Rogue's Paradise Read online

  I managed to tear my mouth away. The skies were clear, if rapidly deepening into an ultraviolet dusk. A luminous silver behind the edge of one canyon wall hinted at moonrise. A few early stars, spinning with kaleidoscopic color, pierced through, like wormholes to other worlds. For all I knew, they were.

  “What happened to the flying monkeys?”

  “They’re gone.” He cupped the back of my neck, tilting my head so he could nibble the sensitive underside of my jaw. I melted, moaning a little. “You are delicious, powerful Gwynn. That was far more than I needed. I’m glutted with you.”

  With a flick of a disgusted thought, Darling Hercules jumped down from the saddle, mentally muttering about there being no mice in this prey-forsaken place.

  “What did you do? How do we know they won’t keep coming?” I asked, my breath coming unevenly.

  “I...reversed them in a way. Instead of finding us, they go backwards.”

  “Clever.”

  “I’m flattered you think so.” He found my mouth again, kissing me long and sweet and deep, rocking against me.

  So help me, I wanted him like nothing I’d felt before. As if all the months of buildup, all that teasing and torment, had layered on, fueling my desire just a bit more with every encounter. This close to him, to his deeper thoughts and emotions, I knew Rogue felt it too. The unbearable need to bury ourselves in the other.

  “Gwynn,” Rogue murmured. “Say it can be now.”

  All those times I’d said no. All those arguments and my determined resistance. I might have paid my life debt to Rogue by promising to bear his child, but I’d at least been able to forestall those consequences by refusing his seduction. All come to nothing.

  I’d never agreed and I’d still lost that battle. I hadn’t quite assimilated that I was truly pregnant. Titania had forced us—tricked, manipulated, however you wanted to split the hairs—into doing the deed, but then she’d removed the memory afterward. It had happened weeks ago. Or months, as time in Faerie flowed in a different way. Titania had restored the memories and informed me of the pregnancy in a neat double whammy meant to lay me low. I was still reeling from the rawness and violation of the rape. Technically I’d done it to Rogue, but I counted Titania as our true rapist, as she’d pulled the strings.

  I could let that go now. No more defending myself from the embryo I already carried. I could say yes, finally.

  “If you say no again, it might kill me,” he growled, biting my lip again, then laving it with his tongue.

  “Even though you’re immortal?” I teased.

  “Even so.”

  “Then yes.”

  Something inside me released at that moment, old scar tissue breaking open, finally yielding up that tight, binding pain. A rush of gladness followed. I didn’t have to fight this anymore.

  Not letting me go, raining kisses on my upturned face, Rogue swung down from Felicity, in a feat of strength and grace that had me gasping. He smiled, the fanged lines around his beautiful mouth twisting with the movement, loving that he’d impressed me.

  His magic swirled and he laid me down on a bed of velvet he’d wished into existence, stretching himself beside me.

  “Doing magic left and right now?” I asked him in an arch tone.

  “Yes. I am overflowing with you. And still you feed me more. Let me have more.”

  “It’s yours.”

  With a choking sound and some incoherent emotion I couldn’t discern, he fell on me, fingers twining into my hair, holding me in place while he kissed me in that drugging way that swept all thought aside.

  I meant it too. For the time being, at least, I just wanted to enjoy him. Savor the moment without worrying how much I might lose to his magnetic personality. He’d said he loved me and, though it might not mean to him what it did to me, I wanted to believe in that. Even if it had been in the heat of battle and the crushing aftermath. I only wished that I could touch him in turn. At least loosen the band that tied back his hair.

  But I couldn’t use my hands. Thanks to the handy anesthetic magic of Darling Hercules Goliath—I was trying to remember, though the name chain was getting ridiculous—I mostly didn’t feel anything. The makeshift bandages swaddling my hands, however, both mittened me and hid from view the lethal claws that had made a ruin of my fingers. The feline spirit that had recently taken up occupation in my soul had helped defeat Titania, but it also wanted out and needed my flesh to do it.

  Nothing to do about it at the moment. Rogue had promised we’d fix it and we would. For now I wanted not to think about it, to simply seize the moment and savor Rogue.

  Besides, I had other means at my disposal. A lowly scientist in my previous mundane life as a university professor, I’d become a sometimes distressingly powerful sorceress, with even my least notion coming true until I learned to control it. A hair tie was far more easily dealt with than, say, an army of flying monkeys. I vanished it, and the black silk cloak of Rogue’s hair fell around us.

  “I am looking forward to the moment,” he commented in a wry tone, “when I manage to sweep your thoughts away in truth.”

  “You’ll just have to work harder.”

  “Oh, sweet Gwynn, I fully intend to.” He untangled his hand from my own hair and put it on my bare leg, raising my skirt. I stared into his fulminous eyes, riveted.

  At last.

  “Oh no!” Starling’s startled exclamation shattered the moment. “Turn around, you guys.”

  Athena’s and Larch’s voices protested. Rogue and I stared at each other, sharing the same frustrated annoyance. For once we were in perfect sync. His hand flexed on my thigh, as if unwilling to let me go, then relaxed and smoothed my skirt back down. He sat up, drawing me with him.

  Larch, Athena and Starling stood a short distance away, black-and-silver shapes in the moonlight, Starling wringing her hands together and clearly kicking herself for the interruption. My half-fae, half-human maidservant and friend had been hoping so hard for me to give in to Rogue that she no doubt deeply felt the irony of interrupting us. Larch, a Brownie stolid as the blue fireplug he resembled, looked into the distance. Only Athena, a petite fairy girl with a diabolical brain, seemed unperturbed, spinning her glinting dagger in her fingers, a salacious grin on her face. Darling wound around their feet in greeting and I glared at him. He could have warned us they were close.

  “Goliath,” he replied in a grumpy mental tone, tinged with more than a little jealousy. Great.

  “Looks like you’re feeling better, Gwynn,” Athena observed. “We thought we’d better come check on you two to see how you fared against those nasty chimps, but you seem to be doing quite fine without us. Brilliantly, in fact.”

  “We should go!” Starling announced. “Come on, everyone. Back on your horses. We can, um, go find a place to camp.”

  “No, don’t go.” I levered myself to my feet awkwardly, Rogue assisting me after a moment’s hesitation. Dark and broody irritation rolled off him, but I could hardly dismiss the people who’d accompanied me on this quest—and who probably were the making of it. Especially with another attack possible. What had I been thinking? About sex, clearly. “Are you guys okay? No one is hurt?”

  “A pair of those things grabbed Larch and nearly carried him off, but Athena threw her dagger and hurt one, so they dropped him,” Starling said, looking between me and Rogue. She produced a bright smile. “So we’re fine! We’ll just see you and Lord Rogue in the morning.”

  With night truly fallen, and without Rogue’s intense body heat to warm me, I shivered. He slipped an arm around my waist and drew me against him, a casual intimacy I’d never before been able to allow and I leaned my cheek against his chest. The 3/4 rhythm of his heart pounded under my ear, reflecting all that aroused desire I sensed, but didn’t show on his impassive face.

  “There should be no stopping for the night,” he declared. “It’s likely only a matter of time until something worse is sent after us. More distance is better.”

  “Tha
t’s not what you said a few minutes ago,” I said for his sharp ears only.

  He looked down at me, eyes bright as if lit from within, and cupped my face, thumb running over my cheekbone. “I lost my head.”

  I leaned in to the touch, impossibly moved by that simple declaration.

  “I’d tell you two to get a room,” Athena cracked, “but I don’t think there are any for leagues in any direction—besides Titania’s castle, that is.”

  I laughed, amused that the idiom existed in the fae culture, too, but Starling rounded on the petite fairy girl. “You will not speak to Lord Rogue and Lady Gwynn that way!”

  Athena spun her dagger for a moment, eyeing Starling. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and get Gwynn’s cloak for her?”

  “Oh!” Starling took the bait immediately and dashed to the saddlebags, rummaging wildly, as if to make up for her lapse with speed. I would have told her not to worry, but having the cloak sounded really good. The cold seemed to be eating into me.

  Starling brought it over and Rogue took it from her.

  “Allow me.” He shook it out and held it for me to step into, his long fingers brushing my neck as he settled it over my shoulders. Fastening the green silk frogs at my throat, he bent down and whispered in my ear. “I’d planned to have you naked by now, not wearing more clothes. You owe me.”

  Owing Rogue anything generally led to very bad bargains for me, but this time the demand rocketed through me, full of sensual promise. The cloak felt heavenly—hopefully it would soon warm me up.

  A hound bayed, the bone-chilling sound eerie in the night, quickly joined by more wolfish howls and shrieks from humanoid throats. Horses thundered in silhouette across the face of the moon.

  “Another excellent reason not to be caught sleeping. The Wild Hunt rides—and they appear to have slipped their leash,” Rogue said in a dry tone. “Let’s be on our way. My Lady Gwynn?”

  At least he made a semblance of asking before he swung me up in his arms and strode toward Felicity, who’d managed to find a few tufts of grass growing between the black rocks. Mounting with no hands and the same fluid grace, he continued to hold me, like a bride carried over the threshold.

  “I can sit astride,” I protested.

  “This way you can sleep. Your mortal flesh needs it.”

  “Starling is half-human—she needs rest too.”

  “Lady Starling,” he called out, and the others clopped up to join us. “Shall I bespell you to stay in your saddle, so you can sleep without fear of falling off?”

  “Oh, Lord Rogue, that would be lovely, but I fear I couldn’t pay for such a generous gift.”

  “On the contrary,” he replied. “I am in your debt, for your great services in rescuing me.”

  She fluttered, embarrassed and pleased, then agreed. Athena and Larch, fueled by magic, could continue indefinitely. Larch never even rode, just ran beside us, his squat, Brownie body moving at uncanny speeds. We set off down the canyon, moonlight bouncing off the opaque glassy surfaces of the rocks.

  “You could have spelled me to stay in the saddle. Hell, I could have done that, too,” I said.

  He adjusted his arms around me, my hip pressed against the hard line of his cock, obvious even through my thick cloak. “Indulge me. If I can’t have everything yet, I can at least enjoy the feel of you in my arms.”

  “You could also let me ride Felicity and you could poof yourself elsewhere, like you do. You have enough power now, I’ll bet.”

  “True.” He sounded thoughtful. “But you are forgetting something. I’m not leaving you behind, ever again, my Gwynn.”

  His words had the power of a vow. Not lightly done in Faerie, where crazy-ass goddess and queen Titania played enforcer and executioner. “You’re being awfully sweet and romantic. Prison changed you, man.” I reached for the joke, shying away from the intensity of it all, but Rogue went still, pulling his thoughts deep where I couldn’t hear them.

  “Yes,” he finally said. “Yes, it did.”

  Chapter Two

  In Which I Ask for Something

  In some ways, Faerie contains all the classic elements mentioned in fairy tales, with many of its denizens matching storybook descriptions. But there are other fragments, too, such as the flying monkeys and the Wild Hunt, which derive from other types of stories. It’s as if human imagination were smashed into pieces and reassembled like Frankenstein’s monster. Which I shall no doubt encounter next.

  ~Big Book of Fairyland, “General Observations”

  By morning, I had a raging fever.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. The last I’d seen, the claws had torn my fingers apart. I doubted they could heal much without further attention. Likely the open wounds had become infected and festered. I really needed to inspect my hands, but with both bandaged, I couldn’t do it by myself.

  Oh wait—yes, I could, with some judicious magic and some time alone, so I could make the assessment first, before worrying the others unnecessarily. Which might be hoping for a bit much, as the odds were that my prognosis would not be promising.

  Still, neither Rogue nor any of the others seemed to have noticed anything amiss with me and I disliked being the whiner enough that I didn’t say anything. But when Fergus came galloping up, for a moment I feared I’d started hallucinating.

  “Top o’ the morning to ye all!” he called out, sweeping off a battered felt cap. He swayed a little in the saddle, clearly already drunk. Where he’d managed to find alcohol in this forsaken landscape, I didn’t know. Maybe he had a portable version of his magic drink-cart, forever refilled with his favorite poison. He was in squidgy mode, complete with stubbled chin and bloodshot eyes. Perched atop his prancing hero’s battle horse with a sword reminiscent of Excalibur strapped to the pommel, he made an incongruous sight.

  “Daddy?” Starling sounded surprised to see him too. We’d last seen him—in full Prince Charming mode—battling the Wild Hunt in Titania’s courtyard. Another human immigrant from my old world, he couldn’t work magic like I could. Instead, the magic worked him, transforming him into the undefeatable hero of the old tales. However, as with my wishes, it seemed to function in a situation-specific way. When heroics weren’t needed, he reverted to drunken Irishman.

  “No kiss for your old da, Little Bit?” The question was apparently rhetorical, given that they were both on horseback and Fergus had his gaze fixed on me and Rogue. “So, there’s himself, the recently rescued Lord Rogue.”

  “Fergus,” Rogue greeted him in a cool tone.

  Starling rode closer, a frown line between her brows. “I thought you were staying back to look for Baby Brody.”

  Fergus had been on a quest since his son, Brody, disappeared as a baby. Another half-human, half-fae firstborn child. Another cautionary tale for me.

  “We-ell.” Fergus drew out the word, digging at his ear with a gnarled finger. In a nonmagical world, I would have put him in his early sixties, but I estimated he’d come through the Veil from the 1700s or thereabouts. Some people did, just as in the old stories. Fergus, consistently cliché, had fallen asleep drunk on a mound and woke up in Faerie. Nobody, so far as I could tell, managed to go back the other direction. I’d tried. “I’ve it in mind to go after your mother,” he finally said, surprising us all.

  “You mean,” I inserted, “that you think Blackbird’s journey sailing over the Endless Sea will be more likely to get you to Brody than searching the Queen Bitch’s palace.”

  Far from offended, Fergus grinned at me. “That may be true. Besides, I don’t know what you did to that one, but the place is in quite the uproar. Lots o’ folks being called into her presence and not coming back. I thought it best to make meself scarcelike.”

  I shivered, not wanting to contemplate what Titania might be doing to heal herself, my hallucination-inclined brain all too willing to embroider on some horrific images. “So why bother to find us now?”

  Starling gave me an unhappy look, but she knew as well as I that F
ergus had been a terrible father. Paternal love hadn’t sent him our way and I had no patience for him glomming on to us.

  “I recalled how you used yon scepter to scry. Thought mebbe you could tell me where Blackbird might be. Save me a bit of trouble. And since you owe me for helping rescue himself.”

  “Scrying?” Rogue asked.

  “You didn’t wonder how I found you? Athena, give me the scepter, please.” I didn’t owe Fergus a damn thing since he’d attached himself to us out of self-interest, but Blackbird and I had a history, not just because she was Starling’s mother.

  Athena, however, narrowed her eyes at me, the stubborn skepticism in them belying their doelike lavender prettiness. “No. I don’t think I will.”

  “Dammit, Athena. Just for a minute—it won’t take much.”

  “Your liege lady gave you an order, girl,” Rogue said, at his most imperious.

  Athena seemed far from impressed. “That liege lady nearly killed herself using the scepter before. You’re an idiot if you think I’ll let her have it in her current condition.”

  Rogue gave her his most disdainful cobalt glare. “You may have come up in the world since last we met—”

  “And you may owe me the same debt as you avowed Starling,” Athena interrupted.

  He frowned at her, taken aback. She looked like the simpleminded fairy she’d been when Rogue and I first encountered her, with her girlish frame, violet eyes and powder-blue hair. Unlike the ringlets most of her kind sported, she’d hacked at hers with a knife, so it stood up in short spikes. The boots and brown leather fighter’s gear, with the short dagger strapped to her waist, made her look like a punk pixie.

  “She’s more than what she was,” I told him, raising my eyebrows meaningfully. I didn’t know how much Athena understood that I had “tweaked” her brain during one of his lessons for me. Playing God scared me on a visceral level and I’d wanted to at least help her instead of harming her. But I’d still yanked her from a fairly blissful existence of playful ignorance, awaking a restless and fiercely intelligent spirit in her. Blessing or curse remained to be seen. “That said, I feel like I owe Blackbird the favor of sending Fergus her way, since I can.”