No, don’t think so. I think being here was a big-ass accident. A good accident,” she said hastily when his forehead creased again. “But it was nothing I did on purpose. Um—what next?”
“You will come with me to my home. I wish my father and brothers to meet you.”
“Oh. Okay, then. Doesn’t exactly sound like a request, though,” she added in a mumble.
He rose in one fluid movement while she gaped in admiration, then extended his hand. It was almost twice as big as hers, and she wasn’t exactly a shrimp.
She put her hand in his and let him pull her to a standing position. She sensed that he could have tossed her thirty feet if he wanted to. She tried not to stare below his waist, but couldn’t resist peeking. He was long, thick, and semierect, which was flattering.
As if reading her mind, he looked down into her face and said matter-of-factly, “You are extremely beautiful.”
She laughed at him. She hadn’t meant to, but it was an absurd comment. She was built like a fire hydrant—dense and practical, but hardly the curvy, willowy blond specimen so popular in American society. She had no waist, and her legs were too long, and her tits were only so-so—she’d been a B cup for years. Plus, she had multiple scars from years of street scuffles—knife wounds, bullet wounds, even a permanent rope burn a junkie, high on acid and Jack Daniel’s, had given her. Her hair was the nicest thing about her, and it was too curly, too wild, too out of control in humidity, and the color of a tar pit.
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. Even through her shirt, she could feel the heat from his hands, and his erection brushing against her back. This was alarming, yet delightful. She was facing the sun—a small, white orb—and in the distance she could see a castle.
“My home is there. May I keep you?” he asked, leaning down and speaking softly into her ear. She shivered and felt her entire left side erupt into goose bumps. She leaned back against him and felt him drop a kiss to the tip of her ear, then nuzzle the side of her neck. He was definitely an affectionate fellow, no doubt about that.
“Ah—nope. But I’d sure like to see where you live.”
“As you wish, my lady. And about the other, we shall see.” Before she could puzzle out what that was supposed to mean, his hands were abruptly gone, and when she turned to look at him, he was a puma again.
Out of pure curiosity, she stretched out her hands. Even when she put her hands thumb to thumb and spread her fingers wide, his head was still wider. He was truly enormous, bigger than any cat she’d ever seen on her own world. Even the lions on her world were smaller.
“My lady, what are you waiting for?” She could hear him laughing in her head. “Mount, if you please.”
She blushed all the way down to her toes at the mental image that phrase conjured up, then awkwardly clambered on top of him with many grunts. “You mean I have to ride you to the castle-thingy?”
“Most citizens would say, ‘O good lord, you mean I, your humblest servant, am allowed to ride atop you?’”
“Yeah, well, I’m not from around here, pally.”
He laughed in her head again—God, that was so weird!—dug into the sand with all four paws, and they were off like a shot. She shrieked with surprise and joy and nearly fell off. She gripped him tighter with her knees and clutched his fur, which was coarse and soft at the same time—like rough silk. The stunted trees were whizzing by, his paws thudded into the hard-packed sand with the regularity of a metronome, and above her the lavender sky whirled and twirled. She laughed aloud and felt truly, deeply happy for the first time in a year.
“Oh, faster, can you go faster?” The wind was rushing in her face and the dust was making her eyes water and she was probably going to get a bloody nose if she let her face bang into his shoulder but she didn’t give a tin-shit. All she knew was that she wasn’t dead—or if she was dead, it was pretty swell—she wasn’t in pain, and she was enjoying the first puma ride of her life with the most intriguing man she’d ever met. “Faster!”
She could hear the delight in his voice. “Most ladies—and lords!—would be yetching all over my coat by now.”
“Yetching? You mean puking, barfing? Throwing up? Ha! I haven’t thrown up since I was eight,” she said scornfully. “And that was because I ate all our leftover Halloween candy.”
“Hallo’een? You mean Spirit Night?”
“Hmm, that’s interesting. Looks like your home and my home have some interesting parallels. And the reason I’m using words like ‘interesting parallels’ is because you’re not going fast enough.”
He snorted, then poured it on. She didn’t talk anymore. She concentrated solely on hanging on. She had never been happier in her life.
Chapter 4
“That was something,” she said, jumping off. She was panting from the adrenaline rush, but her knee didn’t so much as squeak in pain. And she took fresh delight in that. “That was really something. Hey, gorgeous, maybe we can do it again sometime?”
He popped back to human form. It was still too quick for her eye to accurately report what happened when he transformed. “I am at my lady’s command.”
“Well, isn’t that nifty. So, um—you live here?”
“Here” was the castle. When she’d seen it from the middle of the desert, it had looked like a small white castle dreaming in the distance. Up close it was, she figured, about the size of the Empire State Building. Except not as high. But it sure had the square footage of Manhattan real estate. She had to tip her head waaaaaaay back to see the top of the spires.
It looked just like the castles she’d seen pictures of back home, except it was pure, dazzling white. She assumed they had mined the stone from a nearby quarry…about a thousand years ago. The flags flying atop the spires were brightly colored and had animals on them—she spotted a puma atop all the others, but lions, leopards, and even a few house cats were also represented.
There were several people about, going to and from the castle, and every one of them was staring at her as they hurried by. She assumed it was her clothes—or her coloring, because they were, to a man, woman, and child, all blond. And they sure weren’t wearing an old workout bra and tattered gym shorts. Shit, she was practically as naked as puma-man was. Somewhere along the way, her old shirt had disappeared.
There were dozens of shades of blond represented, from the fairest platinum to what her dad had always called “dirty dishwater blond.” And while many of them had wavy locks, none of them sported a headful of wild curls, as she did.
Ah, great…dead and a freak. Perfect.
“…all my life.”
“Huh?”
“I said, in answer to your question, that I have lived in the Castle Royale all my life.”
“Oh, right. Sorry, I forgot the question. Is that why they’re staring at me instead of you? I mean, at least I’m wearing clothes.”
“I told you,” he said simply. “You are beautiful,
