CHAPTER FIVE（Untitled）Grace

CHAPTER FIVE

Grace

Shock freezes me in place, my whole world narrowing to nothing but the strong beat of his heart under my hand. He's warm, even through the soft linen of his shirt. My fingers dig in a little, as if testing if his muscles are really as deliciously firm as they look. Yep, they totally are.

Already married? Husband? This gorgeous actor is my husband? My heart gives a little skip of excitement.

Then the word penetrates the daze of attraction. Actor. All of this is fake.

"That's going too far." I yank my hand away and spin toward the trees, raising my voice. "Okay, you got me. Great joke. I'm through playing now."

"Who are you talking to?" The "orc" says behind me.

"The director, the camera operator, whoever." I throw a hand out and keep turning until I face him again.

His brow pinches in what looks like genuine confusion. "I don't know those words."

"Sure you don't." God, I refuse to fall for handsome-guy bullshit ever again. Calvin almost killed me. Pain spears my chest. I'd been so stupid, dreaming of a relationship with him, one always about to happen "soon." All of his promises always came right when he needed help with something, designed to string me along so I'd keep doing his work for him.

I shove down the ache and focus on something else. Holding out my hands palms up, I ask, "How'd you guys make the pillows appear in real time like that?" I never watch the behind-the-scenes stuff that explains how all the movie special effects are done. I get enough insight into how things can be set up to fool people working the carnival—I like keeping the mystery alive for my favorite movies and shows.

"Magic." A smile lights up his face as he strides over to the tall pillar of rock and sets his hands on it. "I wish for a new bow."

Nothing happens. Is the special-effects department taking a break?

"I want a quiver of arrows."

Still zip.

Instead of being upset, he spins to me, excitement gleaming in his dark eyes. "It's as I thought. Only you have the magic of this standing stone, which means you're very powerful."

I snort in amusement. This guy's still keeping his shtick going. He must have a contract with the reality TV show that says he can't break character or something. I picture a camera crane dropping a camera onto his head and him saying, "What is this strange thing?"

Only, where are the cameras? Why can't I see them? Is everything done with tiny drones now?

Oh! I bet the birds are the cameras. The flock still hovers overhead.

He goes over to the bouncy castle and touches one of the inflated walls. "Your magic is truly amazing. I've never seen anything like this."

Then he shoots me a knowing grin and dives forward to sprawl across the floor on his side. "Ah, my bride. It seems I was wrong about the pillows. You made this for our wedding bed." He gives a couple of little bounces, which make his hips move suggestively, and pats the soft surface beside him.

His gaze is sexy and admiring, and my heart joins my tummy in fluttering rapidly. My traitorous body takes half a step toward him before I jerk myself to a halt. Bad body!

I know me—my face will have shown how close I came to joining him. They'll have caught all of that on film. I'll be teased for years as the "chick who wanted to bang an orc." I won't even be able to go to the grocery store without people tittering.

Anger heats my chest. Out of all of the teasing and bullying over the years about my looks, this is the cruelest of all. "Okay, I mean it," I tip my head back and yell. "I'm not going to play along any more. Come on out."

"Stop yelling," a woman's irritated voice says from somewhere in the trees. "I'm coming."

Ha! I knew it. She must be the director.

Only it's not a woman who emerges from the forest. It's a unicorn! WT actual F?

Built like a large horse, it's white, with a silver mane and tail. And a long spiral horn juts from its forehead, the grooves flashing silver in the sunlight. How is it attached? No anchors or anything show.

"I was still doing reconnaissance. You might have told our enemies I was there and ruined my ability to surprise them." The grumpy words come from the unicorn—she's moving her mouth —but how the hell are they doing that? Some kind of hidden speaker?

"Were there any enemies?" The orc rolls out of the bouncy castle and stands.

"No ogres or kelpies." The unicorn stomps a hoof into the ground. "But another sluagh flew north."

"Goddess, I bet they've gone to get reinforcements. We need to leave."

"What is that ?" The unicorn jabs its horn toward the bouncy castle.

"That's the thing that kept me from breaking several bones when I fell off the top of the stone," I say, glaring at the orc to make it clear I didn't do it to make a bed for us.

"You fell?" The orc steps toward me, eyes running up and down as if searching for injuries. He looks truly worried, but then, he's obviously a good actor. His talent's wasted on reality TV, but maybe this show is supposed to give him his big break.

They sure aren't sparing any expense. His costume and makeup, the unicorn, the special effects—they're all top-notch.

"Are you hurt?" He sounds truly concerned, all his flirty playfulness gone in an instant. Then he steps close, taller and bigger, and my body feels his size as he towers over me until I thrum with awareness.

His hands are on me, moving over my arms and shoulders, sending little licks of fire shivering over my skin. He leans over, his long black hair falling around his face. God, why is long hair so sexy on some guys?

Wasn't I just angry at him a minute ago? All of that fades under his concern. No matter how good of an actor he is, his care doesn't feel fake.

Then his hands slide down the outside of my legs, and I realize it's been way too long since someone touched me. For all his months of teasing, Calvin never touched me a single time. That should have been a clue, because if he'd actually been interested, he should have wanted to touch me. And this man's hands on my thighs—even my outer thighs—feels like a promise.

My stomach flutters like it's ready to throw a parade. Bad stomach!

"I thought we were in a hurry," the unicorn says.

"I'm not making her ride if my bride's hurt," the orc growls, a flash of determination crossing his face. His hands glide down my lower legs, and I never thought of my calves as sensitive before, so how is he making my skin tingle even through the denim of my jeans?

"Grace," I croak, my throat suddenly dry. Him saying bride all the time is a lot . "My name's Grace."

He stands, his smile back in place. "Grace. It suits you."

Hah! Now I know he's a liar. Grace has got to be the most ironic name ever, because being almost six-feet tall and built like a Viking, I'm pretty damned far from graceful.

"I'm Branikk, and this is Aurora."

"Who wants to leave." The unicorn tosses her head. "Although I don't know what we're going to do with all of these… things."

She's right—or whoever's talking through the speakers is. There's a bouncy castle and a ton of pillows. It feels wrong, like littering, to just leave them here where there's nothing but moss and trees, but surely the TV people will clean it all up.

"Did we pass any gnome homes on the way here?" Branikk asks. "I was too focused on our destination to pay much attention."

"It's the forest," Aurora says with an amused snort. "There are always gnome homes. That doesn't mean we have to call the pesky things."

Branikk's eyes flick to the bouncy castle. "We can't leave that here. It makes my bride's great magical power all too obvious. Any sluagh who sees it will only want her more."

It looks so carnival bright and plastic and very, very wrong in this setting that I fight down another wince. I didn't really do that, did I? I didn't make it appear—that's impossible. Only, it seems I've landed in a world of impossible things. My hand scrubs over my face. All of this is too weird to process with very little sleep—not that being passed out on a bed of hard rock could exactly be called sleep—and no caffeine. God, I could crush a Coke right about now. I've never liked coffee, no matter how much sugar you put in it, but a continuous stream of sugary soda fuels my days.

Branikk stomps out a steady beat, his other foot joining in until he's stomp-dancing in a repeating pattern, rat-a-tat-tat-tat. Each thump of his feet vibrates through the ground with power, but his big body moves gracefully, his long hair swirling around his shoulders as if to show off their width.

He spins slowly in place, and the bow and arrow quiver on his back jostle, right above—

Dear god, the man has a great ass.

My mouth goes dry and my fingers flex as I imagine it would feel as firm and warm as his chest.

Branikk turns back to me, and when his sharp eyes catch me looking, a knowing gleam heats them.

The flutters come back, filling my whole damned tummy until I feel like I can barely breathe. Bad flutters!

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat. Branikk stomps, the repetition of his movements hypnotic, full of primal power.

I'm not much of a dancer, but his dance calls to something in me, making my toes tap inside my work boots. My body starts to sway forward and join his…

I jerk myself upright. Nope. Not falling for a handsome liar ever again! And telling me we're already married sure is one hell of a lie. It's even more of a whopper than his green makeup and all this fantasy stuff.

Before I can get a good scowl going to remind him—and the hidden cameras—that I'm not falling for any of this, the ground beside him moves.

A clump of moss rises upward, turning into a little hat on the head of… what the hell is it?

A tiny man with light-green skin and white hair and beard rises from the earth, spinning like a ballerina doing a prolonged pirouette. He comes to a halt, facing us, his arms thrown out like a gymnast who just stuck the landing. Only two-feet high, he's dressed in a patchwork quilt of brown, green, and blue leaves.

Then another appears from underneath a different clump of moss, a little woman this time. More swirl out of the ground all around us, each striking a pose and wearing a moss cap. No matter how small they are, they aren't children, their stocky builds made of muscle instead of baby fat. They all have white hair, but their faces range from young to middle-aged, so it must simply be their hair color.

Branikk stops dancing. "You came."

"You called," one of the tiny women says. "An orc, a unicorn, and— What are you?"

As one, they all turn to look at me. "It's an elf!" "It can't be. Look at the ears." "But it's not green, and what is that hair color?"

"Hey, no!" I throw out my hands. Damn, they're taking this whole fantasy thing to the extreme. "I'm a human, not an elf."

The woman continues. "An orc, a unicorn, and a human have called us here. What do you have for the gnomes?"

"An offering of—" Branikk grinds to a halt, pointing to the bouncy castle and throwing me a questioning glance.

"A bouncy castle," I say.

The gnome squints at it, her expression unimpressed, and front flips across the clearing. The rest follow her, tumbling like a troupe of acrobats, not a single one of them walking. The space where she came out of the ground is… not a hole. The removal of the moss now sitting on her head left behind an oblong patch of dark-brown dirt. I poke it with the toe of my boot—it feels solid, instead of like a trapdoor to a hiding space. So where'd she come from?

And what is she? Shelly, back at the carnival, is a person with dwarfism, but these people are way too short to be the same, even discounting the light-green skin.

Maybe they're holograms? Actors filmed somewhere else and projected here, which means the moss hats they now wear are holograms, too. Whatever this all is, they sure seem to be spending a lot more money on special effects than I'd expect for a reality-TV program.

She touches one of the upright pillars, and the plastic surface dimples below her hand. There's no way a hologram could do that, right?

The world seems to waver around me, or maybe I'm the one wavering. Oh, god. What if none of this is special effects? What does it mean?

"It's soft," the gnome says, as more of them join her in peering and poking at the inflated plastic. "What's it for?"

"It's for fun," I say. For one of my first teenage jobs, I'd worked for a company supplying these to children's birthday parties. "You go inside and jump up and down."

She narrows her eyes at me for a second, then snaps her fingers at one of the young men and points.

He does a forward flip into the bouncy castle and makes a tentative jump. The whole thing shivers when he lands, just as if he weighs something. He makes a couple more jumps, bouncing higher each time, then lets out a big whoop.

The others pour inside, and in only a couple of moments, the entire bouncy castle shakes as a full mass of gnomes bounce, their laughter shrieking through the forest. There's no way holograms could make the castle move like that unless there's some kind of mechanism under it to make it shake.

God, this is all too fucking weird.

"The gnomes love your creation, my bride," Branikk grins at me, eyes warm with approval.

I can only gape at the gorgeous man who says he's an orc.

And my husband .