Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale by Christine Warren Read Free Book Online

me, Mr. De Santos,” one of the uniformed club staff said quietly. “I was unaware you had company, but I’m afraid there is someone else here asking to see you.”
    The Felix frowned. “I had no appointments this evening. In fact, I told no one I would be spending any time here at all. Did this person give you a name?”
    “She did not, sir, but she seemed insistent. She did inform me that it was Council business.”
    Luc sipped his brandy and watched his host’s face. The other man’s expression remained impassive, but Luc could see impatience turn to curiosity in his cat-like yellow eyes.
    “Forgive me,” Rafe said, nodding to Luc. “The head of the Council’s time is rarely his own. Please enjoy your drink while I step out and deal with my unexpected visitor. I’m certain I won’t be long.”
    Luc grinned. “And I’m certain how long will depend entirely on how attractive this ‘she’ turns out to be.”
    “Actually, it won’t,” a decidedly female voice retorted from over the footman’s shoulder. “Because she isn’t here for a game of touchy-feely. She is doing her good deed for the century, and then she is going to go the hell home before she catches anything in this…ridiculous place.”
    Luc stood even as Rafe turned to face the newcomer. The footman spent a split second looking mortified before he spun and made a grab for the intruder. The woman stepped sideways and knocked his hands away with a clenched fist.
    “Watch it, grabby,” she growled. “I don’t know where you’ve been lately.”
    “At the front door, I expect. You may return to your post, Jameson,” Rafe said smoothly, nodding at the still-mortified and now disgruntled servant. He stepped forward with an outstretched hand and smiled at the latest visitor. “Corinne, what a pleasant surprise. I hardly expected to see you here at Vircolac tonight. What could have brought you to our little club?”
    “Nothing short of a loaded handgun or a conscience full of misplaced loyalty,” the woman said. Or, more accurately, grumbled. She shot Rafe a suspicious look, then spared a glare for Luc. “I didn’t know you’d be in some kind of meeting, like a normal person.”
    Luc raised a brow and indulged himself with a quick study of the bad-tempered female. That she was human was obvious, almost as obvious as the crushing weight of discomfort that radiated from her. She looked less than pleased by her surroundings, and equally un-enamored of her present company. Behind the scowls, though, Luc saw something that caught him off guard.
    He knew Rafe had said that Regina’s friends all seemed to be remarkably attractive for humans, but for Lady’s sake, Luc was Fae. He lived among the most beautiful females in creation, served as elite guardsman to one who probably reigned as the most beautiful, so he certainly shouldn’t be feeling this surge of lust for a human.
    Besides which, humans were just so…human. They had nothing special, not compared with an Other or a Fae or any of the other legions of creatures living in the worlds. No powers, no gifts, not even any real talent to speak of. Like many in Faerie, Luc had always thought of them as being a bit primitive and undeveloped. So why the hell did the sight of this woman to go directly to his groin?
    She didn’t so much surpass the normal notions of human female beauty as expand them. She had warm, slightly olive skin and thick, dark hair the color of the onyx Mab wove into her crown every Samhain. She was taller than the average human woman, too, though still a good foot shorter than he, and she had the sort of solid, human figure many Fae thought of as coarse and common. Luc found it tempting. Her curves made his hands itch to trace them, and her very substantiality seemed to call to him, made him ache to feel her press against him, heavy and warm and real. He wanted to hold her, to taste the curves and angles of her clear, classical features, to learn the earthy truth of her