Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) (33 page)

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Odd Fate

CHAPTER One

The blood rushed to my face as I ran. It seemed I embarrassed more easily these days. Probably running down the street in negligee would embarrass anyone, but I still hoped that anyone who saw me would think it was strain causing the flush of color.

Chasing after the bad guy cost no real effort on my part, so it wasn’t actually any added blood flow to my face making me blush. Stamina and speed were among the newfound benefits of being whatever monster I had become. I hoped my back-up would show up soon, however. The one thing we had noticed about my powers, since I had them, was that I was similar to a cheetah. I had great, almost fantastic, bursts of speed with, as I said, little to no effort on my part.

After the initial sprint, I started burning energy. When I burned energy it had to be replaced. Replacing energy for me involved more than taking a nap or snacking on a protein bar.

As it was late at night in rural Ohio, no one in the Harbor seemed to take notice of us, for which I was terribly grateful. It was hard enough being a single mother—in a small town—who got dumped for a podiatrist by her lawyer husband. Toss in my life weirdness and the chatter would become a dull roar.

Winter clung to northeast Ohio like a lover long past when the romance had died out for most of its inhabitants and I was freezing in my inappropriate dress. Speaking of inappropriate, the guy I was chasing needed to invest in Nair. He was half hairy and as he glanced over his shoulder at me and growled, the teeth he bared were elongated and yellow as they snapped at me in warning.

My back-up chose just then to pop into place in front of the were-puppy, so as the creature spun his head back around he tried to come to a screeching halt before crashing into Chance.

Chance was not dressed much more suitably than I was, but from my point of view, hey, I wasn’t complaining.

Chance wore boxer briefs almost as bright a red as his hair— which I’d gotten him for Christmas—under a fuzzy pink robe. The robe was Sven’s, grabbed on the fly from the bathroom back at Odd Stuff. Like I said, we hadn’t planned on going out. Still, as he popped into place in front of the half man, his robe flashed open and his hair flared out and I was rewarded with a full frontal view of him that made me stop jogging and grin.

Ah, it was good to be me.

In my head, Chance said,
Could you concentrate on business and stop ogling me?
 

I replied, just as silently,
You like to be ogled
.

His answering flash of teeth seemed a particularly evil grin, which to our prey probably thought was directed at him as Chance’s eyes had never left the out of control shifter.

While the shifter was paying attention to my lover, I slid up behind him and began to sing softly.

We had the routine down pretty well after months of working together. It was getting pretty monotonous, honestly. I wrapped my arms gently around the shifter, who had gone nearly limp upon hearing my voice, before sliding my arms up his coarsely haired arms. I enjoyed his musk and tasted his power. It wasn’t bad. Shifters had a live sort of energy that was appealing, but I preferred a different sort of energy these days.

I slid my eyes up and met those of the man in the pink and smiled.

He grinned back at me.

Stepping closer to the shifter, Chance caught us both in his arms. In moments we were standing in another room. This one was warm, thankfully, but smelled worse of were musk and blood and other things better not examined too carefully.

Chance stepped back and I released the newly made were to drop to his knees. The leader of the pack was standing a few feet away.

Dara was a bitch. This wasn’t an insult. She was proud to be the bitch of the local werewolves. Usually when one thought werewolves, one thought alpha dog. In our city, it was a bitch. She had made it to the top by being tougher than any of the males. Her hope was that one day someone, in her case someone male,
would
be bigger and badder than she was. So far, well, she was the biggest bad ass our town had in fur. I liked her.

I had gotten the call from her tonight because someone had Turned this little guy on our side of town and somehow or another he was loose and causing trouble. My affiliation with the FBI had evolved to helping out other situations. Lately, Dara had her hands full. Something was rotten in the shifter community. We were all doing double time to try to stay on top of whatever it was to keep it from notice within the human community.

It was even causing trouble for the fairies… or something was.

But that was another story and just now Dara was looking over the wayward puppy.

“How do you two catch them so fast? I just called you,” she murmured.

I shrugged and figured that this was one of the questions that we didn’t answer. There was sort of a list of questions that Chance and I just did not answer. It seemed to keep me healthy, so we went with that.

I looked at Chance and yawned broadly. It was my idea of a hint. I never did get subtle down. We had been busy before the call had come in. That was why we were dressed so… well, that was why we weren’t dressed.

And lately there had been little to no time for
us
. It seemed the more responsibility we took on, the less time there was for us.

I can’t say as I liked this change.

Especially since things had seemed to begin to change between us. Dara shrugged it off and Chance, who had been a man of few words for a while now, came to my side and said, “Night, Dara.”

“Hmm,” she said and Chance popped us out of there.

We landed back in my bedroom. I had gotten almost blasé about Chance’s mode of transportation. I still wasn’t sure how he did it. I could feel almost energy crackle down his skin and I had tried to see if I could do it (not when he was around, of course) but it was, like so many things with him— mystery.

I sighed and slid out of his arms and stalked back to the glass of wine I’d abandoned when I got the call from Dara earlier.

I looked at my cell, still sitting where I abandoned it.Then I did something I rarely did lately. I hit the button and turned it off.

I turned to him, wine in hand and saw he was dropping the borrowed robe to the floor.

The room was lit by candle light. He stood, in boxer briefs, his body all peaches and cream with a light dusting of the auburn curls trailing down to disappear into the briefs like a line drawn on a map... all he was missing was the x to mark where the treasure was hidden.

His curls, the ones on his head, had grown longer since I had met him, and brushed his shoulders. When he held me, they brushed over my skin and were yet another bit, another layer of texture to be enjoyed about him. My own hair had started to grow out and now hung in fat silver, almost white, curls to my chin. I brushed the curls back, as they crossed my mind and continued my silent study.

Just now his head was bowed and the muscles in his neck and shoulders stood in stark relief in the flickering light and I sighed out a breath. I watched his fist clench. It made a single muscle ripple up his arm.

I wondered at how you could think a man beautiful… even his feet. I understood, too, the fist. He knew we were going to have a talk.

Candles and wine and the whisper of the night were around us. With me in lingerie and him wrapped in shadows, only Chance and I would ruin it when our very minds are close enough that we knew that our only shared wish was to be wrapped in each other’s flesh by instead having a meaningful discussion.

I sighed.

We were warped like that.

I sat down and smoothed my hands down my thighs and looked down at the confection of black and silver satin and lace I was wearing and wondered why we bothered. Chance and I had been together for months. It had been reasonably smooth sailing. I touched the promise ring on my finger. We had been happy. We’d been lovers and friends in a way that I had never thought to share with anyone.

He had been what I had always hoped to find. Which is, I think, what was my primary objection to the entire thing.

That is, not to say, that he and I never fought. We fought. We yelled at the top of our lungs. We yelled in our minds at decibels that only we could hear, but were no less deafening in their silence. We found ways to fight that we had probably invented.

We also made up in ways that we probably invented.

We had made love in positions we probably invented. Some of them I later thought probably should have been physically impossible.

He had been… perfect.

But I am Janie Smith.

I am not perfect. I never will be. The more perfect for me he managed to be; the surer I became that I was doing something very, very wrong. And since time was passing, well, he and I were finding ways to get around each other.

Chance and I got tied together a few months back in a soul mate thing. There are these things tying the two of us together, the soul mate strands we call them. We had no choice in them and accidentally made them stronger. Now we are tied together, soul to soul. In this link, he can see into my mind and I into his. But since we have gotten more… comfortable, so to speak, in each other’s skins, we found the constant saturation was too much. So we found ways to construct barriers over bits of ourselves. Walls, so to speak.

Ways to keep each other out of pieces that we would rather keep to ourselves.

The pieces I mostly kept him out of were my insecurities. Like my nearly constant worry that he just got stuck with me because he wasn’t given another option. Also on the list is my worry over what he thinks of being tied to me. I have not tried to “peek” into those bits of his mind. For months.

I, it seems, am awfully good at making space in relationships where I would rather there not be space. I was making a space of silence while not talking to him about what was bothering me.

I had a feeling that tonight was going to be full of words rather than sighs. He had yet to move. It seemed the more walls that I constructed to keep him out of my mind, the more quiet he got. The usually chatty man was becoming the strong silent type. I can’t say as I liked the change.

I stood and faced him, swirling the wine in my glass because I was still not ready to actually look at him.

“You were saying that you wanted to talk,” I murmured.

I decided if I threw the ball into his court it would perhaps be that he did not want to discuss that which I worried he would want to discuss.

There was a chance that I was wrong.

I saw his feet come into range and the glass was removed from my hand. “Since when did you like wine?” he asked.

I looked up at him surprised. He took a long drink from the glass and handed it back. I looked at it and then at him. “I like wine,” I defended.

“I always thought you preferred Corona,” he replied.

I shrugged and looked at the glass.

“You only pull out the wine when you want to distract me. Also, you only pull out the romantic evening when you want to distract me… like when you pick up on the fact I want to talk to you from my mind.”

I looked at the glass again. Anything was better than looking at him. He took the glass again. He swirled the liquid and I felt need swirl when he swirled the glass.

“You still don’t want to talk about it?”

I bit my lip.

“Months, Janie. We have been together months. We are happy. I am happy. Are you happy?”

ABout theAuthor

Virginia Nelson believed them when they said, “Write what you know.” Small town girl writing small town romance, her characters are as full of flaws, misunderstandings, and flat out mistakes as Virginia herself. When she’s is not writing or plotting to take over the world, she likes to hang out with the greatest kids in history, play in the mud, drive far too fast, and scream at inanimate objects. Virginia likes knights in rusted and dinged up armor, heroes that snarl instead of croon, and heroines who can’t remember to say the right thing even with an author writing their dialogue. Her books are full of snark, sex, and random acts of ineptitude—not always in that order.

Virginia loves to hear from her readers. Find her online!

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