Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1) (22 page)

Finally, she turned her attention to the Jeep itself, looking at it from every angle, even stepping up on the rear bumper to get a good look at the top of the convertible through the stone, and crouching low to peer beneath the Jeep. She saw no traces of glamour, except when she looked through the passenger window at the grocery tote in the seat.

Nothing. She was safe.

Unless they could follow the queen's trinkets like homing beacons, which seemed all too likely. The tote glowed like a malevolent sample of reactor fuel, gleaming dully but sickly through the cheap cloth. She didn't dare throw the things away. If she was right about them, she'd need every single one, though she couldn't imagine how she'd ever find all the queen's victims. If they were even still alive.

Tess wondered what it would take to convince the fairy queen to restore what she had taken. She visualized herself waltzing into the gorgeous throne room of a Disney castle, demanding to see the queen, who would be coldly beautiful and dressed all in spun silken cobwebs in iridescent hues and holding a star-tipped wand. Given how nervous Thomas seemed about his queen, she was probably very strong, magically speaking. She'd never listen to a mere mortal who wanted her to undo her dirty work.

Tess realized she was standing in the middle of the street, pondering things that would get her hospitalized, if anyone could see into her brain. Not to mention she was in plain view of any passing fae, and as she'd seen, they were everywhere in Portland. Maybe not right here, not at this instant, but despite the assurances of the seeing stone, she had no doubt that if they wanted to be on this quiet residential street, they could, and she'd never notice them.

She climbed back into the loyal, trusty Jeep, buckled her seatbelt, and started again for home. More dodging and twisting and doubling back, and at last she rolled into her driveway, wishing she had a garage in which to hide the Jeep and its distinctive coloration. The fae knew about her now, knew about the Jeep, too, if last night's chase and this afternoon's were any indication.

It was probably only a matter of time before they knew about her house, but she hoped to stave off that knowledge as long as possible. She scrambled out of the Jeep, gathered her shoulder bag and reluctantly took the grocery tote in hand, glaring at the fallen leaves in the yard as she hurried to the house. Inside, she took the tote into the kitchen and set it in a corner behind the trash can so she wouldn't accidentally see it and remind herself of the day's frights.

Tess decided it would be best to hide the Jeep, so she ran upstairs to the linen closet and found an old quilt. Outside on the driveway, she gave the quilt a shake and lofted it over the top of the Jeep. As it settled, she thought she heard tiny, thin laughter—the sort of laughter an evil fairy leaf might make—all around her, but when she stopped to listen, she heard nothing but a faint breeze blowing.

"Stop making yourself crazy," she fussed, circling the Jeep and tugging the quilt into place. It didn't quite cover the entire car, but it was better than nothing. She looked up into the sky as if fae helicopters would be circling there, marking her home on their fae radar systems. The seeing stone shifted on its cord, rough and chilly against her skin. The reminder jolted her from her dithering panic, and sent her scrambling for the house yet again. Inside, she locked the door, close to sobbing with fright, exhaustion, and the sheer insanity of her own thoughts. She leaned against the door breathing slow and deep until she felt steadier.

But steadiness was an illusion. Only two things seemed real now: the strange certainty she felt about Thomas, and the sick way her stomach twisted whenever she thought about him out there alone, facing down the things that chased them both. She moved backward until she could sit on the stairs and stare out the narrow windows on either side of the front door, and tried not to imagine seeing unearthly things through the dimpled glass.

There was nothing left to do now except wait and hope for Thomas to return. She wondered with uneasy dread what she would do as dusk settled over the city, when the trick-or-treaters came for their ill-gotten swag. Trick-or-treat? Child or kelpie?

A
S
T
HOMAS STUMBLED UP THE
walk to Tess's porch, dim with the early dusk of an autumn evening, the front door flew open wide and a tide of light, yellow as sunshine but infinitely more welcome, spilled out. Tess flew out with it, his name on her lips in glad cries. He hardly had time to set his feet enough to brace against the impact of her body—soft, warm, clinging—before her arms wrapped around his neck and pulled his head down.

"You're safe!" Tess spoke directly into his ear, her whisper hoarse and broken. She pressed feverish kisses to his cheek and jaw, mumbling things he couldn't understand though he got the gist. She'd been frightened for him and had waited and watched. Through his exhaustion and hopelessness, joy crested like a storm surge and he wrapped his arms around her, closing his eyes to savor her nearness and feel the silk of her skin beneath his lips.

Her cheeks were wet, and there was no rain. He licked his lips.

Salt. Tears.

The fae in him threatened to rage forth at the delicious bitter taste of tears shed for him, but then her wandering mouth touched the corner of his and paused there for long seconds, her breath warm and quick and excited and a little fearful, all at the same time. It was her fear that calmed the beast, and though the Unseelie savagery urged him to hurt her more, make her cry,
take her salt and blood and fear
, it was the human in him that won. When she turned her face the bare inch that would bring their lips together, he met her there, and the flood of sensation quickly swamped the fae craving. Lips on lips, the quick rush of breath, the warmth of her as he caught her up against him, one arm lying along her spine to cradle her head, the other much lower to cup her hips and take her weight and balance. His body responded unmistakably.

It was a homecoming, such a welcome as he had not felt for decades, perhaps not since he had been made fae. He couldn't think beyond the way she clung to him, the way her mouth was still whispering his name, the eager yielding of her lips when his tongue slipped out to taste her and then to plunder. He was exhausted, yes, and scraped and bruised and bleeding from the encounter with Hunter, but here was a fresh source of energy—the raw desire that burned in his heart and groin like the coals in Sharpwit's braziers. He tore his mouth from hers to whisper hoarsely in her ear.

"Oh, Tess. Tess." He breathed her truename with all the longing and desperation of his half-human soul, because only her truename could convey the hugeness of what he felt. The swelling of magic within him, around him, was like nothing he had ever known before. Even though Tess had given him her name the first time they met along the riverfront near Underbridge, he had never spoken it aloud. Her truename, coupled with his emotions and her utter trust of him, felt as if it were an expanding star she placed directly in his heart. Thomas cupped her face in his hands to look down at her, falling into the deep pools of her eyes.

"
Tess
." With that magical third repetition, whatever unspoken bargain they had made with each other was sealed. He felt it inside himself, a thing both closing and opening, fluttering and stilled, starving but sated.

On the porch the cornstalks rustled just as he sought her mouth to plunder it again. Thomas's head came up.

Treachery
, his long years with the fae whispered, reminding him that spies could be anywhere, or everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He stared hard into the darkness at the edge of the yellow light from Tess's house, but the stalks were motionless, and it might have been a breeze.

Might.

"We should go inside," he urged her, looking down into her sweetly dazed face with its wide-apart eyes dark with evening, and the slowly burgeoning smile on her well-kissed mouth.

"By all means. Mustn't shock the trick-or-treaters." She took his hand and led him toward the bright hallway, and Thomas hung back only enough to summon his will to make the porch seem toothily fearsome to the children who might otherwise flood the door.

The cornstalks shuddered in his wake, and the candle in the pumpkin snuffed itself with a stink of waxy smoke and scorched vegetable.

Inside, he closed and locked the door and turned off the porch light, and then the hall light, missing its warmth immediately. In the gloom, Tess pointed at the bowl of candies she had standing by. "The neighborhood children will—"

"Not tonight," he said, moving close. He brought her hands beneath his oilskin and pulled them behind his back. "Grant me one thing on this night. Let the knocking go unanswered." Because it might not be a human child at the door. He remembered Hunter's oath to hunt him down if he were outside the mound and wondered if Tess's house, so close to Forest Park, would be shelter enough. Thomas's very presence had brought danger to her house, and to her, but with the Queen's trinkets here, there was no telling what would happen. He would have to remain alert and on guard. Allantide was not the time to move them.

She looked at him for a long moment, gazing steadily into his eyes. She pulled away slowly, her hands warm even through his shirt. As her hands left his torso, they ran over his arms, and at last linked with his own, palm-to-palm, fingers interlacing with his and curving over the backs of his hands. Something about her stillness calmed him.

"Will it...will you...I mean..." Tess cleared her throat. "Yes, let the door go unanswered tonight." She turned, keeping hold of one of his hands, and led him up the stairs to her room. Thomas followed, his heart pounding with joy and anticipation.

It was no trivial matter, undressing in front of Tess, regardless of how eager he felt. The oilskin went first, draped slowly over a chair at the side of the room. Then Tess turned to his wooly sweater, which stretched so usefully when he was shifting between human and trow. When the sweater came off over his head, she gave a gasp. Hunter's new bruises had to be explained in carefully casual language. The cuts and scrapes necessitated a trip to the bathroom where she daubed at them with cotton balls dipped in something that stung at first and then was magically soothing.

But the worst was yet to come, as he had known it would be. Eventually she worked around to his left arm, where she saw the Queen's armband beneath his bicep, with its curled-back strands of gold and splintery gray-white bone.

Her hand hovered above it as if she was afraid to touch it.

"Thomas?"

"It's nothing."

"It's on too tight."

The Queen meant for it never to come off until all his debts were paid. "I know."

"What happens when you...when you change? You're so much bigger, all over..." She seemed to take in the reality of that for a moment, swallowing hard. "Doesn't the armband hurt you then?"

"It hurts all the time. Just more sometimes than others. Really, it's nothing."

"It's not nothing." She probed at it, gently, where the muscles of his arm bulged around it. "Don't you want to take it off?" She got a thoughtful look on her face, and Thomas felt a nervous flutter in his belly. He was beginning to know that look of determined analysis. It would be followed by a stubborn pronouncement or a willful action, like the night before when she raced for the Jeep with Hunter's bogles on the prowl.

"No, I don't."

Her brown eyes searched his. "You're lying. Wait right here. I'm going to see if the guys next door have a bolt cutter. Maybe if I can work one of the blades beneath the band, I could—"

"Stop." He caught her before she could leave the bathroom. "Do you think I didn't try that years ago when it first began to ache? Besides, it's enchanted. Bolt cutters won't work on it."

"If they're steel, maybe the iron would—"

"It's all right," he repeated. He took her face between his hands and distracted her with a slow, tender kiss. Maybe there was a little unintended magic in the kiss, but more likely she could simply sense how much he wanted to be with her, because when he lifted his head, all she said was, "I only want to help you."

Me, and every stray that crosses your path.
"I know."

He kissed her again, and when she slid her arms around his neck and leaned in, he lifted her and carried her to where the bed waited. He set her on her feet beside it, seriousness overtaking him. She laid a hand on his chest, over his heart. He felt like it might burst from his chest, but when he saw her pulse leaping in her throat, knew she was as uncertain but eager as he. He undid the top button on her shirt, then stopped, meeting her gaze. Tess smiled softly and simply stood, waiting, and he undid the rest.

Beneath her shirt she was pale and naked. His hand trembled as he brushed his fingertips over the crest of her breast and watched its unmistakable reaction to his touch. She watched his fingers as they trailed downward over her stomach to the waistband of her jeans, where he fumbled for a moment with the button and zipper. She returned the favor.

In only a few seconds more, there was nothing left between them, and when skin came to skin all along their lengths, he shuddered and threw back his head with a hiss to hold in the trow. They tumbled to her mattress in a tangle of warm limbs and searching mouths.

Tess's bed was no thistledown couch, for which he was glad beyond reason. The bedding all smelled of her, soapy and clean and musky. Each moment was filled with skin and lips, tastes and welcoming arms and legs. There came that supreme sensation of joining with Tess, an exquisitely slow push accompanied by her indrawn breath and passionate arch. He looked down at her, meeting her brown eyes. Her soft gasping "Ahh!" was every word he could have wanted to hear.

"Thank you," Thomas said.

She traced trembling fingertips over the bridge of his nose and around the edges of his lips. When she shifted positions beneath him, her legs moving to wrap around his hips and seat his body deeper into hers, he was lost in gladness. She met his thrusts with a lift of her chin, as if savoring each stroke.