Chapter I

“She’s three hundred and thirty-seven years old. That’s a bit late to be running away from home.” “She aren’t running away from home. She just taking a vacation.”
“It looks a lot like running.”
“And how does you know what running look like, you big pansy? You is too old to get faster than a hobbles!”

“Shush!” The hiss is Tabitha’s voice got her companions’ attention, and they fell into a tense, bristling silence. “Silent” or “sniping” described how Squit and Binkie spent nearly all their time together, but at the moment, Tabitha had other things to worry about.

She couldn’t afford a distraction. “I told the both of you that if you wanted to come see me off, you were going to have to be quiet. If you can’t manage that, I can always send you back to the palace.”

The pixie and the imp exchanged fulminating glares, one from the spot where he fluttered beside Tabitha’s head, the other from his perch on her shoulder. She ignored them both, concentrating on making sure they weren’t being followed as she picked a path through the dense, cool forest north of the Palace. Normally, no one would have cared that she’d gone and certainly no one would of stopped her, but as she had recently realized, very few things these days were “normal” at Court.

“Your Highness,” the pixie broke in again, his tone clearly disapproving, “I really think it would be better –“
She fixed him with a sweetly dangerous smile. “Binkie, my dear friend, if you don’t shut up in the next five seconds, I might just change my mind and take you with me.”

The resulting silence lent a genuine curve to her smile. She could hear Squit chortling beside her ear, but she ignored him. She’d learned long ago not to encourage the imp. Or any imp. It only gave them ideas.

The pixie continued to flutter beside her head and cast disapproving glares in her direction, but disapproval didn’t bother Tabitha. She’d grown far too used to it over the years. Binkie, on the other hand, lived in mortal fear of Queen Trinity’s disapproval, which was why the threat of bringing him along to the human world had shut him up in such a hurry. Tabitha’s mom had decreed this particular vacation destination off-limits to her people ages ago, and Binkie had never been one to disobey a direct order. Unlike Tabitha.

Turning away from examining the trail behind her for followers, Tabitha started forward again, her violet eyes scanning the forest on either side of the trail for any sign of pursuit. All remained eerily quiet. For about fifteen seconds.

“Personally, I think a little vacation are a fine idea, Princess,” Squit piped up, and Tabitha didn’t have to glance over at his perch on her shoulder to know he’d be grinning tauntingly at Binkie as he spoke. “Things has been getting real...complicated at court. A nice refreshing tour of boring human land are just whats we needs for lifting our spirits.”

Tabitha shot him a sideways glance. “Who said anything about we?”

The imp looked shocked. “But Missy Tabitha! You has to take us with you! Who will protects you if I’s not there? The human land cans be a hideous, dangerous places.”
“I think I can handle it, Squit. It cant be any more dangerous than court is becoming.”

She grimaced at the truth of her own words. For someone who had grown up at court, as she had, a certain amount of danger was to be expected. There were always intrigues and deceptions to deal with, enemies to avoid and loyalties to question, but these days, the perils of politics had grown unexpected teeth. Ones that had just yesterday attempted to clamp down on Tabitha’s unwitting head.

Her mouth firmed into a line of displeasure as she recalled the experience of being cornered in a remote alcove by a particularly ambitious courtier. The entire population of Faerie knew the queen was planning on naming her heir from among one of her two dozen or so sister’s and brother’s before the next Passing Moon, and apparently the odds on Tabitha were high enough to make her an attractive target of would-be-consorts. No one seemed to believe her protestations that she had no interest in ascending to the throne. It had taken a snapped temper and a knee to the groin to get the message across well enough to make her escape, but it had taken significantly less to convince Tabitha it was time to take a nice, long, remote vacation.

Too bad her chosen spot was on the banned-travel list.

Ever since an incident a few years ago when the queen’s nephew had been spotted by several humans as he gallivanted around New York, Her Majesty had gotten a lot tougher about enforcing the ban on travel between Faerie and the human world. Most people tried to stay away from upsetting Queen Trinity.

There hadn’t been much chance that anything would come of the sightings, considering most humans had stopped believing in the existence of the Fae—Faeries, as they called them—many humans centuries ago, but Queen Trinity did not like to be thwarted.

Tabitha didn’t see how anyone could consider a quick little vacation to the human world as “thwarting,” though. After all, it wasn’t like your average human would be expecting to see a Fae walking among them, and with a little glamour—the smallest form of Fae magic—she could make sure all they did see when they looked at her would be a perfectly normal human woman.

Even without magic, her basic appearance didn’t give her away. She was human shaped, with one head, two arms, two legs, and the requisite number of eyes and noses and such, and at five feet, four inches, tall she fell easily in the acceptable height range for a human female. Her black hair might be a bit long, since she wore it to her hips as most Fae did, but it’s not like it hissed or anything. And if her skin was paler than the average human, well, she could always say she was afraid of skin cancer. The Fae were immune to it, but she’d read that it was a big concern for mortals. The real need for the glamour came from the subtle, luminous bits of magic that nature had woven into her being. The glow that made her skin look more like moonlight than peaches and cream. The bright glitter of starshine in her pure violet eyes. Those were the things that might give her away, but humans, in her experience, were not that tough to fool. And while the world full of mortals went about its business in blissful ignorance, she’d be able to do some shopping and take in a few concerts. She’d done it before with no problems. She didn’t forsee any this time, either.

Chapter II

“I’m telling you, I have a bad feeling about this,” Binkie grumbled, apparently unable to bear the living silence of the forest clearing a moment longer. He’d lasted longer than Tabitha had expected. Pixies were not well-known for their taciturn natures. “If you step through that gate, you’ll be sorry.”

“You is always feeling bad,” Squit grumbled. “That ain’t nothing new.”

“The only reason why I would be sorry would be if the queen found out,” Tabitha said. “And the only way my mom could possibly find out something like that would be if you told her. Which you’re not going to do. Are you, Binkie?”

The pixie remained stubbornly silent. For once in his life.

Tabitha’s hand darted out, pinching his gossamer tunic between her thumb and forefinger and hauling him right up to her face. “Are you, Binkie?”

He glanced from her to the gate on the other side of the clearing and back again. His wings drooped at the edges. “No, Princess Tabitha. I will not tell the queen of your rash and ill-advised excursion into forbidden territory.”
“I’ve asked you not to call me ‘Princess,’” she said, and released him with a flick of her fingers.
From her shoulder, Squit stuck his tongue out at the pixie.
Binkie flew back a couple of feet and gave a wounded sniff. “You are a princess.”
“Sure, along with ten of my female cousins, and that’s not counting the others who happen to be princes.”

She peered around the trunk of an old oak tree and scanned the break in the thick vegetation for any signs of movement. Just because she wouldn’t let the fear of getting caught stop her from going through the gate didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try to avoid it.

“None of them had parents who died and left their care directly in the hands of the queen.”

“Binkie, do you want me to take you with me?”

“You can takes me!” Squit shouted, jumping up and down excitedly.

The renewed threat shut the pixie up, but the damage had already been done. He’d reminded her of something she spend a great deal of her time trying to forget, and now she’d spend at least the rest of the day with it hanging over her head. Pesky pixie pest.

Tabitha knew that ignoring the truth wasn’t going to make it go away, but that didn’t keep her from trying. On a daily basis. She despised court life, whether it was at her aunt’s Court or at the other Court that was ruled by Trinity’s former husband and Tabitha’s still officially uncle, Adonis. The idea of taking the throne when the peace between the two courts had been uneasy at best for most of her lifetime made her break out in hives. And that was exactly the reason that she needed to take a vacation. She didn’t have the patience or the deviousness required to be a successful leader of the Fae, and she had no intention of developing either. Her parents might both have been sidhe—the noble race of Faerie—but she swore that sometimes she wished they’d been goblins or trolls or pixies or sprites or even a dryad and a satyr. Any type of Fae under the sun or moon would have been fine with her, so long as it wasn’t a member of either high court. Sometimes, she reflected, life as a Faerie princess pretty much sucked.

Thinking about it only steeled Tabitha’s resolve to screw the rules and seize the opportunity for her much needed vacation. In the human world, she’d be able to blend in for a little while, to be a nobody. She wouldn’t stand out, and with most of her magic drained from her by the unfamiliar surroundings, she wouldn’t have been able to make much in the way of waves if she tried. It sounded perfect.

She took one last careful look around, set Squit down on the ground beside her, and shouldered her small travel bag. Grinning, she flicked the imp and the pixie a jaunty wave.

“Take care, little friends,” she called, hurrying toward the shimmering Faerie gate and into the simple, predictable world of the humans.

Chapter III

Hex IceFly hadn’t gone laid in at least three months. He knew very well that this hardly qualified as an emergency, but he did consider it symptomatic of a larger issue. Not only had he not had sex in all that time—which was not inconsequential for a bachelor werewolf in his prime—but he also hadn’t gone on a date, gotten an uninterrupted night of sleep, watched an entire ball game, or take a day off. Considering all that, was it any wonder his mood edged toward cranky as he stalked through his 3am park partrol?

Technically, this wasn’t even his patrol, a fact that only contributed to his case of the grumps. As the second in command of the Patrol on the Forest Grounds—Hex had been in charge of the lead of Manhattan. That meant he got to assign shifts and theoretically give himself one off day now and then. Tonight should be his night off to get some rest. Unfortunately, the leader of the Faerie Squad who was supposed to be on duty seemed to be just a little bit pregnant, and her husband was not willing for her to leave their home.

IceFly could sympathize with the sentiment; his own instincts would have been driven him to react the same way if he’d had a mate. Something attached to the Lupine Y chromosome turned them into raging Neanderthals where the safety of their mates was concerned, but he was still single. He also still had an entire city to patrol and a security force already stretched thin to cover it.

He growled and stuffed his hands into his pockets as he stalked through the park, his sharp gaze constantly sweeping the surroundings for anything unusual.

You’d think by now he’d be used to the whole over-whelming thing. It had been like this for nearly six months, ever since the Council of Others and its equivalents from around the world had entered into secret negotiations with the humans. The delicate nature of the talkds necessitated an atmosphere of peace, no matter how tense, if the two sides were going to reach an agreement that didn’t lead to bloodshed on either side. And when you were negotiating with vampires, shape-shifters, Others, and human politicians, Hex reflected, bloodshed was always a possibility, no matter how hard he and his pack worked to prevent it.

The Council’s negotiations would alter the course of the future, for the Others, who had finally taken their first step out of hiding, and the humans, who now needed to acknowledge that so many of the things they believed to be safely fictional actually did walk among them. It meant asking the humans to discard centuries of fear and superstition to allow what many of them considered to me monsters to enjoy the same rights and legal protections as anyone else. So in contrast, beefing up Other security to be sure no one got out of line and did anything to frighten the humans into another Inquisition seemed like a wise course of action.

The Council had put the Clan in charge of making sure that the Others kept themselves in line and did nothing to frighten the humans into breaking off the talks. Since Hex was pack beta and his day job happened to be as head of security at the largest club for the
Others in this half of the world, it fell to him to coordinate that security force. Which was why he was currently on his third patrol in forty-eight hours instead of facedown in his mattress.

Heading north at the fork in his path, Hex considered all the changed he and his kind had faced over the past months. No one had really been prepared. Sure, Others had been debating about the Unveiling on and off for most of the last century, but that had a theoretical sort of thing, an “imagine if” approach to the future. It hadn’t prevented the shock of learning a few months ago that a radical sect called the Light of Truth had gathered enough evidence to take the decision out of their hands and reveal their existence to the humans whether they were ready or not.

That news had convinced the Council of Others that the time had come to take the first steps in claiming an open place in the world around them, hence the secret negotiations. Even the most optimistic members of the Council knew better than to break the news to the human public without first gaining some assurances from their governments that the rights of the nonhumans would be preserved. Optimistic did not equal foolish.

For their part, the Others were prepared to make certain none of their kind did anything stupid, like attack a human. Or even be seen within ten feet of one who happened to be dead, injured, or mildly inconvenienced. The last thing they needed was for the humans to abandon the bargaining table. Hex figured he was currently doing his best, and the best of at least three other people to boot.

Thankfully, things were staying pretty quiet—quiet enough that twenty-four-hour patrols probably weren’t strictly necessary, but you just never knew when that one problem you wanted to avoid would rear its ugly head.

Or scream bloody murder.

Before a sharp feminine cry had even faded from an “eek” to an echo, Hex had whipped around, pin-pointed the source of the sound, and launched himself toward it, sprinting through the trees in a blur of speed and swear words.

Chapter IV

Tabitha stepped out of the other side of the gate and into an inky blackness, sighing in irritation. Darn it, on of these days she was going to have to get a handle on those stupid time changes. She stepped forward into the dark, muttering to herself, and promptly tripped over something immovable laid directly in her path. It might help her vacation relaxation plan if she didn’t go stumbling around blindly and walking into things like an idiot. She paused for a moment to let her eyes adjust from the bright daylight of Faerie to the dimness of a Manhattan night, or at least one in the depths of the city’s wildest park.

It only took a few seconds before she could see almost as well as she could have in the middle of a sunny afternoon. Hitching her bag higher onto her shoulder, she scanned the area around her and stepped over the fat tree root in front of her bare feet. She headed toward the park entrance, confident she knew where she was going. This was the same gate she’d used on her other trips to the human world, so at least things looked familiar. And she knew exactly where she wanted to go—straight into the East Village to see if any of her favorite bands were playing. Some frenetic music in an overcrowded human club sounded like the perfect way to spend her evening. She couldn’t thing of much else that would be as drastically different from a night at the Fae courts.

At this time of night, her path through the woods peared deserted, but Tabitha didn’t plan to jeopardize her vacation by taking chances. She made a subtle gesture with her hand and stirred up a little of the magic inside her to cast a small glamour. She had planned ahead and brought a small reserve of magic with her from Faerie in case of emergency. She could have spared her reserves and tried to gather up some the scarce fragments of Fae magic that managed to linger in the human world, but such scraps were few and far between here, and what magic did exist in this world was almost completely inaccessible to her. No one had eve really explained why that was—why the Fae couldn’t tap into the magic inherent to the human world and why the rare mortal witch who had visited Faerie over the last couple of millennia had found it equally impossible to harness the magic of that world. Something in the molecular fabric of the two worlds made their force incompatible. Like oil and water, Tabitha and the magic of the mortal world didn’t mix, but she didn’t expect to use much magic during her trip. That had been one of the reasons she’d opted to come here. She could afford to tap into what she’d brought with her.

The little shimmer that accompanied the spell barely registered in the darkness, but it made a significant impact on her appearance. The long fall of her jet-black hair turned into a close, shaggy crop of electric blue, moussed on its ends and tipped in shocks of bright fuchsia. Her pale, cream white skin took on a golden cast from a liberal sprinkling of freckles on every inch of visible skin, and her new outfit left a lot of skin visible. In place of the gown she had been wearing were a couple of casually layered and strategically torn tank tops in black and blue. Below them, she wore a pleated plaid skirt in a tartan Scotland had never intended and a length that was guaranteed to make any man she met take a much closer look. Her legs were covered in lacy black thigh-high stockings that ended just about where her hem began and disappeared at the other end into heavy black boots that laced halfway up her calves.

She let the twigs snap under her feet as she practically skipped down the path in anticipation of the amusement awaiting her. Once she got to the park’s entrance, she could hop a subway to 9th Street and see what she could see. Maybe CBGB would have a good show. Or there were always Manitoba’s as an alternative, or Mona’s if she changed her mind and decided to go for Guinness and songs that reminded her more of home. Somehow she didn’t think that would be happening.

Ooh! And maybe she’d try that little noodle house she’d spotted near Washington Square last time, just to see if they still made that pad mi ga ti dish…

Nearly tasting the coconut milk and hot chilies, Tabitha sent a pebble skittering down the path. She watched as it bounced off the cloven hoof of a very large, very black, very fiery-eyed, and very not-nice-looking creature with curling horns and waves of heat rolling off its hulking frame.

Chapter V

That was about when she screamed.
Right after that was about when she ran.
Her heart leaped into her throat and her stomach sank into her boots as shock and fear and confusion took over, sending her sprinting for safety.
Sweet stars above, that’s a demon!
Her mind raced along with her feet across the forest floor. She veered off the path and darted around trees, cursing as she heard the muffled thunder of the creature’s footfalls echoing close behind hers. Not only was that a demon, but it was now chasing her over the uneven terrain.

She knew it was a demon even though she’d never seen one before. In fact, she couldn’t think of a single soul who had. The creatures had been banished from the human world and then from Faerie ages ago at the end of the Fae-Demon Wars. They were supposed to be bound to their own world, the Below, not lurking in the middle of Manhattan to prey on any Fae who happened to travel by.

Apparently, no one had bothered to mention that to this fellow.

She could feel its hot, fetid breath at her back and poured on a fresh burst of speed. She had no idea what could be going on or where the beast could have come from, but she didn’t intend to slow down long enough to ask. She didn’t intend to slow down at all. She may not have met a demon before, but she knew enough to realize she didn’t want to meet this one. Everything she knew came from the stories of her people, and her people weren’t exactly the biggest fans of those who walked Below. A few centuries of violent conflict could do that to a relationship.

Casting a frantic glance around, Tabitha looked for an escape route or a hiding place or a weapon or a miracle. She wasn’t picky, so long as it kept her alive past the next five minutes. If she could just get back to the gate, she might be able to dart back through and lose her pursuer. The meager store of magic she’d brought with her from home would never be enough to cast any sort of effective defensive spell and she obviously couldn’t gather up any mortal magic, but in Faerie she’d be able to tap into the magic of the land if the demon managed to break through the wards and follow her there. Considering her current options seemed to boil down to that or getting her heart ripped out of her chest, it might be worth a try.

Tucking her head down, she lengthened her stride to its limit and called up her last reserves of speed. Praying her luck and her ankles would hold, Tabitha ran flat-out straight for the trunk of a huge old pine tree and darted suddenly to the side, digging in her heels, spinning on a dime, and heading on an angled path back the way she’d come. The demon snarled something that she was glad not to understand. Just the sounds struck her as foul and corrupted, and she shuddered even as she ran.

She heard a horrible roar and a rending and glanced back over her shoulder just long enough to see the creature grab onto the same pine she’d spun around seconds before to stop its forward momentum. It worked, but the tree didn’t survive. Its roots tore free with a painful snap, and the demon tossed it aside like a stick of kindling to crash to the forest floor.

Tabitha did not take this as a good sign.

Hauling in a ragged breath, she decided the small reserve of magic she’d brought with her might just have to do. If the demon got much closer, she wouldn’t have any choice but to throw whatever power she had into a spell and hope it would be enough. She just hoped it wouldn’t come to that, because a spell that strong might drain too much power from her and leave her completely and totally vulnerable.

She gathered her legs beneath her to leap after the first of several boulders gathered together in a wide out cropping at the edge of a small clearing in the trees. She needed to get to safer ground, and failing that, she needed to get to ground the demon wasn’t on.

Behind her, she heard it roar as it reached out with one grotesquely elongated arm, its claws catching around her ankle and stabbing through the heavy leather of her boots to scratch the delicate skin beneath. She cried out reflexively and grabbed onto the stone with both hands. The cruel grip on her leg made her teeth clench against the urge to whimper. She felt the first real welling of fear when the demon began to pull, reeling her in with the slow deliberation of a fisherman with a bite on his line. Her grip on the rock began to slip, and the tips of her fingers scraped raw as her body slid backward over the rough surface. Wriggling desperately, she twisted her hips to get a better angle with her free leg and sent her booted foot slamming into the beast’s skull just between its malevolently glowing eyes.

The demon roared again and stumbled back a handful of steps, but its grip never wavered. It dragged her with it, shaking its great horned head to clear it. Tabitha found herself dangling upside down above a carpet of stone and pine needles, gazing directly at the monster’s oddly misshapen legs. It took her a minute to realize that they weren’t misshapen, just jointed backward like a goat’s. She almost expected them to be covered in fur, but instead the skin looked like tightly woven plates of matte black scales. Instead of feet, it had cloven hooves and Tabitha found herself idly wondering if it had a tattoo of a Baphomet pentacle on the back of its skull.

Her arms waved in a search for purchase and balance, grabbing desperately. Her hands felt only air, and her heart nearly stopped when something slammed into the demon from behind. The great beast reeled, thrown off balance in a way her single forceful kick hadn’t managed. The creature launched her hard toward the tree line, wobbling on its feet as Tabitha felt her spine slam against the base of a stately elm.

That’s gonna leave a mark.

Chapter VI

Blinking, she pushed herself up on her elbows and peered through her momentary double vision to see where the demon had moved to. It wasn’t like she could get up and run at the moment, but it never hurt to know which direction the death blow would be coming from. She hated to be caught unprepared. Instead of getting a clear view of the demon that had attacked her, Tatitha found herself staring at the back of a very unfamiliar figure. This one might not have looked all that big in comparison to the demon, but even the half-dazed Fae could tell he was enormous. Standing close to seven and a half feet tall, he put himself directly between Tabitha and the beast and set off a low warning growl that made something finally click in her mind.

The newcomer was Lupine. A werewolf.

He stood in his were form—half man, half wolf—huge and hulking with muscle but somehow still sleek compared to the demon. That monster had the thick, bulging musculature of a troll and the long, skeletal skull of a bull, topped off with two curling horns that grew backward from just above its sunken, banked-ember eyes. In contrast, the werewolf looked lithe and graceful. His muscular form rippled with power, but on him it looked right and natural under a thick, healthy pelt of silver-gray fur.

She couldn’t see the werewolf’s face, but she finally got a clear look at the demon, and the clearing was small enough that she could smell the filth of it, like coal and decay and the choking stench of burnt flesh. It crouched facing her and the Lupine, its too-long arms brushing the ground, dark shining nails combining through the forest debris.


The two powerful figures eyed each other for several tense minutes, neither making a move forward. Each subtle alteration in the position of one evoked a mirror image in the other. Then the demon shifted its soulless gaze from the Lupine back to Tabitha, and the werewolf’s warning growl turned into a vicious snarl.

Just that quickly, the battle began. The first attack was a blur, a lightning-speed crash of black and gray, dull, scaly skin against thick fur. She almost expected the ground beneath her to shake with the violence of the impact. Both figures shook and twisted and grappled and roared in primitive fury. Hoof and claw dug into the mess of earth, stone, and organic litter that covered the ground, seeking purchase. Claws slashed across scales and fur. Fangs glinted, and muscles bulged and shifted. Tabitha’s eyes widened as the Lupine seemed to briefly hold his own against the impossibly powerful demon.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, the demon lowered its massive bovine head and rammed its horns directly into the werewolf’s stomach. Tabitha heard a loud whoosh as the impact drove the air from his lungs. His clawed hands raked furrows in the creature’s flesh even as he went airborne, landing at the opposite side of the clearing from Tabitha at the base of another tree.

She winced in sympathy at the dull thud of his landing, but she had no time to wonder how he was feeling. The minute the demon shook him off, it turned back toward her, perfectly clear in its focus on her as the preferred target. Which made no sense. Everything she knew about demons told her they were indiscriminately murderous. They didn’t care about the identity of their victims unless someone told them to. Normally, they would just attack whatever stood more clearly in their paths. So why was this one so intent on ripping out her heart when she assumed the werewolf had a perfectly good heart of his own?

Something here didn’t add up.
Tabitha pressed her back against the tree trunk and kept the demon clearly in her sights. It looked like the cavalry that had ridden to her rescue might be having some problems of its own. She’d never been much of sitting around wringing her hands and waiting for help—yet another reason that she made such a lousy princess. Unlike her aunt the queen, who liked to send her knights into the fray to deal with any problems, Tabitha preferred to handle everything on her own. That way there was no one around to tell her what she was doing wrong.

The demon stepped slowly forward on its crouching, satiric hind legs, spewing puffs of yellowed, noxious-smelling smoke from its nostrils. Holding her breath against the stench and her own unease, Tabitha levered herself into a sitting position and took a deep breath. She raised her hands before her as if to ward off the monster while she grabbed a thin thread of the magic left inside her and pulled hard.

It yanked free of her in a flash of bright blue energy and swirled into a small, powerfully glowing tornado of magical energy. The demon uttered something in a guttural snarl of pain and rage and stumbled a few steps away. Squinting against the glare in her hands, Tabitha watched it stumble backwards, right into the force of the Lupine’s renewed attack. Between the light and the noise and the violent crash, she felt like she’d gotten caught up in a lightning storm. She could only hope the demon did, too.

At least it seemed to hate the disc of bright blue light she had conjured up. Its reflexes seemed slower this time, and it appeared to have trouble tracking the werewolf’s movements. It didn’t see its opponent duck beneath a clumsy blow and dive toward its hind legs, claws flashing. With two quick slashes, the Lupine slice through the tendons at the backs of the monster’s legs, sending it crashing to the ground and bellowing in rage.

Quickly, instinctively, Tabitha jumped up from her tree, light balanced between her fingertips, and raced forward. She stopped a few steps short of the felled demon, took aim, and sent the swirl of light flying toward the creature’s gaping mouth as if the light were a Frisbee and the demon were an overeager border collie.

She should have stopped a few steps shorter. As the magic missle made impact, the demon lashed out with one arm and caught her across the lower torso with the tip of one glistening claw. It sliced through her clothing as in her pale flesh.

Dazed, she looked down at her injury with wide, confused eyes. The pain registered along with the ticklish trickle of blood across her stomach, but she stayed on her feet, unmoving. She couldn’t’ even raise a hand to cover the wound. Weakness crept over her, making her sway where she stood. Her little magic trick had taken more out of her than she had planned.

In the background, she thought she had heard a roar that sounded more like an angry werewolf than an attacking demon. She wanted to ask if he was all right, but she couldn’t form the words. She just stood there and tried not to fall on her face even as the demon begun to stir and struggle to right itself. The roar came again, louder this time, and then the Earth tilted on its axis as Tabitha’s legs collapsed beneath her and send her sinking into darkness.

Chapter VII

Hex wanted to grab the woman and shake me for being so stupid as to rush up to the other like that. Then he wanted to thank her for distracting it with the spell. And finally, he wanted to get a better look at what he remembered as being a truly fine backside, this time without the distraction of a rampaging creature to dull his pleasure.
But at the moment, he had other things to do. Like getting us both the hell out of here before the creature learned how to run with severed Achilles tendon.
Hex scooped the unconscious figure up in his arms and sprinted for home. The Other or creature reacted as positively to that as Hex had expected, but thankfully, the injuries slowed it to a point where the combination of werewolf speed and the thick tree cover foiled its pursuit. That didn’t mean Hex slowed down any.
He ran a good two miles before he felt safe in slowing to a brisk, ground-eating trot.
Through it all, my body remained limp and still. He wasn’t sure if I was asleep or unconscious, but either way, I was so out of it that he contemplated setting me down for a minute so he could shift back to human form before we left the park. The general rule for Lupines stated they shouldn’t walk in were form anywhere they might be seen by humans. Wolf form could be written off easily enough as the appearance of an especially large and long-legged dog, but there was nothing in the human world that could account for a seven- or eight-foot creature covered in fur with the posture of a man and the facial features of White Fang.
In this case, Hex weighed his options and decided that if he stuck to the alleys on the trip back to his apartment and didn’t get too close to any streetlights, he’d be better off going as he was. If he shifted back to human, he might not risk psychically scarring a wandering human eyes, be he did risk spending the night in a cell with a public-indecency citation. Given the way his night had been going so far, he didn’t have time to go to jail.
He reached the borders of the park and scanned the street from the cover. He didn’t see much movement, which did occasionally happen even in New York, and at three-something in the morning the streets were about as deserted as he could ever hope to see them.
Taking a deep breath, Hex lowered his head, held me tight against him, and dived into the shadows. His long strides ate up the ground between the park and his neighborhood. At a dead run, a werewolf could move faster than a sprinting racehorse and might even give a cheetah a thing or two to think about. Luckily, Hex could maintain his speed for distances closer to those of the equine than the feline, because it was a good couple of miles to his apartment.
He made it without incident, ducking into the alley behind his street and breaking his speed, slowing to a walk for the last hundred yards to his building. It took him a second to catch his breath, but both of us had made it in one piece. And, he hoped, with out being seen.
Hitching my unconscious body higher against his chest, he scanned the area before he rounded the corner, balancing me carefully in one arm while he paused outside his apartment door to retrieve his spare key. He kept it hidden for just this sort of emergency. In his line of work he never did know when he’d be coming home without pockets. That fact that his door was set down half a flight of stairs as a basement entrance made those times easier, too, by offering a bit of concealment from the odd passerby.
He let us inside and kicked the door shut behind us. Though the entrance to his apartment looked like it led to a basement, he actually occupied two floors of the narrow old building, and he used the bottom floor as a workroom and home gym. His living space was upstairs. He carried me up and directly to the sofa, lowered me down on the soft cushions before he shifted back to his human form.
He felt the sting and then easing as his genes reformed his body, knitting together the crack in his ribs, sealing the scratches he’d gotten wrestling around the forest. When the change was complete, his shoulders rolled in instinctive adjustment.
I never moved, and he frowned down at me, crouching beside the sofa to examine my limp form. He’d felt the steady beat of my heart and the rhythmic rise and fall of my breathing as he’d carried me home, so he knew perfectly well I wasn’t dead. And that was what had him frowning. No human woman or witch should have survived the attack, which meant I must not be human. He knew from my scent that I wasn’t Lupine or any other sort of shifter, for that matter. There was nothing earthy about me, nothing animal. I smelled too pure for that, and the fact that he could smell me at all meant I wasn’t a vampire. My skin felt too warm and smooth and elastic to belong to any other nonliving life form, and I looked too much like a human for him to identify my origins by sight.
He didn’t like that his sense of smell had failed him here. One good sniff ought to give him all the information he needed to place my species, but instead it only gave him a raging erection. He didn’t know what the hell was the matter with him. Sure, just like any other male in existence, a good brush with death tended to bring out the horny in him, but this felt like more than that. He didn’t just want sex; he wanted sex with me, with this woman-or whatever I was-and he wanted it now. In fact, he seemed to want it more with every breath full of my scent that he inadvertently inhaled. He struggled to block the tantalizing aroma from his mind and pushed to his feet. If he didn’t get control of himself, I would end up getting a hell of an awakening. Maybe from the inside out.
Gritting his teeth and taking slow, shallow breaths through his mouth, Hex braced himself against his uncontrollable arousal and forced himself to take stock of my wounds. Starting at my feet seemed safest, and the ragged puncture marks in the leather of my high boots looked pretty nasty. He dealt efficiently with my laces and tugged the boots off, setting them aside under the coffee table. Without the heavy covering, my feet looked tiny and fragile beneath the veil of sheer black stockings, which were dotted with blood around the left ankle. The creature’s claws hadn’t bitten deeply, thanks to the leather, but the punctures would need a thorough cleaning.

Chapter VIII

His gaze moved up the length of the slim, graceful legs, which did totally inappropriate things to his libido, but they appeared to be free of further injury. The only other wound he could see was a slash across the stomach, and that was the injury that worried him. Carefully, he reached out to lift aside the hems of the skimpy tank tops, one eye on my face to be sure I hadn’t woken up. My eyelashes didn’t even flutter, and my expression remained tranquil. Hex wished he could say the same for himself, but one good look at the ragged gash in my pale, freckled skin had him cursing a blue streak and gritting his teeth against the urge to howl in anger.

The cut bled sluggishly, much less than he would have expected, but it looked nasty all the same, with jagged edges darkened to black by the poison on the creature’s claws. Jaw clenching, he dropped the hem and headed straight for the first-aid supplies in his bathroom. On the way back, he paused in the bedroom to grab a pair of jeans and ease himself into them. No reason to scare anyone to death by having me wake up eye to eye with the part of him most anxious to maker my acquaintance.

He stepped back into the living room with his hands full of disinfectant and bandages, and he froze. The blue-haired punk he’d left on his sofa had been replaced by a dark-haired goddess with skin like whipped cream and a torn and tattered gown of a fabric so light, if it hadn’t been for the pale lilac color, he couldn’t have sworn it even existed. The clothes I had been wearing had disappeared, and I slept on as if nothing had happened. Now he had proof I wasn’t quite human. A witch, maybe? That would explain my human appearance, since technically witches were humans who just happened to have evolved the ability to use magic, and a spell fading would explain the change in my appearance. At least, he thought it would. He wasn’t all that up on the rules of magic.

And none of the rules he had heard before explained why the very scent made him want to strip me naked and introduce himself to my womb, up close and personal.

Forcing his mind off his crotch, he returned to the sofa and knelt on the floor at my side. My wounds took precedence over his curiosity at the moment. Until he did find out who and what I was, he’d be better treating my injuries than speculating about the effect I had on him. When I woke up, he’d get his answers.

Still, he was frowning as he poured disinfectant liberally onto a sterile pad. He parted the cut in my dress, ripping it slightly wider to get at the injury. When he pressed the cotton to my skin, the muscles in my stomach clenched reflexively, and he heard a soft gasp whisper between my lips. His gaze shot immediately to my face, but my expression remained relaxed and tempting in sleep. Reluctantly, he looked back at his task, only to see that the wound in my abdomen appeared to be a lot less serious than he’d thought, now that he’d cleared the dried blood and dirt away. In fact, it almost looked as if it had begun healing even before he’d washed it.

Oh, this wasn’t good.

Swallowing a curse, Hex leaned back and took a really good look. One that had his stomach sinking into his toenails. He took in the moonlight-pale, velvet-smooth skin, the miraculously healing wounds, the magically transformed appearance, and saw that his bad day just gotten a hell of a lot worse.

“Aw, shit.”

Muttering to himself and whatever god currently watched and laughed at his predicament, Hex took a deep, bracing breath, eased his hands into the tumbled mass of my unconscious raven black hair, and lifted it gently away from the delicate shell of my ear. An ear that swept gracefully up from small, unadorned lobes to a distinct and elegant point.

Fae.

He realized that the currently passed out on his sofa, bleeding from an unexpected and determined creature attack, was Fae. As in full-blooded, non-Changeling, born-and-bred-beyond-the-gates-in-Faerie Fae. And high sidhe from the look of me. I wasn’t a sprite but one of the aristocratic race. So what the hell was a Fae doing in his living room?
Okay, he had carried me there, but that wasn’t the point. The Fae weren’t even supposed to be in this world. Their ruler, Queen Trinity, had made that long-standing custom a law after some kind of incident a few years ago, but the end result was that Hex could cont on one hand the number of Faerie’s he’d met in all of his thirty-five years. This one made number three. Not his lucky number.

Pushing to his feet, Hex shoved a hand through his already-rumpled hair and began to pace across the quiet room. He didn’t need a Lupine sense of smell to know this whole thing reeked of trouble, and he wasn’t just talking about the creature stench. He already had enough on his plate trying to keep the Others in the area from inadvertently starting a war with the humans. The last thing he needed was the Faerie’s and creatures putting in an appearance and throwing everything into chaos.

Hex bit back a curse and looked over at the sofa, directly into a pair of sleepy, darkly lashed eyes the color of African violets. It felt like taking a stone giant’s fist straight to his gut. Even the creature hadn’t packed this kind of punch. Asleep, I had been beautiful. Awake, I stole the breath from his lungs and the brains from his head. All he had left was the blood in his veins, and that was sure as hell easy enough to prove, considering it had all rushed right to his groin the minute I opened my eyes.

While he stood there, blinking like an idiot and probably drooling like one, I raised my arms over my head and arched my body in a lazy, feline stretch that left him cross-eyed and half-delirious. Then I collapsed back into the cushions and my full lips curved in a sensual smile.

“Hi.” I said in a sleep-husky voice had the same effed on his dick as the average Lupine female in heat waving her tail in his face, only magnified exponentially. He probably had zipper marks running up and down his shaft. “My name is Tabitha. Who are you?”

Hex groaned and rubbed his hand over his eyes, quickly discovering that the image of me stretching had been burned indelibly into his retinas.

“Shit. I’m screwed.”

Chapter IX

Tabitha felt her lips twitch, but she figured it might be considered rude to laugh at someone who had saved her life. “Ah, all right. Do you have a nickname?”

The werewolf scowled down at her. “Hex IceFly. But I think the more important question, lady, is what in the hell are you doing here?”


Pursing her lips, Tabitha swung herself into a sitting position and winced when the movement pulled at the slash in her belly. The wound had begun to heal, but with as much magic as she had expended, she guessed it would be a couple days at least before she did any dancing. Which was a shame. The idea of performing one of the seductive, erotic, hip-grinding dances of Faerie for her erstwhile rescuer held a definite appeal. And judging by the current fit of said rescuer’s jeans, she thought he might turn out to be an appreciative audience.

“Lady,” he growled, jerking her attention off his pants and back to his face. “You want to answer my question?”

“Not particularly.”

She bent her head to examine the wound on her belly, so she couldn’t see his face, but she could definitely hear his biting curses.

“Do it anyway.”

Tabitha looked up, saw the edge of a ruthlessly controlled temper looming, and sighed. She’d been raised around her aunt’s warrior guardsmen and knew a dominant man in a snit when she saw one. In her experience, it was always better to humor them. “I’m taking a vacation.”

He opened his mouth, looking for all the world as if he planned to huff and puff and blow her house down, then snapped his jaw shut in confusion. “A vacation? What? Was the Fae Riviera overbooked?”

She blinked innocently up at him. “No, but I just hate getting all that sand stuck in my hair.”

“Oh, right. I see.” He glared at her, the sarcasm dripping off his tongue. “I’m sure that as soon as she hears your reasoning, Queen Trinity will personally drape you in a lei and sing you a chorus of ‘Bon Voyage.’”

This time it was Tabitha’s turn to pull up short. She eyed the Lupine warily and offered a soothing smile. “Really, Hex. Let’s not be childish. There’s no reason to bring Aunt Trinity into this—“

“Aunt Trinity?!”

Tabitha watched with fascinated horror as the top of the werewolf’s head seemed to lift off and hover atop a molten-lava eruption of furious disbelief. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the family connection? But of course, he’d latched onto it with the ferocity of a pit bull and was shaking it for all it was worth. Which, in Tabitha’s book, wasn’t a whole hell of a lot.

“Queen Trinity, High Lady of the Sidhe, Queen of the Summer Court of Faerie, Mistress of the Living Forest, and Empress of Earth and water, is your bloody fricking aunt?”


Now seemed like a good time for Tabitha to stand up. And take a few steps back. And maybe make sure she was standing somewhere far away from corners and close to an obvious escape route.

“Um, a little.”

“A little? She’s a little your aunt. So I suppose she’ll only make my life a little miserable when she finds out you’re here. That’s just fabulous.”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a tad?” she laughed, not really amused. “Trinity can be a little bit…tempermental, I grant you, but she’s not entirely unreasonable. She’s not going to get all bent out of shape with you just because I took a little trip.”

Hex crossed his arms over his chest and pinned her with his stare. “So then you got permission to visit before you crossed through the gate from Faerie that no one on either side is ever supposed to use except in direst emergency?”

Tabitha made a face. “Not exactly.”

“Then what the hell makes you think Trinity isn’t going to pitch a royal Fae fit?” he snapped, stalking toward her until she could have sworn the force of his irritation blew her hair back like a hurricane wind. “You broke the goddamned law, and not only that, but you picked the worst possible time in history to dump your pretty little troublemaking ass into my lap, sweetheart. I’ve got enough to worry about without trying to prevent an inter-dimensional incident with the Summer Sidhe!”

Tabitha’s curiosity leapfrogged over the protestation of innocence she had been about to make. Rumor had it, there was a sprite somewhere back in the branches of her family tree, and it was moments like this that lent credence to the story. Eyes glinting, her need to know everything hurled her right into the provocative part of his diatribe. “How is this the ‘worst possible time in history’? Is something going on?”

Hex teetered back on his heels, his expression slowly shifting from anger to confusion. It looked like he’d just hit a brick wall after accelerating to full speed. “What?”

“What’s going on at this particular moment that makes the timing of my vacation so bad?” she asked, ignoring the bark in his tone. “There must be something major going on. You seem stressed out. Is there something I can do? Anything I can help with?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Well, there’s no need to sound so astonished. Just because I’m Fae doesn’t mean I cant be useful. Not everyone who grows up at court is a dilettante. Just tell me what the problem is, and I’ll be happy to lend a hand.”

The werewolf stifled another curse that had Tabitha wondering about the extent of that particular portion of his vocabulary. It seemed quite amazingly comprehensive.

“The only way you can help me,” he grumbled, abruptly backing up a few steps and resuming his earlier pacing, “is by doing whatever it is you do to magic yourself something to wear that looks less like it came out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Then you can follow me back to the Faerie gate you came in through and get the hell home before anyone important realizes you were ever here.”

Chapter X

Tabitha blinked and raised an eyebrow. “That was a little harsh. Is that what passes for manners in the mortal world lately? No wonder we have so many jokes about the irony of mortal civilization where I come from.”

His head snapped around, and he scowled at her through fiercely narrowed eyes. “Now is not a good time for you to lecture me, sweetheart.”

The predatory glow in those wolfish eyes caught Tabitha by surprise and sent a shiver of awareness skittering down her spine. All at once her senses seemed to register the power of his muscled body, the breadth of his lightly furred and distractingly bare chest. The heat that radiated off him in waves along with something subtler, deeper, and infinitely more unnerving. Typically, Tabitha reacted to the warning of her instincts not with a strategic retreat, but with a slightly suicidal tug to the tail of the beast.

“Oh? What time would work better for you?” she asked, opening her eyes wide and guilelessly, even as her subconscious streak of self-preservation had her backing up another step or two. Or four. “I’d be happy to take a look at my calendar and work you in—“

By the time she heard his warning growl, it was already too late. In the time it took for her synapses to fire, the werewolf had leaped across the distance separating them and slammed bodily into her, sending her careening into the wall five feet behind her. She hit the drywall with a thud and a hiss, the air in her lungs whooshing out and into the mouth of the beast.

She would have felt a lot better if she could have thought of him as beastly, if she could have mustered up something like outrage or indignation or even some judicious fear. But no. Instead, all she felt was a wave of intense dizziness and a weakening of every muscle in her body as it melted against his. Her lips put up no resistance as he forced them apart with his own and surged inside like a conquering chieftain. His tongue claimed her mouth with bold strokes, marking the sweet territory as his. His teeth nipped sharply at her lips, before soothing the brief pain with suckling kisses.

Moaning, she sank into him, letting her knees collapse. He didn’t seem to need any help keeping her upright. He had her pinned against the wall like a canvas, held in place with the weight of his body. It worked for her, leaving her free to do nothing but savor the surprising, intriguing, intoxicating flavor of him.

He tasted of rich, dark coffee, thick and heavy with sugar. Traces of spice and forest filled her senses and made her tremble as she dissolved in pleasure. Her hands slid up the cool surface of the wall and tangled in his hair, curling into fists and holding him tight against her lips. He didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere else, but at this point, Tabitha didn’t want to take chances. She wanted to devour him. Or let him devour her. Either option would work so long as he never, ever stopped kissing her.

A low rumble, half growl, half purr, vibrated between them as he leaned more heavily into her, into the kiss, nestling his hips into the cradle of hers, pushing against the flimsy barrier of her gossamer gown until she felt the rough scrape of denim against the center of her need.

She moaned and wriggled against him, wanting to magic the barriers of cloth away, but she had used up her magic in the demon attack, and stars knew when she’d be able to get a refill. Probably not until she got back home.

Chapter XI

Even as the thought brushed through the edges of her consciousness, Tabitha became aware of the passion between them, shifting, changing, and becoming something more. Sheer, teasing tendrils of magic began to form from the energy of their mutual desire. The tendrils swirled and danced in the pit of her stomach, then spilled out, finding the wound in her flesh and smoothing over it. The magic knit skin and muscle back together, found foul, oily molecules of poison, and wrapped around them, insulating and separating them from her bloodstream and dissolving them into individual atoms that could be benignly flushed from her system.

The healing magic filled Tabitha with a rush of warmth and energy, replenishing her depleted stores of magic until her wish became a reality and the barriers of clothing between her and her werewolf disappeared, leaving him pressed hot and hard and naked between her thighs. She moaned and clutched him tighter, canting her hips invitingly, seeking to draw him inside her body, into the hot, moist depths that ached with emptiness only he could assuage.

Unfortunately, the brush of molten heat against the crown of his shaft seemed to snap him into some hideously noble sort of sense. He tore his lips from hers and grabbed her wrists, jerking her hands from his hair and setting her bodily away from him. Far enough that her blindly seeking hips couldn’t reach his and squirm their way past his guard.


He swore violently and stood glaring at her with eyes that burned with heat and frustration and a distinct sense of unease. Holding her at arm’s length, he struggled to regain his breath even as she struggled to free herself and press against him once more.

“Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. His voice was so harsh, so low, so animal that he sounded more like wolf than man. It took a few seconds for Tabitha’s overheated brain to translate the question and even longer for her to understand what he meant. For some reason he seemed to be upset by the fire leaping between them.

Frowning, Tabitha tested his grip on her wrists and found it just as steely as ever.

“I wasn’t thinking,” she said, impatient and uncomprehending. “I was too busy tasting you. But I don’t know what you have to be so upset about. I mean, it’s not as if—“

“Sweetheart, I almost fucked you up against a wall, and I’ve known you for all of seventy-two minutes, sixty-three of which you spent unconscious! You bet your ass I’m upset!”


Tabitha felt her frown deepen. “But why? Is there something wrong with the wall?” She craned her head to look at the pale-cream-colored surface behind her. “It seems perfectly functional to me.”

Hex made an odd choking sound. “That’s not the point. Jesus, this is crazy. It’s completely impossible.”

Tabitha let her gaze drop pointedly to his erection and felt her eyes widen. My, but he looked…enthusiastic. And impressive. Borderline challenging.

“It looks very happily possible to me. Probable, even, if you’d stop yelling for a few minutes and just let me get a little bit closer—“

She slid a bare foot up his muscular leg to hook behind his hip and urge him toward her. For one delicious moment, she thought she saw his eyes start to glaze over and his body begin to sway nearer, but then he caught himself, jerking back as if electrocuted and shifting farther out of reach.

“Would you stop that?”

If she hadn’t known the man in front of her to be a predator, Tabitha might have called the look in his eyes just then hunted, especially once he glanced down at himself and really noticed that the reason he probably felt like she touched him through the fabric of his clothes was because he no longer wore any. But to be fair, neither did she.

His head snapped up, and his expression hardened. “Put them back.”

Tabitha didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Instead, she sighed. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t? I’m not the one around here who does magic, lady, and I’d sure as hell remember it if I’d undressed you, so I think it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re the one to blame.”

“Accusations are so not constructive—“

“Put them back,” he repeated, in a tone she bet made all the female werewolves swoon. “Now.”

“I told you, I can’t.” Since her gorgeous but grouchy companion had seen fit to kill the mood, Tabitha gave up and leaned against the wall, which was not nearly as much fun as it would have been if he’d been pressing her up against it with that yummy body of his. The thought helped her muster up a respectable scowl of her own. “I don’t have the magic. I’m drained.”

Seeing the Lupine’s confusion and not in the mood to be accused of lying, which she felt sure would be his next step, Tabitha explained. “Fae magic is different from the magic you have here. It’s an entirely different system, almost like another language, and the only language I speak is Fae. I might be able to puzzle out some of the important words if I concentrate really hard, but that would take more energy than I’d be likely to gather. Which means that if I want to use magic while I’m in this world, I need to use magical energy I brought with me from Faerie.”

“Then do that. Use what stuff you brought with you.”

“Like I just told you,” she said, glaring, “I’m drained. I used up all the magic I brought when I was trying to keep from being eaten by a demon with a serious case of the munchies. I don’t have anything left. That’s why you’re seeing what I really look like, instead of the glamour I had on when I got here. When I used the last of my magic, I couldn’t even keep that simple a spell cast.”

His expression reflected his skepticism. “If you can’t do any magic, where the hell did our clothes go in the first place?”

Tabitha shifted uncomfortably. Somehow, she didn’t see Hex being all that comfortable with the idea that she’d basically fed off the energy created by their intimate encounter. It was one of the inherent talents of the sidhe branch of the Fae that sex fueled their magic, and while that failed to even raise eyebrows in Faerie, it occasionally proved a bit disturbing to inhabitants of the human world. Other or not. With that in mind, Tabitha didn’t really want to be the one to have to explain it to this already-irritable Lupine. It would be enough of a challenge getting him to kiss her again as it was. If he reacted with the unease most of his fellow non-Fae felt for folk who replenished their magic with the energy of others, he’d probably never touch her again. She really wanted him to touch her again.

“That was the last of it,” she said, cautiously meeting his gaze. “I’m surprised I even had enough to manifest a thought like that, but there’s no way I can reverse it now. I’m tapped out.”

Hex’s expression remained suspicious, but he released one of her wrists and used the other to tug her along behind him. He crossed the room to a half-closed door Tabitha had been much to occupied to notice earlier.

As they stepped into the other room, she looked from the enormous invitingly rumpled bed to the Lupine’s grim expression and made a face. It didn’t look like she should get her hopes up here, but she couldn’t stifle the disappointed sigh when he grabbed her by the shoulders and positioned her squarely in the center of the room, well away from any and all accommodatingly flat surfaces.

“Don’t move.”

Obediently, she stood still and watched him rummage through a chest of drawers. He pulled out a pair of jeans first and tugged them on roughly. With his back turned, he missed the wistful expression that crossed her face as the heavy cloth slid over and concealed his truly mouthwatering behind. She consoled herself by admiring the way the fabric cupped and molded to him, right up until a veil of blue-striped cotton landed on her head, cutting off her vision. She reached up to yank it away and heard the thud of another garment landing at her feet.

“Get dressed,” he growled, and stalked past her out of the room without another glance.

Sighing, Tabitha picked up the sweatpants he’d left her and dropped them on the end of the bed while she slipped into the soft cotton shirt and went to work on the buttons. Sometimes, she really wished her instincts were a little less reliable. Because then maybe she wouldn’t be quite so convinced that sleeping with Hex IceFly would be the most exhilarating experience of her life so far, or that the man would rather chew glass than give in to their mutual attraction.

This vacation was turning out to be a lot less fun than she had planned.

Impressum

Texte: Kiana Dreamfairy
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 05.11.2011

Alle Rechte vorbehalten