Heart of the Sea: An Others Bonus Story (The Others) (2 page)

“I mean it, Richard. I’m keeping the skin until we’ve talked this through.”

He prowled toward her, seeming oblivious to his nudity. Somehow that nudity seemed a lot more intimidating than it had while he’d been a seal.

Jenny backed up a step. “You stalked off this morning without giving me a chance to explain what Patrick was doing at my cottage.”

“Mm, I did, didn’t I?”

The space between them appeared to be shrinking at a rate that made Jenny uncomfortable. She glanced uneasily around and noticed that she had very little room to maneuver before she hit the cliff wall. She had better talk fast.

“I know neither of us was what you would call completely dressed,” she continued, stepping swiftly to the side, her eyes fixed on Richard’s relentless approach, “but it was completely innocent. It’s just that the cottage heats so quickly when the candles are lit.”

“I’ve noticed.” Dark eyes fixed on her face, their expression surprisingly predatory. Disturbingly predatory. “There has been a time or two when we’ve had to stop at what I would call an…inconvenient moment to open a window. You remember.”

“I do. But that isn’t the point.”

“Mm.”

Jenny swallowed hard and nearly tripped when her heel hit a large boulder. “The point is that you jumped to conclusions this morning. You saw Patrick and I together first thing in the morning in what looked like a compromising position and just assumed that something sexual had happened between us—”

“No, I didn’t.”

“—but you should know that I would never—”

Jenny stopped, blinked, frowned. And had to crane her neck to meet her fiancé’s gaze as he finally halted with less than a hand’s-breadth separating them. “You didn’t?”

“Of course not.”

“But you growled at Patrick. You threatened him!”

Richard sighed, lifting a hand to brush a lock of hair away from her cheek. “Jenny, my love, you were standing in front of another man wearing less than a suit of armor or a full Muslim burkah. Of course I growled. I’m a man, and—apparently—a jealous git. I want to be the only man who gets to see you half naked. But I never believed you and Patrick had slept together. I know you’d never betray me like that.”

Jenny felt like a balloon that had been left too long at the party—sadly deflated. “Oh. So I stole your skin for no reason.”

He smiled and wrapped a strong arm around her, pulling her body flush up against his. She could feel the chill of his skin and the heat of his erection seeping through her clothes.

“I wouldn’t fash yourself over it, love,” he murmured, leaning down to press his mouth to hers. “You can keep it. I plan to spend the rest of my life with you, and I’ve no desire to ever escape.”

Relief and love and passion and humor welled inside her, bringing a smile to Jenny’s lips. She rubbed it against his, then nipped gently with her teeth. The sealskin slipped from her hands as she closed her arms around him and ran her palms appreciatively over his smooth human form.

Richard retaliated with a kiss that stole her breath and curled her toes. Or maybe he just kissed her like that because he wanted it. Either way, Jenny had no plans to object.

“Well, if that’s the case, then I guess you don’t need the present Patrick helped me make for you.”

He pulled back and raised an eyebrow. “Present?”

She chuckled and rubbed up against him “What else did you think Patrick and I were doing in my cottage last night?”

The barrier of her clothes suddenly seemed like a personal affront and Jenny willed them away with a surge of magic. Her skin pressed to his and she shivered, not in cold but in delight.

“I didn’t think,” he murmured, dipping his head to nibble at the curve of her shoulder, then soothing the small sting with the warm stroke of his tongue.

“Well, we were making your wedding present.”

She gripped his shoulders and boosted herself until she could wrap her legs around his hips. His hands immediately went to her bottom, cupping and supporting her weight.

“Where is it, then?”

“Right here.”

Locking her ankles together behind his back, Jenny reached up and removed a chain from around her neck. A small disk dangled from the sturdy links, looking almost like a saint’s medal with a raised center in the shape of a heart. The piece of jewelry was masculine without being heavy and looked like something that could be worn beneath clothes without drawing attention to itself.

“What’s this?” he asked as Jenny fastened the gift around his own neck.

“My gift to you,” she whispered. Her eyes smiled into his as she cupped his face in her hands and kissed him, a kiss full of passion and tenderness. “It’s a piece of my heart. I wanted you to be able to carry it with you always, even when you go to the sea without me. This way we’ll never really be apart and you’ll always know that my heart belongs to you.” Placing a piece of yourself into an object was hard and deeply intimate, but Richard was worth it.

“
Gràidheag
,” he murmured. His eyes seemed to melt into hers as he leaned closer until their foreheads touched and their breath mingled between them. “I cannae give you a piece of my own heart, for you’ve owned the whole of it since the first time I laid eyes on you.”

She gave a watery laugh and blinked back tears of love and joy. “I was a grubby eight year old with carroty braids and skinned knees.”

“You were a witch who bespelled my heart even then.”

Jenny stroked her hand over his face and grinned. Her heart felt so full it threatened to burst. If love was this overwhelming now, what would it feel like in two more days, when they finally took their vows together.

“Oh, I’m a very wicked witch, my love,” she said, and kissed him again, “for I intend to never give it back.”

Want more from the world of the Others?

Look for the other novels in this outstanding series

WOLF AT THE DOOR

SHE’S NO FAERIE PRINCESS

THE DEMON YOU KNOW

HOWL AT THE MOON

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

ONE BITE WITH A STRANGER

YOU’RE SO VEIN

BIG BAD WOLF

BORN TO BE WILD

PRINCE CHARMING DOESN’T LIVE HERE

BLACK MAGIC WOMAN

AVAILABLE NOW FROM ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS

NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING AUTHOR

CHRISTINE WARREN

keeps the
HOT
reads coming….

Read on for a preview of the next book in the Others Series

BLACK MAGIC WOMAN

On Sale April 2011 from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

Daphanie Carter had witnessed a lot of interesting things over the course of the last forty-eight hours, not the least of which had been her baby sister’s wedding less than five hours ago. However, the sight of a small, chubby red hand reaching out from under an elegantly draped reception table and groping among the cutlery really had to take the cake. Or in this case, the diet soda, which the hand curled around and began to ease slowly through the obstacle course of discarded dinnerware.

Daphanie blinked, but the hand was still there and making remarkable progress. Considering all the cutlery, porcelain, and glassware it had to avoid, the hand and the soda were cooking. And that was when it occurred to Daphanie that maybe the hand of fate came in a variety of shapes and sizes.

And colors.

It took less than ten seconds of fascinated observation before her curiosity overcame her. Casting a furtive glance around to be sure the rest of the guests were too preoccupied with each other to notice what she was doing, Daphanie reached for the bottom of the tablecloth and lifted it so she could duck underneath. Her silk maid-of-honor dress slid easily across the antique carpet as she settled herself cross-legged in the dim light of the little cavern. Directly in front of her, the owner of the red hand started and snatched the hand and the captured prize back so fast that the diet soda inside ricocheted right out of the glass and onto his demonic little face.

“Harpy’s tits!” the little creature cursed, wiping the sticky liquid from his face. Daphanie watched as he lifted the end of an incredibly long and currently dripping mustache to his lips and sucked out the moisture.

“
Baghk!
Diet cola! How do you humans drink that poison?”

“It’s an acquired taste,” Daphanie murmured, her fascinated gaze taking in the sight before her.

Standing less than three feet tall—probably more like two and a half, since he didn’t even have to crouch to keep from hitting his head on the table above them—the creature with the dislike of diet sodas looked like nothing so much as a comic-book rendition of a devil. He had dark red skin, marked here and there with black moles, and hair the color of coal, which he wore in a short, spiky Mohawk positioned precisely between the tips of his two pointy ears. The hairstyle stopped where his forehead started, or more precisely, just shy of the two stubby black horns that sprouted there, as if he’d just walked out of a painting of a mythological faun. He also sported the Fu Manchu mustache that grew long enough to tuck into his belt, had he been wearing one. Instead, he appeared to be decked out in a pair of toddler’s OshKosh denim overalls with the cuffs turned up over his tiny cloven hooves. The garment had apparently been altered further to allow for the pointed red tail Daphanie could see lashing behind him. All in all, he constituted the most amazing thing she had seen in a pretty amazing few days since her return to New York.

“I’d rather acquire a root beer,” he grumbled. “Doesn’t anyone drink root beer anymore?”

“Sure.” Daphanie stared at his face, finally noticing the little silver ring that pierced the end of his nose. It flapped a bit while he talked, making her grin. Seriously, the last couple of days were blowing her mind. In a good way. Hadn’t she been longing for something
interesting
to happen lately? Right before Danice had called to announce her engagement and add to the chorus urging her to move back to New York from her most recent home in Pennsylvania. “I mean, I don’t know if anyone at this table does, but I assume that there are people who do.”

“Swamp rats.”

Daphanie grinned. In addition to his entertaining looks, this little guy had quite a way with expletives. His appearance had also gone a long way toward reassuring her that her sister, her family, and she had not all completely lost their minds.

When she’d arrived in Manhattan on Wednesday, just a few days before Danice’s scheduled wedding, she’d expected a warm welcome from her parents and her baby sister. She’d expected to finally get to meet the man who had swept Niecie off her feet. She’d even expected to get caught up on all the family news and gossip that she’d missed since the last time they had gotten together. After all, when the stars aligned like they had to urge her to move back to the city, Daphanie liked to take the hint. What she hadn’t expected had been the news that the Carters’ mixed-race family was about to become mixed-species, because her baby sister’s fiancé was not quite…well, human.

McIntyre Callahan, or Mac, as he’d informed her with a million-watt smile, turned out to be a lovely man, in more ways than one. He had the fair good looks of a Hollywood dreamboat and the body of a leanly muscled action star. Honestly, the man was more beautiful than any human being had a right to be, which was confirmed when they sat Daphanie down and explained that Mac wasn’t entirely a human being.

He was half Fae, as her sister had termed it, the son of a human father and a Fae mother—what Daphanie would previously have thought of as a “fairy,” and honestly still tended to. Looking at the highly masculine and utterly besotted man with his arm curled around Danice’s shoulders, “fairy” had been the last description to come to Daphanie’s mind, but she’d taken their word for it. She had also taken their word on a whole list of other things that threatened to blow her mind and leave her little more than a vacant-eyed, drooling, babbling mental sponge cake on the day of her sister’s wedding. Having expected the mild adventure of an introduction to Mac’s family and close friends, instead she’d received an introduction to the world of the Others.

Talk about being careful what you wished for.

That was what Mac and Niecie called them: The Others. It meant, as Daphanie soon learned, the collection of nonhuman beings who lived and worked in the midst of human society. They could be your neighbor or your friend, the woman who manicured your nails or the man who fixed your leaky toilet. Some were highly placed political or corporate officials, and some were sanitation workers or public servants. The Others had always been there and would always be there, she discovered, and some of them were the creatures of late-night B-rated horror movies.

Missy, Danice’s quiet, kindergarten-teaching friend with the sweet face and soft manner, had married a werewolf last year, Niecie revealed. Missy had even given birth to a werewolf baby (who had not been born with fur, Daphanie had been assured). Reggie, one of Niecie’s other friends, had not only married a vampire, but she’d allowed herself to be turned into a vampire as well.

And those revelations had been only the tip of the iceberg. For three days, Daphanie’s head had been spinning as she tried to take in the fact that everything she’d ever thought was true about the world around her was really only a veneer of truth. Underneath the glossy, everyday surface moved an entirely new and unfamiliar world into which she’d just received a secondhand invitation. It was enough to blow a girl’s mind.

Daphanie’s mind, however, wasn’t blown; it was intrigued.

She marveled at the possibilities. Wouldn’t it explain a lot, she thought, if her college sculpture professor had actually been some sort of were-bear? It would certainly provide good reasons for his bushy beard and terrible temper during the winters. And how much sense would it make to learn that the girl she had hated from the sorority next door had been an actual as well as a meta phorical bloodsucker? Somehow, all of it just seemed to make sense. It was as if she’d subconsciously suspected this all along, and someone had only needed to point out the truth for everything to fall into place.

The most surprising part, Daphanie had quickly realized, was that most of the Others she had been introduced to had been so unexpectedly…normal. Except for his extraordinary good looks, Mac could have been any other man on the street, and Reggie might look a little paler than she remembered, but Daphanie hadn’t detected even the slightest glimpse of fang. Really, it had all been almost disappointing. She had expected to look around her and feel like a veil had suddenly been lifted and now she could see the world for what it really was, but it turned out that the unveiled world looked pretty much exactly like the veiled one had.

At least, until now. This little guy was an entirely new experience.

Daphanie refocused on the little red creature before her and grinned. “I don’t think we met before, but I’m Daphanie Carter. I’m Danice’s sister. Are you a friend of Niecie’s or Mac’s?”

He took her hand warily and shook quickly. His skin felt warm and rough but not really any different from human skin. “I, uh, I know both of ’em,” he ventured. “Name’s Quigley.”

“Quigley,” Danice repeated, deciding it suited him somehow. “It’s very nice to meet you, but I do have to ask what you’re doing lurking under the tables instead of sitting at one.”

“Um, I like to keep a low profile. You know, not stir things up too much. Get everyone all excited.”

Watching the way his glowing-coal eyes darted from side to side as he said that gave Daphanie the tiniest clue that his answer might not encompass his entire reason for attending the reception in hiding.

“So you crashed, huh? If you know both of the happy couple, why didn’t you get an invitation like everyone else?”

“That’s what I’d like to know!” Quigley’s chin jutted out at a belligerent angle. “Alls I can say is, it’s a fine way to thank a dude after he puts his own hide in trouble to save yer life. Some people just got no idea of gratitude, I can tell ya.”

Daphanie blinked. “You saved a life? Whose life? Mac’s, or Niecie’s?”

“Either/or. It was a tense situation.”

“What situation? Danice didn’t tell me anything about her life recently being in danger. Why was my baby sister’s life in danger?”

Quigley must have noticed a suspiciously militant gleam in Daphanie’s eye, because he quickly shifted his feet and darted his glance to the side. Daphanie couldn’t help it, though. She’d been protecting and taking care of her little sister since the day their parents had brought Niecie home from the hospital. Old habits, and all that.

“It wasn’t that bad,” the little creature hurried to assure her, twisting one end of his mustache around his chubby finger. “I mean, it all worked out, right? No harm, no foul. Hazard of doing business and all that.” He laughed nervously.

“But why was Niecie in a dangerous situation to begi—”

“So, did ya come in from out of town or something?” Quigley cut her off with an enthusiastically jovial tone. He rocked forward on his hooves and pasted a toothy smile on his face. Somehow, the fact that his teeth were more pointed and fangy than normal human teeth didn’t diminish the effect in the least. “I can’t recall Danice mentioning she had a sister here in the city.”

Daphanie’s eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t. I’ve been away for years now. I just came back this week. Does the situation you saved my sister from have anything to do with the reason why you’re lurking under dinner tables instead of mingling with the rest of the wedding guests?”

“Ah, that explains it. Yup, I figured if Danice had a sister in New York, she’da mentioned it by now. I was just sayin’ to myself, ‘Quigley, if this is Danice’s sister, I bet she musta been living someplace pretty far away up until now or you’da heard about her before this.’ Yessir.”

The creature’s burning, beady eyes darted this way and that, looking everywhere but at Daphanie’s face. She could almost swear she saw little drops of sweat collecting on the skin at the base of his horns. She had him backed into some kind of corner without even having seen the walls coming. She couldn’t think of any other reason for his nervous twitching. The question was, what had him so tied up in knots, and should Daphanie try to squeeze him for information, or take pity on the poor thing?

“I’m going to take that as a yes.” She considered him along with her options. Clearly, whatever danger Niecie had been involved in had resolved itself by now, but it bothered Daphanie that her sister hadn’t told her about it. And it bothered her even more that this Quigley creature knew more about her sister’s recent past than she did.

“Take what as a yes? Was there a question? I don’t remember a question—”

“And that means that whatever situation you were in with Danice, it was one she didn’t want to be reminded of on her wedding day. Because I’m assuming that otherwise she would have invited you.”

Quigley’s nervous laugh made her think of hyenas and two-year-olds, simultaneously. Which was kinda creepy.

“Heh. Come to think of it, maybe she did mention she had a sister with a bit of wanderlust to her. Haven’t you been traveling for a few years now? I think I heard Danice tell Mac that her sister was some kind of gypsy, wanderin’ around the world sellin’ her art and lookin’ for inspiration to make more. That’d be you, I take it?”

“Which means that if she or Mac knew you were here, they wouldn’t like it.” She saw his eyes dart nervously around, as if he expected the linens to disappear and leave him vulnerable to exposure. She was on the right track. “Given that it’s their wedding day, they might not want to make a big scene and might just get someone from the staff to escort you out. That would cause the least amount of trouble, I’m guessing. But then again, Niecie always has had a temper. If she was really upset to see you here, she might pick you up by your ears and fling you out a window herself.”

“A real live artist! Fancy that!” Quigley’s voice had risen to an uncomfortable and unnaturally loud squeak that made Daphanie wish for ear muffs. “Who would have thought I’d be sitting here at Vircolac’s talking to Danice’s famous artist sister! Now, she didn’t call you a paint er, so what was it you do? Sculpture? No, not that, but something similar, right? I think I remember it being something simi—”

Daphanie crossed her arms, her lips pursing. “Now, I don’t know Mac very well yet, but he does seem to be awfully protective of my sister. It makes me curious. I wonder what he would do if I just let him know about his little uninvited guest under table three…?”

“Hey, you know what? It’s gettin’ kinda stuffy under here, ain’t it?” The imp cut her off with grim determination and a forced tone of good cheer. His smile looked more pained than friendly, but she guessed he was at least making an effort. “Whatta ya say we blow this pop stand, eh? You’re new to the city. I could, you know, show you around. Take you to all the hot spots.”