Page 11 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

FAWKES

The amount of effort that it took Fawkes to get Leah to end a search that was clearly making her unhappy, and come outside in the sunshine, suggested that (contrary to all other evidence) she had never had fun in her entire life.

However, once they’d crept away from their latest failed search and went out the back door, sunlight bathed her face and Fawkes could see her warming up and becoming her usual bubbly self.

“What exactly did you have in mind?” she asked him. “If we’re not looking for clues, I really should get back to rehearsals.”

“Do you want to?”

Leah hesitated. From the vicinity of the woods near the lodge, voices were raised in song for part of a verse before someone hit a flat note and it all fell apart. Maggie could be heard exclaiming in dismay.

“Er—no.”

“In that case, what do you say we take a walk and see some of this allegedly beautiful scenery?”

There were a number of paths going off from the lodge. Fawkes picked one at random, thinking it looked smooth and easy for Leah to navigate.

“So the play has songs?” he asked. “ Peter Pan ’s a musical, right? I don’t know much about it. The only version I’ve seen was the Disney cartoon. And I know it’s a book.”

“Well, that’s complicated.” Leah navigated the path with her usual unconscious deftness, and Fawkes got the impression that she was actually slowing down somewhat for him .

“There are a lot of different versions of it. It was a play before it was a book, and there are also different versions of the play, including some that are musicals and some that are not. Maggie rewrote the script for the number of actors that we have, and also for their relative singing abilities, which is, uh—not great in most cases. It’s a mix of the original play by J.M.

Barrie, and the well-known musical version, but cut way down so we can do it with fewer people than we really ought to have, most of whom can’t carry a note in a bucket. ”

“But there are some musical numbers?”

“Yeah, a couple. We do have some people who can sing a little, unfortunately not including Gloria.” Leah shook her head. “Okay, I think that’s all the brain cells I want to devote to the play right now. I thought we came out here to forget about all of that.”

It was a lovely day. Sunlight dappled the path ahead of them. Under the trees, the forest floor was dotted with white and blue wildflowers. Leah’s narrow hips flexed very appealingly with every step she took.

“Leah,” Fawkes blurted out. “You are my mate.”

Leah paused and looked over her shoulder at him. She rolled her eyes, although there was a slight blush on her cheeks. “I know that. I have an inner animal too, you noodle.”

Fawkes could feel himself flushing. He wasn’t a blusher by nature. He had probably spent more time blushing around her than in the previous thirty years of his life.

“If you know that, then why didn’t you say anything?”

“I tried! You immediately told me ‘No’ and then ran off like you’d just remembered you left the stove on. What’s a girl supposed to think?”

Although she said it flippantly, there was a visible edge of hurt underneath the playfulness.

“It tells you that your mate is an idiot, mostly.”

“Why did you lie?” she asked.

Fawkes took a deep breath. She was still half-turned, looking at him.

“Because I was here for work, and I didn’t want to make it complicated. And I wasn’t thinking. And also I was being stupid. Let me make up for it.”

He stepped forward, closing the space between them. Leah’s lips parted slightly.

She had a stunning face. It wasn’t soft; it was all angles and clean lines, a narrow face filled with personality and dynamic energy.

Her wide hazel eyes, fringed in soft brown lashes, reflected the green and gold of the sun-drenched forest around them.

There was a light dusting of freckles across her high cheekbones.

Her hair was straight and brown and unadorned, swept out of the way with a clip but otherwise unstyled, falling to her shoulders.

It looked so soft he ached to run his hands through it.

And when he placed a hand lightly on the side of her head, stroking his fingers gently through the fine strands, it was softer than he had imagined possible.

He drew her in and kissed her.

Leah’s mouth opened under his. There was a tentative moment of tasting each other, and then she suddenly, fiercely, almost furiously kissed him back.

She threw her arm around his back, and he was vaguely aware of a crutch banging his leg, but he barely registered it because he was kissing her, kissing his mate , kissing her and never wanting to stop.

Her mouth was hot and responsive, and time simply fell away.

They broke the kiss only because they both needed to breathe. Fawkes held her, gazing down into her eyes, feeling her chest rise and fall tantalizingly against him.

“You could have done that at the very beginning,” she said. “You absolute walnut. You acorn. You utter filbert .”

Fawkes laughed, half drunk on the feeling of her body against him, warm and wriggly in his arms; the scent of her, the taste of her. “I hope I’m a reasonably good-looking filbert, at least.”

“You are the hottest hazelnut in this forest.” She took his face in her hands, the crutches now lying at their feet, and kissed him again.

A more picturesque setting for a first kiss could hardly be imagined. Wildflowers surrounded them, a blue and white sea of stars. The sun was warm on the back of his head. They kissed and kissed, and gradually he became aware he was supporting more and more of her weight.

“I’m gonna have to sit down,” Leah said. She looked up at him hopefully. “Or you could carry me.”

“Like this?” He grasped her firm, round ass and pulled her against him, hoisted her up, and now her arms were around his neck and he was holding her body clasped tightly to him.

His cock had definite things to say about this new state of affairs.

“This is nice,” Leah murmured. The lift brought her to eye level with him, so he no longer needed to bend down. “I can work with this.”

They kissed, nibbled at each other’s faces and necks and ears. Leah played with Fawkes’s hair, making him want a hand free to do the same.

“I could lay you down in the wildflowers right here.”

Leah toyed with his hair coquettishly. “That sounds nice. And scenic. But also cold and damp. What if we just keep doing this for a while?”

Fawkes kissed her again, wishing fervently that he’d thought to bring a blanket. And a bottle of champagne. And a condom.

“You probably need to put me down soon,” Leah said wistfully.

“In a minute.”

They went on kissing, and kept at it until Fawkes almost lost his grip on her and stumbled sideways into a tree, recovering his equilibrium by slamming his shoulder into it. Leah squeaked and tightened her grip around his neck until she was nearly choking him.

“Maybe now put me down,” she gasped in his ear.

“Sorry, I got distracted.” He set her carefully on her feet. “Crutches?”

“Yes, please.”

He picked up the crutches and handed them to her. “Out of curiosity, and I’m asking this mostly just to know how I can help out?—”

“Can I stand without them?” Leah asked, settling her hands on the grips and her forearms in the wrist loops.

“Yeah.”

“Not very well.” She thrust out a leg. “It’s a congenital deformity.

You’ve been very kind about not asking, but I’m sure you’d like to know.

I was born this way, and I’ve had a number of surgeries to get my legs more or less straight and the same length, but they still just don’t support my weight very well.

I used to wear leg braces as a kid, and that helped with getting them to grow straight, but they’re restrictive and also wearing them weakened the muscles a lot.

Now I walk without them pretty much all the time.

I still have the braces for bad leg days, but I don’t have those much anymore. ”

“You do get around just fine,” Fawkes said. He hesitantly placed a hand in the curve of her back, and she leaned into him a bit. It was still so incredibly new, so amazing, being able to do this. “In fact, well, like I said, I didn’t really notice at first.”

“I still can’t believe that. What were you looking at instead?”

Your eyes, your lips, your everything. “Your face,” Fawkes said, gazing down at it.

“Oh,” she whispered.

They kissed again, softer now, without the earlier fervent energy and with more of a gentle undertone to it. Leah played with the hair above his ear.

“Do you mind if we—don’t really do anything else yet?” she asked. “I think I’d like to walk a bit more. And do more of this, of course. But I’m also curious where this path goes.”

“Doing more of this and walking on this path with you sounds like a perfectly amazing afternoon.”

They set off again, but close together, and every now and then her hand brushed his. The path was wide enough in places to walk two abreast. Elsewhere, one or the other of them took the lead.

“So tell me about you,” Fawkes said. He felt giddy, overwhelmed with joy, still living on the intoxication of her kisses and her warmth and her nearness. “What do you like, what’s your favorite movie, where did you go to school—I don’t even know what you do for a living.”

“Didn’t I?”

“You just said it was gig work.”

“Oh, goodness. Well, I’m working in call centers right now.

I’d love to do theater full-time, but it’s a volunteer thing, not a job.

I wasn’t a good enough student to get scholarships to college, and in fact, I don’t really click with studying in general.

I like to use my hands. I’m still figuring out exactly what I want to do what. ”

They went on chatting about movies (she liked superheroes and comedies with animals), food (Leah unsurprisingly had a major sweet tooth) and family. She came from a mixed-religion household (Jewish mom, Protestant dad) but she said it hadn’t affected her upbringing all that much.