Lucky Between the Sheets: An Anthology of Stories that Get to the Point

by L. A. Boruff

  "You're right," I say, "it changes everything." I run my hands up his body, fiddling with his shirt collar as a way to touch his skin.

  "Mmmmm, now the truth comes out," Riley says. "This has been an incredibly interesting exercise, don't you think? Amazing what these new types of assignments can do for even seasoned hunters like ourselves."

  I can't deal with this. I punch him in the stomach. He winces, but laughs, then removes his shirt.

  "Kiss it and make it better," he asks, then continues, "You know, only if you want to. Not if you don't want to."

  I want to, but I also want to punch him again.

  I pause. I know exactly what I want to do and I’m terrified of doing it.

  He senses my reluctance and misreads it, standing up straight to back away. "Didn't mean to overstep. Sorry." He holds his hands up in surrender, and my entire body laments the loss of his physical closeness.

  "I don't want to make promises I can't keep, even accidentally. And I don't think there's anything I can promise you that I can make good on." I'm not even sure the sentences coming out of my mouth make sense anymore.

  "It doesn't have to mean anything," he says.

  "What if I want it to?" I ask, moving to my feet to close the distance between us. He's still shirtless, and I move to one knee to give his stomach the requested kiss. Riley is all lean muscle, and his six pack is hard under his smooth skin. I caress the area with my lips, opening and shutting them over the planes of his abs like a prayer. I move back and forth across the V they make with his thighs until I'm satisfied I've said my apologies, if not for everything then at least for the playful jab. I look up at him. I'm blinking, trying not to cry. Which one, I'm not sure, but I know for sure I feel a healthy amount of fear unlike anything I've felt since my very early days tracking vamps in New York City. When I meet his eyes my resistance breaks. I only feel one droplet betray me, but it's enough, and Riley pulls me to my feet. His arms surround me and it's the first time he's ever done it in the absence of some big disaster.

  No, I think darkly. This time the only disaster is me.

  I try to push him away. It doesn't work, but once he figures it out he lets go. I'm confused now, and the tears are coming more freely. Damn him, if only he'd ignored it. I was so close. I could have moved downward, undone his pants, and transitioned into the same hot, casual sex we were used to. Diverted his and my attention from the thing I'd said beforehand, and after we got off, I could go back to ignoring it.

  "Is pushing me away actually what you want to do right now?" he asks, but it's gentle.

  "No," I tell him. "I want to pretend we won't have to say goodbye."

  He shakes his head and closes the gap again, his arms around me tighter this time. "I'll never say goodbye to you," he says, whispering into my ear in a way that makes me shiver. Then his hands are under my top, moving against the skin of my lower back. He pulls me into him by my waist with one hand, his other working its way to my neck to guide me into his kiss. He kisses me deeply, like I am his salvation, like I am the only one who can lead him home. I feel his length through my yoga pants and feel slickness in my underwear, wanting this expression of his love for me to be enough.

  For today, it might be.

  He growls in a way that almost sounds... possessive? I think I might be imagining it for a split second, but truth be told one of the things I'm probably best at is reading him, and I'm not surprised when his voice rumbles with a command: "Come with me."

  He breaks his hold on my torso, instead leading me by the hand to the bed. He shoves the bag of clothing unceremoniously off the side, then takes slightly more care moving our bag of tech to a further corner out of harm's way. Then, he lifts me with little warning. I squeal, but he just smiles and kisses my forehead before placing me on the bed carefully. As if I'm something precious.

  I'm terrified.

  Me, Molly Maeve, who's gone up against vampires, werewolves, a cyclops, merfolk, trolls, and other things most people don't believe actually exist with nothing but excitement and adrenaline.

  That's all fine.

  This love thing? Nope. Abort mission. Break my spotless-as-far-as-I'm-concerned record. This is too dangerous.

  But there isn't time to fall too far down that rabbit hole, because Riley follows me onto the bed. He's over me, now, supporting his weight with his hands on either side of my head to press his lips and body into mine without squishing me. And, fuck, I want him. I want to know what it's like to be someone he's making love to and not just someone he's fucking.

  He kisses me gently. His lips are no stranger to mine but the dance they do across them now is foreign. I have the sense he has spent our past encounters prioritizing what I wanted from him, that casual, playful, lust-focused sex that means nothing more than two people liking each other as people and thinking the other person is hot as fuck.

  But this is serious. If there was anything he wanted to tell me but couldn't find the words for it, he could say it now. He is, and I think I understand better this way than I would have if he'd written it out in a long form letter.

  I know you. I see you. I love you.

  And, somehow, most importantly?

  You owe me nothing.

  He's wrong about that last part. I owe him a lot of things, but they're all things he doesn't—can't? won't?—understand I owe him. Safety from whatever's been following me all these years, for starters. A reprieve from my sarcasm and inability to commit to another person. The fact that I'd never leave this job that would, inevitably, kill me.

  His lips move away from mine to trace my jaw to my ear. He kisses my earlobe and I feel my body erupt in goosebumps. He takes it between his teeth and pulls gently, making me moan and arch my back. I don't think I've ever wanted him this badly, and I don't want to break out the words to tell him that, but I hope he understands me the way I do him.

  I run my hands up his chest and around his neck, pulling him back down to me. He's less gentle this time and his mouth crashes against mine, his tongue pressing its way through my lips. I spread my legs and he drops his torso, pressing into me. Through the layers of fabric I feel his desire match my own. A guttural moan escapes his mouth as he comes up for air, pulling me so that I'm sitting up in the process.

  For a split second I'm disappointed, but he looks deep into my eyes. It's getting dark now, and I see his eyes glint in the rays of the sunset. He kisses my forehead, then loops his hands around the bottom of my shirt to pull it off. I put my hands over my head to help him, and he unhooks my bra, freeing my breasts.

  He lays me back down, kissing me again until my head rests on the pillow. His hands massage my breasts, pulling at my nipples just enough to make them pebble. He traces a line of kisses down my neck to my chest, taking each breast in his mouth, circling my nipples with his tongue and grazing his teeth against them. When I'm whimpering, he moves down further, building anticipation until he reaches the top of my pants. Wordlessly, I lift my butt off the bed to allow him to take them off, and he pulls them off together, sliding them down my legs slowly. Deliberately. Like I'm a prized object he's taking his time to absorb.

  I lift my legs so he can get them past my feet, and they disappear onto the floor somewhere. He continues where he left off, his mouth moving just below my belly button and moving to the place where my thigh meets my crotch. He kisses along the seam, trailing his breath across my vulva as he moves from one side to another before, finally, burying his mouth into my cunt.

  I let out a loud moan I didn't realize I'd been holding in. This man knows how to get me off; how to do it efficiently and still make it hot as hell. But that isn't his goal, at least not for the moment. He's here to explore my body and I'm just along for the ride.

  And... I fucking love it.

  His tongue swirls around my clit for a moment before moving back down my folds, caressing my body's intricacies as if it's the first time he's able to—or the last chance he’ll ever get. And maybe it is.

  He brings
me to the edge and I lean into it, moving my cunt upward to meet him, but he presses me back down, pushing my thighs onto the mattress with his forearms. I'm strong enough I could probably fight my way back up, but it's not worth it to fight him. I only want to surrender, despite my need and him taking his time with me. So, I do. I meet my edge, not quite falling off of it, and then he pulls himself back up, leaving me exposed to nothing but the cool air of the room.

  I whimper, held hostage at the edge of release and the intersection of desire. He pulls a condom from somewhere I can't see, and as he unwraps it and pulls it over his shaft, I watch the way the muscles in his torso move in the dying light.

  "Riley," I say, my voice quiet in the darkness. It lingers on my tongue for a long moment before I feel him on top of me again, his hands searching for something I can't quite name across my skin, and his cock at my entrance, hard and teasing. He touches every part of me, sliding fingertips through my hair, down my arms, and to my thighs. His mouth travels from my lips to my neck and chest, his cock slides into me with one thrust.

  I scream, for a moment not registering that the guttural sound is coming from my mouth and not someone else's. But he continues, his thrusts hard and slow, like he's taking his time making me feel every inch of him. It's all pleasure. He holds my arms down as he moves over me, not in a punishing way but as if he's trying to make sure I'm here... as if trying to make sure that I'm solid and that there's no way I'm going to vanish on him.

  It hurts me that he's uncertain. He has every reason to be, because somewhere beyond the pleasure I know I'm likely going to be separating from him soon. But there's no time for me to really consider this as he moves, and I let out another gasp that he echoes in his motion. Right now he is everything, right now is all that matters, and the only thing that I'm more sure of than how massively I'm going to fuck this up is that I am absolutely, madly, in love with this man.

  He speeds up, his thrusts coming faster as he nears his own release. My entire world is him, the way he feels against me and inside of me. As I cum, so does he, panting and grunting against my body.

  He lays on top of me, his weight enveloping me, skin to skin for a long moment before he pulls out and rolls over on the bed.

  The sun has set completely now, and all I see are the outlines of his features in the starlight.

  "I love you," he tells me.

  "I love you too," I reply, finding the words to, for once, be honest about that, and never speaking the fears that rattle through my veins aloud.

  * * *

  It rains overnight. By morning it's stopped, but the moisture hangs in the air in a way that is encouraging given our mission. We grab our packs and some quick breakfast to eat while walking and leave almost immediately upon waking up.

  The walk back to the shore is tense. The words we exchanged last night were true, but their veracity makes them harder to process and leaves us more uncertain about how to proceed than any lies would. But it doesn't matter. Not really. That was last night.

  Today all that really matters is dealing with this leprechaun, which means finding a rainbow and following it to him.

  We make it to the beach. There's nothing special about the beach per se, but we need the visibility of the sky that comes with an area without trees. Plus, I have a hunch, and I do my best to follow my hunches. They've saved me several times in the past.

  Today, too, they lead me in the right direction. As we hit the sand, we see a rainbow stretching over the expanse of sky, and wordlessly move to follow it. It's a few miles away, so while it's definitely not an insurmountable trek, it's far enough that if we don't move quickly we might not make it there in time.

  "Remember what we're supposed to do," Riley says, and I nod, picking up my pace so that I'm almost running. Rainbows, generally, are untouchable. Just refractions of light that don't look consistent from place to place, so finding the end of one is impossible. But here, in this land of magic, things are different, and would be even if we weren't the best fae bounty hunter duo currently working.

  We jog down the beach, ignoring how much more the motion hurts in the sand than it does on sidewalks. It's no different than that time we had to hunt down merfolk off the coast of California, right? It doesn't matter. I'll recover. I'll be damned if something as insignificant as the burning in my thighs and calves is what stops us from proving ourselves on our first outing as elite agents.

  I accelerate to a run, not looking back to see whether Riley is keeping up. He'd better be, but then, I don't know how all of this stuff works. Maybe it'll be enough if I make it there. Maybe the rainbow merely points to the leprechaun's residence, and the residence itself doesn't shift. I assume we need it at least once, but maybe that's wrong, too.

  Or maybe the rainbow is the conduit between worlds and it's impossible to enter without one.

  I feel myself panting as I sprint down the shoreline. Everything in my body screams and I pause for a moment, take a deep drink of water, then watch Riley move past me. He, too, is clearly pushing himself. I clip the bottle back to my pack and follow him, nearly lapping him, when he trips and stumbles over what looks like a long vine spreading across the otherwise empty ground.

  "How... how did you not see that?" I start to ask him, but then it fades before my eyes. I blink, willing it to return, and look around for a culprit as Riley gets to his feet and brushes off his hands.

  "The massive boulder that jumped in front of me?" he asks. "Yeah, I saw it. At the last second."

  "No, the... the vine." I pause, then look back into the woods, drawing a blade from its sheath on my thigh. To my left, I see the arch of the rainbow rising from a few feet out in the water and fading into the distance. We've made it and I hadn't even noticed in the wake of Riley falling over... a rock that jumped in front of him? Or a vine? Or whatever it was. "An illusion," I say, flatly. "We're here."

  Riley nods. The end of the rainbow is pretty hard to miss: a massive, almost spectral beam of light coming from the water. It doesn't clarify exactly where the leprechaun is, though, so I make my way to it, walking through crystal-clear water. It soaks through my shoes and it's cool against my ankles. At the literal end of the rainbow is a pot of gold, just like on television, and I wonder at this as I run my hand through the water toward it.

  My hand hits the shiny coins. They sparkle different colors in the light of the rainbow and are heavy in my hands. They remind me of doubloons, and I toss a few ashore.

  "Guess this part of the legends are true," I tell Riley, who just shakes his head.

  "It'll probably just vanish when the rainbow does," he says.

  "Right. But we're on the right track for sure. So where is this guy, do you think?" I raise my hands, letting the magic from the land vibrate off my palms. It's a simple trick, one we learned as rookies in the field, but it's dead useful. Attuning to the way the energy around us feels lets us know where something more might be hanging out. I follow my gut and the data the land is giving me into the trees. Just past the edge of the woods is a tangle of brush that looks like it's covering the door to a cave. It's wide enough for me to work my way inside, and I do so without any real trouble, moving some vines and overgrown tree limbs in the process. I'm not sure if Riley's right behind me or further off, but I trust he'll find me before too long regardless.

  It's the only obvious place to go, after all.

  When I get inside, I blink as my eyes adjust to the dimmer lighting. It's something of a cave for sure, but more importantly, it’s a home crafted in a cavern. It’s simple, and in many ways it mirrors the cottage we’ve been sent to: a one-room sort of deal with a bed and a fire pit in the ground, something like a small kitchen, a few chairs scattered about. The most interesting thing about the arrangement is a workbench with a table adjacent to it, covered in scraps and tools I’m not quite familiar with. The material seems like leather, I and look at various diagrams around the table just long enough to figure out what it is.

  "Admiring my shoemaking wo
rk?" a voice echoes across the cavern.

  How long has he been watching me? I turn to face him, and it takes me a moment before I see him. When I do, my mouth drops open.

  My first thought is that he's huge. I'm putting him at 6'8", but given our location it's hard to say specifically. He's also broad-shouldered, with muscles on muscles that are shown off by his lack of shirt. He's a redhead with a full beard and a light grazing of red hair down his torso that clashes oh-so-slightly with his bright red pants. I notice I've been staring at his bulge just a little too long and snap my eyes back to his face. There's a twinkle in his green eyes and he wears a side smile that borders on a smirk.

  "C'mon, mate, you're not gonna tell me you've never seen a leprechaun before," he starts, and I shut my mouth. Right, I'm here on a mission. Focus.

  I move toward him, bounding across the room in a few huge steps. I hit the place he stands and fall through him. He disappears in a cloud of smoke. I blink back my surprise, keeping my face guarded, and turn around. He stands in a different corner now, smirking more.

  "I was hoping you wouldn't be here when I showed up," I tell him, circling back toward him. "I had all the makings for a trap in my bag and everything."

  He shakes his head and vanishes again as I approach him. "Don't know why you're trying to trap such a dangerous criminal," he says, but this time it's a whisper. I feel his breath in my ear and his hands move to pull me backward into him, but when I turn to face him no one's there.

  "I can work out a deal for you," I tell him. I don't know if it's true, but there are few things most fae like more than making deals, so I'm hoping to distract him.

  No dice. "You've seen the list of accusations against me, love. You know better than to think they're gonna let me off the hook for good behavior."

  "So tell me, why did you do it? What did you have to gain?"

  "That's where you're wrong. What you should be asking is what someone else has to gain by framing me."