by I. T. Lucas
Even so, Julian couldn't imagine Ella rooting for the enemy.
She waved a dismissive hand. “It wasn’t that kind of dream. It was just an ordinary one. Well, calling it ordinary is not right either. I was Princess Guinevere, and Arthur, who in the dream looked like Magnus, was my father.”
He chuckled. “Did you tell Magnus about it?”
“I didn’t see him today. When I got back to the house to get a change of clothes, he and my mom were out on a walk with Scarlet. He gets Fridays off.”
“Magnus is going to love it. It will prove to him that you’ve accepted him as your stepdad.”
Ella scrunched her nose again. “I accepted him as my mother’s fiancé, and even as a stepdad to Parker, but the guy looks so young that I have trouble thinking of him as a father figure.”
“Apparently not.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I guess dreams reveal deeper truths. It seems my subconscious is smarter than my mind, which is deceived by appearances. After all, Magnus is old enough to be my great-great-grandfather.”
“I wonder how old Lokan is.” Julian cast the bait, hoping Ella would reveal what she thought about the Doomer.
She shrugged. “I have no idea. He looks like all the other immortals. Late twenties or early thirties. I remember the Russian commenting that Mr. D must have made a deal with the devil because he hadn’t aged a bit in all the time Gorchenco had known him.”
It seemed that a bigger bait was needed to loosen Ella’s tongue. “In Dalhu’s portrait of him, Lokan looks quite devilish. Does he look like that in real life?”
“Oh, he does. He has those intense dark eyes that are almost black, and when they glow, there is a reddish undertone in the light they emit. When he smiles, he looks charming, and he is a really good-looking guy. But when he is not happy about something, he looks a lot like what I imagine the devil would look like. If he were an actor, he would have been a shoo-in for the part of Lucifer. An evil fallen angel.”
Nothing in what Ella had said indicated that she had feelings for the Doomer, but the excitement in her voice and the slight flare in her feminine aroma had told Julian a different story.
Ella was not only impressed with Lokan, but she was also attracted to him.
Julian felt like a boulder had settled in his gut.
If Ella was indeed his fated mate, she wouldn’t have felt attraction toward another male.
Could he have been wrong about her? Had he convinced himself that she was the one for him only because he wanted her to be?
Since he’d seen her picture, Julian hadn’t looked at or thought about another female. That was one of the best indicators that Ella was the one for him. And maybe she was, but he wasn’t for her.
Was the fucking Doomer her fated mate?
That would explain her lack of arousal when they’d kissed.
It wasn’t because of her traumatic experience, but because Julian wasn’t the one for her.
42
Ella
For some reason, Julian looked pissed.
Ella had tried to tone down her description of Logan. Calling him good-looking was a huge understatement. The guy was stunningly handsome. And most of what she’d said was her first impression when she’d still been scared of him.
What had gotten up Julian’s ass? For sure it couldn’t have been her calling Logan good-looking or charming.
Had he expected her to say that the guy was ugly? Anyone who’d seen Logan’s portrait would have known that was a lie.
As she reached for Julian’s hand, he didn’t pull away, but he didn’t give it the little squeeze he usually did. It felt like she was holding hands with a stranger.
He cast her an impassive glance. “You look tired. Let me take you home.”
It had been a long day, and an emotionally draining one, but Ella didn’t want to go home without fixing whatever had gone wrong between Julian and her.
She wouldn’t be able to sleep, and thoughts of him and what had caused the change in his mood would permeate her mind.
And if Logan dream-shared with her, he was going to encounter Julian’s manifestation because her head would be filled with him.
“I am tired. But I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what has gotten your panties in a twist.” She pulled on Julian’s hand and led him toward a bench. “Sit.” She pointed at it.
That wrested a small smile out of him. “Yes, ma'am.”
When Julian did as she’d asked, Ella climbed onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m worried. That’s all. Lokan isn’t stupid, and he is very powerful. I don’t remember if I explained it to you, but the closer genetically an immortal is to the godly source, the more powerful he is. Lokan is a god’s grandson. Not a great many generations removed grandson like most of us, but a direct one. And not just any god but one of the most powerful. You are no match for him.”
She rolled her eyes. “Thanks a lot, Julian. Now I will be so scared of him that he’ll know something is up. And since I can’t stop him from entering my dreams, I’m screwed.”
If she’d wanted Julian to feel guilty, she’d succeeded.
Raking his fingers through his gorgeous multi-colored hair, he sighed. “I’m sorry, but you should know who you’re up against. You might think that Gorchenco was the big bad wolf, and that if you outsmarted him, you could outsmart Lokan. That’s not the case. It’s like with Magnus. Because he looks young, you regard him as you would a human that age. You’re aware that he’s intelligent and cunning, so you take it into account, but you think that your youth and beauty are enough to blindside him. They are not.”
Ella shook her head. “I’m not that vain, Julian, and Mr. D was quite frank about what he sees in me. He told me point blank that it wasn’t about my looks. He even said that he has had many girls who were prettier than me. He wants me for my ability, but I’m not sure Turner is right about him wanting to use my mom and me for what we can do. What would he do with us that he can’t do with a satellite phone?”
“So why do you think he wants you?”
“Maybe he suspects that we are Dormants? Or maybe he wants me because I’m special. You know, like in rare. Because of my telepathy.” She looked away.
Touting her own attributes wasn’t something Ella was comfortable with. Heck, she had spent her life trying to act as modest as can be because people took one look at her and assumed that because she had a pretty face, she must be full of herself.
Hooking a finger under her chin, Julian turned her head, so she had to look at him. “You are special, Ella. And not just because of the telepathy. Why do you think I want you?”
“The face. It’s always the face. I know you’re going to deny it and list all the things you supposedly admire about me, but that is just the frosting on the cake. Maybe you’re not even aware of doing it, but you’re looking for justification.”
“I don’t need to justify myself to anyone. Besides, no one questions my reasons except for you.”
“I wasn’t talking about justifying it to others. I’m talking about justifying it to yourself.”
He arched a brow. “Oh, really? And how do you know what’s going on inside my head?”
Crap. They had been doing really well up until now, and then she had to go and ruin it because Julian’s pissy mood had infected her.
Ella waved a dismissive hand. “People do it all the time, and especially guys. A man meets a beautiful woman who is up to no good, and he finds excuses for why she is marriage material. Women are a little better at this, but they do it too.”
Julian’s eyes softened, and he wrapped his arms around her, coaxing her to relax against him and put her head on his chest. “I’m no expert, and I might be wrong, but I think everyone does it to some extent.”
He kept rubbing his hand over her back in slow, soothing circles. “Falling in love with someone is not a logical process. I don’t know if it’s a chemical reaction, or
if it’s our subconscious collecting information lightning-speed fast and making an instantaneous decision for us, but the result is the same. We fall, and then we try to justify the why to ourselves.”
Letting out a breath, Ella closed her eyes. “That’s probably why it’s called falling and not soaring or floating.”
He chuckled. “That’s such a clever observation. It had never crossed my mind, although it should have. Soaring in love sounds so much better than falling in love.”
He was buttering her up, attempting to make up for his lousy attitude from before. “You’re just trying to find ways to make me look smart.”
43
Julian
Julian stroked Ella’s hair. “I don’t have to. You are smart.” It was spiked with a lot of gel and not pleasant to touch.
He wished she didn’t have to do that, but on the other hand, he didn’t want some random camera picking up her image and then someone running it through facial recognition software. Not that the different hairstyle could fool it, but it was part of her disguise, and an extra layer of security on top of the special glasses she wore every time she went out of the village.
“Sorry about the hair,” Ella said. “I put in so much gel that it could qualify as a lethal weapon.”
He chuckled, relieved that her sense of humor was back. His anger from before had made her anxious, and he didn’t like seeing that look on her face. He’d much rather see the mischievous spark in her eyes and the sly smirk whenever she said something funny or sarcastic.
That was one of the reasons he hadn’t answered her questions truthfully. The other was his stupid pride.
Admitting that he was jealous of her dream visitor would have made him seem petty and immature.
Besides, he hadn’t lied.
Every word he’d said was true. Lokan was dangerous, Ella was no match for him, and Julian worried that this new plan Turner and Kian had hatched was going to misfire big time.
They’d put too much trust in Ella’s ability to wrap Lokan around her little finger. Julian had a feeling Lokan was toying with Ella, letting her believe that she had him fooled, when, in fact, he was fooling her.
The thing was, while this was going on, Ella had to pretend that she was attracted to the Doomer, and it seemed to him that she didn’t have to pretend too hard. Still, he had to remember that she was only doing what she thought was right for the clan, and what Kian and Turner wanted her to do.
Besides, it could very well be that Lokan was compelling her attraction to him while at the same time compelling her not to respond to any other male.
If the Doomer was playing a game of seduction to make a naive young girl believe that he was falling for her, it made perfect sense for the unscrupulous bastard to use every tool in his arsenal. And that included compulsion.
Julian let out a relieved breath.
Thinking of it that way made it much easier for him to deal with the situation. The attraction Ella felt for Lokan wasn’t natural.
She was forced to feel it.
And the same argument held true for why his fated mate, his one and only, didn’t find him irresistible.
“Speaking of weapons. Tell me about your dream.”
When she scrunched her nose, he couldn’t help but lean and kiss the tip. “You look so cute when you do that.”
Shifting in his lap, she leaned against his arm and looked at him. “What do you want to know? The kind of weapons you and Mr. D used to hurt each other?”
“Among other things. You said that you were Princess Guinevere and that Arthur was your father. I assume that I was fighting the Doomer for your hand in marriage?”
She nodded. “You each had a sword in one hand and a shorter dagger in the other. He wasn’t better than you, but he didn’t fight fair, so he was managing to wound you worse than you were wounding him.”
Julian stifled a smirk. The dream was proving his hypothesis. On a subconscious level, Ella knew that both he and Lokan were trying to seduce her, but while Julian’s intentions were pure, Lokan’s were sinister. And on top of that, the Doomer was fighting dirty by using compulsion on her.
But there was one part that caused him to frown. “I was losing?”
Ella nodded. “You were losing so much blood. Every time he made an illegal move, I screamed to warn you, and every time he cut you, I cried. I sobbed so hard that my head started hurting in the waking world. Maybe the headache was what saved me from seeing him deliver the death blow because I woke up just as he was about to chop off your head.”
Well, that answered the question of who she’d been rooting for.
Tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, Ella cupped his cheek. “I don’t know what the dream meant, but it might have been a warning that you shouldn’t come anywhere near Mr. D. I’m not willing to chance your life.”
As the tears started sliding down her cheeks, making dirty tracks with her dissolved makeup, Julian’s heart melted.
Could it be that Ella loved him?
If she was crying over him getting hurt in a dream, she must have feelings for him.
That didn’t mean, however, that he was going to abide by her wishes and stay behind while she and her mother walked into the lions’ den.
Using his thumbs, he wiped her tears away and then leaned and softly kissed her trembling lips.
“Don’t cry, Ella. It was just a dream, a vivid representation of your fears. Have you ever had prophetic dreams before?”
She shook her head. “What if this is the first one?”
“Nice try. But I happen to know someone who has those, and she’s been having them since she was a little girl.”
“Who is it?”
“Kian’s wife, Syssi.”
Wiping her cheeks with the back of her hands, Ella just made a greater mess of things. “That’s so cool. Did any of her premonitions come true?”
“They did, but because her premonitions are vague, they are not actionable. The when and the how are usually missing. I wasn’t here when she had them, so I only know what my mother has told me.”
“Maybe I should talk to her?”
“What for?”
“So that she can tell me whether my dream was a premonition or not. She would know the difference, right?”
“I’m not sure, and there is no point in your bothering her. Your dream reflected your thoughts and fears, nothing more. Besides, I’m not letting you go without me regardless.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Ella pushed her chin out. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“And I’m not going to. But by the same token, you can’t prevent me from going.”
She laughed. “Are we back to that again?”
“You started it.”
“True, which means that I have to end it. You can come, but you have to do exactly what whoever leads the Guardians tells you. No heroics, please.”
44
Ella
“Good night, Julian. I’ll call you tomorrow morning, okay?”
He held on to her hand. “Are you sure you don’t want to spend the night at my place?”
“I can’t. I need to dream.” She looked away, not wanting to see the anger bubble up from him again.
Except, he surprised her with a smile. “Can I at least get a kiss goodnight?”
“I would love a kiss.”
Swooping her up, he crushed her to him and fused their mouths in a kiss that was all about possession.
Holy Thor and all of Asgard, that was hot.
No gentle coaxing, and no tentative sweetness. His hands cupping her butt cheeks, Julian pressed her against his hardness while ravaging her mouth with his tongue.
Needing to take a breath, she was loath to stop the mother of all kisses, but Julian sensed her need and let her come up for air.
His eyes glowing like two blue neon lights, he rested his forehead against hers for a moment, and then let her down. “I’d better go. Good night, Ella.”
Turning around,
he jumped down the three steps separating the path from the front porch and broke into a jog.
Poor guy. Julian was probably suffering from the worst case of blue balls in the Northern Hemisphere.
The good news was that they had parted on a good note, so she knew they were okay as a couple and that Julian was no longer mad.
Which meant that she could go to sleep without worrying about that.
As much as she kept their relationship on a slow burner, Ella couldn’t fathom not having Julian around. He’d become a vital part of her life.
Without him and his quiet and unwavering support, she wouldn’t have been able to recover so quickly. Not that she was fully recovered, she would be deluding herself if she believed that, but she could function, and think, and come up with ideas, none of which would have been possible if she’d sunk into a depression.
It was still a daily struggle to keep it at bay, and from time to time disturbing thoughts managed to infiltrate the barricades she’d erected against them. But overall, she was doing better than she’d ever expected so soon after her rescue.
Julian was a godsend, and stubborn as a mule.
She didn’t like that he’d refused to heed the dream’s warning, or her asking him not to come. On the other hand, though, she liked that he’d stood his ground and didn’t crumble under pressure.
Her guy was a fighter through and through.
Funny how her perspective had been completely changed by what had happened to her.
The old Ella had dreamt of marrying a nice guy who was fairly intelligent, motivated, and a hard worker, preferably tall because she was short and had a thing for tall men. Fighting skills hadn’t been anywhere near the top of her list of desirable traits.
Quite the opposite.
She’d sworn that she would never marry a military man, no matter in what capacity he served. Her father had been a chopper mechanic, for God’s sake, and he’d gotten killed, leaving a wife and two small kids to fend for themselves.