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When he’d dressed in more formal realm-wear – black slacks and a dark blue silk shirt – he went in search of Hannah. Full-dark wouldn’t arrive for some time in the northern realm. Because the steel shades were still down throughout his house, he contacted Hannah telepathically.
I’ll be right in. Just catching the sunset.
As soon as she opened the balcony door and stepped across the threshold, his heart gave way. So much feeling surfaced that for a moment he couldn’t move and he definitely couldn’t speak.
But his expression must have caught Hannah off guard because as she closed the door, she asked. “What’s wrong?”
He had to show her.
He crossed the room in a few brisk strides, hauled her into his arms and kissed her.
~ ~ ~
Hannah had never been more surprised than by this kiss. Jude had looked really upset for a good long moment when she’d opened the door from the balcony. Now she was in his arms, her heart beating hard in her chest. She’d wondered what it would be like to see him again after such extraordinary lovemaking earlier that morning.
Now she knew.
She slid her arms around his neck and responded in kind, stroking his back beneath his clasped Guardsman hair, nibbling at his lips, savoring when he drove his tongue against hers.
She hadn’t expected to be caught up in an embrace first thing, but she loved it.
Her heart had warmed to Jude over the past two days. She’d longed for him before, and loved him very much as a good friend, but right now, oh, God, she was pretty sure she was falling in love with him, all the way, hard.
When he drew back, he looked as confused as ever as he pushed her hair away from her face. “I hadn’t meant to do that, but the moment I saw you, it seemed like the only thing I could do.”
“I’ve never had a more perfect greeting, and I mean that.”
He kissed her again, and if Nathan hadn’t been roaming the lower rooms, straightening up for the meetings, she felt certain they would have been headed for a quickie.
She almost suggested they retire once more to his bedroom, but Nathan came in and said that the Civic Coalition leaders had just started to arrive. “I’m making lots of coffee. You’d better go in and start laying feathers. You’ve got a couple trolls hop-stepping with steam coming out their ears. The same question keeps getting asked: ‘Why weren’t they told’?”
“Got it.”
Despite Nathan’s presence, Jude kissed her again, though this time, he didn’t linger.
On her own, she returned to the balcony, enjoying the sun as it made its way slowly into the west. In early summer, this far north, it took a while for full dark to arrive. She pulled her phone from her jeans and called the Gold Rush. Amelia shut the door to her office against what sounded like a riotous, happy hour crowd so she could talk.
Han
nah felt the smallest pang that she wasn’t there. She knew so many people in Port Townsend and had as many human regulars as realm. More than one romance had blossomed, which reminded her that the bride who’d been assaulted by Margetta had announced her engagement at the Gold Rush.
“Sounds like the gang is all there.”
“Yes, and that troll is back who gets stinking drunk then dances on the bar.”
“You can’t blame him. They use their feet for expression.”
“It’s a safety hazard,” Amelia growled. Despite her overall free spiritedness, she had her rules and didn’t like anyone overrunning them.
Hannah realized just how much she loved the kinds of problems she had at her bar compared to Jude’s regular nightmare. Her heart felt crushed suddenly with the knowledge about how much her life had changed. She wanted to go back badly, to the way things were before the wraith-pair attacked Jude outside her bar.
Drawing her thoughts back to the Gold Rush, she said, “Well, have Hector keep an eye on him.” Her bouncer could easily hold the troll in the air with one hand if he needed to. He was a Guardsman-sized shifter who’d fallen out with his pack and now lived in Port Townsend year round. Hannah had helped him get a special U.S. visa because he worked for her.
She trusted realm-folk, but like humans, sometimes alcohol could make them behave like idiots. And Hector, bless him, took care of business every night.
“He’s already on it.”
Hannah then explained what had been happening. Amelia whistled a couple of times then said she’d known a few things already because one of the fae had brought in a copy of the Kellcasse Chronicle. “Your ass looks stellar in that photo, by the way, and all your friends are going to be so jealous when they see that you’re wrapped up in Mastyr Jude’s arms.”
