0449474001339292671 4 fighting faer (10 page)

Damn it, she didn’t
want
to want him around. He had stormed into her life without a by your leave, had turned her world upside down, given her the most amazing orgasms of her life and recruited her for some sort of top secret Fae mission. And now he was invading her thoughts, and making her like him, and he wasn’t even human. She had to get a grip on herself.

It took some serious mental coaching. She had to remind herself that she hadn’t asked to find out about Faerie, or Seoc or any of the other things he had told her, that he was interfering with her story and derailing her investigation. That he kissed better than any man she’d ever—

No! That was precisely the kind of thought that led to trouble, and she had to banish it immediately. She was busily nursing her mad, reminding herself that he was a stubborn Fae advantage-taker when they entered the realm of the pink neon.

She reminded herself that just because he’d convinced her of the logic of their working together—and
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the fact that he wanted to and he was bigger so she should suck it up and deal—didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.

So, all in all, she’d managed to work herself into a big frothy lather when she yanked open the glass door of the shop and stepped into the pink hell of her foulest nightmares.

Apparently someone had taken the shop’s name a little too seriously. The walls glowed with a high-gloss paint the same sickeningly intense shade as Pepto-Bismol. They seemed to radiate an unearthly light that even the dark, cheery red trim around the windows and doors and along the floor and ceiling couldn’t moderate. Everywhere she looked, she saw evil, and she wasn’t talking about the sex toys; she meant the décor. Pink marabou and dyed faux fur clashed hedonistically with silk, satin, velvet and brocade in all the horrifying shades of pink, rose, red, scarlet, mauve and the occasional purple a body could imagine, and Corinne had a damned fine imagination. Unfortunately, another five minutes in this place, and she’d need that imagination, because she could feel her retinas being seared off where she stood. She heard Luc’s pained inhalation beside her and hoped his own sense of taste was as offended as hers.

Since they had decided Corinne, as the one with a legitimate reason to be poking around and asking questions, should be the one to poke around and ask questions, she took a deep breath and mustered up the resolve to walk deeper into the badness. Swallowing back a surge of nausea, she blinked her watering eyes and fixed her gaze firmly on the maroon carpet, not looking left, right or up as she made her way across the floor to the counter in the corner of the shop. Luckily, her field of vision remained enough that she could see the counter getting closer to her knees before she walked into it, and stopped.

Bracing herself for the sensory onslaught, she looked up to meet the entirely disinterested gaze of the clerk behind the register, a young woman with black-tipped blue hair, purple lipstick and enough shiny silver facial piercings to give an airport metal detector a heart attack.

Sighing, Corinne fished a business card out of her pocket and slid it over the counter. “We’re here to see the owner.”

Shiny barely looked up from her puffy pink emery board. “Yeah? Who’re you?” Corinne glanced down at her card and back up at Shiny. She waited a heartbeat. “We’re with the
Chronicle
. He knew we’d be coming by.” So it was a little fib. She had called and left a message.

Walter Hibbish
should
know, if he ‘d checked his machine.

“That so.” The clerk snapped her gum and went back to filing.

Corinne resisted the urge to take out several days of frustration on Miss Unconventional and Uncooperative. Instead, she leaned over the counter and bared her teeth. It was supposed to look like a smile. Sort of. “Why don’t you go tell him we’re here. Don’t worry. We’ll wait.” This time, Shiny actually lifted her head and sized them up. Well, her glance slid right over Corinne before she sized Luc up. If the amount of time she lingered there was any indication, she seemed to be having the most trouble with his crotch. Corinne was about to get Shiny’s attention by yanking hard on the silver ring in her eyebrow when Luc distracted her. He leaned over the counter, flashed Shiny a charming and patently insincere smile, and added his weight to Corinne’s.

“Please,” he purred. “We’d appreciate it.”

Corinne wondered how much the flirtatious Fae would appreciate a trip to the emergency room.

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Her mouth curving in what might have passed for a smile, had she been three days past dead, Shiny shrugged, slid off her stool and gave a weary sigh. “If you got nothin’ better to do.” She disappeared through the door behind the counter without another word but with one last, lingering glance at the fly of Luc’s jeans. She just missed the new nickname Corinne invented especially for her, but that was likely a good thing.

Grumbling under her breath, Corinne gave Luc a sour glare and slung around the miniature backpack she used in place of a purse. If he kept up that sort of behavior, she wouldn’t have to convince herself he was scum. He’d take care of it for her.

She flipped open the clasp and pulled out her small notebook. Might as well make use of the delay to scope out the store. If this sorry excuse for a lead ever panned out into an actual story, her observations of the nut of a witness’s nutty place of business might prove useful. She certainly didn’t intend to speak a word to Lothario Luc.

Rummaging for a pen and wishing she could put her sunglasses back on without feeling like a moron, she looked around the shop, this time tuning out the horrendous décor and the presence of the Fae warrior beside her. She didn’t need to notice it again to know it would play a prominent role in describing the place. Some things a girl could never forget.

In a city full of sex shops, they tended to boil down into three categories. On one end you had the kind of place that flourished in the heyday of Times Square, before Giuliani and Disney got hold of it and cleaned it up nice for the tourists. Those were the sleaze museums, the places where anyone in their right mind wore rubber gloves, a biohazard suit, a good disguise and still thought twice about touching anything. They catered to the lowest sort of hustlers and vagrants and anyone with a quarter and a strong stomach who wanted a couple of minutes alone in a dirty viewing booth. Come to think of it, no one in their right minds would step foot in one of those to begin with, biohazard suit or not.

Then you had the upscale shops, the ones that made the papers for reasons other than arrests and crimes committed there. They had well lit, tastefully decorated retail spaces, with polite, well-educated and well-informed staff that took care to be both helpful and non-intimidating. They carried quality products and catered to couples looking to add spice to their relationship, or to women who were too intimidated or embarrassed to step foot into a less welcoming environment.

Then you had places like the Pink Pillow. Somewhere between trash and good taste, it sold a huge selection of goods at reasonable prices in a neighborhood you wouldn’t be afraid to walk through under normal circumstances. The staff was iffy—clearly—but they probably didn’t have any serious criminal history and they could ring up a sale easily enough, even if they couldn’t discuss the chemical components in lube like a Nobel scholar. These shops retained just enough of the sleaze factor to give the average conservative a thrill, but not enough to scare him or her away from stopping by to stock up. In fact, if she hadn’t been so grumpy, Corinne might have had some fun browsing. While she appreciated the Religious Sexes of the world, her pocketbook appreciated the Pink Pillows.

In reality, aside from all the…pink…there really wasn’t anything wrong with the shop, or its merchandise. Looking around, Corinne spotted half a dozen brands she recognized, from the maker of flavored massage oils on a small multi-tiered shelving unit to the silicone dildo manufacturer occupying a prominent place against the wall. She wondered briefly if that much familiarity with the world of sex toys said something about her character, but shrugged it off. Everybody had to have a hobby.

“Are you going to ignore me for the rest of the day?” Luc spoke from right behind her, apparently bent on following her through her tour.

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“I’m thinking about it.”

“Because it’s not my fault that woman was staring at me.”

“I never said it was.”

Luc sighed, but he fell silent.

She scribbled down notes as she walked through the shop, which turned out to be a good deal bigger than the average Manhattan storefront, or at least the average storefront in the East Village. There seemed to be plenty of room for attractive displays and for the half dozen other customers to avoid each other as they browsed. In fact, if it weren’t for the godawful pink everywhere, Corinne might have made it a point to come back, but she couldn’t think of a good reason to risk permanent vision impairment when she already had Blowfish bookmarked on her web browser.

She raised an amused eyebrow at the life-sized, blow-up boyfriend who stood propped up next to a colorful display of condoms, but her attention really caught on the far side of the shop and the table stacked high with edible goodies. She had a deep weakness for the combination of sex and chocolate.

But not chocolate pudding. She wasn’t a freak like some people.

The body paint got a cursory glance—she preferred to go with real chocolate syrup, since it tasted so much better—but she lingered for a moment on the raspberry bindi before her eyes widened and her hand shot out to snag a long, thin box with an intriguing cover illustration.

“Ooh,” she murmured to herself as her mouth slid into a grin, “chocolate tattoos!” She dropped her notebook on the table and flipped the box over to scan the information on the back, trying to block out the mental picture of stenciling her name in chocolate on some choice body parts of the Fae warrior who still trailed after her with his hands in his pockets and a scowl on his face. Maybe she could add a the word “Mine” across his ass in those gothic-looking chocolate capital letters…

“You know, at some point we’re going to have to stop fighting.” Corinne looked up from the chocolate. “Why is that?”

“Because eventually, we’re going to run out of things to fight about.” She snorted. “Sure we are.”

“That’s it.”

She heard the growl, but before she could so much as blink, the tattoo box was snatched out of her hand. Luc wrapped his hands around her waist, lifted her and plunked her ass down on the display table, bracing his arms on either side of her so she couldn’t get away.

“Now,” he snapped, leaning forward until his nose practically rubbed up against hers. “Do you mind telling me why you’re being such a brat?”

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Luc watched her look away and fought the urge to grab her chin and force her to look him in the eye.

She was driving him crazy. He felt like for every step he took forward with her, she pushed him two steps back. For Lady’s sake, she was his bloody heartmate. Would it kill her to try and be civil to him?

He’d noticed something was wrong before they got to the store, but he’d been hoping he’d just imagined it. Ever since they’d left her apartment, her mood had gotten progressively worse and she’d gradually stopped speaking so much as a polite word to him. He couldn’t figure it out, either. She’d seemed fine when they’d woken up tangled together in her bed, and normal while they had breakfast in her tiny kitchen. Well, sharp-tongued as usual, but normal for what he knew of Corinne D’Alessandro.

Nothing all that unusual had happened between her apartment and the Pink Pillow. He was at a total loss to explain why she’d suddenly turned from an adorable if sarcastic woman to a hostile army of one. He wanted to know what the hell was going on.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, sounding about as sincere as a mermaid apologizing for singing.

“No, you’re not,” he snapped. “And I want to know why.” She shrugged and remained mute, which just made him want to shake her. Lady! Who would have thought a human woman could be so damned hard to understand? He was starting to think the only time he could expect her to react to him honestly and openly was when he was making love to her. And as appealing as it might sound to spend the rest of his life buried in her sweet cunt, he had a few reservations about its practicality.

Still, he wasn’t above pressing the only advantage he had. He reached around her to grab a small bottle from the table and let his chest brush against her nipples with the movement. He heard her quick inhalation and felt a grim sort of satisfaction. Straightening up, he held up a small glass bottle filled with reddish-brown massage oil so she could see it. “Cinnamon,” he said. “The vanilla’s good too, but it doesn’t make the skin tingle quite the same way.”

He saw her eyes widen and let his mouth curve up at one corner in a small, almost menacing smile. Her gaze seemed glued to his hands as he twisted the top off the bottle and covered the top with the tip of his middle finger before upending it to coat the pad with the oil. While she watched, he eased the low neckline of her tank top down another inch and slipped his hand beneath, snaking inside the cup of her bra to rub the infused oil directly onto the skin of her nipple.

“Luc!” Her cry of protest sounded choked and breathless. “We’re in a public place!”

“No one can see.”

Her head darted from side to side as she looked around, but it was true. Shiny hadn’t yet returned from the back, and there were only two other customers in the store, both of whom intently perused the selection of erotic DVDs with their backs to Luc and Corinne. She didn’t relax, though.