Chase the Moon
Page 3
He looked different today, in a red plaid flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. He’d pulled his hair back, into some sort of man bun, and those eyes were even more impossibly blue in the October sunshine.
“It’s you.” I almost asked if he’d come to kill me, but I caught myself. I didn’t need to give him any ideas.
One side of his mouth turned up into a smile, and it made me wonder when was the last time I’d kissed someone with a beard. It would be a lot softer than a day or two of lazy stubble... No. I couldn’t think about kissing him. I would never survive a horror movie. While I wouldn’t be the one running through the woods in high heels, I’d die simply because I had a monster crush on the killer.
“You should be glad it’s me,” he said. “Anyone else would have called the cops on you for trespassing on the North Shore of Sapphire Lake with your mobile home.” He pointed up to a sign that I never saw before that moment that clearly said No Trespassing.
“Tiny house,” I corrected.
“Call it whatever makes you feel better about it being stuck on my land.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t see the sign when I parked it, and there was no way to hook up to power, since I wasn’t supposed to be here, and I didn’t notice it.” I had to get out of here before he did something else to freak me out. But first, I should explain why I’d trespassed on his land. “There wasn’t anywhere space left in the RV park. This is my first night on the road. My plan is to travel all over Canada and the US. I’m totally winging it, and I wanted to see Aurora Falls again. I thought it would be a good way to start my trip, but clearly, it wasn’t, and you don’t really care why I’m here...”
As I rambled, he’d committed to the smile. “I do care why you’re here,” he said.
“I—I’m not staying.” It didn’t sound convincing, not even to me. “If you could maybe call someone who has a tow truck, I’ll be on my way as soon as I can move.”
“I could.” He didn’t sound convincing, either. “Would you like to talk about what you saw last night?”
He didn’t whip out his phone to call for the tow truck, and I was kind of at his mercy until someone came with heavy equipment that could move my tiny home. But on the other hand, I desperately wanted answers for what I’d seen.
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
His shoulders relaxed, like tension had left his body. Maybe he wasn’t so scary after all. The whole thing could be a terrible misunderstanding.
“If this was any other weekend, I’d offer to take you out for breakfast—”
“Not brunch?” I teased.
He shook his head. “Brunch is for people who can’t make up their minds. I know what I want.”
“Oh.” A shiver ran down my spine. I liked that way more than I should have.
“But it’s festival weekend and we’ll never get anywhere near Rita’s. I know you like those pancakes.”
“Shouldn’t you be working at the festival?” It was only one weekend, and I’d assume anyone who signed on committed to the whole thing.
“I quit,” he said.
“Are you sure you didn’t get fired for scaring the hell out of your customers?”
“You’re the only one who saw my mark and had the vision.” He nodded when my mouth fell. “And I was only there looking for you.”
Chapter Six
ABEL
If it were anyone else but Tori I found on the beach, I’d be watching Sherriff Holmes take her away in handcuffs, and a tow truck removing her truck and her mobile—tiny home. Didn’t exactly understand the difference, and we’d still need the tow truck.
She’d been this close to me all night long. Damn it. It was only a few hours, but when I only had three, now two days to make my case, it was so much time wasted.
I hadn’t managed to put her mind at ease. Not yet. Her big, dark eyes were wide, unblinking after my declaration. She wrapped her arms around her middle, like it was enough to protect her against me.
Little did this woman understand she held all the power. She could make my dreams come true or send me back to my watery prison with a simple yes or no. My fate rested in her gloved hands.
“We can still go into town, if it would make you feel more comfortable.” Anything to get her to relax. To stay. Nothing was stopping her from unhooking the truck from the tiny home and leaving it behind. “But we’ll have to deal with the festival again. Saturday’s always the busiest day.”
She shuddered. “No thank you.”
“No thank you to me or the festival?”
“I hate crowds,” she confessed. “My plan for this weekend was to get one of those sapphire massages, maybe buy some crystals, and eat until it was hard to button my pants. I had no idea it was festival weekend until I got here. When I couldn’t find a place to stay, I should’ve kept going—”
“No. You shouldn’t have,” I said too quickly, and her eyes got even wider. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
She nodded, but I didn’t miss the gulp. “If I’d been able to hook my house up to a power source, I would’ve never gone to the festival. It was either that, or sit here in the dark, so I figured I’d brave it and go. But it was too much, and...”
“I can explain,” I interrupted. She didn’t have to say that touching my mark freaked her out. “My cabin is right up the hill, and there’s no line for breakfast there.”
She closed her eyes for a long blink. Dark lashes fringed her pale skin, and her cheeks flushed in the cool morning air. Her eyes fluttered open, and she took another deep breath, like she wasn’t sure what would come out of her mouth.
Yes or no. You hold my fate in your hands, woman.
She let out a chuckle. “I would do unspeakable things for a cup of coffee right now.”
I raised an eyebrow, loving the flush that spread from her cheeks down her neck, disappearing into the collar of her thick sweater. I imagined the way it would dapple her entire body, like the sunlight hitting the sand through the thinning leaves, and my cock hardened inside my jeans. My brave mate, with her dreams of adventure and her naked fears holding her back. I’d show her how powerful she really was. She could bring a damned man back to life.
She gasped. “I didn’t mean it like that.” Her gaze raked over my body. “But...”
I motioned for her to follow me. If she said too much I’d be tempted to back her against the side of her tiny house and put my hands on the bare skin under her sweater. Our lips would meet, and she could touch my mark again before she understood what it meant. If I didn’t do this right, I could lose her. And I’d been damn lucky to find her not once, but twice this weekend when I’d been waiting an entire lifetime for her to come to me.
Her breathing was ragged by the time we’d climbed the rocks to get to the cabin. There were well-worn paths that led to the road, but we’d left the shore wild to discourage humans from hanging around. Someone was always living in one of the cabins, the Mer who’d found their human mates, so we didn’t have to worry about vandalism. We’d been more concerned with saving the humans from their own stupidity, from falling prey to the serpent in the lake.
My heart thundered with each breath she took. It wasn’t easy to be this close to her, when there was no guarantee she’d stay. “Have a seat.” I pointed to the kitchen table and headed to the fridge.
She stayed standing, still hugging her middle, as she caught her breath. “You live here?”
“Yeah.” Three days a month, until further notice.
“It doesn’t look very lived in.” She took it all in with a frown, either pitying me or not believing me.
She was right, the place was pretty bare. Just a two-seat table, a couch, and a TV. Nothing on the walls, none of the little trinkets that the mated Mer had that made their cabins a home. The bed was big and comfy, but I never slept well the three days I walked on earth. I spent too much time dreaming of ways my mate slipped away from me. But it was never like this.
“I’m not in town a lot.” That’s the line we gave the hum
an women who weren’t our mates when they wanted to know why we couldn’t stay with them. “I only come here for work.”
“How often is that?”
“One weekend a month.”
She wrinkled her brow. “But you’re working at the festival, or you were until you quit...”
I glanced at her over my shoulder as I shut the refrigerator door with my foot. My hands were full of eggs, milk, bacon, and cheese. “Calling bullshit on my story?”
“Little bit.” She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip, and I could hear her stomach rumble at the sight of the food. My mate should never be hungry. She should never want for anything. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here, Abel.”
“I plan to.” But I had to win her over enough that she was ready to listen to the truth. The bullshit would be a lot easier to swallow. “Rita’s pancakes are good, but they don’t hold you over. I’ll cook this first, and then I’ll answer all your questions while you eat.”
The chair scraped against the bare wooden floor as she pulled it out, but she still didn’t sit. “Want some help?”
“Nope.” I had a feeling Tori was used to doing things on her own. She was too stubborn or proud to ask for help. I could feel it when we were down in the lot, and she was struggling to move the tiny house. She would rather set her truck engine on fire than admit she needed my help. I couldn’t take it personally. It would be my pleasure to serve my mate. I’d give her everything she asked for. Every jewel on the bottom of the lake if she wanted them. Damn, I’d set a whole new curse into motion, stopping at nothing to make her mine. “How do you like your eggs?”
Her gaze swept over the tiny kitchen. “If you have toast, sunny side up.”
Thankful Dolly had stocked the fridge for me, I opened it again and grabbed the bread. She did it every month, just in case we found our mates. Just in case her love was enough to make Zander’s mark visible her.
It boggled my mind, how perfect they were for each other, and how it wasn’t enough. And here was Tori, acting like this was a hostage situation. Only staying because she was hungry and stuck. It would be so much easier if I could have let her fall in love with me. If I had more than three days to convince her to stay.
“Why only with toast?” I wanted to make her relax, and trust me. Show me a little bit of herself, so I knew who to dream about if this plan backfired.
“Because I love sopping up the yolk with the toast. It’s my favorite breakfast.” She finally sat, resting her chin her hands and watching me work.
“Even more than pancakes?”
“Pancakes are a treat.” She accepted the cup of coffee and poured milk into it. Lifting the cup to her mouth, she savored the first sip. “Eggs and toast are too. It’s something I only make on a day off, when I have time. And this is damn good coffee.”
“Straight from Enchanted Brews,” I said. Dolly loved this town as much as she loved Zander, and she’d make sure any potential mate of mine would too.
I gave Tori a chance to enjoy her coffee while I cooked, thinking of what the hell I’d tell her. If I should start at the beginning, with Tamsin’s story. If she’d believe it. It would match the vision. And then I’d have to tell her I was a cursed man, unless she was willing to save me.
She sighed when I put her plate down in front of her. “This looks like a dream come true.”
“You don’t keep any food in your tiny house?” I teased as I took my first bite of bacon. One of the best things about coming to land every month was the food. Damn, I loved human food. “Doesn’t sound very lived in, either.”
“It was my first night.” She kicked me under the table, and her brows went up in surprise when she realized how much she’d let her guard down. If all it took was food to win her over, I wouldn’t have to go back to the lake. “I can’t keep anything perishable in there until I find someplace I want to stay a while. The fridge is only on when it’s hooked up to a generator.”
“What if you stayed in Aurora Falls? There are plenty of legal places to park that thing.” I’d let her keep it on the beach as long as she wanted, even though she wouldn’t need it anymore.
She dragged her toast through a river of broken yolk and took a bite, shaking her head. “This is my first stop. I haven’t seen anything yet.”
“I can guarantee you could go all the way to the Pacific Ocean and you wouldn’t see anything like you would here.” My heart stirred in my chest. “Aurora Falls might be small, but looking at your house, that doesn’t bother you. We have it all.”
She cocked her head and took another bite of toast as she considered her next move. If she wanted to play with fire or if she was afraid of getting burned. “Do you work for the town when you’re not quitting Viking festivals?”
I shook my head.
“Then why do you want me to stay here so bad?”
“Because.” I reached for her hand that was on her coffee mug. It didn’t surprise me that she flinched. The last time she’d touched me, she’d had the visions. “You’re my mate.”
Chapter Seven
TORI
“What do you mean, I’m your mate?” This trip kept getting weirder. I should’ve known Abel was too good looking, too everywhere, to be real. He was real in the physical sense, and after I left Aurora Falls, he’d most likely fuel a fantasy or seventeen...but the vision, and now this declaration that I belonged to him. Too much, too soon, buddy.
He wrapped his giant hands around his coffee mug and blew out a breath to move his long auburn hair out of his face. “How much do you know about the legend of Sapphire Lake?”
“I know there are jewels at the bottom of it. And the mermaid lore the town loves so much is tied to it.” When I was little, my parents bought me a picture book while we vacationed here. But I couldn’t admit everything I knew about the legend came from that book.
He nodded. “Both are true. Want me to fill in the blanks a little bit, so everything that’s happened between you and I might start to make a little more sense?”
His gaze met mine, and there was a tension that had been there the entire time. Since I bumped into him at the festival, before I tried to wipe the syrup away. It was there this morning too, when he scolded me about parking the tiny house at the lake.
“If you can put this all together in a way that makes sense, I’ll...”
His cerulean eyes lit up. “You’ll consider staying?”
My jaw dropped, because that had not been on the list of possibilities at the beginning of this conversation. Had I been able to get the house out of the sand, Aurora Falls wouldn’t even be a speck in my rearview mirror, and those objects were always closer than they appeared.
“I can’t make any promises.” I hated that I disappointed him. I shouldn’t feel any sort of attachment to this man. It wasn’t lust. It was something much more dangerous than that. “But I’d really like to hear the legend.”
He took a deep breath. “Sapphire Lake was never meant to belong to humans. It belonged to a goddess named Tamsin. She spent her days with the animals and spirits. When human settlers came to Sapphire Lake, she welcomed them. She even admired one of them and made herself visible in human form.
“The settlers didn’t understand what she was. They thought she was a witch, and that she was there to bring a curse, but all she wanted to do was spread love. The humans had come for the jewels at the bottom of the lake, and she let them take as many as they wanted. All she wanted in return was the love of one of them. His name was Bjorn. Big dude, even bigger than me and Zander, the guy in the merman pants who was with me at the festival. True Viking. Bjorn would take whatever he could to make himself stronger.”
“You talk like you know this guy,” I said.
Abel nodded. “Tamsin loved Bjorn very much. She thought she’d take him as her mate, and she kept making herself available to him in every way possible. It was a good time for our clan. Our ship was full of treasure that we planned to bring back to our motherland.”
“Bjorn wasn’t satisfied with his bounty. He didn’t appreciate what he had. One day, when Tamsin went to Sapphire Lake to collect more pretty stones for her lover, she caught him with another woman, having his way with her on the rocks on the shore.”
I groaned. “What a surprise.”
“You say that like you’ve experienced it.”
“We all have a fuckboy or two in our past.” I sopped up the rest of the yolk with the last slice of toast. “Nothing ever changes.”
“Tamsin didn’t see it that way. She was furious, and rightfully so. She’d made her lake available to us—”
“You keep saying us like you were there.” And it was freaking me out.
Abel held up his hand. “She’d only asked for love in return, and we’d been too stupid and too greedy to give it to her. So, she cursed us. That was what you saw when you touched my mark.”
My hand stopped, mid sop and I looked up with him with my mouth open. “That happened?”
He nodded. “To make the humans stop pillaging Sapphire Lake, she turned her energy into a terrible storm. She made us board our ship, and then she set it on fire. As it sunk, she bound us to the lake, and turned us into Mer.”
“So the cute little legend and all the mermaid stuffies are actually based on a horror story,” I said more to myself than to him.
“Most legends are. Humans today are softer, because their ancestors overcame the horrors of the past. They believe in happy endings, and luckily for us, the gods did too. They gave us a chance to escape the curse. Three days a month, during the full moon, we’re given our human lives back, and the chance to find our mates. Our mates are the only ones who can see our mark, the only ones who see the visions when they touch it, and the only ones that can give us our freedom.”
He paused, giving me a chance to absorb the story he’d told me. This gorgeous man who’d made me breakfast was a centuries-old Viking who’d been doomed to the bottom of a lake and his fate depended on me.