and over me!, nearly did me in. Without thinking about it, I flung myself forward, wrapping my arms around his neck and holding him tightly.
“I’m okay, now,” I murmured into his ear, his coarse jaw rasping against my cheek. “And I’m here. I’m fine.”
Anyan’s only response was to hold me tightly, his huge hands warm and strong where they gripped my flesh.
It felt wonderful. I felt safe, protected, and cared for. Nevertheless, I’ve always been greedy.
I wanted more.
So I pulled back from Anyan, just enough so that my nose nuzzled against his gorgeously long schnoz, just as I’d fantasized about doing so many times.
“Bad puppy,” I murmured, my voice husky.
His hand on my hip pulled my pelvis in snugly against his, just as I leaned forward, my lips just brushing Anyan’s…
“If I knew it was going to be this kind of party, I’d have brought some towels,” came an oily voice from the crack in the cove walls, causing me to yank Anyan’s hair in surprise.
The barghest winced, and as I pulled away I growled, “Trill!”
“Don’t huff at me, Nell wanted you,” the kelpie chortled, as she stepped from the shadows. She was again in her pony form, and was prancing with mischief. Her pearlescent flesh glimmered in the moonlight. “How was I supposed to know Anyan was planning on jumping your bones the minute you woke up?”
“Leave them alone, Trill,” came Nell’s kindly voice from behind the kelpie. The little woman stepped up from behind the sea-pony. She didn’t seem at all discomfited by walking up on us practically in flagrante.
“We’re sorry to interrupt,” Nell said. “But everyone’s waiting for you at the Sty.”
I gave Trill the traitor a sharp look. She should have warned Nell that Anyan and I were, um, having a reunion. One with no clothes, at least on my part. Trill just gave me her horrible pony grin in response.
I gave her the finger.
“So if you’re finished, we can get over there,” Nell said, levitating my clothes a bit closer to where I straddled the barghest. Then the gnome looked Anyan full in the face, giving him her sweetest, most heartfelt grandma smile.
“We won’t tell anyone we caught you jumping Jane’s bones.”
CHAPTER FIVE
As I walked through the door of the Sty, I was hit with the familiar smell of the bar: beer and burgers, mixed together with a faint undertone of Pine-Sol. And there, around the large, square bar that jutted out onto the edge of the Sow’s small dance floor, sat all of my Rockabill chums. They were clustered around Tracy—she and Grizzie were taller than any of my supernatural friends—and not paying any mind to the front door.
Nell and Trill, blanketed under the gnome’s heaviest glamour, walked toward our group. For some reason, Trill had a hard time glamouring herself, especially if she interacted with humans at all. I think it was a concentration issue. So for the very, very occasional times she was away from her own kind, she kept her pony shape and let Nell glamour her to look like a wolfhound. If I let my gaze unfocus, I could see the large dog’s shape padding over the clopping form of our little kelpie.
Before following Nell and Trill, I moved over to Anyan’s side, peering up at him speculatively. I wasn’t so slow that I didn’t realize there was something happening between us, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t opposed to reassurance. After all, the last thing I remembered was that Anyan and I had been just a possibility. And while Anyan had had a month to think past those stumbling first steps—and leap all the way to bone-jumping, the ambitious sod—I was still lurking in a corner of square one.
The barghest, as if sensing my insecurities, reached out to cradle my jaw in his warm, dry palm. His skin was rough against my soft cheek, but that just turned me on even more.
“You have no idea how happy I am to see you upright,” Anyan’s low voice growled. Then he leaned in to kiss my forehead, before moving his lips to my ear. What he whispered next made my poor, overtaxed libido nearly faint: “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to want you flat on your back again as soon as possible.”
His teeth nipped my ear and I whimpered, a million Anyan-related fantasies suddenly swarming through my brain like overstimulated honey bees. When I didn’t budge, my gaze turning inward to enjoy my own naughty thoughts, he chuckled before