Elfhome

33: HIT BY AN ARROW

Tommy was so screwed. Strange he didn’t see it coming.

He should have known when they fell asleep locked together and he noticed that she fit perfectly to him. He should have realized it when she woke him up by sliding down onto him and he had to smile at her look of fierce determination. All day he had little warning signs as they scrambled up and down hills, across streams and marshes, dodging lone oni scouts here and killing them there. He missed the subtle evidence.

So he’d been completely clueless when she stopped on a ridge, cast a spell and then murmured, “We’re safe here, for now.” She made a slight noise of protest as he pulled her into his arms that ended with a laugh smothered by his lips.

“Insatiable,” she groaned as he kissed his way down her neck. Judging by the way she clung tight to him, it wasn’t a complaint.

Whoever invented dresses had ready access in mind.

After the quick hard fuck, she nuzzled into his neck and murmured, “You say you don’t belong to the viceroy. Were his terms so bad that you rejected his offer?”

He growled and pushed her away. “I’m done with having masters.”

She gave him a puzzled look and then understanding flooded her face, followed by exasperation. “Oh! I see. He has done it again.”

“Done what?”

“Wolf Who Rules has a way of expecting you to trust blindly. To leap at his command, with no reassurance there is a safe landing beyond. For those who love him dearly, I suppose that is enough. Those of us, though, who don’t love him enough. .”

Apparently the viceroy had a thing for small, dusky females with a temper. “You didn’t.”

“No. I didn’t.” She tugged and shimmied her breasts back into her bodice.

“Forming a household in a clan is not enslavement any more than starting a business. It is, in fact, one and the same.”

“Not the way Windwolf explains it.”

“He may be beautiful, intelligent, rich, blessed with two esva—”

Tommy kissed her to stop her from going on about the male elf.

“But he does not kiss nearly as well as you,” she murmured. “And he fails at speaking his heart plainly.”

“He had no tender words for you?”

She laughed. “It is the plain words I want, not the tender ones. The humans call him a prince, and they are not far from the truth. His mother was sister to the king, and his father is the head of the Wind Clan. I, on the other hand. .” She pulled the hem of her skirt down over her hips and tried to smooth it with her hands. “My parents oversaw three small holdings that made glue and shoes from animals unfit for eating. I spent my childhood with blood-soaked slaughter yards, the omnipresent stench of the curing pits, death, rotting flesh, and the constant struggle to make enough money to eat. I loathed it. I didn’t want to live forever in that hell.”

“You didn’t trust him to keep you safe?”

“No.” Jewel laughed, held out her hands, and turned in a full circle. “And look how well I’ve done on my own.”

“They could have gone after Tinker just as easy as you.”

“Grab any bitch and breed her? No, this wasn’t a simpleminded act of war. This was betrayal at the deepest level. Earth Son’s First has been guarding over children that the Wind Clan believes were lured here by someone in the Stone Clan. I decided to go through his things and see if they’re right. Two days ago, I discovered he used a camouflage spell to hide a spell-locked chest within a closet. I spent hours trying to get the damned thing open and failed. I was going to ask the Wind Clan domi for help.”

Tommy remembered the massive destruction at the enclave and guessed the fate of the locked chest. “The oni warriors blew it up when they took you?”

“I’m just a distraction from the truth.”

She looked so distraught that he put out his hand, but she had already turned away.

He reached and caught her braid and gave it a playful tug. “Hey—”

She cried out and flinched away from him.

“You said not to grab your arms,” he snapped and then realized it wasn’t him that she was reacting to. She jerked the braid out of his hand and stared at it with loathing and horror.

“They caught me by my hair. If I’d stayed free of them a minute more, I could have summoned my magic. But they caught me by my hair. They pulled me back and pinned my arms and made me helpless. There was nothing I could do but watch as they killed my people!”

She pulled out her oni gutting knife and started to hack ruthlessly at her hair.

Seductive elves, Tommy had no experience in. Females battered to pieces by the oni, he knew too well. She needed to vent the anger. He mourned the loss of her beautiful hair, but it would grow back. He watched only for a more permanent cut. Her hair fell around her in long, silky locks. When her hair was cropped close to her skull, she tried to cut it shorter and he caught her hand, taking the knife from her. He’d learned that there was nothing he could say to make things right. Wordlessly, he took her in his arms and did the best he could to comfort her while keeping her safe from herself.

And it was then that he realized he was screwed.

He’d broken the cardinal rule. He forgot to disengage the heart when engaging the dick. He cared for her. Shit! What a stupid twelve-year-old mistake. The last thing he needed was to go all gooey over an elf.

“I should have never come to Pittsburgh.” She cried into his shoulder as he railed silently at himself. “I cast my lot nae hae ago, when Wolf brought me to the Westernlands and his household was living in tents and there was nothing but trees. I didn’t trust him then. I didn’t believe he could carve prosperous holdings out of the wilderness.”

And of course, because Tommy was thinking with the wrong head, he was happy that she hadn’t trusted the male, that it was his shoulder that she was crying on.

“All I could see was ruin,” she wailed. “So I put distance between us and left him to fail alone.”

That was what Tommy needed to do. He couldn’t afford to be softhearted over any female, especially an elf. Of course, there was the annoying problem that he needed to deliver her alive and well to Prince True Flame.

“I should have lived with my failure.” Jewel Tear sobbed and clung tighter to him. “But everything was unraveling and word came that his child bride had been taken and might be dead. I thought if I was here when they found her body—”

He kissed her to silence her. He didn’t want to hear how she planned to win Windwolf back. He didn’t want to think of her in bed with the male — true stupidity to feel jealous — to feel anything. Still, he couldn’t help holding her and soothing her and feeling like an idiot for wanting to protect her.

She calmed down enough to realize that they really didn’t have time to screw around anymore. When she pulled out of his arms, it felt like something tore inside of him because he knew he would have to keep her at arm’s length from then on. It made him angry that it hurt — angry at himself and at her and at the elves and the stupid oni.

Spot tugged at Tommy’s shirt and pointed upward.

A gossamer swam on the horizon, the bulk of its giant body just a shimmer of light. Its passage was marked by the massive gondola gliding underneath it like a black needle threading through the blue.

Jewel Tear gasped. “It’s one of ours.”

Ours. Like he was an elf, too. But she didn’t sound any more happy about it than he did.

“And that’s bad?”

“I don’t know how many of my clan are working with the oni.”