Three Days of Dominance (8 page)

“I don’t make threats. I do.” The glimmer in his eyes now looked wholly dangerous.

The swift demonstration of sheer power left her stunned. With his arms being more than twice as thick with muscle as hers, she’d no chance of getting free without trying some violent maneuver that would likely hurt them both and her worst of all. She felt exhilarated and helpless all at once, and weirdly tempted to see how far he would go.

Giving in seemed prudent.

“Yes,” she grumbled. “Most likely.”

He released her, and then, his eyes locked on hers, he placed his hand over her heart. “Your heart’s pounding.” He feathered his fingers from her chin and up the side of her face to rest half-tangled in her hair. “And you’ve reddened even more. You liked the idea. Are you sure you don’t want me to make you scream after all?”

“No!”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“No, thank you. I’m quite happy here.”

“Another time then.” He deliberately gripped her wrists again, then leaned in and kissed her hard enough to make her sink into the kiss. Soon, nothing existed in her head except the feel of those lips on hers, taking. When he slowly drew away, her thoughts were spinning in empty space, and it was several gasping moments before she remembered where she lay.

Weren’t there some warnings about the fae? About not eating their food, and so on? Was there one about not allowing them to make love to you in case you had a heart attack? If not, perhaps there should be. But then, she was part fae, according to his tendril theory.

Her wrists were still bound and she felt the slow crawl of buzzing tension up her from toes to stomach to throat. She was lying here, in her garden, her hands tied together, her pussy naked to the world if she dared to open her legs because somehow the cotton of her shorts had fallen apart…and she found it exciting. Wetness seeped between her thighs. She liked, no loved, everything he did to her.

He was combing his fingers through her hair, as if quietly happy to let her think things through.

And she had her head nesting in the warm corner of his arm and shoulder. Firm biceps and odor of man. Heaven. She let herself stay there a few moments longer before she roused.

With the words,
untie me
, clamoring to be said, she raised her hands. Something thin snapped.

A string of interwoven grass blades and yellow clover flowers slid down her arms. Frowning, she picked it up. He’d tied her with this tiny thing?

She went to add something, to ask for an explanation, when he spoke.

“Why don’t you tend to this garden? Half of them are dying or injured.”

“Injured? Them? They’re plants.”

“They’re living.” He tugged on a coil of hair at her nape. “You live in the midst of a paradise, and you barely see it.”

For a moment, she glimpsed a possibility, as if she saw what the world might look like with Heketoro by her side. Clear and glimmering with
aliveness
, instead of the dull monotony of her days, where the gray highlights were counting the number of speeding tickets issued, or blessing the lack of domestic disturbances and battered wives and children. And then there were the other days, the worst ones, when she saw the world from the bottom of a very dark well.

Annoyance prickling her, she shrugged. “Look. Okay, I used to like gardening but now…I have better things to do with my life than to water and fertilize trees.”

“Such as?”

“Drinking gallons of scotch and dragging strangers into my bed!”

“Ah!” He smiled sadly and trailed his knuckles down her cheek. “The scotch you can do without. Though I wish we had time to try this bed of yours.”

She dragged herself up onto her elbows. “What, so you can tie me to it with this?” She picked up the circlet, waggled it before him. She stared at it, wondering why it had felt so substantial around her wrists. Grass and clover? “How did you—”

“Symbolic,” he said, as if that covered all possibilities. “Though that does sound interesting.” He grinned.

Interesting? Heat unfurled in all those well-used places where his hands and lips had been. She closed her mouth, blushing. She’d walked into that one.

Why was she sitting here calmly, well almost calmly, having a conversation about bondage with this man? All she knew about him was the peculiar story he'd told her about being fae and having killed someone in another world—a story her gut reaction told her was true, yet who in their right mind would believe it?

And besides, how did she know what he'd done hadn't been murder, assuming it had actually happened? Certainly, it would come close to manslaughter. He'd volunteered the information, of course, and that seemed to count in his favor, but the way he'd mingled telling her with giving her a mind-blowing orgasm made her wonder at his motives. Pure association of the state of ecstasy with his revelations had made the facts more digestible. She shivered. Far more digestible.

At least he'd not ravished her while talking. Not that right now, with her heart pounding, and the ache between her legs, she wouldn’t have minded a bit of ravishing.

At the heart of all this though, she knew, if she didn't mostly believe him, she wouldn't still be in his arms.

Then, while she was still straightening thoughts, he shuffled to his knees, slid his arms under her and picked her up as if she weighed no more than a basket of flowers.

“Hey,” she said weakly.

“Shh. Be quiet. I can’t keep eyes away if you make loud noises.”

“No one’s looking?” she whispered. Hell. She’d forgotten.

“No.”

As he strode through her garden, the motion rocked her, and she couldn’t resist turning her head into his chest, feeling safe and languid in the remnants of the postorgasmic haze.

“I can’t and won’t go into your house. Not now. I've been there long enough. The metal and exactitude of human construction worries at my fae flesh. Remember—the lake. I will see you there."

He lowered her, placing her gently on the timber of the veranda. He shut her eyes with his fingers, and she waited, expecting a kiss. Nothing happened.

She pried open a lid, only to find Killer bearing down on her, tongue out. He slurped her face.

“Urk!” She spluttered. “Killer! Stop!” At last he desisted, sitting on his haunches and watching eagerly.

The buttons on her bodice were gone—no doubt lost somewhere in the grass. When she put her hand down between her legs…again, she thought, smiling and remembering how he’d directed her fingers, she found the seam of her denim shorts undone all the way from the bottom of the zipper and for five or six inches back. Her panties were bunched to one side.

Now, none of her other lovers had ever managed that, no matter how much they might have wanted to. Maybe she needed a new brand of clothing.

Heketoro was nowhere in sight. He’d gone.
Why does that bother me?

Chapter Five

Slowly, Danii sat up into a cross-legged position, with her hands resting limp across her thighs. Drawing herself together, waiting, while staring at a spot beside her left foot, for her mind to tick over the way it should. She felt suddenly drained, as if a wind had torn through her and stripped out half the particles making up her body. The word
devastated
came into her head.

Minutes ago, she’d been on top of the world.
What is happening to me? Some sort of psychotropic drug? No, too quick. Hypnosis
? It wasn’t as if she’d ever been susceptible to that, and, hell, she sure hoped not.

Could this have been another of the strange visions from the day before? Every detail of their lovemaking came fresh to her mind—the feel of him against her skin, his words, his smell. Her visions hadn’t come close to anything like that. It was another explanation, yet she believed none of them. She so
wanted
him back.

He’d asked her to meet him at the lake, yet in such a short time, he seemed to have taken over her life. She hated to think what her existence would be like when he left. She rubbed at her forehead. Those black days would be blacker still. And it wasn’t just the sex, amazing as that was. It was him. Attraction was putting it mildly. What had she done to deserve a man like him?

She’d wondered earlier what he’d bleed when scratched. Now she knew—there was pure male awesomeness under there. Her? Scratch her and you’d get 90 percent scotch, and the rest some disgusting gray mess.

Somehow she got her legs working again and stood.

An ache started between her eyes. She blinked and sniffed, then dabbed her nose with the back of her hand. Ridiculous. If he wasn’t a faerie, she was being a fool. Well, if she had to be the moth being lured by the scent of a flower, she just hoped he wasn’t one of those bug-eating predatory plants.

She turned and walked into the house. The screen door clicked and hissed as it shut behind her.

A delicious spasm seized her, spreading outward from her groin, bringing her stumbling to a halt, half bent forward over her stomach.

Unh. That was…some feeling. The egg he’d talked about—had to be that. The toah that he’d put inside her while she was half-awake. How had she forgotten
that
? He’d told her it stored magic, sexual magic.
And Jesus, what a concept that was.

Without Heketoro here in front of her, the mountain of bizarre facts revolving round him wobbled in her mind. One minute plausible, the next fantastical, like a dream remembered the morning after. Except, some of the facts weren’t only bizarre, they were verifiable with her own eyes. Fact one, his physique had changed from average to so nicely muscular, she almost bit her tongue whenever she saw him. Impossible, yet true. This toah could be the same—a seemingly impossible thing that was true and real.

In the bedroom, she slipped off the remnants of the shorts and underwear and sat on the bed examining the undone seam. She puffed out her cheeks. This was something concrete and undeniable. Yet, it was only the result of stitching giving way. She could do the same with a seam ripper.

She bent over, probed up inside herself, biting back a moan as her overly sensitive flesh throbbed, to find the thing deep within. With difficulty, she got two fingers around it enough to drag it from her, though the lubrication made it slippery. Holding it before her eyes, she saw it was burnished smooth wood, egg-shaped, and covered in some strange black curlicue writing. It might simply be some sort of sex toy, if she didn’t know better. Outlining where it rested on her palm, there was a faint blueness on her skin.
It was glowing?

She went to her knees on the carpet and put the toah into the darker space beneath the bed. The toah shone blue.
My oh my. Is that a sign of magic?

But then her practical side took hold of her.
Luminescent paint of some sort? Yes, that might be it. Or it was indeed magic. Damn. He wants to show me something at the lake to prove magic exists. Though, he didn’t say exactly when, did he?

She rotated the toah, seeing in this simple object proof of Heketoro’s existence, of their lovemaking, of another side to herself she could never show to anyone.

She rocked back onto the bed. Drawing her knees up, she returned the egg to its place and lay there for several minutes simply dreaming of the feel of Heketoro inside her.

What would they think of her at work, if they knew of this? Though, of course they never would. A policewoman walking about with
that
inside her. It was, in its way, a luscious secret. There was the world out there, and the world of her body. This made her so aware of herself, of being a sexual creature. She shivered and let her thoughts drift.

Whatever Heketoro was, when she mulled over how he’d carried himself, his body language, he didn’t strike her as loony. He was too real, if anything. Like he could reach out and do anything he wanted, if he put his mind to it.

Still, running off to the lake straightaway seemed rather…impetuous. She’d wait a bit and think. If she could establish some sort of facts to judge this by… But how did you judge what was real or not, in a case like this?

“Damn!” She sat up, shook her head. She couldn’t figure this out in any impartial way. She just plain liked him too much.

She’d gone to her knees when he’d commanded it, masturbated in her backyard in broad daylight while he watched and approved. She squirmed inside at the thought, uncomfortably aware of the thumping of her heart and the blossoming warmth where the egg rested. Oh. That
was
nice. If any of her friends ever found out, she’d die of embarrassment. Maybe she’d just fallen down a rabbit hole like Alice and in a minute she’d wake up and discover all this was a dream?

She stared at her hand, where it rested palm-up on her knee and couldn’t help recalling the water mirror on Heketoro’s palm, and the grass and clover bindings. The tendril! How had she forgotten that! Now there was something harder to fake than a shiny egg, and she could easily check it out.

She went into the bathroom and looked at her forehead in the mirror above the sink. Like a tiny vine growing on her temple, it curled black and delicate just above the corner of her eyebrow. Not some false memory at all—it was really there. Hesitantly, she touched it. His finger had done the same not so long ago. Just the barest, lightest touch had sizzled through her. The memory raised more goose bumps.

It even seemed as if the tendril had grown an extra curl since she’d seen it in the garden. Maybe she should have sketched it, so she could compare. She snorted, amused at the thought of pulling out a camera or a sketchbook in the garden.

Still no closer to getting a grip on the whole situation, she showered quickly, then dressed in underwear and a new pair of shorts and top, and padded over to where her laptop sat on her desk. She stared at it for a moment. Heketoro. Hmm.

She switched the computer on, pulled over the swivel chair. Google would have to do. Surely it was a rare name.

She tapped in the name and followed the links. Her eyebrows raised, she leaned back against the chair. A name from the Maori, New Zealand language, meaning
faerie spirit
. She giggled.
There you go, Google had it right.