The Adversary by Thea Harrison
Chapter Twelve
Eva and the surrounding woods reappeared. The other woman had gone white. “You disappeared. What the righteous fuck just happened?”
The seraph’s realm was still too personal for Pia to talk about. Maybe someday, but not yet. She shapeshifted back into her human form and slung an arm around her best friend’s shoulders. “Never mind that for now. It’s a story I’m not yet ready to talk about. Eva, I am not merely done. I am really most sincerely done.”
Eva slipped an arm around her waist. “Okay, but you’ve got to tell me someday.”
Maybe she would, but maybe she wouldn’t. Occasionally some things happened that needed to remain private. As they walked back to the others, she asked, “Do you still have that pup tent you use when you go camping?”
“Of course.”
“Can I borrow it for a while, along with your bed roll?”
Eva squeezed her. “Anything you want, baby girl. Just ask, and it’s yours.”
When they reached the others, the avians changed into their Wyr form and took on passengers. Pia touched Dragos’s shoulder. “Are you okay for flying?”
His bleak expression lifted somewhat, and he nodded. Good enough.
Liam rode Rune, Eva settled behind Pia in her usual spot, Quentin and Bayne paired up, and this time Morgan hitched a ride on Graydon. They flew back to the settlement in a casual formation. Nobody pushed it. There wasn’t an emergency any longer. Dragos flew in silence, and Pia let him.
They each took turns landing in the clearing by Hell House and changing into their human forms. Mates reunited, hugging each other tightly, and people came up to Pia to hug her too. She patted Bel on the back, gave Carling a brief smile, and said to Eva, “Would you be so kind as to set up your pup tent and bed roll in some shade down at the beach?”
“Of course, right away.” Eva was beginning to look worried, but she loped off to do it.
“We have fresh food waiting inside,” Bel told her.
No doubt they did. Pia nodded, and the other woman seemed to take it as acknowledgment and turned her attention back to her mate, Graydon.
A few minutes later Pia slipped away and walked down the path to the beach where Eva was just finishing with the tent set up. The bed roll fit perfectly inside the pup tent. Pia touched Eva’s hand in thanks, crawled inside the tent, and pulled the flap down. Then she finally, finally let her body go prone. Finally let go of the interminably long, horrid day, and the relief was indescribable. Listening to the waves, she began to drift off.
She felt him approach rather than heard him. When Dragos wanted, he could move as silently as a cat. The tent flap lifted, and he looked inside. “What are you doing?”
“I live here now,” she told him. Her limbs felt weighted with lead.
He gave her a fierce frown. Liam peered over his shoulder, looking baffled and worried. Dragos said, “My shoulders don’t even fit in there.”
“I know.” A giant yawn cracked her jaw.
Dragos ordered, “You need to eat and drink. And you’re filthy—I know you’re exhausted, but you’ll feel better when you’re clean. Get your ass out here.”
She contemplated that for, oh, maybe a split second. “No.”
“Pia,” he said between his teeth.
“Don’t you ‘Pia’ me in that tone of voice, mister. I will not put foot inside that house again. I won’t eat or drink anything there, I will not shower, I will not rest there. I will not wear a single stitch of clothing from it, I will not use the toothpaste. I reject that experience entirely, and I don’t care if that doesn’t make sense to anybody else. All that matters is that it makes sense to me. And I’m so goddamn tired I could lie here and die.”
At those last words, his expression tightened. He put a hand on her head and stroked her hair. The hair she had left, anyway.
She continued, “So since we don’t have a house I can stand to be in any longer, this is my house now. If you don’t like it, go do something about it. You’re richer than Croesus.” Looking beyond him, she added to Liam, “And you can lift a million tons with your little finger.”
Reluctantly, one corner of Liam’s mouth notched up a fraction of an inch. “Maybe not a million tons.”
“You know what I mean.” She loved them both so much. But everybody had issues, and whatever was going on between them, they would have to work it out for themselves, because she couldn’t fix one more thing. Hopefully, they would take the prompt and work on the project together and get past what happened. If not… She closed her eyes again. Her voice wobbled as she told them, “I need to sleep, and I need my baby. That will be all for now. You may leave.”
A taut silence greeted that. She wasn’t surprised. She’d never behaved like this before. Then, Dragos said to someone, “Get her food and drink. Lots of calories, liquid, and fat.”
Someone raced off, probably Eva. Pia lay still, not caring.
He leaned into the pup tent as far as he could and pressed his lips to her mouth. “You’ll get your baby, and we’ll have a new place for you to stay by nightfall. I promise.”
She believed him. She fell asleep.
The next thing she knew, Eva was there, shaking her awake. Eva held a straw to her lips. “Don’t bitch at me. I don’t care how tired you are. Wake up and drink this.”
She sucked on the straw. It was a refreshing cold smoothie, filled with coconut milk, fruit, and greens. She got half of it down before falling asleep with the straw in her mouth.
Someone shook her awake again. She didn’t open her eyes. “What does a girl have to do to get a nap around here?”
Niniane said, “We have your hell baby.”
That made her eyes pop open. She reached out with hungry arms. Niall screamed at her. She gathered him close. “Oh, sweetness, I’m so sorry.”
Tearfully, Niniane told her, “We never let him cry it out. Someone was always available to lavish love on him, and when they couldn’t take it any longer, they handed him to someone else, and Hell Baby. Never. Shut. Up. He drank every drop of milk you sent, so I don’t think it was trauma, I really don’t. I just think he was really mad.”
“Are you my precious Hell Baby?” Pia crooned at him. Niall screamed louder. As she unbuttoned her bra, she told Niniane, “Thank you for everything.”
“You, and he, are so very welcome. But I gotta say, I’m really scared about having my own baby now.”
As she bared her breast, Niall latched onto her nipple, drew a couple sucks, then pulled away to yell wordlessly at her before latching on again. Both she and Niniane began to laugh.
Pia told the faerie, “Nothing could possibly be as bad as Hell Baby, so I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
Niniane slipped away, and after Niall finished feeding, he and Pia fell asleep. At some point a very warm dog wriggled into the tent. Skeeter alternated between putting his chin on Pia’s ankle and panting, and between the baby and the dog’s added warmth, she quickly grew clammy and uncomfortable, but she didn’t have the heart to send the dog out and nobody was taking her baby away again, so she curled onto her side and dealt with it.
When she next opened her eyes, she heard the sound of canvas ripping. Dragos lifted away the top of the tent. “You just ruined Eva’s pup tent.”
“I’ll get her another one.” He gathered her up, baby and all, and carried them down the beach. “We got your new house done. It’s very temporary.”
“I don’t care. I’m sure it will be wonderful.” She’d almost told him earlier she would be happy with a cave, but she hadn’t wanted to lower the bar too far. She looked around blearily. The heat of the day had eased, and the sky was filled with the brilliant colors of sunset. In the distance, she could hear drumming. “What’s that noise?”
“Some people decided they wanted to have a real beach party. No weird, dangerous ghosts invited.”
“Good for them.”
He had showered and shaved, and he wore a pair of khaki shorts. His short black hair was still wet, and he smelled so good it made her realize just how rank she was. “I’m so stinky you shouldn’t be touching me.”
“I will always want to touch you,” he told her. “No matter how stinky or cranky you get. If you want, I’ll roll in the mud with you.”
“Now, there’s true love.” She snuggled against his chest.
His arms tightened. “How’s the baby?”
“He’s perfect in every conceivable way, but he’s really mad. He might yell when he wakes up again.” She peeked at Niall’s tiny, exhausted face. “Hopefully he wore himself out and won’t wake up for a while.” After a moment, she asked, “How are you?”
He stopped walking to kiss her. “Better. I took Liam to a Wyr doctor, who confirmed his wings healed just fine. To be on the safe side, he still wants Liam to avoid flight for a few weeks. Then he and I got to work on your new place. It was—strange and difficult at first. I—” He stopped talking and the pause turned excruciating. Then, from the back of his throat, he forced out, “I killed him. I killed my own son.”
“Put me down,” she ordered.
His arms tightened jealously. “No.”
“Then look at me.” For a moment he resisted, then he met her gaze. The anguish in his eyes made her heart constrict with compassion. “You didn’t kill him. You saved him.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” he said carefully. “But my visceral experience says otherwise. I bit into his throat. His blood filled my mouth. He stopped breathing, and his soul left us, and he’s only back through the kindness of others.”
This was so difficult. It might be one of the most difficult things they had ever gone through, and they had gone through a lot together. She lay a hand against his cheek. “What did he say about it?”
“He said, ‘Thank you.’” Dragos gave her a bitter smile.
She breathed through that and let her gaze wander over the beautiful scenery. Then she said, “You know, sometimes, things don’t magically get better. Things happen, and we have to endure the experience, and then we need to leave them in the road where we found them and move forward. He loves you so much. He said ‘thank you’ because he’s grateful, and I am too, because you saved him. And I am so sorry that you had to pay the price by going through that experience. But I am so glad and grateful you are strong enough to take this hit and move on. You won’t let that monster hurt our family anymore.”
He closed his eyes and tilted his head down to her as he listened. “No, I won’t. He doesn’t get to do that to us.”
That was when she knew they had turned a corner, and things would be better now. Maybe not all at once, but day by day, moment by moment, they would be. Every happy experience they shared, every kiss, every holiday with family and friends, every sunset, and every joke took them further away from Senusret and made him irrelevant.
Dragos resumed walking. “Anyway, Liam and I ended up spending the day together as we worked on this. It was good. And word got around, then people started showing up with donations, and I hope you like what we came up with.”
She pressed a kiss to his collarbone. “I already told you. I know I’m going to love it.”
She was getting tired of being carried, but she thought he might be enjoying himself, so she put up with it. He rounded a bend, and then in front of them, a gigantic, magnificent tent came into view. It was different from anything she had ever seen before, with several peaks at the top. Warm light spilled out from a spacious opening.
“Oh…” she breathed as she took it in.
“It’s fashioned after a Bedouin tent,” he told her. “The roof is waterproof, and you can roll up the sides. It will be cool in the daytime, warm at night, and dry underneath. We have rug hangings to delineate rooms, and more rugs on the floor. People gave us furniture, and you have all kinds of new clothes. They were happy to help. They know what you did for them. If Senusret had been allowed to go unchecked, things would have gone very badly here.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Were you serious about the toothpaste?”
Toothpaste? What was he talking about? She drew her brows together, then remembered and gave him an abashed grin. “I’ve slept since then and am feeling a bit more sensible.”
“No need. We have new toothbrushes and toothpaste too. I was just curious.”
Finally at the edge of the tent, he set her on her feet, and she handed the sleeping baby over to him and walked forward wonderingly, staring at the Elven rug hangings and sophisticated Dark Fae furniture. There were couches, and a low table made of burnished wood with cushions set around it. It was every bit as spacious as Hell House had been, with room for guests.
“We’ve only got one bath area set up,” he told her, as he followed her. “And I’m afraid it’s a bit primitive. Liam constructed the shower—it took him a couple of hours. There are slats underneath that you can stand on so the water can run through, and wooden sides for privacy. There’s warm water.”
“How?”
“The Demonkind encampment had some solar heating camping bags they could spare. You fill the bags up, set them in the sun, and when the water’s warm, you can hang the bag on a hook and use a nozzle for a spray. Like I said, primitive, but effective.” He shook his head. “Technically it doesn’t follow the rules, since the bags are made of plastic, but since they already brought them in I decided we should make use of them.”
“I love it, I love all of it.” It was all completely different from the things that had furnished Hell House, new and even luxurious, and filled with a sense of their new community. Turning back to him, she beamed.
He smiled. “The guards are here too. I had them set up a ring of tents some distance away. But, we should be a bit quiet if we want to be private. If you want to cook something yourself, you’ll have to grill over an open fire, but otherwise we’ll have meals delivered. There’s food waiting for you in the ice chests.”
“I want all of it. Honestly…” She bit her lip as she confessed, “Hell House was wonderful. It really was, and so thoughtful, but I hope you don’t mind. I think I like this better.”
His smile deepened. “I think I like this better too. It will do very well for now. I enjoy the sound of the waves.”
“Me too. Okay, I have to get clean now.” She hesitated, looking at the baby.
“Go,” Dragos told her. “I’ve got him.”
She was still very tired, so she showered, washed her hair, and brushed her teeth with the spare economy of someone who wanted to go horizontal as soon as possible. She didn’t ache. The seraphim had been too generous for that. But she was looking forward to a good night’s sleep in Dragos’s arms.
After showering, she used two mirrors to check the back of her head. For something that was so painful, there actually wasn’t that much hair missing, just a chunk low in the back. She was pretty sure nobody would be able to see it when her hair was dry. And her hair grew fast.
She slipped on an oversized T-shirt meant to fit Dragos and in her new nightgown shimmied happily to the bedroom area. Rich patterned pillows and blankets covered a king-sized mattress.
Dragos lay stretched out, Niall resting on his chest. He rested with his eyes closed, but as she approached he opened his eyes and looked at her. He gave her a slow, sexy look. “Looking good, lover.”
Hop. Ta-da. Jazz hands.
Laughter suffused his expression. “Holy gods, I love you, woman.”
She fell to her knees at the edge of the bed and crawled toward him. “I might be kinda crazy about you too.” He lifted one muscled arm in invitation and she gladly cuddled against him. “I want to be on vacation. Can we just live in a tent by the water and be on vacation for a while?”
He exhaled slowly, eyes narrowed as he contemplated the roof of the tent. “Let’s negotiate. Define vacation. By the way, Liam’s going to stay for a couple of weeks until he can fly back to the crossover passageway on his own. He’s out enjoying the beach party now.”
“Yay for us, and good for him!” She bit back a yawn.
“And the sentinels stayed to help us for a couple of hours, more to socialize than anything else, but then they had to go back to New York. They said they had been gone long enough and to tell you they were sorry they didn’t stay to say goodbye.”
“Totally understandable. I heard them talking about reports and investigations. I’m sure we’ll see them again soon.” She yawned again. What would a vacation mean to Dragos? And how much could she wiggle out of this negotiation? “I want to go swimming with you, and I want to make love under the stars. I want to look up from a good novel and see you relaxing.” She rolled her head on his shoulder to look at his hard profile. “But I also don’t want you to feel trapped into doing nothing. Just—let’s have fun.”
What was she even trying to say? She pushed her lower lip out and pinched it with her fingers. Nation-building, managing different factions of the community, dealing with politics, breaking up the occasional fight between demesne representatives, building their permanent palace high over the water—all of that was fun to Dragos, and this whole land was his playground.
“Maybe I just miss you,” she confessed. “Maybe I want your whole attention on me for a little while. I guess I’m not over what happened.”
“Pia, it’s only been over for a minute. Of course, you’re not over it.” Moving carefully, he set the sleeping baby to the side. Then he rolled over onto her, pinning her with his weight, and laced his fingers through hers and looked deeply into her eyes. “I always miss you. I never stop thinking about you or wanting you. It doesn’t matter what else is happening. You’re always at the forefront of my mind. I never knew what loneliness was until you came into my life and taught me what it was like to love someone.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I can’t stand it when you go too far away.”
“I can’t stand it either.” He kissed her cheeks, her forehead, her mouth, her throat. “I hated that stupid little pup tent.”
A snort exploded out of her nose.
He gave her a lopsided smile. “But I do know now why you did it. Thank you for knocking Liam and me together.”
“Well, I didn’t know if it would work. And my shitfit was sincere.” She sniffed and raised her head to kiss his collarbone. “But you’re welcome.”
He stroked long, hard fingers down her torso and slipped them underneath the end of the T-shirt. He was a master of fire, raising it along her skin wherever he touched, and she gasped and arched as it pooled between her legs. “A week. Just you, just me, and the baby. And Liam whenever he wants to be with us. How does that sound?”
“It sounds heavenly,” she whispered. She let her fingers dance across his skin. “Late breakfast, cups of coffee in the shade.”
“Naps,” he said against her breast. “Very quiet naps, so no one else can hear….”
“Yes, please.”
“Morgan and Sidonie are going to stay for now. He and Graydon are going to supervise the excavation of the rest of the sinkholes, just to make sure there aren’t any other dangerous artifacts.”
“How lovely for them, but they need to leave our bedroom now,” she told him.
His chest moved in a chuckle. “I only meant that doesn’t need my attention.”
“Oh, I see! Well, then, I approve.” She slipped one hand between them and unbuttoned the waist of his khaki shorts. “What else do you want to tell me, my love? I want to hear everything you have to say. For years, and decades, and centuries upon centuries.”
“Everything I have to say will be I love you, just in different words and different languages, for the rest of our lives.”
Two “I love yous” in one night. That was quite a bonanza from Dragos, who didn’t say the actual words very often. Gleefully she hugged them tight.
“I am the richest, luckiest woman in the world,” she whispered.
Gently he parted her legs and pulled open his shorts. His beautiful cock spilled out, turgid and large. She took hold of it with both greedy hands, and he hissed. Then he eased inside her and they rested together that way for a while. Lowering his head, he breathed in her breath, exhaled into her mouth.
Sharing breath, sharing life. And when they moved together, it was the oldest, most primal, best dance in the world.
Everything was in motion. Nothing stayed the same.
She paid homage to it.
And how they danced.