Christmas After Dark: A Holiday Paranormal Romance Anthology

by Abigail Owen

  She'd been about ninety-nine percent sure he was full of crap, but that one percent had made her stop arguing and accept the gems as graciously as she'd known how to.

  And so it went. After a year of sporadic visits, he finally went out to dinner with her.

  By the third year, he’d trusted her enough to tell her about Atlantis.

  By the fourth year, he’d finally allowed her to touch his face and learn what he looked like from her fingertips—and the sensation of his skin, warm beneath her hands, had gone straight to her soul.

  The touch had lingered on the tips of her fingers for months.

  By the fifth year, she'd fallen in love with him. This man she’d never even kissed had a claim on her heart. She just didn't know how to tell him, so she didn't. And then…well, then his visits became more sporadic.

  He came once every three months or so instead of every month. Also, he seemed increasingly abrupt and on edge. She didn't know why. When she'd asked him, he’d said only that he never signed up to be an ambassador. All the hoopla surrounding Atlantis finally rising from beneath the sea had been hard on all of them, he said, and he was definitely getting his share of problems from the people he usually did business with. They all wanted something from him. Access. Partnerships. Sales channels. Black-market goods from Atlantis.

  It was too much, and he was sick to death of it.

  “Enough that you’d give up going to sea?” she'd asked him once.

  "Never." He’d sounded shocked at the thought. “Being a sea captain isn’t only what I do, Lyric. It's who I am. Without the sea, I’d be nothing.”

  A shiver snaked its way through her at the memory. Really, could anything have been a clearer warning to stay away? Without the sea, he’d be nothing. Where was the space for a quiet homebody of an artist in that life?

  Her watch chimed out a lilting melody, telling her it was seven o'clock. An hour past time to close. He hadn't come. He wasn't coming. At least not now. Maybe he’d arrive later in the week, or after the new year. She could talk to him then. She could tell him…

  Or she could not tell him.

  She was starting to feel like not telling him might be the wiser choice. She needed to accept that it was time to move on. Time to get thoughts of the honey-voiced Atlantean pirate out of her mind and out of her heart, before she had a chance to fall any further.

  "All I need is you, Picasso,” she told her large, furry, footstool-shaped cat. “Right?"

  Picasso arched his back under her hand and purred as she stroked his silky head.

  "Time to close up shop." She turned toward the door, but before she even took a first step, it crashed open, bells jangling out a discordant warning.

  "I think I need your help,” a man groaned. It was Dare; she knew him instantly. She could smell the sharp scent of wind and sky and saltwater that was uniquely his; she could pick his voice out of a thousand others.

  "Dare?" She started toward him. “Are you hurt—"

  "I think I need—"

  A heavy thud was the only conclusion to his sentence. A shudder ran through her, freezing her in place for a moment. He'd collapsed. She rushed over, slamming her knee into the corner of the counter in her haste, but ignoring the pain. She slowed her pace, and when she felt the edge of his body with her foot, she knelt down beside him. She reached for his pulse, her fingers finding their way to the spot. It was there; strong and reassuring. He was soaking wet, though; his skin was icy cold and he was shivering violently.

  "Dare? Dare? What happened?"

  He didn't answer. Maybe he couldn’t answer. And of course she couldn't see him, so she couldn’t even guess how badly he was hurt.

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket and told it to call Dr. Miller.

  No. She pressed END CALL.

  "Call 911."

  No pirates were going to die on her watch.

  3

  Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

  -- The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry (1917)

  Dare was pretty sure he was dead.

  Or at least deep beneath the ocean and about to be dead. He tossed and turned, fighting the shards of pain ripping up his head and lungs. Fighting to break through the darkness surrounding him. He had flashes of awareness—flashes of color and light. And each time, the beautiful face of what must be an angel was right there, looking down at him.

  Individual words pierced the haze of his mind. Geometric shapes of language that stabbed him and prodded him with sharp edges, but had no meaning to the chaos in his brain.

  His head hurt like it'd never hurt before, and he'd certainly been a victim of many mishaps considering his calling. Life on the high seas wasn't exactly designed for the faint of heart—or the fragile of bone. But this was different. His brains—if he had any left—were surely leaking out his ears.

  Someone or something opened his eyelids, and the light from the lamp spiked into his eyes. He tried to remember how to form words, but managed only a harsh grunting noise that he hoped to the nine hells somebody recognized as the word stop.

  The light went away, at least, and they let him close his eyes, but that's when it occurred to him that he might not be dead after all. Unless he was, in fact, caught in the first level of the nine hells; trapped in pain for eternity for a life filled with misdeeds and self-absorption.

  A gentle voice that rang with an undertone of silvery bells: "You're going to be fine, Dare. It's only a concussion."

  He knew that voice.

  Lyric.

  He reached out instinctively, and her warm, slender hand clasped his. Her touch calmed him, soothed the jagged edges of his mind in a way he knew he had no right to feel, but he’d be damned if he wouldn’t take advantage of it for the short time he could do so.

  Another voice, this one slightly deeper but still female, spoke next. "He took a hell of a hit, Lyric. But it's almost as if he's healing right in front of my eyes. If I hadn't seen it, I never would've believed it, and I would insist that you go to the hospital head trauma unit. But he’s gone from a major injury to a mild concussion in the space of the last ten minutes."

  "Well, the way he fought with the EMTs to not get in that ambulance made it pretty clear that he wasn't in any major trouble. Nobody at death's door would have that much energy," the silvery voice said, still sounding concerned, but with an edge of laughter.

  Dare started to sink again then, and after that, only snatches of sentences made it through to his conscious mind.

  "... watch him."

  "Thank you. I'll ..."

  Then the voices faded to unintelligible sounds in the background, and he let himself drift back under, inexplicably reassured that the owner of that silvery voice would keep him safe. He was exactly where he belonged.

  "Dare? I need you to wake up. Can you look at me?”

  Lyric. He opened his eyes. Even shadowed by the light of the lamp behind her, he knew her face.

  A cloud of riotous black curls surrounded her face and touched her shoulders, and her eyes looked dark in the shadows, but he knew from six years of looking into them that they shone like beautiful copper, a color as rare and precious as the metal in the armband that contained the magic of his spirit bond with Seranth. He started to raise his hand to touch the band, but the movement sent a jolt of painful protest through his muscles, and he winced.

  "Dr. Miller told me not to let you sleep too long. She wanted me to ke
ep checking your eyes, but of course we know I can't do that. Can you hold still for a moment while I take a picture to send to the doctor?"

  Before he could answer, a light flashed in his eyes, making him flinch. But he’d clearly already improved a great deal, because the light was far less painful than the last time. All credit to superior Atlantean healing powers, of course.

  Maybe, though, some credit went to the woman seated at his side. He was too tired to pursue the thought…

  The next time Dare woke up, the room was swimming around him. Waves of sensation buffeted him from all sides, but unlike his dive into the ocean, this was a gentler current. He felt like the shore might be in sight. He opened his eyes and realized he was in a bed. In a room.

  A room on land; not his berth on the Luna.

  Lyric.

  He remembered calling her name in his mind. Reaching out to her when hope and light and life itself were about to be lost. All he’d wanted was one last look at her face. One last chance to hear the sound of her voice, before the ocean took him into silence and darkness forever It would have been enough.

  This was better.

  The portal—it must have worked. The room was rimmed with shadow, lit only by a bedside lamp on a small wooden table. He glanced around, curious about this place. A private sanctuary that perhaps held her secrets as much as the mystery in her copper eyes. In six years of knowing her, he’d never once seen her bedroom.

  He laughed a little at the thought. The men and women he caroused with regularly at dockside bars would never believe it. Captain Dare of the Luna—celibate. Perhaps celibate wasn’t the word. It had been six years since he met her, and he was a man. But the encounters he’d had with other women since then had been brief and unsatisfactory. For some reason he couldn't understand, after the first time he’d met Lyric, the vision of her eyes, her face, her curls, and even the sound of her voice seemed never far from his mind.

  His thinking was still muddled. That last crack on the head had been no joke. At least his crew…wait. His crew. What had happened to them? He tried to reach out on the Atlantean mental pathway to reach someone—anyone—who might have heard what had happened to his ship and crew. None on board were Atlantean, so he had no way to reach them directly.

  His brain flinched from the attempt, though, and he heard nothing in return. Perhaps he was too far away or too injured. He’d try again as soon as his head quit pounding quite so much.

  And the unicorns—Bingley and Jane. By Poseidon, he hoped they had survived. If he'd caused the world to lose two such magnificent creatures, he’d never forgive himself. If he ever told her about it, Lyric probably wouldn't forgive him, either.

  Lyric. His mind kept wandering off from the most important question. Where was she? He tried to sit up but fell back against the pillows, weaker than he'd realized.

  "Lyric," he croaked out of his damaged throat. "Water."

  Just then, perhaps in response to his raspy call, Lyric appeared in the doorway with a bottle of water in one hand and that infernal camera device in the other.

  "Water," he repeated, holding out a hand.

  She stopped in the doorway, her wide eyes turned toward him. A smile like the sun rising over the horizon on a clear day spread across her face.

  "You're awake. You're talking," she said unnecessarily. He already knew both of those things.

  “Water.”

  She walked the six paces to the bed, uncapping the bottle of water as she came. "Here you go. But just sips, please. Dr. Miller said to give you a little at a time so you didn't bring it all right back up."

  He tried to raise his head, but before he could put any real effort into it, her hand slid under his neck and supported him so he could drink. Dare closed his eyes at the sheer bliss of the water sliding down his throat and her cool hand on his head. He tried to be a gentlemen and not notice how close her delightfully round breasts were to his face, but gave it up as a lost cause.

  After all, he wasn’t a gentleman—he was a pirate. And the sight of her curvy body was a wonderful prize for a man who’d thought he’d never see her again. Six years of meetings—of waiting for the chance to see her again. To talk to her, make her laugh, watch her slightly unfocused copper eyes sparkle with amusement. To inhale the delicate scent of flowers and the stronger aroma of charcoal and paint that surrounded her. To watch her graceful movements.

  Imagine her touch on his skin, her taste in his mouth.

  Six years of being beguiled by her kindness and humor and intelligence. Six years of being tempted by her luscious body. The curve of her cheek. The way her gleaming hair fell around her face in the sunlight. How much his hands ached to reach out and grasp her amazing ass and pull him toward her, inch by tantalizing inch.

  Naked.

  He closed his eyes and groaned, shifting his body to try to get comfortable. At least she couldn’t see the erection that was straining the fabric of his pants.

  "Oh, no,” she said, probably thinking he was groaning in pain. Well, it was pain, just a different kind. “How are you feeling? I should take another picture of your eyes for—"

  "No," he said firmly, wincing at the thought. "I have definitely had enough of that damn flashing light in my eyes. I'm fine. Superior Atlantean healing."

  Lyric sat down in a chair that was pulled up next to the bed. She must've been sitting there next to him for hours, because every memory of the night that was coming back to him contained the image of her face.

  He struggled to sit up, letting her help him just for the opportunity to breathe in her scent. Then he tried to swallow, in spite of the painful lump suddenly blocking his throat. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought my problems to your doorstep. I didn't have–" He stopped just short of admitting there hadn't been anywhere else he'd rather go. His confession seemed at once too much and yet not enough. It'd taken him five minutes to become fascinated with this woman, and then he’d spent the next five years—no, six, now—fighting his attraction. She was human. She was an artist. She was a self-professed homebody.

  The last thing she needed in her life was a pirate of poor reputation and worse deeds.

  He watched, fascinated, as her cheeks turned pink, and then her graceful hands reached for the bottle of water.

  "I'm glad you did. Here, drink a little more. Are you hungry? No, you're probably not hungry. Dr. Wilson said the head injury would make you nauseous for a while. But when you're ready, I can make you some soup. I have half a roasted chicken I could put in with some carrots, and maybe I could find some onion and a little—" She broke off, biting her lip, her cheeks flushing again. "I'm sorry I'm babbling. I have to admit I've been worried sick about you. I wanted you to go to the emergency room, but you quite strenuously refused."

  Abruptly, he remembered a chaotic moment of battling someone who was trying to hold him down. Suddenly alarmed, he looked up at her. If he’d harmed her in any way, he’d never forgive himself. "I didn't hurt you, did I? Or anybody else?"

  She shook her head. "No. You were quite gentle with me. And it's not like the EMTs don't have experience dealing with unruly patients. They were quite competent at restraining you in order to secure vitals. Between the three of them," she added ruefully. “Luckily, my neighbor Dr. Miller—Penny—was walking her Goldendoodle, so she came in to have a look. She said she'd be glad to keep an eye out for you if I was definitely sure that I wasn't going to send you to the ER in restraints."

  Dare scowled. "I have no good experience with restraints. It is well for them that they stopped when they did. Even half-conscious, I could well have hurt someone."

  "Yeah, we kinda got that,” she said dryly. "Superior Atlantean strength, huh?"

  He took another long drink of water, but then could feel himself slipping back under. He was so tired. So very tired, as if he hadn't slept in weeks instead of only days. The trip had been a rough one, and he’d only caught catnaps in his cabin a few times. He felt like he could sleep for a week.

  Bu
t only if he could stay here. With her. In her home, her room, her bed.

  Her arms.

  If only she’d allow him to hold her. Longing slammed into him, tightening his chest, and he pinned his gaze to her expressive face. How could eyes that couldn’t see still say so much? "I can stay, can't I? Just until I feel better? I would not wish to be a burden upon you, but—"

  A wave of heat smashed into him, and he made a grunting sound at the pain that started hammering his skull. “Sorry. My head. I was saying--"

  His forgot what he’d meant to say. He was trapped in a sudden typhoon of swirling, cascading heat, and his mind went hazy. Fever. Or worse?

  “Shh.” She rested a gentle hand on his forehead, and he closed his eyes in relief at her cool touch. “Of course you can stay, Dare. Don't worry about anything. I'll take care of you, and what I don't – or can't – do, Meredith or Dr. Miller will help me with."

  Every muscle in his body relaxed at her promise. "So tired," he mumbled. "So very tired."

  "Sleep, then. Sleep, and I’ll watch over you."

  He drifted off on currents of tropically warm water and the surprised realization that she was singing to him. It was French, he knew that much. He’d been to Paris a few times. He’d even been to Avignon and seen the bridge in her song. And he’d so love to dance with her there. She’d be so incredibly beautiful, with French lavender in her hair…He could feel himself floating away again, lulled by the silvery notes of her song and the vision of dancing with her.

  “Sur le pont D’Avignon, On y danse, On y danse…”

  "So beautiful." Had he said it or merely thought it? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem to matter.

  She touched his face and spoke again, so softly that he almost didn’t hear. "Oh, Dare. I was just thinking the same thing about you."

  4

  There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.