Rampant, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  She scowled back, but I could tell she was having difficulty staying angry at him when he so obviously felt like crap. Then she spoke, and she was close enough to tears for this to be about more than a swimming suit.

  “Bracken Brine,” she said, shaking her head, “not wearing a bikini doesn’t have anything to do with being fat—although my hips are getting to have their own zip code, thank you very much.”

  “Well what, then?” I asked curiously, hoping that a little interference might calm the storm I saw coming.

  She shook her head and wiped a hand across her face, grimacing when it came back smeared in mascara. “You guys, you see me naked all the time. Don’t tell me all you see is the size of my boobs and my tattoo?”

  I blinked in confusion, because that’s all I did see. Boobs—squishy and good. Tattoo—bright and exotic. All of it—the softness of her freckled skin, the cinnamon color of her nipples and private hair—sweet, pretty, fun, and erotic. I was completely lost by the tears and the shyness and the entire scene, and was about to say so.

  Then I saw that Bracken had come off the bed in irritation and there was a smell of wildflowers in the air, and I wanted to crawl under the bed. This, I thought in complete loss, was why Bracken and Green got to be her beloveds, and why I had needed to find someone else I was more suited for. They had the strength to match her strength—and to comfort her vulnerability. I could only follow, and I was miserable at leading her away from the darkness in herself.

  Bracken embraced her, buried his face in the sweet hollow of her neck, and then stood and looked firm and stoic, the way he did best. “They’re scars of honor,” he said, the anger in his voice tempered by gentleness. “You don’t get to hide them from anybody. You got those scars defending us, defending yourself. We’ve had this conversation before—why are you dragging it back now?”

  I caught Cory’s embarrassed look at me. The lightbulb went on, and I wanted to die.

  “Goddess, Cory!” And now I stood up and went to do some of the comforting myself, because this was my fault too. Her shoulder looked like a grenade had exploded through it, and there was a thick band of tissue across her chest and stomach from the charred end of some bastard’s bone. There were various cuts along her upper arms and upper body, and a thick band of something white and jagged at her ankle. I didn’t see these things when she was with us—how could I see these things, when she was in my arms?

  “She didn’t want my parents to see them,” I told him. Bracken grunted, his look at me challenging and irrefutable.

  “Too. Fucking. Bad.”

  “I agree,” I returned mildly. I couldn’t even be mad at him for being mad at me, because I should have seen.

  Cory sniffled and shook us off. “We’re not having a happy family moment over this,” she sniffed. “We are absolutely not.” She grabbed our arms, gave us a push back toward the bed, and started rooting in her yarn bag, coming up in triumph with a little pair of scissors before she cast a look of complete disgust at us, still fighting tears.

  “Now what are you doing?” Bracken demanded, and her nose wrinkle was almost an entire rant.

  “Something I didn’t think I’d have to do when I was going to wear the one-piece suit with the briefs,” she snapped. “I’m going to have to go….” She made a vague hand gesture around her upper thighs and lower abdomen. “Groom,” she finished, leaving Bracken and me blinking at each other in the dimness of the room after she’d shut off the light.

  “Groom what?” he asked blankly, obviously fighting sleep.

  “Groom her pubes,” I told him, not sure how I knew this, unless it was from watching reruns of Sex and the City. “They’re sort of… I don’t know… bushy. Apparently that’s bad.”

  Bracken glared at me before his eyes closed. “I hate the entire human race,” he grumbled, his voice trailing off. “With one tiny exception….”

  I had to laugh at that. But when Cory came out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, I had fallen into thoughtfulness. She scowled at me—one of those expressions that said she was wrestling with her humanity and her femininity, and had somehow come out on the bottom—and I returned the expression with a smile.

  She really cared for me, I thought with a funny little quirk in my chest. She worried about my parents—she cared what they thought of her. With everything else she had to worry about, I somehow ranked, and I’d been too blind to see it.

  With a sigh she crawled into bed between the two of us, Bracken’s hand coming around her middle with the same possessiveness he always showed. I’d almost come to treasure that feeling—I could have fucked her life up so badly, if Bracken hadn’t simply asserted that their love would be.

  She turned to him and touched his face, and he hardly stirred. Even for a sidhe, his skin was pale and his breathing quick. It would take a ten-mile sprint to wind Bracken—except here, where the heat was in the teens and your skin stuck to your skin, and the air seemed to sear your lungs.

  “Does it get this hot in Montana?” she asked me, her eyes sleepy and worried.

  I blinked. “Sometimes. It’s… wet heat, mostly, and not for four or five months, like it can get here.”

  “Mmmm….” She didn’t seem to be ready for sleep yet, so I took her hands in mine and kissed them.

  “Thank you,” I told her, “for doing this for me. It’s hard for you—I know it. You’re… anxious, and nervous….”

  “And psychotically insecure,” she supplied, rolling her eyes, and I grinned at her softly. She really must care for me, I marveled, and in spite of the fact that I loved men better than women, I never doubted that I loved her best of all.

  “And psychotically insecure,” I nodded, just to make her laugh, which she did. “Don’t worry about the scars, Cory. If my parents can’t love you, then fuck ’em….”

  “Nicky!”

  “They don’t deserve to follow you, much less have you as their family.” There, I’d said it. I guessed with most humans there was, or should be, a time when a husband or wife declared an allegiance—spouse or family. I’d chosen my spouses, and they were my family now. It wasn’t everybody’s family, but whether my parents wanted it to be or not, it was mine.

  She nodded and chewed her lower lip, her dark eyes luminous in the dim light. “Thank you, Nicky. That means a lot,” she said sincerely. “I just hope I can live up to it.”

  “I just hope I can live up to you,” I told her, meaning it. She grinned.

  “Maybe it will all hinge on how well I groomed my pubes,” she predicted direly, and I laughed and kissed her freckled nose.

  “Maybe I should check that for you,” I told her. Now she laughed, the sound rich and deep. “Would you like me to do that?”

  “Oh, of course,” she said silkily. My hands found her skin easily, pulling at her shorts and rubbing under her shirt. We kissed, and there was no thundering pulse, no sensory overload, but it wasn’t bad.

  We laughed when we made love—or giggled, was more like it. I had seen her with Bracken, been with her and Green, and she was breathless in their arms, eyes wide, smile ready, but also in awe that they should touch her, and they returned the sentiment. But with us, it was all giggling, like kids playing doctor, and I had learned to enjoy this too.

  I liked the taste of her in the center of her sex, and when we were naked, I knelt between her thighs and she covered her face with her arms.

  “How bad is it?” she mumbled, and I laughed.

  “Like your privates were attacked by a miniature lawn mower steered by a blind gardener!” I told her truthfully, petting feebly at the patchy cinnamon hair. Then I licked the pink, tender flesh anyway, laughing as she wriggled. “And you’re giving me rug burn!” I complained when I came up for air.

  “I’d think that was something you were used to!” she teased. I waggled my eyebrows at her and pounced, driving myself inside her body as deeply as I could go. She gasped, and so did I, and the giggling stopped for a few moments until the climax wash
ed over us both like waves on a lakeshore—a small lakeshore, not Lake Michigan or anything, but still pleasant.

  She licked the sweat on my collarbone when we were done, and I rolled away, gasping, because we were slick with sweat and I wanted to lie naked under the fan to cool off. Cory pulled on the T-shirt I’d taken off and shimmied into her underwear, then checked on Bracken again.

  He had watched with hooded eyes as we made love, and his color seemed to be better. Sometimes for the sidhe just being around sex made them better—but in this case he was smiling, so maybe our giggling had cheered him up a little too.

  “You make love like sprites,” he commented sleepily. “Now nap like them.”

  Cory grinned at him, relieved, and nuzzled his cheek. As hot as it was, it was never too hot for them to touch. Then she yawned and reached out to brush my hand with her own, and I stroked her wrist with my thumb, and that’s the last thing I remember for a while.

  About an hour later, I woke as she shimmied out of bed, whispering, “I’ve got to practice.” I listened to her change, barely remembering what it was she needed to practice. I only felt a little bad before I fell asleep again.

  I came to an hour after that, and I heard my parents’ voices outside.

  I blinked.

  They were talking to Cory.

  I sat up in bed.

  There was my mom’s trilling soprano. “Oh, honey, you’re such a sweetheart to help with the bags. John, honey, could you make sure this nice girl gets a tip? I only wish my son could have settled down with someone nice like you!”

  “Oh fuck!”

  Bracken, as used to emergencies as the rest of us, sat bolt upright in bed and looked at me in alarm.

  “My parents are here!” I scrambled out of bed and started rooting for my cargo shorts—oh fuck oh fuck—Cory had thrown them somewhere….

  “So what?” Bracken asked blearily, standing into his flip-flops on wobbly knees.

  “They’re talking to Cory!” Oh crap—there they were, and my turquoise cotton boxers with them, only… oh Goddess—I smelled like sex—I smelled like her… oh fuck….

  “So….”

  “Brack, they think she’s the help!”

  “The fuck they do!” he shouted, suddenly completely awake. Then he stared at me, hard. “You—go shower. You look like sex. I’ll go talk to them.”

  I was going to argue, but he was right. We had done nothing wrong. I had made love to my wife, and it wouldn’t help if I acted like that needed to be defended.

  “Give me three minutes,” I told him seriously. He returned a sour grimace, smoothing his wild black hair back and looking fabulous anyway.

  “I’ll hold you to that—don’t forget your shorts.”

  Cory: Lasting Impressions

  YOU KNOW those girls who can wander around in butt-floss bikinis with their asses hanging out, getting tan while they paint their toenails?

  Pretty, aren’t they? Confident. Their hair always looks fabulous, with some sort of awesome hair product that streaks it and keeps it from frizzing and probably conditions it all at the same time? You know those women?

  I don’t. I wish I did. For the sake of the men, I wish I could be one, but I’m not. So, while everyone else was sleeping and I was wandering around the blistering hot dock vamping to Alannah Miles’s “Black Velvet,” I wore Bracken’s T-shirt over that little-bitty bikini, and a little cotton sun visor. I hoped I’d smeared enough sunblock over my face to keep it from bursting like a hot dog in the heat.

  I also hoped nobody could see my pubic hair at the crotch, and I wished Renny was awake so I could ask her if she could see it. Although, on second thought, I should probably ask Katy, because Renny had no problem lying about something like that if it meant she could watch me spaz out later.

  After half an hour, hearing my own voice echoing among the lonely trees got old. When I finished the song for the zillionth time, I heard a round of applause and looked up to see the young man from the cabin at the end looking at me from a rock in the shade by the cabins. He had a wild mop of dark hair, a sunburned nose, spots, braces, and searing blue eyes.

  He also had a grin through the braces that made me respond, and I rolled my eyes and gave a little bow and a wave. He waved back and returned his attention to the electronic whatsit in his hands, so I turned mine back to the lake.

  I was starting to think of it as a nemesis. It was a hundred bajillion degrees outside, and here I was, mere feet from something that would cool me off. Something I enjoyed. Something I had used before with comfort and ease.

  Something that now seemed to terrify me with the thought of black immensity beneath my feet.

  I scowled. Oh, fuck this! With care, I shed my flip-flops on top of the dock and put my iPod on top of them. I debated shucking my T-shirt, but the thought of wearing it wet when I got out was immensely appealing, like an air conditioner on my back.

  Gingerly I put my hands on the edge of the floating dock and put my feet into the water, gasping a little as I slid to the middle of my thigh before I touched bottom. I looked down and wiggled my pale toes, kicking up some of the red dirt that permeated everything here—including our toenails and the cracks of our skin after we’d gone swimming. I could still see my feet, I thought happily, so I backed away from the dock and started inching toward my right, toward open water.

  My foot slipped off the underwater ledge, and I almost shrieked. I held it together, teetering on the brink, and reminded myself under my breath that I’d been swimming in lakes since I was three years old. Unfortunately, my dumbassed traitor brain kept up a clips video of everything that could possibly go wrong, complete with Wes Craven soundtrack and Oscar-winning makeup and special effects.

  I sucked in a breath and deliberately treaded water, battling the billowing shirt under the surface and very aware that my visual knowledge of my body turned into a big pale blank somewhere around my knees.

  Fuck this. Fuck this fuck this, oh fuck this! I was the fucking Vampire Queen of fucking Northern California, I could vaporize giant bad things from fifty feet away, I could sort of negotiate peace treaties with werewolves that I decided not to kill—and I could, for the love of chicken shit on the sidewalk, get over this dumb-fucking, ass-kicking, baseless goddamned phobia.

  I started to shiver, and it wasn’t because of the water and still I kept treading. With a sharp series of breaths, I turned away from the docks and dove under the water, kicking horizontal to the shoreline and concentrating on the sweet feel of all that coolness on my head and not on the fact that I still couldn’t see under the murky, red-green watercolor tint of the lake.

  I came up and took a deep breath while I swiveled my head frantically around to get my bearings. From behind me, I heard that damned kid cackling like a serial killer. I resisted the urge to flip him off.

  Even I knew I looked like a fool, and as much as I didn’t care about how I looked to this random stranger, I’d suddenly had enough. This little exercise in overcoming my fears was over, and I was ready to go wake everybody up now, thank-you-very-much-the-end.

  I hadn’t brought a towel, so I pretty much let myself drip for a couple of minutes before mooching back up toward the cabins.

  A big red Pontiac crested the rise and dipped toward the driveway in front of the cabins just as I got there myself, and I blinked. There was a couple in the front—middle-aged, average people who could have been my parents or Nicky’s, or even Renny’s or Max’s, for that matter—and, in the back, there was a young woman. Why would Nicky’s parents bring a girl with them? He didn’t have a sister.

  My first thought was irritation—oh shit, do we have another civilian to deal with?

  I didn’t have time or space for a second thought, because at that moment, Nicky’s mom got out of the car.

  She was extraordinarily pretty, with a tiny, feminine nose, a little pointed chin, and Nicky’s high cheekbones. Her hazel eyes were wide and guileless, and she’d dyed her hair the colors of strawber
ries and sunflowers. I walked forward to introduce myself, and she smiled perkily and waved, then opened the back door of the car to let the young woman out. Together, the two of them started talking so quickly that I literally couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

  “Well, hi there, did they send you out to help with the bags? That’s just so nice, you never can get good service these days. Isn’t that right, Annette?”

  Annette nodded in complete agreement—because no, she wouldn’t ass-kiss at all—and said, “That’s right, Mrs. Kestrel. Remember that waitress at the IHOP? Wasn’t she a complete bitch! I was actually worried that everybody in California might be that way!”

  Oh. Goddess. “We’re not,” I replied with a hesitant little smile. I tried for Let me introduce myself, but what I got out was, “Let me—”

  “Oh, yes, absolutely,” said Nicky’s mom, “and you both call me Terry, now. Annette, I swear I’ve been trying to get you to do that since we left Montana!” And before I could ask why, in particular, Annette had been with her since they left Montana, Terry, in that completely familiar way that some people have with strangers, took it upon herself to tell me.

  “We’re meeting my son here—he got caught in one of those, you know, shotgun weddings?” Terry Kestrel leaned in to me and winked. “We brought Annette here to see if maybe he’s got a reason to come home.”

  I looked deliberately at Annette—lots of blonde hair, a wasp waist in bottle-cap shorts, and a front-buttoned halter top showcasing melons that would win first prize at the county fair. I sighed and turned my attention back to Terry, who had wandered opposite her husband and was working with him to take the luggage shell off the top of the sedan.

  Mr. Kestrel was a fit-looking man in his early fifties, with lots of graying hair that might have been Nicky’s rust color at one time. He was dressed in American Dad—khaki shorts, Birkenstocks with socks, and a Hawaiian shirt. In true American Dad fashion, he seemed completely oblivious to the machinations of the women around him.

  “I don’t know if there’s another room for Annette,” I said practically. “Where would you like her bags?”