CHAPTER SIX
BABY ELEPHANTS
Sher looked at the glass display on the wall where her bow and arrow were encased.
Lyric followed her gaze. “Strings,” he said. “We have that in common, you and I.”
When her head swiveled his direction, he pointed toward the room where he kept his collection of every imaginable musical instrument. “This, for instance.” He reached for an acoustic guitar that Sher hadn’t remembered being there before. “What kind of music do you like?”
She raised her chin. “I do no’ like music.”
Lyric laughed and shook his head. His dark hair ruffled with the movement in a most appealing way. “Don’t be childish, Sheridan. It’s unattractive.”
“I’m no’ interested in appearin’ attractive to you, demon.”
He sighed. “Hmmm. Well, everybody likes music. Perhaps people get different levels of pleasure from music, but everybody likes it.”
Sher cocked her head. “Let me tell you what’s unattractive. Bein’ a know-it-all.”
The demon smiled wickedly as the gleam rose in his eyes. His eyes had a sort of inner light that was frightening, captivating, and aggravatingly sexy all at the same time. At times his irises seemed to have little flames that responded to various emotions and danced for the benefit of the observer. Perhaps the flames were a warning. Perhaps they were simply a reflection of interest, mirth, or desire. It was impossible to know. And just as impossible to look away when it was happening.
He pulled the guitar into his lap and began to casually strum a pleasing arpeggio. If Sher had been sleepy, she knew she’d already be yawning and thinking about a nap.
“Would you like to learn to play the guitar, Sher?”
As a matter of fact, she would love to play the guitar, which made it really hard to say, “I can no’ stand the sound of that contraption. ’Tis like the squeakin’ of old rusty wheels.”
Lyric’s eyes slanted toward her slowly in a measured way as if testing for the truth of that. “I could teach you easily,” he said, ignoring her proclamation of distaste. He just chuckled when she looked the other way.
In looking away from Lyric her eyes had landed on the wall display, which seemed to have been put there to taunt her with her helplessness and captivity. She toyed with the idea that she might be experiencing punishment for being too proud of being selected for D.I.T. For being mate to a beautiful and brave veteran vampire hunter. The folklore she’d heard among the people of Black on Tarry all her life was resplendent with such superstition.
On impulse, without plan or too much thought, she rose, grabbed the guitar out of Lyric’s hands and smashed it against the display. The guitar didn’t break, but whatever had been the transparent material magically holding the bow aloft vanished. It clattered on the floor as the quiver fell with a soft thud beside it. With a speed and presence of mind she didn’t know she had, she picked up the bow, strung an arrow, and whirled around aiming it at Lyric, who was still sitting calmly on the divan.
He got to his feet and raised his hands in a, “Please don’t shoot me,” pose.
“So you lied after all,” Lyric said with more interest than anger. “You are a demon. Why play games?”
“I’m no’ a demon, eejit. I’m an elf who’s ready to go home. Now show me the way or prepare to get stuck and let me warn you these arrows are coated with a juicy little surprise designed especially for creatures such as yourself.”
“Sheridan.” Lyric lowered his chin and gave her a sobering look. “Only another elemental could break the spell holding your bow.”
“Deceiver.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. Not in this case. I wish it wasn’t true. I’d like to keep you.”
“I’m no’ a demon.”
He looked pointedly at the wall where the bow had been. “Circumstance says you are.”
She bit the inside of her lower lip while contemplating whether or not there could be any truth to that. It was then that she finally pushed her own emotions aside long enough to add up the score. Her unhappiness, missing her mate as she did, worrying about him as she did, had been all she could manage to deal with.
When her reason finally decided to show up for the party, she reviewed the evidence. She hadn’t eaten or slept for two weeks. Which was utterly impossible. Unless… If the demon was telling the truth about why she was able to break the bow free, then…
She looked around and, sure enough, her senses told her where there was an active portal that could be used to step into the passes. In her haste to see if she could leave, she forgot all about the homing necklace he’d taken from her. But when she stepped into the passes, she realized she didn’t need it. With the other changes, she had, apparently, acquired an internal compass along with incredible speed. She knew exactly how to navigate her way to the D.I.T. house in Dublin. She didn’t know how she knew. She just did.
The house was quiet except for an ancient Swiss clock housed in an elaborately carved German style that stood in the front hall. When it was quiet in the house, the clock noises seemed to grow in volume. Torn glanced toward the front hall and wondered if it would be noticed if he carried the clock over to the commercial trash containers at the end of the next block. He would ever so much more prefer silence to the increasingly irritating tick tock.
He decided that destroying Black Swan property was the sort of thing that could land him back in Marrakesh. Or worse, on floater rotation. So he decided he’d grit his teeth and leave the damnable thing alone.
All the D.I.T. hunters had been called to the Abbey for the briefing. He was curious how the others would take it.
He hadn’t really thought there was any chance Sher was coming back to the house in Dublin when he’d asked to stay behind, but he’d maintained a vice grip on the sliver of hope that she’d be more trouble than the creature planned.
Torn didn’t have a lot of experience with hope. He’d spent his entire life thinking hope was a silly indulgence practiced by people who’d had such an easy life that they expected, and even believed they deserved, good things. But it only took one instant of holding Sheridan O’Malley in his arms to overhaul his perspective on such things. Occasionally he berated himself for constantly fantasizing that any minute the demon would tire of her and choose to let her go unharmed. But he continued anyway.
With plodding steps, he started up the stairs toward the second floor room he shared with no one, not knowing what he’d do when he got there, wishing he had someplace else, anyplace else, to be. His only reason for going was that the clock noises were a little quieter upstairs, especially if he closed the door and shoved towels against the crack between door and floor.
He was halfway up the stairs when the hairs all over his body began to stand on end. Without any idea what that meant, his intuition informed him that, if it was trouble, he’d rather be downstairs with directional options, than upstairs. Trapped.
He paused for less than a second before reversing direction. Just as his foot hit the old worn and creaky boards of the ground floor, he felt a shift in atmospheric pressure and heard a slight popping sound in the next room. He didn’t have to go look to know it was Sheridan. His mate senses were flooded and filled with her nearby presence.
He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He told his body to move in that direction, but he was frozen in place. When she turned the corner and saw him standing there, she was visibly filled with the joy and relief that was overwhelming Torn’s mind and body.
She rushed into his body, throwing her arms around him and let out a sob followed by a huge gasp of air, almost like she hadn’t been able to breathe for weeks. It was odd for her body to be doing things she hadn’t actively approved. She hadn’t cried since she was a child and had an accident with a fallen tree trunk after being chased by an out-of-sorts badger.
Still unable to make his voice utter a single sound, Torn grabbed onto her like he was alone treading water in the middle of the ocean and she was an inner tube. Sher’s sob resolved into quieter expressions of intense relief. He felt the quick intakes of breath that moved her chest against his. Gradually he became aware of wetness where her face was buried in his neck.
“Sher.” He breathed her name like a prayer to long forgotten gods. Letting go just long enough to put his hands on both sides of her head, he pulled her face up so that he could get a good look at her. Indeed, the changes in her looks were similar to Shivaun. The freckles he’d loved were gone, replaced with skin that was perfection in the evenness of its color. He immediately decided he loved that just as much. The eyes that had been a warm and welcoming shade of mahogany had become a kaleidoscope of color. Flecks of amber, gold, yellow, and… was that orange?… danced in her eyes, enlivening her irises so that they sparkled with light that seemed to move from within. And he loved that just as much.
He methodically kissed every inch of her face including her eyelids, then kissed each corner of her mouth before pressing his lips to hers. Tongues fought for the privilege of letting the other know how much they were missed and how mightily damn pleased each was to have the other locked in an embrace.
When they parted, Torn managed to rasp, “Are you alright?”
She let out a small laugh full of the satisfaction that came from surviving a situation that could have resulted in death or, in their case, mate separation. Which was worse.
“I am,” she said, “now.” She looked closely at his face, her gaze flicking from one of his eyes to the other then upward toward his hair. The hint of a frown formed between her brows. “Do you look different?”
He laughed. “Perhaps a bit. You like it?”
She studied him intently looking from one eye to the other before grinning and saying, “Well, aye. I did no’ think you could be more beautiful. But perhaps I was wrong.” He chuckled as his hands continued to pet her body like he thought that, if he stopped touching, she’d disappear. “Where is everybody?”
“Gone to Scotia. Rosie called the Wild Bunch to the Abbey to talk about, em, things.”
“Wild Bunch?”
“That’s what everybody in Black Swan started callin’ us.”
“Oh.” It took less than a second to process that and move on. “So we have the house to ourselves?”
Understanding the direction of her thoughts, Torn smiled wickedly. “We do.” He began to kiss around the rim of her delicately pointed ear, which triggered an erogenous response. When she squirmed and giggled, he said, “Whate’er should we do with the opportunity?”
“I want to hear what’s happened since I’ve been gone.”
“I want to hear everythin’ about you.”
“But it can wait for ten minutes.”
He looked down his nose with sparkling eyes. “I’ll ignore that barb, but take the challenge. We’ll see if you’ll be story tellin’ within ten minutes or no’.”
Sher turned and went up the stairs so fast that, to human eyes, it would have appeared that she’d vanished. But Torn, having the same newly enhanced abilities, was right behind her reveling in the sheer delight of her laughter and thanking the gods that his good fortune was restored to him.
He filled his hands with athletic curves covered by peaches and cream skin as he backed her toward the two single beds they’d shoved together in the middle of the room when they’d shared quarters.
She raised her arms as he pulled her Henley over her head and, as he was tossing it aside, he leaned in and sucked her earlobe into his mouth. That elicited a tiny gasp that caused his engorged cock to twitch almost painfully.
“Paddy, Sheridan,” he said. “Ne’er leave me again.”
She leaned back to look in his eyes, hearing the pain in that simple statement. And she knew in that moment that she’d had the easier lot of it. While she’d spent her time trying to figure out a way home, he was helplessly waiting. Not knowing if she was well or even alive.
“I’ll ne’er be away from you by choice. It hurts my heart to know you’ve suffered.”
She removed the rest of her clothing quickly and pulled Torn toward the bed, silently signaling her preference to skip foreplay. She was eager to be joined, to feel him inside her, and it was clear that was what he needed as well.
Pushing his jeans down to his thighs she pulled him back onto the bed, into the cradle of her body, and cried out when he entered her in one mighty thrust. Seated deep, Torn made a sound that could almost be described as a whimper.
Taking charge, as elf females were notoriously fast learners when it came to sex, Sheridan rolled them over, straddled her mate and began to ride him with such ferocity and an abandon so wild, so primitively wanton, that both lost the ability to think. They could only feel the exquisite pleasure of being connected in the most intimate way.
“I can no’ hold on with you on top, love,” he said. “Feelin’ you. Watchin’ you. ’Tis too much.”
“Let go,” she said. “I want you to.”
When Sher felt the pulsing spurt of warm liquid, she threw her head back and climaxed in a shudder that almost looked like a seizure. Torn tightened his hands around her waist then abruptly sat up and wrapped his arms around her.
As she slowed, her body seemed to move in the most sensual dance of afterglow and supreme satisfaction. “I missed you, vampire slayer.”
They held onto each other, in that position, for a long time, simply grateful to have each other. They needed nothing else. They wanted nothing else.
When Kellareal arrived at Lyric’s door, he stopped and used the doorknocker, which was an iron figure of a Green Man with an open maw that looked forbidding. Not to him. Of course. But he assumed it was intended to frighten would-be visitors who were less powerful than himself.
He could have entered without knocking, but it would have been so impudent and impolite that news of it would be circulating in elemental circles for centuries. It just wasn’t worth it. So he waited.
In a short time Lyric swung the door inward and turned away leaving it standing open, presumably in invitation.
“She’s gone,” he said with a shrug and who-cares attitude before turning his back, walking back toward his conversation space.
“Gone?” Kellareal repeated.
Lyric turned around. “You getting hard of hearing, old fella?”
The two weren’t friends, but both could recognize the other on sight.
Kellareal smirked. “I heard you, demon. I’m just surprised. That’s all.”
“Why?”
“Well…”
“Has something to do with the fact that she didn’t know she’s demon when she came here. Right?”
“First, let’s be honest. She didn’t come here. You grabbed her out of the passes.”
“Tweedle Dee. Tweedle Dum.”
Kellareal squinted, shaking his head slightly to indicate confusion. “What!?!”
“I don’t like word quibble.”
“You mean you don’t like to use language with precision?”
Lyric barked out a laugh and flopped down into his cushy divan. “If you’re staying, close the door. If not, close the door behind you.”
“Why would I be staying?”
“No idea. Yet here you are.”