Her wings were like gossamer lace and I found myself sweating as I did all I could to be careful, to not put a single tear in them. My concentration was so intense that when she spoke to me again, I had to get her to repeat herself.
“The Hollows Group turned down our offer today.” She looked over her shoulder at me. “But really, we didn’t want them to help us.” The weight in her stare said it all, but she went on anyway. “Or at least not all of them. My lady would like to hire you, Breena. She’ll pay well.”
I grimaced as I continued to rub the greasy hair cream through her delicate wings. So apparently it wasn’t just happenstance that she’d stumble-flown to my window. The whole can you see me? thing had been a ruse. I should have known. “Tell me if that hurts.”
“It’s fine, a little tingly.”
She wasn’t wrong. My fingers were tingly too. “Is that your magic?”
“No, I think it’s whatever you’re using.” She cleared her throat. “Would you be willing to meet with my lady? To at least hear the offer?”
My own brain was still trying to work through the morning fog. Yes, it was closer to noon, but when you worked till three in the morning, noon was morning. “Why did the Hollows Group turn you down?” It seemed exceptionally strange to me that they would turn down any job. Especially given the last job they’d almost turned down had ended up paying so well, both financially and as a PR opportunity.
The door to the bathroom opened and Corb stood there in nothing but shorts, his dark hair mussed up, eyes at half-mast as he stumbled toward the toilet on which I was sitting. Every muscle in his torso was defined as if they’d been sculpted, and it looked like he’d woken up in a sweat. Damn it, I think I was actually drooling. My hormones had gone into overdrive when I hit forty, and I really, really liked to window shop. Fortunately for me, the men I was around gave me a good amount to look at.
“Move, I gotta pee,” he grumbled. A one-bathroom loft had its disadvantages.
I rolled my eyes as I fought my suddenly raging libido and the urge to reach out and swipe my hand across his abs to see if they really were that hard. Instead, I held out a palm for the fairy and picked up the hair cream with the other hand. “Manners, Corb.”
His eyes shot to the container in my hand. I held it up. “Your hair cream is helping me get the gum out of her wings, seeing as you don’t have a lick of cooking oil in the kitchen.” Classic bachelor pad if you asked me.
He swallowed hard and slowly looked at my hand and the petite woman who sat there, seemingly enjoying the view of his naked torso as much as I was. She leaned forward and pointed a finger at him. “He’s hot. Do you really live with him?”
Yup, she was a window shopper too.
I laughed. “I live in the closet, not his bedroom.”
His eyes shot to the hair cream. “That’s not hair cream.”
I held the container up. “It’s Boy Butter. What else would it be?” I lifted my eyes to him, making a pitiful attempt to raise one eyebrow, which always ended with me lifting both of them. “You maybe need to go back to bed.”
His jaw flexed and he turned on his heel.
“I thought he had to pee?” the fairy girl asked.
“Me too.” I sat back down on the lid of the toilet, and she hopped off my hand and onto the sink edge, where I kept working the cream through her wings. “It smells nice.”
The fairy let out a giggle. “Oh my lady of the stars! I think I know why he was upset.”
I pulled the long string of bright pink gum off and put it on a piece of toilet paper. “Why?”
“That isn’t hair cream.”
I grabbed the container and flipped it over so I could read the label.
“Boy Butter, best cream around.”
She was giggling; I was staring at the picture of a large arm grabbing a stick as it churned butter on the yellow label.
Churning. Butter.
I put the container down, unable to stop the blurt of laughter that ripped out of me. “CORB! You should keep this in the bedroom, not the bathroom!”
Heavy footsteps and then the front door slammed. I couldn’t stop a fit of giggles, and the fairy laughed with me until tears streamed down both our faces.
“Do you think he has more?” she finally managed.
My hands were covered in exceptionally greasy lubricant, which made it hard to open the cupboard under the sink because my fingers kept sliding over the handle. But when I did . . . all I could do was stare. “Jaysus, it’s like he’s stockpiled enough to outlast the apocalypse. Oink and Boink? Tastes like Bacon?” I fell back laughing, unable to help myself. Was this real? Maybe I was dreaming.
The fairy flitted in front of me, flicking lube around with each flutter of her wings, and read off the rest of the names until I was laughing so hard I had to lie on my back so I could still breathe.
I held up my hands in surrender. “Stop, stop! Whatever makeup I had on is gone, and as you correctly determined, I need all the help I can get.” I swiped my eyes, forgetting that I had the heating lube on them. “Ahh, that’s not good!” I sat up, eyes pinched shut and tearing, and smacked my head on the bottom edge of the sink as I scrambled to get a wet cloth.
The water helped, but the lube wasn’t water-soluble, which only made me giggle more. I mean, I’ll admit part of me was totally intrigued. Corb was a hottie. I liked looking at him, and he’d kissed me.
But that was a helluva lot of lube he had going on. Like there had to be at least thirty bottles under the sink! Who needed that many? Was he planning on an orgy in the near future, or maybe an old-fashioned key party?
My eyes tingled, and I rubbed at them with the cloth, which only made them redder and intensified the feeling of heat. “Crap.” This was not going well.
“Here, I can help.” The fairy flitted up around my face, the fanning of her wings cooling the heat rushing across my skin. I could only imagine what it would feel like to have that lube somewhere else, with someone leaning in close to blow on it.
My face fanned hot again as images blasted through my mind like an out-of-control race car heading straight for a wall and a supernova explosion. I only needed to keep it from crashing into the wall.
Crash.
Damn it, if I wasn’t thinking about one guy, I was thinking about the other. Nope, no thinking about Crash. He was one of the bad guys. A bad guy. But a really, terribly hot and nice-to-look-at bad guy with muscles and a bit of silver in his hair that just added to the hotness factor.
I sighed. “You think you can help me with my face now?”
The mirror showed my eyes were slightly swollen and red around the edges, like I’d been playing in the stinging nettle patch. I was a bit red all over from the laughing and the sudden hot flash, which hadn’t helped the heat index at all. Sighing, I took out my makeup bag.
“Difficult, but not impossible,” she said as she fluttered around my head, tilting her chin as she did so. “You should use a little more cover-up.” Her voice wasn’t as high-pitched as I would have expected a fairy to sound. Musical and sweet, like the tinkling of the bells I’d heard at the window, but it wasn’t ridiculously perky.
“Cover-up looks crappy on me.”
Her smile flashed super sharp canine teeth. Fairies were omnivores—just like humans—but they had a tendency to like their meat a bit more than most. “Eric has been talking about you non-stop the last few days. So when my lady asked me to come see you, I knew you wouldn’t be like the Hollows. Will you talk to her? Will you consider working for her?”