Tab Bennett and the Inbetween (31 page)

 The smile that lit up his face was blinding; I’ve hardly ever seen anything so beautiful in all my life. His eyes were a swirl of sky blue, sea blue and the deep gray of pebbles at the bottom of a stream.

“There’s something I want to tell you too,” I said. “The enchantment is gone. It burned off when my Gifts tried to turn me into a cinder yesterday. I thought I would feel different once it was lifted, that things would go back to the way they were before I met you. But I still feel it every time I look at you.”

“Feel what?”

My knees felt weak. I was terrified of, and absolutely ready for, whatever came next. He pulled me against him and tangled his hand in the hair at the nape of my neck, gently turning my face up to his.

 “The pull between us. The thing that makes me want to touch you, taste you, all the time.” My whole body trembled while he brushed his lips softly over mine, teasing me, trembled while he gently bit my lower lip. He leaned in, pulling me close and pressing himself against me at the place where the pull originated. I moaned without meaning to, responding to his touch, the electricity of it.

“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he asked. He reached out and pulled the rubber band from my hair; freeing the dark waves to fall around my face.

I shook my head, whispering, “Is it like what you do to me?”

“I hope so.”

 Then his mouth was on mine. His hands were sliding under my shirt. His impatient fingers sliding across my stomach, then lower. And I was just as bad. Worse maybe. I rubbed against the hard length of him. I opened his zipper and slipped my hand into his jeans, caressing him and delighting in every little noise of pleasure he made. I loved knowing my hands and body had such power over his. That was the only power I really wanted.

“Don’t stop,” I begged when he took a small step back. My voice sounded strange to me, strangled and airless. He growled and reached for the waistband of my pajamas pants, pulling them off me in one effortless motion.

“Unbutton your top,” he whispered.

So I did. My fingers trembled over the buttons and he couldn’t look away.

“Take off your panties,” he said breathlessly.

I added them to the pile.

Then I pulled him out of his t-shirt and helped him take off his jeans. He was naked and perfect in the moonlight, his eyes a shifting kaleidoscope of color and light.

“You have no idea how badly I want to be inside you,” he said as he pulled me to him.

“Then show me.” I said.

And he did.

I had a dream that I was walking on the stone wall between the Manor and the deep forest. I was holding a bright red parasol. Round and round it went in my hand, spinning like the wheel of fate. Robbin was standing on the ground a little ways away from me, looking at me with disapproval and disappointment in his eye.

“So you’ve decided?” he asked.

“Everything was decided for me,” I insisted. “All I had to do was show up.”

I leaned over, tilting into the deep shadow and high dark of the forest, pretending I’d lost my footing, making him think I was going to fall.

“Don’t do that,” he cried, reaching to steady me although the wall was high above his head. Ten feet high, fifteen. Higher and higher. I looked down and saw Robbin, so small and far away as the wall continued to grow. I could hear him calling my name, yelling. “Get down from there. Come down before you fall.”

The wall was twenty feet high now and still climbing. “I’m coming down,” I called. “Try to catch me.” I blew him a kiss, positioned my feet on the wall’s tipping edge, and stepped off into the sky.

I fell slowly, like a starling feather, like Alice through the looking glass. Just before the crash that would have broken my parasol, a thousand starlings caught me and held me and carried me away.

When I woke I was in Alex’s bed with the word Homecoming, his thought, in my head. He was lying next to me, naked, his perfect body curled against mine. There was no clock on the nightstand – he insisted Elves didn’t need clocks to know the time – but I guessed by the quality of the light that it was late in the afternoon.

I stretched and felt him stir against me. He made a sound like a soft purr and wrapped his arm around my waist. I settled against him and closed my eyes again. I snuggled in and let myself enjoy being close to him. I knew once we started talking everything would become complicated. There would be consequences and ramifications and the endless chorus of ‘I told you so’ to deal with. There would be Robbin to deal with. I was content to let the peaceful silence go on a little longer.

I turned around to face Alex, pressing my lips to his shoulder.

“We left our clothes,” I whispered. “Someone has probably found them by now.”

He chuckled. “At least our clothes are the only thing they found lying on the kitchen floor.”

Although it had seemed like I would, I didn’t lose my virginity up against the island countertop in Bennett’s kitchen. Alex carried me upstairs to bed before things went any further. I was so caught up in kissing him I didn’t even notice the venue change until he laid me on his bed.

He looked so peaceful laying there, all relaxed and stretched out across the bed. I reached out impulsively, caressing him with the back of my hand. The smile on his face reawakened the butterflies in my stomach.

“It feels strange to touch you.”

“Still?” He propped himself up on his elbow and looked at me with a slightly amused expression on his face.

I’d touched every bit of him, kissed and licked every inch. I blushed, remembering. “I meant not to resist touching you when I want to,” I explained. “I’ve had to do it so often it’s become a habit now.”

His eyes sparkled as he moved closer to me. I could feel him getting hard against my thigh. “Do you want to touch me now?”

I was too breathless for speech; the best I could do was nod. He kissed me and guided my hand down. I wrapped my fingers around him, moving my hand slowly up and down the hot, hard length of him.

“Is this ok?” I whispered. It was his turn to be too breathless to talk; he nodded. His reaction made me bold.

I pushed him back against the bed and climbed on top of him. I trailed my hair across his body, rubbed my breasts across his chest and stomach, and settled myself between his legs. I wrapped my fingers around him, teasing with my fingertips.

“Can I kiss you?” I asked.

“God yes.”

I kissed the tip of him, licked. His breath caught in his throat, his body arching off the bed to meet my mouth. “I’ve never done this before,” I said. He moaned when I bent to take him into my mouth. I sucked and licked, so gently, loving the taste of him, the feeling of that solid silken flesh. He said my name, again and again. Begging me.

I pulled my mouth away. Kneeling above him, I positioned myself so he could slip inside me. I moved my hips, rubbing him against the soft, wet warmth of my body, teasing us both.

“Now,” he demanded. He reached up, wrapping his hands around my waist, pulling me down on him, burying himself deep inside me. I arched my back, driving him deeper still.

 I moved slowly at first, until I found the rhythm. Then faster and faster, sliding against him, slamming, until the crackle of power and magic was so thick and bright in the air around us I could hardly breathe. He arched his hips one last time. I yelled his name as the release shook through my body. The room lit up, a flash of lightening, and then was dark again.

“You are amazing,” he said after I collapsed on top of him. For a long moment I laid there, feeling too weak and sated to move. When I propped myself up on my elbow he was nearly asleep. I disentangled myself and curled against his side. I waited until I thought he was asleep and then I slipped quietly from the bed.

“Where are you going?”

“Downstairs. I’m not really tired but you look exhausted. I’ll just toss and turn if I stay in bed and keep you awake.”

“Do you want some company?” he asked through a yawn.

I thought it was very sweet of him to offer but he was clearly too tired to make it to the bedroom door let alone all the way to the kitchen. “That’s OK.”

I borrowed his robe from his closet. I had to roll up the cuffs, but it was soft and warm and the plaid flannel felt good next to my skin.

“Looks better on you,” he mumbled as I went out into the hall, quietly closing the door behind me.

********

The sight of our clothes still in a heap on the kitchen floor where we’d abandoned them made me blush. The small matter of my virginity was at last behind me – and what a way to lose it. I smiled and folded our things into small pile to bring upstairs with me when I went back up.

That’s when I saw the package. It was sitting on the bottom step of the back porch. Wrapped in brown paper and tied with a big aqua blue bow, it looked innocent enough.

I went to the door but didn’t open it.

Francis would be so proud of me.
I scanned the yard to see if who ever had delivered it was still outside.

I could see clear to the wood line; there was no one there. I wondered who’d left it, how long it had been sitting out there. I debated with myself about going out to get it for a full fifteen seconds before I decided I was curious enough to risk it. I unlocked the door and waited; no one came. I opened the door and stepped outside, fully prepared to jump back into the house if someone Appeared but I was alone.

While I went cautiously down the stairs, pausing to listen and watch on each step, a starling came and landed on the box.

“Go away,” I said. But he didn’t. He opened his wings, flapping them in an attempt to either scare me off or fly away with the box. “Let go, bird,” and then I added, “I ask this as your future Queen.”

The bird looked at me and hopped off. 

I reached out and grabbed the box without going down any further. My heart was racing as I sprinted back up the stairs and locked the door again; turning my back to the woods was the scariest thing I’d done in a long time. When I looked back, safe inside the house again, the bird was gone.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” I said, turning to look at him. “There was a starling outside.”

“Where did that come from?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged and set the box on the counter, pulling the card from underneath the satin bow. “It was on the porch when I came downstairs.”

I opened the card. The note inside was written on a thick piece of creamy white paper. The handwriting was elegant and looping and formal. I read the note aloud:

Tabitha,

            This is the first of many gifts I could give you. How many you receive depends entirely on you. Renounce the crown to which you have no legitimate right and Bennett will be returned to you – more or less in one piece. Refuse and he dies.

Together, he and I are waiting for you to do the right thing.

George grabbed the card from my hand and studied it, looking for some clue I might have missed.

“Hey, I wasn’t done,” I said.

“Yes you are.”

“What else does it say?” George ignored me. I watched him read the card to himself, watched the threat sink in and take hold. His eyes were a hypnotizing swirl of lime green and black.

Suddenly the box was different, terrifying. Even the bow looked sinister. I tried to pick it up but I couldn’t seem to make my hand reach for it.

“Back up,” he said, grabbing the box before I could. He took a deep breath, yanked the ribbon off, and looked inside. His face went white. I took a step toward him but he shook his head and stepped away from me. The hand he held up to stop me was shaking.

I heard him think, ‘don’t scream’ when he looked inside again.