Binding Curse: Dark Fae Hollow 4 (Dark Fae Hollows)

by T. F. Walsh

  Axel directed me to an older two-story house with a pointy roof. Several tables and chairs lined the veranda, and a painted sign sat above the door with the words, Ryumochanaya Bar in red.

  Inside, the stench of perspiration and alcohol coated me. Wooden tables dotting the dimly lit room—occupied mostly by men and a few women—seemed to be at home eating and drinking. To my left, a bar was cradled in the corner with a mirror backing. Next to it stood a seven-foot taxidermy brown bear on hind legs. Paintings of wolves and Siberian tigers lined the walls, lit up by small spotlights situated above them.

  Axel flagged down the bartender who gave him a baleful stare. While they chatted, I scanned the room for anyone appearing seedy. Okay, well, most in the room could fit that description. From the man in a hoodie in the corner nursing his drink, to the guys leering at me, and even the elderly man several tables away, scratching his groin as he stared at me… the place had no shortage. Yeah, well, that one might soon find himself with a broken arm.

  I tucked my hair over the side of my neck. Everyone here was human, and I guessed the same applied to most in this town. So, why would an assassin fae live here when humans were not welcoming of our kind?

  When Axel returned, he handed me keys and nudged me toward the stairs. He raised his voice. “Here’s our key, babe. I’ll meet you up there.” Then he slapped my butt.

  I couldn’t believe he just did that. I spun and shoved a palm into his shoulder, but he grasped my wrist and yanked me against him so fast I gasped. His words whispered across my face. “Play along. You’re sticking out like a goddamn PPD, understand? We’re in room four.”

  I lost myself in his blue eyes and was impressed with his quick reflexes. Prying myself away, I did a quick glance around and found everyone in the bar studying us with bated breath. Great, we’d become the spectacle. Before I could respond with my plan of action that involved kicking butt, Axel nudged me toward the stairs and called out loud enough for the entire town to hear. “Keep the bed warm. Be up in a sec, sweetheart.”

  I gritted my teeth and offered him the glare of death before spinning on my heels. Sure, I’d go along since I was the odd one out, a fae everyone would want to kill if they discovered my true identity.

  The sleazebag slouching against the railing near the steps wiggled his eyebrows in my direction. “When ya finished, ya can come ’n warm me bed.”

  Before I could stop myself, I slammed my fist into his neck.

  The guy recoiled, coughing. Sounded like he coughed up a lung. Served him right. I rushed upstairs and followed a long narrow corridor, searching for number four. The wooden floorboards screeched underfoot as did the cockroach I’d squished. Hell no. With my luck, I’d find this dump was built on a huge nest.

  Inside, the timber look continued along the walls and ceilings. One double bed, a table with two chairs, and that was it. Well, looked like Axel would be sleeping on the floor. The voices from downstairs reverberated against the walls.

  Five steps and I stood near the window. I pushed aside the stiff lace curtains in bad need of bleaching and disinfecting. Outside, the street remained the same with lights from storefronts, people coming and leaving. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  When the door groaned open, I turned around to find Axel strolling into the room, wearing a wicked smirk. He kicked the door shut behind him.

  “Hope you like hot dogs.”

  “I don’t eat meat.” Still, my stomach growled with intensity.

  “No meat in these. It’s a chickpea mixture.” He dumped the food on the table and grabbed three, and in two bites he’d finished one. He pushed two toward me, and I ate mine standing and craved ten more of these morsels. They were bland with no seasoning or sauce but sated the hunger.

  On my next step, I squished something and pulled my leg away to find the world’s biggest son of a bitch roach. “Fuck, I hate these things. I swear they’re planning to take over Kutia Hollow.”

  Axel shrugged, too busy eating to care, but as I turned toward the window, I spotted another, the size of my thumb, scurrying up the wall. I cringed, but when something gleamed across its back, I froze. “What is that?”

  I shoved the rest of the hot dog into my mouth and approached the insect. Knowing my luck, it would be pregnant and explode with a thousand babies swarming our room. I toed off my boot and picked it up.

  Inches away, I studied the disgusting bug, when a human-like eye blinked on the back of its head. I flinched and recoiled. “What the hell?” I slammed my heel into the creature. The flattened carcass was now glued to the sole of my shoe.

  “Get it?” Axel asked, mirth lining his words.

  Using the napkin from the food, I peeled the remains and set it on the table. “Something’s wrong with this one.”

  I leaned closer, yellow guts everywhere, but the head remained intact and… as before… an open eye stared at us. Except it also had its normal bug eyes.

  Axel sidled up next to me. “A mutation?”

  I cut him a glare. “With what—a person’s eye? Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked closer. His lips pinched to the side, and he rubbed his chin. “That’s weird.”

  “Fuck yeah.” Just then, another insect scuttled across the wall next to us. I grabbed an empty glass and jammed it over the cockroach, trapping the bug inside. “Another one with an eye. And it’s following me as I move from one side of the tumbler to the other.”

  Axel said nothing, and I twisted my head to find him holding a creepy-crawly in his hand by the wings. “This one, too.” He dropped it and flattened it beneath his boot.

  We both stood silently, and my mind whirled with confusion. What if animals were mutating? Look at the vlko that attacked me, a cross between a wolf and tiger. That species had morphed to fit into the changing geographic landscape. But how does a human eye help a bug? Nope, this wasn’t normal.

  “I once heard a story about the old realm,” Axel said. “That vulsines used familiars that would rise from the darkest pits and fill the street with a plague of rodents, seeing everything, knowing all.”

  “Because shit wasn’t strange enough, now there are spying cockroaches?” Surely not! I thought back to our encounters with vulsines, how they kept turning up in places we didn’t expect. At the church, even in Axel’s apartment. And each time there had been damn cockroaches there.

  “Don’t know,” Axel said. “But how ’bout we kill the bastards and go to bed?”

  I nodded, though an underlying uncertainty played in my brain, unable to ignore the coincidence that the bugs were linked to the vulsines.

  Pushing those thoughts from my mind, I joined Axel in the massacre of every insect in our room, praying I was wrong. That the vulsines weren’t using cockroaches to track down who they would kill next.

  Chapter 21

  I crashed onto the bed on my back, hair wet from the shower… and the robe I found in the bathroom wrapped around me. Next to me lay Axel, both of us breathing heavy.

  “I killed fifty, at least,” Axel said, staring up at the paint curls along the ceiling. A white sheet draped across his lower half. And as much as I longed to rip away the fabric and gawk at his nakedness like a horny teenager, I kept my temptation locked inside.

  “Mine was definitely double that,” I said. “And I’m never getting up.” I laughed because considering we’d just spent the last hour hunting the disgusting insects, their carcasses now covered the floor.

  Axel nudged me, smirking. “Hey, can you go downstairs and get us more of those hot dogs?”

  I cringed. “How can you think of food?”

  He shrugged and set his hands behind his head, lying there as if his troubles were a world away. Make that our troubles because we were both in deep shit. Yet, I couldn’t help but glance at the ripples of muscles and flat abs. He had minimal tattoos on his torso, unlike his strong arms. The black leopard on the inside of his arm, the stars on his collarbone, the
spider on his inside wrist, barbed wire around his biceps.

  I rolled onto my side and faced him. “So, the plan for tomorrow then? We hang out downstairs waiting for this supposed contact you know to show?”

  “Pretty much.” He glanced over, his attention dipped to my chest, and he grinned.

  My robe had pried open, half revealing a breast. Heat found my cheeks, but I didn’t cover myself. Come on, I lay next to a naked hunk, and only a thin piece of fabric separated us. When we locked eyes again, electricity danced on my skin.

  His smile was hypnotic, and the laughter lines that curled at the corners of his lush mouth added to the allure.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Just admiring.”

  I lifted myself onto an elbow, and the lights switched off. “What the hell?” Sitting upright, I stared out the window. Pitch blackness with only a silvery hue from the moon casting a faint glow across the room.

  “Most towns have power outages during the night,” Axel said. “To reserve energy, but it won’t stop anyone at the bar. Candles are a massive business in the Outlands as are backup solar generators.” The voices picked up from downstairs.

  Something tickled my toe, and I flinched. “Shit, there’s a cockroach on the bed.” And no way was I getting off the mattress barefoot with no light to avoid treading on the massacre around us.

  Axel leaned forward, a shoe in hand and slapped the black creepy crawlies staring our way, antennae wiggling. I cringed, and my entire body itched. I scratched my arms and peered over my edge of the bed. Nothing else stirred down there.

  “Saved you,” Axel said with smugness in his voice.

  When I turned, my words flatlined as he kneeled close in his birthday suit, the sheet gone. Because I was super predictable and had zero control over myself, my gaze dipped, and an involuntary gasp echoed in the room.

  “Like what you see?”

  I was burning up and probably resembling a tomato. Not that I was the prudish kind, but hell, Axel had a hard-on, and my ex never even come close to his size, or any faes I’d been with. Was it a human thing, because if that was the case, this whole time I’d made a mistake to never date one.

  “If you keep staring, you’ll have to do something about it.”

  My attention snapped to his face. “Put that away before you poke my eye out.” Though part of me pleaded to reach over and touch him, take him into my hand, and do the things I’d been fantasizing since we first met. Taste him, and beg him to run his hands over me. Was it wrong of me to want Axel, to drool over him, to blush like an insatiable sex-starved female?

  He laughed, and damn, even his chuckle turned me on. A shiver of excitement drove south at being in such proximity to the guy. Nowhere to go for the night and the bed was the only clean thing in the place.

  Axel didn’t pull away but studied me.

  After running for our lives, bonded by the secrets we’d discovered, and being targeted by the vulsines, what was wrong with a night together, forgetting the crappy world for a while?

  I took a deep inhale and untied my robe and slid the fabric off my back, letting it fall.

  Axel’s eyes devoured me, and there was zero doubt his attraction was real. “You’re stunning.” He reached over, sliding blonde strands off my shoulder. His fingers traced the swirling pattern around my neck, his touch feather-soft. “I’ve always thought fae markings were beautiful, especially yours.”

  He leaned in, fingers cradling my head, his breath on my cheek. “And I was thinking about fucking you ever since laid eyes on you in the woods. Even if you are stubborn.”

  I broke into a laugh, but his mouth captured mine, his kiss tender at first, as if testing the water. When I returned the passion, opening my lips for his tongue, his hunger intensified. With a hand sliding to my nape, he lowered me onto my back. I softened into the mattress.

  Axel cupped the side of my face, and every inch of me tingled beneath him. His fingers slid down my collarbone, finding a breast and kneading it, pinching my nipple. I mewled into his kiss. He lowered himself, licking between the valley of my breasts, taking one into his mouth, flicking the tight bud with his tongue.

  I buzzed with excitement and fisted his hair. A fire soared within, begging for release. For the past few days, I’d craved Axel, his caresses, his heat. Now I writhed as he left a trail of pecks down my stomach and positioned himself between my legs. He pried them open and kneeled in front of me, smiling. “Magical. I’d heard fae markings continue between the thighs. Yours is sexy. I love it.”

  Just hearing a guy like Axel get switched on by my ink undid me, and I lost all ability to speak. Difficult to speak when I lay open for him, and he drooled. An inferno raged within and drove so fast, I was sure I’d explode the moment he touched me.

  Axel crouched in front, his hands on the back of my thighs, pushing them wide and opening me. The moment his tongue stroked me, I arched and moaned.

  He chuckled. “Love the way your body responds.”

  His mouth was on my nether lips, sucking, licking with no respite. The euphoria pushing me heightened, and I rode the wave of pleasure, unable to get enough. My groans grew louder, and I didn’t care who listened, not when a hunk like Axel was having his way with me, and fuck… I screamed as his fingers penetrated me.

  I glanced down my body, the moonlight dancing across his curved back, his shoulder blades. And just having a strong guy like Axel bowing in front of me was the most amazing feeling.

  Damn, a tidal wave of excitement owned me, shaking me to the core as an orgasm claimed me. I shut my eyes, and my thighs pressed against Axel’s head because he wasn’t releasing his hold. I shook with tremendous pleasure, adoring every second.

  Spent, I collapsed. “Where’d you learn how to do that?”

  Axel lifted himself and winked, leaving me melting in desire. “It’s all for you.”

  Before I could respond, he grabbed my hips and drew me across the mattress, toward him. Crap, his strength had me swooning. But when his tip nudged my entrance, I gasped and raised my pelvis.

  He pushed into me, filling me, and the sensation left me trembling. I moaned, and he thrust forward. “Yes! Please make me forget myself.”

  “You got it.” With him deep inside me, my inner walls clutched him, never planning on letting go. He gnawed on a pebbled nipple as he slammed in and out of me, fast and powerful.

  I shuddered with each slap, and the sensation hurt in the best possible way. I raised my hips to meet each pounding. We fell into a rhythm. Sweat gleamed on his neck, but he wasn’t stopping. I gripped his arms, riding him, taking all of him. He leaned down and kissed me in an animalistic way, pulling at my lips. The groan in his throat was the sexiest sound I’d ever heard.

  And at once, a second wave of orgasmic bliss engulfed me, owned me, rocked me. My world fell away. Only Axel and I existed, lost in our sexual heaven.

  He withdrew and came over my stomach, unleashing a guttural exhale I could get used to hearing every night. When his eyes opened, he was staring at me with satisfaction gleaming from his gaze.

  “You’re so fucking sexy.” He reached across to the dressing table, grabbed a towel, and wiped me clean.

  I lay there, adoring the attention he gave me, his caring touch, the way he ogled my breasts.

  “You ain’t bad yourself.”

  He laughed and tossed the towel aside. “So, you ready to go again?”

  “You’re a dirty dog, but hell yeah. Once I catch my breath, I’m all yours.”

  Axel was next to me, the mattress sagging, and he pulled me into his arms, both latched around my shoulders, me facing away from him. He smelled my hair. “Everything about you reminds me of candy. And I want to keep eating you.”

  I snuggled closer to him, adoring the warmth of his lips on my neck, the way his thumb stroked my arm. His embrace was a seatbelt, holding me secure. At that moment, I floated above the hellish world we lived in and let myself believe happiness amid such
darkness was possible. This was about the two of us, who’d shared too much, shown our vulnerabilities, grown exhausted, and fought for our lives.

  Who gave a crap if we died tomorrow!

  Chapter 22

  Life was never straightforward. It threw curve balls the size of asteroids. One minute, I fought Axel at every turn to understand who he was and why the vulsines wanted him. The next day, we humped like crazed rabbits.

  Now, we sat across each other on the veranda just outside Ryumochanaya Bar over breakfast. A cool breeze fluttered my hair. I took a bite of the piroshki filled with cabbage while Axel stuffed a morsel of beef and egg pie into his mouth. To ignore his closeness was impossible. Last night, I’d let myself believe happiness was a possibility. Now I felt like an idiot. We had a good time and released our pent-up tension. And as much as I told myself this, the ache swirling in my chest screamed otherwise.

  “Tell me about the person we’re looking for,” I asked, needing a distraction from my revolving thoughts.

  Axel glanced behind him at the empty veranda before leaning closer. “Found out a few details from the chef. The fae does a lot of business out of this town. It’s not where he lives. He’s a loner and never talks to anyone, but if you need someone killed or an object stolen, you go to him.”

  I shifted, scratching my head. “If no one speaks to him, how can he do these atrocities for people?”

  Axel shrugged and took a gulp of his black coffee. “Just sharing what I discovered. He probably does things for people to make himself seem bigger. It’s what most gang leaders do.”

  With another mouthful of piroshki, I studied the way the sun lit up the side of Axel’s face, the stubble across his square jaw, and the glint in his incredible blue eyes. All I pictured was him winking at me from between my thighs last night. Axel had rocked me in bed, and I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to shake him out of my system. Earlier that morning, we got up, showered, and left with barely two words exchanged. Fine, if that was his game, I had no issues. If by some miracle we came out of this crap with the vulsines unscathed, and I proved Axel’s innocence, got my job back… all massive unlikely probabilities… would it even work between us? Fathoming the impossibility hurt my head, so I tucked the thought away.