Firefox: a Fox Demon's Claim Read online

“It’s very good,” she added.

  Sparrow shrugged. “I only had to put the things together, fortunately.” He took a bite and seemed much less pleased with his sandwich than Chloe did. He sniffed at it, and the tips of his ears peeked above his hair. Chloe giggled, covering her hand with her mouth as she kept chewing, so he let his ears emerge completely and twisted them around.

  She reached out to touch one, still amazed that they could be real, and he tilted his head toward her hand as if eager for more affection. A low noise came from his throat.

  “Do foxes purr?” she asked.

  “I am not purring! That’s only for cats.” He said the word like it was distasteful, but the quick smile made it clear his indignant tone was all for show, probably trying to keep her smiling.

  They ate in silence for a few minutes, until Sparrow cleared his throat. “I don’t want you to get upset, Chloe, but why didn’t you let me punish her? Would it not have made you feel better to see her brought to task?”

  Chloe chewed slowly, carefully considering his question. “It would have made me feel better, yes. But only for a moment. After that, I would have felt like I was letting you fight my battles for me. And I’m not one to do that.”

  “As your guardian, it is my duty to help you fight any battles you may find yourself in.”

  She took a long drink of her coffee, a painful truth settling over her. Since her father had died, who had ever helped her do anything? Even the supposed kindness of the senator taking her in hadn’t really been a kindness, but a way to give his son what he wanted in the end.

  “Nobody does anything for me without an ulterior motive,” she admitted.

  “I do.”

  “I know it seems that way. But it’s going to take me some time to get used to.”

  Sparrow nodded, as if he understood. He stroked his hand down her hair, and the touch did feel electric. She hadn’t been imagining it before.

  Chloe shuddered.

  Carla had been a reminder that nothing ever came easy for her, nothing ever seemed to work out the way it should. And it brought back her distrust of Norman or any Greyson or people in general with the force of a tidal wave.

  Unless her mind had cracked right down the middle after Norman’s voicemail, Sparrow definitely wasn’t human. He was something otherworldly. And that intrigued her and excited her. But overcoming distrust in people generally, and men specifically, wasn’t something she could snap her fingers and do.

  “I’m going to need time,” she said. “I’m not saying no. I’m saying I’m not ready to trust you that much, not yet.”

  Sparrow leaned back, away from her, his eyebrows raised in the middle, looking not like a fox or a demon, but an incredibly sad puppy. It almost made her smile and embrace him, tell him everything would be okay. But he nodded his head.

  “I understand. Take all the time you need, of course. I’m at your service, after all.”

  “Thank you.” At least there was one part of her life where there wouldn’t be pressure, at least for a while. “I don’t want you to leave, though, if that’s all right?”

  “Of course.” His face brightened, and they continued eating in silence.

  Sparrow said little through the rest of the day besides asking Chloe what he could do for her, what she needed, and trying to take care of her as best he could. It warmed her, because for the first time in her life, someone’s concern actually seemed genuine.

  Chloe could see Sparrow struggle with being patient when it came time for her to go to bed. She hadn’t gotten dressed through the day, opting to stay in her bathrobe and lie on the couch, a lot, once with her head in his lap while he stroked her hair.

  And despite her reluctance to talk about Norman and her ruined life, she’d told Sparrow everything. How she’d been taken in by Norman and not realized what a monster he was. How his parents were generous with her, but cold. How she’d lost their baby, and Norman had turned brutal with her. How he’d drank too much too often, and had almost killed someone else while driving drunk, trying to catch her when she panicked and ran from him. That was why he’d gone to jail, and despite wishing no one had gotten hurt, Chloe was relieved he was locked up.

  She told Sparrow how Norman thought they were going to get back together. How he thought Chloe belonged to him. And she could sense his anger with each new revelation and the way he kept telling her she didn’t need to worry about Norman or anyone else anymore.

  She almost felt as if she was taking advantage of him, laying in his lap, confessing, but he’d suggested it, and acted as if her willingness to do so made him happy.

  At bedtime, though, when she said she was going to have to sleep and headed for her bedroom without inviting him, he stood there looking forlorn, leaning forward as if it to follow her, though he made no move to do so. She stopped at her bedroom door and said, “We can just sleep again, right?”

  He beamed and followed her to the bed. When she sat her alarm, Sparrow asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I have work tomorrow.”

  “Gaia, that’s of no concern to you now. It’s unnecess—”

  “It’s my job.”

  “But you no longer need to follow a human routine.”

  “I know you keep saying that, but it’s another example of something that’s going to take me some time. I think I’ll feel better if I stick to my usual routine for right now, while I’m…coming to grips with things. All right?”

  He’d paused for a moment, then spoke softly. “As you wish.”

  The truth was, her job wasn’t the greatest thing, but it was hers alone.

  Without a college degree, she’d had trouble finding a good job, but she’d started out as a simple file clerk in a law office and worked her way up to a receptionist with a lot of other duties. People hesitated to use the word secretary, but that’s essentially what she was, for three of the lawyers who worked in that firm.

  The job allowed her to pay her own bills and be independent. She had responsibility there, people who relied on her, and as lost as she felt right then, if she’d given that up, she wasn’t sure if she could handle life in general.

  She wasn’t ready to trust anyone that much, not even the man—the fox-demon or whatever he was—who held her so protectively.

  With his warmth at her back and his gentle breath against her ear, Chloe slept like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  The next morning, getting out of bed was a bigger challenge than even those mornings where her head felt three sizes too big and her stomach lurched the moment she opened her eyes. Sparrow’s body melded against hers, hard in all the right places, and Chloe felt drawn to him in a way that surprised her.

  She wanted to roll over, spread her legs and take her chances. And maybe if life had treated her even a tiny bit better, she’d have been able to do that. Instead, she wanted an ordinary day to clear her head. She had time before Norman was released. Time to make decisions about whether or not to “consummate the joining” as Sparrow kept putting it.

  Sparrow shadowed her as she got ready for work, and wanted to come with her, but she convinced him to stay there instead. Or go wherever he wanted, as she wouldn’t be home until after five. She offered to bring dinner home.

  And then she left, and noticed that as soon as she was on the other side of her front door from Sparrow, she felt a little cooler. But she caught the train to work and walked into the office with a smile on her face, and everything went as it normally did for the first hour or so.

  A delivery man carrying flowers and a box of chocolates showed up before the morning had gone on too long. “Chloe Greyson?”

  A lawyer walking through frowned at him, then her. She went by Chloe Rossi here—they didn’t know her married name had been Greyson. So she waited until he’d left the room before saying, “Yes, that’s me.”

  He had her sign for the delivery, then left Chloe there frowning at it all. It was sweet, but it pressured her. She was sure she’d gotten through to
Sparrow that she didn’t want to be pressured. She had to take things in her own time.

  Still, maybe he thought it was the appropriately human way to woo someone? In that case, it was kind of sweet.

  And she wasn’t one to turn down chocolate at any time.

  When she opened the long, narrow box of candy, she realized her mistake. Sparrow hadn’t sent this. Norman had. Each piece from left to right was decorated with a number, counting down the days until he was released.

  A card was taped inside the lid of the candy box. Her hands shook a she opened it, and a cry tore from her when she read the simple message:

  Not long now before we’re together again, Chloe, and starting the family we were supposed to have.

  Her desk phone rang, but Chloe couldn’t answer it.

  She shot up from the chair, dumped the box of candy and flowers into the trash can behind her desk, and raced for the bathroom, sure she was going to be sick.

  Chapter 12

  Though he was disappointed that Chloe hadn’t accepted him yet, Sparrow admired that fact, too. The more he thought about what he had expected from his goddess, the more he realized it wouldn’t have been right had she just agreed with everything he’d said.

  Gaia was headstrong, independent, and capable. Of course she wasn’t going to take his word for anything. Not even after he’d shown his true self to her and had let her see his power.

  His goddess had to make decisions in her own time, and Sparrow would accept that. He was confident that if he merely gave her that time, she would come to realize the truth and happily welcome him into her arms as her consort.

  He did hope it didn’t take much longer, because two nights of sleeping with her body pressed against his had been hard enough. Much more of this and he might lose his mind. It was so difficult to hold her and do nothing more when his entire body ached to be one with hers.

  But he was hers, no matter what. If he had to hold her while she slept every night for many more days, then that’s what’s Sparrow would do.

  She hadn’t been gone more than an hour or so when he started wondering how he might best please her while they remained here. He was working out how to go about this when he realized something was very wrong.

  They hadn’t consummated their joining yet, but they bonded. And wave after wave of fear, disgust, and despair begin crashing into Sparrow through the bond they already had with each other. He didn’t know what had happened to cause his goddess to feel this way, but it didn’t matter. Sparrow closed his eyes and reached out for her, and in a matter of moments he stood before her in a tiny stall that smelled of bleach and flowers.

  Chloe sat on the closed toilet lid, her feet up and her arms wrapped around her legs. Her forehead rested on her knees while she sobbed quietly.

  “Gaia?”

  Chloe shouted and flinched, her head snapping up. “What the—how did you get in here? Did…did you follow me to work?”

  Through all her shocked, angry questions, the tears didn’t stop.

  “I felt your pain, and so I came to help you.” Sparrow cupped her cheeks with his hands, wiping the tears away with his thumbs. “What is wrong?”

  Chloe shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut, another sob escaping her throat. “It doesn’t matter. But I have to gather up my things and leave, right away. I’m going to have to change my name again, find a new job, new friends…no, no friends this time, that might be how he found me to start with. I can’t trust anybody next time.”

  She let go of her legs and stood, forcing Sparrow to step sideways to give her room in the cramped space. “I can’t be here right now. I have to go home and—”

  “Wait. Gaia, first you need to calm down.”

  “Do not tell me to calm down! I’ve been calm for a while, and it was a mistake. I lulled myself into a false sense of safety, but I was being an idiot. He found me, and he’s coming, and—”

  “Another person has threatened you? But you have nothing to fear with me by your side. There’s no need for you to go anywhere, but home with me.”

  Chloe rubbed her hands over her face and leaned against the wall. “Sparrow, you don’t understand. I was married to this man. He’s not going to stop no matter where I go. I won’t be safe anywhere, but the faster I get out of here now, the faster I can find some other place and buy myself time until he finds me again.”

  Sparrow sighed. “After all I’ve shown you, you still don’t believe I can protect you?”

  “I don’t think it’s your place to protect me. Norman is my problem, not yours.”

  Sparrow laughed then, and Chloe looked at him as if a tree might have sprouted out of his forehead.

  “You are so stubborn,” he said. “I don’t know why I expected anything else. But I assure you, Gaia, your problems are my problems. Will you allow me to show you something I think will change your mind?”

  “No one has ever protected me from Norman or anything else in my life. And I’m running out of time.”

  Sparrow touched her face gently. “Five minutes to convince you, Chloe. Surely you can spare five minutes?”

  And he felt her assent before she sighed and said, “Okay, five minutes,” so by the time she’d spoken, they were already gone from the bathroom stall and standing next to a brook.

  “But I can’t spare more than—” Chloe gasped, then leaned first left and then right as if she couldn’t get her balance. She reached for Sparrow to right herself, though he held her arms firmly. She spun her head side to side to take in her new surroundings.

  “What the…” She took a few unsteady breaths. “Is this…am I hallucinating? Is this all in my head, like a dream?”

  Sparrow took her hand and led her on the path next to the brook, then helped her step over it. They walked a few more steps until the brook widened into a stream. “No. This is not a dream.”

  Chloe looked around her wide-eyed, clinging tight to Sparrow’s hand. “H-how did we get here?”

  Sparrow stopped, unsure what she was asking. “I wished for us to come here, and we came.”

  She shook her head quickly, as if what he said made no sense. “But where are we?”

  “We’re in the Twilight.” He pointed toward the simple cottage he’d lived in for a time as a child. “And this is my home.”

  Chapter 13

  Chloe’s insides, at first, might have still been in the bathroom stall at the lawyer’s office. But by the time Sparrow took her hand and led her toward the cottage, her equilibrium had returned. A small part of her still wondered if maybe her night of bourbon at the bar had led to alcohol poisoning and coma or brain damage, and that’s how it was possible for the most gorgeous man she’d ever known to have fox ears and lightning inside him.

  That would go a long way toward explaining how she’d jumped from the bathroom at work to this magical-looking place in the space of a breath.

  “My mother was banished here while she was carrying me,” he explained.

  Chloe scoffed. “Banished? This place looks like a reward, not a punishment.” The cottage he was leading her toward looked like the little country cottage in every fairy tale movie ever made. Flowers ringing the outside, a little stone path leading to the door, and green, lush grass in the front yard. Everything was green here, except the flowers that were multicolored and the impossibly blue, clear sky save a few fluffy, pure white clouds.

  Birds flew overhead, singing sweet tunes, and two squirrels chased each other around the trunk of a huge tree that offered shade to the cottage. Well, not shade exactly, because…there was no sun. The light simply seemed to come from the sky. It warmed her skin like sunlight, but seemed to come from every direction.

  “Yes, it’s beautiful. But if you can never leave, anyplace can be a punishment.”

  Or any situation, she thought bitterly.

  He led her through the door of the cottage, and the inside was as old-world fairy-tale as the outside. And nearly as bright and warm. He motioned for her to sit on a puffy,
green chair that might have been the most comfortable chair in which she’d ever sat. Without doing anything, it extended beneath her feet and lifted them so she was reclined.

  That’s quite a trick. She caught herself before she said it out loud, because unless she was trapped inside her brain imagining all this, none of this was an actual trick. Real magic, perhaps. She had to face what was in front of her.

  “I haven’t been here in some time. I left right from your palace to find you after I won the Selection and was knighted your consort. I lived there, mostly. But this is where I lived as a boy, even after my mother died.”

  “It’s…” Beautiful seemed inadequate, and he’d already called it that. “Amazing.” She couldn’t miss the wistful look on his face as he glanced around the sitting room and kitchen of his childhood home. “She died when you were just a kid?”

  Sparrow nodded. “I think a broken heart killed her slowly over the years.” He knelt next to her chair and rested both palms casually on her arm. “My father was a powerful demon, duke and heir to a noble house. My mother was a servant there. She fell in love with him and believed his lies that he loved her too. Lies he told to get her into his bed. When she was with child, he trapped her here for the remainder of her life because he wanted nothing to do with her or me, and he didn’t want the duchess to know he’d been unfaithful.”

  Sparrow breathed in sharply through his nose. “My mother faded every year that I can remember, and when I was twelve, she died. Not long after, the duchess died without ever giving my father a proper heir. So he sent for me and finally acknowledged that I was his blood. I—”

  Sparrow stood and moved to the window, staring out and swallowing repeatedly.

  “You what?” Chloe asked, the chair moving before she did, as if it knew she wanted to rise. She stood and pressed a hand to Sparrow’s back. “Go on, please.”

  He tilted his head her direction but didn’t meet her eyes. “I didn’t know the story of how we came to be here. She never told me. I was happy here with her, even though I knew I had a father somewhere. So when he sent for me, I was overjoyed. I didn’t know the whole story until later. Another servant in his house told me, and I was so ashamed for being happy to be a duke’s son.”