- FIVE
Cece
The second I put pressure on my feet, both the pain from the cuts and the soreness of my muscles objected to the strain, my legs all but turning to Jell-O beneath me and I felt myself falling.
But then the next second, I wasn't. Jasper's strong fingers dug into my hips and hauled me upward, plastering the whole of my front against his front and the contact was enough to completely knock the wind out of me.
Everything about him was firm and strong against my soft and weak.
And my body reacted. My breasts swelled; my belly flipped; my sex clenched a little too deliciously seeing as I really had no interest in Jasper that way whatsoever, save for the moment of blinding insanity that made me a little turned on when I slept on him the night before.
"What is it with you two and all the cuddling?" Doyle's amused voice asked, appearing out of nowhere.
It was just the sobering thing I needed to stop me before I went full-on crazy and leaned into Jasper's body.
I wrenched away from him too quickly, stumbling back against Onyx who looked up at me curiously.
Swiveling, I found Doyle, shirt off, displaying a glorious eyeful of muscular masculine perfection.
And... nothing. Literally nothing. No breast swelling; no belly flipping; no sex-clenching.
Nothing. Which made absolutely no sense seeing as I actually liked Doyle and he was hot. But he did nothing for me.
He was stepping up the bank down to the stream, which had been getting consistently deeper as we followed it, water trickling down his body as if he had washed up.
The envy I felt was almost overwhelming.
Every inch of me was sticky and dirty and disgusting and there was more than a slight chance that I might have actually started to smell at that point.
"You can take a swim if you want," Jasper said and, if I wasn't mistaken, he sounded amused, having likely 'overheard' my thoughts about stinking. Great. That was wonderful.
"You don't want me in the water," I reminded him as I looked at the cold little stream as if it was the most luxurious soaking tub I had ever seen in my life.
"Oh, the water fae are harmless. Charming, really," Doyle chimed in with a big, boyish smile.
Jasper gave him a hard look that Doyle shrugged at then moved several purposeful steps away from me. "Fine, you stay with her then. I'll take a swim upstream." With that, he took off to do just that.
With him gone, I hobbled awkwardly toward the water and sat down and started carefully unwrapping my feet. "So he told you," Doyle said, dropping down beside me, smelling both clean and masculine.
"Yeah."
"Jade told me that she knew as soon as you called her. Which is weird. She doesn't usually take to changelings so easily."
"You make us sound like second class citizens," I grumbled.
"Hey, what is Jade's skill or... whatever?
" I asked, knowing Jasper didn't seem to like to talk about that kind of thing.
I had been trying to rack my brain to figure it out for most of the day, but I couldn't place anything that had seemed supernatural or overly perceptive or anything about her.
"Jade is a gemstone for love mostly," he said, his voice almost a little guarded as he looked off.
"That makes perfect sense." I nodded. It did. She was so easy to love, so loving herself. As I watched Doyle's profile, I thought how incredibly sad it was that her skill didn't seem to work in her own love life.
"They look a lot better," Doyle said, gesturing toward my feet.
"Yeah, that yarrow is a miracle worker."
"So are you going in or what?" Doyle asked, looking like he might push me in if I didn't go willingly.
"That bad, huh?"
"Yep," he said, giving me a huge white-toothed smile.
I laughed, shoving my shoulder into his, then lowering myself down into the water.
The cold was a welcome shock to my system, moving over my skin like pinpricks at first, then rinsing away the dirt and sweat in a way that made me sigh.
I moved over to where the stream got deeper, moving onto my back to float so the water could rinse some of the grease out of my hair.
I wished fleetingly for shampoo, but told myself not to get greedy.
A few silent moments later, I felt a weird tingling sensation on my head and reached up to dislodge what I thought was a twig or something. And then my hand was slapped away. Meaning, by another hand.
I shrieked, dropping down onto my butt and swinging to find two impossibly small female fae in the water looking mostly human except they were half my size with the delicate bone structure of birds and skin that was almost bluish in tone.
Oh, and not to mention their hair which was a weird stringy texture and a vivid green.
"Doyle?" I called, my voice slightly hysterical, knowing Jasper warned me to especially steer clear of water fae.
"They're water sprites," he called casually from the bank.
"That's not exactly helpful," I said, inching backward as the held out their hands toward me.
"They want to wash your hair," he explained unexpectedly and I turned to look over at him, brow raised like he had lost his mind.
"Seriously. They like your hair. It's not like theirs.
They're harmless, I promise. Lie back and relax.
It will make them happy and they'll use some shit in your hair that will clean it and make it smell amazing. "
I looked back at the sprites, both trying to reach for my hair.
One of them smiled a little encouragingly and I figured, what the hell.
I floated onto my back and turned my head toward them, eyes open, half-paranoid that they might try to bash my head in with a rock.
But they squealed delightedly and started running their long fingers into the strands, then slathering something on as well.
"Did they wash your hair too?" I asked as Doyle watched.
"Not those ones, but yeah."
An image of Jasper flashed into my mind, naked from the waist up, the pretty little creatures tending to his hair like they were tending to mine and a swirling, uncomfortable, unreasonable rush of jealousy moved through me at the idea.
I squashed the feeling, and the reasons behind it, down and closed my eyes, sinking into the sensations as the sprites worked their magic.
It seemed to go on forever until I felt water being poured over my head. And then nothing. I opened my eyes and turned to find them looking at me, smiling. "Oh," I stumbled, not sure what to say. "That was really great. Than..."
"No," Jasper's voiced snapped, making me and both the sprites start.
"What?" I snapped back, a little surly. He was always so friggen rude.
"You can't thank a fae for anything, Cece," he said, sounding like an exasperated teacher talking to a particularly dense student.
"They will think you owe them. And, trust me, you don't want to owe any fae, no matter how harmless they may look, anything.
Just tell them it was most kind of them and get the fuck out of the water. "
I sighed at him and turned back to the sprites, both watching me with wary eyes. I gave them a genuine smile and did what I was told. "That was most kind of you." With that, they smiled and turned away.
Regrettably, I got out of the water, dripping everywhere and wishing for a towel. Jasper was beside the bank with three hollowed-out butternut squashes. "We need to move away from the stream," he explained, his words guarded.
"We're almost there, aren't we?" I asked, seeing the tension in his body.
"Yes. But we are only going to walk for another hour or so then stop, get some food, get some rest. We will head in before the sun comes up and hopefully get out without anyone seeing or sensing us."
I turned to the sound of Doyle's voice, low, sweet, and realized he was squatted next to the water and flirting with the sprites.
I looked over at Jasper with a bemused smile and he just shook his head.
"Where the hell did your dog go?" he asked suddenly and I looked around, realizing for the first time that Onyx was, indeed, gone.
"Maybe he went to get some food?" I suggested, stomach feeling a little wobbly at the idea that he had taken off and I would have to continue on foot again.
"He took off snarling just before you showed up," Doyle explained, walking back toward us. "Had his hackles up about something. I'm sure he'll be back. She isn't safe yet."
With that, Jasper nodded as Doyle took the canteens to the stream to fill them. "Do you think you can walk for a bit?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, knowing he could sense the lie, but also knowing he was going to let it slide because he was anxious to keep our time frame.
"Okay. Not far, alright? And we can stop if it's too much and wait for Onyx."
Was he actually being... considerate? "It doesn't matter. However far we need to go, I can handle it."
Except that was entirely untrue.
We had maybe been walking fifteen minutes, each step like a stabbing through my feet and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out, when Jasper turned suddenly and stalked toward me.
"No," I said, trying to go back a step as he reached for me.
"Shut up," he said, but the words were soft as he scooped me up and started walking again. "We are about to go up a steep hill. It's hard to scale with good feet. You can barely walk. So just be quiet and let yourself be carried for a while."
With that, and knowing he was every bit as stubborn as me, if not worse, I tried to settle into his arms without thinking about it too much. Without thinking about how one of his hands was right...
No.
Okay. I needed a blank mind with his freaky emotion-sensing thing. I had always been crap at meditation, but I figured there was no time like the present to try to learn a new skill.