Ever Mine (Dragon Lore) (2 page)

“Yes.”

“Fine.” He gritted his teeth. “You can come home with me until we figure this out.”

Katenia glanced around, confused. “This isn’t your home?”

“It feels like it sometimes,” he muttered under his breath. He raised a brow. “Will you be able to keep up with me?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know.”

He nodded, and after a moment’s hesitation, flashed a cocky grin. He hooked a finger in the breast pocket of his jacket and tugged. “Hop in.”

She snorted indignantly, until she realized he was serious. Her mouth dropped open, and for the first time since she had learned to fly, she broke concentration with her wings. His hand shot out when she plummeted, catching her in his large, cupped palm before she landed face-first on the floor. He was grinning as he raised her to eye level. “No need to swoon, woman.” He chuckled.

Her breath caught, because when he smiled, humor and mischief danced in his dark, mysterious eyes. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

Katenia was still trying to wrap her brain around the kind of trouble she’d be in with her people if they found out she was lusting after a giant, when the beast dropped her into the pocket near his heart. “Hey!” she yelled, popping her head out of the fabric to glare at him. “I’m a fairy. I have magic, and I can turn you into a toad!”

He didn’t look at all impressed with her very serious threat. “Trust me, Thumbelina. No one else in this building is going to be as believing, or accommodating, as I am. You are safer out of sight.”

She snorted so hard at the accommodating part she lost her balance and landed on her butt. If this was what a helpful human looked like, she was in some serious trouble.

Chapter 2

Nathan had done a lot of weird, and sometimes messed up shit in his life. He’d been arrested more than once as a teenager for a variety of things—reckless driving, stealing cars, starting fights. He owned those past mistakes, and instead of hiding them from the public, he talked openly about them. But nothing he’d ever done made him feel as awkward as walking through a building with a fairy in his suit pocket.

More than one employee stopped to stare when he strode past, making him think he wasn’t pulling off the casual, nonchalant swagger as he’d hoped. That was before tiny hands grabbed the edges of his jacket pocket, and a small blond head popped up.

“Get down,” he muttered, “or do you want people to see you?”

“Where are we going?”

“I told you. My place.”

“I need my flower. It’s my bed.”

He let out a frustrated sound and pivoted. While cursing under his breath, he headed for his office. Looping an arm around the brightly painted pot, he lifted it, then glared down at the wee person in his pocket. “Anything else?”

She shook her head and beamed up at him.

“Good.” He started for the elevator again, disgusted at how easily his temper cooled off with a smile from her. “Now get down before someone sees you, and I have to explain something I don’t even understand.”

She leaned against the outside of his pocket, and crossed her arms over her chest. If she wasn’t the approximate size of his thumb, she would have been hot. His brow winged up as he hit the button for the elevator. “What?”

“What’s your name?”

“Nathan.”

She smiled. “I’m Katenia.” She glanced over her shoulder when the elevator doors slid open. “What is that?”

“It will take us down to the lobby floor.”

She shifted in his pocket, pressing her back against his chest. “It’s iron.”

Instead of walking into the elevator, he glanced down at her. If he kept craning his neck this way, he was going to have a hell of a nasty headache by the time he made it home. Not to mention the looks he was getting from his staff for talking to himself, he was going to end up in a psych hold if this kept up. “Is it a problem?”

“Fairies don’t like iron,” she whispered. “It makes us weak.”

“We’re on the tenth floor. I’m not taking the damn stairs.”

Someone cleared their throat from directly behind him. He grimaced at the secretary’s overly-sweet voice. “Excuse me, Mr. Alexander? Is everything all right?”

Nathan gritted his teeth, pinning the woman with a look over his shoulder. “Why do you ask?”

The blonde scrambled back a step in her mile-high shoes, generous cleavage bouncing in her low-cut blouse. “Sir, it’s just that we—none of us—have ever seen you talk to yourself before.”

Well, hell.
Give him a one way ticket to the mental ward
. “I’m not talking to myself. I have a fairy in my pocket who’s afraid of elevators.”

The blonde—Amy, Angela, Abigail, he could never remember—giggled, and it took everything he had not to cringe at the sound. In the year she’d worked for him, she’d done everything in her power to seduce him, while doing little to hide her ambition. She wanted to be a trophy wife, and she’d set her sights on him. “Oh, Mr. Alexander,” she purred, still giggling as she laid a hand on his arm. “Your sense of humor never gets old.”

He raised a brow and peeled her hand off him. “Good to know. You’re free to go for the evening, but be in my office by eight AM. We need to talk.” He held her gaze as apprehension flashed in their depths, but he wanted her worried. She needed to know her job was on the line if she didn’t stop hitting on him.

After she finally walked away, he turned his attention to the other employees standing around the office staring at him. He raised his wrist to look at his watch, then cleared his throat. He made eye contact with each of them, one by one, which was all it took to have them rushing back to whatever they were supposed to be doing.

He sighed when he realized they’d missed the elevator, and punched the button again. The fairy had disappeared inside his pocket. “Stay in there. The elevator will be here in a moment.”

“Can’t breathe in iron,” she said, her soft voice muffled through the fabric.

Nathan let out a quiet curse. Without a word, he turned and headed toward the stairs. Her head popped up again. “Now, where are we going?” she asked.

“The stairs.”

* * * *

Katenia smiled, though she was confused. All of her life, bedtime stories had warned her and the other fairies against the savage giants known as humans. Selfish and blood-thirsty, their quest for war and power and technology knew no bounds, and any respect they may had once held for the land and the earth that nourished them, was long since gone. The differences between humans and faeries had been drilled into her head for as long as she could remember. They were a violent race, crushing everything smaller than them underfoot.

But Nathan didn’t seem cruel to her. He seemed distracted, sad even, but not cruel. Even on their descent down the stairs, he was careful not to jostle her too much. She wasn’t imagining it, either, because his large hand was cupped around his pocket, holding her close to his chest.

He wasn’t like the males she knew, and not because of his difference in size. Fairies, even the warriors, were slight, nimble creatures. While there were males of her race nearly twice her small stature, and stubborn, obstinate beings, they didn’t carry the kind of hardness and rawness Nathan did. He should terrify her. But he didn’t. He was every bit the mythical human warrior she’d always been fascinated by, with his long black hair and vibrant blue eyes.

When he finally finished the stairs and pushed through another door, Katenia gripped the edges of his pocket and peeked at the new surroundings. Humans were everywhere, dressed in odd fabrics that didn’t seem to let the skin breathe, while the women wore torture device-like shoes to help them appear taller. Even more confusing was, though there were large, beautiful plants decorating the airy space, not a single human noticed.

She twisted her head to look up at him. “Are you truly a giant, then? No one is as tall as you.”

A chuckle rumbled through his massive chest. “Not a giant, no. I’m only six-foot-four.”

“Oh.” She wiggled her nose as she thought about it. When he pushed through another set of doors, warm, humid air enveloped her. She tilted her face up to the sun and smiled. “How tall are giants then?”

“Probably eight—” His words disappeared as a loud blaring sound came from the street in front of them.

The sound was unlike anything she’d ever heard. Katenia screamed and bolted out of his pocket. With her heart pounding violently, she flew for the cover of his dark, shoulder-length hair.

Instead, her feet hit the sidewalk, and she stumbled on legs that didn’t feel like hers, throwing her face-first into Nathan’s back. Staggering from the impact, she landed on her butt, her mouth dropping open as she realized she wasn’t fairy-sized anymore.

His face was thunderstruck. “Katenia?”

She lifted a hand and peered at it, trying to process its sheer size. “What happened?” she asked, finally lifting her gaze to Nathan.

“I was going to ask you that.” He crouched in front of her, his dark blue eyes dazed as they made a slow trek from the top of her head to her bare toes, and back to her face. A low, purring rumble reverberated in his chest, his voice tight when he spoke. “Ah, hell. You’re naked.”

She shook her head, her bottom lip quivering in fear of what she’d find if she looked over her shoulder. “Are…” She took in a deep breath, and tried to keep the tears out of her voice. “Are my wings still there?”

Even if she hadn’t already known the answer, the look on his face as he shook his head would have broken her heart. Sympathy, along with something completely wicked, flashed in his eyes when he held his hand out for hers.

“Let’s get you up,” he said, gruffly, “before you get trampled.”

Despite her new size, his hand still swallowed hers as she slipped her fingers into his grip. Once again, he was gentler than she’d expected as he helped her to her feet, and when she swayed, not used to standing without help of her wings, his arm snagged her around the waist.

When his gaze met hers, Katenia became aware he didn’t have to go cross-eyed to look at her anymore. While he still towered over her, she was too big. “I’m a giant,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes. “A wingless giant.”

* * * *

Nathan cleared his throat. Seeing as the top of her head barely reached his chest, he didn’t think that pointing out four-foot-eleven didn’t qualify as a giant would help her situation.

To make it worse, the tiny scraps of sheer silver fabric had vanished, and while she seemed to be less concerned with her nudity than her missing wings, Nathan’s head was about to explode. Sweet Jesus, the woman had a body wet dreams were made of, and he couldn’t remember being this goddamn hard in his life.

It was ridiculous how perfectly built she was, from the soft white-blonde waves that fell to her waist, barely shielding large, full breasts, all the way down to her small toes and everything in between. Her eyes were a startling shade of green, almost the color of moss, and there was a small mole just above the curve of her left eyebrow.

He ground his teeth together. He was lusting after a fairy. When the hell had he taken the trip down the rabbit hole?

Aware she was about to fall apart in his arms, and with every man in the vicinity stopping to stare, he yanked off his suit jacket. “You are not a giant.”

She snorted through the tears shining in her eyes as he pulled the gray coat around her shoulders. “I’m human-sized.”

“I’m aware,” he muttered, sure he was being punished for something. “Has this ever happened before?”

She shook her head, the first tear falling over. “No, but I have to find a way to change back. I need my wings. I have to go home, and I can’t like this!”

Because she was getting more worked up by the second, he wrapped his arm around her waist and started down the street. He was careful to move slowly in case she lost her balance, when what he really wanted was to scoop her up and make a dash for it, to get her away from prying eyes.

She moved gingerly, as if gauging each step to make sure she didn’t land on the ground again. Her beautiful face was screwed up in concentration. “Where are we going?”

“My aunt’s. She sent you to me, so maybe she knows what the hell is going on.”

She stopped walking. “What do you mean, she sent me to you? Did she take me from my garden?”

The migraine that always came from dealing with his aunt started to form. He wouldn’t put anything past Mellie. She not only claimed to have “The Sight,” she whole-heartedly believed the ends always justified the means. If she thought Katenia belonged in his life for some reason, or vice-versa, there was every damn chance she’d done exactly what he feared, and had Katenia plucked from her home.

“It’s possible,” he admitted, his eye starting to twitch. It was a nervous tick he’d developed long ago whenever he was face to face with his flighty, irresponsible aunt. “If she did, hopefully she’ll know how to get you home.”

“And normal sized?”

He nodded, his gut twisting at the hopefulness on her sweet face. Damn, the woman was beautiful, and hell on his senses.

She peeked up at him. “Does your aunt live close?”