for sex,” was Anyan’s only response. Then—to my utmost pleasure—the barghest gave me the softest, sweetest kiss on my lips before he turned around to attend to Gus.
Who exhibited not the slightest awareness I was hanging out, half naked, on Anyan’s railing. Bless.
CHAPTER TEN
Looks like a rock to me,” I said, as I kicked my boot against Gus’s boulder. In the bright morning light, Gus’s glade was lovely. Quiet and peaceful, when it wasn’t being attacked by Alfar purists, the boulder dominated the small open space surrounded by trees.
“Stop kicking it. It’s like his girlfriend, or something,” Iris chided, pulling me away by the elbow.
“It’s a rock,” I reminded her.
“Don’t judge. I’m schtupping a goat and you seem to be falling for Man’s Best Friend.”
I frowned, turning to where Anyan and Caleb were deep in conversation, also trying to figure out what secrets the huge hunk of stone in front of us could reveal. The four of us were trying to figure out where, and how, Gus’s rock could contain some kind of magical lock. Meanwhile, Nell and Trill were off, partly trying to track down Phaedra, but mostly working sentry duty to make sure the Alfar couldn’t enter our turf again.
“It is sort of humiliating,” I admitted to Iris about Anyan’s other identity. “I mean, he is a really big dog. But why a dog? Why can’t he be something more respectable… like a wolf. I could say, quite proudly, ‘I’m shagging a werewolf!’ Instead, I’ll say, ‘Yes, he’s a dog… but a great big dog! Really huge! And fierce! And he wubs it when you scratch his belly,’ ” I concluded, gently scratching at Iris’s tummy as I did so.
She laughed, wiggling away from my tickles. “Oooo, so you’re shagging, are you?”
I winced, realizing what I’d said too late. “Not exactly. But we’ve done our best. We keep getting interrupted… invading evil, and all.”
“It happens,” she said drily, carefully trying not to put too much emphasis on her words. I’d realized quite quickly that Iris didn’t want to dwell on what had happened to her. Yeah, it was an elephant in the room, but she wanted us all to act as normal as we could about that elephant. For her sake, we tried.
We both clammed up, giving the men a totally not talking about either of you stare as they walked in our direction and then past us to examine the other side of the rock.
“I gotta say, you and Caleb are pretty adorable together,” I whispered, once the coast was clear.
“Yeah,” she said and smiled, her eyes glowing gently as she hunkered close when the satyr and the barghest teamed up their magic and began blasting the rock with various probes. “He was totally unexpected. I sort of wondered if I’d ever feel like this again. Then, with what happened, I was pretty sure I never wanted to feel anything again. Till out of the blue Caleb showed up. And it was… it was like everything became new again.”
“Wow. That’s amazing,” I said, and she nodded, a small smile gracing her lips.
“And he’s hung like a yak,” I heard myself adding, much to my own horror.
“That helps, too,” she giggled, wrapping an arm around me. “Should we go see what the boys are up to?”
I nodded, and we strolled over to Anyan and Caleb, who were doing something that felt like trying to crack the boulder in two.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Iris hollered, racing over and standing up on her toes to flick both idiots in their earlobes. “What do you think you’re doing? That’s Gus’s rock. Think about his feelings if you turned it into playground pebbles.”
Both men stopped, looking at each other guiltily. Caleb shifted on his haunches, his hooves clomping nervously, and I wondered what it was like sleeping next to him. Talk about cold feet.
“So, no destroying the rock, yes?” Iris demanded. Both men nodded their heads, sheepishly.
“Good,” Iris continued. “So, what have you big dicks discovered?” We all looked at her, a bit shocked.
“Dick as in detectives, duh,” she said, rolling her eyes. Iris acted so young, and so contemporary, that is was easy to forget she’d been alive when people could still say “dick”—either for “Richard” or for “detectives”—without giggling. “What’s up with this rock?”
“Um, well, we’ve tried to strip it of any glamours, in case something’s written on it, but there don’t seem to be any. We’ve tried to probe it, to see if there’s something inside, but it seems solid,”