The Trouble with Fate

by Leigh Evans

  The music was louder. Much louder. Someone’s heart was breaking somewhere, but for once it wasn’t mine. The taste of him. Salt. Woods. Man.

  There reached a point where I got an opportunity to take a good look at him. That part of him. I mean, he was in my hand, and my face was just there, and I couldn’t help but take his measure and starting thinking real hard about the moment coming up. Would it fit?

  I didn’t have a chance for doubt to turn to trepidation. He pulled me up his long, hard body, drugged me with a few more kisses, and then he rolled me onto my back. His cheeks were flushed as he propped himself up on his elbow and let his gaze roam over the feast of Hedi. Instinctively, my hands flattened over my stomach. He growled, but I don’t think he meant to, because there was a hint of cover-up to the mocking “tsk-tsk” he uttered as his maimed hand lightly captured fluttering ones. With a hint of Trowbridge twinkle, he gently lifted my arms over my head, and pinned them casually there, not savagely, or hurtfully, more like someone unsnapping their folded napkin before they set down to the business of consuming their meal.

  I sucked in my breath, and held it there, maybe a little longer than I should have, but I couldn’t have exhaled in that moment for the all the green tea in China, because he was suddenly studying me in a way that made me want to arch my back and preen. Gone was that annoying, light bantering humor that had marked his face just two seconds before. It had been stripped away, and replaced by a far deeper one of intent. Yes, his gaze was a little possessive—but not in the “I shall stalk you” manner, more in the helpless “touch her and you die” way. And yes, I could see something else—an essence both primal and instinctive. It called to my Were, and she told me to bend one leg, and lift my chest a little higher. Feral heat simmered between us. Cheeks flushed, he brushed his knuckles down my neck and then those skillful fingers uncurled to slip sideways down the valley between my breasts. They slid under one silken mound and cupped its weight as if testing a peach for its juiciness. I thought it filled his large paw quite nicely, and he must have arrived at the same conclusion, because he held my breast for another beat, his eyes mere slits, before his hand slowly opened—fingers to cradle its weight, thumb to stroke its nipple. I am woman. I am Were. My head tipped back in pleasure. Who knew happy breasts could cause such a savage ache down there? Crap, I’m a string on his violin. Pluck one end, and the other part quivers.

  “God,” he said, sounding one notch away from stunned. “I love your skin. When I touch it…”

  Pleasure bubbled up, champagne bright and light. “What happens?”

  “I can feel your magic hum.” He traced my collarbone with his finger. “I can sense your Were.”

  Fear melted away.

  There was more stroking, and sighing (that would be me) and heavy breathing (him), and then we reached the point of no return. He was poised over me, his face gorgeous with the strain. His shoulders were a poem to male beauty. I could feel his erection, heavy and hard against my thigh. I did this to him. I reduced him to this—trembling, sleek muscles covered in a faint sheen of sweat. Half wild. His hungry wolf glittering from behind his narrowed blue eyes. Like to like—the thought shot a lick of fire right down to the heels I’d dug into Cordelia’s percale. I opened my heart, then my legs. Curved my arms around his neck and lifted my pelvis to his. At last! bayed my Were.

  His heat slid through my wet folds and met my personal pearly gates.

  I winced and scooted back a millimeter.

  He muttered something I interpreted to mean “I worship you.” Oh Trowbridge … I pulled him closer and he surged for the goal.

  And with one thrust, my accord with my inner Were was torn.

  Pain. Hot, nasty, and unforgivable. He filled me up, and still he kept going. Stretching, changing the shape and history of me. Thick. Large. Penetrating.

  “I change my mind, I change my mind,” I said, scooting.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said, following on his knees. “Easy.”

  “Don’t easy me,” I hissed. “That hurt.”

  “Shhh, I can make it better.” His lips dipped for mine as his hand slid over the slope of my stomach in the general direction of my happy button.

  “Make it better?” I howled, slapping his big paw away. “It’s too late for that.”

  He took in a shaky breath and hung his head, exhaling slowly through his teeth. A curl of black silk floated in the air between us, got afraid, and flew back to the safety of his tousled mane. “Okay, Plan B. I’ll pull out. Don’t move.”

  And of course, I moved. It was hard not to.

  “Son of a bitch.” He shuddered. “You’re making it impossible to pull out. Just stay like that for a second, or you’re going to trigger the Were—”

  “Trigger what?” I shrieked, and shimmied up the bed until my head hit the wall, and still I kept going north, even though I was dragging a six-foot-two piece of Were with me.

  “The mating knot,” he said, with another intense shudder.

  I put both hands on his shoulders and shoved. Which is when I learned that Weres’ penises are not exactly like human penises, not that I was any authority on human penises. Immediately his member swelled inside me. It didn’t precisely hurt, but it didn’t feel right.

  But worse, far worse, was what happening inside me. Sure, my Were might not have been able to do anything about my sudden change in the game plan. She could control neither my thoughts nor my tongue. But she was real familiar with the territory down south. And for the record, she was not agreeable to this sudden, unexpected course adjustment. Outraged with frustration, she doubled in size, deluging my interior with her ho-hormones. My body’s response was to swell certain intimate channels. I mean swell.

  “You’re getting bigger,” I said. “Take it out!”

  He curled in his stomach muscles, flexed his hips a smidge, and hissed when my nails scored twin lines down his back. “I can’t,” he spat back in frustration. “It’s no good. You’ve inflamed the mating knot.” There were no words for what I was feeling and so I settled for trying to melt him with my death glare. “Don’t look at me like that. I am not the bad guy. You wanted this as much as me. You said, ‘Oh Trowbridge!’”—I said that out loud?—“When I asked if you were a virgin, did you say, ‘Yes, Bridge, I am a virgin.’ No! No, you did not. Did you in any way, give me an indication that—”

  “Would my virginity have made a difference?”

  “Yes,” he said, through his teeth. “It would have made a difference. I would have slowed down. Given you a chance to accept it. Taken longer—”

  “But you wouldn’t have stopped?”

  “I would have stopped the moment you asked, just like I have now. But it wouldn’t have stopped me from trying to change your mind, because you’re fucking Fae catnip to my Were. I smell you and I want you. I touch you and…” He lapsed into silence. “Whatever. Listen. I’m not taking the blame for this. You’re as responsible for this situation we’re in as me.”

  Another splatter of sweat on my breast.

  “I don’t have a scent.” Okay, maybe I had one now. Fae blood had been spilled and the bed smelled a bit like cinnamon.

  “You do for me. You’ve always had a scent to me.”

  I stared at him. “Well, I am not respons—”

  “Your vagina is clenched around my dick like a fist,” he said flatly.

  Oh hell. He had noticed.

  For a second we studied each other, before my eyes slid from his accusing ones to examine his scruffy beard with acute dislike. I am a needy fool, I thought. Was I so anxious for another’s touch that I lost any sense of discrimination? Look at him, Hedi. He’s a gorgeous skirt-sniffing dog with the homing instinct of a grazing water buffalo, and don’t you forget it. Use your brain. Just once. Think.

  Maybe he saw something in my face that I hadn’t seen in his. In a softer voice he said, “There’s nothing we can do except wait it out. Eventually it will ease.”

  Just what every
ex-virgin with a serious case of remorse wants to hear. “No wonder birth rates for wolves have plummeted,” I muttered. “Does this happen every time you have sex?”

  “No,” he said.

  Too fast and too evasive. “Then why did it happen with me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His shuttered gaze was fixed on the hollow of my throat. Fine. I chose another focus point—conveniently, Cordelia had an étagère filled with rhinestone crowns—and started counting. One crown … two crowns … three crowns, four ridiculously cheesy coronets … five … Very hard to think when you’ve got a male’s weight over you. Six diamond diadems, seven—Goddess, this is going to take forever. I should have let him “make it better.” I thought about that for a bit. It had been very nice when he did that thing with his mouth, even if I did feel a bit awkward with my legs splayed open like that. Well, he couldn’t do that right now, not without breaking his spine, but he could lavish some effort on my boobs again. I poked his chest with my finger. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound conciliatory.

  He looked down his long nose at me.

  And pfft, there went my Trowbridge-love. “It’s occurred to me that maybe we’re in this position because you didn’t do it right,” I drawled.

  “Kid,” he growled. “I’m well past wanting to do this right.”

  “Fine. How much longer?”

  “A while,” he said through gritted teeth. “Stop talking, I’m trying to think of something else.” A bead of sweat rolled down his jaw. My eyes followed the droplet of perspiration as it coursed down his neck. It hung on his collarbone for a second, and then fell on my boob. With a grimace, I wiped my breast dry with my finger. “How. Long.”

  “Keep talking, Tinker Bell, and it will take a year.” He looked more in pain than when the bullet had been chewing its way through his femur. Back then, I’d felt remorse for my twitchy trigger finger, but then again, back then, I’d been admittedly weak in my helpless attraction for my childhood crush. Now, not so much. I flinched as he shifted his weight on his palms.

  “Seriously, a minute or two or three?” I asked. Then with dread, “Fifteen?”

  No answer.

  “Trowbridge?” The sweat was beading up on his throat again. I blew some air on it, hoping it would evaporate.

  “Stop that!” He took a deep, steadying breath, then let it out in a slow puckered-lip whistle. “I’m not sure how long it will last,” he said, somewhat savagely. “I’ve never had one before, all right?”

  He’d never had a mating knot before? Not even with dandy Candy? Well, well, well. I bit down on the instinct to give him a teeth-baring smile. Pleasure spread through me, sugar-sweet and warm. Never, huh? My inner Were—usually so slow to take advantage—took note of my ambiguity and immediately started some flexing of her own.

  “Oh, that’s better,” he moaned.

  I allowed her to do it again; fascinated by how his eyelashes fluttered with each faint squeeze.

  “That’s so … good,” he said huskily.

  She did it again—squeeze, squeeze, pulse—while I just lay there. With every contraction, he looked a little more tortured … and intent. Just who was he rallying here for? Hedi? Or her Were? Like to like. What if it was just me? No Were. No Fae skin. Just me. Mortal-me—the person sitting on the bleachers watching all this go down. Just who are you making love to, Trowbridge? Me, or my inner Were?

  See me, I wanted to howl.

  I shut down and allowed his cock and my inner Were-bitch to take over at that point, since it was obvious all other union negotiations would be acrimonious.

  It pumped and she squealed. Enough said.

  But for me, the semimortal Hedi-me? I felt splintered and detached. I stared at the ceiling while Trowbridge grimaced over me. Yes, my skin goosefleshed as his head snapped back. But who put that look of ardor on his face? Not me. I watched the blush bloom on his throat and chest. I observed his strained neck tendons; heard him grunt low. Felt the gush of warmth inside me. If I have a litter of puppies, I guarantee he’ll never get a chance to experience another mating knot. I turned my head and closed my eyes.

  Silence.

  Hot breath on my shoulder. More stomach-quivering shivers of delight from my inner bitch before she sank into her sex-satisfied stupor.

  Ho.

  Trowbridge pressed a kiss on my brow. On my eyelid. On my nose.

  “Hedi?”

  I squeezed my eyes so tight the tear that had been looking for a way out threw up it hands in disgust, and trudged back to my cramped ducts.

  He ran a gentle thumb across my tight lips, before he pressed gentle coaxing kisses on them. “Tink,” he said softly as he threaded his fingers through my hair, brushing the sensitive pointed tips of my Fae ears. He cradled my head, then leaned his forehead against mine. His long nose against my short one. Our breaths mingled.

  A minute and three seconds later, the knot eased. My satiated bitch yawned, gave herself a celebratory shake, then subsided into a snooze.

  I rolled to my side.

  I heard a sigh. The singer was still lamenting his lost Valentine.

  I reached for Merry and put her around my neck, then curled up in a ball and wondered if there was any Kleenex nearby. And somewhere between my stratagems for wrapping the blanket around myself and going to the bathroom for another shower, I fell asleep.

  I didn’t even wake up when two warm arms pulled me into their protective cradle.

  I didn’t feel him tug the covers up over my chilled body. I didn’t notice how easily his bristly chin found its place by my pointed little ear.

  No, instead, I slept.

  And prayed that I wouldn’t dream.

  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Something tried to claw its way through the door, which is dumb, animal dumb, because anyone with any sense would realize all that frantic scratching would only lead to nails worn down to the nub. The door is steel, set in a cinder-block wall. With its covered round rivets, it’s like a fire door—the type you find at the bottom of a staircase, under a sign reading EXIT, except in this case there’s no bar to push on and no handle to turn.

  People kept on this side of the door are going to stay there.

  Someone had customized the door, adding a small viewing window about the size of a book, at eye level. A screen of metal mesh is positioned over it. Thin strips of screw-studded metal secure it. The walls of her prison are gray cinder block, distressed by claw marks and pockmarked by gouges. Ugly. The poured concrete floor has a drainage hole in the middle of it, covered by an iron grate.

  Lou backs away from the iron grate.

  There’s nothing else in the room. No blanket, no window, no bed, or water. Over her head is a false ceiling, made of the same wire mesh used to protect the glass window. The real ceiling is a foot beyond that, and unfinished, exposing the wooden joists and subfloor of the room above it. A single-bulb light fixture is screwed into a beam overhead.

  The ceiling cage seems like a thin protection. One good swipe with a Were paw and it would come down. Unless, of course, it’s—

  Lou reaches for the dull gridwork of mesh covering the glass window with one long white finger. She strokes it, her finger growing more languorous with each swipe. There are few things that make her languorous in this world. Maple syrup, a wad of cash, and any one of the oldest of the old—gold, platinum, or silver.

  Silver. The dull mesh isn’t oxidized metal. It’s tarnished silver plate.

  She fits both hands in the area, positioning them so that each fingertip is on a different welded join of the gridwork. There’s a moment’s pause as she gathers up the remaining essence of her gift. She flattens both palms hard across the mesh.

  Her mouth’s calling to Ebrel, Fae goddess of the Seven. She keeps her eyes on her hands. The Fade has reduced them to nothing more than tendon and bone.

  The color of the mesh changes from uniform to mottled as the grid sweats pi
npoints of shiny liquid silver. Her hands quiver as the mesh becomes slick with a top coat of the precious metal. It’s hers, now ready for the taking.

  One dot of wet silver begins rolling toward her fingers, pulled by the magnetism of her call. Drips turn to rivulets. The silver rolls in a thin molten river, following the path laid by the trail of her fingers. Down the smooth surface of the metal door. A leap in space, before landing with a wet splat on the floor into a pool accumulating by her small feet.

  Stupid, ignorant Were fools.

  They had put a Collector in a room fortified with silver—debilitating to Weres, but utterly harmless to the Fae.

  Can she hear me? As I hear and feel her? I can’t just be a spectator to her dreams anymore, they were too dangerous to me. I call to her. “Where are you, Lou?”

  She raises her eyes, and considers the mesh-covered ceiling.

  “Soon,” I hear in my head. “Wait.”

  * * *

  Even in my sleep, I was so tired I could barely move. That struck me as funny in a sad way, though I couldn’t figure out why. Another wave of lethargy swept over me, and my dreams twisted from Lou’s to my own. I was no longer standing beside her in that prison. Instead, I was on a raft, drifting down a stream, sloth happy in my nakedness. The sun was warm on my skin. I could feel it right over my breastbone, lulling me into a deeper sleep.

  Then a flicker of irritation intruded. Something was jiggling my raft. I was no longer drifting, I was being bounced. There was an annoying babble in the background. And the sound of water. Falls? Were we going over the falls? I turned my head from it all and tried to find a way back to that warm peace of indifference, but the stupid raft kept bouncing and shaking, and the annoying dribble of words was getting louder and louder.

  Words sharpened. Turned into sentences and opinions.

  “Darling, I’ve heard of difficult women, but really, gloves?”

  “Get the water ready.”