Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale (10 page)

Corinne heard the challenge in her friend’s voice and braced herself for Ava to swoop in for the kill.
She felt Luc tense.
Maybe she should check her backpack for a tissue.
He’d probably need something to wipe away the drool.

“No, actually,” she heard him answer, yanking her shocked gaze back to his face.
“I’m just looking for the man we think the models may have spotted.
He’s…a concern to, ah, a client of mine.”

“Really?
Well, I hope you find him, then.”
Ava extended her hand to him, her fingers clinging to his for a moment while she searched his face.
“I hope you find any number of things during your stay here.”

“I think I’m already on the right track.”

Corinne watched the exchange through narrowed eyes, waiting for the inevitable exchange of phone numbers, or, God forbid, for them to just get it over with and kiss.
Only it didn’t look like that was a danger.
The predatory female vibe Ava had put on the second she spotted Luc through her peephole had disappeared.
Now she looked, well, almost businesslike.
And Luc just looked…resolved.

Corinne frowned in confusion.
Was there any chance this day could start making sense?

Corinne seemed distracted as they left her friend’s apartment, Luc noted.
The tiniest little furrow had taken up residence between her brows, making him want to smooth it away with his thumb.
Or his tongue.
She’d barely said good-bye to Ava, and she responded to Bruno’s cheerful address by murmuring a distracted “Have a good night.”
Clearly, she had something on her mind.
For some reason, he didn’t think it was the models they needed to interview.

“Where to now?”
he asked as they stepped out into the night air, less because he thought she had an answer and more because he wanted to remind her that he still existed.
She appeared to have forgotten that between Ava’s living room and the front stoop.

“What?
Oh,” Corinne blinked and frowned at him.
“Um, nowhere.
I mean, it’s getting late, so I think we should just leave this until tomorrow.
It’s after ten, so it would be really rude to start making phone calls or knocking on people’s doors.
Let’s just meet at The Pink Pillow tomorrow morning like I originally suggested.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In what meantime?
We go home.
To our respective homes,” she added hastily.
“I go to my apartment to get some sleep, and you go to wherever it is you’re staying and, er, do whatever it is that you, uh, do.”

Oh, but he had some suggestions for her about what he did.
Or at least, about what he wanted to do.
To her, specifically.

“Fine.”
He could bide his time.
If he really had to.
He couldn’t help but notice, though, that Corinne appeared a little jumpy.
He wondered what could be causing that.
Deliberately, his arm bumped her shoulder.
“I’ll walk you home, then.”

She nearly jumped out of her skin.
Interesting.

“No!
I mean, that’s not necessary.
Really,” she said, stumbling over her own words.
“Really.
I won’t even be walking.
I mean, I live downtown.
I’ll have to take the subway, or something.
Maybe I’ll just head up to the avenue and take a cab.
So I won’t be walking.
So you won’t need to walk with me.
I mean, you won’t need to walk me home.
I can do it.
Get there myself, that is.
Safely.”

Luc watched her fingers clench on the strap of her backpack and felt himself grinning.
Her knuckles were turning white, and she seemed to have a newly discovered difficulty meeting his gaze.
Maybe she had begun to feel the same energy building between them that he’d been fighting all evening.

Now, though, he was having a hard time remembering why he shouldn’t just give in.
If Corinne was his heartmate, then the issue of his magic no longer stood between them.
She had seen through his enchantments, so no one could argue that his Fae nature had clouded her mind.
If she was attracted to him, it was an honest attraction.

It was a strange twist of fate that humans should find something about the Fae so irresistible when their people had chosen to live so far apart, but there it was.
Not even glamours could hide the fact that the Fae were magic, nor keep some humans from sensing it.
Usually, when a human woman seemed intent on seducing Luc, he could write it off as a reaction to his glamour, as he had with Corinne’s friend Ava.
The other woman hadn’t really wanted him; she’d been drunk on his power, which no matter how beautiful she might be by human standards took quite a bit of the shine off the encounter.

Corinne was the first human woman he’d ever felt this kind of attraction for.
He usually gave the species a wide berth.
He knew humans and Fae were physically compatible, but he’d grown accustomed to taking the women he wanted without the elaborate mating rituals humans observed, and he didn’t picture a human woman appreciating the bold sexuality so common among his people.
Besides, somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d always found it distasteful that with a human, there would be the possibility that it really wasn’t him she lusted for; it was the magic he couldn’t hide, not even behind the strongest glamour.

That magical attraction accounted for all the human stories of the seductive beauty of his race.
Tam Lin had indeed been captivated by the beauty of the Queen of Faerie, but at least a little bit of that beauty had come from Her Majesty’s particularly strong glamours.
Those very tricks usually proved the undoing of any relationships between Fae and mortal.
For some reason, humans tended to get all bent out of shape when they discovered that their perception of their lovers was based on a web of pretty lies.

But with Corinne, he wasn’t lying.
He couldn’t.
She would—and did—see right through him.
The thought brought forth a surge of excitement.

“I don’t mind,” he told her, letting his smile curve into one that would have made a hunting Lupine proud.
“I haven’t gotten much chance to see your city, and it’s a nice night.”

Corinne stared at him while inside her lust battled with reason in a fight to the death.
Ten minutes ago she’d been convinced she’d have to let herself out of Ava’s apartment discreetly while the two of them jumped each other and screwed like rabid mink.
Now that she thought about it, though, it did seem as if Ava had been the one giving off all the signals.
Luc had done nothing to encourage the other woman, except be gorgeous and charming, and Corinne didn’t think the man knew of any other way to be.
For the first time in ages, a man had brushed off a seduction-minded Ava and turned to Corinne instead.
She needed a few minutes to process that information.

Oh, it wasn’t like Corinne didn’t attract her fair share of men, and Ava wasn’t the sort to go after a man she knew one of her friends was already making a play for.
Corinne knew she had nothing to be ashamed of when it came to her appearance, either.
When she decided to pull out all the stops, she could pull off
bombshell
like Sophia Loren in her prime.
But Ava was on a whole other level.
Men looked at her and saw not a woman, but a fantasy.
Except for this man.
He saw Ava and wished her a good night, but if the glint in his eyes was any indication, when he saw Corinne he wished for a different sort of night entirely.

So what was it that Corinne wished for?

Three hours ago it would have been to dump this entire mess on the head of the Council of Others and then not set eyes on another non-human being—except maybe Reggie—for at least a week.
Now, though, she wasn’t so sure.
Her head still told her that the man—or rather, the Fae warrior—standing in front of her would be a lot more trouble than he was worth; her gut, though—and maybe a bit of real estate just south of there—told her that the only way to know for sure would be to try him out.

And boy, she bet he would be one hell of a ride.

While she hemmed and hawed, Luc simply nudged her elbow and began walking, heading up the block to the nearest avenue where the cabs cruised more frequently.
“Let’s go.”
He glanced over his shoulder and urged her to cross to the other side of the street.
“You can make up your mind on the way.”

Corinne wondered if she really could.
In fact, she was still wondering when he raised one beefy arm—somehow coming up with two cabs—when he slid into the back of the taxi next to her, and when she gave the driver her address.
In her own defense, she had a lot to wonder about.
Not just the sex, which she’d already decided had the potential to be stupendous, but also the advisability of getting involved with a member of another species.
And an out-of-towner at that.
Once he found the Faerie Queen’s nephew, Luc Macanaw would head right back to his homeland and right back out of her life.
How would she feel about that?
The man didn’t exactly have
long-term potential
written all over him.

That sort of thing didn’t usually bother Corinne.
After all, she’d dated more than her fair share of men, and none of them had lasted so far.
But she rarely decided to hop into bed with a man if she knew beforehand that he wouldn’t be around for more than the time it took to deal with the buttons and zippers.
She blamed her Catholic roots.
Being raised in the church just had a way of making a girl worry about looking like a total slut.
Maybe it was the dress code.

And Corinne had to admit, something in the back of her mind looked at the idea of sex with a member of another species with a certain amount of alarm.
She’d never slept with a man who wasn’t human before.
She supposed the fact that Luc didn’t suffer from the furry form of PMS counted in his favor, but still, were humans and the Fae even, er, compatible?

Instinctively, her eyes dropped to his crotch and her cheeks heated.
The evidence suggested they were.

Corinne sighed.
Why were all the good ones married, gay, or another species?

Her gut weighed in on that one.
It told her that Luc Macanaw could be one of the good ones.
Mouthwatering face and body aside, in the few short hours that she’d known him, the man had displayed a sharp intelligence, polished social skills, and basic human decency.
Or the Fae equivalent thereof.
Frankly, she’d dated men who’d barely scored two out of three on that scale, so why did she hesitate?

She pondered that for a few minutes and could come up with only one explanation: sheer, unadulterated stupidity.

The man made her thighs tingle just to look at him!
Time to yell
Bansai!
and have at it.

Clearing her throat, she angled to face him just as the taxi turned onto her street.
“So, um, maybe you and I should spend some time laying out our game plan.”
She tried desperately to sound casual and just hoped she at least managed better than totally lame.
“You could come up for coffee, and we could compare notes.
My building is just up ahead.”

Corinne gestured through the windshield then swore.

Luc cursed.
“Before or after the police barrier?”

“After.
Damn it.”

“Hey, sorry, folks, but this is as far as I can go.”
The cabbie eased out of traffic and rolled up to the curb four blocks ahead of Corinne’s building.
“I dunno what the heck is going on up there, but it looks messy.
Good luck getting through.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Luc was handing through the fare before Corinne even managed to find her wallet inside her backpack.
She slid out of the vehicle in front of him, almost jumping out of her skin when he helped her with a warm hand on her ass.

“I, uh, I guess you’re going to get to walk me home after all,” she said, shoving her hands into her pockets to keep them from returning the favor and grabbing his ass in the middle of the street.
“Unless, you know, you’d rather just wait until tomorrow.”

He grabbed her hand and started hauling her down the sidewalk at a speed that forced her almost to trot to keep up.
“I’ll be lucky if I can wait until we reach your bed,” he growled.

“Oh.
Then I guess you will be staying for coffee.”

He shot her a glance that all but set her eyebrows on fire.

“I’ll be staying for you.”

Luc decided to take the strangled sound Corinne uttered at his blunt pronouncement as a good sign.
Considering the sight that greeted him farther down the block, he could use all the good news he could get.

When the barricades went up, a crowd gathered.
That was the way it worked in New York.
People wanted to know what was happening.
At the moment, the happenings had to do with at least forty protesters gathered in front of a beleaguered coffee shop and angry over the plight of laborers on plantations in Africa and South America.
Judging by the broken glass and ceramic littering the pavement, the angry voices, and the news cameras strategically positioned on the scene, Luc could assume that nonviolent protest had gone the way of the dodo sometime in the last few hours.
What irked him at the moment, though, was that all these people currently blocked his way between here and Corrine D’Alessandro’s bed.

This had to change.
Immediately.

Grasping her much smaller hand firmly in his, Luc set his jaw, firmed his shoulders, and prepared to bulldoze his way through the crowd of protestors, police, coffee shop workers, and onlookers.
If he had to knock people over, so be it.
His heartmate had just not-so-subtly invited him to share her bed.
He’d have knocked over Mab herself if she stood in his way.