by Juliet Dark
“Are you from … the other side?” I asked.
But the buck only pawed the ground. Then it lifted its head, sniffed the air, its ears twitching, and leapt away as suddenly as it had appeared. I listened for what had frightened it, but all I heard was the chiming of the ice ornaments.
I turned and went on, soon coming out into a clearing that I recognized as my own front yard. Honeysuckle House was twenty yards away, my front porch light shining through the snow. See, I said to myself, I’m not lost. I struck out for my house, breaking into a clumsy run through the ankle-deep snow, but then something hit my head. I turned and met the yellow eyes of an enormous black bird, its talons stretched out. I ducked and flung my arm up to protect my face. The bird screeched horribly when I hit it and beat the air with its huge black wings, like a swimmer treading water. Its yellow eyes latched onto me, their hatred piercing the snow better than my high beams had.
Then it gathered itself for another dive.
I crouched and covered my face, sure it meant to pluck out my eyes, steeling myself for its talons and beak tearing into my flesh. But instead I heard a hollow thwack followed by the bird’s outraged scream and then the heavy beat of its wings. I uncovered my face and looked up at the figure towering above me, his back to me. Black feathers clung to his shoulders like a capelet. When he turned, the black feathers drifted down in front of me and landed in the snow, staining the white with splatters of blood. I looked up again, half expecting, half fearing that those yellow eyes would still be there. That the bird had transformed itself into this bloodied, feathered man, but the eyes regarding me were the soft brown eyes of Liam Doyle.
“Bloody hell, Callie!” he said, crouching down in front of me. “What did you do to piss off that bird?” His voice was shaking. I saw he still clutched the stick he’d used to fend off the bird. It was matted with blood and feathers.
“Liam, how did you know …? What are you doing here?”
“I was sitting in my room at the window, watching the snow fall, and then I saw someone in the woods. When you came out onto the lawn I saw it was you—and then I saw that crazy crow come out of the woods behind you. You know, I think it was the same one that attacked you the day you left … only it looks like it’s grown …”
He faltered and I wondered if he, too, was remembering what had happened the last time he’d rescued me from the bird—how we’d kissed and I’d pulled away. He reached out and touched my face, and I started to shake.
“You’re half frozen,” he cried, grabbing my hand and pulling me up. “We’ve got to get you inside. Do you have your key?”
I patted my pockets and realized that not only was the key gone but so was Ralph.
“Oh no!” I cried, scanning the blood-speckled snow. When had he fallen out? Had the monster crow gotten him?
“Don’t worry, you’ve probably got one stashed away. Most people hereabouts do, I’ve found. Let me guess—under this wee gnome perhaps?”
He’d helped me up to the front of the house and sat me down on the porch steps while he tilted back the stone gnome that had come with the house. “Ha! I knew it!” He cried, holding up a key. “Come on now, don’t cry. It’s just the shock of being attacked by that nasty bird.”
I wasn’t crying from shock—or at least not just from shock—but because I’d lost Ralph in the attack. Even if the bird hadn’t gotten him he’d freeze to death if he didn’t get inside soon. I had to look for him.
I got up and started to walk back across the snow, but I only got a few feet before a wave of dizziness overcame me and I sank to the ground. I heard Liam’s feet coming down the porch steps and felt his arms hauling me back to my feet. “Where do you think you’re going, Callie?”
“Um … I forgot something in the car … I have to go back.”
“You’re delirious, girl, which is one of the signs of hypothermia. You’re going inside now.”
Liam half carried me up the steps and into the house. I began to explain about Ralph, not caring anymore if he thought I was nuts.
“A pet mouse? What a strange woman you are, Cailleach McFay. But don’t you worry. Wild animals know how to take care of themselves. He’ll go to ground until the snow stops and then he’ll come home.”
He sat me down on the library couch and crouched beside the hearth where logs lay ready for a fire. He set a match to the logs as he talked, his voice a soothing patter—like raindrops falling on a tin roof—but I couldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t just Ralph anymore; it was everything that had happened: Paul breaking up with me, my grandmother turning out to be a witch, finding out about Frank Delmarco, crashing my car in the woods, getting attacked by a giant bird … It all bubbled up inside me now and spilled out in long wrenching sobs. I told Liam some of it—about Paul and the car … and somehow I managed to throw in finding him on the cloakroom floor with Fiona.
“That hussy,” he said, wrapping a knit throw around my shoulders. “She asked me to get something off a high shelf for her and then was all over me. Don’t worry about her … or your idjeet ex-boyfriend. You’re home now.” He knelt in front of me and pulled off my sodden boots and socks and rubbed my feet, his hands incredibly warm against my chilled flesh.
“It’s okay,” he cooed, his voice as warm as his hands. “You’ve had a bad time of it, but it’s okay now, you’re home now.”
He slipped his hands up under my jeans and chafed my calves, bringing the blood back into my legs. I’d never noticed how large and strong his hands were. He could span the width of my calf with one. I felt the warmth of them stealing up my legs.
He let go of my calves and sat on the couch beside me. He stroked my matted hair back from my forehead and brushed the tears away from my face. His eyes were the color of warm brandy, a tawny brown with floating specks of gold. Staring into them I felt myself growing dizzy, as I had when I’d stared into the swirling snow. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to my cheekbone. When he leaned back his lips were wet with my tears. He leaned in again and touched his lips against my earlobe, and then to the top of my jaw. I stayed perfectly still, feeling his breath moving over my face, then down my throat and along my collarbone, the warmth of his lips and breath spreading heat throughout my body. He unbuttoned the top two buttons of my blouse and grazed his lips across the top of my breasts. I started to tremble. He lifted his head and looked into my eyes.
“It’s okay,” he said, stroking my face. “You’re home now.”
He pressed his mouth against mine, opening my lips with his. I felt his tongue inside me, then his breath, then the heat of his body pressing me down into the couch, his legs moving mine apart as deftly as his lips had opened my lips. That’s what his kiss felt like—an opening. His hands moved up inside my shirt and down below the waistband of my jeans, his fingers moving between my legs.
“Liam,” I moaned.
He shifted his weight to the inside of the couch and withdrew his hand but left it resting flat on my belly. “Yes, Callie?” he said, as if we’d been in the middle of a conversation, as if we’d known each other all our lives.
“I’m afraid …” My voice came out breathless and husky. “We’re … going … too fast.”
“Too fast?” he asked, tilting his head, one side of his mouth quirking up into a crooked smile. “I’m sorry. I’ll go slower. How’s this?”
He dipped his head to my clavicle and ran his tongue along my throat and up to the lobe of my ear at exactly the same excruciatingly slow pace as he drew his fingers down from my naval to the inside of my thighs. Then he exhaled on the wetness on my ear at the same time as he slipped his fingers between my legs, so that it felt exactly as if his lips were where his fingers were. He pulled the lobe of my ear between his lips, grazing the flesh with his teeth, and sucked on it as his fingers slid inside me.
“How’s that?” he breathed into my ear. “Still too fast?”
“No,” I admitted, turning to him and twining my hands aroun
d his hips to pull him to me. “That was exactly right.”
THIRTY
True to his promise, that first time we made love was long and deliciously—almost maddeningly—slow. By the end I felt he had touched every millimeter of my body with his mouth or fingers—and I often couldn’t tell which had touched me where. But what I remember best about that night was waking up in my bed and finding him watching me, his body carved marble in the moonlight, his eyes silver. As soon as my eyes opened he slid inside me and came immediately, as if he’d been carrying that excess sum of desire from the first time we’d made love and had to spend it now.
He never did that again. He was always the most thoughtful and generous of lovers, always giving me pleasure first, always holding himself back until I came. But whenever I recalled that swift second coupling, wherever I was—standing in front of a class or walking down a grocery aisle—my knees went watery at the memory of his desire for me. It was the moment that sealed us, and the only time he acted without putting my pleasure first.
When we awoke the next morning he was already thinking of ways to please me. He’d sneaked into the Hart Brake Inn—where he was staying alone since Diana had gone to Liz’s house to take care of her—and brought back supplies to make a huge breakfast of banana pancakes, fresh fruit, eggs, and coffee. He brought it all to me on a tray with a single rose.
“Did you steal the rose, too?” I asked.
“Ah, that I found in an enchanted wood, the last rose growing in the garden of a ruined castle.”
“Hm,” I said, sniffing the rose. It didn’t smell like a hothouse flower—it smelled of summer. “Just like in Beauty and the Beast. I love that Cocteau version, too …” I stopped, embarrassed that I’d finally given away my Internet sleuthing.
He grinned. “I know you do—it’s listed on your favorites, too. Let’s watch it later.”
I’d been afraid to mention “later,” not wanting to assume we’d be spending our later together, but Liam made no pretense about wanting to spend every minute he could with me. We spent that first day in bed, letting the still-raging blizzard serve as our excuse for not budging, although in truth I think that even if the sun had been shining we would have found an excuse to stay in bed that first day. But the next day I awoke to a bed empty except for long swaths of cold sunlight twisted in the sheets. I felt a pang of loss as sharp as the crystalline light reflected off the icicles hanging from my bedroom windows, and for a moment I wondered if I’d dreamed the last day and a half. It felt like a dream, more incredible than the nights I’d spent with the incubus. Maybe the incubus had been real and Liam was the dream …
But then I heard a scraping noise coming from the front of the house. I went to one of the front bedrooms and, looking out the window, found Liam shoveling the front path. He looked up at the sound of the sash opening and waved, his cheeks glowing pink from the cold and exercise, a puff of condensed air hanging above his head. How could I have thought he was a dream? He looked more real than anything I could ever imagine.
I made breakfast that day and later we put on heavy boots and hiked down the hill to meet AAA at my car. It turned out that the tow truck was owned by Brock’s cousin Alf, and that when he heard I had made a service call Brock had insisted on coming along to help. He looked a little surprised to see Liam there, but Liam explained that he’d seen me walking down the hill to the car and offered to stay with me while I waited for the tow truck. Brock squinted suspiciously at Liam, and kept looking back and forth between us, as if he suspected that Liam was holding me captive.
“I thought he was going to tackle me,” Liam admitted after the car had been winched out of the gully and towed away.
“He’s just being protective,” I told him. But I too wondered why Brock had seemed so wary of Liam.
Since we didn’t have a car we hiked to the Stop & Shop, the only store open in town, and bought groceries. Later we borrowed two pairs of cross-country skis from the inn and skied through the woods, making new tracks in the deep virgin snow. The woods still scared me a little after being attacked by the giant crow, but with Liam blazing the trail ahead of me I told myself that nothing bad would happen—and nothing did. The woods were silent, hushed by the deep mantle of snow. Whatever creatures had stirred free through the door between the worlds, they had all gone to ground now.
As did we. For the next few days—in the still time between Christmas and New Year’s—we marooned ourselves in Honeysuckle House. Outside the snow fell steadily, dropping a thick white curtain between us and the rest of the world. The heat we made steamed the bedroom windows and then the steam froze, sealing us in.
“It feels like the ice age has come and we’re the only two people left in the world,” I said one night as we lay in bed, my head pillowed on his chest, watching the snow fall through the almost opaque windows.
“Would that be so bad?” Liam asked.
I laughed and looked up to see whether he was serious, but he was looking toward the window and his face, a white profile against the shadows, had no more emotion than a bust carved out of marble. “We can’t go on like this forever,” I said, trying to make my voice light but hearing a tremor in it.
He turned to me, his eyes twin dark wells in his face. “I could,” he said fiercely. He shifted his hips and pinned me beneath him in one quick fluid movement that made me gasp. We’d made love less than an hour ago, but he was hard again. But he didn’t come inside me. He stretched both of my arms over my head and wrapped my hands around the bedpost.
“Hold on,” he whispered, kissing my hands. His breath was a silken sash that bound my wrists to the bedpost. He pressed his mouth to the inside of my wrist and ran his tongue down my arm.
“I could tie you to this bed and make love to you forever,” he whispered into my clavicle. He pressed a line of kisses down my chest that seemed to seal me to the bed. I felt myself sink deeper into the mattress and clutched the bedpost harder to keep from sinking. He tongued my naval and my back arched as if pulled by a thread connected to his mouth. He was spinning a web around me with his lips, each word and kiss binding me.
“I could devour you,” he said, breathing into the cleft between my legs.
He really means it, I thought, arching my hips to meet his mouth. He could devour me. But as his tongue slipped inside me I understood that I didn’t care. He could tie me to this bed, lick me dry, and pound my bones into dust and I’d still cry out for more—as I was now, crying out in the empty house where the snow muffled the sounds and locked us in together, snowbound.
I woke the next morning with aching arms and that prickly sensation of having done something I should be embarrassed about but couldn’t remember—a feeling I recalled from drunken nights in college. Liam lay asleep beside me, his face angelic in sleep—an angel who’d told me last night that he wanted to tie me up and eat me.
It wasn’t really bondage, I thought, rubbing my wrists. And even if it had been—well, there wasn’t anything wrong with that. Plenty of consenting adults engaged in far wilder games. But I never had, and something about the abandon I’d felt—the willingness to give myself over—made my stomach feel hollow now. I slipped out of bed quietly, so as not to wake Liam, and stole downstairs. I felt like I had to reconnect to the world somehow, so I opened my laptop and checked my email while I started the coffee machine.
I had 283 unread emails.
“Shit,” I swore, scrolling through my inbox. When was the last time I had gone this long without checking my email? How long had it been? What day was it anyway?
I looked at the date on the most recent email and was shocked to see that it was December 31.
Most of the messages were easily disposable but there was one from Paul. I poured my coffee before opening it.
Just wanted to make sure you’re okay, he’d written, and wish you a Happy New Year. <3 Paul.
“What’s that symbol mean?”
I jumped at the sound of Liam�
��s voice. He was standing right behind me.
“You scared me!” I yelped. “I didn’t hear you come down.”
“You were pretty engrossed,” he replied, tilting his chin toward the screen. “What does it mean? Is it a math symbol? Paul was a math person, right?”
“You know it’s not polite to read other people’s emails,” I said, more testily than I’d meant to.
Liam flinched. “I didn’t think we had secrets from each other. I thought …” He looked again at the screen and a look of understanding crossed his face. His jaw muscle clenched. “I see now. It’s supposed to represent a heart. Is that his idea of romance? Sending you a heart cobbled together of signs and numbers?”
“He just wanted to make sure I was okay,” I said, ignoring his critique of Paul’s heart. Truth was, I’d always thought the heart emoticon was a little goofy, but I didn’t like the idea of laughing at Paul with Liam. It seemed disloyal—and petty of Liam.
