I took it and shrugged. “I don’t know; you tell me, since you can feel my energy,” I answered playfully.
He laughed. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”
* * *
We arrived in an alley between two apartment buildings. When I started walking toward the brightly-lit street, Crew didn’t follow. His grip on my hand stopped my forward motion and I spun around to face him.
He stared at me with intensity in his eyes.
“What?” I asked, accompanied by a nervous giggle.
Stepping in, closing the gap between us, he wrapped his other arm around my waist and lowered his head toward mine. Immediately, the flame in my chest rekindled.
“Are you sure you don’t want to just skip dinner and pick up where we left off in the infirmary,” he rasped, his voice deep and throaty.
“Mmmm,” I hummed, “that sounds like exactly what I want to do. Whatever happened with my family must have been terrible.”
“What—”
“You are avoiding telling me about it like the plague!” I accused with a grin, playfully hitting him on his solid chest.
“I—okay—first of all—”
“First the potion, and then let’s get out of here, then get dressed, then let’s get dinner, and then let’s make out in an alley!” I teased.
“Listen, all of that really was necessary,” he defended, pointing a finger under my chin and smirking.
“Oh, really?” I crossed my arms. “All of that?”
He tilted his head and looked up in thought. “I mean, I really want to kiss you, and kiss you a lot, right now. But I guess maybe this alley isn’t the most romantic of places or timing.”
“You guess?” I laughed.
“I haven’t been on a date in a long time,” he admitted with a shrug.
“Me neither, but I do know that alleyways haven’t become super romantic since my last one,” I said.
“Noted,” he chuckled. “Let’s eat. Then we will talk about how everything fell apart without you.”
“Is that what happened?” I asked as we walked hand-in-hand toward the street.
“Not entirely, but you secretly you would love that, wouldn’t you?” he teased.
“No . . .” I said, shaking my head dramatically. “I mean, I wouldn’t say I would love it.”
He threw his head back and laughed in a loud bellow that echoed through the street.
The only thing that was louder than his laugh was the sound of trumpets blaring and dozens of people talking over the music. Crew gestured to a dimly lit stairwell leading down into a basement. As I descended it, I knew exactly where he had brought me.
The Cuban restaurant he had described in our first conversation.
Inside, the walls were painted to look like adobe, except the sections of exposed brick. Vines and airplane plants crawled up the beams and hung above most tables. Everything smelled like the fire grill and chili peppers and lime and rum.
The hostess led us to a small booth at the back near the end of the bar and we slid in, Crew positioned himself close enough to immediately put an arm around my back. “Two mojitos,” he answered the hostess when she asked if we wanted any drinks to start.
She came back almost instantly with them, and I noticed that one bartender seemed to be making only mojitos and just lining them up on the bar; apparently assuming they would be ordered and consumed no matter what. I took a drink and sighed at the delicious, refreshing perfection of it.
“Okay, let’s hear it,” I said.
He swallowed a mouthful of his mojito with a gulp. “Alright, here goes. After you collapsed, I got you inside. There was a lot of chaos for a while, but eventually, once the campus was cleared and the students dismissed back to their dorms, we got a chance to explain what had happened out there to your father and your sister.”
“Naturally, they were both pretty shaken up by the news that the Sentries were after Iris,” he explained. “And naturally, Sentry Force wanted to know why. So, in addition to the typical forensics we do on the cores, they wanted to run a battery of tests on her.”
“Oh, wow,” I muttered.
“Yeah. Iris was all for it, but your father fought it; hard. For almost two full days, even though Iris is twenty-three years old and could sign the consent forms herself, he refused to let Sentry Force “conduct testing on any students or staff at his facility” and cited a bunch of academy bylaws—that actually exist, by the way—to support his argument.” Crew took a quick sip of his mojito and let out a short laugh.
“It was actually sort of impressive,” he said. “and scary. It definitely makes me think that I’m in big trouble, while I’m sitting here right now on a date with his daughter, with my arm around her and lots of plans about how I’m going to kiss her later, when he finds out about us.”
My stomach flipped and I bit my lip. “I’m twenty-six years old. I can sign the consent forms myself,” I quipped in a voice so sultry I wasn’t even positive it was mine.
He grinned. “Don’t distract me.”
“Sorry. Continue.”
“So, finally, Sentry Force arranged to take her to the Empire State office in Albany, by magical court order if necessary, and Forrest freaked out. He didn’t want his baby girl to leave the campus, since it was the safest place for her to be. So, he gave his consent to make an exception to the bylaws and allow the testing to be performed at Shadow Lane.”
He paused and took a deep breath, holding it in with a wince on his face before blowing it out in a sharp exhale.
“Oh, God, what?” I groaned. Queasiness settled into the bottom of my stomach.
Was something wrong with Iris?
“The good news is we now know exactly why the Sentries, or more specifically whoever is sending and controlling them, want your sister,” he said.
“And the bad news?”
“There’s quite a bit of it, I’m afraid,” he sighed. “We don’t know how to protect her in the long-term, other than to keep her under lock and key.”
“Which will never work for Iris,” I remarked.
“Exactly,” he said, “and wouldn’t work for very long, either. The Sentries advance with every obstacle we throw at them. It’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to penetrate the protection spells we’ve put on Shadow Lane.”
A grimace gripped my face. The last thing I wanted, after anything happening to my sister, was for anything to happen to my students. Nor did I want them to have to evacuate the school, not when we’d just gotten into the swing of the fall semester.
“Why do they want her, Crew?” I asked.
He took another deep breath. “Marigold . . . she’s—her blood is special. Her magic is unique. The Sentries—their creator—have never encountered anything like it, so they’re drawn to it. They think it holds the answers to our defeat, much in the same way as we capture them and study their cores.”
“What’s so special about it?”
A third deep breath and a tight face. His hands fussed with the sugar packets on the table.
“She’s half fae.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I shook my head, and then reached for my drink. Continuing to shake my head, I gulped it down, as if the sweet liquor concoction would make this piece of information disappear.
“No, that’s not possible,” I argued. “It’s not possible because that would mean—that would mean that we don’t have the same mother.”
My throat closed off and a sob threatened to break the last words as I spoke them.
“I’m sorry, Mare,” he murmured, taking my hand in his and squeezing it. “When we had the results, we confronted your father, certain there was some mistake. He confirmed it. He said he had had an affair with a woman on the staff when you were little and after Iris was born. The woman revealed to him that she was a faerie and she had been summoned to return to her realm and serve out her punishment for having relations with a human.”
“Your mother agreed to
raise Iris as her own, but Forrest said she never trusted him again, and it ate away at their marriage,” he continued. “He said that’s why she eventually left. So, it should come at no additional surprise to you that Iris refuses to speak to him. Hell, she even refuses to be in the same wing of the building as him.”
“We both live in the same wing as him,” I said.
“Yes, and she has demanded to be moved,” he replied. “She’s already been accommodated. She’s definitely got more than a few of my Sentry Force colleagues wrapped around her finger.”
“That’s the least shocking thing you’ve said to me all night,” I drawled, and he chuckled, squeezing my hand again.
Our waiter came by the table, wearing a fedora, just as Crew had described at the staff dinner, only days ago. We ordered another round of mojitos, and a steak quesadilla entree and platter of empanadas to share.
“So, Iris’s mother . . . is that—is that what they’ll do to you?” I questioned.
“Drag me back and punish me?” he asked with raised eyebrows. “Well, I mean, we haven’t had relations, but even still, probably not.”
“Why not?” I asked. I took a sip of my fresh mojito that had, again, been dropped off so quickly I wondered it if it had been conjured.
“Because . . . I am a prince,” he admitted, his cheeks turning pink with embarrassment.
I choked on my drink. “A what?!”
“A prince,” he repeated.
“Then why are you here? In the mortal realm? Posing as a warlock?” I interrogated.
“Are you familiar with the tale of Sleeping Beauty?” he asked.
“Yes, of course I am, I was raised on Disney movies,” I said. “Maleficent was my role model.”
“Well, my aunt is as close to the real Maleficent as it comes, and she wanted the throne so badly that she threatened to turn me into a piglet and feed me to werewolves, so, yeah . . . my parents decided to hide me,” he explained. “But instead of hiding a mortal princess baby with three fairies, they hid their faerie prince baby with a witch and a warlock in Salem, Massachusetts.”
“They hid you with the enemy?” I gasped in shock.
“My parents—my real parents, the man and woman who raised me—wanted a child so badly they didn’t care,” he said. “They loved me and supported me as parents are supposed to. To them I wasn’t a faerie, or an obligation, or a sworn enemy, or anything like that. I was just their son, from day one, until now. They’re my biggest fans.”
“My faerie mother and father have tried to convince me to come home and join the court of the fae and to marry, but I won’t leave my human mom and dad,” he added. “Especially not while things are so dangerous.”
I sighed and looked at my lap, as we came back to the subject of the danger. It seemed as if it had persisted almost nonstop since the day Iris and I were attacked by a Sentry, while returning her graduation cloak, just months before in the early summer. A day, or a conversation, or a date, or a class would be going on just fine and normal and then we’d all be reminded of the peril witches and warlocks were in—and how very little we knew about why it was happening.
Now that danger was closer to me than ever.
“Marigold,” Crew murmured, tucking his hand under my chin, “if anyone can figure out how to protect your sister, it’s you.”
I swallowed hard through a tight throat and blushed. “I don’t know about that—”
“I do,” he said and then his lips curled into that delicious smirk I’d already grown accustomed to. “I’ve already told all of Sentry Force just that; and I may have hinted heavily that you’re a genius, so now you have to do it.”
We ate our meal after it arrived, while Crew filled me in on more of the drama and goings on at the school that I’d missed. Eventually, we stopped talking about Shadow Lane altogether and discussed our favorite movies and music, places we had visited on the East Coast, places we wanted to visit—whenever we both stopped working all the time.
Around ten o’clock, the staff moved a section of tables out of the way and people jumped up from the bar and started salsa dancing in the little area they had cleared. The twinkle in Crew’s eyes told me he wanted to dance, too.
“I’m not great—” I tried to warn him, but he didn’t listen. He was half way out of the booth, pulling me with him.
“Neither am I,” he said as we claimed a spot on the dance floor.
He put his other hand on my waist as we watched the other dancers around us. When he stepped forward I stepped back, and when he stepped back on the other foot, I stepped forward, rolling my hips as best as I could with my steps and the rhythm.
Once we had the basic step pattern down, he threw in a few spins that were less than graceful on either of our parts, but which made us laugh hysterically. Then, he pulled me in closer, pressing his hips against mine as we both swiveled and swayed with the music.
My desire took over again and my hands slid down from around his neck and I dug my fingers into his back as I pulled him even closer. I didn’t know what had come over me. I had never been forceful or aggressive, especially after only knowing him for a few days, more than half of which I wasn’t even awake for.
But everything about being with him felt right. Without over-analyzing or thinking it to death or even taking it as slowly as possible, as I’d done with every other relationship I’d had, I just knew I wanted him and wanted to be his.
“Should we get out of here?” he murmured, dropping his head to my ear.
I nodded, and we paid our tab, before heading back to our little teleport spot in the alley. Within a moment, we were standing in a cool, dark, silent room. When Crew lit every candle in the room simultaneously, with magic, I realized we were in the sitting room of the Shadow Lane guest house.
“You got the guest house?!” I spat out.
“Obviously,” he laughed. “I am the guest of honor, remember?”
“We usually reserve this for diplomats and coven leaders and—”
“Famous people?” he suggested.
“Okay, good point,” I conceded.
“I don’t want to go back to that,” he muttered, bringing his face to within an inch of mine, as he wrapped an arm around the small of my back and ran a hand across my forehead, tucking a curly strand of my hair behind my ear.
My skin prickled and a wave of desire rippled through me at his touch.
“I’m going to retire from Arena,” he continued.
“Will that make you happier?” I asked.
“It will allow me a lot more time to focus on things that will make me happy,” he answered, nodding slowly, his eyes locked on mine.
“That sounds great,” I murmured.
“Oh, it’s going to be . . .”
He ran his thumb over my lips and I shuddered. Slowly, gently, he touched his lips to mine and took me into a tender kiss. But for all its languid softness, it built a fire inside me—a wildfire that sparked and roared and could not be contained.
A broken sigh of frustrated desire escaped me, when we broke for breath and it was all he needed to spur him on. He growled like an animal as he pulled me in tightly against his solid wall of a body and plunged his lips into mine. Barely aware of what I was doing, in the fog of passion, I started to unbutton his shirt.
Pulling back from the more urgent kiss, he removed his shirt once I’d unbuttoned it, and then moved on to mine. We locked lips again, this time filled with need and hunger. Guiding me by the waist, he backed up until his legs hit the sofa and he sat, positioning me in a straddle over his lap.
Immediately, I felt his need as I settled against him, ready and awaiting the union we both knew was near. My hair fell over his face like a peach-colored curtain as he dropped his head back, a groan of arousal rumbling in his throat. Just as my broken sigh had fueled him, the sound of his need turned me into a pillar of flame, every inch of me burning and aching for him.
I took his bottom lip between my teeth and he growled with raveno
us demand. Lifting me up slightly, he swiftly unbuckled his belt and slid his pants and boxers off. Then, in a fluid movement, he flipped me onto my back on the sofa.
Hovering over me, he pulled the tie on my wrap skirt, letting it fall open on either side of my body. Finally, he removed my panties, so slowly and carefully I was sure he was toying with me, purposefully driving me mad with anticipation.
I writhed underneath him in expectancy and he took his cue, joining our bodies with urgency. Spine contorting, I gasped at the depth he reached, as he sent shockwaves through my every nerve, along the way. He took the opportunity to lay his lips on the thin skin of my exposed neck.
“Crew,” I uttered in a raspy, broken exhalation as he slid himself out then drove in again, even deeper.
His moan of approval vibrated against my throat as his mouth explored every inch of it. “Oh, God, Mare . . .”
As his tempo built and his depth increased, a fiery, tingling tension built throughout my core. Our bodies moved to a silent beat—forward and back, in and out, like the salsa—compounding the burn, the ache, bringing me closer and closer to the invisible edge.
Then, the tempo sped up again and the rhythm broke from a steady cadence to a frenzied, desperate dance. Our lips met with passion in the midst of our futile battle for breath. The edge neared and I clawed at his lower back to pull him further into me.
He seemed to know how close I was to breaking, and grabbed me by the hips drawing them upward, as he pressed himself to his final depth. I threw my head back and cried out as the floodgates burst open, drowning me in warm, quivering waves of release.
Burying his lips against my chest, he roared like a beast through his finish, squeezing my waist in his strong hands as we both collapsed in ecstatic exhaustion.
He rolled to his side, wedging himself between me and the back of the sofa, and rested his head on my shoulder.
“That was . . .” he breathed. “Wow.”
I ran my fingers through his hair and my lips instinctively pecked his sweat-pearled forehead. He lifted his head up to meet my eyes.
Bonded by Fae's Magic Page 6
