back to Faerieland? You have to keep it with you. Only take the copy of the bill of sale. That might offer some sort of insurance.”
There was another knock on the door. This time it was her father. Jago fell off the bed in his scramble to get up.
“Just wanted to say well done again, Ellie. I’m so proud of you. I’ve felt guilty all these years for depriving your mother of her family and friends, of the world she grew up in. Different for me, of course, because this is all I’ve ever known. But I’ll be able to get used to things over there. There’ll be something I can do, I’m sure. The family will be together, so that will be great. Well, I’ve leave you to it. I’ve called Pixie and Asher and told them to come over this afternoon.”
It wasn’t her imagination, was it? He didn’t seem so keen on the idea of living in Faerieland either.
Once he’d gone, Jago said, “I think your family needs to talk about this. What if you don’t go back? What if you sell the Kewen and split the money? What can Oberon do? All this has been based on the belief that your family desperately wanted to return to Faerieland, and it seems the dream has faded over the centuries. Your father’s become so obsessed with the search, he’s not taken into account the consequences of success.”
Ellie’s head ached. Jago crawled onto the bed behind her and wrapped her in his arms.
“Now I know faeries exist; what else is out there?”
“Vampires, werewolves—”
“Really? Have you met any?”
“Yes.”
“Oh God. How—how long will you live? A lot longer than me, judging by how young your parents look. Going to look after me when I’m old and gray?” He gulped. “Can you turn me like vampires do, or are you going to be stuck with a doddery old guy while you look just as you do now.”
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