Back on the streets of Paris, Océane wondered if she had finally lost her mind. Perhaps it really was Stockholm syndrome after all, she mused, casting a sly look at Laen. Bloody hell, but he was gorgeous. It was just that she felt like she wanted to give him a chance. Corin had said she should and he had known Laen since they were children. She knew Corin was a little in love with her and she didn’t think he would suggest such a thing if he didn’t sincerely believe it. She decided she would give him the benefit of the doubt if for no other reason than that she desperately wanted to. But if he showed even a glimpse of his previous behaviour she would be off and running through the streets of Paris.
“I’m freezing!” She shivered, trying to stop her teeth from chattering.
“Would you like my jacket?” Corin asked, though in truth he didn’t look much warmer than her.
Océane shook her head. “No, come on. Let’s go and warm up.” She darted into the next café on their path before either of them could reply, and Laen and Corin were obliged to follow her inside. It was blissfully warm and packed with people who’d obviously had the same idea. The room was filled with the low chatter of conversation and music playing, the scent of fresh coffee and burning dust from the overworked heating system on the air. Threading their way through the crowded room, they found a free table crammed in the corner and ordered coffees.
Océane watched in amusement as Laen tried to fold his huge body up and tuck his knees under the tiny table with little success. Corin grabbed at the wine list, which made a bid for freedom when Laen’s knee bashed the table top and catapulted it in his direction. He rolled his eyes at Laen. Océane smothered a giggle as the big man blushed before rediscovering his usual ‘don’t speak to me if you want to keep breathing’ expression. As she looked up she saw that every female in the room and a few of the men were looking in their direction as though they had just seen exactly what they wanted from the menu. She gave them the evil eye and they looked away fast, probably wondering how in hell someone like her had ended up in the company of two earth-bound gods.
They made their orders and she hid a smile as the waiter made doe eyes at Corin. She looked at Corin to see how he reacted and smiled as he seemed unperturbed and winked back at her with a grin. As they waited for him to return with their orders she felt tense and clenched her fists to stop herself from biting her nails. She needed to do something as the awkward silence that now hung over them was appalling. Once the coffees arrived it became even worse as they all sipped quietly and she could do nothing but stare at Laen’s big hand as it gently cradled the tiny coffee cup.
To her surprise, Corin broke the tension by declaring he had just seen someone he knew. Taking his coffee in hand he got up and disappeared around the corner. She watched every head turn as he passed before she stared down at her cup, blushing. It had obviously been a blatant lie and they both knew he was giving them time to be alone together. With nervous fingers she tore open the packet containing the small chocolate that had come with the coffee with such haste that it flew from the wrapping and across the table. Laen’s hand reached out so fast that she didn’t have time to register the fact before he handed the chocolate back to her.
“It’s OK.” She shrugged. “You have it.”
She looked away from those disturbing black eyes and back down to her coffee only to see him put his own unopened packet on the saucer of her cup. She looked up at him and gave a nervous smile. “Thanks.”
“Try not to juggle it,” he said, his voice gruff but with an amused look in his eyes.
She picked up the little packet and handed it back to him. “Perhaps you should do it. I seem to be all fingers and thumbs.”
Obediently he opened the packet with care and handed it back to her. She retrieved the little chocolate from its plastic cover and popped it into her mouth. “Try yours,” she said, gesturing at the one she had thrown at him only to realise his gaze was focused on her mouth, his expression one of such hunger that she didn’t think one little chocolate was going to help much. She chewed self-consciously and wondered what the hell to do next.
***
Laen had watched his best friend retreating with a mixture of gratitude and horror as he couldn’t think of a single, damn thing to say to the woman opposite him. There was so much he wanted to say... needed to say but he just didn’t know how to begin. He had never been good at talking about emotions, and would frankly rather stick pins in his eyes. He knew this irritated the hell out of Corin, who didn’t find it a problem at all and was forever trying to get him to open up - with little success. It was usually Corin who mediated for him when such intervention was required with a woman. To be fair this wasn’t often as his affairs rarely lasted for more than a night. He didn’t like emotional entanglements and would swiftly disengage from any potential for tearful goodbyes. Corin strongly disapproved of the way he treated his lovers and often stepped in to pick up the pieces. At one point he had been forced to observe that Laen’s women all suffered from whiplash, he sprang from their beds so fast. Not that Laen cared. He didn’t care if they hated him and in fact preferred it to the idea that they might be wasting their love on him. This time, however, he discovered he cared very much and he was aware that, so far, he’d made an unholy mess of it.
He had spent the last half an hour wondering why Océane had been quite so quick to reassure Pierre that she was all right. It would have been the perfect time for her to sound the alarm but she hadn't even tried. What's more, for some reason he hadn't been concerned that she would. He trusted her, he realised with a jolt. He looked across the table and her dark eyes held his for a moment until she blushed and looked away. How he had found himself in his current position, he simply couldn't fathom. Océane was supposed to be his prisoner but somehow she was leading him by the nose around Paris and what’s more, he didn’t mind in the least. Somehow he had to make it clear that he wasn’t an ogre ... or at least that he wouldn’t be to her, not if she wanted him. For her he would happily curl up in a ball and purr like a kitten if she wanted. He tried to bring to mind all of the sage advice Corin had given him over the years about flirting with women, and couldn’t remember a word. Feeling increasingly uptight as the opportunity that Corin had given him began to slip away, he told himself sternly to man up. He cleared his throat and Océane looked up at him expectantly. Damn.
“Does ... your friend live close to here?” he asked, hoping this was a way to get her talking. He breathed a sigh of relief as Océane lit up and snatched at the conversation with enthusiasm.
“Yes, about ten minutes away.” She nodded and then looked anxious as though she was wishing it was farther so she could talk about it more.
Laen fumbled around for his next line as he systematically shredded the plastic cover of the chocolate he had handed her. “You said she was sick, what ails her?”
Océane bit her lip, cradling her empty coffee cup between her hands. “Cancer,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “She was diagnosed a long while ago. We’ve been friends since we were children. We don’t have any family, so it’s always been her and me against the world,” she said with a smile.
Like him and Corin, he thought with a frown, though Corin’s family were not in any way as cold and cruel as Laen’s. Corin’s Mother, the Queen of Alfheim, had her own special way of tying him up in emotional knots with her games at court. From whoring him out to those she needed influencing and brought on side, to locking him in the dungeons if he spoke out against her. She was as manipulative as she was beautiful. Their circumstances and their positions as crown Princes within the land’s most powerful families had given them common ground when they were actually polar opposites. Their friendship had not always been an easy one but they had always found a way through or, at least, Corin had always been generous enough to forgive whatever it was Laen had done. He didn’t deserve it on the whole but besides his sister Aleish, Corin had been the only person who had ever given a damn if he lived or died. Corin would lay down his life for him in a heartbeat and Laen would not hesitate to do the same.
“He’s a good friend to you, isn’t he?” She gestured in the direction that Corin had left in and Laen nodded.
“Better than I deserve. To be honest I ...” He stopped and shook his head. “I cannot understand why he bothers.”
“I think that about Carla. She’s such a lovely girl. She’s always cheerful even when I’m being a bitch. I’m afraid I’ve got a terrible temper,” she admitted and he smiled inwardly as he remembered how she had raged at him. She paused and his heart broke as her eyes filled with tears. “She doesn’t deserve the life she’s been given. She doesn’t deserve to be so sick. It isn’t fair.” She stopped as her voice broke and looked away as she brushed away a tear.
Oh, nice work, Laen, he thought to himself savagely. You finally open your wretched mouth and now she’s crying! Feeling like a brute, he reached over the little table and took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“I am so sorry.”
Her head shot up as she looked at his big hand covering hers and her shock was palpable. He felt his heart sink into his boots at her reaction and was about to withdraw his hand when she looked up at him. His breath caught in his throat. Her beautiful eyes were so warm and glittering with tears, and then on top of that she did the most wonderful thing. She smiled at him again. Totally lost and bewildered by the fact that she hadn’t withdrawn her hand the minute he touched it, he brought his other hand to the table and held hers within them both.
***
Océane stared at their clasped hands in disbelief. Laen was holding her hand! She somehow resisted the urge to squeal but almost lost it and giggled. She bit her lip savagely to contain herself and sat utterly motionless in the hope she wouldn’t spook him. It would appear that he was far from being spooked however when he slowly but insistently rubbed his thumb over her palm in a circular motion. The sensation was all at once soothing and disturbing and somehow became so physically intimate she thought she might actually spontaneously combust.
“Do you miss your home?” he asked.
She looked up from their hands in confusion and had to focus hard on the question before she could answer as his touch was so incredibly distracting.
“Yes, of course ...” she began automatically and then stopped. “Yes and ... no.”
“Oh?”
She couldn’t miss the hopeful tone of his voice and she smiled a little as she replied. “This whole experience has been ... terribly frightening.”
“I know,” he butted in, his hands tightening on hers. “I shouldn’t have ... I should never have treated you like that!” She was taken aback by the self loathing in his voice but she wasn’t about to disagree.
“No. You shouldn’t,” she said and was quite pleased that she’d sounded so severe as the thumb stroking her palm was doing things to her insides. To her disappointment he began to withdraw his hand, obviously thinking she was angry with him. She held on to it though and wouldn’t let it go. The look on his face made her pause. He seemed so relieved and the smile that followed made her heart do a little somersault in her chest. “Anyway, that aside, your kingdom ...”
He shook his head. “I am not king yet.”
“Well, whatever it is, your land ... It’s so beautiful. I’m envious. Paris is an amazing place, great for my work. There are museums and galleries everywhere you turn but ... I’ve always wanted to live in the country. The city smothers me, it’s so big and busy and ... lonely,” she admitted.
“You are lonely?” His voice was gruff but his eyes, usually so fierce and intimidating, were filled with concern. She swallowed, her heart pounding in frantic excitement.
“Yes, I am.” She looked back at him and willed him to say what it was he was thinking so that she needn’t keep guessing, but he said nothing. Instead he just brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it gently. It was the barest touch, but Océane still felt his lips burning against her skin even when they were no longer touching her. The feel of them seared like a brand and she felt a ripple of desire flood through her veins and pool in a central point that she had to try very, very hard to ignore. Her breathing hitched despite herself and she looked determinedly at the dregs of her coffee, quite unable to look up and meet his eyes, which she knew were studying her every move. She licked her lips nervously as he lifted her hand once again, turning it this time to plant a soft kiss against her palm. This time she did look up and the smile he gave her made her heart leap in her chest.
She watched in approval as he moved his chair as close as he could get, and she leaned into him, feeling the heat of his big body warming her even through his leather jacket. Her head naturally fell to rest against his shoulder and for a moment she felt like she had found the most comfortable spot in the entire universe; a safe haven in a world that had not treated either of them kindly. She dared to look up at him and found it hard to breathe as she caught the tender look in those black eyes. Moving instinctively she raised her head, hoping that maybe ... maybe he would kiss her, but at that moment Corin returned to the table, putting a hand on Laen’s arm. “I suggest we get a move on,” he said with a hesitant smile.
Océane straightened up quickly and tried to remove her hand from Laen’s before Corin could see but he had taken them both by surprise. He smiled at them in his usual manner but Océane had caught the look on his face as he saw them together and her heart twisted with guilt. Oh, why couldn’t she have just fallen in love with Corin, it would have made things so much simpler. Not that she was falling for Laen, she assured herself, she just, she just ... Well, she was just curious about him. Yes, that was it ... curious. A little voice snickered in the back of her head and she told it firmly to keep its opinions to itself.
“Actually,” she said to Laen, deciding she was going to test him and see if he really could be trustworthy. “My flat is closer to here than Carla’s. If you promise I can still go and see her, we could go and get the story first.”
Laen smiled at her. “Yes, of course.”
Oh. She tore her eyes away from his mouth with effort. It really was a devastating smile and all the more so for being rare.
Corin paid for their drinks and she led them out of the café and back onto the icy pavement as they followed her home through streets with too many forgotten corners and past the jagged-toothed windows of forsaken buildings. The closer they got, the more colourful the walls became, illustrated with spray-painted markings announcing the possession of place or person like dogs pissing on a lamp post. Somehow the swirls of garish colour only made the place duller still.
Eventually they stood outside her building. It was a massive block of flats that made Océane feel smaller than ever stood in the landscape of her own life and as usual the lift was broken. They had to climb seven flights of stairs up to her floor. She took the all too familiar path and with each footfall her body felt heavier, colder. As always she felt like the cold grey concrete beneath her feet was sucking the life from her soul, like the longer she stayed the more the colour and vitality leached from her life and she walked her days like a faded old film. Her movements were captured faithfully but the colour was reproduced in black and white. Before the men at her side had arrived she had existed in the brightly coloured world that lived in her head, her real life a shadow compared to the vivid beauty of what lay in her imagination. The glittering lights on the horizon sparkled, sharp and cold and only illuminated everything she already knew.
She had spent as much time as possible hidden in galleries and museums, cloistered securely from the real world, surrounded by the beauty that she could not afford or was unable to bring to her own life. She had stayed here because she had begun here, not because she wanted to. Not because she belonged here. She didn’t know why exactly, as Paris was a vibrant place, a whirlwind of creativity that should have fed her artistic nature, but she had never felt that she belonged and the excitement and exuberance of city life had changed with time and experience to an underlying fear of danger and isolation. The noise and the dirt and the bustle just segregated her more the longer she stayed. Now the sensation gripped her anew and she found herself totally out of place. Surely she didn’t belong here? She didn’t want to belong here! The thought made panic rise in her chest as the smell of refuse and urine assaulted her nostrils. The leavings of the human world flitted around her feet, chocolate wrappers and empty larger cans scattering on the wind along with the contaminated leftovers of the druggies who found an escape from their own monochrome world into a neon landscape of chemical devising.
With tears in her eyes she found herself longing for the sweet untainted air of the Fae Lands but it was so utterly foolish that she gave herself a mental shake. This ugly grey reality was her home and no amount of daydreaming about being whisked to her happily ever after by a handsome Prince was going to change that. Laen would read the story, realise he had made a mistake, and let her go. And she would never see either of those impossibly handsome Princes or their beautiful world again. She almost laughed out loud at her own stupidity. One of her teachers had told her once as a child that she should grow up and stop believing in Fairy tales. It would appear she still hadn’t managed it.
By the time they reached her door she had composed herself again and dug her key out of her jeans pocket. She hesitated with the key still in her hand and looked around at them. They were the ones out of place here, not her. This was her life, her reality, where she belonged and she wished that she didn’t have to suffer the humiliation of showing it to them, but she guessed there was no choice. With a sigh of regret she unlocked the door and stepped inside. She glanced at Laen to gauge his reaction, and looked away when she saw that he was very clearly shocked. She could only imagine what a Prince must think of her, living like this. She had done her best with the place with her meagre income but now she saw it through his eyes, the shabby brown chair with the stuffing hanging out, washing hanging over the back of the doors and the disgusting orange carpet she couldn’t afford to replace. It was all mean and pitiful and that was without adding the strong smell of damp from the leaking pipe in the bathroom.
***
Laen stood in Océane’s flat, imagining her here all alone, and had to stop himself as the pain in his chest threatened to overwhelm him. He simply couldn’t believe that anyone could live like this. But Océane ... His Océane had been forced to. He took a breath and nearly choked on the stale air. He turned around and knocked into the kitchen cabinet, sending a landslide of crockery tumbling back into the sink. Cursing himself for being so clumsy, he stepped back and almost sat down as he backed into the tiny kitchen table. There was barely enough room to swing an undernourished mouse, let alone a cat. One small room served as a kitchen, living and dining room with a door that led to an even smaller bedroom and a bathroom so tiny he couldn’t have turned around in it. Yet every available surface was crammed with plants, some of which looked wilted and thirsty. Océane sprang into action, grabbing a chipped mug with a discoloured picture of Monet’s garden on, filling and refilling it with water and dashing around while Laen looked on with the painful ache in his chest growing stronger. He hated the idea of her stuck in this tiny room, longing for green fields and trees and compensating with as many plants as could possibly fit. It made him want to sweep her back to his land and promise her that every single inch of it down to the very last blade of grass was all hers if she would only take it from him.
The feeling shocked him so much that he couldn’t speak.
She finished her watering and put the mug down as he watched her wringing her hands uncomfortably, looking at them both with big frightened eyes. He didn’t want her to look at him like that, not again, and he struggled to find a way to tell her that it was all right, that he wouldn’t let her live like this for a moment longer, but he couldn’t fathom how to begin. Instead he just stood there like a fool until Corin spoke.
“The story?” he prompted gently and she nodded and pulled a laptop out from under the chair. With a complicated arrangement that required careful balancing of various boxes connected by leads, she managed to set up the laptop and printer and out came the story. Laen watched the proceedings as his brain turned and came up with absolutely nothing of help past the fact that he was in love with her and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Once the story was printed she got a plastic folder and put the pages inside, holding it out to Laen with defiance in her eyes. Her chin was up as she looked at him, as though she was daring him to find fault with it. “There.”
Laen looked at her, surprised by her manner and tone of voice. He felt she was cross with him suddenly and he wanted more than anything to tell her it didn’t matter. He didn’t want to read it any more. He really didn’t. If she had written him a gruesome death or assassination, then he didn’t want to know.
He didn’t think his heart could stand it.
The story, however, was the reason they were here and he couldn’t say anything now. When they got back to his home he would give it back to her, unread, and perhaps then she would understand what he was trying to say. He could only hope so as he seemed to be quite unable to find the words himself. It would be all right, he assured himself. He just had to get her back to his home and everything would be all right.
He watched as Océane grabbed a coat from her wardrobe and turned out the lights, and they headed back outside.