by R. Cooper
Ray wanted him anyway. A half-human. A child of man and fairy. Someone who wouldn’t want any part of him or the life he offered.
“Yes?” He purred it, growling, maybe knowing the little butterfly was seconds away from screaming in terror and fleeing, no matter how much Ray’s soul would pine for his. It wasn’t fair, wasn’t right.
He stopped short at the touch of a hand, blinking as he looked down and saw graceful fingers sliding slowly up his chest, weaving through his fur.
“Soft,” Cal exhaled, startled somehow, and when Ray looked back up at him, breathing hard, he angled his head back further without seeming to be aware. He was staring at his hand, watching himself pet Ray, desire all over his face. “You’d think you’d be scary. But you’re soft.”
Ray felt a tug, felt himself moving closer. His mouth was open, his skin prickling with sparkles, butterscotch on his tongue.
“Ray,” Cal started, only to stop and pull his lip between his teeth. He wasn’t biting, it wasn’t hard, but Ray wet his mouth, grunted, and watched that full lip turn red. Cal’s eyes went round.
In Ray’s changing perception, the lights seemed to flicker, Cal’s glitter bursting into an impossibly bright halo. Cal made a noise, shocked, and then the world dimmed, went back to normal except for a scent made of lilies and caramel popcorn and the unmistakable tang of pre-come.
“Rover.” Cal’s words buzzed like bees around their honey. “Ray. You. You’re….”
“A wolf?” Ray knew rejection was coming. It had to be. If not before they fucked then after. His soul already cried for being abandoned, howling when Cal’s teeth sank into his lip again.
“I was going to say incredible. Shiny. Perfect. Beautiful. But yeah, wolf will do.”
Ray’s claws clicked against the wall by Cal’s head, their breath mingling before Ray realized that he’d stepped in closer. “Do you know what that means?” He had to ask, barely getting out the desperate question.
Fairies couldn’t lie, or wouldn’t. Cal slowly shook his head. Then, confusingly, he nodded.
“Going to show me, big man?” he teased, but Ray barely heard it. He shut his eyes. It had been too much to hope. He’d known that, but with it all so new, exposed, his cock stiff and the tip wet, he hadn’t been able to resist trying.
Cal still wanted it, but it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t a Mate. He didn’t understand. He was Fairy and he would leave.
Ray tore himself away and faced the mirror over the sink. He shifted, quick and harsh, back to all man where the loss of a partner was minutely less painful.
He was panting, tongue lolling out for those pearly, salty traces of Cal’s arousal. He needed it in his blood, and would, for the rest of his life. He did howl, the tiniest cry slipping out before he clenched his jaw.
“Wait, what?” Cal was shocked, and moved. He came up behind him but stopped when Ray tensed. “I don’t get it, Ray. I thought—”
“Cal.” He couldn’t say Parker. “Cal, I’m asking you now, explicitly, to leave.”
“Leave? But… the case?” Ray could hear the flail in that voice and raised his head.
“The case? I know you don’t want to finish that. We both know you don’t want to be working on it.” He was being too rough and softened his voice, because hurting Cal was suddenly close to impossible. “It’s fine. You’ve been a help. I’ll look into goblins, okay? I’ll even let you know how it went.” Anything just to see him again.
“That. That isn’t…. What’s happening here?”
“Nothing.” Ray opened his eyes but the mirror was fogged up. “Nothing is happening here.”
“Why not?” Frustration. Need. Want. So damn much of it. It wasn’t all his, but that wasn’t a comfort.
“Does it matter? I’m letting you go.”
“Oh, are you?” It was almost a frown in Cal’s voice, as though even a fairy could be deeply unhappy. “I find you, and you’re letting me go?”
“The case….” Ray cleared his throat but couldn’t turn yet. “You don’t want to be here.”
“I generally resist anything my dad suggests, at first. Good old Calvin Parker, Super Cop.”
“You’ve been helpful. I can see the need for the department to have someone to consult on these cases. It doesn’t have to be you, Calvin.”
“It does.” The stubborn tone made Ray twist around. Cal’s gaze was hot. “And my name isn’t Calvin, Rover.”
Not Calvin. Ray was hanging on that information, waiting for more.
“Something floral?” It wasn’t a sneer, he was too curious for that, already mentally running through the names of flowers.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Cal leaned back to stare up at him. He palmed himself through his jeans again, then pointedly glanced at Ray’s erection. “Ask, and it’s yours,” he offered and shivered when Ray loudly sucked in a breath.
“Until then….” Cal went on when Ray didn’t answer, dripping glitter and staring carefully at him with eyes that saw more than any other fairy Ray had ever met. “I guess I’ll have to come back tomorrow, unless—”
He moved, just like that, taking half a step nearer and then freezing in his tracks at whatever passed through Ray’s expression. Ray had a feeling it was more desperation, perhaps fear. He’d thought nothing could make a fairy stop, but there Cal was, regarding him with the teeniest, tiniest scowl Ray had ever seen, as though for the first time in his life he was utterly lost.
All Ray could do was find it beautiful.
Cal wet his lips, staring at him like he could figure Ray out if he just stared long enough. Ray almost wished he would. “So I’ll see you tomorrow, Ray Ray?”
Ray Ray. Just like he’d said when he’d begged Ray to take him.
“I….” Ray tried, but Cal was already gone from the room, not even his wings in view. “Tomorrow.” He was agreeing. Trembling, at the thought that he might not see one little fairy again, and that he might. “Tomorrow.” He tried not to think he was waiting for Cal to come back, or about how Cal probably wouldn’t, right as Cal poked his head back in the doorway.
“Tomorrow, Ray,” he echoed firmly, then swept a heated look up from Ray’s toes to his eyes, as though enough of Ray hadn’t already been displayed for him tonight. “Because there you are,” he whispered.
“That’s enough, Tiger Lily,” Ray ground out, and had no idea what the wondrous, blissful scent coming from Cal meant. But he’d made Cal Parker smile, and it was enough to make him smile back. Just for one moment, one brief, sweet second, as though he might stay, and then Cal vanished again.
“Tomorrow!” He had called it out from the living room, like a promise, and then had slipped out the front door, leaving a haze of glitter and need behind him.
CAL loved him. Had loved him. Did love him. Ray’s thoughts ran together as the tension left the air, as the memory faded and he was in the present again. The truth left him winded, almost crushed but for the heat filling him as it hadn’t then.
Cal had been telling him everything, and he hadn’t been listening. Cal. His Cal. Had been, even then.
He looked over and met those eyes. For one moment he stared, stuck between then and now, and then Cal wet his lips.
“Oh,” he said, and stretched out his arm behind him to reach for something. The cup with ice water was in front of Ray’s face before he realized that his throat was hoarse, that he must have been talking the whole time. He’d thought Cal was the one sharing the truth, but Cal was staring at him without blinking. His eyes were gleaming as he fed Ray chip after chip of ice.
His fingertips lingered on his mouth. Ray didn’t mind. When Cal finally took the cup back, he pushed it away without looking and didn’t even flinch when it hit the floor. “I was that scary?”
“Terrifying.” Ray wished he was kidding. Cal might have been hurt, but he seemed to get distracted when Ray’s hand landed at his hip—because it had to go somewhere and because Cal was so very warm. He rocked a bit, getting comfortable.
/> Ray bit down hard and didn’t say anything, though the motions in the bed didn’t feel great with his injuries. He forgot the pain in the next second, because Cal rested his head against the pillow, displaying his throat for him. Like he knew exactly what it meant after all. Of course, now he did know.
“Now. Let’s do this right. Sniff away, Fido,” he murmured, watching him with hot eyes.
“But….” Ray protested, not sure why when he was already leaning down and inhaling so much sweetness that he got dizzy. He needed his mate to heal faster, to rest, and didn’t know if Cal knew that but didn’t care as long as he stayed with him. “But….” Like birthday cake, Cal seemed to be made of joy and frosting, and rested against Ray without even a flutter of his wings. “You’re a fairy.” He wasn’t supposed to want this.
“Half-fairy,” Cal reminded him gently, shivering at each one of Ray’s breaths as he panted over him. “And there’s a lot you don’t know about us fairies. My mother alone…. I could tell you stories. Maybe I will, someday. She’s not the reason my parents are split, you know. That was all my dad, not wanting to burden her as he aged… he’s kind of a jerk like that. Kind of like you, but let’s please not go there with my issues.”
“That’s—” Ray tried to speak only to get forcefully shushed. Cal’s fingers slid up into his hair, to the edge of what felt like a bandage, and then back down to his neck.
“So stupid, Ray. He’s smart but he’s so stupid. How could she not want him? I tried to tell him what we see, but he won’t listen, and don’t defend him, I can see that look on your face. You of all people should know the cost of thinking the wrong things about anyone.”
“I know,” Ray said instead. “I know, and I’m sorry. But I didn’t….” He still didn’t understand what it was Cal saw, even though Cal had showed him.
“At first, I wondered why you’d want me but say no. Then I thought it was a wolf thing. I never thought it was a Ray thing. Crap, my dad did try to tell me. I hate it when he’s right. Even Audrey tried to tell me, and oh, Ray, what you did for them. Can we talk about that for a second? What you did, which was wonderful, you softie, and why then you’d….” He sniffed. “Let Nasreen kiss you. I heard all about that too.”
“Are they happy? I’m glad.” Ray avoided the rest of it, and Cal didn’t seem inclined to think about it either. But the quiet envy in his tone, the traces of hurt, made Ray lean back in, breathe in deep until Cal reached up to run his fingers through his hair.
“So happy. The age thing. It bothered Audrey too. And other things. She was afraid, just like you said.”
Ray opened his mouth, then couldn’t say anything and wet his lips.
“I am not pleased to imagine what you thought of me, of us.” Cal made a noise but continued to pet him. “And how dare, how dare you assume I would leave you and treat me like that? Don’t you pay attention to the stories at all, Ray? What are most of those old ballads about anyway? Fairies bringing their human lovers to live with them, or the other way around. They’re love stories, you idiot. Some detective you are.”
He was like bliss, humming under Ray’s mouth, calling him names.
“I know everyone says we just run around looking for new things to make us happy, but nobody ever talks about what happens when we find what makes us happy, do they? What did I tell you then, Ray?”
He’d said, There you are.
Ray would have said Cal didn’t mean it, couldn’t, but fairies never bothered with deception, and it smelled right. He pulled back anyway, enough to stare into Cal’s face. He abruptly felt stupid, knowing that this had been in front of him all along, and he hadn’t believed it.
Cal looked smug, and, briefly, slightly pitying. Ray should have seen the obvious, his expression said, how Cal had circled around him, irresistibly drawn to the thing that made him happy above all else.
“I could stay like this for a hundred years, Ray,” Cal added, just to make it clear, then blinked. “Or until that one nurse comes back around. Kiss me quick before she comes back in here to yell at me! She’s an ogre.”
Ray wasn’t even aware that he’d meant to kiss Cal until he was, swimming in the scent and taste of him, hot as Cal shifted against him. Cal’s hand landed on his chest, and Ray let out a small noise at the pain, then a louder one when Cal pulled back.
He was wriggling again. Ray stared at him, his lips buzzing, his thinking a little muddled.
“Sorry,” Cal was breathing heavily, smiling despite his words. He hummed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Ray wasn’t especially worried about his rapidly healing wounds. This was his mate, practically in his arms. He leaned back over, sliding a series of softer kisses over Cal’s mouth and slipping one hand down to the space between them.
“You can bruise me all you want,” he growled quietly, sizzling when Cal instantly moved, rocking over, rubbing a leg against his, spreading his hands wide.
They were, he realized, checking his injuries as much as groping him.
“You’re so bright. So right,” Cal whispered nonsensically. Or not, when Ray’s vision flared again with that same strange brand of fairy magic.
“Is that really what you see? When you look at me?”
The air tightened. Shiny. Perfect. Those were Cal’s words. He added new ones too.
“You are brighter than the sun to me, Ray. Did I not show you the truth?” Cal didn’t wait for his nod. “I told you then to take me. I said there you are. Say it again, Ray.”
“What?” Ray felt like an idiot when Cal fixed him with a sharp look. Then he just felt hot. Embarrassed. Proud. Turned on. “Callalily Parker is my mate.”
Cal’s groan said it was killing him just to hear it but that he didn’t really mind. Maybe he didn’t understand, but Ray bent to kiss him again, softly this time. Only biting him a little.
“Do I make you happy?”
Cal snorted. It wasn’t quite a laugh.
“Happy, Branigan? Are you serious? Ecstatic. Like I’ve just eaten an entire hot fudge sundae and a ton of whipped cream. Like it’s dawn, and I’m in a dewy field watching the flowers open. Like I’ve danced all night. You make me happy even when I want to smack you. Which I still want to do, by the way.”
This time it was Cal who finally pulled away, glancing over Ray to the door, and it must be some nurse to put any kind of modesty into Cal Parker. Ray was fine with that in any case, with anything. He just dropped his head to breathe steadily in and out. He moved a hand down Cal’s chest, pausing at his lower stomach, then sliding down another few inches and ignoring Cal’s not so shocked moan.
“And with a potential audience too. Werewolves. So slutty.” Cal was too breathless for his sarcasm to be very effective. He wasn’t protesting, either, not even when Ray popped the fly on his worn, soft jeans and made him moan again, a touch louder.
“Hey. You never did tell me, Branigan,” Cal chided him, amazingly still and oddly fierce in his curiosity, even with a hard on. “What I smell like to you.” His voice dropped. He pushed his body forward into Ray’s hand. “Tell me. It’s only fair.”
Ray shuddered against him, considering the plethora of terms he could use to try to define it, cherries jubilee and champagne. Vanilla macchiatos. Yellow beams of spring sun. Moonlight through trees. Daisies. Turkish Delight and bittersweet chocolate. Home. Then he breathed in deep.
“Happily ever after,” he explained at last, pushing his nose over Cal’s skin, nuzzling that face and enjoying Cal’s stunned, then thoughtful expression.
“I told Bens that rubbing my scent on your chairs would pay off,” Cal declared triumphantly after a moment’s pause, and then lifted a hand to stroke Ray’s nose for him.
He repeated it to himself a moment later, enchanted and utterly delighted. “Happily ever after.” He hummed. “I like it.”
About the Author
R. COOPER has been making up stories since she was a wee R. Cooper. She has a weakness for strong-minded characters doing unspeak
ably hot things to each other and thinks dirty martinis are for the weak (or perhaps just thinks olive juice is gross). If she listed all of her turn-ons, it would take up this whole bio, but they include smart people, tailored suits with serious ties, shoulder holsters, funny people, sacrifices made for love, power struggles, the walking wounded, bravery, and good old-fashioned shameless sluts.
She also likes ice cream. Strawberry.
Visit R. at http://r-cooper.livejournal.com/. You can contact her at [email protected].
Also by R. COOPER
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Also from DREAMSPINNER PRESS
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Copyright
Some Kind of Magic ©Copyright R. Cooper, 2011
Published by
Dreamspinner Press
4760 Preston Road
Suite 244-149
Frisco, TX 75034
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art by Paul Richmond http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com
This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the Publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
