and hope upon hope that his vehicle was still parked nearby and not decorated with shaving cream or crepe streamers.
* * *
An hour later, Kir parked the Lexus—undecorated—in front of his house and led Bea inside. She leaped from the car, not wanting to touch any part of the steel frame, even after he’d suggested that nowadays human-manufactured vehicles were produced with less iron, and none of that was cold iron. Still, she’d been cautious and fearful.
He was already late for work, so he didn’t do the grand tour. He wanted to grab a clean shirt and head out. He needed to get away from Bea and orient himself to what had happened last night. So many things going on in his brain. He had a wife. He’d had sex with a witness watching last night. The sex had been awesome. Until the bite. A bite that he could no longer feel. His skin was healed. Would Jacques notice? Could he get in to see the doc this afternoon?
“You’re on your own today,” he said, striding down the hallway toward the laundry room. “Take a look around the place. I guess it’s your home now, too.”
“Peachy.” She stood in the hallway with arms crossed over the sheer dress that barely hung past her derriere. Barefoot, the markings on her feet drew his eye. “Get a new wife. Toss her in a little box and head back out to your normal life. I get it.”
He was not doing that. Okay, he was, in a manner. He’d have a talk with her later. Didn’t she understand that people needed to work to live and survive in this realm? If she was a faery princess, the concept may be foreign to her.
“I’ll leave my cell number on the kitchen counter if you have any questions. You know what cell phones are?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “It’s those stupid little boxes humans talk into when they don’t want to talk face-to-face. Duh.”
“Or when they can’t be face-to-face but just want to check in on each other.”
“Is there iron in them?”
“I— No. Very little iron, if any, in the house, too.”
“Fine, but rubbing against it burns like a mother.”
Touching iron wouldn’t kill a faery, but it would give them a nasty burn—he knew that much. And frequent contact with iron? Eventually it would bring their death. Kind of like what happened if he came in contact with silver. A nasty burn. And if it entered his bloodstream? Bye-bye, wolf.
“I’ll try to swing by on my afternoon break to see if you need anything,” he said, tugging on a clean shirt and buttoning it up.
“More sleep for me, less wolf. Peaches and cream, buddy. Peaches and cream.”
“Right.” Slapping a hand to his neck, Kir wasn’t so fond of the faery right now, either. Despite the satisfying sex. He headed down the hallway toward the front door. “I’ll see you later.”
“I hate you!” she called out from the kitchen.
“I hate you, too, Short Stick,” he answered.
A smirk lessened any vitriol he felt with that statement. He’d never hated a person in his life. Hate was not good for the soul. But extreme dislike felt damn good when it involved a bloodsucking faery who had no compunctions about taking a bite without asking first.
The wolf owned a lot of hair products in bottles that listed so many strange ingredients it made Bea’s eyes cross.
“Makes sense,” she said as her eyes wandered over the array of scented shampoos, conditioners, creams, potions and lotions lined up on a glass shelf in the huge walk-in shower. “The guy is a wolf. I wonder if his werewolf ever showers in here?”
She’d initially been shocked after Kir had shifted to werewolf form. Oh, she’d seen werewolves before and had known what they looked like fully shifted, but she’d never stood so close to one before. Or gazed upon his magnificent hard-on. Or, for that matter, touched said hard-on.
Giggling, she flipped on the shower stream, which blasted her from the walls and overhead.
“Yes!” She skipped about within the water, dancing, arms flung out and head back. “It’s like a rain shower. I could so get used to this.”
She unfurled her wings and let the water spill over them, which sent scintillating shivers along the wings and at the muscles and bones where they connected to her spine. She’d worn them out all the time in Faery yet had been warned that in the mortal realm it was not wise, even if she wore glamour.
She’d never been one to follow the rules. Like what was so wrong with biting your new husband if you hungered for a little sip?
Kir had really been angry with her. Justified, coming from a werewolf.
“Too bad,” she sang, opening her mouth to the water stream and spinning. “You’re stuck with me now, wolf. Deal with it!”
Because look at what she had to deal with: hair, hair and more hair. And a tail. And talons that had cut down her thigh when he’d tried to pry her fangs from his neck. She couldn’t blame him for hurting her. It had been a defensive reaction. And the cut had been shallow; it was already healed.
So now she had a shifter husband who— Okay, so he wasn’t ugly in werewolf form, just big and growly and noisy. He was also a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, from what she could divine. Not pleased to be her husband, that was for sure. Something about drawing the short stick.
Yet they had both given their all for the wedding-night sex. Again and again. And while the sex had been great, Bea wondered how long before the luster wore away and she’d be jonesing for a return to Faery. At least there she’d always been able to find a willing bite. And along with that bite had usually been some reasonably satisfying sex.
“Never going to happen.” She switched off the water and shook her wings vigorously. “I’m not going back!”
Because nothing could make her return to Faery, and the tyranny of her father’s reign over her. She was free. As free as she could be considering the mark on the back of her hand that bonded her to a wolf.
And now that she was here, she could begin her mission. To find the mother she had never known.
Jumping out of the shower, she performed a shiver of wings to flick away the wet, sending droplets across the walls and mirror. She twirled and leaned onto the vanity before the mirror. Eyeing the wet faery, she winked at her.
“Aren’t you a sexy chick? You know the wolf wants to eat you up. But he won’t because you’ve got fangs.”
She ran her tongue along one fang that descended to a pointy weapon. In Faery she’d been a pariah. Half-breeds were favored for strengthening and adding genetic powers and attributes to the sidhe lines. But vampires were shunned. Filthy longtooths. They were nothing but scum who liked to feed on faery ichor as their favorite drug. They were disliked almost as much as demons. A half-breed sidhe demon was labeled The Wicked and was the lowest of the low. So she did have that going for her.
“Not quite the dregs of the barrel, are you, Bea?”
She decided her father had had the affair with her mother for the reason she must have been forbidden fruit. Something lesser than Malrick. Dark and forbidden. He’d wanted to try her out. And he’d never let Bea forget that.
But in the mortal realm vampires must hold a certain status. Bea hoped so. Because she was done with the shame and ostracism. She wanted to shine, to grow and finally become the fierce woman with wings and fangs that had been stifled in Faery.
“So long as the hubby doesn’t get in my way, I’ll be golden.”
Winking at her reflection, she rummaged through the vanity drawer and found Kir’s comb. She hadn’t been allowed to bring any of her things to