“This is where the teenagers come to hook up,” Alder whispered at my neck, sliding one thumb across my collarbone. I shivered, realizing that despite the cool ocean water, Alder felt burning hot to the touch.
I was drawn to him. Under his spell,completely.
He was dangerous, dark, complicated, and everything I knew would be best to avoid.
“It drives me insane to see you with men like him.” Alder’s gravelly voice grounded me.
“Why?”
“Sins of the flesh are only playing with baser needs. I can be that for you. I am that andmore.I tried to do what was best for you, tried to keep my distance while keeping you safe too, but you’re not safe with yourself, Fable. The lies you tell yourself to sleep at night are more dangerous than any truths reality could reveal. You want enchantment? I can enchant and charm, dear Fable. I can appeal to your heart’s darkest desires better than he ever could.”
“I don’t want charm. I want truth,” I blurted.
He laughed wryly. “Then you’re cursed. Foolish and cursed.” His lips caressed the skin beneath my ear. He traced circles at my waist with his fingers until he slipped my dress down my shoulders. His fingers were hot as they crawled over my skin, his lips lingering at the edge of my collarbone before he planted kisses in a stream along my throat.
I was swallowed up by him.
Fear evaporated in favor of carnal desire. The hold he had on me was as real as a live wire, and resisting wasn’t an option. He sank his fingers between the hot folds of my skin, soaked in salty wetness. His strokes brought me to swift and frightening waves of pleasure that threatened my hold on reality. My knees began to quake as release sucked me under, the hot touch of his skin against the cool rock at my back like two sides of a coin, like dark and light coming together to make something new. A split from our separate existence into a newly united reality.
With every breath, I was drowning in him.
Fable
Iwoke up in a cold sweat.
My hair soaked the hard pillows beneath my head. I pressed my hands down the front of my sleep dress, alarmed to find the tie missing and my body slick with a fine layer of dried salt.Sea salt.I slipped my fingers down my bare thigh, pressing my own thumb into a perfectly shaped thumbprint bruise where the top of my leg met my hip.
The sleepy memory of Alder’s wet lips trailing across my collarbone came back to me. His hands burning paths around my flesh, the tingle the bite of his teeth left when he nipped at the sensitive bud between my thighs.
I trembled, pushing a hand through my hair as I thought about how vivid that dream had been. I was coming to resent the hold he held over my subconscious, but the dreams themselves felt so real and charged with energy that I’d secretly become addicted to the feeling they left me with.
I stumbled to the bathroom across the hall from my bedroom and washed my face. Before I flipped off the light, I dipped my nightdress down in the back and turned to see the reflection of my back and shoulders in the mirror. Angry red scratches covered my upper torso; another thumbprint was positioned above my left cheek. Dark stains from a night spent wandering the seashore decorated the hem of my nightdress.
Had it all been real?
Every fevered kiss? My fall into the ocean waves? Alder’s heroic rescue,again?
Tears burned at my eyelids as I wondered if I was descending into utter madness to believe such a story had even a shred of truth to it. So then why when I walked did a slow ache throb through my core like I’d spent all night making love? Frustrated with my inability to make sense of my dreams and reality, I cut the lights in the bathroom and returned to my bedroom. Late-morning light streamed through the windows, and I stood for a few long moments watching Keats cut the tall grass at the edge of the graveyard with an old-fashioned scythe.
Everything at Leith felt frozen in time, right down to the hunched and stumbling caretaker. My eyes slipped along the rocky crags of the loch in the distance, the tiny white thatched house of Alder’s displaying a single plume of smoke from the blackened chimney. Something in me ached to see him, to look for evidence of our night together in his eyes. I thought about locking the doors of Leith with myself inside. Removing myself from Alder’s burning gaze might help restore some of my sanity.
I pressed my lips together, annoyed that my day was starting later than usual, as I discarded the nightdress and slipped new panties and a clean bra over my form. I worked quickly, eager to dig into some of the other books in the library and then maybe after lunch take a wash bucket and soap to the graveyard to try to clean some of the headstones.
By the time I was settling myself into the library downstairs, my eyes were already heavy with the effort. I patted the old wolfhounds on the head, and only one even seemed aware of my presence before he set his muzzle on my lap when I began to read. I first returned toThe Fairy Loverstory, eager to read the conclusion of the three children who were separated after an innocent mistake in the woods led the youngest brother near to death. Before I could read on, rain coated the windows outside as dark clouds hung over the loch and Leith. My eyelids burned with the effort to continue, my breaths already growing deep and measured before I finally dropped the book on my chest and allowed sleep to overtake me. I only half slept, aware of the big dog curled at my left hip and the soft pattering of rain on the eaves. The wind swirled like a tempest outside, driving the fat drops at the windows down in angry rivulets.
I vaguely recalled the shuffling of Keats, admonishing the dogs for sleeping on the couches and then lighting a fire in the old stone fireplace opposite the grandfather clock that never chimed.
I woke late in the afternoon, groggy and only vaguely aware that the storm outside had grown worse since I’d last realized it was still raining. I stretched, letting my eyes flicker across the room now draped in dusty shadow as the dark clouds rumbled over Leith. I yawned, wishing I could will myself the energy to continue my research. Instead, I set the book on the table. I was about to curl deeper into the pillow, but a small shadow caught my eye from the corner.
The warm scent of spiced apples and pipe smoke filled the room, causing one of the dogs to wake up, glance around, and then leave altogether. It wasn’t long before his companion followed, and I was left alone with what felt like the very real presence of something otherworldly.
“Who are you?” I breathed aloud.
Silence was the only reply. I focused on the shadows and licks of orange and red that were cast by the fireplace. I wished for Keats’s telltale shuffle to break up the sense of loneliness that took root in the pit of my stomach.
I could die on this couch, and it might take days or longer for Keats to find me. A shiver singed my spine when a large orange ember leaped out of the fireplace and began to burn a bright hole in the worn rug.
I jumped off the couch, yanking my sweatshirt over my shoulders and smothering the embers with it. My favorite sweatshirt, a tattered crimson Harvard crewneck of my dad’s that I’d been wearing to bed at night since I was twelve. It made me feel closer to home, and now it would probably have a giant burn hole through the soft cotton. I glanced around the room on the off chance a pot of water stood nearby for an occasion just like this. Instead, I found a vase of wild flowers with some water left in the bottom. I tossed the flowers on the floor and then quickly removed my sweatshirt and doused the burn spot with the rest of the water. It smoldered and sizzled briefly and then died.
