She's No Faerie Princess (4 page)

He reached the borders of the park and scanned thestreet from the cover of the last few trees. He didn't seemuch movement, which did occasionally happen even in New York, and at three-something in the morning thestreets of the metropolis were about as deserted as hecould ever hope to see them. It was now or never.

Taking a deep breath and immediately regretting itbecause of the crack the demon had left in his ribs, Walker bowed his head, clutched the woman tighteragainst his chest, and dived into the shadows. His long

strides ate up the ground between the park and his neighborhood. At a dead run, a werewolf could move faster than a sprinting racehorse and might even give a cheetah a thing or two to think about. Luckily, Walker could maintain his speed for distances closer to those of the equine than the feline, because it was a good couple of miles to his apartment.

He made it without incident, ducking into the alley behindhis street and breaking his speed, slowing to a walk forthe last hundred yards to his building. It took him asecond to catch his breath, but both he and the womanhad made it in one piece. And, he hoped, without being

seen.

Hitching the unconscious woman higher against hischest, Walker scanned the area before he rounded thecorner, balancing her carefully in one arm while hepaused outside his apartment door to retrieve his sparekey. He kept it hidden for just this sort of emergency. Inhis line of work he never did know when he'd be cominghome without pockets. The fact that his door was setdown half a flight of stairs as a basement entrance madethose times easier, too, by offering a bit of concealmentfrom the odd passerby.

He let them inside and kicked the door shut behind them. Though the entrance to his apartment looked like it led toa basement, he actually occupied two floors of the narrowold building, and he used the bottom floor as a workroomand Spartan home gym. His living space was upstairs.

He carried his guest up and directly to the sofa,depositing her on the soft cushions before hestraightened and shifted back to his human form.

He felt the sting and then the easing as his genesreformed his body, knitting together the crack in his ribs,sealing the scratches he'd gotten wrestling around theforest. When the change was complete, his shouldersrolled in instinctive adjustment.

The woman never moved, and he frowned down at her,crouching beside the sofa to examine her limp form. He'dfelt the steady beat of her heart and the rhythmic rise andfall of her breathing as he'd carried her home, so he knewperfectly well she wasn't dead. And that was what hadhim frowning. No human woman or witch should havesurvived the demon attack, which meant she must not behuman. He knew from her scent that she wasn't Lupineor any other sort of shifter, for that matter. There wasnothing earthy about her, nothing animal. She smelledtoo pure for that, and the fact that he could smell her atall meant she wasn't a vampire. Her skin felt too warmand smooth and elastic to belong to any other nonlivinglife-form, and she looked too much like a human for himto identify her origins by sight.

He didn't like that his sense of smell had failed him here. One good sniff ought to give him all the information heneeded to place her species, but instead it only gave hima raging erection. He didn't know what the hell was thematter with him. Sure, just like any other male inexistence, a good brush with death tended to bring outthe horny in him, but this felt like more than that. He didn'tjust want sex; he wanted sex with her, with this woman—or whatever she was—and he wanted it now. In fact, heseemed to want it more with every breath full of her scentthat he inadvertently inhaled. He struggled to block thetantalizing aroma from his mind and pushed to his feet. If

he didn't get control of himself, she would end up getting

a hell of an awakening. Maybe from the inside out.

Gritting his teeth and taking slow, shallow breathsthrough his mouth, Walker braced himself against hisuncontrollable arousal and forced himself to take stock ofher wounds. Starting at her feet seemed safest, and theragged puncture marks in the leather of her high bootslooked pretty nasty. He dealt efficiently with her laces andtugged the boots off, setting them aside under the coffeetable. Without the heavy covering, her feet looked tinyand fragile beneath their veil of sheer black stockings,which were dotted with blood around her left ankle. Thedemon's claws hadn't bitten deeply, thanks to the leather,but the punctures would need a thorough cleaning.

His gaze moved up the length of her slim, graceful legs,which did totally inappropriate things to his libido, but theyappeared to be free of further injury. The only otherwound he could see was a slash across her stomach,and that was the injury that worried him. Carefully, hereached out to lift aside the hems of her skimpy tanktops, one eye on her face to be sure she hadn't wokenup. Her eyelashes didn't even flutter, and her expressionremained tranquil. Walker wished he could say the samefor himself, but one good look at the ragged gash in herpale, freckled skin had him cursing a blue streak andgritting his teeth against the urge to howl in anger.

The cut bled sluggishly, much less than he would haveexpected, but it looked nasty all the same, with jaggededges darkened to black by the poison on the demon'sclaws. Jaw clenching, he dropped her hem and headedstraight for the first-aid supplies in his bathroom. On theway back, he paused in the bedroom to grab a pair of

jeans and ease himself into them. No reason to scare her to death by having her wake up eye to eye with the part of him most anxious to make her acquaintance.

He stepped back into the living room with his hands full ofdisinfectant and bandages, and he froze. The blue-hairedpunk he'd left on his sofa had been replaced by a dark-haired goddess with skin like whipped cream and a tornand tattered gown of a fabric so light, if it hadn't been forthe pale lilac color, he couldn't have sworn it evenexisted. The clothes she had been wearing haddisappeared, and she slept on as if nothing hadhappened. Now he had proof she wasn't quite human. Awitch, maybe? That would explain her humanappearance, since technically witches were humans whojust happened to have evolved the ability to use magic,and a spell fading would explain the change in herappearance. At least, he thought it would. He wasn't allthat up on the rules of magic.

And none of the rules he had heard before explained whythe very scent of her made him want to strip her nakedand introduce himself to her womb, up close andpersonal.

Forcing his mind off his crotch, he returned to the sofaand knelt on the floor at her side. Her wounds tookprecedence over his curiosity at the moment. Until he didfind out who and what she was, he'd be better off treatingher injuries than speculating about the effect she had onhim. When she woke up, he'd get his answers.

Still, he was frowning as he poured disinfectant liberallyonto a sterile pad. He parted the cut in her dress, rippingit slightly wider to get at the injury. When he pressed the

cotton to her skin, the muscles in her stomach clenched

reflexively, and he heard a soft gasp whisper between

her lips. His gaze shot immediately to her face, but her

expression remained relaxed and tempting in sleep.

Reluctantly, he looked back at his task, only to see that

the wound in her abdomen appeared to be a lot less

serious than he'd thought, now that he'd cleared the dried

blood and dirt away. In fact, it almost looked as if it had

begun healing even before he'd washed it.

Oh, this wasn't good.

Swallowing a curse, Walker leaned back from hisunconscious guest and took a really good look at her. One that had his stomach sinking into his toenails. Hetook in the moonlight-pale, velvet-smooth skin, themiraculously healing wounds, the magically transformedappearance, and saw that his bad day had just gotten ahell of a lot worse.

"Aw, shit."

Muttering to himself and whatever god currently watchedand laughed at his predicament, Walker took a deep,bracing breath, eased his hands into the tumbled mass ofthe unconscious woman's raven black hair, and lifted itgently away from the delicate shell of her ear. An ear thatswept gracefully up from small, unadorned lobes to adistinct and elegant point.

Fae.

The woman currently passed out on his sofa, bleedingfrom an unexpected and determined demon attack, was Fae. As in full-blooded, non-Changeling, born-and-bred-beyond-the-gates-in-Faerie Fae. And high sidhe from the

look of her. This wasn't a sprite but one of the aristocratic

race. So what the hell was she doing in his living room?

Okay, he had carried her there, but that wasn't the point. The Fae weren't even supposed to be in this world. Theirruler, Queen Mab, had made that longstanding custom alaw after some kind of incident a few years ago, but theend result was that Walker could count on one hand thenumber of Fae he'd met in all of his thirty-five years. Thisone made number three.
 
Not
 
his lucky number.

Pushing to his feet, Walker shoved a hand through hisalready-rumpled hair and began to pace across the quietroom. He didn't need a Lupine sense of smell to knowthis whole thing reeked of trouble, and he wasn't justtalking about the demon stench. He already had enoughon his plate trying to keep the Others in the area frominadvertently starting a war with the humans. The lastthing he needed was the Fae and demons putting in anappearance and throwing everything into chaos.

Walker bit back a curse and looked over at the sofa,directly into a pair of sleepy, darkly lashed eyes the colorof African violets. It felt like taking a stone giant's fiststraight to his gut. Even the demon hadn't packed thiskind of punch. Asleep, the Fae woman had beenbeautiful. Awake, she stole the breath from his lungs andthe brains from his head. All he had left was the blood inhis veins, and that was sure as hell easy enough toprove, considering it had all rushed right to his groin theminute she opened her eyes.

While he stood there, blinking like an idiot and probablydrooling like one, his guest raised her arms over her headand arched her body in a lazy, feline stretch that left him

cross-eyed and half-delirious. Then she collapsed back into the cushions and her full lips curved in a sensual smile.

"Hi." Her sleep-husky voice had the same effect on his dick as the average Lupine female in heat waving her tail in his face, only magnified exponentially. He probably had zipper marks running up and down his shaft. "My name is Fiona. Who are you?"

Walker groaned and rubbed his hand over his eyes,quickly discovering that the image of Fiona stretching hadbeen burned indelibly into his retinas.

"Shit. I'm screwed."

CHAPTER 4

Fiona felt her lips twitch, but she figured it might beconsidered rude to laugh at someone who had saved herlife. "Ah, all right. Do you have a nickname?"

The werewolf scowled down at her. "Tobias Walker. But Ithink the more important question, lady, is what in the hellare you doing here?"

Pursing her lips, Fiona swung herself into a sittingposition and winced when the movement pulled at theslash in her belly. The wound had begun to heal, but withas much magic as she had expended, she guessed itwould be a couple of days at least before she did any

dancing. Which was a shame. The idea of performing

one of the seductive, erotic, hip-grinding dances of Faerie

for her erstwhile rescuer held a definite appeal. And

judging by the current fit of said rescuer's jeans, she

thought he might turn out to be an appreciative audience.

"Lady," he growled, jerking her attention off his pants and

back to his face. "You want to answer my question?"

"Not particularly."

She bent her head to examine the wound on her belly, soshe couldn't see his face, but she could definitely hear hisbiting curses.

"Do it anyway."

Fiona looked up, saw the edge of a ruthlessly controlledtemper looming, and sighed. She'd been raised aroundher aunt's warrior guardsmen and knew a dominant manin a snit when she saw one. In her experience, it wasalways better to humor them. "I'm taking a vacation."

He opened his mouth, looking for all the world as if heplanned to huff and puff and blow her house down, thensnapped his jaw shut in confusion. "A
 
vacation'
? What? Was the Fae Riviera overbooked?"

She blinked innocently up at him. "No, but I just hategetting all that sand stuck in my hair."

"Oh, right. I see." He glared at her, the sarcasm dripping off his tongue. "I'm sure that as soon as she hears your reasoning, Queen Mab will personally drape you in a lei and sing you a chorus of 'Bon Voyage.'"

This time it was Fiona's turn to pull up short. She eyed

the Lupine warily and offered a soothing smile. "Really, Tobias. Let's not be childish. There's no reason to bring Aunt Mab into this—"

"Aunt Mab?!"

Fiona watched with fascinated horror as the top of thewerewolf's head seemed to lift off and hover atop amolten-lava eruption of furious disbelief. Maybe sheshouldn't have mentioned the family connection? But ofcourse, he'd latched onto it with the ferocity of a pit bulland was shaking it for all it was worth. Which, in Fiona'sbook, wasn't a whole hell of a lot.

"Queen Mab, High Lady of the Sidhe, Queen of the Summer Court of Faerie, Mistress of the Living Forest, and Empress of Earth and Water, is your bloody fricking
 
aunt
?"