Page 32 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Ida

The Morning After—critical to establishment of a fidelity bond, the couple may engage in an initial pulling away from each other as they grapple with their feelings about what has occurred. It is critical they come together again after this initial “running away from their feelings.”

Instruct hotel staff to deliver breakfast to the room quietly. Include red roses and strawberries for love, cream and honey for home and hearth. Hot tea.

Magic and Mischief—A Thousand Years of Happily-Ever-After: A Memoir

Ida North

On no account should the Morning After ever involve a woman waking up in a man’s arms with his morning breath stinking in her face and feel like she wants to laugh at him, yell at him, and make love to him all at once.

But that’s exactly how Ida woke up, and the urge to make love was unpleasantly strong.

Maybe it was because Hector had indeed been “pressed” and what had pressed out was highly respectable.

Maybe it was because sleeping tangled up in his arms had caused a series of vivid dreams in which she was waltzing in her castle with the most beautiful man in the world.

He had expressive eyes of purest green and long black hair.

When he danced, he moved so divinely that roses bloomed, sending their heady fragrance washing over her.

Like so many erotic dreams, this one ended with her lying on satin sheets in her own garden, with him naked and easing into her, his kiss burning her lips, the sound of his breath in her ears, and the heartbreak of waking, wet, ready, and empty.

Hector lay curled, one arm draped over her, the other thrown up on the pillow above her head, fingers resting somewhere around the vicinity of her right ear.

His eyelashes fluttered, and his mouth moved softly.

In a sleepy way, he asked Tinbit for a watering can.

In his dreams, the clearly heartless Hector West was working in his garden, oblivious to the intoxicatingly suggestive effects of love magic running wild, the lucky asshole.

Trapped against his chest, legs tangled in his, Ida thought about every Morning After spell she’d concocted for toast and tea to deal with all the angst from baring one’s body to another.

How ridiculous. Waking up after sharing a bed with the worst man in the world didn’t make her feel one jot angsty.

Instead, she felt oddly comforted and the scent of sweet, dark roses bloomed in her mind.

With a soft sigh, Hector muttered something unintelligible, then sighed, pulling her closer, a smile on his lips.

This happy feeling was magically induced, certainly, but right now she found she didn’t care. He was warm, and she snuggled into his arms, and gazed around the room, feeling less disgusted than before.

To her great surprise, the balky fire had burned down in the fireplace; the salamander’s pot glowed with life but not heat.

Hari and Tinbit lay curled up together on the mattress on the floor, with Hari’s blanket thrown over them, their hands in front of their faces, fingers locked together on the single pillow they shared.

Shit. She wriggled, struggling to get out of the trench.

“Mm—Tinbit?” Hector jerked awake in a few sharp twists. He looked surprised to see her so close to him, and his arm, which had been happily engaged in petting her, froze.

“He’s with Hari,” she whispered.

“Ah,” Hector said. He regarded her for a moment, then took his hand from her back and touched the dried-up corner of his mouth and a patch of sticky beard. “Well, it was cold last night. Tinbit probably wanted to be sure Hari stayed warm.”

“It’s still cold.”

With a grunt, Hector shifted to get out of the trench, but he didn’t throw the covers off.

Instead, he pushed them gently around her while he got out of bed, with a soft creaking and snapping of joints.

He shuffled across the room and picked up the fireplace poker.

He stirred the coals, squatted slowly, and fed the fire a few pine sticks and bits of cedar wood.

A warm resinous smell filled the room. He added a handful of sweetgrass to the salamander’s pot, quietly asking if they would like a pine knot as well, and handed it to them.

The happy feeling shuddered over Ida again as Hector, shivering, returned to the bed and eased back in, careful to keep his icy feet off her.

“I don’t mind,” she said generously, setting her feet on top of his. “You should wear wool socks like me.”

He settled on his back until the bed forced him next to her again. “Be warm soon.”

“Hector? Put your arms around me. I’m cold.”

He obliged and shivered against her as she snuggled next to him.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had anyone in my bed,” she said, speaking quietly so the salamander would not hear.

“That surprises me.”

“Way to call me unprofessional.” She snorted.

“I didn’t mean it like that! You were a very attractive woman—I mean, you are a very attractive woman, and I—”

She giggled. How on earth did he deal with dragons if he always spoke his mind without considering how it might sound? And why did she suddenly find that charming? She patted his cheek. “And you’re an attractive man. I’ve no doubt you’ve had a paramour or two in your centuries.”

Hector twisted a fold of her nightdress between his fingers. “I never…I never took one,” he said. “I considered it when I was younger. But I didn’t think I could keep an emotional distance.”

“You didn’t destroy your heart soon enough,” she said.

His mouth twisted in a thoughtful expression. “I did it when it seemed right to me, as I’m sure you did with yours.”

She pressed her ear against his utterly silent chest. “Yes, of course I did,” she said quietly. “But there are still times when, if I’m honest, it might be nice to wake up with someone who mattered, to share the warmth and then a good breakfast.”

“You should get a dog,” he said.

She laughed outright. “You are lying in bed with a very attractive woman who says she finds you pleasant to wake up with, and you tell her to get a dog.”

He blinked, and the gray fringe brought out the intensity of his green eyes in the shadows of the covers. “I’d be frankly envious of that dog.”

She touched his cheek gently. “Would you?”

“We should get up. I need to order breakfast—it won’t be good, I’m afraid—and get my coachman out of his coffin box to harness the horses.” But he didn’t move.

Neither did she. The room was still and quiet, and he was so warm and comforting. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. His hand trembled as he touched her breast.

“Ida?” Her whispered name was soft and gentle on his lips.

She gulped. “Hector?” All she had to do was guide his fingers over her nipples. She wanted to. The dream throbbed in her mind, and the cleft in the bed was deep enough that should he take her quietly from the top, no one would even see the covers move.

A snap of a pine knot breaking, and the fire crackled.

“You’re right. We’d better get up.” She shoved his hand away, crawled out of bed, and fled to the bathroom.

***

There was no hot tea. Belinda came knocking a half hour later and delivered a pan of greasy meat gravy, a few hardtack biscuits, and something that might pass for coffee, if one was drunk. By then, Ida had composed herself.

Clearly, she wasn’t as immune as she’d hoped to be.

But it didn’t matter. In a few days, all this would be over and she could go back to her regular schedule of hating Hector and hexing him by mail, not wishing that the distance between them could be like that bed instead of the wide gulf dividing good and evil.

She’d have to remember it existed the next time she faced him alone again, which hopefully wouldn’t be soon.

Tinbit and Hector were gone. Cear, in salamander form, sat on the edge of their firepot, preening their bright coal-red skin with a delicate orange-colored tongue.

Large eyes as blue as the deepest part of a fire gazed at Ida reflectively for a moment, and blinked.

Hari sat on the couch, wrapped in a blanket.

“Did Tinbit go with Hector to see to the coach?” Ida picked apart one of the biscuits, searching in vain for butter or lard to make it more palatable.

“A few minutes ago,” Hari said.

“Are you feeling better?”

Hari made a sound like a sob crossed with a laugh.

“In myself, yes. In my heart, no. It hurts. It hurts to look at him, to know he doesn’t feel that way about me now.

I didn’t mean to sleep with him last night, but I was cold, and he heard my teeth chattering and asked.

I’m sorry.” He stared at his hands, shamefaced.

She wanted to pull her neatly coifed hair out by the roots. “He was simply being kind, Hari.”

“I know. It’s not him I’m apologizing for. It’s me. I couldn’t lie beside him and not want more. I didn’t touch him, Ida, but I wanted to. And I wanted him to touch me. I can’t forget the way his whole body trembled when we made love, like I was the one thing he most wanted in the world.”

“You’ll make yourself sick dwelling on that,” Ida said. “Don’t.”

“I’m trying not to,” he said. “Tell me when this is over, we’ll go home right away. I can’t stand to be near him and not have him.”

“We will.”

Not only for Hari did she promise. If she spent much more time with Hector, she’d be as unhappy as her gnome, torn between the professional hatred she had to maintain and the feeling that, if it wasn’t there, every other barrier would melt away like wax to his flame.