Witch Bound (Twilight of the Gods) (8 page)

Chapter Eight

When Fen called to see if she and Audrey wanted to come over later to go over the plan for the runes, he mentioned that he was picking up supplies in town and Raquel jumped at the chance to hitch a ride. Fen’s awkward pause told her she’d overstepped.

“I can go with Audrey,” she said, backpedaling. “She just...really likes to shop.”

“And you don’t?”

“Not for shoes.” With Audrey they’d be gone all day, until the energy drain from being so far from the fault forced a retreat. The nearest town with decent shopping was an hour away. Two hours of drive time would mean Audrey could potentially have her trying on every shoe in town, all the while harassing her for not having taken care of it sooner.

When she started to explain this to Fen, he said, “Okay, yeah. That would be cruel. Will you be up by noon?”

By noon? “I told you I’m not a morning person, but I’m not that bad. Noon’s fine.”

Noon was actually great because Audrey had a meeting with the caterer to discuss table linens. When she’d heard Raquel tell the woman to pick whatever she liked, Audrey’s eyeballs had nearly exploded. She’d volunteered to go in her sister’s stead. Raquel didn’t see what the big deal was over napkin color but Audrey, she knew, would make sure everything was perfect. So the least Raquel could do was to take care of the damn shoes.

The wedding dress was long—no one would even be able to see her feet. She could wear sneakers except Audrey would surely notice and Raquel would never hear the end of it. It was the sort of thing that would matter to Christian too. And if it was important to him, then she’d go shoe shopping, much as it pained her to do so.

Fen was a good sport and even though it was shoe shopping, they had fun. She liked hanging out with him.

When they stopped for lunch at a diner on their way, he didn’t blink when she ordered a side of onion rings with her cheeseburger and still made room for pie. Of course, the man did have a truly disturbing fondness for ketchup so maybe that explained why he didn’t criticize her culinary choices. He didn’t complain that time ceased to have meaning for her when she stepped into the bookstore, and he didn’t tease her about the stack of romance novels she picked up.

She caught the wistful expression on his face when he returned a big, kind of pricey book on art to the shelf. She fought the impulse to add the book to her order as a thank you, but she did make note of the title. Friends could buy friends gifts, right? And that’s what he was—her first friend from her new clan. Kind and funny and smart. It was an enormous relief to find someone here that she could just be herself around.

She found shoes and did it in a hurry, as that was the one part of the trip where Fen truly seemed like he’d rather be somewhere...anywhere else. On their way out of town, he ran into the tattoo shop to grab his supplies and she called Christian to let him know they were running late.

“I’ll meet you at the house,” he said, sounding distracted. “Beth, one of the riders, is having a wine tasting at her shop in town. If you’re up to it...”

“We were planning to look at the book of runes Kathy sent me and see if we can work up a sketch for the tattoo. Audrey’s coming. Can we skip the party, or do we really need to go?”

“I need to go. I promised her a few weeks ago. But I’ll make an excuse for you. Maybe I can leave early and come over.”

“That would be great.”

Fen held the door for the woman entering the shop as he was leaving. He also totally checked out her ass while doing it. Raquel must have muttered something out loud.

“What?” Christian said in her ear. “I didn’t catch that.”

“Oh, nothing.”

Fen walked to the truck, lean and fast and sort of dangerous-looking. He moved like a hound even in human form. There was something powerfully attractive about that in a purely animalistic way—probably why the woman was still watching him through the store window.

She said goodbye and clicked off her phone, grinning when Fen opened the door. “That girl is checking you out.”

He gave a put upon sigh. “A heartbreaker, that’s what I am.”

“I can see that.”

He tossed his bag in the backseat and started up the truck. “Some people just want what they can’t have. It’s a normal thing. It fades, especially when all they’re after is the challenge.”

There was a strange note in his voice, as if he was trying to tell her something. Even though Christian had been upfront with her about how many women he’d been involved with, people—women especially—of the clan seemed to feel compelled to warn Raquel about it. She would have been fine with that if they’d come right out and tell her they thought her fiancé was a slut to her face, but it was all hints and innuendo. She hadn’t expected it from Fen. She frowned out the window.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He gave her a longer, harder look. “It’s the first time you’re quiet all day and you look like you’re thinking about politics in the Middle East.”

She shook her head and smiled into his eyes. “I’m
fine.
Did you get what you wanted?”

“All of it. We have everything we need to permanently defile your sweet, young body.”

She snorted. “Defile? You couldn’t defile freshly fallen snow.”

“You don’t think so? You’ve only known me what? A week now?”

“Yep. Seven days.” Fourteen days until the wedding, not that she was counting them down like a doomsday clock or anything. “It seems longer, doesn’t it?”

A funny look crossed his face, but he nodded in agreement. “It does.”

She took a long sip from the water bottle she’d left in the truck. “Christian is going to Beth’s house tonight.”

“Without you?”

“He said we should stick to our plan, but...Beth won’t be offended, will she? Were you invited?”

“No.” He gave her a quick smile, eyes glinting with humor. He had nice eyes—an unusual shade of green. Right now, they were warm, almost hazel, but when the light hit them just right they turned gold. “Beth doesn’t invite me anymore. She got tired of asking, which is just as well because I got tired of saying no.”

“How very antisocial of you,” she murmured, jealous that he had a built-in excuse to get out of that kind of thing.

“And you on the other hand are dying to go to a cocktail party, I can tell. I’m busy tomorrow, but we can do this Saturday if you want.”

She rocked her head to one side. “Let’s stick with the plan.”

“Christian likes to entertain. You’ll be planning your own parties soon.”

“Not likely. But if I do, you’ll come to them.”

His smile this time was slow—and a little sad. “Not likely.”

“Do you really think the shoes will be okay?”

“For the party?”

She rolled her eyes. “For the wedding.”

“I’m the best tracker in the clan—if I can’t follow you, Rocky, no one can.” But she could hear the amusement in his voice so she didn’t take offense. “Do you like them?”

“What?”

“The
shoes
.”

“Yes.” While it had seemed like a great idea at the store now that she was heading back to show Audrey, doubt was setting in.

“Then they’re the right ones.”

“Audrey won’t like the color.” A pale pink that reminded her of the blush at the center of the single white rose Christian had sent her yesterday. “Do you think Christian will care? They’re not very traditional.”

Fen considered it for a moment and shrugged. “Well, they’re probably not the ones he would have picked out, but he doesn’t have to wear them.”

“Right,” she said, capping her water bottle and putting it in the holder. She turned the radio up and searched until she found a station she could live with. “I saw you checking out that girl’s ass, by the way.”

He raised his brows. “I don’t check out girls, Rocky.”

“Fine. That very definitely grown woman’s ass.”

He grinned and shot her a look. “Are you sure
you
weren’t checking her out?”

She shook her head and looked out the window again. Dark came early this time of year and the sun was already setting behind the far hills. They called them hills. Coming from Colorado, that seemed almost sacrilegious. But there was a clean kind of beauty to the area and all of the neatly squared tracts of land soothed the part of her that craved order.

Fen was wrong about her skipping around in conversations. She was just able to carry multiple threads in her head at the same time and switch between them at will. A skill similar to spellcasting, weaving the different strands of power together. It had taken her a while to realize that not everyone thought the same way she did. It drove her mother crazy. Fen didn’t seem fazed by it. She wondered if Christian would be.

Fen took a right turn onto a gravel road. In the side mirror, she watched the dust spin out behind them.

“What are you smiling about?”

She turned to look at him, but his eyes were on the road. One hand on the steering wheel, the sleeve on his T-shirt had ridden up, revealing a nicely defined biceps and the edge of his tattoo—Fenrir breaking his chains. His design. He glanced her way, eyebrows raised. “You’re blushing.”

She touched her cheek. “I am not.”

“What is it?”

“This is the song I lost my virginity to.” She laughed at the expression on his face and then stopped abruptly. “Oh, God. I’m sorry, Fen.”

“No, it’s all right.”

It wasn’t all right. She hadn’t meant to mock him. She grimaced. “If it makes you feel any better, I could probably narrow it down to a single verse.”

“That bad?”

“Uh-huh.”

The silence stretched but not uncomfortably. Some of the tension left his shoulders and his hand eased its death grip on the wheel. The crunch of gravel beneath the wheels nearly drowned out the radio. “Tell me.”

Startled, she stared at his profile, trying to decide if he was serious. Fen looked very serious, but other than that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
This is a bad idea.
But it was also the first time he’d asked her for anything, and this was the kind of thing she’d share with any of her friends. She could be friends with Fen. She wanted to be.

“His name was Brad Dougan.”

“Sounds like an asshole,” Fen said immediately, but the corner of his mouth turned up and she relaxed a little bit.

“I haven’t even started. He went to my high school and we’d been dating for two months, which I know makes me sound easy, but it wasn’t that exactly. It wasn’t even him. I was ready. We waited until there was a surge so my parents would be gone. And that was it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That was it?”

“Pretty much. We were on my bed. This song was on the radio.”

“Green Day?”

“What’s wrong with Green Day?”

“Nothing. It just seems like an odd choice for a seduction.”

She tilted her head. “What would you choose?”

“Honestly, I’ve never considered it,” he said gently. “Go on.”

She felt a twinge of uncertainty but shrugged it off. “Okay, my bathroom light was on and so was my tank top. He never even made it under my shirt. God, he was nervous. I thought he was going to tear the condom trying to get it on. And then...it was over.”

Fen shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not. He did get better eventually.” She laughed. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

The silence stretched and that twinge of uncertainty grew into more of an ache.

“You probably shouldn’t be.”

She met his eyes and it was there again—that sick mix of longing and regret that they weren’t ever going to talk about. “No,” she agreed. “I probably shouldn’t.”

* * *

Fen’s house was a family-sized ranch at the edge of town. The hardwood floors in the entryway looked recently finished, but the furniture appeared to have been there forever. They were likely hand-me-downs. Since clan didn’t tend to move around like the rest of society, a lot of people ended up living in the houses they grew up in. The furniture might actually have been here for quite some time. The couch was brown...plaid with a colorful afghan folded on the nearest cushion. She could almost picture a five-year-old Fen snuggled up on that couch in his Spiderman pj’s watching Barney.

The TV was new and big, mounted over a cabinet that held at least two gaming systems and some stereo equipment. A long, short bookshelf took up most of the other wall behind the recliner. It was clean and spare, but he worked
and
lived here. It should be better.

“It’s not much,” he echoed her thoughts. He tossed his keys on a table beside the door. “Make yourself at home. There’s beer and pop in the fridge, that way. I’ll order the pizza. Steve delivers if you tip him well enough.”

“Steve?”

“The gas station makes the only pizza in town. It’s decent.” A slight smile accompanied by a shrug. “Edible anyway.”

“Can you order extra? Audrey is going to stop by when she’s finished with the dress.”

While he placed the order, she set her books on the coffee table and wandered over to check out his bookshelf. You could tell a lot about a person by the books they read, she’d always thought. It was always the first place she looked when she was feeling...curious about someone. And she
was
curious about Fen. He’d become a friend when she needed one and he was Christian’s best man, though that seemed strange to her. They were very different to be so close.

Something about Fen made her think science fiction, but there weren’t any fiction books at all stacked on the shelves. A bunch of textbooks about computer stuff, some nice hardcovers on art history, both photography and paintings. There were sketchbooks on the top shelf along with a sturdy wooden box she suspected held art supplies.

Her fingers twitched to pull one of the sketchbooks off the shelf, but she wouldn’t do that without an invitation. Too personal. Fen came back into the room holding two long-necked bottles in one hand and she straightened.

“Don’t let me interrupt your snoop. My ereader’s on the nightstand if you’re looking for the really good stuff.” She glanced again at those sketchpads. She bet the really good stuff was in there.

“I pegged you as a science fiction fan.”