Before She Wakes: Forbidden Fairy Tales (16 page)

“What the fuck, Sadie?”
I shriek.

“You'll have to stay now,” she says, smiling like a fool. Like the child that she is.

I stare at the empty bag, numb. My heart pounds like it wants to collapse my chest. “Do you know how much that
cost
me?” I demand, like it will make any difference.
I'm
the fool.

Covering my face with my hands, I try not to be sick.

“Everything has its cost,” she replies evenly, sounding so pleased with herself I want to kill her. But something, or
somebody,
already has, and my flaming ball of useless rage has nowhere to go.

I spread my fingers, allowing light through the cracks, trying desperately to hold myself together. And then it occurs to me—there shouldn't
be
any light. My oil lamps are in the pirogue, and my fairy lamp is in pieces. The swamp should be cloaked in darkness, but I can see my sandaled feet on the boards below.

Looking up, I find a yellow ball of light floating in the branches of the cypress. Half a dozen ridiculous and desperate thoughts pass through my head. My 'shine jar's nearby. Could I coax the thing inside? Or maybe catch it in my hand like a firefly? Throw a blanket over it like a net?

Before I can try any of these things, the glowing orb is sinking toward me.

“What
is
that thing?” Sadie cries.

I don't actually know, but also I've been freshly reminded why I shouldn't talk to her.

The orb touches down right in front of me, and it stretches and reorganizes into what looks like the reverse silhouette of a man. A few moments more and it's an
actual
man—the strangest one I've ever seen, and naked as a newborn.

Now, when I say strange, I mean that his spiky blond hair glows, and his eyes are an even brighter yellow than my head wrap. Other than that, all his parts are in the right places, and I don't think I ever saw such
fine
parts in my life. His bronzed skin is smooth and silky all over, like he's never seen hard living. Not a mark or a scar. But his skin is where the softness ends, because he's firm, rounded muscle all over.

He looks like an angel—except his achingly handsome face is twisted into a scowl.

A phrase rolls off his tongue and I take a step back. It was a question, or maybe more like a demand, but I don't think it was in English. And I don't think it was polite.

I stare at his angry, beautiful face. My gaze drifts down to his waist, where I note that he's male in every way. No ordinary male either, by my limited experience. And he's definitely worked up about something.

Suddenly I remember I'm completely naked. I grab my pants and top and yank them over my damp flesh.

“Who are you?” I ask, and remembering what Maud told me, I add, “Are you the wisp?” Did she know it was so human? I'd imagined something small and buglike.

He frowns and squints and takes a step toward me, pointing a long finger in my face. Another phrase tumbles out, and I shake my head. “I don't understand you.”

Micah's words come back to me.
He wants out
.

Suddenly his hands grip my arms, hard enough that I gasp. It doesn't hurt as much as it could, but it shocks me out of the confused stupor.

“Let go,” I snap, trying to twist away. His hands are like firebrands.

“It wasn't her,” I hear Sadie purr.

The man's gaze cuts to the side, and he grunts another phrase.

Sadie shakes her head, offering her sexiest smile, and steps closer to him. Those fiery eyes scan her up and down.

“She's not the one who put you in that jar.”

He lets go of one of my arms, but I still can't pull away.

“You understand him?” I hiss at her. “What language is he speaking?”

“English,” says Sadie. “With the thickest Irish accent I've ever heard. One of my regulars was Irish.”

English? I eye him skeptically, but say, “She's right. I had nothing to do with putting you in that jar. So take your damn hand off me.”

I tug at my arm, but he doesn't let go. He replies, and I work slowly back over the sentence in my head and come up with “You had to do with keeping me in it, though, eh?”

“I didn't know there was a
person
in there.
Are
you a person?”

He gives a bark of laughter. “No indeed!
Shee.
A wisp.”

“What
is
a wisp?”

He strides to the edge of the porch, towing me along. “Let me go!” I shout.

“Where is
this
?” he asks, eyes flitting in a crazy way over the huge circle of swamp that's washed in his light. “Not a bog.”

“Yes, a bog,” I reply testily. “A swamp.”

His gaze moves up a cypress trunk and he shakes his head in disbelief. “Monsters.”

“Trees,” I correct.

“Are we in the north, then?” he asks. “I've never been north. Cousins there, but we don't get on.”

“I…” I shake my head. “No, the South. I don't—”

“He means the north of Ireland, sugar.”

Sadie joins us and lays one of those cold white hands on his hot bronze flesh. He jumps and gives a cry of surprise.

“You're not in Ire…” Sadie appears to reconsider and trails off, gaze moving over his chest. “What's your name, sugar?”

I roll my eyes.

He blinks at her. “Name? Jack.”

I haven't met many other folk who can see ghosts, but like the man said, regular folk, he ain't.

“I'm Sadie, Jack. You're not in Ireland anymore. This is America.” He huffs in disbelief, and she continues, “You've been in that jar a very long time.”

Sadie's hand slides along his arm and she steps closer. “Do you remember the last time you were with a woman?”

I can't fault her for what she's doing, because the farther her hand slides, the looser his grip on me becomes.

“Aye, I do,” he replies. His voice has deepened to a sensual rumble. He's smiling now, and I'm forced to reassess—there's nothing angelic in his expression as his free hand cups her ass. “In fact, you remind me a bit o' her.”

Sadie smiles. Her hands glide down his ribs to his waist, and she pulls the front of her lithe body against what is now a rock-hard cock, folding it in against him. She grips his perfect ass, pulling his hips into hers as their lips meet.

I could easily break his grip now, but I wait, assessing the situation. My rope ladder is within reach, and since my costly lamp's gone, there's nothing else to keep me from getting the hell out of here.

Glancing again at the supernatural majority in this bizarre ménage, I hold my breath and wait for my moment. Sadie has wrapped her arms around his neck and hauled herself up. I watch as, her high heels anchored on the railing behind him, she reaches down and pushes the strip of fabric between her legs aside and guides herself right down over his cock, pussy lips meeting his abdomen.

Still holding my wrist in one hand and cupping her ass with the other, he begins rocking his hips against her. Sadie's head tips back, mouth open, body rising and falling with his movements. I can't help staring; she looks like she's having the ride of her life.

“You're gloriously hard, Jack,” she moans. Her head tips back farther, nipples aiming now for the cypress branches.

“And you've a sweet little cunny for a shade,” he breathes.

The weight of her is nothing to this big, beautiful otherworldly creature. She's like a wren perched on a dragon. The effortless, sinuous motion is hypnotic. I begin to wonder whether there's room for me on that perch.

Suddenly he lets go of my wrist and spins, resting Sadie's ass against the railing. Gripping the top rail at her back, the lazy grind hardens into a punishing pounding. It wakes me from my sex trance.

Sadie's legs are knotted around his waist, and she's uttering sharp little cries, but not from pain. Or maybe from pain. But she doesn't seem to need rescuing.

I grab the rope ladder and make sure the top rung catches on the metal hooks as I toss the rest of it down. I know better than to look back, but I do anyway.

Something has changed. There are still two exquisite bodies in motion, but Jack is…dimmer. The light that had washed over the cypress trees, extending four or five yards into the swamp, is now no brighter than a single oil lamp.

I glance down the rope ladder, and the light is too faint to even make out the lines of my pirogue. It's no longer safe to go down.

Sadie gives a final, razor-sharp cry and I look up. The smile on her face makes my pussy ache. As for Jack, he almost looks mortal. He gives an earthy grunt and drives hard into her.

Sadie's eyes go wide, and she vanishes.

I gasp. “What the—?”

“Just like that banshee on Achill Island,” Jack mutters. “Almost sucked me dry.”

“Banshee?” I gape at him. “I don't understand. Where's Sadie?”

He waves a hand in the air. “Gone off wherever they go when they don't get themselves stuck.”

“They?”

“Shades.”

I stare at him, no less confused.

He frowns. “
Specters.
I've no doubt she was a fine little whore. Maybe even had a good heart in her once. But once they're dead, they're nothin' but empty, endless need. Damn cold woman almost put it out.”

His light. That much I follow. “So you
killed
her?”

A laugh bursts from Jack's lips and he stares at me. “You can't kill a specter, love. I just filled her full of heat, like she wanted. You could say she ‘killed' her
self
.”

I frown at him. “But she didn't know that would happen.”

He shrugs. “Probably not. But she's better off.”

Planting my hands on my hips, I reply, “You have no way of knowing that.”

He shrugs again. “So the two of you were close, were you? She never did you any harm, is that it?”

I bite my lip and glance down at the glass fragments. I wonder if he realizes Sadie's the one who freed him.

“The thing I do know,” he continues, “is my light's gone low, and
you
owe me a good turn, at the very least.”

His eyes fix on me intently, hot and bright like glowing coals. I back toward the rope ladder. “What do you mean?”

He steps toward me. “You've got a shine to you, love. Most seers do. I only need to borrow a little. Enough to get it started again.”

“Borrow? How?”

He grins the same way he did when Sadie sidled up to him, and I drop to a crouch, reaching with my foot for the first rung of the ladder.

Next thing I know, he's hauling me up, hands under my shoulders like I'm a child.

I flail and kick as he drags me toward the shack. “Let me go!” I yell. “Let me
go
! I'm
not
a seer.”

And he does let me go, shoving me backward onto the bed. He falls down beside me and rolls me over. Pinning me with a hand in the middle of my back, he rises again, replacing his hand with a foot.

I look over my shoulder and find him picking apart the yarn of the lantern bag.

“What are you doing?”

“If you won't give, I'll have to take. It'll be much easier without you fightin' me, love.”

“Stop calling me ‘love,' you monster!”

He chuckles softly and keeps right on doing what he's doing.

He doesn't need to tie me up to take me—tough as I may believe myself to be, my strength is nothing to his. Only reason my frantic brain can come up with for him to do it is because he
wants
to.

And I feel strange about that. Scared. Angry. But I never get this hot feeling between my legs when I'm in danger.

“I'm not doing this,” I growl over my shoulder.

He raises an eyebrow and continues fiddling with the yarn.

I'm panting with the strain of trying to free myself by the time he finishes. Removing his foot from my back, he rolls me over and sits astride me. I can't avoid a view of his cock angling up from my belly button.

He pins down one of my elbows with his knee while he wraps the other wrist with yarn. It's softer and thicker than yarn, actually, and he's braided it into long strands to give it strength. When he's tied the end of the first strand to the rickety metal headboard, I test my own strength against it. The yarn slides and catches on the widest part of my hand. Tugging harder causes pain, and he makes a clucking noise like a mother scolding a child.

“Just relax, and it'll be over before you know it,” he says like he's about to pull a tooth. It would be comical—
if
I didn't feel panic churning my insides.

I go stiff and still as he wraps the other wrist, my breath coming in shallow gasps. He rises from my chest and walks down to secure my ankles.

“Don't go anywhere,” he then calls wryly as he leaves the shack. But he's back in a moment, and I notice the blade of my knife glinting in his hand. It must have dropped from my pocket while Sadie was working me over.

“What are you going to do with that?” I demand, but my voice comes out squeaky.

“Well, we can't very well do this with your clothes on, can we?”

My eyes go wide as he approaches the bed. It doesn't seem to matter that he saw me naked earlier. I already feel painfully exposed with my arms and legs splayed.

He grins. “You need to relax, love.”

I open my mouth to spew something nasty but instead say, “I can't.” The words come out so pitiful and honest that it brings moisture to my eyes, and a shameful heat to my cheeks. My skin is dark, so I doubt he notices. And yet there's a subtle change in his expression.

He turns again and exits the shack.

What the hell was that?
It's true that relaxing is not really part of my lifestyle. Even in a moment like this, I'm mostly worried about the people who depend on me and what will happen to them if I don't make it back. But what made me say such a thing to
him
?