by Nesa Miller
I think you do. “Then why were you trying to stop her?”
“Well…” Etain glanced at Dar, rolling her shoulders.
“We aren’t here to discuss Etain’s family matters,” Dar said, rejoining the conversation. “Is there anything else?”
Freeblood’s gaze slid to the man. “What’s so damn special about you?”
Dar grinned. “I will leave that to my lady.” He trailed a hand down her back. “Tell us, a chuisle. What is so damn special about me?”
The gaze exchanged by the lovers was intimate, intense. The acute heat between them charged the air with sexual energy. Suddenly feeling like a sordid voyeur, Freeblood lowered his eyes. Etain broke the connection with Dar and turned to the young man. “I was in the LOKI clan, but Dar was the only person who knew or understood my relationship with Faux.” Her eyes returned to Dar.
“Yeah, I got the clan connection from your friendly discussion earlier,” he quipped. “It doesn’t really answer my question, but I’ll move on. Explain the mind games.” He wiggled his fingers over his head.
Dar started to answer but was silenced by Etain’s fingers to his lips. “Have you declared a clan?”
“Have I what?” Freeblood asked, flummoxed by the question.
She inhaled slowly. “Have you been invited to join a clan?”
“Oh, that. Well…yeah,” he said, nodding. “I once thought about it in Australia… I’m sorry, the Australian sector, but then the fog in my head lifted and here I am.”
“What made you want to be a part of that clan?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Dar sat back, watching as she descended the steps toward the young man.
“Was it the clan? Their politics? Their beliefs?” She circled around him. “Or…” She stopped, facing him. “Was it a person? Someone you liked or admired?”
Freeblood held her gaze, his mind at work, envisioning his reason. He thought he was beginning to understand.
“Being part of a clan is serious business within the Alamir. It is an important decision that affects your future and the future of your clan. I joined LOKI because of Dar.” She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “I knew him to be honorable, strong, and a good leader.” Her countenance turned sour as she looked back at Freeblood. “But just because someone is Alamir doesn’t mean you can trust them. We may have become superhuman, but we’re still human. I learned the hard way that he was the only one in the clan I could trust. Do you understand?”
“Yeah. I get it.” Freeblood dared to look her in the eye. “What about the mind thing?”
Her warm smile helped lighten the mood. “After your tap dance with the eighteen-wheelers, you needed a lot of blood. The doctor took as much from me as he thought I could handle.” She continued speaking as she walked back to Dar. “You should’ve seen his face when I walked out of the room.” She turned and sat on his lap.
Freeblood chuckled at the memory of the stoic doctor at the hospital. Good ol’ Dr. Green. He glanced at his arms. One had been covered in gashes and scrapes, the other broken. Etain had been on the same road and took him to the hospital. His injuries, severe and life-threatening, had healed within hours of a generous blood donation from the young woman.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, crossing his arms. “So, because of you, I’m Alamir?”
She shrugged. “I had no idea the infusion of my blood could ignite such a thing. If you weren’t meant for the Alamir, I figured the change wouldn’t have been triggered.”
“You’re saying this would’ve happened anyway, whether we met or not?”
“Probably, yes.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “Most likely.”
This was just too provocative. “Are you fucking with me?”
Dar answered, his voice that of a flustered father dealing with a thickheaded son. “Before you met my Etain, could you move faster than the speed of light? Did you see things the way you see them now? Do you really think you would be here, standing before me, if you were still human?”
What? He’d always thought of the stories as fairy tales, anecdotes made up by parents to pacify the wild imaginings of their children. He’d never considered the Alamir to be his destiny. His mind whirled. From the moment he opened his eyes in that hospital bed, everything was different.
“What does it mean to be Alamir?”
Etain accepted the challenge. “It means you are a protector of the human realm but are no longer a part of it.” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “We live in a dimension running parallel with that of humans. It’s our duty to ensure their world continues without interference from evils unseen by the human eye.”
His laugh was more of a grunt. “What evils would those be?”
“Demons, recruiters,” Dar commented, his eye on Etain’s backside.
“You?” Freeblood asked.
A golden gaze slid up to meet his. An uncomfortable darkness teased at the fringe of Freeblood’s consciousness. “Bok,” Dar said, caressing the outline of Etain’s hip.
Freeblood sucked in a breath and turned from the veiled warning. Imagine what his family would say if they knew. Would it make any difference to his apathetic father to know his son was now a defender of the earthly realm instead of the family wealth? Dismissing those thoughts with a shake of his head, he returned to the cozy couple lost in their private world. Like it or not, this is my future.
“Were all those people back there Alamir?” His question brought their attention back to him.
“Spirit and Inferno are Etain’s Alamir family.” Dar smoothed a stray lock of hair from Etain's face. “The others are the High Council of the LOKI clan, and my most trusted friends.”
“That explains the ego trips.” Freeblood smirked. “If Spirit and Inferno are your Alamir family, do you have a human one? Do you ever see them?”
Etain’s head jerked around, a dark look in her eyes. A palpable sadness hit him in the heart, followed by a pain permeating from the center of his brain. Tears glistened in her eyes as bloody images ripped through his mind. A girl pursued by a red-eyed monster, running for her life
Freeblood fell to his knees, head in his hands. “Make it stop! I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“A chuisle, that’s enough.” Her eyes closed, and she escaped into Dar’s arms. He frowned at the boy. “Let’s not go down that road.”
The cool of the stone floor against his forehead helped ease the pain. “Agreed.” Freeblood drew in a shaky breath. “I just wanted to know if we can go back.”
“It can be done,” Dar said. “But I suggest you not make it a habit. The Alamir frown on it.”
They can frown all they want. “It’s in the blood, I get that, but how does it work?”
Dar’s jaw worked, clenching and unclenching. “It comes from an ancient race known as Krymerians.”
“Krymerians?” The word felt strange on his tongue. Freeblood sat up, holding his head. “What the hell is a Krymerian?”
“An ancient race, as I said. Due to wars against opposing clans, the Bok, and even the Alamir, few remain.” He looked at Etain and smiled. “Come to think of it, there's only one left.”
Freeblood contemplated the significance of that statement. “Only one, huh? Who is it?”
The couple ignored the question, too consumed with one another to hear. The young Alamir changed his position, sitting cross-legged, piecing the information together. Etain was already Alamir when she gave me her blood. He looked at the couple. You gotta be kidding me. “Is it your blood that’s made the other Alamir?” he asked, his gaze on the big man.
The question got Dar’s attention. “My blood has nothing to do with them.”
He did get the Krymerian to confirm he shared blood with Etain after she turned Alamir, but before she met Freeblood. He scratched his head, doing his best to follow a sensible line of thought. His next question had to do with the Mexican sector where he, Etain, and Faux had run into each
other.
“You told me the connection wasn’t you. You said it was your sister, Faux. How is that? If he shared blood with you, and you shared blood with me, what happened to our connection?”
“Well…,” Etain chewed the inside of her lip, “a few things kinda got in the way.”
“What kinds of things?”
She rolled her eyes, blowing out an exasperated sigh. Dar wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned his head against hers. “You don’t have to say, a chuisle. We can save it for another time.”
Etain touched his cheek. “No, it’s okay. I guess I should tell him.”
“Tell me what?”
Despite the warmth in her ice blue eyes, Freeblood felt a shiver go up his spine. “After our conversation at the hospital, I could tell you were different. By the time I actually felt it, you shot out of your room, leaving me with no doubt whatsoever. I’ve never seen anyone move that fast.” Her hand ran over her hair. “Faux felt it, too. I went to stop her from going after you.”
“Why?”
“Because…” She paused and glanced at Dar, fidgeting in his lap. Freeblood sensed the silent communication between the two. “Faux is not Alamir, although she was accepted as one at first. She can be…difficult at times.”
The young man hid a grin behind his hand. “Really?”
Etain cut him a sharp look. “Her intentions were not in your best interests.”
“My interests,” he repeated, doubtful that his interests had anything to do with it. “I’m guessing it didn’t go well.”
Dar hugged her close. “Faux tried to remove her from the equation.” His golden gaze was for her only. “That’s when I stepped in.”
Visions of Faux’s arrow-tipped tail lashed through Freeblood’s mind. “She tried to kill you because of me?” Etain shrugged. His mind whirled as he came to his feet, pacing back and forth. Coming to a halt, his gaze went to Dar. “Your blood saved Etain.”
“Aye...” Dar’s voice was no more than a whisper.
So that’s the difference. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “If there’s a link between me and Faux, does that mean you shared blood with her, too?”
Etain stood, growing taller with every step toward the questioning Freeblood, rising up to her demon height of seven feet. White wings tipped with crimson fanned out and settled on her back.
“Faux is not your concern. You will stay away from her.” She lifted him a good foot off the floor. “Do you understand that?”
Dangling in the air, his thoughts tumbled. Wings? When did she get wings?
Dar chuckled and joined them at the base of the throne. “You have been warned. Faux is one with whom you should not toy. My love, turn him loose. Faux will handle him in her own way.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She set Freeblood down and retracted her wings.
“I will allow one more question,” Dar said.
They act like it’s nothing to sprout wings. Freeblood straightened his shirt and tried to appear unaffected by her transformation. “How does Midir fit into all this?” Too late, he realized his third mistake.
Burning Heart, one of Dar’s black-bladed scimitars, flashed out, posing a deadlier threat. “What do you know of Midir?”
A blue-gemmed sword sparked into Freeblood’s hand, which he used to block the move. “Nothing, hence the question. Inferno said you’d gone to visit your brother and his name came up in the conversation…the one with your most trusted friends.”
The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Dar, nor was the foolishness of his actions. One side of his mouth twitched in what Freeblood assumed was almost a smile. “Midir was misguided and desired something that was never meant for him.” Dar eyed the unusual sword in Freeblood’s hand. Returning his own blade to its sheath on his back, he took Etain by the hand and walked toward the door. “We have personal business to attend to. Make yourself at home. The kitchen is in the next hall if you’re hungry. Then pick a room and get some rest.”
4
Time Alone
Upstairs, Etain stared at the same three doors she and Faux had contemplated after a controversial summons from the Krymerian not long ago. Dar silently waited behind her. When she ventured toward her chambers, he came forward.
“Not that one, a chuisle. You come to my bed tonight.” He turned her to face him. “Our bed.” With a chaste kiss on her forehead, he held her close, thankful for this rare opportunity with his beloved. “I meant what I said before we left for Laugharne. You are the only one.” Strong emotions threatened to steal his voice, but his gaze did not waver. “I have missed you…your touch, your taste. I thought I had lost you.”
“When I think of what almost happened...” She touched his cheek. “I could’ve killed you. Mid-”
“Don’t speak his name.” His mouth claimed hers in a long, savoring kiss. Placing his forehead on hers, he caressed her lips. “It’s over. He’s gone. We are here, together.” As dangerous as the confrontation with his brother had been, the experience had proven her heart belonged to Dar. She was as much his as he was hers. “I need you, a chuisle. I need to be inside you, to be lost in you.”
Safely ensconced in their private domain, Dar reached for his fiery vixen, his sole intention being a long, slow seduction. She surprised him by catching his hands. “Not just yet, milord,” she whispered, backing him farther into the room. What he saw in her eyes told him he would be a fool to resist.
Feeling the bed against the back of his legs, he willingly sat down, giving her a curious look. His hands itched, ready to rip the leathers from her luscious body, the need to show her what she meant to him filling his chest. However, curious as to what she had planned, he placed his hands on his lap, gripping his leather-clad thighs. “What did you have in mind, milady?”
“Tonight is a celebration of who you are to me.” Etain entered the territory between his legs, a shadow of a smile on her lips. “I know of your taste in rare birds, my sweet savage.”
Her earthy fragrance, a fusion of warm vanilla laced with sex, was intoxicating. She smelled of life, love, and home. His hands drifted up her thighs to her rounded backside. “Sweet savage… Is that how you see me?”
She held him within her ice-blue gaze, stroking his face. “Sweet?” She traced down his broad shoulders. “Sometimes.” From that point, she continued along each muscular arm to his hands on her bottom. “Savage?” He sat mesmerized, watching her tongue run over her red lips, ending with her lower lip tucked seductively between her teeth. “Always.”
A mischievous glint in her eye, she plucked his hands away from her body and returned them to his own thighs, then stepped clear of his reach. Having set the stage earlier on the gamble he would bring her to his room, she grabbed the stereo remote on the nightstand and pressed the button. Sensual rhythms pulsated throughout the room.
“A woman in control,” he said, a slight grin on his lips. “I like it.”
In time with the music, Etain glided across the plush carpet. “I like your taste in music.” After a suggestive wink over her shoulder, she leaned her head back, shaking out her silvery mane, swaying her hips. Bending over, she pushed her leather-clad backside in the air.
Seemingly hypnotized by her movements, he had enough presence of mind to say, “I must have a conversation with my staff. It is not my music or my taste. However…” He licked his lips, “I am gaining an appreciation for-”
She shushed him with a finger over her lips. Seductive eyes invited him in as she pulled the lace of her boot from its bow.
Dar reached for her, letting her know she was definitely doing something right, although she felt downright scandalized having never done anything like this before. She almost smiled, but caught herself, giving a pouty shake of her head instead. Chastised, his hand fell to his side.
The music and the look on Dar’s face gave her a sense of wild abandon. She undulated to her right, raising a graceful arm, caressing along her curves, down over her hip to the top of the other boo
t. Its laces fell free with the slightest pull. She held Dar in what she hoped was a sensuous gaze, her hips resonating in rhythm with the erotic music. Turning, she approached her simmering prey. Her kiss was soft, a mere taste of breath. Gooseflesh covered his skin as she unbuttoned his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders and down his arms. She twisted around, lowering herself onto his lap. His muffled moan vibrated into her thick mass of hair.
With her bottom pressed against his restrained passion, his fingers trailed down her back, light and playful, as she bent over to finish unlacing her boots. Her eyes closed at his touch, the sensations so delicious, she considered ending it there, turning and taking him now. Then she felt the shivers running through his body. Reveling in her small victory, she unlaced first one boot, then the other. Both boots removed, she straightened and slipped between his legs to the floor.
Crawling away, she emphasized the rise and fall of her hips, stopping once the distance between them was to her satisfaction. She peeked over her shoulder, a seductive glint in her eyes, and winked, then turned, coming up on her knees. Her hands slid along the collar of her top, right and left in a tug of war, exposing her flesh, one popped button at a time. His hungry gaze shifted from her chest to her eyes, his tongue darting over his lips.
He watched as she slid her hands down her front, inserting her thumbs inside the waistband of her pants, separating the deep blue leather from her pale skin, her hands meeting at the button of her leathers. Encouraged by Dar’s undivided attention, she slipped the button, flipped the zipper tab, and pulled the leather from either side, sliding it open. She sensed his blood pumping, hot and heavy, in rhythm to her own.
Graceful as a panther, she slinked back to him, coming up on her knees between his legs. A simple shrug slid her top down her arms. Before it dropped to the floor, she snapped it up around his neck and pulled him in, her mouth hovering over his.
“Etain.” His breath was hot, irresistible.
“Not yet.”
Casting her top aside, her nails grazed down his chest, over his abdomen, and along his thighs. Silver strands swept forward as she removed his boots, massaging each foot, her knuckles working into the arch. Dar breathed a sigh and relaxed back onto his elbows, watching her work. She caught his eye and wrapped her lips around his big toe.