Enchant the Dawn (9 page)

Not that Alan would have a whole lot of luck talking up a lady with a sick child at home but it was better than nothing. When she offered to sit in the back, Alan had raised one slightly shaggy eyebrow at her, looked hard at Daron and then he’d given her a saucy wink.

She knew why Alan had been so tickled about the seating arrangements. Daron had his arm tightly around her waist and she could feel his breath hot on her neck, his erection pressing into her derrière with every bump in the road. Her long skirt whipped about in the wind and she gripped onto it with one hand as the other wrapped around his broad shoulders. Really, it was almost like she was in some cheap novel, riding sidesaddle like some hoity-toity lady fair. It would have been much safer and more satisfying, to simply straddle the man and throw her arms around his neck. Then she could have ground her pelvis against his and gotten some relief from the unrelenting pressure of her need.

The sounds of the street, the raucous horns, the noisy streetcars, the shouting of newsboys and the whirring of the engine on Ol’ Nellie faded into nothing as she listened to the rough sound of their mingled breathing. Every bump, every swerve seemed timed to throw her against him so she could feel every rigid of muscle in his chest and imagine those hard thighs she kept slipping across inside sliding between her own.

“I’m sorry.”

She blinked, sure for a moment she had imagined those words. She turned her head, diving again into those green eyes to try to ascertain if she’d heard him right.

He looked serious and just as incredibly tense as she was. “I would have come earlier but somebody had to watch Hester and Tommy ended up getting piss drunk in a bar in Hell’s Kitchen and I had to go bail him out and the new tenant in…” He trailed off as she began laughing.

“Do you always give your women such excellent excuses when you decide not to look them up?”

He gripped her chin in his gloved hand, forcing her to look him dead in the eye. “It was not a decision,
ashavi
. It was damn inconvenient.” The look in his eyes was fierce, demanding her understanding. She could almost hear his voice in her mind,
If it was up to me, I’d have chased you down that day and we’d still be locked in your flat.

A hard swerve around a plodding horse-drawn ice cart almost threw her out of the car entirely and she felt Daron’s hands settle around her waist as her body lifted up. Before she could think to protest, he’d settled her knees on either side of his hips. Her arms came up around his neck and she found herself sliding, ever so slowly, down the incline of his thighs toward his not inconsiderable erection. At a stoplight somewhere on Park Avenue, she was jammed full against him, feeling the hardness of him through all the layers of damnable clothing between his cock and her throbbing clit. Somewhere on the sidewalk some stalwart matron gave a shocked gasp at such a scandalous position in broad daylight but neither Daron or Sophia heard much of anything.

His eyes were that stunning vibrant green. She wasn’t sure if she was going to be burned or drowned by them, or simply consumed. She knew she wouldn’t survive the journey unscathed. His hands still held her waist and she suddenly felt very fashionably small. They could not help but rub together, the bumpy ride pushing them together in enticing ways.

She was so close to coming she was almost embarrassed. She realized for the first time since she’d seen him last month during that bitterly cold spring sunrise, she didn’t ache. At least, not the usual way. The pounding, unrelenting headache that that followed her into her dreams and allowed not a moment’s real rest for her spirit was gone. It was replaced by his presence and her body’s demand that she meld herself to him and cease all pretense at existing alone.

Her hips moved in shy little circles, as though hoping that her deliberate movements would get lost in the bumping and jostling of the road. The flutter of his eyelids and his low sexy groan meant that she was fooling no one, not even herself. He answered with demanding thrust of his hips up against hers through the thin barriers of his trousers and her bloomers. Her hands twitched on the back of his neck, wanting to dive between their bodies to release the ties that held them apart and feel the wet slide of him inside her. She wanted to ride him in the middle of Park Avenue, the world and all the tens of thousands of beings pressing at her soul be damned. She wanted to come so hard she couldn’t feel her toes. She couldn’t feel anything at all but the promise sweet release that she knew instinctively would happen once they came together.

His breathing was hard, the muscles of his neck rigid under her fingertips while he fought to control the same instincts that drove her. His eyes opened wide and he looked almost alarmed that he was unable to find that deep well of calm that she’d always sensed in him. She was just a mite bit proud that she could drive him just as mad as he drove her. She wondered if he’d been suffering half as much as she had, knowing that he was somewhere in this city wanting her made the situation more bearable. Knowing she had the power to drive him over the edge was almost as good as actually doing the driving. Almost.

She never did get to choose whether or not to make him crack and fuck her right and proper in the rumble seat of that Packard. Instead, with a squeal, the car came to a shuddering stop somewhere around One Hundred Eighteenth Street. The driver’s door opened and Alan popped out in a mad rush to get around the car to open June’s door but he stopped with his mouth open wide enough to catch a baseball when he took in Sophia’s current position perched atop Daron. She pulled back and made a great show of rearranging her skirts as Alan started to whoop his laughter.

Sophia turned her eyes toward the sidewalk, where June stood with her eyebrows raised, non-judgmental but waiting. The sadness and worry in her eyes and in her life energy was enough to galvanize Sophia into action. She clambered over Daron and made her way over to June, not looking back to see if the men followed. Somewhere in the mess of turbulent fire that swept back into her mind when she was no longer locked with Daron in an intimate embrace, there was a little girl who needed her. For all the slow-working torture she had endured from her “gifts”, she might as well try using them for some good.

Chapter Seven

Hester, June’s little
chavi
, was coughing enough to break the heart of a far tougher man than Daron West. It made a soul feel guilty for taking a deep breath with ease. Daron could feel her panic from two floors down and cursed himself for being so wrapped up in Miss Sophia Hunter and her strong thighs and elegant neck and indecipherable eyes.

He started to run, trying to get to Hester and trying to chase away the last dregs of arousal from his system so he could focus on the task at hand. He wasn’t terribly surprised to hear the clatter of shoes on the stairs behind him. June knew what his haste meant and Sophia was damned clever. The worn but clean halls of his building had become as familiar as the back of his hand and he swerved around Mrs. Gianoli and her twins on the second floor as he dashed to the third. There in 5C, the door was unlocked and it slammed open when he pushed at it. Hester was sitting in her favorite green chair by the old smoky stove, huddled in the blankets that Mary and Irene and Ixchel had given to June over the years they’d all come to care for the little girl. So she was swathed in warm Merino wool and the bright embroidery of Mexico and the best of South Carolina quilt work. Hester raised glazed blue eyes to his and Ixchel was muttering in kind but tense Spanish as she ran a warm cloth over Hester’s sweat-drenched brow.

He’d known Hester for almost half her life, ever since he’d found June standing on the roof of this building on his fifth day on the job. June had been holding her wisp of a girl to her chest and singing an ancient Irish lullaby under a full harvest moon with a prayer for health and wellbeing through the rest of the year. Daron had heard his father sing something similar, something his grandfather had sung as a child from Eire.

Once Daron had made his presence known, June had been terrified of him, of all men really. But Hester had started to cough and Daron had done what came naturally. He’d taken Hester’s tiny little fist in his hand and felt all the fear and panic bubble up out of the little sprite and into himself and down and out into the warm dark of the void. The coughing had eased up a bit and June had looked at him with tears of thanks in her eyes.

“
Madre de Dios, ya están aquí
!” Ixchel greeted him with a stream of excited Spanish that he could barely make out but in general he thought it was prayers to her namesake Goddess and a litany of saints and martyrs that he’d finally gotten back with help. Hester was older than the first time he’d helped her but only a bit bigger, her pale skin fine and thin, with huge pale green eyes and the same flaxen hair as her mother. Blotches of purple sagged under her eyes and her cheeks were a false bright red from the continued exertion of trying to catch her breath, of trying to force out all the air she could and wait for new air to return. She was so very tired.

He crouched in front of Hester and stripped off his gloves and took her hand as he had years ago and drained from her as much of the pain as he could. He gritted his teeth that he could do nothing to relieve her physical suffering, only calm her mind and quiet her soul to deal with the burdens life had given her at such a young age. The coughing eased up a bit, the choked gasping lapsing into that ghostly wheezing that always came with one of her attacks.

The world narrowed into shades of gray, as it always did when he was trying to help someone overcome pain and worry. He felt it all, at least for the time it took for whatever magic he’d been gifted with to empty all the excess from him. Sometimes he felt that he would break with it and he marveled at how this little girl was so strong. She was so like her mother, pale and beautiful and wise beyond her years. And just as mistrustful.

Still holding Hester’s hand, Daron felt a strange dichotomy of emotion within him as Sophia entered the little one-room apartment. Hester was scared, worried that this stranger would be poking and prodding her and only making things worse. Daron felt all this and at the same time, he felt the strange mix of his own relief and desire. Desire for the woman and relief that he might have found someone who could really help this little girl.

It was a bit of a shock when the first thing Sophia did wasn’t to sweep in and try to comfort Hester as he was but to start arguing loudly with Ixchel. With a lot of pointing and gesturing, Sophia looking increasingly frustrated until she kicked at the little Franklin stove in the corner hard enough that she started hopping up and down from the pain in her foot.

“Well now, that’s wonderful,” Alan said, having perched on the window sill next to him. Daron shook himself, unhappy with his constant state of distraction. Between the thick fog of Hester’s pain and Sophia’s strange actions, he’d not even noticed Alan enter the room. “Soph’s always wanted to invent her own dance steps. Looks likes she’s finally succeeded!”

Daron blinked but then the world shifted focus as the gray that coated him after draining Hester of her ills turned to a bright shining yellow. Hester laughed, just for a moment before the coughing struck again but it was a rare and beautiful thing. Daron let go of the shreds of the jealousy he’d held against the man for being so close, to knowing his
ashavi
for the years it had taken him to find Sophia. Alan was comfortable and knowledgeable about this new world, not like Daron who struggled to find his place in the madness of New York.

June knelt in front of her daughter, smiling the tired but brilliant smile she reserved for her daughter. “How are you, dear one? Any better?”

Hester nodded, her eyes bright. “Better Momma. You’re back. And Mr. Gypsy.”

Daron cringed a bit from the nickname Hester had always used for him, especially when Alan had broken into yet more laughter. “Is that your name, buddy? That makes a load of sense then, as Sophia always did go after them Valentino types.” Alan turned to Hester then. “Mr. Gypsy here seems like the kind to ride in and save the princess from the evil wizard.”

Hester’s eyes opened wide. “There’s an evil wizard? I didn’t think wizards were evil! I like magic, ’specially when…” Hester started to cough then and June stroked her back lovingly, her eyes filled with resigned sadness.

Alan filled in the void, trying to bring light back into Hester’s eyes as well as June’s. “Well, I suppose we could make Mr. Gypsy get himself rescued by the good witch from the clutches of the Evil Princess!” Daron felt the happy sparkle of Hester’s giggle like a warm flame through him and he gently let go of her hand, having no interest in draining such an emotion from the little girl. He watched as Hester laughed and June smiled. He also took note that Alan’s eyes drifted from Hester to settle briefly on June and a flash of longing appeared. Not the crass kind of lust that Daron had defended June from more than once but an honest kind of caring. Daron could feel the profound effect that June was having on this Alan
Gadjo
and he thought he’d better distance himself from the mess of it while Hester was doing better.