CHAPTER SEVEN

My breath catches in my throat. A scowling Sturrm is handsome, but his smile… his smile makes him downright gorgeous. And the way he’s looking at me… Ay! It could go to a girl’s head! He stares at me in fascination, like he’s never been happy before and I’m the first person to bring him joy.

I love it, even as it makes my heart ache. Why is he so grumpy and sad? I feel like I’m seeing the person he could be, one who’s able to smile and enjoy life.

It almost makes me forget I’m mad at him. Almost.

Why’d he slap that blackberry from my hand? Rude!

But the first heat of my mad has faded, and logic takes over. He’s not a mean man—look at how he held the little butterfly boy who couldn’t fly. So Sturrm must have had a reason. What if they’re not blackberries, after all? I’m not exactly nature girl over here, and blackberries don’t grow in south Florida. Carajo! Did I just eat something poisonous?

I run an internal checklist for the typical symptoms I memorized for class last semester. No nausea or stomach pain. No dizziness or trouble breathing. No slowing or speeding of my heart rate. No abnormal sweating. No feeling of weakness. Without a mirror, I can’t check my complexion to see if I’ve gone pale, but nothing feels off.

I point to the bushes and mime eating berries. “Are those okay?”

The little faeries stream over the bush they coated with glitter and bring me several more. They surround me in a swirling cloud of iridescence, like tropical flowers caught in a miniature hurricane. Their voices ring with excitement, their tiny faces beaming.

Sturrm, however, scowls and barks something at them that makes them shriek and dart back to the bush. He takes my arm and leads me to a different patch of blackberries, ones that haven’t been touched yet.

He plucks a purple berry and tosses it into his mouth, his expression serious as he chews. Then his eyebrows relax, and he picks several more berries, holding a fat one up for me.

It’s sun warmed and soft on my lips, and his eyes latch onto my mouth as it brushes against his fingers to take the fruit. The tart, sweet berry bursts across my tongue, juicy and delicious, and I lick my lips, chasing every last drop, and loving the way his dark eyes heat.

Who knew eating could be this sexy?

I grin, and he startles as if realizing he’s been ogling me.

He picks up my hand and pours the rest of the berries into my palm. His touch is gentle, but the calluses on his fingers rasp lightly against my skin, sending shivers through me. I remember the way they moved over the leather, competent and sure and full of power.

If I close my eyes, I can feel him, my body hyperaware of his. Something tells me he can sense me, too. Is it something to do with magic, or is it him?

My money’s on him.

He turns back to the bush and plucks more berries for both of us. Over and over, I find his eyes on me, making sure I eat. Then he gets out a leather waterskin and offers it to me.

The med student in me wants to ask about water-borne organisms. Most people think bacteria are all you have to worry about, but they’re not. Parasites and other things can live in untreated water.

The muscles in his chest ripple as he lifts the waterskin closer. He’s so healthy he almost gleams. There’s no way he’s been drinking bad water.

Besides, being dehydrated sucks, so I let my worries go and drink. I expect it to taste funny from the leather, but it’s the sweetest water I’ve ever had.

When I stop and try to give it to him so he can drink, too, he pushes my hand back, urging me to take more. Then he breaks off a piece of something that looks like a cookie and gives it to me. He crunches into the other half, his tusks tearing through the food without problem.

I try to take a bite, but it’s hard, so I nibble on the edge. It’s more like a hard biscuit than a cookie, and it tastes like a nutty cracker instead of being sweet, but I like it.

And what I like even more is the way he watches me so carefully, trying to anticipate what I might want or need. I’ve spent the past few years with my nose to the grindstone, and even when I’ve had the time to date, none of the young guys were ever this focused on me, on taking care of me. I should be worried about being in this new world, unable to speak the languages and stuck out in nature where I don’t know how to survive.

But I’m not. Sturrm makes me feel safe, as if I can depend on him in the way I haven’t been able to depend on anyone in a while. A strain of tension woven into my back loosens for the first time in ages. I didn’t even realize I carried it until now. The relief of letting it go rushes through me, and I grin at him.

“You’d probably laugh if you could understand me, but berries, crackers, and water make for the best meal I’ve had in ages,” I say. It’s not that it tastes the very best—I had some kick-ass empanadas for lunch yesterday—but it’s the first I haven’t needed to cook or buy, counting pennies as I do.

His eyes flick to me, and I could swear the ghost of a smile hovers at the corners of his lips.

When he finishes his portion, he fills the small pouch the biscuit came out of with more blackberries while I continue to gnaw on the hard cracker. Then he points first to me and then to the ground in a clear “stay here. ”

I nod.

He says something to the unicorn.

It lifts its head from grazing, answers him, and turns so it can watch me.

Sturrm takes the waterskin and heads into the trees.

With him gone, the butterfly faeries fly toward me, each carrying one of the blackberries they sprinkled with magic. The unicorn gives a loud whinny, and they shriek at it for several seconds before dropping the treats to the ground.

“Guess you lost that argument,” I say, offering them a wry grin and wondering once again what they did to those berries.

When they hear my voice, their mercurial little faces flip from frowns to smiles. They surround me, several landing on my head and shoulders. Tiny hands tug on my hair, pat my cheeks, and tickle the tops of my ears until I laugh.

Their miniscule ears are just as pointed as Sturrm’s, so rounded ones like mine must fascinate them. All my studies have taught me that biology always has a reason for things. I bet the elongated, pointed ears give them a better range of hearing than a human-shaped ear does.

While they clamber over me, calling out to each other in whistles, I crunch through the last of my biscuit, the nutty flavor satisfying, though I wouldn’t say no to being able to dip it in a little aji sauce. Do they even have chili peppers in Faerie?

Sturrm stalks out of the woods, and the tiny fae lift from me in unison like a flock of startled birds. He comes straight over to me, those dark eyes searching my entire body as if expecting something to be wrong .

“Co?o! I’m a grown woman, and you were only gone ten minutes.” But I say it with a smile in my voice, secretly thrilled he cares.

Those big hands wrap around my waist as he lifts me onto the unicorn’s back. This time, he pauses to steady me before mounting behind me. It’s a little thing, but it’s telling. Sturrm has this solid maturity about him, a way of looking beyond himself to see me and what I need.

It’s sexy as hell.