It took four hours and seventeen minutes for Perry, Matt, Cora, and Arthur to walk to Bulgaria, which was exactly nineteen minutes longer than they’d had snacks for.
“Fuck, I’m starving,” Arthur barked as they lingered near the gleaming exit of Princess Simone’s tunnel.
They’d decided to take a moment to gather their bearings and to check Prince Heath’s notes about the estimated landing zone.
“Hopefully, it won’t take long to declare our presence to the local Bears and arrange a meeting with their leaders,” Cora said. “I don’t know how much farther that jerky is going to get me.”
“You want a fat bomb?” Matt asked. “I think Perry’s got one left.”
“Nah. I think he needs it more than I do.”
Grinning, Perry dropped his bag onto the ground to root out the travel phone. “I don’t have much of an appetite right now, but maybe I’ll change my mind later.”
“Just eat it, Per,” Matt said. “You don’t have to like the taste or the texture. You know what your granny said. If you wait until you’re hungry, it’s already too late.”
“Where were you when my granny said that? I don’t recall you being in the room.”
“Oh, I’m everywhere I need to be,” Matt said obscurely. “I thought you knew that by now.”
He was teasing, but Perry wondered if Matt was actually right. Like his cousin Prince Heath, Matt had mysterious ways of acquiring the information he wanted. Perry didn’t know how he felt about that intel being specifically about him.
He shoved the oat-rolled fat bomb into his mouth and tried to chew without tasting anything.
Matt settled into a crouch at the edge of the tunnel and folded the mission’s hardcopy notes into thirds. “If Simone’s targeting was accurate, we should be clear to exit here with no witnesses. We’ll be on or near an old farming commune that was abandoned about five years ago. We’re supposed to walk into town, which should take about fifteen minutes. We’re in an area where a lot of international tourists come for outdoors activities, so we should be able to blend in with the hikers and sightseers.”
“How fast does Heath want us to make contact?” Cora asked. “If we’re in the area and shifter groups find out before we’ve made an effort to announce ourselves to them, they might not be so trusting of us.”
“His suggestion was to try to make contact as quickly as logistically possible, but we have to find out who we’re dealing with first. We can’t exactly post fliers asking them to come out or hire a skywriter to tell them to get in touch.”
“Not necessary. If the procedures are the same here as they are with the various shifter groups I encountered in the U.S., there’s probably going to be a centralized social venue that’ll always have a rep or two standing by. Think bars, restaurants, arcana shops, things like that. Usually, the name of the place will give you a clue about who owns it. That’s intentional, and outsiders don’t know to look for that information. Anyone here speak Bulgarian?”
“It’s not one of my best languages,” Perry said, “but my fluency is passable. At the very least, I won’t get us into any trouble with it.”
“I didn’t know you spoke Bulgarian,” Matt said.
“That’s what Perry used to do in his free time.” Arthur tightened his rucksack straps on his shoulders and then bent to fix his boot laces. “Overprepared fairy shit. Was picking up new languages because he didn’t know where he might end up if Rhiannon started flinging us about.”
“Damn, the things you don’t know about a guy.” Matt actually looked perturbed.
Perry couldn’t really understand why. There were probably thousands of random factoids he could have thrown at him, but Perry had assumed Matt wouldn’t care about any of them. Perry was boring as a survival strategy, really. His attempt to make himself a poet had earned his work terrible reviews from his peers. Colin described the collection as “catastrophic.” Caryl’s murmured remarks were: “off-putting, Perry, off-putting.” That was the only hobby he’d had since leaving the realm. Possibly, his curly hair—when he had it—was the most interesting thing left about him.
“I try to be useful,” Perry said placatingly. “That’s all.”
He couldn’t tell for sure if Matt was placated, but all the same, Matt moved on. He stood sideways at the tunnel exit and gestured the others closer.
“Let’s try to step out as close to simultaneously as we can so we can get an immediate three-sixty view of the surroundings. I want the evidence of the tunnel gone as soon as possible just in case there’s any video surveillance here Heath didn’t know about. Perry, see if you can think up some way to garble any images that do get captured.”
Mindlessly, it seemed, he slid Perry’s hand inside his shirt and up his back and let Cora squeeze in front of him.
If the others thought there was anything unusual about the stance, they didn’t say so. They were focused on departure.
Perry focused on regulating his breathing, which was difficult given that the last time he’d been in such close proximity to Matt, he’d needed an icy shower.
“In three…”
Damn it, he’s warm.
“Two…”
Perry needed to devise some sort of magic scheme, and quickly, or Matt would wonder if Perry was as annoying as his recent haircut.
“One. Here we go.”
They jumped out.
Perry scrounged within for whatever junk magic he could coalesce and scattered it widely into the twilight.
The portal exit pinched and shrank, and they turned silently as a unit to observe the area.
They were in an overgrown field. Dark forest loomed in the distance on one side. Dilapidated farm buildings on another. The faint lights of town on the next. There was an unmaintained path beside them.
For a minute more, they fostered the quiet.
Matt gripped Perry’s wrist inside his shirt, not in a way suggesting he wished Perry to remove his hand, but instead to keep the palm fixed in place. His gaze flitted around methodically, likely for a similar reason as to why Cora’s nostrils were flaring as she turned.
“Anything?” Arthur whispered.
“No one’s been through here recently,” Cora whispered back. “Shifter or otherwise. I think even the animals avoid this path because it’s so close to human structures. Pretty sure we’re safe to walk.”
“Yeah, I don’t sense anyone else nearby,” Matt said. “I’m nowhere near as sensitive at detecting encroaching energy as someone like Tess or Nadia might be, but I’m getting a little boost from Perry.”
“Since when could you sense people who weren’t like you?” Cora asked.
Matt shrugged in his unabashed way. “Dunno when, exactly. The ability’s inconsistent. I think their energy has to have something extra about it for me to be able to pay attention at all. Used to be that I could only find psychics of a certain sort.”
“Well, that’s still handy.”
Matt wagged a scolding index finger at her. “Handy, but inconsistent. That’s what my dad would stress. He says you don’t put a skill on your résumé until it’s reliable. You calling home base, Per?”
For a moment, Perry had been so distracted by the satisfying rumbles of Matt’s voice through his skin that he’d only been half listening. He wondered what it would be like to lay on him while he talked.
Sticky and wet, probably.
Rolling his eyes, he lowered his head to the phone and got it turned on.
It’d be like torture. That’s what it’d be like.
The grueling pacing they’d kept in the tunnel had forced Perry’s arousal to heel but slowing down and having to touch Matt made the affliction threaten to race back with an unholy vengeance.
Mind over matter. Mind over matter.
They started walking toward the lights while Perry waited for the call to connect.
Arthur and Cora chatted semi-amiably ahead of them. Or bickered. Perry couldn’t quite tell for certain, but the rhythm of their exchange seemed jagged to him. From it, he would never assume that they were friendly, only that they were aware of each other’s proximity.
Matt walked at Perry’s side, still cynically scanning the farm surrounding them.
“Ah, thank fuck. There you are,” Prince Heath said in lieu of hello.
“We’ve just arrived,” Perry said. “I won’t put you on speaker. Sound will carry too well where we are. I’ll pass you over to whoever you need to speak with. May I ask first, though, if the princess is well? Creating the tunnel must have taken much from her.”
“Aye, she’s fine. Sleeping off the exertion, but I shared with her all the energy I could spare. She’ll be up to her usual shenanigans by dinner. I’ll let her know you asked.”
“Thank you.” Perry really did worry about them. The nature of their magic was so exhaustible and putting fuel back in their tanks wasn’t always an easy endeavor. Often when the crew had been on their jaunts pre-Princess Simone, there were periods when they’d had to find safe cover for Heath because he’d be dead to the world for days on end after major magic acts.
Princess Simone must have found it terribly inconveniencing to have to constantly expend her energy for the crew’s transportation emergencies, but she was a good sport.
“Were my intel and Simone’s geography correct?” Prince Heath asked.
“So far, so good. We’re heading toward town now. Fifteen minutes should be about right, assuming there’s no barriers between here and there.”
“Find someplace to stay and let us know when you’ve checked in. Even if you don’t end up needing the rooms, I’d rather you be prepared and have someplace to retreat to if tensions escalate unexpectedly.”
“Understood.”
“I don’t need to talk to the others. Just make sure they eat before they feel compelled to do crimes of any sort. Bye.”
“Goodbye.” Perry tapped the end button and tucked the phone into his back pocket. “He said find rooms just in case.”
“So, that’s the plan, then,” Arthur said. “Check in, stow our gear, get some food. Give Perry a chance to pull a list of local businesses and translate names for us.”
“Hate to be the fun-killer, but would you guys mind if the Wolf in your company gets a nap somewhere in there?” Cora asked. “You know. Just, if that wouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience. We’ve only been schlepping heavy bags on our backs for four hours.”
“Shit, forgot about that,” Matt said apologetically. “Sorry, Cora. We’re so used to hoofing it for hours on end without stopping. I guess Heath forgot, too. Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to tank the mission if you decide you need to get a few hours of shuteye. Do you, Arthur?”
“No, I don’t believe that would be such a detriment.”
Nor did Perry. He wouldn’t have minded having a nap himself. Just because he could march for as long as the others didn’t mean he didn’t feel the effects at the end. He’d simply been conditioned ages ago not to complain about his weariness. He was glad Cora was there to say the things he couldn’t. Even an hour of sleep would have been a boon.
And an hour in a room that was far away from Matt’s body would have been a balm.
“I’ll send Prince Heath a text letting him know we’ve tweaked the plan,” Perry said. “We’ll try to be more conscientious going forward, Cora. I apologize on behalf of us all.”
“’Preciate it, boys. I really mean that. You’re swell.”
___
Perry managed to find rooms for them online on the tail end of the walk into town. He’d become proficient at walking, typing the crew credit card number into a smartphone, and chewing gum at the same time, and wondered if that was one of those consistent talents Oliver would think Perry should add to his C.V.
“The website said the hotel restaurant is closed, but room service is running all night,” Perry said.
“Hotel.” Arthur chuckled. “I remember back in the day, it was either we’d sleep with our backs against our bikes or we’d find a cave if it was too damned wet out. A hostel would have been a luxury.”
Perry remembered some of those days, as well. When Princess Simone had found out about them, she’d blown a gasket. “I don’t care if you’re fairies. You’re not waterproof or bear-proof, goddamn it!”
“But we didn’t mind, exactly,” Princess Siobhan had explained to her fuming sister-in-law. “We do what we have to.”
Princess Simone had given Prince Heath’s younger sister a menacing glower before putting her head on Perry’s shoulder and commenting, “You’re cruel creatures to have this baby out in the mud.”
While Perry appreciated that the princess had finally come to an understanding that he wasn’t actually older than her, except in the chronological sense, she’d started to coddle him a little more. Sometimes he minded. Sometimes he didn’t. Much depended on what his magic was doing in him at any given time. Often, he felt like he didn’t know anything, including the things he’d already learned.
The immediate consequence of that discussion had been the princess informing them all that if money was no object—and generally, it wasn’t a concern—they should always choose comfort if they could find it in a secure, discreet place.
“You could sleep on the floor,” Perry suggested to Arthur. “If that makes you feel better.”
“I just might.”
“Please tell me I have my own room,” Cora muttered.
“You do,” Perry said. “Might be smaller than you’re used to staying in, though. The hotel is a renovated historical property, and the guest rooms were converted from larger chambers.”
“As long as there are no bed bugs, you’ll hear no complaints from me.” She cut Arthur a scathing look and marked onward with her chin raised. “I’m always grateful for my comforts. I know not everyone is.”
What could have been a painstakingly slow check-in process was conducted rapidly thanks to Perry’s reckless use of a little magic he shouldn’t have spared. He didn’t see where he had a choice but to use it, however. Matt hadn’t given him more than a foot of breathing room since they’d entered the downtown area. If Perry had to hear that lustrous chuckle of his one more time, he was going to explode.
The bored, ancient innkeeper swiped their card, gave the most cursory of glances to their fake ID’s, and distributed heavy brass keys to them with a minimum of conversation.
Perry kept that nothing interesting to see here, don’t mind us lasso of magic around them as they climbed the narrow staircase to the second floor. Only when he observed that there were no bystanders in the dimly lit hall did he let the hasty warding spell deflate.
“Here’s mine,” Cora said. “Knock if you need anything.”
Arthur stopped without warning in front of Perry and did an about-face. “You can’t just walk in there like that. Unlock.”
Perry had never seen an eyebrow be raised so slowly than the left one on Cora’s face.
“The room has to be checked,” Arthur said.
“I agree.” Cora’s tone was anything but neutral, and her saluting eyebrow was a menacing flag Arthur was apparently choosing to ignore.
“Then unlock the door so we can get on with it.”
“Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Do you?”
Matt swore under his breath and sidled past him. “You’re on your own with that one, man. Fuck around and find out, I guess. Maybe it’ll be a good exercise for you.”
The fleeting scrunch of Arthur’s face was another thing Perry couldn’t recall ever seeing before. Whatever his intent had been in confronting Cora, he abandoned it and continued to his own room. “Knock when you’re ready to eat,” he groused before closing the door.
Perry’s room was two doors down from his. The moment he got that heavy rucksack off his back, he was going to flop onto the bed with his shoes still on and sleep until Cora emerged.
Matt waited nearby and watched Perry shove the key into the lock. “Are they really that small?”
“Hmm?”
Matt raised and pointed to his key. “The rooms. Not large enough for two?”
“Oh. Well, I actually don’t know how comfortable they’d be. I didn’t try to convert the square footage in my head. I’m used to feet and inches now. The dimensions were listed in meters.”
Matt grunted. “Mine’s on the third floor.” He showed Perry the yellowing white plastic key fob with the “301” stamped in gold onto the front.
Awash in administrative frustration, Perry paused the twisting of his key halfway around in the lock. “I thought we were all on the same floor. Do you want me to go ask if there’s one on this floor?”
“Nah, don’t make a fuss. I’m right over you. If you need anything, just bang on the ceiling or something.”
Eighteen inches. That was what Matt was giving him.
Eighteen inches and a tightening clench low down in his belly.
Perry gritted his teeth and forced his thoughts onto anything but the facts that Matt was in striking distance for a kiss and that he was comfortable asking Perry for favors.
He thought about sleep, but more importantly, about security. “Bang on the ceiling,” he said, forcing his heavy tongue to shape the sounds.
There really wasn’t much difference between Matt being upstairs and him being in the room on the other side of the bathrooms in their apartment. The convenience factor was about the same, with the only significant variance from normalcy being that Matt couldn’t pass from one room to the next without properly dressing first. He was over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, had a smile cockier than the sun god’s, and an endowment between his legs that only the most structured of pants could camouflage. He wasn’t going to be ignored.
With a push of relief, Perry opened the door then patted the wall for the light. He found the loosely fastened switch plate and flicked the toggle upward.
Immediately to his left in the short foyer was an efficiency bathroom with a walk-in shower on one side and the commode and pedestal sink on the other. The wall at his right ran true until colliding with the wall containing the curtained window. With the linen material being fairly translucent, he was certain no human-sized being hid behind the drapes.
He moved cautiously past the bathroom and let his gaze rake around the sleeping areas. The bed with its overly ornate, wrought iron headboard was, at best, a full. Perry was used to sleeping at a diagonal, and he’d certainly slept in smaller beds before.
Matt maneuvered tightly past him and knelt. He lifted the bedskirt and looked beneath.
“I’ll check the closet,” Perry said, but Matt got there first, which was stunningly impressive considering how Perry had been closer to the door and actually upright.
“All clear,” Matt said without a note of humor, but Perry laughed anyway. Matt had done the same thing Cora had reprimanded Arthur for trying to do.
“I appreciate your diligence. I hope you exercise the same rigor in your room.”
“Of course.” Without asking, Matt lifted Perry’s bag straps from his shoulders and dropped the huge canvas column into the corner. “What were you thinking of getting for dinner?”
“Dinner?” Probably much to his growling stomach’s dismay, Perry hadn’t been thinking about dinner at all. His mind was cluttered by the distractions of mate magic—of eighteen inches and aphrodisiac laughter.
“Yeah, you know. Dinner. The meal that comes between afternoon snack and midnight breakfast.” Matt set his bag down beside Perry’s and leaned against the narrow chest of drawers directly across from the bed. That was three feet. More than eighteen inches. But when Matt dragged his tongue across his sumptuous lips, Perry wondered if eighteen feet would be enough.
He tugged a long breath in through his nose and held it. If his lungs ached, his cock didn’t. He considered that a reasonable price.
“I’m going to need a hot meal soon,” Matt said. “Is there a menu here somewhere?”
Perry didn’t see any hotel literature atop any of the surfaces. If it existed, it had to be a drawer somewhere. He was going to have to let out the breath to respond, but having to answer Matt’s question gave him an excuse to be busy and to search. He opened each drawer, starting with the topmost one, and stopped at the bottom. The stack of hotel literature was there. “Mostly in Bulgarian. I can translate it for you if you don’t know what you want. Call down from your room when you think you know.”
Looking askance, Matt pursed his lips and grunted. “You know what I eat. Just order whatever. A lot of whatever.”
“I’ll do that.” When you leave. “You should let Arthur know we’re going to call for food.”
“Okay.” Matt tossed his key from hand to hand and departed without another word.
With him out of the way, Perry could think clearly enough to read for comprehension.
The menu offered both local specialties and international cuisines, including American. He didn’t know anything about Cora’s dietary preferences beyond the fact she was a meat eater, so he abstained from making any decisions for her. For the time being, he was going to choose to do her the kindness he’d want for himself and let her sleep.
Matt would probably enjoy the mixed grill…
Perry had to do math to figure out if it’d be enough. A pound of various meats certainly would have been enough for Oliver, so Perry assumed it had to be the same for Matt.
For himself, he chose the moussaka. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had moussaka. The fairies at the Hearth didn’t care much as much about variety as they did quantity.
Having thoroughly scanned the entire menu, Perry drifted to the doorway in search of Matt. He wasn’t standing in Arthur’s doorway.
May have gone inside.
Perry hated the feeling of being left on a ledge. He couldn’t rest until the other men made their decisions and Matt had settled himself upstairs.
As stiffness hooked itself into his neck and back muscles, he tried to relax his shoulders down from their tense height and make his breathing more regular.
Awful if he’s near. Awful if he’s far.
His body was punishing him for doing what he thought was right and fair. His nervous system was locked in a constant state of fight-or-flight readiness, because even if there was no observable danger, his you’re-forgetting-something stasis remained in effect. His magic was essentially working at odds with his sense. The magic demanded that Matt be near, but Perry knew indubitably that Matt being nearby would be wrong for both of them.
Splashing cold water on his face in the bathroom did little to chase away his agitation. He could only hope that when, or if, he slept, his rest would be deep and his body quiet. After walking for four hours, normally he would have had no trouble with that.
On the way out of the bathroom, he mindlessly nudged the room door closed.
It sprang immediately inward, and Matt stepped over the scarred wood threshold. “Shit, didn’t know you were back there. Wasn’t trying to squish you, man.”
An internal shout of “Oh no” echoed in the chasm of Perry’s mind as his eyes, nose, and ears fed increasingly turbulent feedback to his brain.
Look at him. Listen to the rumble in chest when he breathes. You know that scent well, don’t you? The entire apartment smells like him.
The inputs may as well have been a physical beating given how insistent they were.
How dare you attempt to ignore him? they seemed to demand, as though Perry had ever ignored him.
Matt closed the door and activated the lock. “Arthur said he’ll eat anything. Wants beer to go with it.” He pointed to the bathroom interior. “Mind if I go in there? I’ve got to piss like a stallion.”
“Go right ahead.”
They switched positions.
Matt closed the door, then hummed as he handled his business.
Perry made a beeline for the room phone and somehow managed to not be completely incomprehensible as he called the food orders down. He hoped that he made clear that the orders were all going to different places. If Matt wasn’t going straight to his room, Perry would have to come up with Plan B for keeping his wits about him.
As Matt stepped out of the bathroom with his face wetted and his shirt untucked, the room phone rang.
Thick-tongued, Perry snapped up the receiver. “Zdravey?”
The attendant’s speech was rapid-fire in pace and full of colloquial abbreviations, so it took much repetition to get Perry to understand, but it seemed there was no occupant in Room 301, and the room service clerk needed clarification on where the meal should go.
“I’m sorry. That doesn’t make sense,” Perry said. “We have four rooms. Three are on this order.”
The attendant again insisted that there was no guest currently checked into Room 301.
Perry turned to Matt, who was seated a bit sideways on the skinny upholstered bench at the foot of the bed and heeling off his running shoes. “Could you double-check the number on your key, please? They say there’s an issue.”
“Oh, I turned it back in.”
“You did? Why? Was it too small?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look.” Unperturbed, Matt stretched his arms and his legs out expansively and expelled a bear-like yawn.
“Oh no,” went the voice in the chasm again.
“I’m…I’m sorry for the confusion. Send it to 201, please.” Perry hung up.
Oh no.
“We’re probably not going to be here that long.” Matt grabbed the remote control and squinted at buttons. “Didn’t make sense to hog the space.”
“I see.”
Oh no.
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans and discreetly pushing the fabric free from his erection-in-progress, Perry looked around the room. There was no real table. They were either going to have to eat on the bed or eat standing.
A nap would absolutely be out of the question.
“You don’t have to stand for my sake,” Matt said in his familiar teasing way. “You don’t have to play host to me. Shit, we live together, man. Nothing’s changed.”
Plenty has changed.
“How long did they say the food would take?”
Why Matt had to sit that way—splay-legged with his hand dangling so close to his crotch—Perry didn’t know, but he was grateful that they weren’t at home. If they were at their apartment, in all probability, Matt wouldn’t have been fully dressed.
Perry’s throat was so tight and parched that his swallow could have broken his neck. He averted his gaze from the other man, ruing the day he’d first laid eyes on him. “About an hour.”
“Yikes. I’ll go let Arthur know.”
“Please do,” Perry murmured. “Take your time.”
While Matt did his errand, Perry made himself busy.
If he were lucky, he could find minutia to fixate on and work himself into a trance state stronger than his lustful one. He rooted his laptop out of his bag, found the Wi-Fi information in the paper stack, and settled against the headboard.
He could get a lot done in an hour. By the time the food arrived, Cora would possibly be refreshed and be ready to eat, too, so he’d have to put in another order. That’d buy Perry a little more time to recharge whatever energy he could before they attempted their contact with the local Bears.
Magic always found its owners faster when they were well-rested, but he hoped staying still would be a good enough alternative for the time being. Fairies on missions didn’t have the privilege of pickiness, even if they did sometimes get to sleep in beds and not on forest floors.