Luck of the Draw: Magic and Mayhem Universe (Lucky Magic) Read online

  “Oh, no. I can’t. I’m sorry.” Unlike Michael, she actually sounded remorseful.

  “He’s really sorry, which he would tell you if I could convince him to call. But I think he doesn’t want to, ah, bother you.”

  Annabeth snorted. “You mean he doesn’t want to risk something worse happening, like maybe removal of his crown jewels or perhaps shrinkage. Men are so funny about that.”

  Yes, yes they were. And I didn’t particularly want Don to suffer any “shrinkage,” especially if it meant what I thought it meant. And she wasn’t wrong about him being concerned that she’d zap him again. I couldn’t exactly agree, though, since I was trying to make Don look good here. I did a little conversational zigzag instead. “Is there anything I can say to convince you?”

  “Oh, no. You’ve misunderstood. It’s not that I don’t want to help. I can’t help. I haven’t the first clue how I bronzed Don. Well, other than that he really, really ticked me off. Oh, and also made me panic a teensy bit.”

  Don had really done a good job with his whole image make-over. Too bad he hadn’t let his fiancée, the woman he was supposed to marry, in on the secret. I could strangle him. I popped down on the ground, because my knees were starting to protest my prolonged crouch.

  If he had been honest with Annabeth, would I be here now, hanging out with a handsome hottie from hell? Nope. And maybe that would be really sad, to miss out on meeting Don. He was turning out to be pretty cool. And I felt the need to speak to that particular point. “He’s actually pretty cool. You know, sweet, in a linebacker-meets-teddy-bear kinda way.”

  Annabeth chuckled. “I’m glad you think so. You mentioned his ‘faux’-evil and menacing persona.”

  “You caught that, huh?” I blinked at the shoes that rounded the corner of the car. Don’s shoes. Uh-oh.

  “Yeah, I caught that,” she replied. “A few days ago, I ran into a friendly underworld acquaintance who heard something from someone who said they knew the ‘real’ story about that guy that Don beat up over a girl, that he hadn’t actually laid a finger on the guy. That the supposed beating was actually delivered by a peevish kangaroo, and the guy was so embarrassed that he lied. Anyway, you know how underworld gossip can be—everyone is in everyone’s business—but I’m starting to wonder if that isn’t the only not-quite-true story. What do you think, Kayla?”

  As she’d been speaking, my gaze had traveled from Don’s shoes, up to his jeans-clad, muscular legs, past his crotch (without any lingering, thank you very much), to his flat stomach, broad chest, gorgeously muscled shoulders, and then to his strong neck. I stopped there. If he was angry with me, I didn’t want to see it.

  Gaze firmly fixed on Don’s neck, I said, “Yeah, I could maybe be convinced that idea has some merit. Yep. Could be.”

  “Ha!” She sniggered. “You’ve been busted!”

  “That’s quite possible,” I replied. There had been way too much amusement on Annabeth’s side of this conversation. She wasn’t at all what I’d pictured a vengeful demon to be. She seemed...nice. But she wasn’t nearly as remorseful as she should be. The poor man had been pooped on by flying rats! Not cool.

  When her laughter died down, she said, “You claim you didn’t know you had magic. Figure out where your magic comes from and you should have a hint as to how you bent Don’s bronzing curse. I bet if you can figure out how you bent it, you can break it.”

  “Humph.” All this effort—snagging his phone, sneaking out, dealing with the ex’s new boyfriend, begging for a scrap of Annabeth’s attention—and that was what I got? Go figure out where my magic comes from? Seriously?

  “Sorry, sweetie. If I could do anything, I would. Well, not right this instant, but definitely in the next few weeks. Tell Don I’m sorry I bronzed him? Well, a little bit sorry. He was being a massive pain in the butt at the time.”

  And that made me laugh, and it also made me forget that I didn’t want to get a glimpse of Don’s possibly angry, possibly disappointed face.

  When our gazes met, I found that he looked neither angry nor disappointed. Mildly amused, but that was all. He rolled his eyes. “She’s not forgiven, and I wasn’t being that big of a pain.”

  Annabeth laughed, wished me luck, and ended the call.

  I stared at the phone. Dang it. There went the only solid option we had.

  Don stretched his hand out. “Come on.”

  I smacked his phone against his palm.

  He pocketed it quickly and offered his hand again. “Come on. Take my hand. You and I are taking a trip to Faery. We’re going to hunt down your grandmother.”

  When I didn’t take his hand—because no, no way. I wasn’t going to Faery. Where the heck was Faery? Bad things happened there, right?—he grasped my fingers and pulled me to my feet without my cooperation.

  “That sounds like a really bad idea.” But he just tugged me along, ignoring my protests. “Like, really, really bad. I hear nothing good happens there.”

  That stopped him. “And where did you hear these rumors?” His eyes had a much-too-amused crinkle about them. Also, his very large hand was clasped around my fingers, making me feel all girly and flustered. He had perfect hands: warm but not hot, dry but not rough, firmly masculine but not crushing.

  “Wait, what was the question?”

  The crinkle around his eyes deepened and then spread. Soon he was grinning like I’d just told the most amusing story ever. “We were discussing the fact that fairytales and myths weren’t always an accurate representation of the magical world we live in.”

  I grumbled, complained about his use of “we,” and generally came across as a grump, but I also squeezed his hand and followed him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The closet in my tiny cabin was—wait for it—tiny. Imagine that. Why would I care, you might ask? Because that was how one traveled to Faery.

  Eyeballing the mop bucket, broom, and vacuum, which was all there was room for, I didn’t see how we’d both fit. “Can’t you go first, and I’ll just hop through after?” I gave him my flinty, suspicious glare. The same one I used on my little sister’s high school boyfriends.

  Don laughed. “You think you look scary, but that just makes you look adorable.”

  “Oh.” I dropped the flinty look. “That’s disappointing. Wait a second. I know it works. I cowed half a dozen teenage boys and two misbehaving work colleagues with this look.”

  He shrugged. “I find it adorable.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t really have a good response to that. That was really sweet. It was kinda like being told (genuinely) you looked like a million bucks rolling out of bed in the morning, when you knew you had puffy eyes, rat-tails in your hair, and sheet lines marking your cheek. I shook my head, “Okay, so how does this work?”

  “I can’t open it and have you follow, because everyone opens their own door to Faery.”

  “But I can’t open a door.” I raised my eyebrows. “Because I don’t know anything about how my magic works...which is why we’re going to Faery. Oh, Lord. This is the chicken-egg thing. I hate that question. It reeks of deep thought and philosophical pondering.”

  Don rolled his lips together, very obviously trying not to grin.

  I patted his shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re allowed to laugh at that one.”

  He refrained. Instead...he kissed me.

  Yep. Right there. In front of the mop bucket, the broom, and the vacuum. My guy was all sorts of romantic.

  Wait...my guy?

  But the press of his lips on mine, warm and soft but still firm—I know, I know, that makes no sense, just trust me—it was all kinds of wonderful.

  And tingly.

  He tipped his head, and I tipped mine, because closer was good. I felt the silky strands of his short hair beneath my fingers. At some point I’d wrapped my arms around him, though I didn’t remember making the decision. A necessity, since he was so dang tall.

  I opened my mouth to ask if this really was a good idea. Absolutely that
was what I’d planned. Most definitely. But then there were tongues, his, mine, tangled together, sliding...

  There may have been groping.

  As in, me groping him.

  As in, him groping me.

  There may have been climbing.

  Me climbing him, naturally.

  And so much lovely kissing.

  I kissed his strong neck right where his pulse fluttered madly. I kissed his sharp jaw line, reveling in the abrasion of his stubble against my lips. I kissed his collarbone, because why not? Everything about Don was sexy, including and most definitely not limited to his collarbones.

  And Don definitely kissed me.

  In a lot of places.

  Enough said.

  He cleared his throat, and I leaned my head back to look into his eyes. “We’re here.”

  “What-huh?” I blinked against the bright light. My brain was muzzy and kiss-clouded, but even half drowned in lust, I couldn’t miss the fact that we weren’t in the broom closet. In fact, I didn’t even remember entering the teensy space.

  And right about the time I realized we were in the woods, some woods somewhere, I also realized I’d climbed my guy like a tree and had my legs wrapped around his waist.

  Not that I didn’t have a bit of help. Don’s manly man hands were definitely helping to hold me there.

  He lowered me to the ground, and since my arms were twined behind his neck, I couldn’t help but feel all the muscles. So many muscles.

  “You’re so strong.”

  Okay, if you’re envisioning at this point a swoony, weak-kneed, trembly-voiced woman, I have to tell you...you’re exactly right. That was me. For the first time in my entire life. I’d had the snark kissed right out of me. That just goes to show how completely awesome those kisses were, because the spiky parts of my personality were pretty deeply embedded.

  Once my feet hit the ground, Don ran his hands up and down my arms and peered into my eyes as if he was looking inside my head. “Thank you. Are you okay?”

  “What? Yes. Of course I’m okay.” I stood a little taller, mostly to be sure I could stand without wobbling on my swoony legs. “I’m fine. Uh, how did we get to Faery?”

  That was where we had to be. The air shimmered. The light had a gorgeous, translucent quality that seemed to make everything sharper without being brighter. The smells were intoxicating. In short, everything in this little wooded glade was more. More beautiful, more intense, more real.

  Kinda strange, because I’d always pictured Faery as a misty, ethereal place. Not that I’d fantasized about Faery or anything. Why would I? What was Faery to me except some distant place...where my biological grandmother lived?

  Don hadn’t answered my question about how we’d arrived, so I turned my wandering attention back to him. His eyes burned. (No, not literally. Just because he was a demon—come on, now.) Passion, intense interest, something lit them up. He crushed his lips to mine.

  The kiss was brief, fierce, and incredibly erotic. Strange. Only our lips touched, and yet it was more intimate than the touchy, grabby (and completely yummy) kisses in the broom closet.

  Once he’d stepped very deliberately away from me, he reached down and smoothed my hair away from my face. “Each person opens their own door to Faery, but each door also leads to a different destination. So I needed us to open one together.”

  Wait a sec. Was he saying he kissed me to open a single-destination gateway? Whaaat? Although, even if our kiss had started that way, no one could fake that kind of steam. We were combustible together.

  “Did you just use me for my body?” I arched an eyebrow at him.

  But my joke went astray, and he paled. “No. No, definitely not. That’s not what happened. You’re just so...” He motioned toward my body, his gaze stuttering over all the important parts, thank you very much. “And also, so...” He clenched his fingers in the universally acknowledged symbol for “so frustrating I want to choke you.” But then his hands lowered, his eyes softened, and he sighed. “You’re lovely.”

  Wow. He’d just told me that I was hot, challenging, and wonderful. I mean...wow.

  After considering my options, I realized there was really only one. I grinned at him and said, “Ditto.”

  Perhaps this wasn’t the most romantic of gestures, but heck, my guy had made out with me for the first time in a cleaning cupboard, so I figured I had a little leeway in the romance department.

  But neither of us had much time to consider both of our woefully underwhelming declarations and the out-of-proportion happiness they’d elicited in each of us, because some evil wench went and ruined the moment.

  “You’re trespassing,” Ms. Queen of Bad Timing said. “I should have you beheaded.”

  Riiight. Except when I turned to give her a piece of my mind, I found a woman who looked not only to be as pissed off as a beheading-happy queen, but I also discovered she was wielding a wicked-large sword.

  “Or I could simply take care of it myself right now.” She offered this last piece of news with a viciously cold smile.

  If this was Faery, Faery sucked.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Don stepped away and slightly in front of me. “Abaddon, Prince of Darkness and Destruction, bids you good day.”

  The nasty, sword-wielding wench sniffed. As in, she scented the air like a hound. “Demon. Humph. Your sort does like to assume the designation of royalty at the drop of a hat. What’s your claim to the title?”

  Very calmly, as if he’d not been insulted, and very firmly, as if he didn’t have a worry in the world, Don replied, “Master of a million minions, ruler of one-fifth of hell’s lands.”

  “Hm.” As the ruiner of my most romantic memory to date considered Don’s reply, I considered her. Don’s protective bodyguard stance limited my view, so I had to lean to see her well.

  Her appearance didn’t match my initial impression of her age. She looked young. Her black, glossy hair didn’t have a strand of grey, though she could have dyed it. Her flawless, pale skin didn’t have a wrinkle. Red lips, curvy figure—whoa, she was kinda hot in a scary way. The scary was probably the sword. Her unnaturally bright blue eyes met mine.

  Oddly, she was the one to break what had become an awkward stare-fest. She planted the tip of her sword in the ground and leaned on it. How did she keep her weaponry all beheading-sharp if she was treating it like that? Maybe magic.

  “Why are you here, Prince of Hell?” Her voice was tired, not nearly as demanding or queenly as before.

  Very quietly, he replied, “You know why we’re here.”

  Wait—she did?

  Did Don have a history with this curvalicious babe? I jabbed him in the ribs and muttered, “This better not be one of your exes.”

  Maybe it was sweet of him to be tapping his resources to help me, but I’d rather he not be tapping resources he’d...tapped.

  Queenly wench threw back her head and laughed. The long white column of her throat looked pretty kissable to me. Speaking of kissable, her lips were this insane berry color, like she was wearing lipstick, except she totally wasn’t. And her hair was cascading in gorgeous waves down her back.

  Yeah, she really better not be an ex. I had a decent amount of self-confidence, and my self-worth was pretty high...but she was seriously sexy.

  Don shifted uncomfortably, which drew my gaze. If he looked horny, I’d kill him. But he didn’t. He looked miserable.

  And then, for some reason, he grasped my hand and held it tight. Like I needed some kind of comforting.

  Sometimes I was a little slow on the uptake. This woman was unearthly in her beauty, and she was really young. I clung to those excuses. Otherwise, surely I would have seen the similarities. The heart-shaped face. The pointy chin. The exotically tilted eyes.

  My face. My chin. My eyes.

  I let out a whopper of a curse word.

  At least that shut up the babe who had been laughing like a hyena. Unfair, actually. Her laugh was just as beautiful as the rest
of her. I just didn’t like being the butt of the joke.

  “Grandmother,” I said, meeting eyes that held surprisingly little humor for a woman who’d been in throws of excessive laughter moments before. “How...diverting to meet you.”

  It was the best I could do.

  Apparently it was better than she could manage, because she repeated, “Why are you here?”

  No abandoned grandchild expects hugs, cookies, and tears of joy when reunited with the abandoner. That didn’t make it any less sad that I didn’t get those things.

  “Maybe we should leave, Don. This doesn’t seem like such a great idea.”

  Don didn’t have a chance to respond, because my grandmother—sexy beast with the flowing locks and the large sword—appeared in front us and said, “Answer or lose your heads.”

  She even lifted the thing menacingly.

  Small problem. I saw the similarities now. Between her and me. Yeah, shocking given her otherworldliness, but it was definitely there. And my grandmother was full o’ bluff at the moment. I was pretty sure.

  Sure enough to push the flat of her sword to point away from Don and me. “Do you have any manners? Were you raised by wolves?”

  My mother and my real grandma would be appalled at the woman’s behavior. Sure, I was prickly, but I tried not to be outright rude. And you wouldn’t catch me shoving swords in people’s faces.

  Jamming her poor, abused sword into the soil with what looked like very little effort, she said, “Close. I was raised by Fae.” At my questioning look, she rolled her eyes. “Faeries.”

  “Right.” Man was I lucky that Grandpa Tom and Grandma won the coin toss for my mother. If this is was how Fae treated family, no thanks.

  She crossed her arms. “If I tack on a ‘please,’ will you tell me what the blazes you’re doing in Faery? It’s not a particularly safe place.”

  “Hey!” I shot Don an accusatory look. He’d made my concerns sound silly.