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Buylinks above
Publisher: Cari Silverwood 1st edition released: June 2011 by Loose Id Rereleased at a lower price: June 2015 Genre: M/f BDSM/ Urban fantasy/ PNR When a man with mint-green eyes steps from a lake and offers to rescue Danii’s dog in exchange for three days of total obedience, it’s obvious he must be either joking or crazy. She must be the crazy one, though, because somehow, she ends up saying yes. Being a police officer, she usually knows how to handle the crazies, but when it comes to Heketoro, she’s the one being handled. Each day their lovemaking becomes wilder and Danii discovers exactly how far this man can take her. Though the tattoos drawing themselves on his body make it clear he’s not quite human, to Danii what’s more important is their burgeoning love for each other. To Heketoro, what's important is one last ritual of love needed to break an ancient curse that prevents him from returning to his world. But as the time draws near, his enemies return and threaten to destroy him by using his only weakness -- Danii. |
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Nominated in the BDSM category for a CAPA award
See The Romance Studio's site for a full list of nominees Winners drawn on Valentine's Day 2012 |
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Chapter One
Her wrists were drawn taut above her head, secured to the headboard by ropes of thorned red rose and bougainvillea. The pricks of their thorns threatened to puncture her dream. She resisted that, wanting more. Raising her head, she stared down the length of her body, past her protruding red nipples and along her stomach where sweat lined the floral rope fastening her thighs up against her body. With her bottom tilted and her legs spread, her pussy was open, available.
The man, his black hair floating like the rays of a sun, lifted his head from between her thighs. She gasped, rolling her hips upward. The wet tip of his tongue slid across as he licked her juices off his lower lip. Her clit, so recently probed by that clever tongue, pulsed. If he didn’t put it back there, soon…
She panted as his thumbs glided in the slickness down below, felt them sink deep into her, then deeper inside, and gasped again, lost in the molten sensation. She tried to move her arms, her legs and couldn’t. Trapped and pinioned for him to do what he wished. Excitement screwed her insides a notch tighter. Her vagina squeezed around his thumbs. He pulled them out, and she mewed at the loss.
Slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, he rose to his feet, shifting position until his hands wrapped around her thighs and the head of his cock pressed against her entrance.
Anticipation made everything feverish bright, sent lust snaking, thick as syrup, to her groin. Her thigh muscles juddered as she pushed up in vain against the rope. The rope tightened. The thorns bit down.
The man smiled with satisfaction as her struggling subsided, becoming a trembling acceptance of what was to come. He drove the head of his cock into her, sliding inside, and halted. She groaned, anticipating the thrust as he penetrated farther.
Watching her intently, he skated his finger in tantalizing circles about her clit, sometimes touching the aching nub and sometimes not. He gripped it between finger and thumb and squeezed, then thrust with his cock, then squeezed, then thrust—the rhythm driving her closer and closer to the edge, her clit so swollen she was sure she’d explode if her release was held off a second longer. Withdrawing until the head barely parted her lips, he poised there, making her ache, making her want.
Aaah. She arched, threw back her head, opened her mouth…and something soft and furry landed on her. A long tongue swept across her face. The dream dissolved.
Danii opened one eye. Two doggy eyes looked back.
“Killer,” she rasped. Her cocker spaniel barked twice and squirmed closer. She plonked a hand on his head to still his tongue and squinted at the alarm clock.
“Six o’clock. Gah! Couldn’t you have waited one more minute? We nearly did it this time!” Not that it would have mattered. Her dreams always ended before she came, though this time had been close, much closer than usual.
Danii squeezed her thighs together and groaned. She really needed a lover. Only, good men didn’t grow on trees, especially not men who did special tricks with bougainvillea. Whoa, that had been something, way too kinky. She’d never let a man do that to her for real, but in dreams, in dreams it was…nice.
Killer barked again, more urgently.
“You want to go for your walk, don’t you?”
He ruffed and sat up, tail swishing across the sheets.
“Okay. Okay. I’m getting up.”
* * *
Getting her mind in gear in the early morning was something she’d had practice at for years. Within half an hour, Danii was at the lake, having pulled on jeans and a top and collected the neighbors’ dog like she’d promised. The lake was blue-green, cool, and still. The sun’s rays struggled over the horizon in little sparks and glints that hurt her eyes when she looked up.
Preoccupied by thoughts of what might await her at work later that morning, Danii barely noticed the concrete path under her feet, the ducks cruising on the water, or the myriad other life in and around the lake. She’d been here a million times, and the dogs more than made up for her inattention as they sniffed weeds, tree trunks, a patch or two of sodden grass, and eyed everything that moved.
Most likely there’d be a long list of thefts and assaults to investigate today—no court appearances, thank heavens, as far as she knew. With a wrench she brought her mind back to the here and now. Time for all the stresses of work later, when she had to think about it.
Killer and Jugsy, the neighbor’s black-spotted dalmatian, easily kept up with her on the lazy walk around the lake, though the dalmatian had a habit of doing pretzel maneuvers around Killer every so often.
A distinctive child’s hat with butterfly appliqué rested abandoned on the grass ahead. She knew Marie, the mother of the child, and went to pick it up. Jugsy’s lead tangled with Killer’s at the same time she bent over, and she absentmindedly fiddled with the lead and dropped it.
In that one millisecond of sloppiness, a dragonfly darted across Jugsy’s nose, and he took off like a spotted rocket. She lunged, then dived for the loop of the lead and missed. With a gigantic splash, Jugsy plunged into the lake and was yards out before she’d scrambled up off the grass.
Holy hells. Who was to know the animal could win an Olympic medal in dog paddle?
For a Friday morning, the park was inexplicably deserted. No one in front of me and—Danii looked back along the snaking path of gray concrete--no one behind. Just a carpet of grass up to the lake edge, low shrubs spotted here and there either side of the path, and a few timber seats randomly decorated with pigeon droppings. And one very wet dalmatian, trailing his lead through the weeds and scaring up ducks and cormorants while galumphing around on the island in the middle of the lake.
“Damn.” She wrapped the end of Killer’s leash around her hand an extra turn and gave him a quick pat. “At least you’re not stupid enough to go swimming.” Tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, spaniel ears drooping in sympathy, Killer panted happily up at her, then turned to bark at Jugsy.
“Jugsy!” Damn, damn, and damn. It seemed a good time to curse everything. As well as exercising the dogs, she came here to wind down, to forget things like the maniac burglar the sergeant wanted caught ASAP, the avalanche of paperwork on her desk, and the niggling headache that came with it. No way was she getting in that weed-infested water, tangling her legs and drowning because her neighbors’ dog had decided to go nuts.
But…she couldn’t leave him. He might be so dumb a lobotomized weevil could beat him in an IQ test, but he was adorable. She looked down at her jeans and low-cut red T-shirt. Jeans weren’t swimming gear—get them wet, and she’d find it hard to stay afloat. The alternative was to strip them off. No. No way am I stripping off in public.
She shucked her flip-flops and inched her toes closer to the murky green water. In the depths, something flash-wriggled past. Give her a recalcitrant criminal and she’d leap in with handcuffs flying, but this—no way. Water, deep water, that went down into green depths…it was enough to give her a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. She stared, feeling a prickle of anxiety that she knew was only an eyeblink away from becoming full-blown, mind-churning panic.
Liar. Any water made her want to cut and run.
“Need a hand?” From behind her came a deep voice with enough gravel in it to finish her driveway.
She jumped, stepping back at the same time as she swung to see who’d spoken. Her heart pounded ten times faster than it should. As she peered out through the swathe of hair across her eyes, the sun made gold and red haloes on the strands of auburn. Calm down, girl, it’s just a man.
She snagged back her hair. “Hi. My friend’s dog is stuck on the island.”
Reality shifted abruptly, and her stomach twisted. She knew him—he was the man from her dream fantasies for the last year. The resemblance was unnerving. Keeping her face from showing shock was a struggle.
If she talked fast, the man might not notice her blush. In her last dream, she’d been naked and tied to the headboard.
As if he could read her thoughts. Dreams were just…dreams.
He stood there, dripping wet, as sleek as a well-dressed seal, in skin-hugging black pants and a long-sleeved shirt that looked to be made of something like thin neoprene. He’d been swimming? His jet-black hair was tied in a ponytail. He was a little on the thin side for her tastes, and his irises were an odd color that was almost as green as the grass under her feet. Contacts, surely.
It was hard not to stare. Where had he come from?
He smiled. “Would you like me to get the dog back?”
Ooh. His voice went deep enough to turn her bones to jelly.
Killer gave a halfhearted woof, then wagged his tail. A guard dog, he was not.
“Uh. Um. You’d do that? I mean…” She tore her gaze away. “Look at it. There’s weeds in there that could pull you under.” She tucked her thumbs in her belt loops—only to realize it made her breasts push out. Casual-like, she unhooked her thumbs, then threw out some words to cover her embarrassment. “Are you trying out a scuba tank or something?”
He took a step closer. “My name is Heketoro. I will do this in return for one gift.”
A gift? Surely he joked? But the man said it straight-faced, looking down at her with those green eyes, and she noticed for the first time a tiny, undulating tattoo on his temple. Her throat tightened, her heart shifting gear into full speed ahead. Not from fear, though; she knew that feeling. Desire. Her body was telling her something she didn’t want to know, and it was all the fault of those stupid dreams.
He hadn’t moved at all. He was serious? Okay, she could hear others talking now, farther along the path where houses crowded in toward the lake; besides, how crazy could this Heketoro be?
“A gift? Sure, what sort? Ten dollars?”
“No. You will do as I bid you for three days,” he said quietly, smooth as a wrangler handling a horse. The moment coalesced, as if something was about to happen. Water droplets fell from the tips of his fingers where his big hands hung by his sides.
That was it; he said no more. She blinked, her mouth falling open. He was crazy.
From the small movements of his eyes, he was obviously studying her reaction. A smile spread slowly across his face. Ah. It was a joke. Men. What was it with their sense of humor?
Jugsy bellowed a panicked bark that might mean anything from a bird diving on him to a broken leg.
“Jugsy! Here, boy!” Still trying to keep one eye on Heketoro, she saw the dog’s lead was around a dead branch, and Jugsy was frantically yanking on it. He pushed straight-legged as he struggled to get free. The collar was near to strangling him. “Jugsy! Drop!”
Panting and coughing, the dog ignored her and tugged even harder on his leash.
“Damn!” She shuddered, sucked in a breath, and lunged forward into the water only to have her foot go down into a deeper section. Her other leg wobbled from the strain. The lake floor must drop away quickly. She overbalanced and plunged in, water rising to her waist.
No!
The slime under her bare feet, the dark water and the unknown only inches away sent a flood of ice up her legs, to her stomach, to her chest. Everything tightened. She couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but stare and feel her control escaping.
Heketoro grabbed her, both his arms wrapping around below her breasts. His iron-hard muscles left her no option except to be dragged out backward.
“Let me go!” She wriggled and glared over her shoulder. “I’m okay!” He released her and stepped back. Despite her flare of temper, he seemed composed, his eyes steady, though watching her carefully.
Anger, remorse, and fear messed up her thoughts. He’d helped her. Why am I yelling at him?
She shuddered, knowing exactly why, striving to hold at bay those ugly, half-buried memories. The muffled gurgles in her ears, her arms flailing as she sank into a realm of darkening green, lungs straining, then the sunlight in her eyes and her mother hugging her tight. The man who had pulled her from the water had stayed a while, his shadow cast over them, his words dull and distant. She’d spewed water all over her mom’s lap.
Jugsy gave an extra-loud yelp. He was still trying desperately to get free. She looked frantically from the dog to the stranger and back again to Jugsy.
“Look…sorry! Sorry. I’m okay. Thank you. But…can you help? The dog’s going to hurt himself.”
He regarded her. “Yes, I can see you’re okay, despite always trying to drown yourself. I’m going. Don’t worry. I’ll be safe. I’ll get the dog. Stay there.” Without fuss, he turned and waded out calf-deep. He stopped to stare into her eyes. “Three days. Yes?”
“Wha—”This guy took a joke too far. She rolled her eyes, checking that box in her mind next to his name. The one where the line read: To be watched. Still, the dog needed to be freed. She was a big girl, with a black belt in Go-Ryu Karate, and a nine millimeter GLOCK in her car, and she sure wasn’t getting back in that lake. She waved him on. “Whatever. Go!”
The air shimmied as if heated. She swayed, almost dizzy. What had that been? An irrevocability, a this-is-it-you’ve-done-it-now kind of sensation. Like the coiling in your guts at the end of your last day at high school, when you stepped out the gates, as near to adult as you thought anyone could get.
As she watched, Heketoro dived beneath the water and became a blurred dark shape weaving sinuously between the underwater islands of weed. Oh, my. What have I done? If he got into trouble, would she have to haul him out? If she had to, she guessed she would…somehow. Fears were made to be conquered, weren’t they?
What in the world had he meant by saying she was always trying to drown herself? He couldn’t possibly know about her childhood accident, and she’d stayed away from deep water ever since. There was something just plain wrong with swimming—it made her head ache and her muscles cramp with fear if she went in past a couple of feet deep. Even the bathtub got no use in her house.
She shifted uneasily, trying to ignore the high-pitched yelps coming from Jugsy on the island. Her bare feet squelched in the grass. The island fascinated and repelled her at the same time. As if over there were another world where the usual rules didn’t apply.
Heketoro emerged onto the bank and strode over to Jugsy. He quickly untangled the lead and headed back with the now deliriously happy dalmatian following. Again, he swam under the water while Jugsy paddled across the surface. Seemingly unconcerned by his escapade, the dog sniffed hopefully at water lilies and passing dragonflies.
Frowning, Danii studied the second hand on her watch, a rare, if belated, gift from her sister. How long could this man stay underwater?
With water sluicing off him, Heketoro walked calmly from the lake, his black-clad chest barely moving. He breathed as if the swim had been nothing, yet he’d been under for two minutes. Jugsy shook himself next to her, sending out a spray. She dodged as best as she could.
“Pah!” She was wet from head to toe and might as well have done laps.
Her jeans had sagged down, and the top of her panties peeked out. The red shirt, the bottom of it soaked, clung to her like plastic wrap. A breeze made her nipples stand out like big buttons, saying press me. Disaster. She tried to be nonchalant when she wrapped her arms across her chest, as if she wasn’t concealing her nipples. Not that it worked for long. Heketoro handed the lead to her, and she had to take it.
“This is the first day,” he murmured. His fingers moved over hers, and across the back of her hand, to trace a light but electric path up her forearm.
She shook her head, dumbstruck by both his words and his touch.
A shiver ran through her. She noticed every runnel of water across the muscle-hugging neoprene, felt the stir of his breath and the goose bumps rising on her skin.
“The agreement stands.” Slowly, as if she were an animal he was afraid might startle, he reached out and put his hands on her waist, his fingertips almost meeting in the small of her back. He pulled her to him.
Knee to the groin, she told herself, blood thumping hard through her arteries. Or a chin strike and a heel slide down the leg to crunch onto the foot. And yet…and yet she did nothing.
“One kiss,” he murmured. And, oh, those green eyes, lids halfway down. His lips covered hers, lake water mixing with the taste of his mouth. She swayed and closed her eyes. The brush and press of warm lips melted whatever resistance she might have summoned, and she felt warmth between her thighs. Beneath her hands was the moist slickness of his wetsuit, and beneath that the shift and glide of muscle. She clutched at him, lost, drowning in sensation.
Whatever time passed, she couldn’t say, as she answered his kiss with the instinctive movements of her body, pressing against him, groin to groin. She sighed as his mouth left hers to journey with a trail of kisses down to the hollow of her neck and farther, to where her breasts swelled above fabric. He glided his broad hand across the thin T-shirt, from her waist down her back, fingers curving into her bottom and drawing her closer. Then he stopped. She hung there in his arms, with her head back and lips parted, inviting more of his caresses. Through the languor, she was aware of his gaze, though her eyes remained closed.
He leaned in, warmth stirring the lock of hair at her ear as he murmured, “I see our agreement is to your liking. Later then, we will continue this.”
He released her, and she staggered a little, then recovered.
Every part of her ached with longing, her vulva wet, swollen, and so sensitive, the pressure of her jeans between her legs sent out a ripple of pleasure.
She should tell him no. She should. And she shivered and lifted her head only to find him gone. Water gurgled as it washed together where an arrow of disturbance mapped where he’d gone. Underwater, again. People walked past, silent, as if shocked at what they’d seen only moments before.
One of them, a young woman she called Bug Lady, waded past like a strange new species of flamingo, jeans tucked into galoshes, notebook in hand, her sleek black tresses caught neatly by a silver clip, her hands encased in a pair of black gloves. She was a university type who studied the wildlife. A pair of little yellow sunglasses were perched on her nose, and Danii could tell that behind them, Bug Lady’s eyes were examining her.
And Danii didn’t care at all, only wondering at what had come over her. She squeezed her hand over the dogs’ leads until it hurt, as if that would make everything normal again.
Did I imagine it? The grass at her feet was wet but held no footprints. No paw prints either. She tested her own bare feet, pressing down on the grass. The lush stiff blades sprang upright too quickly to leave a trace for long.
Near the lake’s edge, stirred-up mud swirled. Something had been there. There was always an explanation.
She squinted out across the water, daring him to appear, feeling…watched, by something out there. She sucked in her lower lip, let it slip across her teeth. This was ridiculous.
He never emerged, at least nowhere that she could see, and at last she gave up and turned aside to go back to her car. The dog leads were still trapped in her right hand—the woven cord having left imprints on her flesh. Killer and Jugsy, who’d been waiting patiently on the grass, climbed to their feet and followed her. She picked up the butterfly hat as she went past and let it swing idly from her hand.
“Did I imagine that?” she asked Killer, but he only laughed back at her in that laid-back cocker spaniel way, forehead wrinkling, eyes sad but completely clueless. “Jeez, why can’t dogs talk? It would sure help.”
What a morning. The urgency of the world swept back over her. She was going to be late for work if she didn’t step on it. The real world beckoned, not some strange man who disappeared underwater and who might never have been there at all. But memories simmered in her mind—the touch of his lips and tongue and hands on her mouth and skin, the ache in her swollen cleft. She couldn’t have imagined him, or that kiss. A sigh escaped her lips as she remembered. What a kiss.
Those last words repeated themselves in her thoughts: Later then, we will continue this. If he was real, and surely he must be, what in the world did he mean by that? She’d not given him her address. Thank God. What had she been thinking?
Not thinking, no brain cells being used there at all. Dying to get laid, pure and simple.
She reached her four-wheel drive and clicked the button to open it, then tossed the hat onto the passenger seat. Marie’s car was nowhere in sight, so she must have left already. Having towel-dried herself, then Jugsy, she let the dogs in and slumped back against the sun-warmed metal. A crazy mix of fear and longing made her shudder, and she put a hand to her forehead, splaying her fingers in her hair.
If he was real, what if he finds me?
* * *
Heketoro stood ankle-deep at the sandy edge of the island, remembering the way Danii’s gaze had swept across her surroundings, looking for him. The fae glamour had concealed him, and yet he’d found himself wishing he could have stepped out and shown himself for what he was. That would have been a mistake. He knew this from the past—the last woman, twenty years or more ago, had run wild-eyed and terrified from him.
But what a soft, sensual mouth and delicious body this one possessed. Something else too, that he couldn’t yet pin down or understand, had always drawn him to her—something beyond mere sexuality. For all the years he’d watched her, he still didn’t know. Every instinct, every thought, every fragment of his body told him she was the key to his escape from this world. Soon he would see if the darker ways of the fae repelled her, or awakened her.
A green tree frog hopped onto his boot and clung there, moist and goggle-eyed, looking up at him.
He’d taken the first step on the path to defeating the curse and gained her consent. So many years, he’d waited for the antiquated sexual rules of humans to change. He’d waited through times of corsets and tea gowns, through flappers and miniskirts and power shoulders. He could wait a little longer. No matter how much he wanted to kiss her into submission until she begged him to take her. That would happen soon enough—tonight, it would have to be. So little time was left.
A black eel swirled up from the water, mouth gaping to swallow the frog. He grinned, plucked the frog from his boot, and let it hop safely onto the dry land behind him. The eel disappeared back into the depths.
He watched it go, thinking wryly, one of these days his empathy for the little ones would be his undoing. Eels had to eat something too.
The man, his black hair floating like the rays of a sun, lifted his head from between her thighs. She gasped, rolling her hips upward. The wet tip of his tongue slid across as he licked her juices off his lower lip. Her clit, so recently probed by that clever tongue, pulsed. If he didn’t put it back there, soon…
She panted as his thumbs glided in the slickness down below, felt them sink deep into her, then deeper inside, and gasped again, lost in the molten sensation. She tried to move her arms, her legs and couldn’t. Trapped and pinioned for him to do what he wished. Excitement screwed her insides a notch tighter. Her vagina squeezed around his thumbs. He pulled them out, and she mewed at the loss.
Slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, he rose to his feet, shifting position until his hands wrapped around her thighs and the head of his cock pressed against her entrance.
Anticipation made everything feverish bright, sent lust snaking, thick as syrup, to her groin. Her thigh muscles juddered as she pushed up in vain against the rope. The rope tightened. The thorns bit down.
The man smiled with satisfaction as her struggling subsided, becoming a trembling acceptance of what was to come. He drove the head of his cock into her, sliding inside, and halted. She groaned, anticipating the thrust as he penetrated farther.
Watching her intently, he skated his finger in tantalizing circles about her clit, sometimes touching the aching nub and sometimes not. He gripped it between finger and thumb and squeezed, then thrust with his cock, then squeezed, then thrust—the rhythm driving her closer and closer to the edge, her clit so swollen she was sure she’d explode if her release was held off a second longer. Withdrawing until the head barely parted her lips, he poised there, making her ache, making her want.
Aaah. She arched, threw back her head, opened her mouth…and something soft and furry landed on her. A long tongue swept across her face. The dream dissolved.
Danii opened one eye. Two doggy eyes looked back.
“Killer,” she rasped. Her cocker spaniel barked twice and squirmed closer. She plonked a hand on his head to still his tongue and squinted at the alarm clock.
“Six o’clock. Gah! Couldn’t you have waited one more minute? We nearly did it this time!” Not that it would have mattered. Her dreams always ended before she came, though this time had been close, much closer than usual.
Danii squeezed her thighs together and groaned. She really needed a lover. Only, good men didn’t grow on trees, especially not men who did special tricks with bougainvillea. Whoa, that had been something, way too kinky. She’d never let a man do that to her for real, but in dreams, in dreams it was…nice.
Killer barked again, more urgently.
“You want to go for your walk, don’t you?”
He ruffed and sat up, tail swishing across the sheets.
“Okay. Okay. I’m getting up.”
* * *
Getting her mind in gear in the early morning was something she’d had practice at for years. Within half an hour, Danii was at the lake, having pulled on jeans and a top and collected the neighbors’ dog like she’d promised. The lake was blue-green, cool, and still. The sun’s rays struggled over the horizon in little sparks and glints that hurt her eyes when she looked up.
Preoccupied by thoughts of what might await her at work later that morning, Danii barely noticed the concrete path under her feet, the ducks cruising on the water, or the myriad other life in and around the lake. She’d been here a million times, and the dogs more than made up for her inattention as they sniffed weeds, tree trunks, a patch or two of sodden grass, and eyed everything that moved.
Most likely there’d be a long list of thefts and assaults to investigate today—no court appearances, thank heavens, as far as she knew. With a wrench she brought her mind back to the here and now. Time for all the stresses of work later, when she had to think about it.
Killer and Jugsy, the neighbor’s black-spotted dalmatian, easily kept up with her on the lazy walk around the lake, though the dalmatian had a habit of doing pretzel maneuvers around Killer every so often.
A distinctive child’s hat with butterfly appliqué rested abandoned on the grass ahead. She knew Marie, the mother of the child, and went to pick it up. Jugsy’s lead tangled with Killer’s at the same time she bent over, and she absentmindedly fiddled with the lead and dropped it.
In that one millisecond of sloppiness, a dragonfly darted across Jugsy’s nose, and he took off like a spotted rocket. She lunged, then dived for the loop of the lead and missed. With a gigantic splash, Jugsy plunged into the lake and was yards out before she’d scrambled up off the grass.
Holy hells. Who was to know the animal could win an Olympic medal in dog paddle?
For a Friday morning, the park was inexplicably deserted. No one in front of me and—Danii looked back along the snaking path of gray concrete--no one behind. Just a carpet of grass up to the lake edge, low shrubs spotted here and there either side of the path, and a few timber seats randomly decorated with pigeon droppings. And one very wet dalmatian, trailing his lead through the weeds and scaring up ducks and cormorants while galumphing around on the island in the middle of the lake.
“Damn.” She wrapped the end of Killer’s leash around her hand an extra turn and gave him a quick pat. “At least you’re not stupid enough to go swimming.” Tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, spaniel ears drooping in sympathy, Killer panted happily up at her, then turned to bark at Jugsy.
“Jugsy!” Damn, damn, and damn. It seemed a good time to curse everything. As well as exercising the dogs, she came here to wind down, to forget things like the maniac burglar the sergeant wanted caught ASAP, the avalanche of paperwork on her desk, and the niggling headache that came with it. No way was she getting in that weed-infested water, tangling her legs and drowning because her neighbors’ dog had decided to go nuts.
But…she couldn’t leave him. He might be so dumb a lobotomized weevil could beat him in an IQ test, but he was adorable. She looked down at her jeans and low-cut red T-shirt. Jeans weren’t swimming gear—get them wet, and she’d find it hard to stay afloat. The alternative was to strip them off. No. No way am I stripping off in public.
She shucked her flip-flops and inched her toes closer to the murky green water. In the depths, something flash-wriggled past. Give her a recalcitrant criminal and she’d leap in with handcuffs flying, but this—no way. Water, deep water, that went down into green depths…it was enough to give her a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. She stared, feeling a prickle of anxiety that she knew was only an eyeblink away from becoming full-blown, mind-churning panic.
Liar. Any water made her want to cut and run.
“Need a hand?” From behind her came a deep voice with enough gravel in it to finish her driveway.
She jumped, stepping back at the same time as she swung to see who’d spoken. Her heart pounded ten times faster than it should. As she peered out through the swathe of hair across her eyes, the sun made gold and red haloes on the strands of auburn. Calm down, girl, it’s just a man.
She snagged back her hair. “Hi. My friend’s dog is stuck on the island.”
Reality shifted abruptly, and her stomach twisted. She knew him—he was the man from her dream fantasies for the last year. The resemblance was unnerving. Keeping her face from showing shock was a struggle.
If she talked fast, the man might not notice her blush. In her last dream, she’d been naked and tied to the headboard.
As if he could read her thoughts. Dreams were just…dreams.
He stood there, dripping wet, as sleek as a well-dressed seal, in skin-hugging black pants and a long-sleeved shirt that looked to be made of something like thin neoprene. He’d been swimming? His jet-black hair was tied in a ponytail. He was a little on the thin side for her tastes, and his irises were an odd color that was almost as green as the grass under her feet. Contacts, surely.
It was hard not to stare. Where had he come from?
He smiled. “Would you like me to get the dog back?”
Ooh. His voice went deep enough to turn her bones to jelly.
Killer gave a halfhearted woof, then wagged his tail. A guard dog, he was not.
“Uh. Um. You’d do that? I mean…” She tore her gaze away. “Look at it. There’s weeds in there that could pull you under.” She tucked her thumbs in her belt loops—only to realize it made her breasts push out. Casual-like, she unhooked her thumbs, then threw out some words to cover her embarrassment. “Are you trying out a scuba tank or something?”
He took a step closer. “My name is Heketoro. I will do this in return for one gift.”
A gift? Surely he joked? But the man said it straight-faced, looking down at her with those green eyes, and she noticed for the first time a tiny, undulating tattoo on his temple. Her throat tightened, her heart shifting gear into full speed ahead. Not from fear, though; she knew that feeling. Desire. Her body was telling her something she didn’t want to know, and it was all the fault of those stupid dreams.
He hadn’t moved at all. He was serious? Okay, she could hear others talking now, farther along the path where houses crowded in toward the lake; besides, how crazy could this Heketoro be?
“A gift? Sure, what sort? Ten dollars?”
“No. You will do as I bid you for three days,” he said quietly, smooth as a wrangler handling a horse. The moment coalesced, as if something was about to happen. Water droplets fell from the tips of his fingers where his big hands hung by his sides.
That was it; he said no more. She blinked, her mouth falling open. He was crazy.
From the small movements of his eyes, he was obviously studying her reaction. A smile spread slowly across his face. Ah. It was a joke. Men. What was it with their sense of humor?
Jugsy bellowed a panicked bark that might mean anything from a bird diving on him to a broken leg.
“Jugsy! Here, boy!” Still trying to keep one eye on Heketoro, she saw the dog’s lead was around a dead branch, and Jugsy was frantically yanking on it. He pushed straight-legged as he struggled to get free. The collar was near to strangling him. “Jugsy! Drop!”
Panting and coughing, the dog ignored her and tugged even harder on his leash.
“Damn!” She shuddered, sucked in a breath, and lunged forward into the water only to have her foot go down into a deeper section. Her other leg wobbled from the strain. The lake floor must drop away quickly. She overbalanced and plunged in, water rising to her waist.
No!
The slime under her bare feet, the dark water and the unknown only inches away sent a flood of ice up her legs, to her stomach, to her chest. Everything tightened. She couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but stare and feel her control escaping.
Heketoro grabbed her, both his arms wrapping around below her breasts. His iron-hard muscles left her no option except to be dragged out backward.
“Let me go!” She wriggled and glared over her shoulder. “I’m okay!” He released her and stepped back. Despite her flare of temper, he seemed composed, his eyes steady, though watching her carefully.
Anger, remorse, and fear messed up her thoughts. He’d helped her. Why am I yelling at him?
She shuddered, knowing exactly why, striving to hold at bay those ugly, half-buried memories. The muffled gurgles in her ears, her arms flailing as she sank into a realm of darkening green, lungs straining, then the sunlight in her eyes and her mother hugging her tight. The man who had pulled her from the water had stayed a while, his shadow cast over them, his words dull and distant. She’d spewed water all over her mom’s lap.
Jugsy gave an extra-loud yelp. He was still trying desperately to get free. She looked frantically from the dog to the stranger and back again to Jugsy.
“Look…sorry! Sorry. I’m okay. Thank you. But…can you help? The dog’s going to hurt himself.”
He regarded her. “Yes, I can see you’re okay, despite always trying to drown yourself. I’m going. Don’t worry. I’ll be safe. I’ll get the dog. Stay there.” Without fuss, he turned and waded out calf-deep. He stopped to stare into her eyes. “Three days. Yes?”
“Wha—”This guy took a joke too far. She rolled her eyes, checking that box in her mind next to his name. The one where the line read: To be watched. Still, the dog needed to be freed. She was a big girl, with a black belt in Go-Ryu Karate, and a nine millimeter GLOCK in her car, and she sure wasn’t getting back in that lake. She waved him on. “Whatever. Go!”
The air shimmied as if heated. She swayed, almost dizzy. What had that been? An irrevocability, a this-is-it-you’ve-done-it-now kind of sensation. Like the coiling in your guts at the end of your last day at high school, when you stepped out the gates, as near to adult as you thought anyone could get.
As she watched, Heketoro dived beneath the water and became a blurred dark shape weaving sinuously between the underwater islands of weed. Oh, my. What have I done? If he got into trouble, would she have to haul him out? If she had to, she guessed she would…somehow. Fears were made to be conquered, weren’t they?
What in the world had he meant by saying she was always trying to drown herself? He couldn’t possibly know about her childhood accident, and she’d stayed away from deep water ever since. There was something just plain wrong with swimming—it made her head ache and her muscles cramp with fear if she went in past a couple of feet deep. Even the bathtub got no use in her house.
She shifted uneasily, trying to ignore the high-pitched yelps coming from Jugsy on the island. Her bare feet squelched in the grass. The island fascinated and repelled her at the same time. As if over there were another world where the usual rules didn’t apply.
Heketoro emerged onto the bank and strode over to Jugsy. He quickly untangled the lead and headed back with the now deliriously happy dalmatian following. Again, he swam under the water while Jugsy paddled across the surface. Seemingly unconcerned by his escapade, the dog sniffed hopefully at water lilies and passing dragonflies.
Frowning, Danii studied the second hand on her watch, a rare, if belated, gift from her sister. How long could this man stay underwater?
With water sluicing off him, Heketoro walked calmly from the lake, his black-clad chest barely moving. He breathed as if the swim had been nothing, yet he’d been under for two minutes. Jugsy shook himself next to her, sending out a spray. She dodged as best as she could.
“Pah!” She was wet from head to toe and might as well have done laps.
Her jeans had sagged down, and the top of her panties peeked out. The red shirt, the bottom of it soaked, clung to her like plastic wrap. A breeze made her nipples stand out like big buttons, saying press me. Disaster. She tried to be nonchalant when she wrapped her arms across her chest, as if she wasn’t concealing her nipples. Not that it worked for long. Heketoro handed the lead to her, and she had to take it.
“This is the first day,” he murmured. His fingers moved over hers, and across the back of her hand, to trace a light but electric path up her forearm.
She shook her head, dumbstruck by both his words and his touch.
A shiver ran through her. She noticed every runnel of water across the muscle-hugging neoprene, felt the stir of his breath and the goose bumps rising on her skin.
“The agreement stands.” Slowly, as if she were an animal he was afraid might startle, he reached out and put his hands on her waist, his fingertips almost meeting in the small of her back. He pulled her to him.
Knee to the groin, she told herself, blood thumping hard through her arteries. Or a chin strike and a heel slide down the leg to crunch onto the foot. And yet…and yet she did nothing.
“One kiss,” he murmured. And, oh, those green eyes, lids halfway down. His lips covered hers, lake water mixing with the taste of his mouth. She swayed and closed her eyes. The brush and press of warm lips melted whatever resistance she might have summoned, and she felt warmth between her thighs. Beneath her hands was the moist slickness of his wetsuit, and beneath that the shift and glide of muscle. She clutched at him, lost, drowning in sensation.
Whatever time passed, she couldn’t say, as she answered his kiss with the instinctive movements of her body, pressing against him, groin to groin. She sighed as his mouth left hers to journey with a trail of kisses down to the hollow of her neck and farther, to where her breasts swelled above fabric. He glided his broad hand across the thin T-shirt, from her waist down her back, fingers curving into her bottom and drawing her closer. Then he stopped. She hung there in his arms, with her head back and lips parted, inviting more of his caresses. Through the languor, she was aware of his gaze, though her eyes remained closed.
He leaned in, warmth stirring the lock of hair at her ear as he murmured, “I see our agreement is to your liking. Later then, we will continue this.”
He released her, and she staggered a little, then recovered.
Every part of her ached with longing, her vulva wet, swollen, and so sensitive, the pressure of her jeans between her legs sent out a ripple of pleasure.
She should tell him no. She should. And she shivered and lifted her head only to find him gone. Water gurgled as it washed together where an arrow of disturbance mapped where he’d gone. Underwater, again. People walked past, silent, as if shocked at what they’d seen only moments before.
One of them, a young woman she called Bug Lady, waded past like a strange new species of flamingo, jeans tucked into galoshes, notebook in hand, her sleek black tresses caught neatly by a silver clip, her hands encased in a pair of black gloves. She was a university type who studied the wildlife. A pair of little yellow sunglasses were perched on her nose, and Danii could tell that behind them, Bug Lady’s eyes were examining her.
And Danii didn’t care at all, only wondering at what had come over her. She squeezed her hand over the dogs’ leads until it hurt, as if that would make everything normal again.
Did I imagine it? The grass at her feet was wet but held no footprints. No paw prints either. She tested her own bare feet, pressing down on the grass. The lush stiff blades sprang upright too quickly to leave a trace for long.
Near the lake’s edge, stirred-up mud swirled. Something had been there. There was always an explanation.
She squinted out across the water, daring him to appear, feeling…watched, by something out there. She sucked in her lower lip, let it slip across her teeth. This was ridiculous.
He never emerged, at least nowhere that she could see, and at last she gave up and turned aside to go back to her car. The dog leads were still trapped in her right hand—the woven cord having left imprints on her flesh. Killer and Jugsy, who’d been waiting patiently on the grass, climbed to their feet and followed her. She picked up the butterfly hat as she went past and let it swing idly from her hand.
“Did I imagine that?” she asked Killer, but he only laughed back at her in that laid-back cocker spaniel way, forehead wrinkling, eyes sad but completely clueless. “Jeez, why can’t dogs talk? It would sure help.”
What a morning. The urgency of the world swept back over her. She was going to be late for work if she didn’t step on it. The real world beckoned, not some strange man who disappeared underwater and who might never have been there at all. But memories simmered in her mind—the touch of his lips and tongue and hands on her mouth and skin, the ache in her swollen cleft. She couldn’t have imagined him, or that kiss. A sigh escaped her lips as she remembered. What a kiss.
Those last words repeated themselves in her thoughts: Later then, we will continue this. If he was real, and surely he must be, what in the world did he mean by that? She’d not given him her address. Thank God. What had she been thinking?
Not thinking, no brain cells being used there at all. Dying to get laid, pure and simple.
She reached her four-wheel drive and clicked the button to open it, then tossed the hat onto the passenger seat. Marie’s car was nowhere in sight, so she must have left already. Having towel-dried herself, then Jugsy, she let the dogs in and slumped back against the sun-warmed metal. A crazy mix of fear and longing made her shudder, and she put a hand to her forehead, splaying her fingers in her hair.
If he was real, what if he finds me?
* * *
Heketoro stood ankle-deep at the sandy edge of the island, remembering the way Danii’s gaze had swept across her surroundings, looking for him. The fae glamour had concealed him, and yet he’d found himself wishing he could have stepped out and shown himself for what he was. That would have been a mistake. He knew this from the past—the last woman, twenty years or more ago, had run wild-eyed and terrified from him.
But what a soft, sensual mouth and delicious body this one possessed. Something else too, that he couldn’t yet pin down or understand, had always drawn him to her—something beyond mere sexuality. For all the years he’d watched her, he still didn’t know. Every instinct, every thought, every fragment of his body told him she was the key to his escape from this world. Soon he would see if the darker ways of the fae repelled her, or awakened her.
A green tree frog hopped onto his boot and clung there, moist and goggle-eyed, looking up at him.
He’d taken the first step on the path to defeating the curse and gained her consent. So many years, he’d waited for the antiquated sexual rules of humans to change. He’d waited through times of corsets and tea gowns, through flappers and miniskirts and power shoulders. He could wait a little longer. No matter how much he wanted to kiss her into submission until she begged him to take her. That would happen soon enough—tonight, it would have to be. So little time was left.
A black eel swirled up from the water, mouth gaping to swallow the frog. He grinned, plucked the frog from his boot, and let it hop safely onto the dry land behind him. The eel disappeared back into the depths.
He watched it go, thinking wryly, one of these days his empathy for the little ones would be his undoing. Eels had to eat something too.
Copyright Cari Silverwood 2011. All rights reserved. No part of these publications may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.