Move Me (7 page)

Caught up in his glow of satisfaction, he
didn’t realize Belle was awake until the back screen door creaked
open. His heart gave a skip he wasn’t familiar with.

Belle came down the stairs in a black
turtleneck and jeans. She was a wand of a woman: straight, tall,
her hair brushed back in a disciplined ponytail. The turtleneck
made her look reserved, but weirdly sexy too. He knew the enchanted
tigress the sober color hid.

Her expression was a mask as she thrust out a
steaming mug -
his
coffee, apparently. “I fixed it the same
as last time.”

Her voice conveyed a take-it-or-leave-it
challenge. Was she embarrassed to have done a boon for him? He
tried to read her expression as he accepted the gift and sipped the
delicious brew. As was usual for his kind, the touch of sugar gave
him a little charge. He noticed Belle wasn’t displaying the well
rested languor most women would have who’d enjoyed a stellar erotic
dream.

“This is the way I like my coffee,” he
assured her.

She pulled a face, hugged herself, then
surveyed the yard. “How long have you been out here working? It
looks much better.”

“Since dawn. There’s life here yet. The
plants were just feeling neglected.”

She turned dubious eyes to him. “They were
feeling
neglected, were they?”

Dubhghall’s grin sprang up without effort,
though not without calculation. Women had been known to admire his
dimples. “Don’t you begin to languish when people neglect you?”

Belle snorted, but he could tell he’d amused
her. “I suppose you think you’ve earned breakfast now.”

“Wouldn’t say no to it,” he answered.

She
hmphed
again and turned back to
the house. He took a second to admire her “booty”- as he believed
it was called - encased in the worn denim. Belle hadn’t flattered
herself in her dream. Seen from the back, her ass was adorable.

“Well, come on,” she said from the top of the
steps. “It’ll be finished soon enough.”

She fixed him a simple meal with her own two
hands. The scrambled eggs were a thousand times better than tinned
soup. The French toast and maple syrup made him moan repeatedly
with pleasure.

“Don’t you cook for yourself?” Belle was
regarding him with amusement over her second mug of coffee.

Dubhghall remembered he was supposed to be
divorced and abandoned. “I mostly rely on food in cans.” Because a
technical truth didn’t honor her efforts, he offered a confidence.
“My mother used to make wonderful breakfasts for me and my
siblings.”

Those meals had been extravaganzas of her
magical expertise. Dubhghall remembered swelling with pride that
their mother was so skilled, and at the same time being childishly
delighted. Talfryn’s queen had a knack for the whimsical. It was
part of what preserved their family as a family. They cherished who
they were together. Unlike some fae, they didn’t change themselves
beyond recognition out of melancholy or restlessness.

Belle drew breath to speak, then hesitated.
“Is your mother alive?”

“She is, but she doesn’t live nearby.”

“Mine moved to New Mexico,” Belle said. “She
and my father don’t like the cold.”

“And yet here you are.” Without planning it,
his voice had gone quiet and gentle. “Returned to the same town
where your brother disappeared.”

Dream-walking opened a window into another
person’s thoughts. He’d witnessed Belle’s pain when she’d failed to
find her brother at the school in her dream. He knew the complex
feelings her parents’ favoritism stirred. Belle looked into her
coffee. She’d set the mug on the table, and both her hands clutched
it. Dubhghall experienced an urge to rub her fingers but didn’t
think she’d want that.

“I ought to be able to let go. We lost Danny
so long ago. I guess I just don’t know how.”

“And then your uncle left you his house.”

“And then my uncle left me his house.” She
smiled crookedly, her grip relaxing.

Dubhghall thought about a house that always
remained the same, that didn’t grow new towers or rooms on its
owner’s whim. A house like her Uncle Lucky’s must build up layers
of memories. Faeries didn’t do sympathy often, but he supposed some
of his crept into his eyes. His earlier instinct had been correct.
Belle grimaced and got up to put their dishes inside the sink.

“When you’re done with the yard,” she said,
beginning to run water, “do you think you’d like to tackle the
library? I don’t really want Uncle Lucky’s books, but other people
might. You seem acquainted with the topics he was interested in.
Maybe you could set aside the ones that are valuable.”

She wasn’t looking at him, and that bothered
him more than he would have guessed. For a heartbeat he failed to
notice she was handing him the access he wanted on a platter.

“I could do that for you,” he
acknowledged.

“Good.” Her back and arm muscles busied
themselves with washing the dirty dishes. He sensed she had more
stored up to say. It came after she drew a breath. “Some of the
books might be Danny’s. If you find his name written in any, please
don’t put them in the for-sale pile.”

He’d risen to his feet without planning to.
Because he was there, he laid his hand gently on her arm. The
stretchy cloth of the turtleneck didn’t bar her warmth from
him.

“I won’t,” he assured her.

She looked at him for a twinkling, the glance
lasting long enough for him to see the feelings that haunted her.
“Thank you,” was all she said before turning to her task again.

~

Isaiah Lucke’s library was squeezed into a
small room on the first floor. The shelving was of varying
vintages, built-in or bought from thrift stores as Belle’s uncle
ran out of space. Dubhghall took his time going through the
collection.

Isaiah hadn’t been as crazy as the residents
of Kingaken assumed. From what Dubhghall could tell, he’d pieced
together many of the principles of working magic. Actually putting
them into practice was a different matter. Dubhghall didn’t see how
the old man could have accomplished that. The holes in his
knowledge explained why the runes in the shed seemed off. They
simply wouldn’t have worked for a non-Talented human.

Except they had worked, which meant some
other factor had been in play. Dubhghall was betting on Belle’s
little brother Danny. It couldn’t be a coincidence that an
interdimensional portal had been set up in the very yard from which
the nine-year-old disappeared.

Dubhghall glanced at the library door. He
heard Belle moving around in the living room, unpacking the boxes
she’d shipped ahead of her from New York. She seemed to be
tentatively - or maybe temporarily - settling into her uncle’s
place. Given her obsession with her missing brother, he doubted he
ought to tell her Danny might be alive. He didn’t know for sure
what had happened to the boy, besides which she wasn’t apt to
believe his theory.

Belle didn’t strike him as an especially
open-minded mundane.

Not your business
, he reminded
himself. His business was discovering how the non-standard portal
worked, plus charming from Belle what he needed to return home
safely.

He forced himself to focus on a second survey
of Isaiah’s books, this time with an eye toward finding those that
belonged to her brother. He sorted them into tidy piles as he went,
a process that required little mental power. Faeries had an inborn
knack for knowing what items had value, indicated by different
kinds of tingling they felt through their fingertips. The minor
magic worked fine in this dimension, without depleting his supply
to any great degree. Dubhghall probably would have finished his
assignment sooner if he hadn’t gotten sidetracked by a book of
Danny’s. The first he’d come across, it happened to be an
illustrated work of fiction concerning an elephant.

Enthralled by the first few pages, he pulled
an armchair closer to the window so he could read without rushing.
He’d give mundanes credit for one gift: they knew how to spin a
tale. He hoped he’d get a chance to regale his siblings with this
one.

He’d nearly memorized all the pictures when
Belle opened the door and came in. “Wow,” she said, looking at the
stacks he’d sorted the books into. As her gaze reached him, his
heart gave the funny flip he’d noticed in the yard before. Seeing
what he’d been up to, her eyebrows rose. “You found Danny’s copy of
Babar
. He made me read that to him a million times when he
was little.”

Dubhghall had drawn his feet up onto the
armchair’s cushion, but now put them back on the floor. “My
apologies,” he said. “I didn’t mean to ... slack off. I’ve never
read this book before.”

Belle laughed but not full out. She never
did, that he could tell. “You’re hardly slacking. I had no idea
you’d get through this chore so fast.”

Was he working too fast for a mundane?

“I have another shelf to go through,” he said
gravely.

“Okay. Whenever you’re hungry, I picked up a
couple salads at the grocery. I imagine Susi’s mother made them, so
they’ll be good.”

Her cheeks had turned faintly pink, which he
thought both interesting and attractive. He recalled Susi’s name
from the ghost’s account of Belle’s doings. The owner of Kingaken’s
General Store was a local she’d expect John Feeney to know. “When
do
you
wish to eat?”

“Well, I was going to eat now but, you know,
you’re not obliged to join me.”

When she was flustered, she put unnecessary
words in her sentences. She also reached behind her to smooth her
barely mussed ponytail. Dubhghall came to his feet. He’d observed
she found his height appealing.

“I’d like to join you, Belle,” he said.

“Fine. I’ll -” She looked at his mouth and
appeared to forget what she meant to say. “I’ll be in the kitchen,
setting the table.”

She spun and walked off stiffly, leaving
Dubhghall with a surprising knot of heat in his groin. They’d only
been talking, and he was hard. Luckily for his pride, she’d been
aroused too. He’d thought seducing her would take more work, but
possibly not trying was his best approach with Belle.

The flip side to that was that she didn’t
have to try hard to get to him.

They ate their lunch together in near
silence. To his dismay, he enjoyed her company regardless.

~

Belle should have been able to forget that
orgasm. It
had
only happened in a dream. No way would the
real life John Feeney be able to recreate it. Even if he could, she
wasn’t over ex and didn’t plan to stay here, in any case.

Only a fool would start something up with an
odd duck like her handyman.

If she hadn’t found him lost in a storybook,
she might have stuck to her guns. She didn’t know many - make that
any
- grown men who’d have done that unself-consciously. His
behavior was strange and sweet, and never mind how hot his long
body looked curled up in that chair. Of course, everything about
him was sexy: the way he forked tomatoes into his mouth, the messy
spikes of hair that fell over his forehead. By the end of their
quiet lunch, Belle was ready to rub herself on the chair.

When John got up to wash the dishes, not just
set them in the sink, she was done for.

“Are you attracted to me?” she burst out.

He shut off the water and turned around.
Belle sat at the old farmhouse table, her fingers clutching its
edge. As tense as she was, she couldn’t have seemed seductive.

“Yes,” he said cautiously, his cheeks gone a
shade darker. “Are you thinking you’d like us to have sex?”

“Just casually,” she hastened to clarify. “I
mean, obviously I think you’re attractive, but you have issues and
to be honest, so do I. Plus, I don’t think I’ll stay in Kingaken
long. I’m definitely not looking for a boyfriend.”

“Good to know,” he said soberly. She had a
feeling he thought her babbling was humorous.

“Right,” she said, ignoring that. “I’m sure
you’re not looking for a girlfriend either. Plenty of women must
throw themselves at you. We just seem to have chemistry, so I
thought this could be, sort of -” She waved her hands, at a
loss.

“Scratching a mutual itch?”

“
Yes
,” she said, more grateful for his
answer than was called for.

He was smiling, his gorgeous sinner’s lips
rolled together to keep his grin inside.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she complained. “I know
you’re prettier than I am.”

“
I
don’t know that,” he said, his
amusement softening. “Trust me, I’d much rather sleep with you than
with a copy of myself.”

She laughed through her nose, liking the way
he teased. She also liked the way he dried his hands on the old
dishtowel. His fingers were long and elegant.

“Were you thinking of scratching our itch
now?” he asked. “Because, as you can see, that really would suit
me.”

He tossed the towel onto the counter,
revealing that he had a lot more package than was normal. The bulge
increased in volume before her very eyes, creases filling, zipper
lifting, until she wasn’t sure she’d ever drag her jaw off the
floor. That was some stiffy he was sporting.

“Are you planning to answer this millennium?”
he inquired.

“I think I need a minute more to drool,” she
said faintly.

His laugh at that was low and masculine, a
lovely sound she hadn’t heard in too long. “Come here,” he said. “I
want to show you I’m good for more than ogling.”

He was good for a lot of things. He stripped
her out of her clothes almost as quickly as his dream counterpart.
Then he laid her down on the square tabletop.

“Take your clothes off too,” she urged,
tugging less effectively at his flannel shirt. The garment was a
twin to the shirt he’d worn yesterday, but he smelled too good not
to have changed. Chances were, he had a closet full of identical
apparel, bought at Sears, no doubt. Anything less like her ex’s
sartorial fuss was hard to imagine. She’d practically had to lock
up her hair products around Tom. If John was an example of a real
man, she was swearing off metrosexuals.