The Faerie's Honeymoon (8 page)

“One more,” Duvall gritted out.

The rogue wave gathered, rising like a monster from an already churning sea. He hugged her close and protectively. When the final swell of orgasm hit, it was almost too much for her. For just a second, she sensed her husband as a being without a body, as incandescent power and spirit. That spirit grabbed the energy with a skill that awed her, shunting it away before it could hurt. That she understood what he was doing astonished her. Belle generally wasn’t sensitive to woo-woo stuff.

Then she gasped, and the otherworldly impressions she’d had were gone. He was holding her as the last rush of heat and pleasure tingled out through her fingertips.

“Mmm,” she said, every muscle in her body relaxing profoundly.

“Mmm,” he agreed. Not quite as sapped as her, he nuzzled her neck sweetly. “Want me to carry you to the bed?”

All she had the strength to do was mumble, but he understood that meant
yes
.

~

Duvall was exhausted, the roller coaster ride of the day having got to him. Even so, he wasn’t ready to close his eyes. Far more important was watching his wonderful wife gaze adoringly at him.

Belle sprawled lazily on her side on the sumptuous bed, still in her delightful black garter belt and stockings, still relaxed to a boneless state by their lovemaking. Their bent knees bumped together, and Duvall caressed her forearm with his fingertips, the motion as soothing to him as it seemed to her.

He couldn’t remember enjoying just staring at someone so much before.

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he asked. “Like a queen with your straight proud nose and your mysterious dark green eyes.”

His beloved wrinkled the nose he’d praised. “I’m not mysterious. You’re the powerful faerie.”

He hummed vaguely. This was a topic he didn’t want to revisit. Belle snuggled deeper into the bedcovers.

“Do you miss it?” she asked.

“Miss what?”

“The power you have here, the privilege.”

“Is that what you think?”

She shrugged a slender shoulder,
almost
casual. “You do treat it as if it’s natural.”

“I grew up as a prince.”

“I know you did. I guess what I’m asking is, would you rather we stay in Resurrection?”

Her face was calm, ready to hear what he answered. In her shoes, Duvall wasn’t sure he’d have been as open. To his relief - and maybe a little to his surprise - his answer came easily.

“Belle, I’m not even tempted. You’d miss your brother too horribly. You know Danny doesn’t want anything more to do with magic, and you spent too many years not knowing if he was dead or alive.”

“But what if Danny could overcome his aversion? After a while, he might get over the faeries abducting him.”

“No,” he said more firmly yet. “I like our life in your world. I like
my
life in your world. I feel ... realer there - which is illogical, considering I was born in Faerie, but that’s the way it is. I like knowing you’ll be beside me when I wake up. No supernatural creature will have snatched you away. I like that - for the most part - the only surprises we face are the ones we give each other. I enjoy fixing things around your house and taking out the garbage.”

She snickered and he pretended to pinch her nose. “Laugh all you want. Doing those small useful things makes me feel better about myself than you imagine. Certainly better than people bowing to me. I may be arrogant but, with you, I’m a good deal more.
And
,” he added, because this was crucial, “as tonight has proved, you’re safer in Kingaken.”

This pronouncement didn’t have the effect he expected. Belle frowned and plucked at the wedding cake coverlet. Duvall cupped her chin until she looked at him.

“Why are you troubled?” he asked gently. “Do you want to stay here? I was under the impression you aren’t completely comfortable here.”

“I’m not magic, and that means I don’t quite fit. The thing is, if you’d taken me to Paris and you spoke French and I didn’t, I might feel the same way. I don’t want my discomfort to deprive you.”

“Being with you, wherever you’re happiest, could never be a deprivation.”

“You see!” Belle exclaimed, momentarily confusing him. “You are the sweetest man. For that alone, I’d want to give you the chance to, you know, be all that you can be.” She stroked the edge of his upper wing, which he hadn’t folded away again. Shivers of pleasure rolled through him. “There are wonders here I never dreamed existed. Even if there’s a little danger, I’m not certain
I
want to stay away.”

“So, what are you saying?” he asked, inexplicably uneasy.

“We should come back. Maybe a couple times a year.”

Part of him wanted to, but a couple times a year seemed like a lot to him. Not sure what to say, he sat up.

“What?” she asked, her hand coming to his knee.

He looked at her. “There’s prejudice here,” he said, confronting the root of it. “Because I’m fae and you’re a non-magical human. I’d try to shield you from any slights, but I’m not sure I could head off them all.”

“I think it might be worth it. People always look down on folks for something. As long as I don’t look down on me, and as long as you don’t, I doubt it will sting too much. The glories of taking out the garbage aside, I don’t want you cut off from your roots.”

Was she right about this? Could she handle more than he was giving her credit for? He thought back to her encounter with the gargoyle, when she’d wanted to believe it had winked at her. Maybe her hurt over that had bothered him more than her.

“I’m not made of glass,” she said. “No more than your wings are.”

“Being charged up again
is
handy. And I like having power to share with you. I couldn’t have healed you back home the way I did here.”

Cautious, he fell silent to continue debating in his head. Back in Kingaken, she wouldn’t have been thrown off a roof by a vampire, but there were hazards in her world. Would he be comfortable giving up his ability to help? It annoyed him that the answer didn’t immediately come to him. He wasn’t used to wrestling with this kind of quandary. Making decisions that involved two people wasn’t easy.

“Well, don’t think
too
hard,” Belle teased. “We can give coming back a try and see how it goes.”

This was a sensible attitude. If only he didn’t have another awkward matter to bring up.

“Belle,” he said, deciding to get this over with as well. “Since we’re discussing ... slights, you should know my parents are aware we’ve traveled to Resurrection. I suspect they might drop in on us while we’re here.”

Belle was brave, but at this she paled. “I thought we were putting off meeting them until we were more settled.”

“That was my intention but - queen or not - my mother is still a mother. I expect she wants to take her daughter in law’s measure.”

“Urgh,” Belle said, sitting up. Her body language was slightly panicked.

“They won’t hate you,” he assured her. “They couldn’t. They just might not be a hundred percent diplomatic in everything they say.”

At the sight of his anxiety, Belle broke into a laugh. “All right,” she said, relaxation dropping her shoulders.

“All right?”

“They don’t have to be perfect. We’re not, so why should they be? At the least, they won’t be worse than my folks.”

“True,” he said, because her folks had played favorites rather awfully between her and her brother.

As sometimes happened, he inadvertently made her laugh. He must have also pleased her, because she took his face between her hands and kissed him on the lips. “Your parents love you, right?”

“Very much,” he confirmed.

She nodded in satisfaction. “They’ll do then. As for you, you can repay any ‘slights’ they give me with sexual favors.”

He grinned. This sounded like a plan to him.

“I’m thirsty,” she announced, suddenly pushing up from the bed. “I think I noticed some bottled springwater in the suite’s kitchen.”

“I can get that for you.”

She smiled at him so warmly you’d have thought he’d offered to fetch her Cinderella’s slipper. “I’m up. You stay there and recuperate.”

Recuperating sounded like a plan as well. He admired her shapely rear view as she slipped out, then flopped back on the covers with his wings flung out in abandon. He felt so good now that they’d surmounted their hurdles. He was the luckiest faerie in the world, with a beautiful understanding wife and an amazing life to look forward to. What more could any -

Belle’s attenuated shriek bolted him upright. He zoomed to her at faerie speed, almost overrunning her, he tried to get there so fast. She was in the living room, frozen at the edge of the sitting area with her hands covering her mouth. The lights were on, and no one else was around. He sensed no spellwork or other intrusions.

“What is it?” he asked, touching her shoulder. “Did something frighten you?”

Belle took one hand from her mouth and pointed at the carpet. Though strands of the plush silk-wool were visible here and there, the floor covering had been transformed into a spring meadow.

“Oh,” he said, stifling a laugh. “Sorry. I forgot what might happen when I shoved our excess sexual energy away. The elves must have charmed the weave. I guess the magics interacted unexpectedly.”

“You guess,” Belle repeated.

“It isn’t dangerous. Just some bluebells and nice green grass. If you don’t like it, you shouldn’t have been so inspiring. I’ve never had to worry about that during sex before.”

“You’re saying this is
my
fault?” She was amusingly outraged.

“Our fault. We made this magic together.” His beloved looked skeptical, then flattered, then skeptical again, all of which entertained him immensely. “Bluebells aren’t
my
favorite flower,” he reminded her. “If it were my choice, I’d probably have animated that
Water Lilies
painting and caused a flood.”

She bent, hands braced on stockinged knees, to peer suspiciously at the living carpet but also - he thought - because she was curious. Was this all her fear of magic was: a temporary condition she wouldn’t let master her? Because she seemed to want to touch their mutual creation, he lifted her off her feet and set her among the turf. She squeaked, curled her toes, then slid her forearms behind his neck. Her silken breasts settled nicely against his chest.

“It’s soft,” she observed.

“It is,” he agreed, satisfied he’d guessed correctly.

“Is the hotel going to be upset?”

“Hardly. This sort of ... accident lets them charge non-faeries hundreds more per night.”

“So they won’t be angry about the rug.”

Her expression had taken on the slyness he thought of as the businesswoman inside of her. “What are you getting at, sweetheart?”

“Just that, if they’re pleased with you, perhaps they’ll let us hang onto the suite a few more days than we originally reserved it for.”

Oh, she was a treasure, one he was happy to honeymoon with a while longer.

“Perhaps they will,” he said, then showed her how pleased
he
was without any words at all.

###

An excerpt from Move Me

BELLE’s
eccentric Uncle Lucky left her his spooky house in the tiny village of Kingaken. Twenty years ago, her little brother disappeared here, never to be heard from again. Returning to the place for the first time in so long resurrects more ghosts than she cares to face. When it also summons a sexy faerie, with an agenda of his own, Belle had best pray
her
luck is better than her sibling’s.

available in ebook and print

Chapter One

BELLE
Hobart, lately of Manhattan and all that was civilized, parked her rental car in the near-empty gravel lot beside Kingaken’s General Store.

It was a bright fall day in the Catskills village: cerulean sky, turning leaves, postcard perfect in every way. The historic white clapboard house that served as the mercantile couldn’t have been more picturesque. The film of dirt on its dark green shutters and the sagginess of its porch simply added to its patina. Though Belle hadn’t been here in twenty years, she remembered both like it was yesterday.

Unease and weariness fought within her as she slammed the car door shut and tipped her two hundred dollar sunglasses on top of her straight brown hair. For good measure, she buttoned the smart tweed jacket she wore over her tastefully worn blue jeans.

Her feelings might not be as buttoned-up as she wanted, but she could damn well look as if they were.

The General Store’s wood front steps creaked the same as ever when she climbed them in her vaguely equestrian-style boots. Inside, she found the usual mix of practical supplies for locals and tourist crap. Because the tourist crap was dusty, Belle concluded that segment of Kingaken’s economy wasn’t flourishing.

“Belle Hobart!” cried a woman’s voice from the direction of the cash register.

The woman - plump, blonde, and as pretty as an apple blossom - hurried around the counter past aisles of soda and bread to pull Belle into a shockingly strong hug for such a small person.

Belle herself was tall and rangy, built on straight lines instead of curves. She’d been called attractive but never cute. Never girly. Never fragile. Never anything that seemed to inspire men to protectiveness. She had to lean down to pat her old school friend’s shoulder blades.

“Hey, Susi,” she said, feeling awkward as usual. “Looking good.”

This caused Susi to push back from the embrace. “I look awful,” she declared, her hand flying to her beautifully waved blonde hair. Her wedding ring’s diamond glinted in the sun from the front windows, a slap of light in Belle’s eye. “I’m a million years old and fat.”

“Hardly. You’re the same age as me, and you’re still prettier.”

Susi -
Gould
now, Belle believed - went blank with shock for a second before she burst out laughing. “Old Honest Belle. I forgot how blunt you could be. And how you never let people fish for compliments. I’m a whole year older, if you recall. Thirty-three now, Lord help me.”

If she were a whole year older, she’d be thirty-four. Wisely, Belle let that slide.

“I heard you were coming back,” Susi chattered on. “Sorry about your uncle, but it’s nice the old freak left his place to you.”

Belle’s uncle Isaiah Luckes, aka “Uncle Lucky,” had been an inventor and an eccentric. He’d also become so reclusive that he was dead for six weeks before a curious postman tramped up his long dirt driveway to discover why his junk mail was piling up. The postman had peered through the ivy tangle on his front windows to find him peacefully decomposing in his favorite chair.

In case there’d been any doubt, Uncle Lucky’s lawyer assured her he’d expired of natural causes. A fatal stroke was the ME’s verdict.

Somewhat to her surprise, Mr. Tickner also informed her Uncle Lucky had bequeathed her his worldly goods. He’d never been warm and fuzzy when it came to family, but since leaving Kingaken with her parents, Belle hadn’t received a single card or call from him.

“He did leave the place to me,” Belle confirmed. “That’s why I’m here. I figured you could recommend a local handyman. The lawyer warned me Uncle Lucky let the house run down. It needs work to be livable.”

“So you
are
staying.” Susi was bright-eyed at this bit of gossip she’d have to share.

“Don’t know yet,” Belle answered with a shrug. “If I decide to sell, it’ll need work too.”

“Well, I hope you stay,” Susi said, seeming to mean it. “I’m sure Manhattan was exciting, but it can’t have been home like Kingaken. People know you here. You’ve been missed.”

Belle had been thirteen the night her parents shoved their belongings into a U-Haul and drove her “anywhere but here.” She’d lived fewer years in Kingaken than she’d lived away from it. Nonetheless, she understood Susi’s meaning. In small towns like this, where family roots ran deep, natives bonded to each other. Whether they liked you hardly mattered. They didn’t relish seeing their own slip through their fingers.

Lord help me
, Belle thought cynically, silently echoing Susi.

“Do you know any handymen who need work?” she asked.

“Don’t I though!” Susi exclaimed, smoothing what was probably a hand-crocheted sweater down the front of her flowered dress. She was dressed exactly like her mother did in Belle’s memories, down to her sensible flat shoes. “Come in the back while we’re slow. I’ve got a couple numbers in my computer.”

The mention of a computer reassured Belle time had progressed forward after all.

“How is your mother?” she asked Susi politely. She followed her childhood friend to the door of a small office. Inside, a cluttered metal desk claimed most of the real estate. The computer that sat on it was at least ten years old.

“Mom’s good.” A box of files sat on an old duct-taped rolling chair. Susi shoved both aside with her hip so she could lean over the keyboard. “She’s still driving Dad crazy with her baking obsession.”

“I got the recipes you sent when I was in college. That was nice of you.”

Susi finished scribbling something on a post-it and straightened. She faced Belle with a sharp-eyed air of amusement. “Really? You thought that was nice? You never wrote back, you know. And you’ve no idea the amount of detective work I went through to track you down. Your mother hung up every time I called.”

“Danny going missing was hard on my parents,” Belle said, though her personal feelings about their responses were complicated. “After a while, they couldn’t take the reminders.”

Belle knew her eyes were dry, despite her diaphragm tightening. By contrast, Susi’s pretty hazel gaze sheened over. She’d never stuffed her feelings down. “Danny was a sweet boy. People here still talk about him sometimes.”

“It’s probably the only place in the world they do.” Belle’s own words surprised her. She was playing with her jacket’s single button, her hands twisting in a knot.

Susi reached out and patted her. “I think your Uncle Lucky blamed himself for what happened. I think it’s why he turned into a shut-in.”

Belle tended to agree. Guilt was also probably the reason he’d left his estate to her. Belle’s mother had been Uncle Lucky’s sister, but Belle’s little brother was the only relative Isaiah seemed to like. Belle he’d tolerated because Danny adored her. With parents like theirs, whose own volatile emotions always seemed to matter most, she and Danny had found it easier to count on each other.

“It wasn’t Uncle Lucky’s fault,” Belle said. “Nobody thought you had to watch kids that closely in Kingaken.”

“And you never heard what happened to Danny?”

“Never. One minute he was playing in Uncle Lucky’s yard, and the next he was gone.”

“So he could still be ... somewhere?”

“No,” Belle said flatly enough to sound angry. She was done with hoping. She’d been done for a while.

Susi wasn’t intimidated by her hard tone. She rested her curvy hips on the edge of the cluttered desk. “That private investigator you hired came around a few years back, asking folks questions.”

“He found the same as the police. No leads. No clues. Not even suspicions.”

It hadn’t been tourist season when Danny disappeared. No one remembered seeing anyone out of place in town. If a stranger had grabbed her little brother, it had been on the fly. The weirder locals - among whom Uncle Lucky stood foremost - were all accounted for. In any case, none were weird in the way that led to abducting nine-year-olds. Belle’s PI had ended up as stumped as the cops.

“Okay,” Susi said placatingly, causing Belle to realize her teeth were grinding. “Look, honey, why don’t I come around tonight and help you get settled? You don’t need to be alone in that spooky wreck. I’ll bring a bottle of wine and one of Mom’s apple pies. You can tell me about the hot men you knew in New York.”

Belle relaxed enough to smile. Susi had always been boy crazy. “That’s nice of you. Maybe not tonight, though. I think I need to wander around on my own. Get my head sorted out.”

“Soon then.” Susi handed her the post-it. “That’s my number on the top and John Feeney’s on the bottom. He was laid off at the mill, and then his wife left with their three kids, so he’s got time on his hands and a sparse bank account. He can do building, plumbing, and simple electric. He’s a curmudgeon, but maybe you’ll hit it off.”

The wry slant of Susi’s mouth said she thought Belle herself was one.

“Thank you,” Belle said. “I want to catch up. I’m just not ready yet.”

“This is Kingaken,” Susi warned. “I sell the only groceries or toilet paper for thirty miles. If you’re planning to avoid me, it’ll take a fair piece of work.”

Belle laughed in spite of herself. This was the Susi Jenkins she’d have been friends with even if she’d been born somewhere big enough to have a choice.

“Point taken,” Belle conceded and bent to give Susi a quick hug.

For a moment before the feeling evaporated, she was glad to be home.

~

Belle’s dread returned in force as she gassed the laboring rental car up Uncle Lucky’s steep rutted drive. His house had to be half a mile from the access road - all of it uphill. Trees closed in on her from both sides: evergreens mostly, with a blood-bright scarlet maple bursting out here and there. The overgrowth turned her route into a gloomy tunnel, an impression that didn’t lighten when she reached the equally overgrown two-hundred-year-old house.

Like the general store, the residence was two stories and white clapboard. Unlike the store, here the film of dirt had settled deeper - not so much picturesque as morose. Wildings, fallen branches, foot-high grass, and weeds lent the appropriate hermit’s charm to the yard. Wisteria had swallowed the attic dormers, the flickering leaves making it easy to picture ghosts nearsightedly peeping out. The concrete birdbath where Belle and Danny had staged imaginary pirate battles lay in pieces by the barely discernible flagstone path.

Seeing the state the place had sunken into, Belle wondered why it had only taken six weeks for her uncle’s corpse to be found.

She grabbed the groceries she’d bought at Susi’s, then picked her way across the front yard jungle to the porch, glad for the protection of her tall riding boots. Scotch-taped to the chipped navy door was an envelope with a short message scrawled on it. Someone at the lawyer’s office had let the movers in. The boxes of necessities she’d shipped ahead of her were inside. Nestled in the envelope was a simple metal ring with three keys. Belle pulled in a breath for courage and stuck the likeliest one in the lock.

To her relief, all she smelled inside was the recent cleaning someone had given the living room - not a cursory one either. Back in Manhattan, Belle owned a rent-a-maid service. She knew a good top-to-bottom job when she saw it. The wide plank floors were shining, the solid furniture covered in fresh white sheets. Though still shrouded in ivy, the window panes had been washed. Notably absent was her uncle’s favorite leather armchair, the one he’d reportedly expired in.

“Thank you, Mr. Tickner,” she murmured, making a mental note to tell the lawyer that in person.

Her stack of neatly labeled cartons sat in the center of the dark Turkish rug, but they’d wait to be unpacked. Belle intended to tour the house before her nerve ran out. Fortunately, the power and water hadn’t been disconnected. The lights went on when she flicked the switches, and water ran from the tap. Very little had changed since the afterschool afternoons she and Danny had spent here, waiting for their parents to get off work. There was the farmhouse table where they’d done homework, here the squeaky screen door to the fateful back yard clearing. Uncle Lucky’s library-office smelled precisely as she remembered, its shelves filled with musty books and odd natural specimens. He’d dreamed up his many inventions here: some lucrative, some completely pie-in-the-sky, but all more compelling to his attention than his niece and nephew.

Danny had been more curious than Belle about his activities. Her overtures had been swatted aside enough times for her to pretend disinterest. Because Danny was as smart as he was persistent, Uncle Lucky had thawed for him.

Magic is science, and science is magic
, Belle heard him say in her memory. Both seem mysterious until you study their principles.

Most of Uncle Lucky’s pie-in-the-sky inventions stemmed from his belief that the principles of both were valid.

On a nearby shelf, its spine sticking out slightly, a tattered black and white composition notebook caught Belle’s eye. She pulled it out from beside the “nonfiction”
Goblins and their Habits
and opened it. Her heart clutched at the sight of the handwriting. This had been Danny’s, written only months before his disappearance. He’d been nine, and Uncle Lucky had been teaching him what he called the language of the esoteric. Danny had learned it too. Belle couldn’t understand half his childishly penciled words.
E pluribus Unum
was as much Latin as she knew.

Her throat choked up as her fingertips stroked the yellowed paper.

Danny
, she thought.
I miss you
.

Though it caused her eyes to spill over, she kept the book clutched against her side for the rest of her wanderings. Upstairs to the three small bedrooms. Downstairs to re-light the pilot on the furnace. Everywhere she went, everything had been tidied. Uncle Lucky’s clothes were in taped-up boxes, his personal items like toothbrushes and razors thrown away. The more she saw of what Mr. Tickner’s staff had done, the more impressed she became. This was true thoughtfulness. She could sleep here tonight without feeling overwhelmed.

Small town people did have their good qualities.