South of Surrender (Hearts of the Anemoi)

  Naked. You’re naked, Notos. Shit. Chrys concentrated, willing material, any material—he’d take a damn toga if that’s what he could get—to materialize over his bottom half. He broke out in a cold sweat and shuddered. You know you’re in the shit when you can’t even cover your bare ass.

  Fuck it. After some shut-eye and a few hours of her heat, he’d be in more shape to worry about making himself presentable.

  Fatigue pressed down on him, made even the involuntary action of breathing take way too much effort. His gut soured and tossed. Closing his eyes and concentrating on her heat seemed to be the only way to combat the revolt his stomach kept threatening. He pressed his face into the woman’s hair—oranges. She smelled of sweet, juicy oranges.

  Soaking in her warmth and her summery scent, Chrys succumbed to his injured exhaustion and passed out again.

  …

  Laney woke up sweating. The sun streamed in through the hole in the ceiling, roasting her body and drawing out a sheen of perspiration on her skin. The underneath of her hair was even damp.

  It’s so hot, was her first thought.

  The winged horse! was her second.

  She jumped up. Only, something heavy braced around her waist. Shaking off the fog of sleep, she reached down to push herself out from the warm weight.

  What the hell?

  It was a…it felt like a…

  Laney wrenched into a sitting position, and an arm fell into her lap. An arm that had been wrapped around her. A…human arm?

  Her heart pounded blood through her ears. No, no. Time to wake up, Laney. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. Scanned her vision over him until, like a puzzle, the pieces started to come together. And…

  Still. Freaking. Human.

  A moan of panic tore up her throat. She crab-scrabbled backward, and her hand came down on something sharp. She cried out. From somewhere else in the barn, a horse whinnied, a long, low call of concern. Laney slipped, and something sharp and metallic scraped the back of her calf.

  But Laney couldn’t fight the blind panic. There was no horse. No horse! Only a man. A freaking man! Questions flooded her brain, disoriented her, ignited her panic. How? Who was he? What was happening to her? How could her senses have failed her so badly?

  “What’s happening?” the man groaned. “Gods, are you okay? Hey, watch out!”

  Laney’s back slammed into the stable’s grillwork. The impact rattled down her spine and set off a sickening ache in her neck and head.

  Shadows shifted in front of her, but her sight was no more than a blurred, unfocused array of pinpoint images. She had to calm down.

  “Are you all right?” came a deep voice from right next to her. Warmth radiated close to her leg. “Aw, Hades, you’re bleeding.”

  Laney had to swallow twice before she could muster a verbal response. “Wh-who are y-you?”

  “Chrys.”

  “C-Chrys?” As if that explained anything. The light turned gold directly in front of her. Laney blinked and forced herself to take deep, calming breaths. “You’re a man.”

  “Last time I checked,” he said, voice weak but amused.

  She scoffed. Yeah, well… “Last time I checked, you were a horse, so one of us isn’t quite in their right mind.” Laney groaned. Did she really just say that out loud? She sighed, still shaking. None of this made any sense. “Forget I said that.” He didn’t respond, making the air feel hot and awkward. “Why are you in my barn?”

  “I’m not sure. What’s your name?” he finally said, amusement gone from his voice.

  “Laney.”

  “Okay, Laney, can you stand?”

  “I can, but I need you to get me out of the stall.”

  “Uh, what do you—”

  “I’m having trouble seeing,” she said, unwilling to reveal her disability when she didn’t know who he was or what he was doing here. She waved her uninjured hand, accidentally brushing against him. “I’m all disoriented.” Thankfully, it was less and less true. The more she calmed, the more she regained clarity in her limited vision.

  “Sure,” he said in a tight voice. He grasped her good hand. “Go ahead and stand up.”

  Laney nodded and allowed his strength to pull her to her feet, his hand totally encompassing hers. Her legs were like Jell-O from fright, from her injury. Metal warmed the bottom of her feet. “Do you, um, see my sneakers?”

  “Uh, yeah. Got ‘em.”

  Laney held her hands out, but his light touch fell on the top of her foot.

  “Lift.”

  “I can put my own shoes on.”

  “No doubt. Lift.”

  Laney obeyed, ignoring the heat of his skin against hers and the soft brush of his hair against her thigh. She fought the urge to reach out and see if it felt as silky against her hand. Silky like the horse’s wings. Let it go, Laney.

  “There you are,” he said in a deep voice. The golden light moved away from her.

  What the heck was that, anyway? If she was developing halos, her sight was deteriorating yet again. “Thanks.”

  “Okay, uh, take about three steps to your right, and you’re out in the main hallway, but there’s a rough piece of metal you need to step over.”

  Wincing at the sting of her cuts, Laney allowed Chrys to guide her.

  “Step up and over,” he said. “Good. You’re clear.”

  The rubber beneath her feet confirmed the truth of his words. Then the hard concrete told her when she’d returned to the central aisle. Laney swayed.

  His hand gripped her shoulder. “Whoa.”

  “Think I just stood up too fast. It’ll pass.”

  “How hard did you hit your head?”

  Distracted by the weird sensation of vertigo, Laney shrugged and braced her hand against the rail. She hissed. Holding her palm up close to her face, all she could see was red, not the specifics of her injury. Her wounds needed to be cleaned and treated, but no sense revealing just how much they hurt. She dropped her hand, ignoring the stinging, and tried to look him over.

  She was used to the limitations of her low vision by now, but sometimes it was so frustrating not to be able to see more than a pinpoint of the world at a time, her brain putting the whole together like a slow computer loading the pixels of a high-resolution image. Blond hair. Longish. Angled jaw. Muscled shoulder. Bare muscled shoulder.

  Laney gasped and cut her gaze away, half of her afraid of what else she might see if she continued to scan her gaze over him, and half of her dying to know.

  “What?”

  “You don’t have a shirt on.”

  “Uh, no.”

  “This is so crazy,” she whispered to herself. She cleared her throat. “Please tell me you’re not naked.”

  “I’m not naked.”

  Laney looked. Scanned. Jeans. She released a long breath. “Good. That’s good.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, his tone strained and raspy, like it took effort to speak.

  “For what?” Adrenaline flooded through her, along with a healthy dose of fear. She wasn’t sure what scared her most. Whatever he was about to apologize for? That her impossible Pegasus didn’t exist after all? That she’d woken up with a strange and equally impossible man? That she’d apparently imagined the events of last night?

  “For scaring you.”

  “Well, I’d say it wasn’t your fault, but it kinda was.” Still, there was something about the well-worn regret in his voice that made her want to comfort him, touch him, know him. It was just all so crazy.

  “Do you always say exactly what you mean?”

  Laney frowned, confusion still making her head spin. “As opposed to saying something I don’t mean?”

  “I guess when you put it that way…”

  “Look, not to be rude, but who are you and what are you doing in my barn?”

  He sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  One she was determined to hear, given the eleventy-billion questions she had. “I’m sure I can follow along.”


  “It’s not that—”

  “Then what? Huh? I could use a little help reassuring myself I’m not going insane.”

  She could hear his little movements against the flooring. Soft scuffs, like he was barefooted. “You’re not. It’s just that I don’t remember all of it, and what I do remember isn’t going to make any sense.” The gold light moved in front of her. “We should take care of your cuts first.”

  Truth be told, her leg and palm burned like hell, but fear that her senses had let her down so magnificently vibrated panic through her veins. Her senses were her independence. Her survival. Without them, she’d lose everything. “Nice try. Talk.”

  His sigh resembled more of a groan. “I got in a fight.”

  Huh? “And…”

  “I got my ass kicked.”

  Memories from last night washed over her. The gash on the horse’s forearm. The ruined feathers on the wing. Stop it. Clearly, this man wasn’t that horse. Still, the fact remained that there was a hole in her ceiling, and he was here. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “Do you always speak using the fewest possible words?”

  There was a long pause. “Let’s clean you up. You got a sink around here?”

  “Yeah, because that wasn’t an obvious change of topic at all.”

  “Sink?”

  “I’ll get cleaned up inside. It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine, but he didn’t need to know that. Like she wasn’t vulnerable enough. Fingertips on the rail again, she took a step. Gritting her teeth, she put weight on her injured leg. Man, did that smart.

  Much as she hated to admit it, Laney needed help. And that brought one person to mind. Seth. He was going to flip his shit when he saw she’d been hurt. She went for her phone in her pocket— Empty. Damnit! She must’ve dropped it in the stall.

  Just keep moving, Laney. There was a landline at the end of the barn she could use.

  She moved along the railing, and the cuts on the back of her calf pulled with every step. Chrys’s soft treads followed just behind her, like he was prepared to catch her should her legs give out. The hair on the back of her neck raised. Who the hell was this guy and what did he want?

  And why didn’t she feel as fearful as she thought she should? Being blind, hurt, and alone with a strange man didn’t exactly put her in a position of power.

  A man who was a horse.

  Laney groaned and paused next to an occupied stall, her breathing coming a little harder. “Hi, Windy,” she murmured to the colt, the horse’s presence making her feel more grounded, less alone. Gathering her resolve, she continued on to Sappho’s, where she had to rest again. The mare pressed her muzzle into Laney’s uninjured hand and nickered. “Nothing to worry about here, baby.” Sappho shook her head, as if disagreeing, and pushed her big, elegant nose against Laney’s side, making her stumble a step away from Chrys. She grunted at the quick movement. “Hey, what was that for?”

  “I don’t think your horse likes me,” came the strange man’s low voice.

  “She’s protective of me.” A noise caught her attention. In the distance, tires tore up her long stone driveway. Seth’s truck, if she wasn’t mistaken. Years of relying on them for information about her world made her ears especially sensitive. Relieved as she was that Seth had arrived, she mentally prepared for the massive freak-out likely to happen when he saw her injuries. Blowing out a shaky breath, she said, “I think the cavalry has arrived.”

  Chapter Four

  The barn felt suddenly still. That odd gold light shined in front of her and a warmth caressed her face, then both were gone. “Chrys?” She turned around. “Chrys?”

  What the hell is happening?

  “Chrys,” she said again, louder. Behind her, Sappho nickered. She was totally losing it. Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes. “Please answer me.” She scanned her nearly useless vision over the space. The light and the man were gone, as far as she could see and hear. She was alone.

  Truly alone, this time.

  The roar of the engine in Seth’s big pickup drew closer and the strange events of the past twelve hours weighed down on her.

  Laney’s head spun and her injuries left her shaky. Her knees went soft, and she leaned against the front of Sappho’s stall. The horse chuffed at her like she was concerned.

  Hot tears gathered and Laney looked to the ceiling to force them away. Had she imagined the whole thing? If she had… She batted away an escapee tear. If she didn’t hold it together, Seth would go all Papa Bear when he saw her.

  The truck’s tires crunched over the gravel and finally came to a halt near the open barn door. His footsteps seemed to retreat, as if he was heading up to the house.

  “Seth?” she said, but her voice cracked. She cleared it and called again. “Seth?”

  Outside, his pace halted, then quickened into a run. “Laney?” The hard soles of his boots tore into the gravel and finally echoed off the barn’s concrete floor. “Sonofa— What happened? Are you okay?” He hovered over her.

  “Seth,” she whispered, a sob suddenly lodging in her throat.

  Calloused fingers cradled her injured hand. “I knew something was wrong. Damnit. Where else are you hurt?”

  “The back of my leg,” she said, his familiar presence calming her. Seth had always been like the older brother she never had. No, more than that. A true friend. Someone who got her, who understood what was important to her. Someone she could rely on for anything.

  He moved around her, examining her wounds. “How did this happen?”

  “The barn.” Laney pointed toward the far end of the stable. “The roof. In the storm,” she managed.

  “Why didn’t you call me? And why the hell did you try to walk in the debris on your own?”

  “Any chance you can save the lecture for when I’m not bleeding all over the place?”

  “I’m serious, Laney.”

  “So am I. I had to make sure the horses were okay. I tried to call you, but the phones weren’t working and I didn’t have a cell signal. Simple as that.”

  He grunted a sound that expressed his displeasure. “Think you can walk? We need to get you to the E.R.”

  Laney nodded, grateful that he let it drop. For now. She knew she had a major shit fit coming her way. Holding onto him, she pushed off the railing. Her head swam.

  “Okay, lean on me and let’s take it slow.”

  She limped against Seth’s side as they made their way out of the barn and toward his truck. “Is the E.R really necessary? Can’t I just call my regular doc?” Last thing she wanted was a trip to the E.R. She’d spent enough of her life seeing one doctor after another.

  “You’re gonna need stitches and a tetanus shot. The E.R. will be able to take care of everything.”

  It was worth a shot. She sighed. “Okay.”

  “Giving in that easy makes me even more worried about you.”

  She elbowed him in the side. “Shut up.”

  “And there’s my Laney,” he said in an almost amused voice. “Okay, two more steps then hold up a minute.” He opened the truck door. “I’ll lift you.”

  Laney frowned at the idea, but in truth, she wasn’t sure she could get herself up on the seat with the cut on the back of her leg. “Just give me a boost.”

  His arms came behind her back and knees. “Ready?”

  “Yeah.” She wrapped her arms tight around his neck. This close, she couldn’t help but notice his crisp, outdoorsy scent. Sweet hay and warm leather. She’d recognize it anywhere. The arm under her knee pulled at the cuts. She whimpered.

  “Sorry,” he said in a tight voice as he settled her on the seat.

  “Not your fault,” she managed, breathing through the raw burn eating up the back of her leg.

  He closed her door and hustled around to his. With her hand injured and her head such a jumbled mess, she was fighting a losing battle with her seat belt when he got in the driver’s side. “Here,” he said. He reached across and secured the
belt.

  “Thanks,” she whispered, hating being so helpless. Geez, she hoped she wasn’t bleeding all over his truck. Not that Seth would care.

  Laney laid her head back and closed her eyes as they made their way down the long drive. What she had seen of the winged horse came immediately to her mind’s eye.

  “Hang on,” Seth said.

  She lifted her head. “What?”

  “We gotta do some off-roading. Trees down over the driveway. Down all over the place, from the storm. Weather men are saying maybe some tornadoes touched down last night.”

  Tornadoes? That was exactly what she’d wondered when she found the horse. You know, the one that wasn’t there this morning. The truck bounced as it left the gravel, jarring the thoughts away. Laney gripped the door handle and breathed through the bumpy ride. Then they were back on level ground.

  “I’m gonna call Ben. Get him to come take care of the horses and see if he can get some guys to clear the drive.”

  Laney nodded. Seth’s cousin had worked at Summerlyn Farm most summers while he’d been in school. The horses would be in good hands. Seth’s voice in the background, she went back to studying the golden Pegasus plastered on the inside of her eyelids.

  Now, she didn’t know whether to believe her magical visitor had been real or not. Either her faculties were failing or… What? She didn’t even know.

  One step at a time, Laney. Yes. Okay. That, she could do.

  …

  From the doorway of the barn, Chrysander watched the truck depart. He didn’t know what bothered him more—the exhaustion he felt down to his bones, the ass-kicking he’d received last night that had drained his power, the relief in the woman’s voice at the human man’s arrival, or the man’s hands all over her. And why the hell the latter two should bother him, he couldn’t say. For fuck’s sake.

  And on top of it all, he was so badly drained after the latest round of ass-kicking that he had no choice but to return to the Realm of the Gods. He’d been avoiding returning as much as he could. He didn’t want the Olympians to decide the Anemoi couldn’t handle the task of bringing Eurus in, nor reveal just how dire the situation with Eurus was, lest he ruin any chance to appeal to their mercy. But given that manifesting a pair of jeans made him break out in a cold sweat, he was in need of some serious R&R of the sort he could only get in the divine realm.