Three Days of Dominance (13 page)

“Gah!” What in the world? She spit a few times, then rinsed her mouth with water from the tap. She eyed the golden liquid, tilted the bottle back and forth. It looked perfectly clear and scotchlike, and it tasted like she imagined sewage might, on a bad day. She put her nose to the bottle opening.

“Ew.”
What’s happened to the stuff? Surely alcohol can’t go bad?

“It can’t,” she muttered. “Not like this.”
But the taste and smell had changed…

She recalled what Heketoro had said—that fae glamour could alter what people thought they saw and felt and tasted.
He’s done something, but when? While I slept? Yes. ’Course, that was it. Damnation and—

The little spurt of anger gave way to a strange happiness, and then she stood there, shaking her head, wavering between annoyance and an amazement that he’d bothered.
How dare he though
. Her eyes watered.

He knew she drank too much.
Lord. I know I do
. It was just so hard to stop. Was this his way of stopping her? Wouldn’t work, of course. There were enough vices out there for anybody to crawl from one to the other if they wanted to. And being a cop, she knew where to get them all.

She tipped up the bottle and poured it down the drain, then went and found the bottle of gin—that too was contaminated, as was the little bottle of rum she’d kept from a hotel stay as a souvenir. They all tasted vile. The latter was in the back of the pantry behind a tin of beans. She wondered exactly how he’d done this, if it had indeed been him.

Maybe she did need to slow down, before she ended up with a sixty-year-old liver in a thirty-year-old body.
Why did he bother? Because he cares?

The idea that someone might have come into her life who truly worried about her well-being was a foreign one. Not since Jacob had gone had there been anyone that close. Friends, sure, but Sarah and the others never got inside the outer wall she’d erected. It would do them and her no good to divulge all her worries to them. They couldn’t change things, couldn’t make her job all milk and honey and roses. Couldn’t fix her head so she stopped worrying. So she never let them see that side of her. And she was careful only to let herself go and drink like there was no tomorrow on her days off. It had never affected work, or her friends. Only her.

And now he’d taken away that outlet. She knew it had been him. Just somehow knew. If she couldn’t drink, what was she going to do to blank out her brain enough to get some rest from the churning morass in her head?

Anger rose up again. He’d hobbled her. If this was permanent, if she couldn’t drink alcohol at all, she feared she’d have no way left to cope. No legal way. At least this addiction she’d so far kept under control. She needed to be able to walk back into the station on Monday with a mind at least temporarily numb.
Damn him for meddling.

How selfish was that? She was cursing him, and he wasn’t even going to be around much longer, not if she didn’t do something.

The little sea of despair that had been sloshing about in her stomach suddenly overwhelmed her. What had she done? She’d let him push her away, the only man who’d ever made her feel anything like alive. She rested both forearms flat on the kitchen counter, leaning over and putting the side of her face to the cold laminate. The egg sat only a few inches from her nose, beside the little leaf. Was she going to let him die? She had to do something.

She needed to go for a walk, to think, to sort out her head. After showering quickly, she slipped into a wraparound sari and sandals, took the egg and the leaf in her hand. Autumn rarely gave her reason to wear more than the lightest of sweaters, and tonight was closer to summer.

The route to the shops wound past the back of the row of houses in her street, between the mangroves and each back fence, detouring onto a boardwalk and small arched bridge to cross a creek, out between some houses, and finally, across the road. An easy dawdle. Although used by few, the little bridge was picturesque in the daytime with its lattice roof and at night even more so with two green antique-style lights arching overhead, casting crosshatched shadows on passersby.

Danii slowed as she approached. Somewhere a frog croaked. A few confused bugs buzzed around under the lights, and the little creek chuckled as it ran over the moss-laden stones below. She leaned on the railing. The lights cast a yellow hue over everything, the right color for how she felt tonight. Insipid.

Where the world had been shades of gray for months at a time, Heketoro had arrived and blazed a path of colors, some of which she’d never dreamed could exist. Perhaps she could remember this even when he’d gone, maybe she could remake herself and find another man who could make her feel as alive?

A flotilla of leaves coursed down the center of the stream and vanished beneath the bridge.

And maybe there was no other man for her. Maybe for a faerie and human cross only the fae could ever be enough? Of course, he planned to go back to his world if he survived. So all of that, “no other man” rubbish was pure dreams and female hormones.
Whatever
. Letting Heketoro die without trying would be at the very least a betrayal of her own sense of what was right. She couldn’t let anyone die without attempting to save them. Not when the power to do so seemed inches from her grasp. But even more than that, she couldn’t let
him
die, even if she wasn’t sure what they were to each other. More than lovers; there was a connection she hadn’t quite fathomed.

Each time she saw him, he seemed a little more perfect, compassionate and damn…handsome. While she, on the other hand, felt almost every other day as if she’d been scraped off the bottom of someone’s shoe.

Hell, she’d been right in what she’d first told him; she’d never ever forgive herself if she gave in without a struggle.

In her right hand, she held the leaf Heketoro had given her. She raised it to eye level, and just the possibility of what it could do was enough to make her decide. She put it close to her mouth and whispered, “Heketoro.” The leaf fluttered and spun away, glittering, until it left the circle of light and was swallowed up in the night. Then she lifted the skirts of the sari and discreetly slipped the egg up inside her, where it belonged.

Chapter Nine

Arising from the creek, festooned with lichen and beads of weed-strewn water, Heketoro paused, full of purpose and as giving as granite. Either Danii had decided to help him, or Aroha was near. He faltered. Where was Aroha? If there was a reason for Danii to call him, let it be Aroha. Please, let it be that. He could handle Aroha if he treated her with the utmost care.

Then he saw Danii, and his doubts melted away. She’d decided. He clenched his jaw. No. No matter what he’d told her, he had to convince her to abandon him to his fate.

To his enhanced eyes, with the glimmers of the night made like day, her flimsy dress revealed every part of her body—she may as well have stood naked in full sunlight. Fragile and feminine, yet she scanned her surroundings as keenly as any predator. If he’d been simply a human male, without magic, she would have seen him.

He’d thought his arguments had swayed her. Seeing her only reminded him of what might have been if he were able to defeat the curse, if wishes could come true and she not only agreed to come with him but it were safe to take her back. Unless some tragedy had intervened, his family estates would be waiting for him in Rarohenga. He would have introduced her to his friends, his true ones, the ones who would not have discarded him because of the pall cast on him by the curse. And Jani, his other sister would have loved her as much as he did. None of that would ever be.

Yet he’d hear Danii out, as he’d promised.

He let the glamour fall from him, using what little power he had left to clean away the muck from swimming in the creek, then stepped onto the bridge. Three yards of space separated them—too little. He steeled himself to go no closer.

* * *

There he stood. As always, he seemed to bend the world about him. She drank in every detail of his body. What else could she look at but him?

“Heketoro.”

“Why have you called me?” His voice sounded strained. The overhead light shed shadows, intensifying the darkness of his clothes and making them as black as those of a harbinger of death.

“I think you know.” She shut her eyes. “I had to.” She opened them. He’d not moved. “Come closer, please.”

“Why?” He sounded so hard and cruel.

“You said you’d hoped I could be the one to break this curse. You die in two days if I don’t help you. I’ve decided. I’m here, use me. I’ll pay whatever price is demanded of me.”

“No. You can’t.”

“Why? Why? You said you’d listen!” Her voice shook, and she knew he would hear that, but she didn’t care. “What happened to your promise to listen? To accept my decision?”

He sucked in air before he answered. “If this goes wrong, it would not be simply a scratch or a bruise, some minor injury. I won’t take that chance.”

“You said I had faerie blood in me. Maybe I’m tougher than you think.”

“Perhaps.” He took one step toward her. “I still don’t think you really understand what it takes to break the curse. It’s a precise sexual rite. On the last ritual, you have to obey me,
absolutely
, every single step.”

“I’ve said I would, and if I don’t help you, you die. Let me try. Please.” She turned and held the railing, knuckles white. Behind her came another step on the boards of the bridge.

“Why?” He returned her question to her.

“Because, you promised to abide by my decision! I thought you were an honest man…faerie…oh, whatever!” She threw her last card on the table. “I know what you’ve done for me in the past. You saved me as a child.”

He paused there, and she knew she'd guessed right.

“I don’t require repayment.”

What could she say? She didn’t rightly know herself. She sniffled. “Because you’re so much better than I am. I don’t want you to die.” And if you do, she thought, shaking in her boots as she did so, I don’t want you to die alone. I want to be there, holding your hand. But she couldn’t say that to him. Could she? “Because when I see you, I see myself reflected, and I become so much more than I ever thought I could be. Maybe…because I’m tired of being who I’m not.”

“Ahh. But from here I see the other side. It’s because you’re a good person and you hate seeing others in pain,” he whispered. “I’ve seen you crying, sitting at my lake on rainy afternoons when everyone else had stayed home, crying over children you’ve seen and couldn’t help, over people who’ve lost their lives. I’ve seen the joy in your face on good days. I’ve seen what you sacrifice in the name of rightness and upholding the laws of your world. You take on too much, Danii. I’m not some lost runaway child.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t think straight with him this near. “You have been watching me. Not sure I like that. Invasion of privacy. Maybe I should sue you.” Her shoulders slumped. “I love my job—really, but…it gets to me sometimes. Say, did you do something to my scotch? Because I think that was—”

He brushed a finger across her lips. “Shh.”

No. Not this time. I need to keep going
. “I want to help you. Let me try.”

He exhaled, hard, through his nose. A little exasperated, she thought, hearing that.
Maybe, just maybe, he’s going to say yes
. She tensed as he dug blunt fingers into her shoulders.

“You’re sure, Danii? Absolutely sure?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Very well. Then there will be no
try
; we must succeed. Here, now, you can say no. All the way, until the final ritual begins, you can say no, without being harmed, and I’ll stop and go no further if you refuse me too much. Clear?”

She knew her eyes had widened. This was it. She’d convinced him. Trepidation and desire spiraled lazily from her lower body. “Yes.”

Two arms encompassed her, wrapping around her waist, pulling her back against Heketoro. She inhaled his scent—alive, fertile and exuberantly male, as if she had her nose to a forest floor thriving with vines and dew-christened flowers. Teeth sank into her neck. And she shut her eyes. A connection traveled like a trail of fire from his teeth to the egg.

“Oh.” She shuddered. Yes. This was what she wanted.

One of his hands roamed over her belly, down between her legs, over the slope of her thigh to her buttocks. It didn’t matter where he moved his hands, her body was aflame. “God. What have you done to me?”

She turned within the circle of his arm, mildly surprised at the size of his biceps and the breadth of his chest. His shirt hung open. She moved away from him a little and studied the tattoos curling partway across the right side of his chest. The lowest part of the tattoo disappeared into the waistband of those skintight black pants she’d first seen him in. On the right side of his face the same sweeping black-inked style—curve within curve, sharpened here and there to spear points, across his forehead and circling his mouth.

“The tattoos, they grow?”

“Yes.” He smiled. “Sex makes them grow.”

Her hands, long-fingered as they were, barely encompassed a third of his stone-hard biceps.

“Sex? Wow. No wonder then. Your muscles also?”

“Guess.” He raised one of her hands to his mouth and began to kiss each finger, one by one.

Ah, but when he did that, it was too hard to think of anything but the feel and smell of the man in front of her. And what that tongue of his could do. Already her heart rate climbed obediently.

“Will I do the same?”

“How much you change depends on how much faerie blood you have. An ancestor of yours was faerie.”

“So, my mother was right. Though I never imagined it was the ‘little people’ we were touched by,” she said, tongue in cheek.

“Little?” He quirked an eyebrow.

He caught both her wrists in his hands and pushed her back against the railing of the bridge. Pinning her wrists to her sides, his body shaped against hers, fitting so perfectly she hummed deep in her throat, held in limbo by the sensation as she felt his hardness through the thin sari cloth.