Firefox: a Fox Demon's Claim

by Lizzie Lynn Lee

  “Let’s leave here and get you plenty of water to drink. Perhaps it will dilute the—”

  “I told you,” she said, sniffing loudly and straightening. “I’m not going to leave with you. I’m not that kind of girl.”

  He cupped her cheek, gasping softly when she flinched at the touch. He hesitated, then pressed his hand against her cheek again. This time, she let him.

  “I merely want to see to your needs, Chloe. You shouldn’t fear me—I’m at your service, Goddess.”

  She scoffed and turned her head. “Cut it out. Your pick-up line’s lame.”

  “Pick-up line? I do not—”

  Her phone began playing music, a woman’s voice singing about taking back her life. Sparrow picked up the phone from the floor, but Chloe grabbed it from him and stood. She threw it down and stomped it with shouts of no, no, no, the heel of her shoe cracking the screen and bits of broken and crushed glass flying from it. It stopped making noise.

  She put her hand on her forehead and swayed, so Sparrow put an arm around her to steady her.

  “I’m fine. It’s just…too warm in here.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “Let’s step outside and let the cooler air refresh you.”

  She nodded, but her eyes were closed as he led her to the door and out. They stopped a few feet away from the door, where Chloe leaned against the brick and put both palms over her eyes. Sparrow stood in front of her, ready to reach out should she list to the side or fall forward.

  “Please tell me what troubles you.” She did tilt a little forward then, so he put his hands on her shoulders. “I cannot bear to see you so distressed. Are you in physical pain? Because I can end that with a touch.”

  She snorted, shaking her head. “Is that so? Well, I wish it were that simple, but physically, I’m fine.” Her words were harder to understand, one slurring into the next a bit more than before.

  She dropped her hands and regarded him with the pale blue eyes Sparrow knew instinctively belonged to his living goddess. “You’re really good at this, though, y’know? It’s really easy to believe you actually care.”

  “Oh, Gaia, I do care. Of course, I do. My whole purpose now is to care for you.” He touched her face again, but this time she didn’t flinch. Her lower lip trembled, and a fresh tear tracked its way down her cheek as she leaned forward. Not falling because of what she’d been drinking, but a slow tilt away from the wall and into his arms as her mouth pressed against his.

  Sparrow’s heart soared, and he felt like he’d come home.

  Chapter 3

  Chloe managed to crack her eyes open just enough to let a little light in.

  Who in the hell kept bringing a sledgehammer down on the back of her skull? Must have been the same bastard who filled her mouth with sour sand. Ugh.

  She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths through her nose, waiting for a momentary bout of nausea to pass. Then she opened her mouth and moved her tongue around, grimacing at the taste in her mouth. Stale bourbon after a drunken sleep. Sadly, she was all too familiar with waking up after too much alcohol, but this was probably the worst hangover she’d ever had.

  Even visualizing herself sitting up gave her enough vertigo to set her stomach bubbling.

  She opened her eyes fully this time and stared at the ceiling, willing her insides to stop trembling. Maybe she’d force herself to get up and hurry to the bathroom, and that fast movement would bring on the nausea hard enough that she could throw up and get it over with. Chloe had no doubt she’d feel better if she did, once the brain-pounding subsided.

  And then she realized how warm her right side was. And how someone lay next to her, breathing softly and steadily.

  Oh, God, Chloe! You didn’t.

  She carefully turned her head to see the tousled blond hair, straight nose, and full, moist lips. It was the man from the night before who said he’d take care of her. The naked man from the night before, judging from the bare shoulder. At that moment, Chloe realized the sheet was cool against her breasts, her stomach, and thighs. She was naked, too.

  Oh God, Chloe. You did.

  She clamped her mouth shut against a wave of nausea as she turned her head too quickly. Then she looked around the room and realized she didn’t recognize it. Looked like a motel room, and a cheap one, at that.

  At least I didn’t take him home?

  Carefully, she lifted the sheet so she could try to slide out of the bed without waking him. She couldn’t even remember his name, but she remembered him calling her goddess and some other crazy things. And she remembered kissing him, outside. Well after she’d determined she absolutely wasn’t going anywhere with him.

  So much for that.

  As she lifted the sheet and shifted to sit on the edge of the bed, and yeah, she was buck-ass naked head to toe, he made a groaning sound in his sleep and rolled onto his back. Chloe stood and glanced back at him as she looked around for her clothes. He’d pulled the sheet with him as he moved, caught under his hip, and was now bare from head to mid-thigh.

  Even in the throes of the worst hangover of her life, Chloe had to stop and admire him. He was lean but muscular, and despite the boyish look of his hair, he was clearly all man.

  Well, well. What is this?

  Oh, hello there, fella.

  His cock was thick and long, and she guessed that erect he must be impressive. She almost wished she could remember. But his was the biggest, prettiest cock she’d ever seen. She wasn’t even slightly raw or sore, which she might have expected after going as long as she had without sex. Her last encounter had been at least a couple of years ago.

  And there was none of that unpleasant stickiness she’d always felt the next morning after sex. She felt clean and normal. With relief, she thought that must mean they’d at least used condoms.

  With one last long look at the beautiful body, she turned to find her clothes neatly folded on the bathroom countertop. Quietly she dressed, grabbed her purse, and left the room. Maybe she should have left him a thank-you note, or something. He had been kind to her, from what she remembered.

  But the longer she stayed there, the more likely it was that he’d wake. And she simply couldn’t deal with facing her one-night stand, not when she had to figure out what the hell she was going to do. She called a cab at the front desk after she remembered stomping her phone to death, and thought about what she really needed to take with her, and how quickly she could pack.

  She couldn’t be here when Norman got out of prison in just a few days. She had to run and hope like hell he and his father would lose the scent of her trail.

  She couldn’t go back to being with that man. She wouldn’t. She’d taken his abuse for too long already by the time she decided to leave him. Chloe could still feel the pain of that first time he’d hit her, a smack across the face only three days after—

  She choked as she tried to swallow and wiped her eyes.

  “You okay, Miss?” The cab driver stared at her in the rear-view mirror.

  “I’m fine, thank you.” He surely knew that a pick-up early in the morning at a motel, smelling like old bourbon and looking as rattled she did, was the equivalent of a walk of shame. She probably wasn’t the first woman to cry in the back of his cab after a wild night out.

  She put a hand on her stomach as a bout of nausea made her worry she wasn’t going to make it home. And the thought came at how different this was than the nausea she’d experienced during her short pregnancy. Every morning, for at least a few hours, even the thought of nibbling dry crackers was enough to make her heave.

  Norman had been pleased every time she’d dropped to her knees in front of the toilet, like the more nauseous she was, the stronger his baby would be. He’d been odd the entire time, one minute stroking her shoulders and holding her hair back, the next berating her for not taking good enough care of herself and saying it couldn’t be normal for a woman to be so ill during something so natural. Her doctor, one of the best that Senator Greyson had hand-picke
d and paid privately so no HMO got in the way of her care, had assured them that some women have pretty consistent morning sickness, and as long as she could get something down during the day and stay hydrated, it was within the range of normal.

  He still accused her of eating things that made her throw up, or not doing exactly what the doctor recommended for her condition, which was really just living normally, eating right and taking pre-natal vitamins. He’d even acted as if she was trying to harm the baby, which is when she realized there was more to Norman’s odd behavior than nerves. Something wasn’t right about him. It took her pregnancy to make her see that.

  And it took a miscarriage to make her see that Norman’s problems went beyond possessiveness, vindictiveness, and selfishness. He was cruel and abusive. Norman was a tyrant.

  She rested her forehead against the cool glass of the cab window and tried to push thoughts of Norman out of her mind, thoughts of how his face had screwed up, not in worry or sympathy or fear, but in rage when she’d woken up one morning with a pool of her own blood gathering between her legs.

  Chapter 4

  Gaia was trying his patience.

  Sparrow stood next to the empty bed, glaring at each object in the room as if it had personally offended him. Despite being a fox demon, he’d never been particularly quick to anger or to feel any emotion. Because once he let himself feel something, he felt it so completely it could be all-consuming.

  Like his love and devotion for his goddess.

  And the pain of being refused by his own House. His own father.

  Sparrow let himself shift then, in an effort to slow his racing heart and the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. He padded around the bed, back and forth, letting his fox spirit take over so that he could inhabit the small, quick body for a time. It helped remind him what was important, and why he was there. He was Sparrow, now a knight as winner of the Selection, and royal consort to the goddess Gaia. One such as him shouldn’t have time for old hurts from his childhood that no longer mattered, or petty emotions like irritation and anger that Chloe had not only failed to recognize him as hers, but had left without waking him in an effort to leave him behind!

  He growled in his throat, twitched his ears, and thought of his home in the Twilight and how wonderful it would be when Chloe realized her true self and let him take her there for the first time. Sparrow imagined how pleased she might be with him, how she might kiss him again.

  His fox calmed, even if his demon side, his father’s side, tried to hang on to the hurts and the uncertainties. When he’d calmed himself, he let the lightning wrap around him and through him again and pull him back into his human form. He scratched one of his ears before letting his fox-self rest a while, and pulled on his clothing.

  There was no point in indulging himself any longer. He had to find Chloe again, and figure out what kept making her cry.

  He sat cross-legged on the rumpled motel bed and closed his eyes to focus on his heart and the heart of his goddess. He reached out for her, and despite her unwillingness to accept him so far, he could feel her. Crying again, such pain around her, so much suffering that he was desperate to alleviate.

  Sparrow willed his mind to find her, and there she was. He opened his arms, his heart and mind, and he was no longer in the motel room but on a stool in a white, gleaming kitchen, a bowl of oranges on the counter in front of him. He smiled, pleased with himself, and began peeling one for his goddess.

  Chapter 5

  The cab pulled up outside her house, so she tipped the driver and hurried inside, intending to rush straight to the bathroom to drop to her knees in front of the toilet, worshipping the porcelain god. She hated the similarity to the way she started every day for more than a month so many years ago and the way the memories made her feel, but it couldn’t be helped.

  The scent of oranges hit her after she’d taken three steps, followed by a bump that sounded like one of her kitchen cabinets closing. She almost turned and ran outside, but a voice carried from the kitchen. A familiar voice.

  “Gaia, you’re here.” Another bump. “If I’d known you didn’t have coffee, I’d have taken the time to get some.”

  Chloe gasped and walked down the hall to see the guy from the bar opening and closing her cabinets as if looking for something. Her stomach churned. She hadn’t woken up at the motel after all. She was still sleeping off the bourbon and about to embark on a freaky-ass dream.

  How the hell …

  No other explanation fit. She’d left him sleeping and caught a cab to come home. He couldn’t have beat her there—it wasn’t possible.

  She was probably about to wake up and barely make it to the bathroom, given the way her stomach felt in this dream.

  “Gaia, you didn’t look so good.” The man rushed to her, brow drawn down in concern.

  Chloe took a couple of steps back and put her hand up. “Shhh. If I’m going to have a drunk dream, can it be a quiet one?”

  “Drunk dream?”

  She turned toward the bathroom. Was she really going to vomit in her dream? Yes, she thought she was.

  “You don’t look well.”

  “I’m not.” She made it to the toilet, but didn’t drop to her knees. That was too close to how she’d spent weeks of morning sickness so long ago, and too painful. She stood, her head hanging, waiting for the inevitable purge. Her head throbbed like an all-drum band was having a parade inside her skull.

  “Please allow me to help you. ”

  She ignored him.

  It was a dream, so rudeness could be forgiven, right? When he stepped close behind her and wrapped his arms around her, she decided not to fight it for the same reason. None of it was real, so what did it hurt?

  Her stomach knotted, she leaned more, tried to bend at the waist so she didn’t miss, but the guy’s hand pressed against her stomach, and another touched her forehead. She couldn’t bend, in fact she straightened against him and—

  Chloe shouted.

  It punched out of her as something zapped through her, a jolt like the world’s worst static electricity shock but throughout her whole body. She jerked free of him and spun, nearly toppling backward to sit on the toilet. He grabbed her and kept her from falling.

  “What did you do to me?” she demanded, her fingers and toes still tingling.

  “I helped,” he said softly, almost sadly. He let go of her.

  “You shocked me…you…” Chloe swallowed, her stomach no longer threatening to erupt. Her brain had stopped throbbing, and the light didn’t hurt her eyes anymore.

  Her hangover was gone.

  Yeah, this was definitely a dream. The distasteful thought came that maybe she threw up while asleep and that explained why she felt so much better.

  “Come, let’s find some coffee,” he said. “It’s one of the few beverages here I enjoy.” He took her hand in an attempt to lead her from the bathroom, but she pulled it away. When he left the bathroom, she followed and opened the drawer where she kept the coffee. His face lit up as he set up the pot to brew.

  Chloe sat on a stool, watching him.

  This can’t be real. I’m having one hell of hallucination.

  She’d never had a dream quite like this.

  He sat next to her and pushed a plate of orange wedges in her direction. “For my lady.”

  Chloe eyed him, and almost said he wasn’t her anything, but instead she popped a piece of orange into her mouth and closed her eyes at how sweet and fresh it tasted.

  “Thanks,” she said automatically. She opened her eyes, really looked at the man, the stranger whom she’d slept next to and was dreaming about. He was beautiful, with the brightest, clearest eyes. Were they really like that, or a trick of her dream?

  If she was going to be stuck here, being rude to him would go against her nature, even if it wasn’t real. Why does it feel so real?

  “What did you do, in the bathroom?”

  “I healed you.”

  “Apparently so. But how?”<
br />
  “I’m a kitsune. Well, half-kitsune. My father was a full-blooded demon.”

  “That so?” She smiled, humoring him, and chewed another piece of orange before pushing the plate toward him to offer him some. “And a kitsune is…”

  “A fox spirit.” He said it slowly, as if talking to a child, or surprised she didn’t know these things. He ate a piece of orange.

  “So you’re a demon fox mix?”

  He spread his hands. “Essentially.”

  “And you said something about protecting me?”

  He beamed. “Yes, you remember! I won the Selection and have been knighted your royal consort. I’ve come for you.”

  “And I am…”

  His voice took that careful tone again. “You are the goddess Gaia, reincarnated once again on earth.”

  “I’m a reincarnated goddess, and you’re a fox demon who’s come here to be my boyfriend. Well, that makes sense. And here I thought you were going to say something crazy.” She brushed her hands together and leaned her elbows on the countertop.

  “Gaia, perhaps I can explain—”

  She put a hand up. “Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop calling me that. I’m Chloe.”

  “Hmm.” He tapped his finger on his chin, contemplating. “It would presumptuous of me to recklessly utter your divine name.”

  “Call me Chloe. It’s an order.”

  He froze a moment as if he was seized with an invisible bond “Very well.”

  “You can explain all day long about goddesses and spirits and demons, and I’m still going to wake up pretty soon probably not even remembering any of this.”

  “Wake up? No, Chloe. You’re awake now, I assure you.”

  The thing was, she felt awake. She had always been a vivid dreamer, but her dreams had an ethereal quality about them that distinguished them from reality, almost as if anything she wasn’t looking at directly was behind a thin, white gauze.

  And usually there were creatures in her dreams.

  She could never figure out what they were, but had always thought fairies, wood nymphs, the kind of stories her dad used to read to her when she was a kid. Except when she had nightmares.