She watched him over the lip of her gla.s.s as she took another drink. He was so s.e.xy. Her wolf rumbled in agreement. Her teeth tingled again, the urge to sink her fangs into his neck rising fast and hard. He took the gla.s.s from her and set it on the small table next to the bed then, before she could blink, she was in his arms and his mouth was on hers. Her hands gripped his shoulders as he angled his head and deepened their kiss. His tongue danced against hers, sliding into her mouth like he was f.u.c.king her and not kissing her. Her hips tilted in invitation, and he ground his erection against her.

Leaving her mouth, he kissed down her neck with a light growl, his teeth nipping her flesh and making her nerve-endings go haywire. She grabbed the bottom of his shirt, pulled it free from the confines of his pants, and shoved it upward, anxious to feel his skin under her fingers. He lifted from her neck for only long enough to pull the shirt over his head then he growled again, his eyes flashing from green to red.

"You, too." His voice was gravelly.

She couldn't take her eyes off him as she lifted the tunic over her head and dropped it to the floor. His hands curled into fists, and his knuckles turned white. "Get in bed, ch.e.l.le," he demanded with a harsh whisper. His voice cascaded over her, rippling down her spine like a caress.

She turned to the bed and jerked the covers back. Something hissed. She looked down at the mattress and screamed as a black-scaled snake lunged at her, jaws wide and fangs gleaming.

Crimson pushed her out of the way as a sword appeared in his hand. He swung the sword down, and the snake's head dropped to the floor with a wet thud, the jaws still working. The body writhed on the bed as olive-colored blood spurted from the wound, and Lindy covered her nose with her hand as an acrid scent filled the room.

Crimson used his free hand to pull the covers away completely, but the snake appeared to be alone. He took in a deep breath and cracked his neck, and when he looked at her, she could see that his eyes were completely red. "Are you all right?"

"Scared out of my mind, but yeah. What is that thing?"

"A maw-serpent." He speared the head with his sword and dropped it next to the body before the sword disappeared from his hand. The creature was several feet long, and the head was the size of her fist. He gathered the creature in the covers and went into the bathroom. She heard him say something under his breath, and then she smelled something burning. She peeked into the bathroom and saw that he'd put the covers in the tub, setting them on fire with his fae power.

He lifted his hands, and the flames turned from orange to blue, the radiant heat so great that she had to retreat into the bedroom. Warily, she looked at the bed. She could have climbed under the covers without pulling them back and would have put her feet right on that nightmarish creature.

Crimson came out of the bathroom and said, "It's gone completely."

She couldn't take her eyes off the bed. Crimson turned her until she was looking at him. "I scented with my beast, and there are no other maw-serpents, or any other creatures, in the bedroom. It's perfectly safe."

She wanted to believe him, but the image of the snake lunging at her was burned into her brain.

"Do those things come inside houses often?"

"They're not even from this area."

Something about the look in his eyes told her he had a good idea of how that creepy thing wound up in his bed. "Tell me."

With only a heartbeat of hesitation, he told her about the she-fairy named Giwyn who had been angry when he kicked her out of bed.

"They're not poisonous, but they will ruin your day. Their fangs emit a paralyzing toxin that lasts for several hours." He shook his head. "I can't imagine her being angry enough to do that, and at any rate, no one knows we've mated, so it was directed at me."

"Your friends do, and those women with them at the hot springs."

"Oh." His brow furrowed. Then he shook his head. "I'll cast a protection spell around the house to make sure no one else can get into the house except you and me."

She agreed that it was a good idea. Then she said, "How did you do that sword thing?"

He smiled. "I manifested it."

"That was pretty awesome."

"Yeah?" His chest puffed up a bit with pride, and she grinned as she nodded.

"Can you do me a favor?" She looked up into his eyes.

"Anything."

"Would it be okay if we didn't sleep in the bedroom tonight?"

The humor faded from his eyes quickly, replaced by gentle concern. Stroking his thumb down her cheek, he said, "I don't have another bed, but we can sleep on the sofa."

He kissed her.

"Thank you."

"You don't have to thank me for making you happy or keeping you safe. I nearly blew it. I won't take your safety for granted again."

He swung her up into his arms and carried her into the front room, depositing her on the comfortable sofa before walking back into the bedroom. A few minutes later, he returned with their drinks, and they sat together on the sofa, talking until their stomachs rumbled for dinner.

Even though they'd been interrupted and the mood had been shattered, she was glad to have the chance to get to know more about him. She just hoped no more snakes made any bedroom appearances and that the psycho fairy who'd planted the thing in the bed would take a hint and leave them alone.

Chapter 12.

After casting the protection spell over his home, he fixed dinner for Lindy then portal-called Riyad. "A maw-serpent? Man, that Giwyn is one vindictive b.i.t.c.h."

"No kidding. I don't know for sure it was her, but my instincts tell me that it was. Would you do me a favor?"

"Name it."

"I put a spell on the house, but I was hoping you'd be willing to keep tabs on Giwyn for a few days."

Riyad rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah, it'll be a real hardship to spy on a beautiful redhead."

Crimson hadn't thought she was all that pretty, but Riyad had a thing for redheads. "She may have put a maw-serpent in my bed. You really want to tangle with her?"

"Maybe she's just crazy from not enough s.e.x. It happens, you know." Riyad shrugged.

"Your funeral. And thanks."

"I'll keep you posted. Go take care of your mate. I got this covered."

The call ended, and he turned to look at Lindy who was standing at the back door, looking out into the yard. He desperately wanted to go back to when they were about to make love. His body was still humming from the kiss and the way her body had smelled when she was aroused. But he wasn't going to make love to her for the first time on the sofa. It just didn't feel right. No, his sweetheart deserved to be treated like a queen, and that meant not taking advantage of things and really making her feel cared for.

He joined her at the door, placing his hands on her hips. "Are you looking at the scenery or thinking?"

"A bit of both, I guess." After a short pause she said, "It's really beautiful here. It's like my realm, but without the modern touches. Instead of power lines crisscrossing the skies, tall buildings, and traffic noises, there are enormous trees, houses carved from stone, and birds and small animals chattering away."

"Our realms are very different," he mused, not only to her but also to himself.

She looked up at him. "Could you be happy away from here? If we would choose to live in my realm?"

Before she had come into his life, he wouldn't have been happy anywhere but where he was. Now, however, nothing was as important to him as making her happy and being with her, and where they chose to live wasn't as important as the fact that they would be together.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Wherever you are is going to be home for me, Lindy. It's as simple as that. If we decide to live here or there, then it's a decision we'll arrive at together. And nothing has to be set in stone. Your realm is a portal-call away."

She looked back over the yard. "Will your parents be okay with you mating a Were from the Mortal Realm?"

That reminded him that he hadn't shared his history with her yet. And he would. In the morning.

"My father already knew that I was spelling for you, and I told him what happened after I found you. He'll like you because you're my mate and that makes you part of our family. My mother doesn't know about you yet because she's off on a spa trip."

He felt her body tense slightly, and he frowned, drawing her closer. "My mother would have liked for me to mate with a she-fairy of high status among our people because she's very interested in bettering her own station. She never asked me what I wanted, though."

He turned her to face him and captured her hands with his. "If she had asked me, I would have told her that I wanted to find the one woman who's perfect for me and that it didn't matter a bit whether she was fae or human or any other type of supernatural creature."

Lindy smiled. "I believe my mom will be happy I've found someone. She's spent her whole life looking for her truemate."

He was glad she was so confident in her mother's reaction to their mating. It hadn't occurred to him that her family might not like him because he was worried about how his mother would react. It really didn't matter if her mother didn't like him, or his mother didn't like her, because they were truemates, and that meant forever.

He smiled. "It's been a long day. Ready for bed?"

Her eyes darted to the sofa, and she smiled. "Yep."

Normally one to sleep nude, he chose to take off only his shirt and remain in his leather trousers. They weren't the most comfortable pants, but he didn't want her to see how turned on he was just being in her presence. She might want to touch him, and he might want to let her, and then his plans to romance and seduce her would go flying out the window as he pinned her to the sofa and had his way with her. Not that it would be a bad thing, necessarily, because his wolf was howling that it was a very excellent thing. But it wasn't romantic. He wanted to show his mate he would respect her in every way and that he was different from any other males she'd known.

He settled on his back on the hide-covered sofa and put his head on a pillow. She stretched out next to him, and he pulled her close so her head rested on his shoulder. After saying goodnight, he willed the lights off and fell asleep.

By the time Lindy woke in the morning, he had showered and dressed, picked flowers from the garden, placed them in a vase on the kitchen table, and prepared a ca.s.serole of cerion eggs, goat cheese, and pash meat. She sat up from the sofa with a yawn, stretching her arms up. Sleeping with her in his arms for the second night had been amazing. He'd never slept so peacefully.

After kissing her good morning, he sent her off to shower while the ca.s.serole cooked and he set the table.

She came into the kitchen a while later with her pretty blonde hair tied back in a braid and wearing a white dress with yellow flowers on it. She looked fresh and lovely, and pride filled him at her beauty.

After pulling her chair out and tucking her close to the table, he served her a wedge of ca.s.serole and fresh juice then sat down across from her. All morning while he prepared the meal for her, he had been thinking about his life and what he was going to share with her. He'd never told anyone everything about himself before. His friends and family knew him well, but no one knew all of his secrets. He was glad to be sharing his life with Lindy and that she would be the only woman to know every part of him.

As they ate, he began to tell her about his life. Crimson's real father - his biological father - was a werewolf from the Mortal Realm who had fallen in love with his mother when they were both quite young. She became pregnant, and before they could be mated officially, he had been killed by hunters on the full moon.

"My biological father was best friends with a fae named Desmin. At the time, the fae council had a liaison office in the Mortal Realm, and that's where my biological father and Desmin became close. They both loved my mom, and when my biological father died, Desmin stepped in to support my mom and claimed me as his own. I know he's not my biological father, but he's the only one I've ever known."

When he was born, his eyes had been red, which is what prompted his parents to name him Crimson. His eyes faded to green within a month, but they didn't realize that the red eyes were an indication that he was a wulfen. Most fae learned how to control their wings when they were between the ages of five and eight. He was three when he first made his wings unfurl from his back, and his parents took it as a sign that he was going to be a strong fae-warrior for his people. His training had begun early, and he learned how to fight and handle many weapons from the best teachers in the realm. As he grew older, he began to grow restless.

"I always felt like something was wrong with me. I wanted to race into the woods and hunt with my bare hands. I wanted to yell at the sky when the moon was full. And I was so h.o.r.n.y on the nights of the full moon when I was a teenager that I got a reputation for being a vauslav."

"Vauslav?" she asked.

"I think you would say I was a player."

She nodded in understanding. "You just wanted s.e.x."

"Yeah. I didn't understand at the time, but I believe now that the reason I never wanted any long-term relationships was because the females weren't my truemate. When I was sixteen, I shifted into my wolf form for the first time, and it was the singularly most terrifying thing that ever happened to me. I thought I was dying. I was with my best friend, Riyad, and we were hanging out at the hot springs. It was a full moon, and we were entertaining some she-fairies and hoping to score." His cheeks blushed as he said the words, but she'd been open with him, and he was going to be open with her, too. "Then my joints started to crack, and my skin p.r.i.c.kled like needles were trying to push through my flesh. The first shift took hours, and I screamed myself hoa.r.s.e. Riyad called for a healer to come help me, and he recognized immediately that I was a wulfen and trying to shift. He told me not to fight it, but I was so scared that I couldn't relax and let the change come."

She reached across the table and clasped his hand. "Even growing up with wolves, the first time is traumatic. It got better after that?"

He nodded. "I was still a nervous wreck the next month, but it was easier. Wulfen are legendary among my people."

Desmin was a decorated veteran in the fae military and served for many years. Even before Crimson shifted for the first time, he knew he would follow in his father's footsteps. He joined the military at seventeen and quickly rose up through the ranks because of his training. The military considered it a boon that they had a wulfen in their midst.

"This is the Fae Realm, but that doesn't mean that everyone within this realm is fae. The military handles everything from full-scale wars to private matters the way your human police force would. One day I might be handling a robbery in the market and the next day I might be clashing swords with a wizard. There are shifters here that aren't like anything in your realm, and just like in your realm, there are evil people who want to do harm for their own personal gain."

She stroked her thumb across the top of his hand. "I grew up hearing stories about tiny little fairies who hid in flowers and made clothes out of leaves. Your world is nothing like I believed."

He was certain that was true of most people from her realm. He continued on in his life's story, telling her about his mother's insistence that he spend time with high-bred females and go to all the parties. She'd hoped he would want to settle down with a female who came from a family that would get her access to a world she'd not had access to because her family, and his father's family, were not part of the wealthy elite.

When their meal was done and the dishes washed and put away, he continued his story as they walked toward the center of town. He hadn't really realized how dissatisfied he'd been with his life a just going through the motions a until she'd come into it. Just two days with her and already he felt more alive, and definitely happier.

They came to the center of town, and he showed her the tavern where he and the other members of the military came to unwind, the market where vendors hocked their food and wares, and the courthouse where civil and criminal matters were handled.

She held his hand tightly as they walked. They pa.s.sed many fae along the way, with everyone greeting her warmly, and he could see she was relieved. He could tell she wanted to be accepted in his world, and he could admit to feeling the same concern when he considered being in her world. He wanted her friends and pack to accept him, too.

"Do you have prison here?" she asked when he took her into one of the glen's public gardens. Towering flinks flowers waved gently in the breeze, their honey-like scent filling the air.

She sat down on a marble bench, and he joined her. "We do. Our judicial system is not all that different from the Mortal Realm's courts. Here, trials are presided over by fae judges, and sentences for crimes vary from monetary fines to community service to imprisonment."

"Ever been in trouble?" she asked, looking at him out of the corner of her eye with a mischievous smile.

He hummed in his throat. "When I was twelve, Riyad and I thought it would be fun to sneak onto a grent farm. They're hens that have silky bright blue feathers. Some girls from school said that if we would bring them the feathers, they would spend time with us."

Lindy chuckled.

He continued, "Anyway, what we didn't know was that while grents look very docile they've actually got really sharp beaks and spikes along their clawed feet. And they're extremely protective of their eggs. Riyad and I thought the grents were sleeping, but when we touched their long tail feathers, they attacked us. Suffice it to say we barely made it out of their coop with our bodies intact."

She laughed and said, "Did you at least get feathers to give to the girls?"

He shook his head. "We're lucky we didn't lose any fingers. And it turns out that Riyad is really allergic to grent feathers, and he had to see a healer to stop from sneezing constantly."

"So you had to see a judge?"

"Yes. The grents were so stressed out that a few of them died, and the farmer did a location spell to find out who had broken into the coop. We had to publically apologize to the farmer, fix the door of the coop that we'd broken, clean up the mess we made, and pay to replace the grents that died."

"Wow. I bet you never did anything like that again."

"True. My dad was very understanding and just wanted me to learn from my mistake, but my mother was horrified the prank would somehow reflect poorly on her mothering abilities."

He said the words lightly, but suddenly he didn't feel so pleased to be sharing that story. Yes, it was funny, but at the moment, it just reminded him of how worried his mother had always been about her social standing.

"Hey," she said softly, turning his chin with her fingers. "If your mother isn't proud of you, then she's blind. I've never met anyone like you before, Crimson. You're brave and strong. You're gorgeous and funny and kind."