Page 36 of Outside the Veil (Endangered Fae #1)

Endangered Fae: Book Two

Chapter One

“Don’t go.” Finn glowered down from his lofty height, arms crossed over his bare chest. “I forbid you to go.”

“You…what?” Diego blinked at him in shock. “Since when did you decide you wanted to play lord of the manor? You can’t ‘forbid’ anything.”

Finn slumped against the wall and slid down until he sat on the floor. “Apparently not. I thought I might try it once. Would begging and pleading alter your ill-conceived decision, then?”

Diego crouched down to take Finn’s long-fingered hand between his. “Carino, what is all this? I’ll only be gone a week. You left me once for five days and told me it wasn’t long at all.”

“But I wasn’t doing the waiting, now, was I?” Finn said with a sharp bark of laughter. “Oh, love, I can’t explain it. I have an ice spear lodged in my spine, and I don’t know why.”

“Please don’t tell me you’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Diego rolled his eyes. When he had first mentioned the trip to New York, Finn hadn’t protested. Now, when it was too late to cancel his plans, his impending absence caused Finn such anguish.

“But I do. Have a bad feeling.” Finn put his forehead on his knees, long blue-black hair falling forward to hide his face.

“So come with me.”

“No.”

“We could take a train. I don’t have to fly. Or you could become an eagle or a peregrine and meet me there.”

“I won’t go back to the poisoned lands. Not even for you.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask you to.” Diego leaned in to nuzzle at Finn’s jaw. “Are you afraid I won’t come back? That I’m leaving you for good?”

Finn opened his arms and pulled him close with a gusty sigh. “It’s not that sort of feeling, my love. It’s more as if this journey of yours will act as a…catalyst. That we are at some strange turning point I cannot see beyond.”

“Even you can’t see into the future…” Diego stroked a hand over Finn’s hard-packed chest. “Can you?”

“No. No, I can’t. Frustrating sometimes.”

“Whatever it is, mi amor, we’ll work through it. Don’t worry so.”

Finn stared out of the bedroom window at the larches.

Tamaracks, they called them here. The soft burst of gold as they prepared to shed their summer needles amidst the dark green of the pines should have made his heart sing.

They only made him think of Diego’s golden skin against the dark sheets and compounded his misery.

“Bloody, blithering fool,” he muttered at himself.

Diego would return in another three days, a blink of an eye for someone who had lived for thousands of years.

The thought didn’t help. He yearned for his love with every scrap of his being, hating the emptiness of his arms and the empty spot in his mind where Diego’s presence usually nestled.

He was so cursed lonely without him, which was what made falling in love so gods-be-damned stupid in the first place.

Only someone in love truly felt this consuming, hollow pain.

“I need to go out,” he told the pillow he held, the one where Diego’s scent still lingered.

While he liked the new house nestled in the Montana forest, close to the wilderness for him but not too far from the little town for Diego, he had never spent five days sequestered inside a building of his own free will.

There, that was it. He was depressed because of confinement and lack of food. Not that the larder was empty. He just hadn’t felt like eating. A nice fat trout sounded good, or perhaps whitefish, cold and shining.

He would swim, feed, and return by nightfall, when Diego might call.

Good. Perfect. He hurried down the stairs, poked his head out of the back door and lifted his face to the breeze.

No humans lurked nearby to see, so he stepped onto the wooden porch and wriggled out of his jeans.

Clothes were fine now and then, and he wore them to satisfy Diego’s sense of modesty, but the best part about putting them on was shedding them again.

The sun caressed his bare shoulders. The cool grass kissed his feet.

He spread his arms to the breeze and closed his eyes.

A faint blue glow danced over his skin as his body melted, his form condensing, his hair shortening and spreading to cover him in sleek black fur.

A river otter soon stood where Finn had been.

Otter Finn galloped for the river, his heart singing as the tumult of its rush and tumble reached him. He stumbled and stopped as another noise drifted over the roar of the rapids—a scream, inaudible but in his mind. Terrible fear knifed through him—the cold panic of a human in mortal danger.

This is none of my business. I should not involve myself…

What would he say to Diego, though, if he came back and found out someone had died on the river? “Oh, yes, my love, I heard them dying. I simply decided not to act.”

He cringed. Diego would disapprove in the worst way, and perhaps this was someone else’s beloved, someone whose absence would cause terrible pain.

He shifted to hawk form and took flight.

His powerful wings arrowed over the river, sharp eyes searching the water.

There. A little bean-pod-shaped coracle rode the rapids, upside-down and unmanned.

Not far behind, its former occupant struggled, head tugged under the whitewater again and again despite the orange vest humans wore to help them float.

Hawk Finn folded his wings and plummeted on an unerring course to intercept. The moment before he hit the raging rapids, he shifted again, his body elongating to a scaled, sinuous form. Dragon Finn caught hold of the unconscious human’s collar with his teeth and knifed through the water to shore.

“Probably best not to have you see a dragon first thing,” Finn muttered, and shifted back to his own shape. He sat panting a moment. All the swift and sudden shifts had taken a frightening amount of effort.

He cocked his head to the side to regard his odd catch. The scent was female and she still breathed. Her skin was fish-cold, though. Not normal for a human.

He shook her gently. “Do you hear me? Do you have companions nearby?” No response and, as he sifted through all the sounds his ears could reach, no companions either. Dagda’s balls. He simply wasn’t any good at dealing with ailing humans. What would Diego advise?

“Most likely to get her warm, you dunderhead,” he muttered. With a sigh, he slid his arms under her and carried her back to the house.

The strap under her chin frustrated him, but he finally found the little catch to the clasp to remove her helmet.

He supposed if one were to go boating in the rapids, which struck him as a supremely unwise idea, a helmet would be prudent.

The wet clothes only pulled more warmth from her, so he removed those as well.

Pity, really. He traced a finger over the dark bruise forming on her perfect jaw. Such a beautiful human girl, full-hipped and plump-breasted. He would have liked… No, Diego put such stock in exclusive pairings, like swans did. For Diego, he would refrain.

He frowned. The girl still wasn’t any warmer.

Bed. Diego had a blanket that warmed itself.

It should help. He carried her up and wrapped her in the magic blanket, then stared at the white box with the buttons that told it what to do.

Which button did one push? The one with the red circle looked threatening so he chose the yellow as a happier color.

She remained stubbornly unconscious. He sat beside her and stroked the dark tendrils of damp hair from her face. Such soft hair, he fought the temptation to bury his fingers in it. Still so cold. Damn and damn again.

He would simply have to warm her himself.

Finn lifted the blanket and slid underneath with her.

He pressed his skin to hers, wrapped his limbs around her and pulled warmth from the surrounding air.

Slowly, her body temperature began to rise, and he smiled, pleased at his success.

Of course, something else began to rise, as well, but he steadfastly ignored the erection pressed against her lovely bottom.

He was no brainless slave to his mating urges.

He could control them, despite what some might say.

“No, really, Miriam, I don’t mind,” Diego said into his cell. The plane eased up alongside the gate, thumps and thuds coming from outside the door. “It’s just one book signing. There are bound to be cancellations here and there, right?”

Miriam’s snort was neither ladylike nor polite. “You just want to get home to that handsome beefcake of yours so you can screw like bunnies.”

“I won’t say the thought didn’t cross my mind.” Diego laughed as she swore softly. “But seriously, one promo event canceled in a dozen? I’d say that was pretty good.”

“All right. But when you’re bigger than Michener, those idiots’ll regret canceling on you.”

“Maybe. Thanks, though, for setting all that up in the same week.”

“All to make me more money, hon. Don’t ever think it’s anything else,” Miriam growled. Then her voice softened. “You done good, Sandoval. Though I always knew you would. When’s my next book coming?”

“Dios. Don’t I get some time off?”

“No. Not at the snail’s pace you write. Tell me you’ve started the sequel.”

“Started, yes.” Diego shifted to pull his laptop from under the seat in front of him. “But finished is still months off.”

“Get cracking, then. You tell that man of yours to take care of you so you can work.”

“He watches out for me. I haven’t had an episode since Canada.” Diego cringed. Bringing up the seizure that had landed him in the hospital for two weeks was a bad idea.

Miriam only snorted her disbelief. “All right, kiddo. Talk to you soon. Kiss Finn for me.”