Tinker opened her eyes and struggled awake. She lay on the warm, rough cement of the parking pad. Stormsong was doing a leisurely prowl in the alley. Pony knelt beside her, sheltering her from the sun. She groaned and rubbed at her eyes; they burned with unshed tears. "What is it?"
"You were having a nightmare."
She grunted and sat up, not wanting to fall back to sleep, perhaps to dream. Lately dreaming was a bitch. The oni had really force-fed her id some whoppers, not that her imagination really needed it, no thank you.
" Domi? " His dark eyes mirrored the concern in his murmured question. "Are you all right?"
"It was just a bad dream." She yawned so deep her face felt like it would split in half. "How can I sleep and wake up more tired?"
"You've only been asleep for a few minutes." He shifted so that he sat beside her. "Nor was it restful sleep."
"You're telling me." In her dreams, she hadn't been able to save him from being flayed of his tattoos. She leaned against his bare arm, his skin and tattoos wonderfully intact, glad for the opportunity to reassure herself without making a big deal of it. Just a nightmare.
He smelled wonderful. After weeks together, she knew his natural scent. He was wearing some kind of cologne, an enticing light musk. She felt the now familiar desire uncoil inside her. Gods, why did stress make her want to lick honey off his rock-hard abs? Was this some kind of weird primitive wiring - most of us are going off to be eaten by saber tooth tigers, so let's fuck like crazy before the gene pool lessens? Or was she uniquely screwed up?
Every night with Pony among the oni had been a torture of temptation. There had been only one bed and she had been stupid enough to insist that they share it. She would lay awake, desperately wanting to reach out to him-to be held-to be made love to-to be taken care of. She managed to resist because of a little voice that reminded her that she would swap Pony for Windwolf in heartbeat-that it was her husband she really wanted. There been no way to kick Pony out of the bed without admitting how much she wanted him, so he and her secret temptation stayed.
Even now she fought the urge to plant little kisses on his bicep. I'm a married woman. I'm married and I do love Windwolf. She couldn't even imagine being married to Pony, although she wasn't sure why - he was to-die-for cute. Unfortunately, she could imagine having hot sex with him. She sighed as her curiosity stirred to wonder what running her tongue up the curve of his arm would taste like. Now I've done it - it will eat me alive wondering…
" Domi, what is it?"
Embarrassment burned through her. "N-N-Nothing. I'm just tired. I haven't been sleeping well."
"Have you found what you needed?" He asked.
"No." She shook her head and yawned again. She saved her notes on the datapad and handed Esme's file to him. "Put this in the Rolls. I'll get back to work."
Luckily the information she was looking for was in the F's, under Flux Compression Generator. Huh? Normally compressing a magnetic field would generate more amperes of current than a lightning bolt and cause an electromagnetic pulse. What in hell was her grandfather thinking? But there was no mistaking the Reinhold floor layout, and the accompanying notes on the spell. With the folder, it should be fairly simple to recreate her grandfather's spell
She heard the scrape of boots on the cement behind her. The sekasha were probably bored to tears.
"This is what I was looking for." She got to her feet and brushed the dust from her skirt. She looked up and was startled to find the sekasha forming a wall of muscle between her and Nathan Czernowski. The sight of him put a tingle of nervousness through her. "Nathan? What are you doing here?"
"I saw the Rolls and figured that it had to be you."
"Yeah, it's me." She busied herself with the boxes as an excuse not to look at him, wondering why she felt so weird until she remembered where they'd left off. Last time she'd seen him, he - he - she didn't even want to assign a word to it.
Nathan had been like an older brother to her and Oilcan. He hung around the garage and scrap yard on his off hours, drinking beer with them, and shooting the breeze. On racing days, he acted as security for her pit. She knew all his sprawling family members, had attended their weddings and funerals and birthday parties. There wasn't another man in Pittsburgh that she would have let into her loft while she was dressed only in a towel. Nobody else she would have thought herself utterly safe with.
Then he'd held her down, tore off her towel, and tried to push into her.
In one terrifying second, he'd become a large, frightening stranger. She had never considered before how tall he was, how strong he was, or how easily he could do anything he wanted with her.
He hadn't actually done-it. He'd stopped. He seemed to be listening to her. She would never know if he actually would have gotten off her, and let her up, and gone back to the Nathan she knew because Pony had come to her rescue.
A day later she'd been snatched up by the Queen's Wyverns, dragged away to attend the royal court, and then kidnapped by the oni, where she witnessed true evil. She hadn't thought of Nathan once in all that time. She wasn't sure what she felt now.
"I heard about the monster-" Nathan started.
"You and all of Pittsburgh. I'm fine!"