Page 7 of Outside the Veil (Endangered Fae #1)

“I know, I know. And I love your work and you know I believe in you. But we’d have a better chance if you had something else to hang your hat on first. Write me something really new and different.

Something that’ll catch their greedy little eyes and make dollar signs dance around their heads.

Then when we have a contract and their attention, your dragon’ll get a hearing. ”

“Right.” Diego slumped in his chair. His blank computer screen glared at him. Soft splashes reached him from the bathroom. At least someone was enjoying himself.

“You are working, Diego. Tell me you are.”

“I’m… Things have been bad lately. I’ve been busy and…it’s…”

“What’s that man of yours done to you now?”

“Nothing.” Diego swallowed hard, the hollow chasm threatening again. “He’s left me.”

“Oh, sweetie, damn. I’m sorry.” Miriam’s voice softened for an instant before returning to brisk and forceful. “You’re better off without that jerk anyway. Go out and find yourself some luscious hottie. Have him screw your brains out and clear your head.”

Diego let out a sharp bark of laughter. “You know you ruin the whole maternal thing when you say things like that.”

“Sure. But I made you laugh. Seriously, I think you need to get away for a little while. Get out of the city, away from all the distractions and the reminders. The offer still stands.”

“I’m a city boy. How would I survive in some cabin in Moosejaw?”

“New Brunswick, hon. Big difference. There’s plumbing and power. It’s not like you’d be roughing it up there. I even had a dish put up last summer, so you’d still be connected and everything. Tell me you’ll think about it.”

“I’ll think about it.” Diego leaned back in his chair and frowned at the bathroom door. The splashes had become constant, as if Finn were trying to swim in the tub. “I better go, Miriam.”

Diego strode across to the bathroom and cringed at the slosh of water on the tiles. More tired than angry, he stuck his head around the door.

“Finn, do you think you could—”

He expected the small pools on the floor, not much of a shock. But the head poking up over the tub’s rim stopped him cold. Round and covered in sleek, black fur, much smaller than human, the head ducked and reappeared. Two white-less eyes peered at him, long whiskers twitched. Rat? Dog? Otter.

He slammed the door and collapsed against the wall in the hallway. The damned hallucinations were starting already.

“Finn!”

A rush of falling water, light, hurried footsteps and Finn knelt beside him, rivulets cascading from his hair. “What ails you? Have you fallen ill?”

“I’m…I think I’m starting a seizure.”

“Hush, now.” Finn took Diego’s head between his hands, long thumbs stroking his cheeks. “You aren’t.”

Diego gazed into those black eyes, so close, so sure, and nearly believed him. “No, I am. I’m seeing things.”

“Things?”

“I saw a…an animal in the tub instead of you.”

Finn’s forehead crinkled. “You’re a hard man to be angry with, but this has gone from amusing to three hairs short of infuriating.”

He grasped Diego by the upper arms and stood, lifting him to eye level. Diego’s feet dangled above the floor. “All the time I’ve spent hiding what I am and when I finally come out in the open to someone, he refuses to believe me.”

“Please put me down,” Diego whispered. “I’ll hurt us both when I seize.”

“You will not fall into a fit. I would feel it. The lightning sparks in your head well beforehand.” Finn carried him down the hall, set him on the sofa and pressed him back against the cushions. “Be still now. Watch.”

Diego couldn’t have torn his eyes away if his life depended on it. Finn stood before him, arms spread, full erection jutting I-beam straight from the tops of his thighs.

God, he’s beautiful. Even with all his ribs showing.

A soft prickling ran up Diego’s arms like ants with static-electric feet.

For an instant, Finn’s skin glowed a soft blue white, and then he melted, his long body collapsing in on itself.

His hair shortened and spread into black fur over his skin.

The otter stood where Finn should have been.

Another melting and an ebony crane replaced the otter.

The crane clacked its beak and shifted to cormorant.

Wolf, bear and coal-black stallion followed in lightning succession.

Diego’s head throbbed. An odd whimper came from far away, though the vibration in his throat indicated he was the source.

The horse stamped a hoof, shook his mane and melted into a huge, longhaired tomcat, its bushy tail twitching like an aggravated train signal.

“Well, my hero?” The cat spoke quite clearly in Finn’s voice. “Are you convinced? Or do I shift to sea dragon?”

The gift of speech refused to return. Diego could only stare open-mouthed. The cat padded over and leaped onto the sofa beside Diego to rub up against him, purring. Then it sat up on its haunches and changed again, expanding until Finn sat there.

“Diego?”

He shook his head, gasped for air when he finally recalled how to breathe and buried his head in his hands.

Hallucinations. Dreams. He’d been asleep since the day Mitch left.

Finn was merely a product of his heartsick imagination.

Usually his dreams weren’t so crisp and clear, though, and Tia Carmen had met him.

Perhaps she was an illusion as well. It all was.

“And even the dreams are dreams,” he whispered as the couch lurched under him.

“Enough, enough,” Finn murmured and slid a hand under Diego’s chin to lift his head.

He stroked his fingers back through Diego’s close-cropped hair and closed the distance between them.

The touch of his lips sent a hard jolt from Diego’s heart to his sac, so soft, so gentle and yet insistent, full of heated promise.

For a moment, he yielded, his lips moving in answer, aching to surrender to the need he felt in both of them.

This is wrong. So wrong.

“Finn…” he whispered against those sensual lips, and managed to pull back. “Why did you do that?”

Finn’s eyes searched his face. “You needed me to. Didn’t you?”

“I don’t think… I mean, we don’t even know each other…”

“Diego.” Finn’s smile became uncertain. “You’ve given me shelter. Fed me. Slept with me in your arms. Can you still call us strangers?”

“But it’s not right…to…to take advantage of you. In your situation. In mine.” Damn. This was coming out all wrong. “I’m a huge mess. I’m no good for anyone. Especially not right now. I’d just be using you because I hurt like hell.”

“And this is wrong?”

“Yes! Damn it, yes, it’s wrong! I can’t just sleep with you because you’re convenient.” And you’re not even human.

Finn drew back, eyes burning. For a moment, Diego feared he would start a shouting match. Instead, he shook his head and stumbled off to his room.

Diego wrapped his arms hard around himself, waiting for the seizure that never came.

If it was all a dream, he still had to live in it.

As long as he existed here, he had to accept the peculiar rules and realities handed to him.

He couldn’t even say why he resisted so stubbornly.

Throughout his childhood, he had wished so fervently for some hint of magic in the world he’d thought his heart would break.

Now the evidence stood before him, a being who defied the laws of conventional physics, and he did all he could to reject the miracle.

Not to mention hurt the miracle’s feelings.

His legs still trembled but he rose and found Finn kneeling at the window, arms on the sill. He’d pulled the pajama bottoms back on, darker stripes decorating the black cotton where his hair had dripped. Diego leaned in the doorway, searching for the right thing to say.

“Is it all like this?” Finn whispered. “These machine-plagued, overcrowded places? Dead boxes of steel and stone. The poisoned air. Is it all in ruins?”

He sounded so broken, so sick with grief, Diego’s confusion and misery evaporated. “There are wild places left. Beautiful places.” Probably even in Ireland.

“Are there? I wish I could see them…”

“You could fly away,” Diego suggested softly. “If I showed you on a map, could you find a place?”

Finn wiped his eyes, his laugh edging toward hysterical. “But that’s just what I tried to do. To fly away. I’m so weak. Every small effort exhausts me. I fell out of the sky. And crawled back to you.”

“I don’t understand. If you can’t even leave the city, how did you cross the ocean? Did you swim?”

“Not a bit of it. Saltwater doesn’t agree with me. I… What’s the expression? I stowed away.”

Diego considered this as he fetched a towel and knelt behind Finn to dry his hair. “Wasn’t the ship made mostly of steel?”

Finn shrugged. “Yes. If I were something small, a mouse perhaps, I thought I could hide among the wooden crates and do well enough. So much iron bearing down around me, day after day, crushing, stifling, choking the life spark from me.” He trailed off, fists clenched, breath shuddering.

“Mother of waters, it was an idiotic thing to do. I don’t know how I survived, or why I tried so hard to after the first week. But I was desperate.”

“Desperate? Why?”

To Diego’s chagrin, Finn buried his face in his hands, his long frame wracked by sobs.

“Please… Oh, don’t do that…”

“I’m lost,” Finn wailed. “Exiled in this cursed, blighted world.” He whirled about to hide his face against Diego’s shoulder.

With a queasy feeling of borrowing trouble, Diego wrapped his arms tight around him and held on until the earthquake of sobs subsided.

“Now.” Diego tried to sound stern while stroking his back. “You’ve been ducking the question for days. What the hell happened when you came back to the world?”

Rather than answer, Finn pulled him down to lie beside him on the air mattress and settled his head on Diego’s chest. The physical contact seemed to calm him and his voice held steady when he spoke again.