by Starla Night
Her throat closed. “I wish it would have been a little more fun for you.”
“Do not worry for me.” His brows lowered. “My happiness or sadness is of my own making.”
“I know. Okay. Try to have some fun.” She released her brother’s hand and leaned an arm over Evens’ thin shoulders. “Don’t work too hard.”
He laughed with delight. “This is not working. This is a dream.”
Evens’s bliss made the tension behind her heart relax.
Harmony left her brother and Evens where they were, tugged on her snow hat and damp gloves with Faier in the entrance, and clambered on the bus for the destination she’d been putting off since the moment she’d rolled into town and realized things were off.
As always, he remained a silent, supportive figure beside her, whether crammed on the bus seat beneath too many layers of snowy fluff or whether nude beneath the sea.
The high school appeared outside their window. Harmony signaled for a stop. They both got off.
Her nerves crunched.
“Are you okay?” Faier asked.
“Yes. Sorry.” She turned away from the school and hurried down the block. “Come on.”
He followed easily although his gaze returned to her frequently with worry.
This trip had run her through the ringer of emotions, squeezing her heart and then expanding it again.
Long ago on that life raft Faier had promised to bring her home. She’d been so happy and now…Faier had gone through so much to make this promise come true. She hated showing even a moment of unhappiness.
Yesterday, she’d given Evens a tour of the old high school. The outside was the same but the inside had changed so much it was like confronting false memories and finding out her past—her identity—was a lie.
Evens had been enthralled by the brick and concrete structure, with long halls and clean classrooms, computer labs and desks, like he’d stumbled upon a mythical city.
“Your school will be just like this,” she’d said shakily in the doorway while he’d touched the white boards, desks, and paper supplies. “After your mom gets in, we’ll all head to your new school in Florida.”
King Kayo had tilted his head. “How do trainees learn to hunt inside this small space? They must be experts at close-quarters combat.”
She laughed awkwardly. “Fighting isn’t usually on the curriculum…”
“How strange. What more important skill is there for life?”
She didn’t answer.
Only Faier had noticed her distress creeping on the underside of every edgy answer.
Remembering it made her feel guilty all over again.
She turned the blocks from the high school by rote. Even though it had been a decade, she would never forget the route.
Her heart started to thump.
Faier took her hand. Separated by the thick gloves, she could still feel the warmth of his fingers.
She rounded the block and faced the apartment building where she’d spent the happiest decade of her ife. “Here it is! Oh.”
He stood beside her.
Nothing remained of the apartment building but a vacant lot. Cracked cement and stringy grass were flattened under mounds of old, dirty, ice-crusted snow.
An older woman came out of her house in a thick coat and boots, checked her mail, and paused. “You looking for something?”
“I used to live in the apartments that were there,” she said, striving for a normal tone and hating the hurt whine that lived in her voice instead. “But now they’re gone.”
“Oh, yeah. Those old fire hazards got pulled down six years ago.” The woman’s gaze fixed on Faier’s tattoo-colored face with amazement but she continued to answer Harmony’s question. “They were going to put in a fast food place but then the economy turned. Say, are you one of those merman types we’re always seeing on the news?”
Faier rested a hand on Harmony’s padded shoulder. “We both are.”
“Hmm. I didn’t know about any girls.” She patted her coat pockets. “Here, can I get you a hot cocoa? Or do you need something to eat? I think I’ve got some tuna casserole.”
“We have to meet someone.” Harmony backed away. “Thanks so much!”
“You sure? This winter is dragging on and on. You both must be frozen solid. Wait right here…” She headed into her house.
Harmony dragged Faier back to the main road before the woman’s Iowa-nice values got them invited into her living room and stuck in an awkward, although certainly well-intentioned, conversation that ate up the rest of the afternoon.
He joined her in front of the bus stop. “Where do you wish to visit? Back to the Mall?”
“No.” She rested her head on his puffy shoulder. “That was too disappointing.”
The Mall she’d dreamed about for a decade had not thrived in her absence. The very first place she’d stopped at, on the way in from the airport, was the Mall at the Bluffs to get a frosted soda—even though it was freezing—and salty French fries.
But the place had been virtually empty. The food court booth she’d wanted to eat at had a For Rent sign plastered across the counter. At the only open booth the fries had been cold and the pop had been warm.
And it had gone downhill from there.
Several historic buildings she’d remembered from her childhood were just gone. Paved over for parking lots and strip malls, where most of the mall shops had moved to. Then the library was in a new building; the old was converted into a museum. Her favorite restaurants had closed. She didn’t recognize any of the new ones. And of course the high school had changed its carpeting, added a wing, and updated its mascot. She’d been terrified of visiting her old apartment. That’s why she’d waited until the last afternoon of the last day.
Her childhood home was gone.
Faier teased a lock of hair away from her ear and nuzzled her. “Perhaps now it is time for another bag of your favorite hot French fries?”
“Are you hungry?”
The threads in his eyes gleamed. “Not for food.”
She checked the cheap plastic wrist watch she’d bought in the mall. They had a few hours until Fab’s plane touched down. The bus pulled up and she showed their day passes, then stuffed them into a seat. A new idea began to take form. “Let’s go home.”
As always, he followed.
The bus let them off a few blocks from their AirBnB rental. They crunched through the old, dingy ice. Faier opened the white picket fence, shaking off new snow, and she crossed the snowed-over lawn into a salt box blue four-bedroom house. She used the key and, inside the foyer, they clambered out of their cold weather jackets and sweaters and scarves and mittens.
She hung the melting gear over hooks and stretched. “Oh, if only my mom could see me now! I’ve really made it.”
Faier slid his arms around her middle, his arm surprisingly hot against her thin undershirt. “You have.”
“This was our dream.” She lowered her arms and rested them on his strong, bony knuckles. “Working hard enough to live like this. In a middle-income house.”
He was her steady lavender rock. The intertwining of his two colors of tattoos mesmerized her. She traced the lines she had repaired, connecting the old tattoos and recapturing his history. He stilled. His hard arousal pressed her again.
She turned in his arms and stroked his cheeks. “I wish she could have met you.”
“Thank you, Harmony.” His brow, once so angry, smoothed with steady calm. “Your wish honors me. Especially considering my past.”
“She would have seen right away that you were honorable. Whether or not you had your tattoos.”
He teased her lips with his. “Do you wish to draw a bath and relax?”
“No.” She slid her still-chilled fingers around his goosebumpy taut abdomen and turned to fit her body to his. It was funny how on the surface she had to open her mouth to speak instead of kissing and speaking simultaneously. “I have a different idea on how to pass the time.
”
Their lips meshed. His taste filled her mouth. Male, spicy, and arousing. His hands tightened on her waist, cinching her against his hard cock.
She dug her hands into his shirt fabric and dragged him, hips swaying, backwards down the hall and into their master bedroom. The fading winter sun illuminated a fluffy white comforter thrown haphazardly across their bed from the morning’s activities. She backed up to it and tugged, tumbling him on top of her. They bounced together on the bed, him shielding her from his weight by landing on his forearms, and he answered her giggles by smiling down on her with pure satisfaction.
She tilted her head and teased him. “What?”
His smile turned serious. “I am not disappointed.”
“Oh?” She undulated beneath him, sliding her tight nipples across his broad chest and interlocking her legs around his taut buttocks. “Glad to hear it.”
He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Hot arousal made his cock pulse hard against her belly. She loved teasing him and he knew it. He opened his eyes with new seriousness. The lavender threads in his eyes gleamed. Mesmerizing.
She gave into her wish and captured his mouth, tangling tongues.
He slid his hand across her belly and lifted her undershirt, exposing her lace-covered breasts to his expert fingers. They had made love beneath and above the seas many times and his ability to satisfy her had only increased with experience. His hot, wet mouth closed over her eager nipple and pleasure streaked to her hot, throbbing pussy. She closed her eyes and arched into the delicious need he evoked in her.
They pushed and pulled out of clothes, intermixing kisses with exposed skin, tickles with sensual teasing.
He laved her with his tongue, licking and kissing down her trembling belly to her mons, delving beneath her lacy panties to her sensitive clit, and stroking her seam. She opened to his worship. He pressed his hard palm against her sex lips and moved just the way she liked, riding her desire like a fish cutting through the tide. His eyes locked on hers, sensing her reactions and seeking how to better please her. She held his gaze. Locked on it.
Gratitude floated on the top of her building arousal. Thank goodness the other women Faier had met and tried to date had never seen beyond his scars. Now he was healed, inside and out, and she enjoyed the treat of a powerful warrior kneeling on a bed holding her entire world in his steady, capable, gorgeous hands.
He made her want to give instead of only passively receiving. She grabbed his bulging biceps and guided him up her body.
He moved with her, knowing what she wanted with their perfect soul resonance, and fitted his cock to her dripping entrance.
She angled to savor his first thrust, taking him in to the hilt. Male to female, warrior to queen, soul mate to soul mate. Both damaged souls, they had found each other and become whole.
Harmony entwined his flexing thighs and arched into his masterful thrusts. His cock pounded into her feminine center. She lost herself and came hard, tingling with delicious release. He exploded in the same instant, firing his hot release into her womb, and collapsed, shuddering with emotion.
She stroked Faier’s trembling shoulders gently, holding him tight against her until they subsided. How funny that they could have come together so many times and yet he still reacted as if it was the first time.
“It’s kind of funny,” she started to say as sleep invaded her veins.
“I still struggle to believe you are mine,” he replied, knowing what she meant without her needing to finish her sentence.
Her heart warmed. She kissed his trembling forehead and nuzzled into his thick, dark hair. “Believe.”
His arms tightened briefly in recognition. But she also understood. It was hard to believe she was here in Council Bluffs after a decade-long nightmare overseas.
First thing after surfacing as a queen of Aiycaya, Harmony learned that she was welcome to return to the United States as its citizen at any time.
Her ex, off the drugs and struck by guilt at her disappearance after the Coast Guard arrests of Lifet and Jean-Baptiste, had determined to prove her citizenship and had contacted a journalist in Florida with the whole story.
The journalist had not only found Harmony’s mom’s old employer, coworkers, and statements about how she’d worked while pregnant; he’d also found the Dominican midwife who’d delivered Harmony at home. He’d traced the various typos, glitches, and records problems that had created a perfect storm affecting not only Harmony but over a thousand other births during the same decade and had even resulted in one other mistaken deportation. Luckily, unlike Harmony, the other deportee had actually had family abroad to help navigate the sudden shock.
It was nice to know that she had always been an American after all. Although it was all complicated by the fact that she was a mer. Born of a transformed human mother and a mer father, she herself was a mer shifter, and like the rest of the world’s human governments, her actual status for human rights—human rights, the opponents pointed out, restricted her rights even in the name—was up for debate now.
But that didn’t matter because Aiycaya was her home. King Kayo was her brother. Faier was her soul mate.
And she was rich.
After being poor her entire life, literally everything was better with money. She could afford any school Evens wanted—and so they picked one together. She could send Monsieur Joseph to the world’s most renowned knee doctors in Switzerland—and so she did, and he was making great improvements even though he didn’t respond to any Sea Opal therapies.
He was eager to return to his “children” in Haiti and would arrive in a few weeks with a cane. Although he would no longer run with his students at recess, he was also no longer a cripple.
She felt terribly guilty about involving him but he’d waved away her apologies.
“Evens was my student. My boy.” His soft French accent was still dignified and he held himself tall, his black skin midnight against the cream hospital sheets. “I would have given my life for any of my boys but I did not see any chance. Until you.”
She’d swallowed her tears. “I’m sorry.”
“Do not grieve, Harmony. I rest easier now than I ever have. And thanks to your scholarships more of my boys will have a chance to build a good life.”
Her scholarship funded the educations of a girl and a boy overseas, and Monsieur Joseph would return to Haiti to begin talks with community to revamp the educational system.
There also needed to be more for students to look forward to after graduation than joining a gang. So, they needed to make opportunities together to support youth before, during, and also after school.
Last, she did want to improve things for her tribe, not only because it was her heritage, but also because of the shared history with her warriors.
Her cell phone alarm beeped.
She startled out of her daydream and tapped Faier, who was already rising and heading to the shower. He knew her mind again without speaking. That connection was something she hoped all of her warriors would someday find with their brides.
They dried, dressed, and slogged out into the snow again. No busses were coming anytime soon so she ended up calling for a ride. How funny that she could just afford that now.
“You’ll love Fab,” Harmony told Faier, her excitement rising as she got out in front of the busy burger joint. “She’s raw and cheeky and delightful. And it’s no exaggeration to say she saved my life. I turned up in Haiti with nothing. She answered the church resettlement group’s request as my ‘cousin’ even though we’re so many times removed we’re barely related. And she had nothing to her name but she shared it all with me. For a long time, she was my world.”
He held the door for her to enter. “I will honor her.”
“Oh! There she is.” Harmony hurried to the table to greet her cousin.
The professional woman with tight black curls shorn close to her head didn’t look at all like the stereotypical jungle tribe Haitian. She stood and waved, a
steaming hot coffee in one hand. “Here you are! Welcome home!”
“Welcome yourself.” Harmony hugged the slender woman who had come down to the church in Port-au-Prince with an infant in a sling and willingly taken a total foreigner back to her suburban hovel. “I’m so glad you could make it.”
“I didn’t have much choice, did I?” She pulled back, her smile twinkling despite the sadness. She’d lost her job when she’d fled home to beg for Evens’ life from the Haitian gangsters and had had no luck finding a new one. “Where’s my son? Can’t get him out of the library I suppose.”
“You know Evens. The library closes in another twenty minutes and they should be along then. I hope it’s okay. King Kayo’s with him.”
“Sure, I trust my son with a six-foot tattooed warrior who’s never stepped foot on shore.”
Her twinkle intensified because she actually was teasing this time. Her son had skillfully evaded gangsters and trekked into a jungle with Harmony, who’d been less than useless. She knew his capabilities and Harmony’s.
Fab greeted Faier and they ordered food. “So, Faier. What do you think of the fabled Council Bluffs?”
He rested a comforting arm around Harmony’s waist. “I am glad to experience it with Harmony.”
“Better with a wife than a guy’s trip, right?”
He smiled tightly.
Faier still grew silent with the mention of exiled Balim. Something had happened to the quirky, sarcastic doctor who had treated all the warriors with a quip and a quiet melancholy. Faier wouldn’t talk about what Balim had done. Only that he’d committed the worst betrayal of any city and that he’d admitted his treason before being exiled.
Harmony couldn’t stand it though. She put her hands on her cousin’s. “Fab, I’m so sorry. All the stuff I said was here is gone.”
She waved her off with a casual laugh. “Why are you apologizing? It’s America! This is progress. You want it like Haiti? To stagnate or all fall down?”
“I don’t want to insult your country.”
“Haiti is no more my country than it was yours.”
