Page 15 of Lucky or Knot
His voice still had the slightly thick quality of someone who’d been crying. Yeah, he really had been. Fuck, had I hurt him after all? And the fact that the possibility of having done him harm worried me way more than whatever “hypothetical” he didn’t like, well…that worried me the most.
“I don’t either,” I replied, wishing I could get angrier. But with him in my arms, and the taste of him on my tongue, and the music of his heartbeat and his breath in my ears, nothing else really seemed to matter. Gods, I could lie here forever. Knot him again and again. Fuck, I had to focus. Hypotheticals. Right. “I especially don’t like imaginary, unknown hypotheticals that you won’t even tell me about.”
His scent kept getting stronger, sweeter, more soothing. My eyes drifted shut. I tried to force them open, but my lids were so heavy. I tucked my arm around him more tightly, my come-sticky hand pressing against his sternum, and laughed as he made a disgusted little noise.
Still no answer. Mmm, whatever. Hardly shocking that he was being cagey, and anyway, we could nap before we discussed the worst that could happen. Surely it wouldn’t be before wewoke up.
His heart had an odd rhythm to it, fast and a bit thready, vibrating against my chest. I petted him, nuzzling his shoulder, wrapping myself around him as best I could to shelter him from anything and everything. Nothing would get through a weretiger. Even without my ego involved, there really were very few beings on Earth that could.
Between one breath and the next, I dozed off, my arm pinning him safely in place, my knot keeping him tied to me.
***
What seemed like one more breath later, my eyes popped open, my whole body coming tense and alert instantaneously. I rolled onto my back and out of bed, claws out, mouth open in a silent snarl.
Heart racing, I whipped my head around.
The hotel room lay in a gloomy murk, with all the lights off but with threads of sunlight leaking in around the edges of the drawn curtains. But that was more than enough to show me no fairy—and no all-black clothes or stripper heels. My own clothes still lay scattered on the chair and the floor where I’d left them.
Sunlight. Fucking daylight, and by the down-slanting angle of the sun, at least mid-morning. That meant I’d been asleep for a minimum of seven hours or so, a ridiculously long time by my usual standards. I straightened up from my automatic defensive crouch, sniffing the air and figuratively cocking my ears. Cars went by on the street outside, someone yelled and laughed in another room of the hotel, a distant phone rang. Tart sweetness lingered in the air, along with a hint of soap. I’d have been able to hear any movement anywhere in the room, but I went around the bed and pushed the bathroom door open anyway. Nothing.
Although not quite nothing. One towel had been used and tossed on the floor, and a couple of the complimentary toiletries had been opened and scattered on the counter. All the steam of the fairy’s presumed shower had already evaporated, though, so it hadn’t been the sound of him using the bathroom that had woken me.
The outer door closing?
Two seconds later I’d flung it open and stuck my head out.
No fairy. No one at all in either direction along the length of the hotel, and no one in the parking lot except…shit, a woman in a housekeeping uniform, standing by the palm trees, who’d looked up from her phone and cigarette to gape at me.
Naked. I was naked. Fuck.
I dashed back in the door like a reverse Jack-in-the-box and slammed it shut.
Double, triple fuck.
Another wild look around the room showed me nothing new. No sign of where he’d gone, or when, though unless he could vanish into thin air as well as everything else, he’d left a while ago.
Usually I slept lightly, half-attuned to what went on around me even while unconscious, like the giant cat I was. And yet he’d slipped off my cock, climbed out of my arms and the loudly creaky bed, and then gone into the bathroom and taken a shower. Gotten dressed. For all I knew, he’d watched some TV and called a friend and repainted his gods-damned toenails.
And I’d been dead to the world through all of it. Lying there with my mouth open snoring, probably.
Drooling.
Fuck me.
The way I’d fallen asleep hadn’t been natural. That had been magic. The intensity of his scent. The warmth and comfort.All of it. And I hadn’t noticed the enchantment creeping over me, of course I hadn’t, because it’d made me too mentally pliant to notice anything at all.
Rage rose up and nearly choked me, rage and offense and something I absolutely did not want to recognize as betrayed hurt.
My claws popped, and the roar that tore out of my throat rattled the lamps and echoed in the small room, probably sending any small animals for a mile around running for cover with their ears back. I subsided, panting, as little bits pattered down from the popcorn ceiling, sprinkled over the carpet like snow and dusting the rumpled bedding where I’d kissed and licked and knotted that sneaky little fucking magical prick.
Christ. Well, I hadn’t paid for the room, which meant I wouldn’t be liable for the ceiling or the suspiciously tilted and crooked-looking bed, but after that roar—and flashing the housekeeper—I should probably clear the hell out of here.
A shower could wait. My nose and a cursory visual inspection informed me that the only residue the little bastard had left on me had the consistency and scent of the kind of fancy wildflower honey I couldn’t afford to buy at the bougie grocery store.
Ironic, that. He’d paid me, and I wouldn’t be able to afford him.
After I ducked into the bathroom to piss, I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, skipping the sweaty G-string in favor of freeballing it. Socks and boots were next, and I sat there for a second after I’d finished lacing them up, elbows on my knees, massaging my temples.
