Hunted (Book One of the Forever Faire Series): A Fae Fantasy Romance Novel (8 page)

A
s usual
, Kayla and Tara sat together in the canteen tent. Each morning Forever Faire’s entire crew gathered there at the end of the concession lane to share the first meal, which the show provided as an employment perk. The choices offered were basic hot and cold breakfast foods, but since it was free and cooked well, no one complained.

A raven-haired girl with green eyes and tattooed arms parked her breakfast tray in front of Kayla’s as she sat down across from her. “Howdy. I’m Christine,” she said, a distinct Tennessee drawl in her voice. “I keep the kids from shooting each other with arrows.”

Tara eyed the new girl’s ink as well as her eyebrow, nose and lip piercings.

“I’ve lost my appetite,” Tara said.

Before Kayla could chastise her, she got up and headed to the coffee urn. Kayla smiled sheepishly at Christine.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Kayla, the show’s groom, and that rude little business is my sister, Tara, the seamstress.” She offered her the Danish she hadn’t touched.

“Thanks.” Christine added the pastry to her heavily-laden plate. “How long have you and Goldilocks been with the faire?”

“About two weeks now.” Kayla took a sip of her coffee and saw Colm weaving through the tables as he approached them. “Have you met the show manager yet? Because you’re about to.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s my personal love puppy,” the girl murmured before she looked up. “Morning, Colm. Sleep well without me?”

Kayla nearly choked, and stared at the new girl, who was still giving the manager a cheery grin.

“Aye, I always do. You’re to work the hatchet-toss today, Miss Marszalek,” Colm told her, his voice flinty. “No children permitted to play or to step past the roped lines. Three strikes inside the target for a prize. Any questions?”

Christine cocked her head. “Do you have a hairy chest?”

He blinked. “What?”

“I ask because that’s kind of a deal-breaker for me. I prefer skin. Lots and lots of skin.” She leaned forward to give him a better look at her perfect cleavage. “But you could shave.” She smiled. “Or I could shave you.”

Kayla watched Colm turn and stride off. “I don’t think he’s, uh…”

“Interested? Available? Hetero?” Christine laughed. “Some of the other girls say he’s gay, but I’m thinking heartbroke. What’s your take?”

“Not really my business.” Kayla’s eyes shifted to Tara, who was adding cream to her coffee, and then to Jannon, who stood behind her and looked as if he wanted to grab her and drag her off to his room. “Some of the faire guys are a little odd.”

“A little? Honey.” Christine watched Wallace pass their table. “They may not be much in the looks department, but they’re all built like gladiators, talk like time travelers, and smell like dessert from a French bakery. That one is the hammer slammer, right?”

“The blacksmith,” Kayla said. Christine’s assessment might be colorful, but it was also right on the money. “Are you interested in anyone in particular?”

“I can never resist any big girl candy.” She made a hungry sound. “Oh, now there’s some serious sugar.”

Kayla followed the new girl’s gaze to the towering figure standing on the other side of the dining tent. Ryan had been avoiding her ever since the joust, but it wasn’t working for either of them. Every time they saw each other the air between them seemed to buzz with unseen lightning. Kayla had also been losing herself in dark, erotic dreams about him each night. In her dream world they were always naked and touching and kissing, but before anything more could happen she would wake up sobbing with frustration.

Christine nudged her. “You hitting that, girlfriend?”

“She’s not hitting anyone.” Tara thumped her cup down, sloshing some coffee over the rim as she glared across the table. “And she’s not your girlfriend, Pincushion.”

“Hey,” Kayla said, frowning at her sister’s belligerence. “Manners.”

“I heard you were a stripper,” Tara said. She leaned forward, her stormy eyes intent on Christine’s face. “What’s it like, taking your clothes off and shaking your boobs and ass for money?”

Kayla slammed her hand on the table. “That’s enough out of you.”

“Easy, sweetie,” Christine drawled, and smiled at Tara. “It’s good money, kid, if you can smile, look sexy and dance for eight, ten hours straight, seven days a week. This would be on a tiny stage under a blasting a/c vent—they don’t like dancers to sweat too much—with lechers ogling all the time, and groping you the minute you step down. You have to treat them like princes, and pretend you’re overjoyed by the dollar bill tips and the watered-down drinks they buy you. Once your shift is over, you hand a third of your take to the manager for the privilege of dancing in his place. Then you go home and try to scrub off the stink, fall unconscious, and don’t move for eight hours. Then you get up, eat something that won’t make you fat, and do it all over again. Piece of cake, really.”

Tara, who had paled, sat back and folded her arms. “You could get another job.”

“Oh, I tried, but I can barely read,” Christine said, her smile tightening. “Dyslexia’s a bitch. The foster home where I was raised kicked me out on the streets a week after I turned eighteen. Wal-Mart doesn’t hire the homeless. Basically, it was starve or strip. But hey, if you want some lessons–”

“I’d rather starve.” Tara shoved her chair back, rose and walked out of the tent, her ashen ponytail lashing her shoulder blades.

Kayla sighed. “I’m sorry. She’s usually not so hostile.” She saw the way Christine looked at her. “Okay, she is, but she’s still a kid. Dad and I kind of spoiled her, too.”

“She in trouble?” Christine asked. “’Cause that’s the vibe I’m getting off her. Big time scared.”

Kayla couldn’t tell Christine about the biker gang, so she went with the next most plausible excuse.

“Our dad died a couple months back. Mom took off when we were little. I’m all she has now. It’s been rough. Still, it’s no excuse for her to be nasty to you.”

“I was nasty back.” Christine pushed her fork through her cold food before she dropped it. “I can’t eat things that are congealed. You think that turkey leg vendor gal has anything cooked up yet at her stall? I love those things.”

Kayla chuckled and accompanied Christine to the row of food vendors outside the dining tent, where she left her happily munching on a big smoked joint. There were no shows scheduled for the horses that day, so from there she headed to the barn and got to work on mucking out the stalls.

The unpleasant chore mostly kept Kayla from brooding over Ryan, although she couldn’t help recalling the way he’d looked at her in the tent. Whatever this attraction they fought was, they were both losing. What would it be like, she wondered, to just give in.

Tara came after noon with a box lunch and a reluctant apology.

“I didn’t mean to be like that,” she said, and skirted around the barrow Kayla was filling with manure and urine-soaked hay. “I just didn’t like the way she was sucking up to you.”

Kayla and Tara’s jealousy were old friends, but she couldn’t let her off that easily.

“Christine doesn’t know anyone at the show. She was simply being friendly.”

“Everyone always likes you,” Tara said, pouting a little. “Why aren’t they like that with me?”

“Think about how you talked to Christine this morning. That might be a good place to start.” She saw Tara’s expression and set her pitchfork aside. “If you want people to like you, honey, give them something to like.”

Her sister hunched her shoulders. “You want me to apologize to her, I will.”

“That’s for you to decide,” Kayla said. She glanced down the row of stalls and saw all of the show’s horses had stuck their heads out and were watching Tara. “Thanks for bringing me lunch.”

“Don’t be mad at me,” her sister muttered before she trudged out.

Kayla took a few minutes to eat and rest before she finished cleaning the stalls. After she hung the pitchfork she went to tidy the tack room. Although the men took good care of the gear, they were lousy at organizing it. Kayla liked everything in its place. By the time she coiled up the last rope, the sun had set and the barn had gone dark.

“All right, boys,” she said as she walked the stalls one more time to check each mount. “I’m calling it a night. See you tomorrow.”

Titan whickered to her as she stepped out and closed the barn door, latching it in place. She took off her work cap and shook out her hair, rubbing the back of her neck as she turned to head to the lodge.

A burly figure stepped in her path, a cup half-filled with ale in his hand. He peered at her and then his mouth stretched, showing a gap-toothed grin.

“Well, now,” he slurred. “You’re awful purty.”

Kayla nodded to him as she tried to go around him, only to halt as he blocked her.

“The show closes at sunset, sir. Do you need a ride?”

“You think I’m too drunk to drive? Maybe so.” The redneck tossed his drink in the bushes and bent down to breathe ale fumes in her face. “How ‘bout you gimme a ride, girlie?”

Kayla took a discreet step backward. “I can call a cab for you.”

He reached down and massaged the front of his crotch. “Not talking about that kind, you little twat. Come ’ere.”

Kayla did the exact opposite, spinning and breaking into a flat run. Though she headed for the lodge, it’d never looked so far away. Behind her, she could hear the redneck’s footfalls—gaining.

“Help!” she yelled.

She could hear his labored breathing just behind.

“Not so fast,” he growled.

Although she managed a burst of speed, when she glanced back he was reaching for her.

“No!” she screamed, just as something clipped the back of her foot.

She went down hard, skidding along the grass. In the next second he was on top of her.

“Fucking tease,” he breathed.

He grabbed her shoulder and forced her onto her back. As she turned, her fist sailed through the air. But he easily dodged it, backhanding her with a vicious slap. Pain radiated along her jaw and her ears rang. She tried to kick, but her legs were pinned to the ground.

“I’ll show you–”

Suddenly the man’s deadweight lifted. In one smooth movement, he was yanked to his feet and tossed against the broad trunk of an oak twenty feet away. He slid down, sagged over to vomit, and then fell into his own fluids.

Ryan picked her up and held her cradled in front of him.

“Did he injure you?” He looked all over her. “Are you hurt, love?”

“I’m okay.” In fact she wasn’t, but she could fake it. What she couldn’t bear was Ryan calling her his love. “You can put me down.”

His hair began to sparkle as he went still. “I cannot.”

His big arms held her against his broad chest as he strode to the barn. Kayla clasped his neck as he opened Titan’s stall and mounted the stallion without a saddle. He took her up with him as if she weighed nothing at all. He touched his heels to the big stallion’s sides, and Titan carried them out into the night and away from the faire grounds. As soon as they approached the roadside fence Kayla cringed, but Titan made the leap and landed on the other side gracefully, still in horse form.

They rode deep into the woods, sending snow flying all around them as Titan navigated the white drifts. Several times Kayla felt pine branches drag at her hair, but felt no pain. When they finally stopped in front of a dark-windowed cabin, she felt as if she’d come home—although she had no idea where they were.

Ryan lowered her to the ground before he dismounted, and Titan retreated into an open-sided lean-to beside the cabin. Her magical savior stood staring down at her, and his sapphire eyes burned as if they were sinking into the molten heat of a furnace.

“You’ve come to me in my dreams,” he said, his voice little more than a growl. “So often now I dare not sleep. You’ve offered yourself twice now, lass, and I cannot fight it anymore. Do you still want me?”

Kayla’s throat tightened so much she could barely get the word out. “Yes.”

He held out his hand. “Then come. Come inside.”

R
yan took
Kayla into the unlocked cabin, and released her only long enough to light an oil lamp. As he turned up the wick, the glow illuminated the cabin’s one-room interior, which held odd-looking, oversize furniture and strange tapestries. In one corner stood a bed so large it could sleep six comfortably.

Kayla gazed around her. “This place belongs to you, doesn’t it?”

“Aye.” He lit another lamp, and as he did she saw he wasn’t using matches, but sparks from his fingertip. “’Twas left to me, along with the lodge.”

The million questions she wanted to ask him fled from her mind. As unprepared as she was, at least she was on the pill. She walked over to the bed and sat on the edge of it. He watched her take off her jacket and boots, but when she began unbuttoning her work shirt he came and put a long pale hand over hers.

“Never do this out of gratitude,” he told her.

“I’m not grateful.” She pressed her cheek against the hard plane of his flat belly, and felt his big hand stroke the back of her head. “I’m tired, and angry, and confused. I know you’re not going to tell me anything. When I leave here–”

“’Tis not meant to be, lass.” He drew her to her feet, and caught her face between his palms. “We’ll both suffer.”

Kayla felt like hitting him. “You more than me. I’ve been working in the stalls all day, and I haven’t taken a shower.”

Ryan murmured something under his breath, and a cascade of light drenched her. When it disappeared it took with it all the dirt, sweat and stains on her clothes.

“That’s a neat trick.” Her skin also felt so clean she wondered if she were glowing now. “Can you turn straw into gold?”

He bent his head. “The horses can’t eat coin,” he said, the words caressing her lips.

Kayla breathed in deeply, relishing the heady scent of his skin. Tonight he smelled of dark wine and vanilla heat, and she wanted to taste that on her tongue. Wherever their bodies touched she could feel an effervescent tingle sinking into her.

“Okay,” she managed to say, “just…um…forget that.”

“I am busy anyway,” he said, his smile grazing her jaw.