Shutters dropped over his eyes but not before Livvy glimpsed the unspoken gratitude. He’d thought she might refuse him. Somehow, his plea Inez Kelley
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now meant more, as if she’d honored him with her presence. He humbled her.
She held him close a long minute before they rose and went to bed, the dishes still on the table.
She slipped into his bathroom, reemerging to find him straightening the rumpled blankets. The alarm clock on the left told her John’s preferred side of the bed and she went to the right. She crawled in and rolled to face the wall as he took his turn in the bathroom. He didn’t speak when he returned, flipped off the lamp and slid beside her. His arm curled around her hip. Within minutes of crawling beneath the sheets, his breathing leveled into a deep rhythm but he never released her.
The tiny hairs on his arm tickled her fingertips in the dark. It had been so long since she’d slept beside a man, she marveled her nerves weren’t twanging. But John kept his promise and hadn’t pushed once they lay down. This simply felt right, being here in his arms while the hushed night surrounded them.
Sleep came slowly. Just as the softened edges touched her, John jerked. A stuttered catch to his breathing opened her eyes and Livvy looked over her shoulder. A deep line sliced into his brow as his eyelids pinched tight, his lips moving in muttered syllables.
“Murphy?” She rolled to face him. The garbled whisper was beyond her comprehension but the 92
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emotion came through clearly. John’s nightmare reduced his voice to a frightened child. His knees drew up between them, and his shoulders hunched, rounding his back. The position chilled her.
“Shh, it’s okay. It’s just a dream.” Shushing him with gentle words, her hand landed on his cheek. He shied away from her touch, curling tighter into himself. He trembled, fine shivers that racked his entire body.
“Hurts,” he mumbled.
“What hurts, Murphy?”
“Stop, please.”
“It’s okay.” Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked the burn away. The broken noises
sounding from his chest stabbed into hers with a physical ache. Leaning over his knees, she rubbed her nose along his. “Nothing can hurt you now.
I’m here, Murphy. You’re safe with me.”
He nuzzled her nose then pulled her close.
Even asleep he had strength, and the crushing hug forced the air from her lungs. She didn’t care and clung back, holding him as tight as she could. He didn’t let go even as he slid deeper into sleep.
It took far longer for Livvy’s heart to slow and her muscles to relax. Whatever demons lurked in his past still had a firm grip on his memories, and Livvy squeezed harder, wishing she could take the hurt away. She eased the sheet up, tucking it under her chin, covering him with her body and Inez Kelley
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the blankets. The last conscious thought in her mind was that they were wrapped in Thorn’s wings and nothing could harm them as long as they never let go.
The thick mist lay like cotton over the forest floor and made his fur soggy. Jondi shivered.
Something skittered under a rock in front of him and he jumped. He was good and lost,
all right. Nothing around him seemed
familiar. The trees moaned with an eerie
wail and the wind cackled in his ears. Head ducked against the gust, one hand clamped on his ball cap, he wished Thorn were near.
He wished anyone was near. It was cold and frightening here. He wanted to go home.
His stomach ached and his head hurt. He
was starting to feel like he’d never see home or his friends again. The journey back from Poddlemat had never taken him this way
before. Unsure exactly how he’d become
lost, he didn’t know which way to turn.
He’d been walking for so long, he no longer knew how far he was from Windago
Mountain. He didn’t know how long ago he
left the main path or how he’d gotten so
deep into the Hidden Dell. The tall
spindlewood trees with the high canopies of leaves blocked every marker he could think 94
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to search for—the mountain peaks, the
Mother Star, even the Great Blue Moon was hidden by leaves.
Blackbirds shot through the treetops as a high-pitched keen rang out. The sound sent shivers of snow through his belly and he ran.
The laces of his sneakers dragged in the
mud and slapped his ankles as he tore
through the thick underbrush. Knapsack
thudding on his back, he ran and ran. He
thought he was running from the awful
sound, but with the trees wailing and the echoing wind, instead he ran straight toward it. In fact, he nearly tripped over it. He skidded to a stop just before he crashed into it.
Not it.
Her.
Sniffling and shaking, a pretty girl
monster was curled into a ball on the forest floor. Tears of pure glitter streaked from her wide violet eyes as she looked at him. Fur the color of pale pink tulips was peppered with mud and sticks while leaves clung to her long purple ponytails.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
Her whimper made Jondi’s chest ache.
No one had ever been afraid of him before.
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didn’t mean her harm, but she cowered
against a log. Long wet lashes fluttered as she squeezed her eyes shut tight. Tiny tears fell anyway, darkening the fur of her cheeks.
Searching for a way to reassure the
frightened little monster, he scuffed his sneakers in the loose dirt of the Dell floor.
Dozens of tiny glossy stones in a dove gray caught his attention and he idly scooped
them up. Smooth and cool, they warmed
between his fingers.
“Are you lost?” Jondi shoved the rocks
in his knapsack and sat on the log beside her.
Each ponytail bounced wildly as she nodded.
“Me too. Are you scared?”
The lavender hair bobbed.
“Yeah, me too. Maybe we can work
together and find a way out of here. My
name’s Jondi.”
Pale purple eyes as wide as Higonda Gap
stared up at him. “My name is Vory.”
John rubbed the cramp in his hand and reread the first chapter, smiling in satisfaction. The first draft was pouring out like no other book had. Vory had leaped to his mind like a flaming cannonball. He couldn’t type fast enough for her. Jondi was instantly smitten with the little girl monster but 96
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Thorn was not impressed. Thorn was downright mean to her.
This was proving to be an interesting
development. John liked to set the stage, throw his monsters in as much trouble as he could, and watch them work their way out of it. This time was no different.
Except Thorn kept stepping out of character.
He’d found the two lost monsters and, in the process, gotten lost as well, his radar completely useless in the mystical Dell—a fact he never failed to throw in Vory’s face with a biting sarcasm. Only once did Jondi point out that Thorn had gotten lost looking for him and Vory had nothing to do with it. The big bat had snapped his dark violet wings and zipped straight up into the air, leaving a confused blue monster staring after him.
Writing by the seat of his pants could be a harrying trip, but John loved the surprise he felt as his characters found their own paths. Often they veered to the left but so far, they’d always had a reason. Sometimes they just waited until the last few chapters to let him know what that reason was.
So Thorn’s behavior, while strange, wasn’t too unsettling to him. They always figured it out.
The original sketch of Vory lay beside the computer and he picked it up with a frown. She reminded him of someone. Vory had been born of Inez Kelley
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the healing after his spat with Gina. Once he’d added color, she oozed with life. Clad in a pale pink skirt, she flirted with him from the page, looking up bashfully from beneath long curled lashes. No other character, except Thorn and Jondi, was as real to him. Vory could walk into his study now and crawl on his lap and it wouldn’t surprise him at all.
Monsters were more real to him than most
people anyway.
A quick glance at the clock showed he had about fifteen minutes until Livvy called. He pulled out the colored pencils, intent on starting an illustration for chapter four. The next time he looked, he had twelve minutes left. He leaned back with a frustrated grunt and tossed the pencil against the desk. Damn, Livvy had wormed her way into his daily routine and he actually liked it.
This story was doing something to him. It dredged up old feelings, old memories he’d thought were buried too deep to crawl out. The nightmares had come back, but apparently he hadn’t talked in his sleep this time. Livvy never mentioned a word, rushing out to work the next morning with a sweet kiss.
Letting her go had been difficult, though. She stirred an emotion in him no one ever
had…security. It hadn’t faded. She called him twice a day on breaks, by request, and would 98
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bring home something sweet for dessert. They’d make dinner in his kitchen, talking late into the evening before ending up making out on the couch like horny kids. She left him hard and wanting, hinting at more to come.
With any other woman, he’d have walked by now. John did not play hard-to-get sex games. But with Livvy he was reluctant to push. Before, pursuit was fun, short and sweet. Flag ’em, tag ’em and bag ’em, his construction buddies had teased him. He targeted only a certain type of woman and always let them know the score.
Livvy threw that game plan out the window, and he had no idea why he not only allowed it but was relishing it.
Hell, they’d slept together and he’d brought her to an orgasm but they hadn’t yet had sex. How twisted was that? John stared at the phone, thumbing his lip as he wondered at his own patience. With a sardonic snort, he realized he was as lost as Jondi.
The ringing phone jolted his pulse to a jump. If he was lost, he’d rather be lost with Livvy than alone. The hand poised above the phone shook with his realization. A swift breath halted the tremor. He refused to examine something that went against everything he knew about himself, hitting the talk button instead.
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Her soothing alto caressed his inner monsters, making them purr like kittens.
Chapter Four
Rough gravel stones weighted the wedding plans spread out across the picnic table. Andrea compared guest lists and seating charts while Livvy sketched out sample wedding cakes. She held one up for her sister to see, and Andrea took a bite of her ruby-red Popsicle then wrinkled her nose.
“Too flowery. I want sleeker, more upscale.”
Livvy tore the page with a loud rip and
crumpled the design into a ball. She might not have John’s level of raw talent but she could draw cake designs with the best. This was her wedding gift to Andrea and Tow, saving them the expense of a professional cake. She also stopped charging Andrea rent after Tow proposed, covering all her living expenses so her sister could funnel all her cash into her wedding. Would it kill Andy to be a little grateful? Livvy tossed the drawing to join the dozen other crumpled balls on the table.
Spoiled little Bridezilla much?
The incessant banging on the roof drew her attention. She craned her head up and shaded her eyes with her hand. “How bad is it?”
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John’s dark head appeared in the horizon. The low-slung tool belt drew her gaze to the tight muscles of his stomach, bare in the late afternoon sunshine, and her tongue flicked out.
God, I want
to eat him up.
“Not too bad, actually. Just a couple shingles and the flashing needs replaced. An hour or two, max, but it needs done soon or you’re going to end up with a leaking roof.”
His work boots stomped down the ladder, the metal shimmying and shaking. Her stomach did the same, thanks to that fine ass moving beneath his jeans. He grabbed his discarded shirt and wiped the sweat from his face. Livvy caught Andrea’s laughing eyes and theatrically fanned herself. The younger woman giggled as John approached.
“What’s so funny?”
Livvy bit her lip as Andrea boldly lied to his face. “Oh, just seating charts and stuff.”
Shrugging, he turned to Livvy. “If you want to go now before they close, we can get the shingles and I can finish up tomorrow. They’re calling for rain in the next few days.”
“Sure. Let’s go.”
“Let me run home and grab a clean shirt. Back in a minute.”
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Both women watched him walk away. Andrea
whistled. “God, Liv, he’s like a brownie—hot, sinful and full of dark chewy chunks.”
“Now you know why I can’t wait to get home from work. I’m a major chocoholic.”
Andrea fixed her with an intense stare before cocking her eyebrow. Two careful bites of frozen ice got chewed. “So is it good?”
A blush warmed her cheeks that rivaled the afternoon sun. She sipped her iced coffee to help hide the burn. “I don’t know yet. Aunt Flow came for a visit and I haven’t told him she left.”
Her sister shook her head in sympathy. “You mean you haven’t gotten any? That sucks.”
“Yeah, well, good things come yaddah yaddah yaddah. I’m prolonging the main event, enjoying the trip so to speak.”
“I thought this was a pure sex thing between you two, a booty-call deal. What’s going on?”
Livvy toyed with her mug. The ice cubes were disintegrating, sliding into the creamy liquid surrounding them, slowly and ever so subtly changing the consistency of the drink. “I don’t know exactly. It started that way. But things have sort of…changed.”
“Like how?”
Livvy propped her chin on her hand and looked over at John’s deck, watching, longing, hoping.
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“It’s kind of complicated to explain. He’s got all these layers, you know? We talk. I bet I’ve burned more cell minutes this week than I have all summer just talking to him while I’m at work.