Christmas After Dark: A Holiday Paranormal Romance Anthology

by Abigail Owen

  "Always," he promised.

  She smiled a little, but it wasn't until after he'd eased himself down on the bed next to her in a sitting position, and she’d moved to rest her head in his lap and fallen asleep, that he realized what he'd said.

  How could he give always to a woman when he didn't even deserve her now?

  8

  She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

  When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, Dear friends--a mammoth task.

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

  She slept all afternoon. She slept through dinner; she slept through sunset. And throughout that time, all those many hours, he sat and held her, stroking the silk of her hair. Thanking the gods—both his and hers—for this brief moment of happiness in a long life that had been so seriously lacking in it. He nodded off a few times, for a few minutes at a time, but woke at her slightest motion or murmur. He would keep her safe, even from the enemy of her own mind, if need be.

  Lyric began to wake at midnight. The dawn of a new day. It seemed fitting, somehow. She stretched, long and luxuriant, and he felt his body hardening in response. He was finally in bed with her, something he’d dreamed of—fantasized about—on many long, cold nights walking the deck of the ship.

  But this wasn’t exactly how he’d pictured it. First he had been injured, and now she was. It was all a great cosmic joke by someone with a very bad sense of humor.

  She leaned her head back until it touched his abdomen. She froze, as if only then realizing that she'd been asleep curled up next to him with her head in his lap.

  "Dare?"

  "I certainly hope I'm the only man in your bed." He tried to make it sound like a joke, but it fell woefully flat. He knew he could have no claim to her future; she deserved better than a pirate. He couldn’t even hope for a miracle, because he’d resolved to stop giving himself hope that he didn't deserve.

  "I'm a pirate," he said, low and anguished. The words felt like they'd been ripped out of him, but he needed her to understand. He needed her to cast him aside, because he was becoming less and less sure he had the strength to leave her on his own.

  She rolled onto her side and looked up at him. Although he supposed looked was the wrong word. Unless she could still see—but no. He’d taken the amethyst out of her hands when she'd fallen asleep and put it in the basket on her dresser.

  Better to say, perhaps, that she turned her enormous copper-colored eyes toward his face and smiled.

  But why his brain was quibbling about word choice, he had no damn clue.

  "And I'm a painter," she said, yawning a little. Then she smiled. "It sounds like the title of a wonderful romance novel, doesn't it? The Painter and the Pirate. Ooh."

  She shivered a little, still smiling. "That sounds like a book I would buy definitely buy."

  "You don't understand," he said bleakly. "I've done bad things. I break rules. I step out of lines. I’m uncivilized. I'm selfish and self-centered, and you deserve better."

  She blinked, but said nothing. Then she blinked again.

  Then she started to laugh.

  Frustration was making his gut hurt. "Why are you laughing?"

  "I was just thinking: The Painter and the Wicked Pirate. Oh my gosh, that sounds way sexier. I would totally read that."

  He closed his eyes and thudded the back of his head against the wall. Once, twice, a third time. Then he groaned, long and loud. "Listen to me. You don't understand –"

  She sat up very suddenly and swung one leg over both of his to straddle him, which effectively put an end to any speech he’d been about to make. Then she put her hands on his shoulders, slid them up to the sides of his face, and held his head still.

  He stared into her beautiful eyes and waited for whatever she wanted to say. She had his complete attention.

  "You listen to me, Pirate. I understand everything. I understand the man that you are probably better than you do. I understand that you could be off pirating or wenching or robbing helpless widows and kittens, but instead you sat here with me for hours, to be sure I was all right." She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, then his nose, then his right cheek, and then his left.

  He held perfectly still. To move might break the spell.

  She kissed his nose again and then drew one finger down the length of it. "You have a wonderful nose. I'd love to paint you sometime. Would you let me?"

  His head was spinning, and he didn't know what to answer first. "My nose? What are you talking about? Widows and kittens? I don't think you're taking me seriously.”

  She made a funny little sound and then wiggled around on his lap, which drove all the blood in his body straight to his cock.

  "You have a lovely nose.” She moved her hands to the sides of his head again and shaped the outsides of his ears with her fingertips, which was possibly one of the most erotic things anyone had ever done to him.

  Or else he was losing his damn mind.

  "These are wonderful ears, too. You know, ears are so difficult to get right. So many people have ones that stick out in weird ways. You never think about an ear until you try to paint one, really," she said, as if confiding a great secret.

  "I don't want to paint ears," he growled.

  “I don't want to paint ears either,” she said, looking surprised. "I want to paint all the bits of your body that are underneath your clothes. With long, slow strokes of my paintbrush. Dipping into special colors, gemstone-infused colors. Getting the light exactly right in the blue of your eyes and the golden brown of your skin—I'm imagining you have tan skin, I couldn't really tell—and the perfect, rosy blush color for the length of your long, hard—"

  "Stop," he roared.

  Rather than being intimidated, though, she laughed at him. A gentle, teasing laugh; one that made him want to taste every inch of her body. She leaned forward again; wiggled a little again.

  He was almost certainly going to lose his mind, trying to keep from taking advantage of this woman.

  "Oh please, Dare. Please take advantage of me," she said with a breathy little moan.

  "I said that out loud?" He was losing it.

  "Or maybe—just maybe—I can be brave enough to take advantage of you." She leaned down and touched her mouth to his gently, the barest impression of lips on lips. He held his breath, longing for and yet afraid of what she might do next.

  She paused, though, and bit her lip.

  "It's only… it's only that I've never actually seduced anyone before," she confessed. "I mean, I'm not a virgin. There were the mandatory college fumblings, but I've never—I don't—I'm probably not very good at this."

  Suddenly, all her bravado seemed to drain away, and he was profoundly certain that he didn't want that to happen

  "You’re on the right path,” he said hoarsely. “Try again. I dare you."

  With that, he put his hands on her hips and pulled her even closer until she was snug against his body, but then he leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and sat perfectly still. Waiting for a slightly wild creature to trust enough to touch him again.

  For a long moment, she didn't move. Then tentat
ively, so tentatively, she moved forward and touched her lips to his. But this time, he was having none of that. He cupped the back of her head with one hand and deepened the kiss. Caressing, seducing, and tasting her mouth with his own. She moaned – or was that him?

  It didn't matter. It was probably both of them. Kissing her was like nothing he'd ever experienced before. No simple matter of tongues and lips or even teeth; no sheer animal physiology and instinct. This was more—this was deeper. He felt like she was touching his soul.

  Worse—he never wanted her to stop.

  When she finally broke the kiss and pulled slightly away, gasping for air, he was panting, too.

  "I have to have you, Lyric. You to know that, right?” He heard the husky growl in his own voice, but he couldn't seem to help it. Every nerve ending in his body was screaming at him to claim her. “Please say yes. Please, please say yes.”

  She shifted forward and kissed him again, and then a smile of surpassing sweetness spread across her face.

  "Dare? I need—"

  "Anything," he promised fervently. "Anything. Anything for you."

  "I need to paint."

  9

  Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

  "If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"

  At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

  Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

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

  Lyric was reconsidering her sanity.

  She’d wanted this man in her bed and in her life for so long, and now she’d stepped away from him to paint?

  “You’re definitely losing it, Fielding,” she muttered to herself.

  But it was as if madness had caught her, captured her, carried her away on a tide of exploding creativity. The colors.

  Oh my God, the colors. The garden. Dare himself. She needed to paint all of it.

  She needed to paint, more than she needed her next breath. She didn't know how to explain that to him— she needed him, too. More than she'd ever needed anyone in her life. But the fever had her, more powerfully than it ever had before, and she had to answer the Muse.

  "Dare, you understand, don't you? Please, please tell me you understand," she pleaded. She was already out of bed and cautiously feeling her way across the room to find her paints and easel. She needed her canvas like a junkie needed a fix, right now right now right now. She hoped he understood.

  He had to understand.

  Decidedly grumpy noises were coming from the direction of the bed, but she heard his feet hit the floor, and he walked over to her. "Let me help."

  "I don't need—"

  He touched her arm. "I know you don't need my help. But I need to give it. Can you allow me that, at least?"

  She breathed him in, inhaling the scent of sea and spice and salt that was uniquely him. She wanted to paint him. A portrait. A nude. Once—if—she had the chance to learn every inch of his body, she would take that knowledge gained through sensory input, through the touch of her fingertips and lips and skin, and use it to paint him.

  The irony, of course, was that she'd never be able to see the portrait. Adding irony to irony, there was even a name for what she did: blind contour drawing. It didn't refer to blindness, of course. If referred to the artist technique in which the artist concentrated solely on the subject of the drawing or painting, and never looked at her canvas while she worked.

  She’d joked to Meredith once that all of her work was blind contour, but Meredith hadn't found it very funny. Her friend hadn’t much of a sense of humor when it came to Lyric's blindness.

  Dare. He’d asked her something…Oh.

  "Of course I'll allow it,” she said, placing her hand lightly on his arm. “I would love to have your help because you're offering it to me as a gift and not as an obligation."

  He stopped moving, and she felt the muscles of his arm tighten just before he caught her mouth in a deep, claiming kiss.

  When he finally released her, he lifted her chin with a finger. "Lyric, I'm a pirate. I don't do anything out of a sense of obligation. You should at least know that about me by now. Every single moment I've spent with you has been entirely and completely because I wanted to be here."

  "I—oh." She didn't know what to say to that. It was a gift too large and too important for her to unwrap right now, caught in the throes of the Muse's demands. Instead, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him again. She tried to put everything she felt – everything he meant to her—into the kiss, but how could that even be possible? A kiss was a single note, and her feelings for him were an entire symphony. She wanted so much for him to understand, to believe in her.

  She wanted him to believe in himself.

  "Although," she said, grinning mischievously, "I still think The Painter and the Wicked Pirate has a lovely ring to it."

  He laughed his deliciously low, husky chuckle and then surprised her by smacking her on the butt. "Enough of this screwing around. We need to make some art happen. And when I say we, I mean you, because I can't draw—"

  "—a straight line," she finished for him. "Yeah, I get that a lot."

  So many of the non-artistic people in her friend group and the tourists who came into her studio had said some variation of that phrase to her over the years. Sometimes it was funny, and sometimes it was annoying, how they seemed to look at her as if she were a trained monkey in a zoo doing a particularly interesting trick. They'd hasten to tell her all about how they couldn't draw straight lines, or couldn't draw stick figures. And sometimes she had to clamp her jaw tight to avoid saying anything like:

  Well, rulers are a thing.

  Or

  Who would want to draw a stick figure anyway?

  Tourist dollars didn't flow into her studio because she was rude to the paying customers, though. She had to create; it was as important to her as breathing – but she also had to eat. And as long as people wanted to buy her paintings, she felt it was a wonderful bargain.

  A little prep, and she was ready to channel whatever the Muse was sending. The gardens. It had to be the gardens. Not the gardens as she'd imagined them when they’d first walked through, but the vivid, impressionistic shapes and colors and light that she'd seen while holding the amethyst.

  "Eat your heart out, Renoir," she muttered, clenching one paintbrush between her teeth while she selected another.

  He moved to stand behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Do you like his work? Renoir?”

  “Do I like his work? He’s only one of the greatest painters of all time,” she told him. “I could stand in front of Bal du Moulin de la galette for days. I was fascinated with it when my parents took me to Paris. Now I can only see it in my memory, but it will never fade.”

  “His great, great, I don't know, maybe 100-times great-grandfather was Atlantean."

  She dropped her paintbrush. "What? Are you telling me—no. Argh. It has to wait. I want to hear that story. I want to hear a thousand of your stories, but right now I have to paint. I need to paint."

  She heard his footsteps, and then the distinctive creaking sound of a large, muscular man sitting down in a wooden chair. "You need to paint, I get it. So I'll just sit here and watch."

  Oh, that was so not happening. She turned her entire body in his direction and put on a ste
rn face. Or least as stern of a face as she could manage just after she’d been licking the man's ear a few minutes before.

  "No. I'm sorry, but I can't work with someone watching me. Not in the initial phase. Can you, I don't know, go do some Atlantean thing for a while?" She made little shooing motions with her hands, and he started laughing.

  "Fine. I'll go do Atlantean things. But I'll be back, and I expect payment on what we started here tonight," he said, sounding only a little disgruntled.

  She smiled but could feel the heat of a fiery blush working its way up from her chest to her cheeks. "Oh, I can promise you that, Captain."

  She heard his footsteps come closer again and then a thud next to her.

  "I put a small side table here," he said, taking her hand and moving it to the table's surface. "I'm going to get you a glass of water, and then I'm going to leave and go do my Atlantean things. I’ll also have some food sent up, since you missed dinner."

  "Sure. Right. Later," she said, already too distracted by the insistent pulse in her head of the painting that she needed to create.

  Blues. Blues and greens and whites. The marble of the palace; that would be tricky. But as a backdrop for the flowers—oh, if only she could capture the extraordinary bouquet of scents in those flowers. Nothing she'd ever smelled before, which made sense. After all, they were probably species of plants that hadn’t been seen on Earth in millennia.

  Greens. Reds—oh the pinks and purples, they’d shone so vividly in the vision she'd had while holding the jewel. Maybe she should begin with the fountain and center it on the page and focus the eye on the water. Flowing, dancing, sparkling: water like she'd never seen since before the accident. If she could capture the water…

  If she could capture the water, she could capture the feeling.

  She picked up a brush and began.

  Lyric woke up feeling drained. But in a good way. When she tried to sit up, however, she rolled right off the bed. When she hit the floor, she realized she'd been sleeping upside down with her feet on the pillows.