“You’re telling me.” In her dreams, she hadn’t been able to save him from being flayed of his tattoos. She leaned against his bare arm, his skin and tattoos wonderfully intact, glad for the opportunity to reassure herself without making a big deal of it. Just a nightmare.
He smelled wonderful. After weeks together, she knew his natural scent. He was wearing some kind of cologne, an enticing light musk. She felt the now familiar desire uncoil inside her. Gods, why did stress make her want to lick honey off his rock-hard abs? Was this some kind of weird primitive wiring — most of us are going off to be eaten by saber tooth tigers, so let’s fuck like crazy before the gene pool lessens? Or was she uniquely screwed up?
Every night with Pony among the oni had been a torture of temptation. There had been only one bed and she had been stupid enough to insist that they share it. She would lay awake, desperately wanting to reach out to him — to be held — to be made love to — to be taken care of. She managed to resist because of a little voice that reminded her that she would swap Pony for Windwolf in heartbeat — that it was her husband she really wanted. There been no way to kick Pony out of the bed without admitting how much she wanted him, so he and her secret temptation stayed.
Even now she fought the urge to plant little kisses on his bicep. I’m a married woman. I’m married and I do love Windwolf. She couldn’t even imagine being married to Pony, although she wasn’t sure why — he was to-die-for cute. Unfortunately, she could imagine having hot sex with him. She sighed as her curiosity stirred to wonder what running her tongue up the curve of his arm would taste like. Now I’ve done it — it will eat me alive wondering…
“Domi, what is it?”
Embarrassment burned through her. “N-N-Nothing. I’m just tired. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Have you found what you needed?” He asked.
“No.” She shook her head and yawned again. She saved her notes on the datapad and handed Esme’s file to him. “Put this in the Rolls. I’ll get back to work.”
Luckily the information she was looking for was in the F’s, under Flux Compression Generator. Huh? Normally compressing a magnetic field would generate more amperes of current than a lightning bolt and cause an electromagnetic pulse. What in hell was her grandfather thinking? But there was no mistaking the Reinhold floor layout, and the accompanying notes on the spell. With the folder, it should be fairly simple to recreate her grandfather’s spell.
She heard the scrape of boots on the cement behind her. The sekasha were probably bored to tears.
“This is what I was looking for.” She got to her feet and brushed the dust from her skirt. She looked up and was startled to find the sekasha forming a wall of muscle between her and Nathan Czernowski. The sight of him put a tingle of nervousness through her. “Nathan? What are you doing here?”
“I saw the Rolls and figured that it had to be you.”
“Yeah, it’s me.” She busied herself with the boxes as an excuse not to look at him, wondering why she felt so weird until she remembered where they’d left off. Last time she’d seen him, he — he — she didn’t even want to assign a word to it.
Nathan had been like an older brother to her and Oilcan. He hung around the garage and scrap yard on his off hours, drinking beer with them, and shooting the breeze. On racing days, he acted as security for her pit. She knew all his sprawling family members, had attended their weddings and funerals and birthday parties. There wasn’t another man in Pittsburgh that she would have let into her loft while she was dressed only in a towel. Nobody else she would have thought herself utterly safe with.
Then he’d held her down, tore off her towel, and tried to push into her.
In one terrifying second, he’d become a large, frightening stranger. She had never considered before how tall he was, how strong he was, or how easily he could do anything he wanted with her.
He hadn’t actually done — it. He’d stopped. He seemed to be listening to her. She would never know if he actually would have gotten off her, and let her up, and gone back to the Nathan she knew because Pony had come to her rescue.
A day later she’d been snatched up by the Queen’s Wyverns, dragged away to attend the royal court, and then kidnapped by the oni, where she witnessed true evil. She hadn’t thought of Nathan once in all that time. She wasn’t sure what she felt now.
“I heard about the monster—” Nathan started.
“You and all of Pittsburgh. I’m fine!”
“I see.” Nathan gazed her wistfully. “You look beautiful.”
“Thanks.” She knew it was mostly the jewel red silk dress. She also knew that it clung to her like paint where it wasn’t exposing vast amounts of skin. Suddenly she felt weirdly under-dressed.
They stood a moment in nervous silence. Finally, Nathan wet his lips and said, “I’m sorry. I went way over the line, and I’m — so — sorry.”
She burned with sudden embarrassment; it was like being naked under him again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“No, I’m ashamed of what I did, and I want to apologize — though I know that really doesn’t cut it.” His voice grew husky with self-loathing. “I would have killed another man for doing it. That I was drunk and jealous excuses nothing.”
“Nathan, I don’t know how to deal with this.”
“I just loved you so much. I still do. It kills me that I lost you. I just don’t want you to hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” she whispered. “I’m pissed to hell at you. And I’m a little scared of you now. But I don’t hate you.”
At least she didn’t think she did. He had stopped — that counted for something — didn’t it? More than anything, she felt stupid for letting it happen. Everyone had told her that things wouldn’t work out between her and Nathan — and she had ignored them.
They stood in awkward silence. It dawned on her that sekasha were still between her and Nathan, a quiet angry presence. She realized that Pony must have told Stormsong who Nathan was and what he’d done, and embarrassment burned through her. Once again she was having her nose ground into the fact that she was being constantly watched. She pushed past the sekasha and Nathan, wondering how much detail had Pony told Stormsong. She could trust Pony with her life, but not her privacy; she wasn’t even sure he understood the concept.
When she reached the Rolls, she was tempted to climb in and drive away, but would mean leaving the storage room half unpacked. She dropped the file in the back of the car, beside the other things she’d set aside to take home. Nathan and the sekasha had trailed her out to the Rolls. Somehow, out in the alley, she felt more claustrophobic, their presence made unavoidable by the fact that they had followed her en masse.
“I have what I need,” she told Pony and then realized she had said that already. “Everything needs put back.”
“Yes, domi.” Pony signaled to Stormsong to return to the storage room; he remained with Tinker.
Nathan stayed too. His police cruiser sat behind the Rolls. For some reason the Pittsburgh Police had doubled up and Bue Pedersen waited patiently for Nathan to finish.
“Bowman,” Tinker nodded to Bue.
“Hiya, Tinker.” Bue nodded back.
“They tell me that you’re his domi.” Nathan meant Windwolf.
“Yeah.” She fiddled with the bracelet. She had no wedding ring to flash as proof. Elves apparently don’t go for those kind of things.
“You know, everyone’s going on and on as if you got married to him and you’re a princess now, but Tooloo says that you’re not his wife.”