“No, I don’t think so.” I eased around him to the fridge, my cheeks prickling with heat when our bodies brushed together. “I swear I had a few beers in here, though.”
“None for me. I want to stay sharp for the night watch.”
I closed my fridge harder than necessary. “Excuse me?”
“I figured I’d stay the night,” he told me—like it was no big deal. “Just until I can properly fortify the place.” He must have noticed my expression, a smooth blend of shock, outrage, and mild arousal. “I’ll sleep on the couch, of course. I won’t do much sleeping, so you don’t need to worry about me.”
“Huh.” I leaned against the fridge, then hastily scrambled to catch the magnets I’d knocked off. Once I had them back in place, I swept my hair behind my ears, noting the way his eyes fixated on the motion of my hand. “Well, glad I extended the invite.”
“Me too.” He shot me a wink before turning on the sink and filling the second glass to the brim. “Water good?”
I snorted. “Uh. Not really.”
He turned the sink off and faced me, our bodies mere inches apart, despite us both leaning on opposite sides of the kitchen. “Why?”
“Because…” I motioned to the glass, surprised he didn’t just know. “There’s iron in tap water.” He looked down at it, frowning. “And… iron is like fairy kryptonite?”
“I knew that,” Darius muttered, dumping what I guessed was going to be my glass back into the sink. “I didn’t know you were all that sensitive.”
“It’s a gift,” I said with a sigh, rolling my eyes. I then busied myself getting plates and cutlery, stomach at peak howling point now. “Some fae use charms and trinkets on their taps, like a water filter, and it does a pretty good job of getting rid of any excess minerals. Others try to spell it away. I, on the other hand,” I went back to the fridge and retrieved a bottle from the back, “buy in bulk from Alfheim because I know it’s pure.”
His face twisted into something unreadable for a moment, which I chose to ignore, before mumbling, “Makes sense, I guess.”
After we both loaded our plates with takeout, Darius hoarding all the dumplings for himself, we migrated back to the living room. Whatever weird reaction he’d had to my mention of Alfheim had passed, as evidenced by the somewhat cheeky smile he shot me.
“So what about showers? What do you do for that?”
“I shower, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You do smell pretty awesome. It’s a quandary.”
“I tap into my white magic supply when I shower,” I stated, biting back the urge to tell him he smelled pretty delicious too—for a shifter. Because that would be rude. And telling. “I can usually last about ten minutes, maybe less, so I have to power-wash most days.”
“Only ten minutes?” Darius arched an eyebrow. “So, no time for shower sex, huh?”
I fought against the blush washing over my cheeks and instead, reached for the remote nonchalantly to turn on the TV.
“Or,” I said, then looked him dead in the eye, “only enough time for shower sex.”
He choked on a dumpling.
* * *
“You know, if you really want to investigate a place that’s detrimental to my health, Ballard’s Ice Cream bar is probably the place to start.” I scooped a spoonful of strawberry cheesecake ice cream into my mouth, savoring the addition of raspberries and chocolate chips I’d added liberally down at the shop.
“You know…” Darius licked his spoon, remnants of his chocolate-cookie-monster deluxe carried away by his tongue. He lifted a foot to my balcony railing and tipped his chair onto its two back legs, smirking. “Pretty sure I’m not here to fight your calorie demons, but I’ll keep that in mind.”
I swallowed the urge to tell him that the only thing I was truly in serious danger of, was over-indulging on ice cream. Instead, I simply spooned another mouthful of deliciousness into my mouth. Today was apparently a junk food day. First Chinese takeout, then ice cream from the make-it-yourself bar at the end of my block. This wasn’t my first rodeo down there. The cashiers practically knew my name—and that I always got a large scoop.
But Darius had put up a fuss about the bottle of wine I’d opened, and since he was so intent on staying sober and not distracting himself by kissing me, I had needed something to satiate my sweet tooth. So, ice cream it was. He had complained at first, not wanting to leave my apartment tonight because of his weird shifter spidey-senses, but he couldn’t deny he’d morphed into a kid in a candy shop the second we were in the store.
My hips were not going to thank me in the morning, but after the insane day I’d had running the practice by myself and dealing with a dragon shifter telling me I was in serious danger, I thought I deserved to treat myself.
We ended up on my balcony when we returned. While I enjoyed the fresh, cooler-than-street-level night air, I knew we were out here because we were getting too cozy on the couch earlier, and Darius wanted to be stone-cold sober; apparently, alcohol wasn’t the only thing that could get him intoxicated. I was officially on that list now, too.
Awesome. A fucking straight-edge shifter bent on playing my personal protector. Gorgeous and untouchable.
At the thought, I shoved an extra-large spoonful of ice cream into my mouth, chewing the cheesecake crust bits with a pout.
“So,” Darius started, tipping dangerously far back in his chair. My balcony was usually a comfortable fit for one person; two was pushing it a bit. Heights always reminded me of my inability to fly, so I tended not to use it. We’d had to dust both chairs off before they were suitable for sitting.
“So?”
“You were telling me about your family?”
I stabbed at a frozen strawberry. “Was I?”
“Can you?”
“Why?”
Darius shrugged. “Why not?”
Because families were touchy subjects for a lot of people, supernaturals, and humans alike. For all he knew, my home life could have been one big epic disaster, and talking about it would trigger a Greek-goddess worthy meltdown.
Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. Sort of. I’d grown past my childhood misfortunes.
“I don’t know. I have one?” I ate another spoonful of ice cream, thoughtful as I noted him watching me out of the corner of my eye. “Well. I used to. My mom died during childbirth with me. Dad couldn’t handle looking at me, so he dumped me and my brother with my aunt and left.”
“Shit. Sorry, Kaye, you don’t have to—”
“It’s fine.” I stabbed at the next piece of frozen fruit with more vigor. “My aunt was awesome. So was my brother, until he left.” That one hurt more than my dad. “He left when he turned eighteen and didn’t look back.”
At the time, I’d been devastated—like don’t get out of bed for days devastated, sobbing at the drop of a hat devastated. Zayne was my best friend, my protector, my partner-in-crime. We were two parentless brats thrust upon our aunt. It was supposed to bond us for life.
I guess he just didn’t feel the same way.
“He sounds like an ass,” Darius said as he came back onto all fours of his chair. I also noted I was working through my ice cream much faster and should probably slow down. “I’ve got a couple of asshole brothers too, but I love ‘em.”
“You kind of have to.” Even though he too had abandoned me, I still loved Zayne. Deep down, under the anger and wounded feeling of intense betrayal. He was my big brother. I’d always love him.
When Darius went quiet, I prodded him with my foot. “What about you? Spill it, dragon. It’s only fair.”
He chuckled. “Not much to share. I’m the oldest of three boys. We were born into the Sanctius dragon shifter clan. My father is a highly respected member. My mother babies all of us, especially my youngest brother. I… I left after the curse.”
“Why?” I shook my head. “Couldn’t they help you? It wasn’t your fault you were cursed. Not really.”
Even if he had broken the
witch’s heart, stealing his wings wasn’t an appropriate response.
“I want them to respect me,” he told me, expression hardening for a moment. “It’s… humiliating. A dragon who can’t fly. I would never live it down. I had to leave so I could figure out a cure on my own.”
“Stubborn.” Alpha-personality. Can’t let anyone see his weakness. I made note of that if I needed something to explain his stupidity in the future.
“Mom used to say that was my middle name,” Darius said, smirking. His face lit up when he mentioned her. I wish I could say the same about my mom, but I never knew her and every time I thought about the situation involving her death, I felt somewhat guilty. After all, she died while having me. And despite the fact fairies could heal, no magic was powerful enough to save her from that.
The chair groaned as he twisted his body to face me. “I know this is kind of personal, but are there any shifters in your family?”
I frowned. “Shifters? No, not that I’m aware.”
“Huh.” He faced away and went back to his ice cream.
“Why?”
“Curious, I guess. You’re not like other fairies, that’s all.”
We sat in silence for a little while, both of us mulling over what we’d learned.
“So,” I blurted, mirroring his previous start to a very personal conversation, “tell me how you met the witch.”
Darius groaned. “Really?”
“Do it.”
“We met where everyone meets.”
“Bookstore? Gym? Online?”
“A bar.”
I laughed. “You’re a walking cliché, Darius.”
“And what about you?” he fired back. “All this prying into my love life… What about your seedy romantic history?”
“Hardly seedy.” I bit my lip, not interested in sharing the family history and my pathetic romantic past on the same night, but Darius had been more than open with me. “He was another fairy. It was a year ago. I thought he was the one.”
“And?”
“He cheated.” My cheeks grew hot as I stuffed two spoonfuls of ice cream into my mouth. Beside me, Darius’s expression had hardened again, so I shrugged, not wanting to make a big deal out of it. “I should have guessed that’d be the outcome. Fae men are known to stray. They’re too pretty and too interested in shiny things not to wander. It was my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t.” The gruffness of his voice surprised me, and I turned to find him scowling at my railing. “No one deserves to be treated like that. It wasn’t your fault, Kaye.”
“Well, whoever’s fault it was, I stopped dating shortly after.” Ice cream complete, I stashed the cup under my seat. “And that’s the way I like it.”
“I think you should reconsider your feelings about that,” Darius insisted. He shot me a sexy grin before turning his gaze out to the city before us, to the sea of lights that made the metropolis of New York, a very beautiful sight.
I studied him briefly, arms wrapped tight around myself. “Maybe I will.”
His grin widened, eyes twinkling with our city stars. “I’ll hold you to it…”
Good grief, am I ever in trouble.
Chapter Four
I awoke the following morning alone—and not for lack of trying. Exhaling sleepily, I rolled over to check my clock, which told me that it was about five minutes before my alarm was set to go off. With a few heavy blinks, I turned the alarm off and rubbed at my eyes, wondering if last night with Darius was just a dream.
But, moments later, the rustling of dishes coming from my kitchen told me no, it wasn’t. He was still here. He had stayed the night, just like he told me he would. I pinched myself, just to be sure, then sat up and listened to him putter around for a little while. As I tried to run my hands through my mane, I caught the distinctive whiff of bacon. Apparently, he had helped himself to my fridge again, but he was too “professional” to help himself to me last night.
I couldn’t help it. After our lengthy talks about relationships and family dynamics on my balcony, I had offered him a spot in my bed, all the while knowing he would shoot me down. I guess I was feeling masochistic, because he did shoot me down, politely, and insisted he would stand watch this first night instead. Fine. I wasn’t someone to beg. But when I leaned up to press a kiss to his cheek, he had turned his face at the last moment and captured my lips with his in a sweet, chaste kiss. Romantic, almost, given the mood lighting from Manhattan’s buildings twinkling back at us.
Clearly, I wasn’t pulling this sexual tension out of thin air. Darius wanted it. He just wanted to do his job more.
I rolled my eyes and flung my covers back, recalling my jaunt to the bathroom at three this morning. Half-asleep, I’d shuffled out and caught him sitting on my balcony still—this time on the railing itself, watching. On guard. Like a gargoyle overlooking its monastery, only not an asshole. Gargoyles were assholes, from what I’d heard.
The sight had touched me in ways I wasn’t ready to properly process yet, so after shimmying into some pajama shorts and throwing a house coat over the whole mismatched ensemble, I headed for my kitchen repressing any, and all, feelings I might have developed since I let a sexy dragon shifter into my apartment.
“Morning,” he greeted, a little too chipper for my taste. My not-a-morning-person expression made him chuckle, and my features softened when he handed over a mug of steaming hot coffee. “I’ve tried to make everything without iron, just for my favorite fairy.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, then took a sip. Oh. He meant he didn’t use water. That’s a lot of creamer—but there was a mouthwatering man making me breakfast, so I couldn’t complain. The only thing that would have made this better was if he was shirtless, which I’d always assumed was some rule of the Man Code to be half-naked when making bacon. Apparently, Darius hadn’t gotten the memo. My eyes swept over him appreciatively before I went to lean against the sink, watching him work with a tilt of my head.
“How did you sleep?” he asked, back to me as he flipped all six—six!—pieces of bacon at once.
“Well. You?”
“Didn’t sleep.”
I slurped my coffee. “Awfully chipper for someone who didn’t sleep.”
“Comes with the job. All-nighters aren’t new to me.”
I resisted the urge to ask if shifters were able to withstand sleep deprivation better than most. Even though it was normal to ask about powers and abilities, shifters were touchy about it—probably because we supernaturals made them feel like the lesser species simply because they could only turn into animals. I’d no idea what else a whole magical population in my community was capable of, and, honestly, that didn’t sit right with me.
Instead of probing, however, I changed the subject entirely.
“As you can see, I survived the night without an assassination attempt.” My expression turned smug when he glowered over his shoulder at me. “Looks like, just as I thought, your dreams were merely your subconscious encouraging you to see me again. Case closed.”
Darius gave a humorless chuckle as he poked at the sizzling strips of pork. “Hardly.”
“What’d ‘you mean hardly?” I motioned to myself, drawing my hand up and down like I was a game show presenter showing off a really good prize. “I’m alive, aren’t I? Pretty sure that makes me right, and you wrong.”
“Not necessarily,” he told me. I watched him look through all my cupboards for a little while until finally taking mercy and grabbing a plate from the drying rack. He accepted it with a little half-smile, clearly not pleased with my attitude about all this. “Just because you didn’t die last night doesn’t mean you aren’t still in danger. That’s a black-and-white way of looking at it, Kaye.”
I drew in a deep breath, then exhaled it slowly, watching him work and biting my tongue. Sure, my somewhat joking perspective on all this might be black-and-white, but you know what—it was warranted. Never in my life had I ever been in danger, and Darius’s assertions that suddenly I w
as, and suddenly I needed his protection, wasn’t exactly sitting well with me. He hadn’t done much to drive the point home, honestly, and I didn’t feel any less safe in my cozy old one-bedroom now than I did any other morning.
“Look,” I started after he grabbed a carton of eggs from my fridge and cracked two into a pan, cooking them in the bacon grease, “I appreciate your concern. Last night was a lot of fun. I’d like to do it again sometime. But I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine.”
“Kaye—”
“I just don’t want you going out of your way to do this just because you dreamt up some ludicrous story that feels too real not to be true, or whatever,” I insisted, pinching the bridge of my nose as I pointedly reminded myself not to get too analytical on him. I spent most days listening to problems and trying to talk through them. That was what I specialized in: talk therapy. Karen handled the medical side of things at our little practice. Sometimes I slipped and psychoanalyzed issues with my friends, and apparently, that wasn’t a very appealing trait.
“I didn’t pull this out of thin air,” he told me, flipping the eggs, mouth set in a tight line. “I have good instincts. My job has always been to protect people. I know when they need protection.”
“Maybe.” I fiddled with the tie of my housecoat. “And maybe not. All I’m saying is… You can go on with your life. You don’t have to spend every night on my balcony on the lookout for phantom dangers—”
“Let’s just drop it,” he said gruffly. With those eggs done, browned and crispy by the high heat and bacon grease, he dumped them on the plate and added two more to the pan. “I’m not backing off on this.”
“Even if I insist?”
“Even if you insist.”
That’s what you think, dragon. I rolled my eyes and went back to nursing my coffee. It was way too early to have a full-out brawl with the hot shifter cooking me breakfast. So, I let it go for the time being, prepping my very tiny table at the end of the galley, able to see into both the living room and the kitchen. Mostly I used it for mail and bread and odds and ends I couldn’t find a place for. This morning, however, I didn’t think it appropriate for us to eat such a nice breakfast on the couch in front of the TV like a couple of millennial savages. So, I cleared off all the junk and gave it a quick wipe-down, slightly embarrassed about how much dust had collected there during its disuse.
Magic Fire: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shifting Magic Book 1) Page 5
