The slivers of glass and blue gravel in a giant puddle on the floor. My eyes flicked over the mess and a keen broke free from my lips before I even located what I sought among the wreckage.
Glass bit into my palms and knees as scrambled over to scoop up the limp, golden body from the ruins.
Sigmund was dead.
*****
“Julie, get me a cup of water! Quick!”
She was off the ground and running, Marvin hopping after her.
A heavy hand fell to my shoulder. “It’s hopeless,” Crixus said.
“No! No it’s not. He might come back.”
Water sloshed over the side of the cup as Julie set it down before me. I slid Sigmund’s little body in and stared down on it, willing the gills to open and pull in life-giving oxygenated water. A single golden eye stared up at me as he floated to the surface on his side.
I swirled the cup around as if this might somehow rouse him from what was surely just a nap. Maybe he didn’t realize he was back in the water. I recognized the thought for what it was, seeing the word denial floating next to him on the water’s surface.
Pain tightened a crank in my chest, squeezing tears to my eyes. “Oh, Sigmund,” My voice broke as the first fat tears slid down my cheeks. “What have I done?”
“I’m really sorry, Matilda,” Julie said, crouching next to me.
I shrugged off the hand she placed on my arm. “What are you sorry for? You weren’t the one—” A sob choked off my voice as my brain supplied an endless list of endings for this sentence. The one who practically raped a client. The one who’s a complete hypocrite. The one who just had sex with a total stranger. The one who killed a defenseless living creature entrusted to my care.
“Let me see him,” Marvin said, dark eyes shining with some mysterious light.
Marvin’s cotton-candy-colored nose twitched at the cup I set before him. One white paw dipped into the water and pulled out Sigmund’s body, the other paw coming to rest on top of a gill.
Small inhales puffed Marvin’s chest, building to what looked like a gigantic sneeze. The room held its collective breath as he reached the top and paused. “Ahhhchooo!”
A shower of rainbow sprinkles exploded over Sigmund, who leapt out of Marvin’s hand, landing safely back in the water cup.
“Sigmund!” I shouted, holding the cup in a two-handed grip like a mug of hot chocolate.
He swam a little circle and blinked up at me, a few sprinkles trailing like glitter in his wake before dissolving completely.
“I’ll go see if I can borrow a vase,” Julie said. “Until we can replace his tank. Again.”
This last word sank a hook of guilt into my heart. My fault. This had all been my fault. And I hadn’t even thought about Julie. About what she might think of a talking rabbit, a demigod, resuscitation via rainbow sprinkles.
“About all this,” I said, looking to from Marvin to Julie.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, waving a hand. “I’ve always believed in this stuff. Witches, werewolves, shape-shifters.”
“Really?” I asked. “This doesn’t bother you?”
“Hell no,” she said, grinning. “This is like living in an episode of Supernatural. Be right back.”
“How did you do that?” I asked Marvin, once she had gone.
“Came about the same time as the vest and the talking,” he shrugged. “Let me tell you, I shit jelly beans down both legs the first time I accidentally sneezed on a cabbage I was about to dig into. Good thing the prototype was picked up by that Xavier Roberts guy.”
“Cabbage Patch Kids?” I asked. “You mean those creepy toys were actually inspired by a living thing?”
“Yeah. Xavier caught the cabbage thing I accidentally created humping a head of lettuce in his garden sometime in the ‘80’s. Made billions together. I think they retired in Boca.”
An idea scampered across my mind. “You didn’t happen to sneeze on any potatoes lately, did you?”
“Nope,” he replied confidently. “Why?”
“Just a thought,” I said.
“Here we are,” Julie announced, breezing in with a large glass vase brimming with water.
I handed her the cup containing Sigmund. “Thanks,” I said. Somehow, having her cheery assistance made me feel about the size of a piss ant. Here I had judged her for not being able to resist Crixus when my own dalliance would not only cost thousands of dollars to repair, but had nearly cost the life of my fish.
“No problem,” she said. “I think I’m just going to wander out to my desk and make sure your 11:00 a.m. doesn’t show up early. Wanna come with me?” she asked Marvin. “I have some baby carrots at my desk.”
“Sold,” Marvin agreed, hopping along after her.
Once the door was safely closed, I looked from Crixus to Don, who was now buttoned and bagged and sitting back on the leather couch. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Adonis,” Crixus answered. “Adonis is what came over you. And beneath you. And beside you. And gods know where else.”
“Adonis?” I said, looking at the paper bag. “That’s who you are?”
“I tried to warn you,” Adonis answered. “I tried to tell you it wasn’t a good idea.”
“What I would like to know,” Crixus said, pushing himself to his feet, “is how the hell I can bring you here because you can’t keep up with Aphrodite or Persephone but within five minutes of leaving you two alone, you’ve fucked the whole office into oblivion.”
“You yourself said she was one of the best,” Adonis pointed out.
“Someone also said that he found fucking to be very therapeutic,” I added.
Irritation created a crease in Crixus’s heavy brow. “So you’re cured then? You’ll go bang the happy back into Aphrodite and Persephone and the world can return to normal?”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Adonis said.
The sleeves of Crixus’s T-shirt strained against his biceps as he crossed his arms over an expansive chest. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t want either of them.” The eyeholes in the paper bag turned my direction. “I only want her.”
All traces of the capricious cocktail of humor and arrogance vanished from Crixus’s face, drawing his mouth into a straight, flat line. “I’m going to forget that you just said that. I recommend that you don’t do anything to remind me.”
I could only blink at both of them, unable to weigh in with an intelligent response.
“I’ve made up my mind, Crixus. I’m not going back. I’m tired of being swapped back and forth like a pawn in the keep-the-goddesses-happy game. You’re just going to have to think of something else.”
“There is nothing else,” Crixus growled. “That was part of the deal. You were granted eternal life in exchange for spending four months out of the year with each one. It’s Aphrodite’s turn, and until you two are reunited, the world and everyone in it will be trapped in a cycle of infertility.”
Adonis swung long legs onto the couch and slouched back into a reclining position, folding his hands behind the paper bag. “You like to spread it around, Crixus. Why don’t you go bang the happy back into her?”
“Because she will only accept you,” Crixus replied.
“Already tried that?” I asked.
The demigod looked at me as if I had just asked him what color a green bean was. “Of course I did. Hell of a lot easier than chasing this guy down and dragging him back to see you.”
I was on the point of making a comment about his loose-zippered solution for every problem when a piece of glass fell from my hair into my lap. So much for righteous indignation.
“Then I suggest you get working on another option,” Adonis said. “Because I’m done.”
Crixus stalked behind the couch with a predator’s impatience of enclosed spaces. “I think you’re forgetting a couple things.”
“Such as?” Adonis asked.
“Such as, you do
n’t keep up your end of the bargain, and Zeus can revoke your immortality.”
“Don’t care,” he yawned.
“And what about Aphrodite and Persephone? What do you think they’re going to do when they find out about her?” Crixus said, gesturing to me.
“Me?” I asked. “What about me?”
“Goddesses aren’t so big on sharing, as it happens. Especially not with mortals. I hate to think what will happen if they find out you went and played with their favorite toy.” Crixus used this last word like a scalpel, tracing it around Adonis to cut him to a proper size.
“But, it was an accident!” I insisted. “You could explain that to them, right?”
“An accident? You mean, you tripped and fell on his dick?” Crixus parroted back to me the very words I had so righteously spat at him and Julie after finding them in the closet together for the second time.
“It wasn’t so much tripping as launching,” Adonis chimed in. “She’s pretty limber, too. In fact, I haven’t been—”
Crixus thumped the back of Adonis’s paper bag with enough force to spin the face around to the side, then righted it so he could glare into the eyeholes. “You will shut the fuck up unless you want to find out how it feels to extract your own leg from your ass, pretty boy.”
Feral heat galloped through me, the cold air on my hot skin reminding me that my shirt hung wide open for the second time in one day. I glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes until my next appointment. Just enough time to get home and change out of my shredded clothing. But doing this and getting my office restored to order? That would require assistance of the supernatural variety.
“Look, guys. You can measure your various appendages later. I need to get home, get changed, and get my office back into shape in twenty minutes. Who’s doing what? And before you ask, no, I am not one of the things that needs doing,” I said.
“Are you at least a reward for doing one of the things?” Adonis asked.
“No,” I answered.
“What about two of the things?” Crixus added.
“Even if you did all the things, the answer would still be no,” I said.
“Seems only fair that Adonis stay here and clean up the mess in your office, and I take you home to get undress—er…changed.”
“Okay by me,” came Adonis’s resonant voice from beneath the bag. “If I took her home, we wouldn’t make it back for hours. Maybe never.”
“I live close enough to drive,” I cut in, as much to defuse the escalating tension as to distract Crixus.
“I saw our friend managed to get his job back.” Crixus took a step closer to me, his boots crunching on the mixture of broken glass and gravel. “I can’t wait to see Rolly’s expression when he notices the modifications to your wardrobe.” He traced the tear in my skirt to where it disappeared at the side of my hipbone, the movement a reminder that my ruined panties lay on the floor over by the bookcase.
“Of course,” he continued, “I could materialize you home. It would also save you the drive time.”
“I thought you got in trouble with the BSA last time.” The BSA, or Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, was responsible for making sure humans and paranormal critters shared space in an amicable fashion, as far as I could tell. Crixus’s main function, aside from popping into my life and making clothes seem like a real waste of time, was to track down “supers” who were noncompliant and/or neglecting their duties.
“I’ll handle the BSA,” he said. “You coming?”
I didn’t miss the emphasis placed on this second word in his sentence, a question as well as a reference to the unusual effect that materializing had on the human body.
The answer to both would be, of course, a resounding oh, God yes.
“All right.” I gathered my coat and laptop bag, cracking the door open to tell Julie that I would be making a quick trip home and to call my cell if she needed anything.
As soon as the door closed behind me, I was dragged backward against the wall of Crixus’s body, his thick arms banded around my chest, his chin resting atop my head.
Tremendous pressure began to build in my epicenter, taking root there to push every cell into an ecstatic state that could only end in explosion.
And then I was gone.
*****
My body was rocked by wave after wave of crippling pleasure. The world reassembled itself around me a piece at a time.
My apartment, my bedroom.
Still crushed against Crixus, it took me the better part of a minute before I could find enough air to speak. “We’re…in my bed.”
“And here I was aiming for the closet,” he said. “Oh well. Since we’re here…”
I peeled his hand away from my thigh, where it had begun an exploration of the flesh exposed by my torn skirt. “I have clients,” I reminded him.
“So you’re saying you only have time for five orgasms? I’m okay with that.”
He leaned in to brush his mouth across mine, but found my index finger sandwiched between us. I pushed it against his lips to back him away the couple inches I needed to maintain some semblance of sanity. “Answer one question for me.”
“Woman superior,” he said. “I like to watch.”
“You know that’s not the question I have in mind.”
“Yes, I know. But I like my question better.”
“Crixus,” I warned.
He sighed like a disgruntled teenager and flopped onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. “You’re not wearing any underwear and you have eighteen minutes alone with me. This is how you want to spend them?”
“I need to know,” I said.
“Then look me in the eye,” he challenged.
We both listened to the measured breath fill my lungs before I secured my skirt and turned over to face him.
Time slowed to match the throbbing of his jugular vein, moving through the air around us like whatever magic swam in his immortal blood.
Passion shot silver threads through the oceanic depths of his eyes beneath dark, thick lashes most women would commit felonies to obtain.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I’m trying to seduce you because I’m jealous. I’m so fucking jealous that it’s a damn good thing I gave up the gladiatorial ring and the sword over a thousand years ago because I would rip the spine from any man who came near you quick as you could bone a fish. I’m a jealous, hypocritical bastard who wants to fuck every woman in the world, sometimes all of them at once, and yet the thought of you with another man, with another anything, fills me with a rage that defies expression in any language I know. I’m jealous of Liam. I’m jealous of Adonis. I’m jealous of your fucking office chair for the hours it spends pressed to the body that I want to trace every inch of with my tongue. I’m jealous of the fucking air, because it gets to be inside you.”
But at some point during the last few moments, air had ceased to enter or exit my lungs. Frozen, I was. In unreality. In disbelief.
Crixus reached his hand out and pressed it to my chest, his warm fingers splaying outward. I could feel the echo of my own pulse against his palm. “I want to be in here.” His index finger began at my sternum and drew a line down my stomach, skimming over my belly button and sliding under my ruined skirt to cup the place where my pulse throbbed between my thighs. “But here is all I know.”
One finger made a slow, searching arc, Crixus’s eyes falling half closed when he found the moisture there. His exploration continued, the rough pad of his finger sliding upward and circling the aching nub. “Any other questions, Doctor?”
“How many?” I gasped.
“What?” he asked, his fingers freezing in place.
“Languages,” I replied. “You said you couldn’t express your rage in any of the languages you know. How many do you speak?”
He blinked heavy-lidded eyes at me and pushed himself into a seated position. “I just delivered a speech that would have had Cleopatra herself rolling in ecstasy at my feet, and you want to know how many languag
es I speak?”
“It’s a valid question. Also, Cleopatra wasn’t known for being especially difficult to roll over.”
“Fucking academic types,” he muttered under his breath. Up and out of the bed, he stalked off toward the living room.
“How many?” I called after him.
“All of them,” came the reply from my kitchen.
“Now that’s impressive,” I said.
His resonant voice surged through my head, bringing with it a tide of foreign words. Vedere quello che tengo in tasca, poi parleremo impressionante.
Italian. I had studied enough Latin-based languages to hazard a guess. Mostly that he suspected my ability to assign the word impressive to anything until I had seen what he kept in his pocket.
I resisted the urge to mention his recent leprechaun pocket guest and opted to get changed instead. A quick sweep by the dresser armed me with unshredded underthings on the way to the closet to slip into a clean skirt and blouse.
Crixus was reclining on my couch when I made my way back into the living room. “I preferred the previous version,” he said, his eyes flicking over me from heels to head.
“Even though you’re not the one who ripped it?” I asked.
One corner of Crixus’s mouth jerked upward. “If I had been the one who ripped it, there wouldn’t be anything left.”
I forced a swallow down through my throat. “I think we better get back.”
“Then by all means,” he said, gesturing to his recumbent form. “Hop on.”
I took a deep breath and walked over to the couch, my heels sinking into the carpet as I approached him. I looked down at my pencil skirt, then up at Crixus. “This isn’t a hopping friendly outfit.”
A quick gust, a blur of movement, and I was stretched out on top of him, my legs interlaced with his, my palms pressed against the steely pectoral muscles beneath his T-shirt.
“It’s kind of cute,” he said.
“What is?”
“How you’ll say anything to kill the moment or put me off. Afraid you might feel something for me?”
“No,” I answered too quickly.
“Do you have any idea how much I want you?” His hands traveled down the small of my back to cup my ass, pressing me into the part of him that pulsed hot and hard against my hip.
Unhoppy: The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist #3 Page 4
