Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale (15 page)

The body paint got a cursory glance—she preferred to go with real chocolate syrup, since it tasted so much better—but she lingered for a moment on the raspberry bindi set.
Then her eyes widened and her hand shot out to snag a long, thin box with an intriguing cover illustration.

“Ooh,” she murmured to herself as her mouth slid into a grin, “chocolate tattoos!”

She dropped her notebook on the table and flipped the box over to scan the information on the back, trying to block out the mental picture of stenciling her name in chocolate on some choice body parts of the Fae warrior who still trailed after her with his hands in his pockets and a scowl on his face.
Maybe she could add the word mine across his ass in those gothic-looking chocolate capital letters.

“You know, at some point we’re going to talk about what’s going on here.”

Corinne looked up from the chocolate.
“You mean aside from crimes against the sighted community?”

“Not what’s going on in this store.
What’s going on between us.”

She shook her head and hoped she hadn’t just gone visibly pale.
“I told you, I’m not upset about the ogling, and I wasn’t ignoring you.”

“But you are upset about something.”

“No, I’m just working.”

“Corinne, you need to feel comfortable sharing things with me.
We’re in this together.”

She played it deliberately stupid.
“Believe me, if I see or smell or think of anything that will help us find Seoc, I will absolutely let you know.
Now relax.”

He didn’t budge.
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.
You keep trying to act as if there’s nothing between us, as if you don’t have the right to be jealous if a woman makes a pass at me.
We need to talk about us.”

“I wouldn’t have called a few leers and the sad lack of a poker face a ‘pass’ necessarily—”

“Corinne.”
He snapped out her name, sharply enough to force her to look up at him.

She abandoned stupid and tried for dismissive.
“Look, I really don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”

“You don’t?
Hm, then I imagine you might find it a little awkward when the first baby comes along.”

The box of tattoos clattered to the floor with the impact of a Howitzer shell.

“When
THE WHAT
does
WHAT
?”

Luc couldn’t quite decide if he found the expression on his heartmate’s face more insulting or amusing.
She looked as if someone had just explained to her that her regular coffee had secretly been replaced with dehydrated, powdered babies’ fingers.

“When the baby comes,” he repeated—whether to punish her or to force the issue of their relationship out into the open, he wasn’t sure.
“Darling, don’t tell me you don’t want children.”

She stared at him for a minute, narrowed eyes assessing his intent before she unclenched her fists and drew in a hissing breath.
“You’re a bastard, you know that?”

“I think that all depends on point of view, really.
In your eyes I’m a bastard for talking about the future,” he explained calmly.
“In my eyes, I’m simply refusing to let you avoid the subject of our relationship like the proverbial grasshopper to my ant.”

“If you were an ant, I’d so step on you right now.”

“Temper, temper.”

“Okay, you really want to do this here?”
She planted her fists on her hips, a pose he supposed he preferred to having those fists swung at his face, and glared up at him.
“You really want to talk about our relationship—which so far consists of nothing more than about three hours of admittedly fine sex, by the way—here.
In a god-awful-tacky sex shop, in front of a handful of strangers, with the kindly gaze of—” She read a nearby label.
“—Inflatable Amy, Your Go-to Good-Time Girl!
looking on?
Frankly, I think the romance factor may be a little shaky.”

He grabbed her around the waist and boosted her up to sit on a display table, bringing her face at least a few inches closer to his.
He imagined his expression when he leaned in might have intimidated a lesser woman.
“You might be telling yourself that the only thing between us is sex, Corinne, but I know you don’t believe it.
You’re not stupid, and you’re not blind, and to dismiss what’s happening would require you to be both.”

“I don’t
know
what’s happening between us,” she ground out, her eyes meeting his in a way that spoke of both defiance and discomfort.
He could read the confusion in the brown depths.
“Twenty-four hours ago, I didn’t even know you existed.
Now, in the space of less than a day, I’ve had to deal with the worst story assignment in the last millennium, a meeting with the Council of Others, the discovery that the Queen of Faerie’s idiot nephew is currently gallivanting through Manhattan and threatening the safety of some people I love like family, and the fact that I’ve just met a man who makes my knees quiver every time he gets within three feet of me.
I’ve got a lot on my plate, so cut me a little slack, okay?”

“No.”

Her eyebrows shot toward her hairline.
“No?”

“No,” he said.
“I’m not cutting you a damned thing.
You’re not the only one in this situation, and you’re sure as hell not the only one in this relationship.
You seem to keep forgetting that I’ve known you for exactly as long as you’ve known me.
Do you think this hasn’t caught me by surprise?
Sometimes that’s just the way these things work.
Sometimes you stumble over the things you need most while you’re busy looking for the ones you don’t even want.”

“You don’t want to find the Queen’s idiot nephew?”

“If it were up to me, the little menace would have suffered a fatal accident shortly after birth.
The point is, it’s not up to me.
And neither is this thing between us.
We’re both just going to have to get over it and deal.”

“Because you’re not leaving until this is finished.”
She sounded tired and worn out.
“Right.
I get it.
So let’s get the hell on with it.”

Damn it, she just wouldn’t understand until he laid it all on the line, would she?

“No,” he said, catching her chin in his hand, and holding her gaze with his.
“You have to get used to it because I’m staying whether this gets finished or not.
I’m just staying.
Because you and I are together from now on.”

He watched as his words registered with her and enjoyed the parade of expressions across her face.
Excitement, lust, shock, confusion, and terror all made an appearance as she studied him.
His brain told him he should gloss over it—pretend that it hadn’t happened or that he’d been joking.
When his heart and other assorted parts encouraged him to just rephrase it from
You and I are together
to
You’re mine and I’m going to spend the rest of our lives keeping you so busy you won’t have time to argue with me,
he thought his words made a good compromise.
Because his other parts offered a really good argument in favor of option number two.

She pursed her lips, and he banished the thought of what he’d like her to purse them around.
“You certainly work fast,” she said, slowly, almost visibly fighting the desire to panic.

He shrugged.
“What can I say?
I’m decisive.”

“And you’ve decided this?”

I’ve decided lots of things, including that the best way to keep you from fighting with me is to keep you so distracted that you can’t remember what you wanted to fight about in the first place.

“Fate has decided it.
I’m just along for the ride.”
Tact, he reminded himself.
Tact.
“I’m as shocked by it as you are.”

She barked out a laugh that didn’t sound at all amused.
“Somehow, I doubt that.”

“You should have a little more faith.
Look at this from my point of view—I came to
Ithir
to find an annoying royal brat with the common sense of garden moss, and instead I found you.
I think
gobsmacked
is an appropriate estimation of my current frame of mind.”
He saw her hesitate and tried an engaging smile.
The captain of the Queen’s Guard rarely bothered with engaging smiles, but maybe she wouldn’t notice if his looked rusty.

“Yeah, that’s a bit more British than I’d have gone on my own, but I think it works.”
She shifted her weight to brace her hands on the edge of the table and lean forward a little.
He took it as an invitation to wrap his arms around her and cradle her to his chest.
Mostly just because she felt so right there.

“How is it that you can be so calm about this?”
she wondered, her voice partially muffled against his shoulder.
“You might claim to be gobsmacked, but you don’t act like it.
You act like you’re taking it all in stride, which just makes me feel like an even bigger idiot.
I feel like I’m on some sort of roller coaster, only someone blindfolded me so I can’t even tell when I should be getting ready to scream.”

He squeezed around her and tried to tease.
“Why should you scream?
Is the idea of having me in your life really that terrifying?”

She sighed and answered the question seriously.
“No.
But yes.
I’m not terrified of you.
You’re just…” She hesitated.
“You’re not what I was expecting in a lover.”

“You mean I’m not human.”
He didn’t mean it as a condemnation, just as a truth.
He knew Corinne had to be wary of the Others, including him, and he couldn’t really blame her for it.
She’d been brought up to believe that creatures like him were only to be found in storybooks and scary movies.
Even after she’d found out the truth, that legacy represented a lot of mistaken beliefs to overcome.

“That sounds so…”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t invalidate your right to feel that way.”
He sighed and took her by the shoulders, cupping the curves in his hands and urging her back far enough that he could look into her face.
“Look, I’ll make you a deal.
We’ll take this one step at a time, okay?
Right now, we’ll concentrate on finding Seoc, and I’ll try not to do anything to scare the pants off you.
But in exchange, you’ve got to start trying to get a grip on what we have between us, because I can promise you it isn’t going to go away.
And neither am I.
Deal?”

She hesitated, her wide brown eyes searching his face for something.
She must have found it, or found something she wanted, because she pursed her lips and nodded slowly.
“All right.
It’s a deal.”

“Thank the Goddess,” he sighed, flashing her a grin and squeezing her shoulders before he lifted her from the table and set her back on her feet.
“Now, should we get back to business?”

Before Corinne could respond, Shiny reappeared from the back of the store, followed closely by a bald head that peered around the heavy curtain and fixed on Corinne.

“You’re the reporter?”

The bald head barely waited for her to nod.
In fact, he might not have.
“Come on in back.
I’m right in the middle of something.”

The head disappeared and Corinne blinked.
“Who was that?”

Shiny shrugged.
“The owner.
You better hurry up.
He won’t wait around for you.”

Corinne couldn’t decide whether to feel upset by the interruption, or intensely relieved.
Luc might have been ready to steer the conversation back to business, but she still had a few questions she was dying to ask.
Like,
What the hell are you talking about?
Still, it quickly became apparent that Shiny was right and Hibbish didn’t intend to wait around for them.

Gesturing for Luc to follow her, Corinne pushed through the heavy drape and hurried through a short entry then around the corner of a shelving unit.
She saw piles of stock, apparently separated by categories, and in some cases by color and/or size.
The choices stocked by The Pink Pillow were quite, uh, impressive.
Not to mention distracting.
One particular battery-operated accessory had her tilting her head this way and that in confusion until she nearly forgot about the rest of her surroundings.
She just followed the path through the shelves until she rounded a corner and something entirely non-mechanical caught her attention.
It took about three seconds for what she was seeing to register with her unsuspecting brain, and she froze in place with the abruptness of a gunshot.

Good Lord!
What had she just walked into?

She heard a chuckle behind her and a gust of warm breath against her ear.
“When he said he was in the middle of something, I didn’t think he meant anything quite so…literal.”

“Um, me either.”

Corinne swallowed and felt Luc’s hands settle on her shoulders.
He had stepped into the back room right on her heels, and since he was so much taller, he had an unobstructed view of the sight that greeted them.
She could only wonder what it looked like from his angle.

She did try to look away.
It seemed like the polite thing to do.
She wondered briefly if she should have stared at the hideous pink walls outside for a little longer so she could have been struck blind by the garish colors.
That way she would have been unable to see the horrific sight now before her.

Sheesh,
she thought,
can this day get any weirder?

In the back room of the shop, the man she assumed was Walter Hibbish stood hip-deep in a pile of mostly naked bodies with a camera pointed straight at some of the most naked bits.
Okay, the most unclothed bits.
Naked
might be a bit misleading, since they all seemed to be covered with something that looked like pastel-colored whipped cream.

“Sorry I can’t take a break to talk to you,” the shop owner said in between snaps of his shutter, “but this stuff is gonna be on the shelves next week and I need to get these shots done and printed up for the display.
A little to the left, Hildie.
Good.
Is that okay?”

Corinne blinked and grabbed for her composure.
“Well, I would have said to try it with that top leg a bit more bent, but yeah, it looks fine to me.”

Luc snorted behind her.

“Oh, I meant—hey, wait.
I think you may be right.
Deb, try bending your top leg just a little farther toward Maura.
Great.”
The camera snicked again.
“Hey, good call, Ms….?”

“D’Alessandro.”
Corinne stepped forward, figuring that if she pretended she wasn’t in a room with a pile of naked women, a man she wanted to jump on and spend a few hours licking, and a weird middle-aged man with a camera, then she should be able to conduct this interview just fine.
“Corinne.
From the
Chronicle.
Sorry, but I thought you were expecting me.”

“No.
Should I be?
We already run a regular spot in your paper.
More tongue, Lil.
Fabulous!”
He glanced over his shoulder at her and spotted Luc standing in the background.
“Who’s he?”

Luc beat her to the punch.
“Luc Macanaw.
I’m an associate of Ms.
D’Alessandro’s.
Thanks for agreeing to meet with us.”

Corinne had intended to introduce him as her photographer, but seeing the profession—or at least very serious hobby—of the man they were about to interview, she figured
associate
would be safer.
It was nice to work with someone who could think on his feet.

She was about to forge ahead with the questions, but something distracted her.
Specifically, five pairs of feminine eyes distracted her when they turned at the sound of Luc’s deep voice and took on the bright gleam of interest.
She fought back an urge to curl her fingers into claws or to slap a sign on Luc’s back reading, mine!
And just in case they missed seeing that one, she’d put another, permanent one someplace lower.
But now that she’d had time to think, she decided the second tattoo wouldn’t be on his ass, and it wouldn’t be made of chocolate, and—

Damn it, she needed to get a hold of herself.
This jealousy thing was going to get real old real fast, especially if Luc continued to do absolutely nothing to warrant it.

Hibbish seemed to notice the looks, too, but he had a slightly different reaction.
“That’s it!”
he shouted, camera snapping frantically.
“That’s exactly the look I need.
Hold it.
Hold it.
Perfect!
Wonderful!”

Corinne’s teeth clenched so hard she feared lock-jaw, but Luc didn’t seem to have any such trouble.
In fact, he flashed the heap of women a playful grin and reached for a tall, black can from the assortment on a nearby table.

“Kissy Kreme?”
he asked, his eyebrows rising.

“Yeah.
Great find.
Come on, Jennie, smile for me.”
Hibbish paused to adjust a flash umbrella, then resumed shooting.
“It’s brand new, but I know it’s gonna be big.
It’s fun, colorful, all natural.
Customers are gonna eat it up.”

“I think that’s the point,” Luc said, his voice low and clearly intended just for Corinne.
That damned murmur of his was lethal.
She watched, feigning disinterest while he flipped the can over and began reading from the blurb on the back.
“‘Sweet, creamy and sensual—just like the perfect lover should be.’”

He looked up at her with an intent expression that she’d have to be dead not to be affected by, but she covered her melty-ness with a snort, since the last thing he needed was another advantage over her.
At least, she hoped she’d done sufficient melt-coverage, but his eyes just sparkled at her as he continued to read.

“‘Kissy Kreme brings a new dimension to your love play in five unique flavors that blend wholesome ingredients with wicked intentions.
Cover your lover’s tastiest bits with the sweet flavor of raspberry, mint, chocolate, orange, or strawberry cream and delight your senses to the fullest.
Because kisses taste better when they’re creamy.
Bon appétit!’
Hmm, sounds yummy,” he said, looking back up at her with speculation and intentions that went well beyond wicked.
“Don’t you think, Corinne?”

“Come on, girls, act like you’re having fun, will ya?
It’s great stuff,” Hibbish said to them over his shoulder.
“Go ahead.
Give it a try.”

Luc’s mouth twisted into a subtle curve, the one that seemed to eat away at the ability of Corinne’s knees to actually do the job of supporting her weight.
“Thanks.
Don’t mind if I do.”

The man’s mouth ought to be outlawed, Corinne decided as she watched him check labels until he found the one he wanted.
Lifting it from the table, he extended his free hand to her and made her stomach do a wobbly cartwheel.

“What do you say?
Care to try?”

When she found herself all but blushing like a virgin, Corinne drew the line.
She hadn’t let a man intimidate her with sex appeal since Tony Melitti in the ninth grade.
Squaring her shoulders, she cocked one eyebrow, put one hand on her hip, and let the other brush teasingly across Luc’s upturned palm.
“Absolutely,” she purred in her best Jessica Rabbit.
“But you go first.
So I can watch.”

“Thanks.
I think I will.”
Predatory hunger radiated from his big, beautiful body as he caught her hand in his and sidled right up next to her until she could feel every inch of his body pressing up against her.

Sweet Mary Magdalene, the man felt like heaven.
All heavy, roped muscle and exotic scent, he gave off heat like a blast furnace, but Corinne already knew he was a hell of a lot nicer to curl up to during a cold snap.
She watched his crystal-green eyes go all lazy and seductive and fought back the urge to wrap her arms around his neck and scale him like a prison wall.
Just the thought of wrapping her legs around his waist and feeling his arms reach around to hold her steady made her pant.
She could almost feel those enormous hands of his kneading her muscles again, easing the burning ache his nearness caused.
She remembered the width of his shoulders blocking out the light, the weight of him pinning her to the cushions of her sofa, the scrape of callused skin against hers…

The hiss of the spray can yanked her back to reality just before her fantasy life caused her to embarrass herself.
If thinking about him drove her to the edge like this, she’d hate to imagine what might happen the next time she got her hands on him.

He already had his on her.
Eyes gleaming, he held her gaze captive while his fingers pulled the neckline of her tank top and the strap of her bra to one side, exposing the golden slope of her shoulder.
The can hissed again as he pointed the nozzle at her bare skin and painted a line of thick, pale blue whipped cream from the side of her neck to the edge of her shirt.
Then his head lowered and she felt his breath in hot contrast with the refrigerator cool of the cream.

“Chocolate pudding aside,” he whispered as her breath froze solid in her chest, “you can never go wrong with the taste of fresh raspberries…”

His head dipped, and his lips parted, and her world spiraled out of control at the feel of his tongue sliding hot and moist over her cream-covered skin.

Her head fell backward as if her spine had melted, and that’s pretty much how it felt to Corinne—like she’d become nothing but a great, big, boneless pile of goo.
Well, if goo could feel so desperately needy.
She pressed her chest against his, the pressure offering a slight easing of the ache in her breasts.
His tongue licked and stroked muscles and nerves and tendons as he ate the cream from her skin.
His lips pressed and teeth scraped, and it felt like he touched each separate nerve ending and coaxed it to quivering alert.
Her knees quivered like jelly and her stomach had filled with hyperactive butterflies, while her head swam a leisurely backstroke, content to let Luc feast on her flesh as long as he wanted.
If she was lucky, it would be a long, long time.

The click of the camera shutter barely penetrated her consciousness, but the loss of his kisses did.
He pulled away and straightened to his full height.
She whimpered and reached up to pull him back toward her, dying for more of his magic touch.

“Oh, my God, you two are amazing!”
Hibbish let his camera fall to his chest, dangling from the woven strap while he palmed his bare head in his hands and tapped out an obscure rhythm in what Corinne guessed was a gesture of mental overload.
“I’ve never seen anything like it!
Tell me what you charge.
I’ll pay anything!
Anything you want, just so long as you sign a photo release so I can use that shot on the Kissy Kreme display.
Name your price.”

Corinne barely registered the shop owner’s babbling as English, her senses still reeling.
It took a second to transition from the impulse to climb Luc’s body like a rope wall, to acting like a mature professional with a job to do and information to elicit.
With her eyes still locked on Luc’s face, she saw his expression sharpen.
He turned to the shop-owner-
cum
-photographer.

“Anything?”
he repeated.

Hibbish nodded.
“Absolutely.
That picture I took of you two is gonna sell a whole truckload of Kissy Kreme.
For God’s sake, you can have my firstborn child.
Just give me ten minutes to call my wife and let her know.”