CHAPTER EIGHT
He couldn’t do this. Graham couldn’t be around this woman, who smelled like honey and spice, who curled her tongue around the light and dark ice cream as though it were the sweetest aphrodisiac.
He had a hard-on that wouldn’t stop. Xav Escobar knew it, the a*shole. Graham had recognized the smirk. Of course, Xav probably had one too. And for that, Graham would kill him.
“I can’t do this,” he said.
“Can’t do what?” Misty stood in front of him, hands on her hips. “Break my door? Smash my dishes? Trample my plants? You’re like walking mass destruction.”
She wanted him to apologize, Graham realized. But Graham never apologized. You said sorry, and people felt smug and justified, and started to take advantage.
Hard to look into those sweet brown eyes and say nothing, though. “I’ll fix your front door.”
“You bet your ass you will,” Misty said. “Now, are we going to talk about it?”
There she went again. Talking. Always talking. “I thought you were done with me,” Graham said.
“I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still mad at you. Or not talking to you.”
“Then we’re not done.” Not by a long way.
“Yes, we are.”
Graham turned from her, not liking how fast his heart was beating. Or how thirsty he was. He fought it, having learned to work through hunger and thirst a long time ago, but he knew he couldn’t banish it entirely. The Fae magic had gotten to him, but he couldn’t give in to it. If he did that, he was dead.
To keep himself from thinking about the thirst, he focused on Misty’s yard. It was like her—compact, neat, beautiful. She hadn’t simply stuck clumps of plants everywhere. The yard had been landscaped, sculpted almost, with low mounds of grass and gravel hosting small flowering bushes and plants that bloomed fiercely under the hot sun. A false wash of river rock cut through the yard, crossed by a small wooden bridge.
Stepping stones led to the bridge and across the yard on the other side. Between the stones were gravel and scatterings of plants, blossoms moving in the summer breeze. The ugly cement block walls, so common in Southwestern cities, were softened by stands of hot pink and white oleanders on two walls, with a line of rose bushes, sheltered from the direct sun, on the third.
A pretty garden, with chairs and tables set out so Misty and friends could sit and enjoy iced tea or whatever women drank on summer afternoons. Graham was out of place here, a hulking creature in the diminutive space.
Misty seemed to be waiting for something. Graham did not understand her—anything female, in fact. She declared she was finished with him, then she ran after him. She said she wanted to talk to him, then she expected him to do the talking, when Graham wasn’t any good at it.
“What do you want me to say?” he ended up almost shouting. Yelling—that he was good at.
Misty glared. Did she know how edible she looked in her body-hugging tank top, the shorts that stopped mid-thigh? She’d put on sandals, which showed her bare legs all the way to her toes. Misty wasn’t a stick, thank the Goddess. Some human women starved themselves down to skin and bones and thought it looked good. Insanity.
Misty had round breasts, arms that were plump from shoulders to elbow then tapered into soft wrists and small hands. Strong hands—she worked hard in her store, carrying plants, heavy pots and baskets, armloads of flowers, buckets of water. Her legs were sturdy and curved, calves soft and kissable.
Her face—the one all screwed up with her scowl—was round, her nose in perfect proportion. Her eyes were a little too big for a human, but Graham didn’t mind. They were soft brown and surrounded by thick black lashes.
Watching Misty tongue the ice cream had made every cell of him scream in need. She had a little bit of cream on her lips even now.
To hell with it. Graham closed the space between them, jerked her against him, and brought his mouth down on hers.
Misty made a little surprised sound in her throat, and fists contacted his shoulders. Graham tightened his grip, pulling her into him, and licked the cream from her lip in one firm stroke.
Misty stopped fighting. Her lips softened, hesitated, then formed to his.
Fire. Her mouth was heat and everything good. Graham laced his fingers through her hair, pulling it out of the ponytail she’d dragged it into. Soft goodness flowing over his hand.
He sucked her lower lip into his mouth, and Misty made another soft noise. No more protests, no more fists. No more talking.
Misty’s body fitted to his, breasts tight against his torso. He moved his hand down her back, callused fingers catching on her cotton tank. The fabric was so thin he could feel the heat of her skin plus the strap of a bra, tight against her back.
Graham could savor her all day and all night. He licked into her mouth, finding a bite of spice. Thirst went away as he drank her.
Her small hands caressed his shoulders then moved to the back of his neck, above the Collar. She liked to hold on to his neck when they kissed for some reason. Not that Graham minded. She also liked to run her fingers through his short buzz of hair.
Graham kept on kissing her. Misty’s mouth was a joy, her breath warm, her body pliant against his. His cock hadn’t gone down; in fact, it had grown even more rigid. Misty tasted like sunshine, felt like a soft cooling breeze.
If it could be just you and me . . .
We’d unmake the world.
Graham made himself ease the kiss to its end. Misty gazed up at him, eyes warm, her lips parted. Her anger had been erased for now, and what he read in her was desire. Moisture lingered behind her lower lip, and Graham licked it away.
It took all his strength to relax his arms around her, to let go. Misty had been on tiptoe, and now she thumped back on her heels. She stared up at him, unblinking, her lips slightly swollen.
Graham pointed his finger at her face and ended up touching her lightly on the nose. “You and me,” he said. “We’re not done.”
He turned and walked away. Killed him to do it, but you didn’t say an exit line and then not leave the stage. You didn’t even look back to see if she stared after you, longing in her eyes, no matter how much you wanted to.
? ? ?
Graham wouldn’t go home. After his searing kiss and the parting shot, Misty expected him to be long gone when she came back inside the house, but no. He was talking to Reid in the living room, his loud, harsh syllables drowning out Reid’s quieter ones.
Xav had cleaned up the broken bowl and given the cubs more ice cream. The two little ones could sure put it away. They’d discovered that licking the ice cream from the spoon was even more fun than licking it from the bowl. They could lick the spoon all over before they scooped up more. After all, Aunt Misty had been licking it from the spoon. So it was all right, wasn’t it?
When they finished, Kyle or Matt said, “Can we play outside, Aunt Misty? We didn’t go out before, because you and Uncle Graham were kissing.”
Xav laughed from where he sat at the table, and Misty’s face went hot. “That’s fine, but don’t mess up my plants. They get hurt easily.”
Matt and Kyle agreed they’d never do anything like that. They half wrestled each other trying to be first to the door, then they started yanking off their clothes.
Before they finished stripping down to their skin, they were shifting, fur rippling, tails popping out. Two fuzzy cubs barreled out the door they’d already opened, yipping all the way.
“They don’t have Collars,” Misty said out loud. She hadn’t noticed that before, but when they’d shucked their T-shirts, she’d seen that their necks had no slash of black and silver Collar to mar them.
“They don’t take Collars until they’re older,” Graham said, coming into the kitchen. “’Cause they’re damn painful. Even humans couldn’t bring themselves to be that cruel.”
Misty let out a breath. “All humans are not that bad, Graham.”
He gave her that look that said he’d lived a hundred years in the harsh wilderness, and she didn’t know what she was talking about. “Yes, they are,” he said.
“Then why are you still here?”
Another look. “Because a Fae is after you, and an ex-cop with bullets isn’t going to stop him.”
“And a Shifter is?” Reid leaned in the doorway. He still had the book, but he held it closed in his hand.
“Shifters won the Shifter-Fae war,” Graham said. “Remember? We kicked your asses. You lost all your Shifter pets.”
“That was more than seven hundred years ago,” Reid said mildly. “I wasn’t born then. And dokk alfar had nothing to do with Shifters.”
“I know; I just say it to piss you off. Point is, this Fae targeted her—and me—and I’m not going to sit at home waiting for him to come get her.”
Why did that make Misty feel better? She should want Graham gone. Out of here.
Instead she went to the sink and filled up a glass of water. Las Vegas tap water tasted terrible, but who cared? She needed the water, needed the cool wetness inside her parched mouth.
“This book.” Reid held it up. “Where did you get it?”
Misty explained about the flea market. “I had it valued, but even though it’s a first edition, it’s in too bad a shape to be worth much. I kept it for the interest.”
“Whoever wrote it knows much about the Fae.” He flipped to the title page. A nice frontispiece with an etching of an heirloom rose faced it, the plate guarded by a thin piece of vellum. The title page itself didn’t have much information.
“The author didn’t put her name on it,” Misty said. “Or his. They didn’t always back then. This book has a date but no publisher or author.”
“Maybe a Shifter wrote it,” Xav suggested.
“Doubt it,” Reid answered. “The spells in here against Fae are subtle but show a good understanding of Fae magic. Shifters are cruder when dealing with Fae.”
“He means we just rip their heads off and spill out their insides.” Graham strode to the back door and yanked it open. “Kyle! Get out of that damned tree! You’re not a cat.”
Kyle stopped squirming in the branches of the fruitless mulberry that overhung Misty’s yard from her neighbor’s, and dropped to the ground. He yipped once when he landed, then he trotted off, none the worse for wear.
Misty tried to memorize what he looked like, so she could try to tell them apart, but once he joined Matt, she gave up. The two, as wolves, were identical.
“Are you babysitting them?” Misty asked when Graham came back inside.
“Their foster mother dumped them on my doorstep,” Graham said. “I was on my way to hand them to Nell and her bears when the dream hit.” He regarded Reid speculatively. “You and Peigi have a bunch of foster cubs at your house. Kyle and Matt like them.”
“No,” Reid said quickly. For the first time since Misty had met him, Reid looked less like a mysterious being and more like an ordinary human. A worried human. “Peigi’s got too much to deal with—the cubs, the other Shifter women from Mexico . . . You weren’t here when we rescued them. They went through hell, and Peigi as their alpha feels the worst of it. Leave her alone.”
Graham scowled at him a moment longer before he relaxed into a grin. “Why don’t you just make the mate-claim on Peigi and get it over with?”
Reid looked embarrassed. “Dokk alfar don’t do mate-claims.”
“You’d better start. Shifters need females, and she’s fair game. Even my wolves are eyeing her. They’re going to start to Challenge for her, and they won’t care if you’re dokk alfar or tree bark. They’ll use the Challenge as an excuse to kill a Fae, and won’t care you’re one of the good ones.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Reid said, recovering his calm. Graham didn’t seem to frighten Reid, and neither did other Shifters, Misty had noticed. Most humans, even Xavier sometimes, could grow nervous around Shifters, but never Reid.
“So we wait until moonlight?” Xav broke in.
Misty shrugged. “I guess.”
“I guess we do.” Graham moved back to the door, opening it again to watch the cubs. He wasn’t about to leave, she saw. Misty would have to sit here with him for the next few hours, her nerves making her crazy, the sensation of his hard kiss lingering on her mouth. “Got any beer?” Graham asked over his shoulder.
“I told my guys to bring some,” Xav said. “And we’ll get pizza.”
At the word pizza, high-pitched yips sounded in the backyard. One cub popped up from the riverbed, an eager look on his face. There was no sign of the other cub.
“Matt!” Graham shouted. “Get out of there.”
The second wolf scrambled out from under the bridge. He gave Graham and Misty an innocent look, or as innocent as he could with a clump of Angelita daisies drooping from his mouth, their yellow heads bobbing in the sunshine.
? ? ?
Moonlight. The clear skies of southern Nevada ensured plenty of light once the three-quarter moon rose into the black night.
The moonlight poured down into Misty’s backyard, rendering her colorful flowers pale ghosts of themselves. The neighbor’s tree cast sharp shadows on the patches of grass, and the dry river’s dark rocks took on a dull glow.
The cubs, unbelievably, were asleep. They’d dropped off fearlessly on top of Misty’s bed after consuming more than their bodyweight in meat-lovers’ pizza.
Misty’s aching body begged for rest, but she was afraid to sleep, afraid to dream. What if she found herself facing the hiker again, the wave of ice? The cubs didn’t worry, but then they hadn’t drunk the Fae water. How the cubs had entered the dream, and whether they’d truly been there, neither she nor Graham knew.
When the moon had risen high, Misty and Graham went out to Misty’s backyard. Graham had told Xav and Reid not to join them. He didn’t know what the spell in the little book would do, if anything, and he didn’t want it messed up by unspelled humans or a Fae—especially not a Fae.
Reid agreed without argument. Xavier didn’t like it, but he stayed inside, saying he’d keep an eye on the cubs.
Xav’s men had not only brought the pizza, but water—glorious water. A case of it, which Misty had drunk almost half of.
Graham had drunk nothing. She knew he was feeling the thirst, because he kept wetting his mouth, or swallowing and turning away as Misty had guzzled water. Why he wouldn’t drink, she had no idea, and he wouldn’t tell her.
Graham helped her carry the accoutrements for the spell outside. Misty had harvested petals from two of the roses she’d brought home from her shop, washing them thoroughly and rolling them dry in a towel.
“You eat flowers?” Graham asked when she told him imbibing the petals would be safe. “Humans are weird.”
“Lots of flowers are edible,” Misty had answered. “Cake bakers paint them with sugar water and use them for edible decoration. Roses, pansies, carnations, squash blossoms. I went to a restaurant where they made sweet corn tamales in squash blossoms. They were awesome. You have to be careful to choose the right kind of flowers, though. Oleanders, for instance will kill you quickly.” She waved her hand at the thick, dark green bushes along her fence.
Misty set everything up at a table on the other side of her yard, which was reached by the little bridge. She spread out a white cloth, scattered the cut rose petals on it, inhaling their fragrance, and consulted the book.
Gather petals of red roses, washed three times. Check. Chopped with a fine-bladed knife. Check.
Immerse in alcohol . . .
That had been an interesting problem. Misty and her friends drank mostly wine and beer, saving hard liquor for martinis on evenings out. Misty wasn’t sure she wanted to gulp down rose petals in beer, or even in the nice white wine a friend had brought her last time she’d come over.
Then Misty had found a bottle in the back of her liquor cabinet. She hadn’t noticed it in a while and hadn’t drunk any for a long time. But it might work.
Now she put the chopped rose petals into two shot glasses, one in front of her and one in front of Graham.
“What is that?” he asked as Misty poured out the liquid. Graham only drank beer too.
“The good stuff.” Misty sat down across from him, lifted her shot glass and waited for him to lift his. “Tequila.”