by Judi Fennell
Zane plucked the plate off Merlin’s back, then fixed the toppled items. “Where’s Vana?”
Merlin rolled onto his back and crossed his wings on his chest, his feathers strumming his gold belly. “Guess that’s a no.”
“Merlin, is there a point to you being here?” Zane asked as he bit into a piece of flaky pastry. He loved baklava, and this was the best he’d ever tasted. One more plus in Vana’s favor.
“Point? Uh, no. But most people like having me around.”
“I’m not most people.”
“Okay. Fine. I can tell when I’m not wanted. But it looked to me—and Henry and Eirik and even little Lucia—like you’d walked out on her. Just when she needed you, too. We all did. We were about to send out the troops.”
“Needed me? Why? And what troops?”
Merlin shook his head. “Nope, you’re not getting the story from me. Ask her. As for the troops, those gargoyles aren’t as dumb as they look, you know.”
“Then why is one standing with his head stuck in the ground in my front yard?”
Merlin smacked his forehead with his wing and landed on the sofa. “You know, you try to give them the benefit of the doubt and look what happens. I better go fix this.” He disappeared in a cloud of gold flames, just as Vana ran down the steps.
God, she was beautiful. It didn’t seem possible that he would have forgotten how beautiful in twelve hours, but he had.
“Zane, you’re home!”
And just like that, with those three words, it all fell into place.
His life.
This house.
Vana.
He looked around. His great-great-great-grandmother’s lantern on the side table. His parents’ wedding picture hanging above the fireplace. His baby picture beside it. Peter’s portrait in the foyer. His mother’s thimble collection, his grandfather’s pipe. The salt shaker he’d given Vana on the mantel next to his Little League trophy.
This was home.
Somehow, in a short period of time, Vana had turned this place from a dusty, dingy, sheet-covered bad memory into a place filled with life and warmth and memories.
She’d made it a home.
“Zane? Are you okay?”
He nodded. Because he couldn’t speak.
He was home. For the first time, he had a sense of what that meant.
And he had her to thank for it.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” She took the plate from him and tugged him toward the living room, her smile taking his breath away.
That was something a man could get used to.
He cleared his throat. “What happened, Vana?”
She stumbled but quickly recovered. “Happened?”
“Yeah, while I was gone. Merlin said something about you needing me.” Those words had a nice ring to them. Yeah, he could see the whole picture.
“Some friend he is,” she muttered, setting the plate down before tucking some hair behind her ear, then fiddling with her fingers—very telling signs with her.
Zane glanced around. No cows, no bears, and the stairs were still in one piece.
“What happened, Vana?”
“Nothing really.”
Oh, it was something.
“Tell me.” He picked up her hands. “Please.”
She nibbled her bottom lip and glanced at the table before giving him a too-quick smile. “I took care of it. You don’t have to worry.”
Apparently he did. But he didn’t pressure her, just sat there holding her hands and looking at her. She’d tell him when she was ready.
“It’s Gary.”
Shit. “What about him?”
“He knows about me.”
Double shit. “How?”
“I’m not sure, but he knows. He… he took Colin.”
“One of the children?” Zane stormed to his feet. “Where is he? What’d he do with him? Is Colin okay?”
Vana grabbed his hand and stopped him from running out the door after that motherfucking prick. “Colin’s fine. He’s here. Unharmed. It’s okay, Zane.”
No, it freaking was not. On so many levels: Gary, the kids, how he was coming to feel for them, for Vana… and in one blinding instant he’d thought it’d all gone up in swirling pink smoke.
He needed to sit down because his knees were threatening to give out in a way that had nothing to do with his ACL. “What… what happened?”
Vana took a deep breath and pulled her hands back into her lap, her fingers twiddling madly. Zane covered them with his. “Vana, tell me. I’m imagining all sorts of horrifying scenarios right now.”
“Okay, but remember, it all worked out in the end.”
He tried to quell the desire to murder Gary as Vana relayed the story she’d pieced together from Henry, Eirik, Fatima, Lucia, and the children, as well as the parts only Colin had known.
“So while Lorelei was talking about using the yard for a community picnic, and LeeAnn was suggesting donating the property to the Future Farmers’ Club, and Laura was thinking we should open a series of summer camps, I was trying to figure out where Colin had gone. It wasn’t until the ladies left that Henry and the rest could tell me what happened.”
“But how did Gary know in the first place?” And who else knew…
“I didn’t find out. I was more concerned about getting Colin back.”
“And he’s back? He’s okay?”
Vana’s laugh relieved some of his tension. Well, his worry, but the desire to commit murder was still pretty strong. “Oh, he loves telling the story now. Quite the adventure.”
“And you? How are you?”
Her tough façade wavered just as he knew it would. She’d been as terrified as he’d been when she’d first told him. He shouldn’t have left her here alone. “You should have called me, Vana. Or magicked me back here.”
“Which would have done exactly what I was trying to prevent Gary from doing. The whole world would have known about me if I showed up out of nowhere and whisked you away.” She took another deep breath, and this time, her shoulders rolled back and her chin tilted.
“Besides, I handled it. I did it, Zane. And I could do it because Gary took something from me that was more important than my problematic magic. I had to get Colin out of there, and I had to keep Gary from going public with what he knew. I didn’t have time to worry about what my magic would or wouldn’t do. And it was actually better than I could’ve hoped. Gary won’t be spreading tales about what he knows for a long time. Ever, if I have anything to say about it, and the beauty of it is that Gary thinks I do. So our secret is safe.”
“I still think you should turn him into a toad.”
“That’s always a possibility if he tells someone something he shouldn’t.”
“But… that would mean you’d have to be around to monitor him. Here.”
The idea no longer bothered him. Matter of fact, he liked it. It answered everything. The children and the furniture could stay here while Vana tried turning them back, and if they wanted to stay once they were changed, well, the house certainly was big enough—
No. The home was big enough.
She tugged her hands away and tucked hair behind both her ears. “I… I actually wouldn’t have to stay here, Zane. Gary’s leaving town. On threat of being turned into a donkey.”
“I like that better than the toad idea. He’s already an ass.”
She smiled and Zane felt another piece of his life fall into place. He wouldn’t leave her to face Gary or anything like that situation again. “But what if I wanted you to stay here? What if I…” He took two seconds to think it over and realized that he had to say it. Had to do it. “What if I don’t sell the house?”
He counted to three before her mouth closed. Counted five more before any words came out.
And even then, they were breathless. “Are you… Really?”
He cupped her cheek. “Really. You’ve made this place a home, Vana. For all of us. Even the gargoyles and Henry and Eirik. When I
walked in the door tonight, I felt it. That sense of homecoming I’ve never had.”
“You did?” There was something in her eye. A tear, perhaps.
No, she shouldn’t cry. Ever.
He brushed it away with his thumb. “Vana.”
Shimmering silver eyes met his. “Yes?”
He caught another tear. “I want to kiss you.”
She inhaled sharply and her fingers flexed against his chest. They grasped his shirt and hung on. “Oh,” was all she said.
That was all she needed to say.
He slipped his hands, so slowly, beneath that fall of hair, letting the strands glide between his fingers, igniting every nerve ending he had.
He tilted her chin up just slightly with his thumbs, feeling the steady thud of her pulse against them.
He watched the silver sheen in her eyes darken, the pupils dilate, saw her lips part to take in more breath.
“Vana,” he whispered, her lips just out of touching range of his.
She swallowed. “Yes?”
“I’m going to kiss you.”
This time she said nothing. Not a gasp, not an “oh,” not an “okay.”
This time, she moaned.
It was Zane’s undoing.
He pulled her into him and kissed her, her lips trembling beneath his as she sighed into his mouth.
It wasn’t enough.
He shifted on the sofa to get closer, but his leg was in the way. So he leaned forward, urging her back. He lifted his knee to the cushion and raised himself above her, never once breaking the kiss.
Her fingers slid up his chest and around his neck as he slipped her legs beneath him on the sofa, every inch touching, and framed her face with his hands, tugging on her bottom lip with his teeth until she opened her eyes. Starlight shone in them.
“You are so beautiful.” He stroked a strand of hair from her cheek. God, he could swear he’d been imagining her like this since the day they’d met. He wanted to tell her that, but the words wouldn’t come. He stroked her cheek again in a caress that felt so right it was as if he’d done it just that way before.
She lay there in the moonlight with the sweetest welcome in her expression, as if she were a gift from the gods. As a genie, his genie, she just might be.
But he didn’t want the genie. He wanted the woman. Because, for all her magic, nothing had made this house a home more than Vana had.
“I want you, Vana.”
There it was. No preamble. No dissembling. No games. Stark, honest, raw desire.
The same thing he saw reflected in her eyes.
Something thwumped, and for a moment, Zane thought it was his heart.
But then it thwumped again behind them.
Zane looked up. Eirik’s limb was pressed against Henry’s door, and both of them were staring at him and Vana. Not that Zane knew how they could stare, since they didn’t have eyes, but he could feel their looks like a physical touch—or make that a physical “do not touch.”
What were they—her guardians? “Don’t you two have something better to do?”
Eirik made a big production—as big as a coat rack could—of lifting his limb from Henry and stomping back to his post by the door. Henry straightened his shoulders, er, frame, so he was two inches taller. The two of them radiated displeasure through every grain of the wood they were made of.
God, there were people—beings, whatever—in his living room. Gargoyles running amok in his yard.
And Vana in his arms.
That made everything right.
Everything except…
He wanted her.
In his bed.
No, hers. The one on the third floor that he’d forever think of as theirs.
“Say ‘yes,’ Vana. God, please say you want this.”
He waited half a heartbeat. A desire-filled, anxious half of a heartbeat. With his blood throbbing in his ears, dread and hope warring in his gut.
No, not his gut. A little higher.
And then she looked at him beneath her long lashes and said the magic word—and it wasn’t “Abracadabra” or “Open, sesame” or even the dreaded “holy smokes.”
It was the one three-letter word that opened the door to every possibility.
“Yes.”
34
Vana didn’t have to think about it. Of course she’d say “yes.”
Aside from the fact that she’d wanted him desperately since she’d first set eyes on him, he wanted her. Despite everything, Zane wanted her.
And he wanted the house, too. Finally, they were on the same page, and Vana was so utterly happy she could cry. Was about to, actually, but then Zane jumped off the sofa, swept her up in his arms, and strode toward the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Rhett Butler couldn’t hold a candle to Zane.
Candles covered every dresser, nightstand, and windowsill when he kicked open the door to her bedroom.
“Thank God,” said Zane, kicking it closed behind him.
She was about to agree, but then he let go of her legs, and inch by maddeningly slow inch, she slid down his body.
“Zane, I—”
He kissed her then, and it was as if lightning arced between them with hot, intense, unmitigated desire. She forgot what she was going to say as her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his shirt.
Zane muttered something against her lips, then covered her hands with his and yanked, sending the buttons flying.
Oh gods, he was all planes and angles that her fingers wanted to trace; ridges and valleys her lips wanted to explore; sinew and muscles and the sexy line of hair heading down to his belt line and below that she remembered all too well. How it’d felt beneath her fingers, against her cheek, along the tips of her breasts.
His fingers fumbled with his belt, and it was her turn to cover his hands with hers. “Allow me.”
He nipped her bottom lip and removed his hands—which he then rested on her waist. “Your wish is my command.”
That was her line—
No, she wasn’t going to think about the differences between them or her magic or the last time they’d done this… This was a whole new start for them, as if that other night had never happened.
She wasn’t going to take this night from him. Not now, when he knew everything about her and who she was.
Well, not everything.
“Kiss me, Zane.” She needed to stop thinking of anything beyond tonight and just live in the moment. That’s all genies could ever do.
Zane backed her up against the bed and bent her back over his arm. He leaned into her, taking her gently down to the mattress, his other arm bracing their descent.
He followed her down, that glorious chest mere millimeters above hers, his lips a hairsbreadth away, his gorgeous blue, blue eyes now the deep indigo of the sky just before night claimed the day.
“Be sure this is what you want, Vana, because if I kiss you now, I’m not going to stop.”
“Thank the gods.” Every single one of them.
Zane smiled. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’” He slid infinitesimally closer. How was it possible that he still wasn’t touching her?
She arched off the bed. There. Her breasts came in contact with that warm, naked expanse of skin, and she breathed a sigh of relief that, in the next second, turned into a gasp as desire shot through her, as heady and quicksilver as magic.
Zane had to have felt it, too, because he dropped those last few inches onto her and kissed her senseless.
He dragged her hands above her head and intertwined their fingers, nipping at her jaw and her neck and just beneath her ear where his warm breath caused shivers that undulated out like a wave on the shore, everything in its path caught up and swirling and tumbling along the tide of desire.
Gods, she wanted this. Wanted him. Yes, she knew it was dangerous, but that danger only heightened what she was feeling.
And oh stars, what she was feeling. It transcended the physical. This was love, a joining of two
hearts and souls in an act so profoundly beautiful that it surely had to be magical.
See? Mortals still had their magic, if only they knew how to find it. Zane had found his and was wielding it so utterly perfectly that Vana willingly gave herself up to the enchantment, as exhilarating as a magic-carpet ride over storm-tossed clouds and as beautiful as the rainbow that followed.
She shifted when Zane’s lips slipped from her earlobe to the curve of her neck, needing the pressure of his thigh against her, needing that ultimate contact that she knew would be all the sweeter for the wait, but wanting it now.
She wanted to touch him, to give him the same pleasure he was giving her, and she moved her hands. But Zane tightened his hold and nipped along the cord of her neck, then down to her collarbone, nuzzling the hollow above it, his tongue soothing the sharp little bites, each and every one heightening her pleasure.
She squeezed her eyes against the emotion he drew from her with the utter perfection of his touch and the pleasure he wanted to give her, and she wondered… dear gods, she wondered how she’d ever live without this. Without him.
He licked his way down to her T-shirt’s scooped neckline and paused there, looking up at her with hooded, sexy bedroom eyes that seemed to glow, warming every cell in her body while the rasp of his stubble invoked shivers down to her toes.
“Shall I continue?” He smiled wickedly.
She could only nod.
Zane grabbed the shirt’s fabric with his teeth and scraped it down, catching it briefly on her tight nipple before releasing it beneath her breast. He then took the aching, swelling flesh into his mouth and worked his own brand of magic.
Vana shifted beneath him, the contact not enough. She needed to be naked against him. Needed to feel his skin against hers, that roughened hair bristling against each of her nerve endings.
She turned her head to kiss the closest part of him so she could summon her magic. That body part turned out to be his forearm, an area she’d never consider sexy on anyone but him, and she put every thought and hope and wish behind that kiss to magic their clothes away.
Thank the stars, it worked. Skin on skin, hearts beating together, they were finally, thankfully, as the gods had intended. Not genie and mortal, but man and woman. As elemental as time itself.
