Winter's Tale (4 page)

She wasn’t shy enough to refuse. She climbed,
and he hiked, and a hard thick ridge ground against her through the
front of his buckskin pants. Groaning like this was both hell and
heaven, he rocked his solid erection over her pussy. She could have
cursed the sturdiness of her jean’s denim. Aroused though she was,
she needed more pressure to go over.

“Good?” Hans panted, reclaiming her mouth
before she a chance to say.

She understood why he couldn’t wait. She
didn’t want to stop kissing him either. No kiss had existed before
this one, and it mustn’t ever end. Crazed to get what she needed,
she reached between them instead, opening the metal button at her
waist and dragging down her zipper.

She guessed he knew what a zipper was. He
heard the rasp and stiffened.

His cock stiffened too. She felt it kick and
then throb more violently against her. God, that was exciting.
Though their lips remained together, his eyes opened. His lashes
were spikes of dark gold honey.

Their kiss slowed but didn’t stop. Breathing
hard through her nose, she reached behind her for the wrist of one
of his kneading hands. He didn’t resist as she dragged it around to
the front of her.

Neither of them spoke as she pushed his hand
under her panties.

She was too wet not to be a teensy bit
embarrassed. Luckily, embarrassment wasn’t his reaction. A
pleasure-pain sound broke in his throat. Long male fingers delved
deeply into her folds.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Oh yes, sweetheart.”

He pushed her slick flesh apart with his
fingertips, the first knuckle of the longest curling gently into
her opening. His thumb went the other way, stopping when it found
the pulsing swell of her clitoris. No more than an inch from hers,
his pupils expanded.

“Tell me what you want,” he said.

“Hard,” she whispered against his mouth. “Rub
it hard in a big circle.”

She had to bite her lip when he did. He
pressed the heart of her ache just right, gasping sharply with his
own excitement. Her hips rocked closer. Because his hand was
between them, he rubbed himself against its back, his erection
adding more heat and force to the proceedings.

“Don’t stop,” he urged. “I want to feel you
go over.”

Knowing he was turned on by her arousal did
crazy things to her. Her head fell back with longing, her fingers
digging hard into his shoulders. His touch felt amazing, better
than anything ever had. Groaning, he opened his mouth on the crook
of her neck and sucked. He was going to give her a hickey, and she
damn well didn’t care. His breathing was hot and ragged, the
movement of his hips jerky.

In thirty seconds, the combination of
pleasures added up to too much for her. She wasn’t coming, but Lord
she wanted to. To save her life, she couldn’t restrain her
moan.

The sound yanked her awake before she had a
chance remember she was sleeping. She couldn’t doubt she’d moaned
in real life. When she finished blinking, the entire class of a
dozen girls was snickering at her.

The teacher kind of looked like she wanted to
laugh too.

“That must have been some dream,” someone
drawled knowingly.

Though part of her could have dug a hole in
the floor to hide, she knew better than to admit she was mortified.
“Hey,” she said, brazening it out as best she could, “at least I
wasn’t drooling.”

~

After her unfortunate napping episode,
December needed a distraction. More determined than ever to pursue
her inquiries, she grabbed a bag of potato chips, another apple,
and slipped out of the lunchroom. Returning to search the school’s
computers for “Hans Winter” and “Dire Woods” was a bust. Probably
she was silly to expect differently. Those words were random
phrases from her subconscious. She shouldn’t be treating them like
clues.

Unless they were clues. She shoved her chair
back from the carrel and rubbed her throat where Hans had sucked
it. That graveyard was peculiar. This whole school was. And her
dream had been uncannily detailed, as tangible as real life. Maybe
her neck
wasn’t
marked, but the statue’s touch felt
imprinted between her legs. She had to squeeze her thighs together
on account of how hot and achy she got from recalling his caress.
She’d never experienced a dream that lingered this powerfully.

I need to dig deeper
, she thought.
Hans had said Dire Woods was the closest he came to going home
these days. He’d claimed that unless she saved him, he was doomed
to burn forever. The vividness of her dream aside, neither of those
things made him seem like a real person.

They made him seem like a fairytale.

She frowned, instinctively resisting that
idea. Fairytales were just stories. Hans Winter had touched her.
He’d been as solid as the chair she sat on.

Because you
dreamed
him that way
, she snorted to herself.

“Do you need help?” someone asked.

Long years of secret keeping had her
instantly closing the search window. Only when she’d done so did
she look up at the intruder.

The aisle to her row of carrels ended in a
plain door marked LIBRARY. A woman had opened it. She looked like
December thought a librarian ought. Short and plump, she wore a
pale green cardigan and calf-length skirt. A pair of colorfully
framed glasses hung from a chain of beads on her neck. She was
smiling and her bosom was motherly.

“You must be the new girl,” she said. “I’m
Mrs. Blake, the librarian.”

“Oh.” December was startled into showing her
manners and rising. This must be the Mrs. Blake Miss Westin had
mentioned. “I’ve been meaning to come see you.”

Mrs. Blake beamed at her. “Excellent. I take
it you’re skipping lunch. You can join me for a cookie.”

There seemed no way to avoid following the
woman into her domain. The library was dusty but comfortable. Its
windows overlooked the school’s front grounds, where an attempt at
landscaping had been made. A scattering of wind-stripped maples
broke up the long slope to the front gate and the access road.
Benches sat beneath a few, empty for now, as were the flagstone
paths. If December hadn’t been one of Rackham’s students, she’d
have assumed the school was closed.

What had her parents been thinking when they
banished her to this bleak outpost? Her last expulsion really must
have pushed some bad buttons.

“Here you go,” said Mrs. Blake beside her.
“Don’t worry. I bake them myself.”

She held out a plate of small hill-shaped
cookies. They were the tired gray of old oatmeal.

“Um,” December said, struggling not to show
her alarm. “I, uh, don’t really have a sweet tooth.”

This was an outright lie, but those cookies
looked miserable.

“No?” Mrs. Blake responded with a slight
pout. A moment later she laughed brightly. “Well, then, I guess
there’s more for me!”

For the sake of her research, December prayed
Mrs. Blake was a sharper tack than she seemed. She trailed her
tentatively to the Victorian checkout desk. If the hand-carved
mahogany had been polished, the piece would have been gorgeous. As
it was, it seemed too large to service Mrs. Blake’s apparent dearth
of patrons. December couldn’t see all the stacks, but to go by the
hush, they were the only two in the library.

“I hoped you had some histories of the
school,” she said. “And if you could point me toward the folklore
section, that would be great.”

“The history I can help you with.” Mrs. Blake
bent over as she spoke, pulling a huge scrapbooking sort of thing
from the under-shelves of the checkout desk. She dropped it onto
the counter with a thud and a puff of dust. “I’m afraid the
folklore section is sadly sparse. Miss Westin has a nasty habit of
squirreling away its contents in her office.”

“Does she?” December asked.

“I scold her, but she doesn’t listen. She
claims students don’t appreciate such things.” Mrs. Blake shook her
plump-jowled face mournfully. “Even as a girl, she was just that
selfish.”

December’s curiosity was truly prickling now.
“You knew her?”

“Of course! We were both students here.”

December fought not to let her jaw drop. Why
would anyone who attended Rackham stay an instant longer than they
had to?

“That’s nice,” she said weakly.

The librarian seemed not to recognize her
horror. She flipped open the giant book and turned it around for
her. “Here we are,” she said, pointing at a photo. “First and
second in our class.”

Their class had come through in the
seventies. The girls stood side by side under the Gothic arch of
the main entrance. Mrs. Blake was colorful but not exactly
attractive in her wide flowered bellbottoms. Miss Westin fared
better in a fringed suede mini-skirt and platform sandals. She
wasn’t as skinny as she was now, but her legs were already
showstoppers. Neither of the pair was smiling.

“Wow,” December said, for lack of a better
word.

“Those were the days,” Mrs. Blake said
wistfully. “Sonia and I had quite a rivalry.”

“Uh, well, those things happen sometimes,
don’t they?”

“Yes, they do, dear. That table by the window
is nice and sunny. Why don’t you settle in and read there?”

Her gentle suggestion was impossible to
resist.

~

The status-challenged, Dr. Who-hating
redhead’s name was Brianne. She had the bed to the right of
December’s and nearest to the door. She waited until December slid
under the chilly covers to come around the separating curtain with
her peace offering.

The girl held out a beautiful red
apple—locally grown, she guessed. December didn’t recognize the
species.

“You missed dinner,” Brianne said
defensively. “I thought you might be hungry.”

December
had
missed dinner. She’d
returned to the library after classes—a waste of time, as it turned
out. Mrs. Blake had been correct. None but the most watered-down,
Disney-fied fairy books remained on the shelves.

Naturally, Hans Winter’s story was not in
them.

Since every trace of daylight was lost by
then, she’d put off revisiting the graveyard.

This all flashed through her mind as Brianne
waited for an answer. “You shouldn’t starve yourself,” the girl
insisted, seeming unaware of the pot-and-kettle irony. Brianne’s
arms were sticks in her not-as-cool-as-Nina’s pink negligee.

“O-kay,” December said, accepting the pretty
apple. Unsure whether to take the offering at face value, she bit
into it carefully. The fruit
was
delicious: crisp and sweet
and tasting faintly of cinnamon. “Thank you.”

Encouraged, Brianne took a hesitant step
closer. Around her neck she wore a delicate chain with a gold
wishbone. Perhaps from nervousness, her fingers toyed with the
charm. “You don’t have to feel embarrassed about falling asleep in
class. I do that all the time.”

December bet she didn’t wake up moaning with
desire. She contemplated how to respond, but didn’t get the
chance.

“Jesus,” Nina snapped from her Queen Bee
bower on the other side of December. “If you two
have
to
kiss and make up, get a room.”

This was too much for Brianne. Flushed hot
pink beneath her red hair, she scurried back to her own
section.

Smiling to herself at Nina’s tartness,
December dug in her bedside drawer for her e-reader. As she did,
the hair on her nape stood up. When she’d last put the tablet away,
she’d left the charging cord coiled precisely on the screen’s
center. Now it lay on the drawer’s bottom. Someone had rummaged
through her belongings.

She stiffened but didn’t say a word. Nothing
seemed to have been taken. She turned on the small computer and
checked the battery icon. The power level was lower than before.
That mystified her. Why would anyone care what she had on here?

She glanced around the dormitory’s students,
none of whom were paying her any mind. Girls at boarding schools
could be nosy. Maybe they’d hoped to find naked pictures or
sexting. December didn’t keep a digital diary. She had a decent
memory and valued her privacy. Not knowing what to make of the
situation, she took another bite of apple.

“Stop chomping like a cow,” Nina ordered.
“Some of us want to sleep.”

December blew a kissing noise in her
direction, but put the apple down. She wanted to think before she
dozed off. She had important issues to consider.

She fluffed her pillow and sighed, in
response to which Nina sighed louder.

December grinned, but was too tired to yank
the other girl’s chain again. Thinking could wait a little. She’d
just shut her eyes a second . . .

DECEMBER
had the impression that she
woke up rather than fell asleep. The cemetery’s forest had
undergone a thaw. Patches of grass glowed among the snow, tiny
crocuses poking through as purple and yellow buds. As graceful as a
painting, Hans stretched on his side on a pale blue blanket that
matched his eyes. December swallowed at the sight of him. God, his
body was long and buff. He wore the same buckskin trousers as
before but no shirt. His bare upper torso was ten times as amazing
transformed from stone into flesh. It flexed as he shifted onto one
elbow, muscles contracting in his arms and belly, copper colored
nipples tightening on his pecs . . .

“Sit with me.” He patted the blanket in front
of him. “Unless you’d rather stand there gawking.”

Drooling was more like it.

Gathering her long curls behind her, she
lowered herself to the pale blue wool, mimicking his posture on her
elbow. He wasn’t as calm as he pretended. A pulse beat so she could
see it in the hollow of his strong throat. She slipped into the
logic of the dream state without effort.

Hans smiled and held her gaze. “These
garments.” He touched the button between her breasts.