Triquetra

by Marguerite Labbe

  “Tito and I will check it out. Come down to the precinct later and give a statement.”

  I grinned in relief. His partner would’ve made me come now and lost the bastards in the process. Not to mention that the urgency to get home was so strong it was a fever under my skin. I wanted something familiar around me, something sane and safe.

  “Yeah, I can come down sometime tonight.”

  “You have any idea why they wanted you?”

  Oh, I’m sure there were reasons, a whole damn list of them. But I wasn’t positive they were working for the Syndicate. And since I was pretty sure I hadn’t pissed anyone off lately, I didn’t know who else it could be.

  “Haven’t a clue. I left there not five minutes ago, but they said something about waiting for nightfall. So that only leaves one thought in my mind.” Uneasiness stirred in my gut. What if these cops didn’t have a deal with Ussier? Was I stirring the pot, getting them worked up over things better left unsaid?

  “Where’s your protector? Isn’t he going to want to take care of this situation?”

  I clenched my jaw. “He’s gone. Besides, I don’t want them hurt. You understand?”

  The cop’s voice softened. “I understand. Will I be able to reach you at this number?”

  “Yeah, it’s my cell.” I hung up and debated for a quick moment what I had just put into motion, and then decided it was the right thing. Whoever kidnapped me had been human and I’d rather have other humans deal with them, even if they’d been working for the vamps. At least then it wouldn’t be an immediate death sentence.

  I followed up with a quick voice mail to Tony so he’d have it when he woke up, which should be soon. Then I gave in to the urgency churning within me and ran, faster and faster until the world blurred by on a rush of fierce exhilaration.

  Chapter 14

  AS I unlocked the door to my dorm, such a profound sense of relief swept through me that I almost sank to my knees. Home. I was home. I pushed inside and my heart stopped. It literally stopped dead in my chest then gave a single painful lurch.

  Kristair lay in the center of my bed naked, his long legs drawn up and tucked in close to his body. His forehead touched his knees and his arms clasped around them. He was still, both his body and mind at peace, almost as if waiting to be reborn.

  I couldn’t move, dared not blink. I just stood there, staring like a fucking idiot. Waiting for him to disappear, waiting for the illusion my fucked-up crazy head had conjured to fade and leave me alone. But it remained, Kristair continuing to lay there looking so damn real, so solid, it broke my stuttering heart all over again.

  “Kristair.”

  I breathed his name and approached the bed, sinking down onto it beside him. Hesitantly, I reached out a hand, pausing just before touching him, my heart pounding in my ears. It was so real, he was so real, yet it couldn’t be possible.

  My lover stirred, his head turned toward me, his long, dark lashes fluttering open. He smiled. A slight tugging of his lips as his eyes warmed. “Mo chroí.”

  “Oh mah god, Kristair.” I leaned over him to throw my arms around him and let out a little yelp when my hands went right through him. I almost fell flat on my face. My heart, which had started beating again, stopped once more. “What the fuck?”

  Kristair sat up, sorrow flickering in his gaze. Oh god, I felt him. I felt him inside like I used to. Felt his emotions wash over me, his need to touch, sensed the same fear in him that I carried. This wasn’t a dream. Somehow he really was here in some screwed-up way.

  I scrambled from the bed, trembling all over. This was way too much, too close to what I’d had, too much of a mockery of our past. I was going crazy. “What are ya? Some kind of ghost?”

  “No, Jacob, no ghost. It’s me.” He rose as well. Unsure of what was happening, I backed up when he took a step toward me. “Close your eyes.”

  “What?”

  “Trust me, mo chroí. Close your eyes.”

  They stung, but I did as he asked and sensed him approach. Oh god. Then his hands framed my face. “Keep them closed,” he whispered in my mind before his lips closed over my own.

  Hesitantly, I wrapped my arms around him, felt the strength in his body as we came together. This time my mind wasn’t clouded with a dream and I wasn’t in the middle of a major rock-bottom meltdown. He was here and I could taste him, I could smell him. My senses reeled it was so real.

  I opened my eyes, overcome with the need to see him as well. As soon as I did, the sense of his body against mine, the sensation of his kiss against my lips immediately disappeared and my arms fell through him. “Jesus fucking Christ. What the fuck, man?”

  I was losing it. I was seriously fucking losing it.

  But Kristair stood there, looking as solid as I was, such sadness in his eyes that it eased my frustration. “I’m so sorry, Jacob. But they placed restrictions on my return. You can see me, but not touch me, or you can touch me, but not see me. Never both at once.”

  “What?” I couldn’t wrap my brain around it, not him being here, or in such a screwed-up manner. I had walked into a nightmare. “You’ve got to be joking, Kristair. Who the fuck makes up rules like that?”

  “Sit down,” Kristair urged, gesturing toward the bed. “We have much to talk about.”

  Stunned, I did as he said, once again sensing our connection flow between us. It was so achingly sweet, so painfully beautiful, that I almost couldn’t bear it. Kristair started to ease back and I shook my head, grabbing a hold of the connection and holding on as hard as I could. “Don’t.”

  “You’ve gotten stronger.” Kristair’s eyes roamed over me, locked on my face as if seeing me could somehow feed him. “I have a great deal of explaining to do, so much to go into and very little time to get it all together.”

  “You’re leaving again!” I shouted, jumping up from the bed. “No! No, ya can’t.” I didn’t know if I could live like this, with him only half here. My brain chose that moment to give my emotions a good swift kick as if to say, “Think, idiot.” It couldn’t be very different from him being a vampire who ran around at night and whose world I could only be a reluctant part of. I paused. If I thought of it that way, yes, I’d damn well try.

  “Not if I can help it.” Kristair’s voice bore the same grim determination as his dark eyes.

  I sank back down, unable to tear my gaze away from him. “You’re really here? I’m not just imagining this?”

  “I’m really here. I swear to you. I am and you’re not going crazy,” he said, echoing his words from the night before.

  A hot, hard lump settled in my throat, making it impossible to talk. “And it was really you last night too? I didn’t dream that?”

  “Yes, it was real, though in a much more limited fashion.”

  I closed my eyes, stretching out my hand to him and swallowing hard when he grasped it and tugged me into his arms. I squeezed them shut tighter, then buried my face in the crook of his neck. I realized then that Kristair’s heart was still beating within me and had been steadily since I’d woken up from the tranquilizers. He must’ve been here the entire time, asleep and waiting for me.

  “I knew you were in trouble, so I came back earlier than I intended,” Kristair said in response to my mental thought.

  “What do you mean earlier than you intended?” I glared at him, unable to help myself. “You mean you could’ve been here months ago? Why’d ya wait? Kristair, for fuck’s sake, you know what I’ve—”

  He shook his head and lifted his hand, pressing phantom fingers I didn’t feel against my lips until I closed my eyes. Fuck, I couldn’t take this. I opened them again, my eyes burning. “What’s going on?”

  “Lay down with me, Jacob, like we used to, and I’ll explain it all.”

  Like we used to. Nothing was like it used to be. I was caught in a tailspin, spiraling out of control and heading for a fiery crash. There was something I could cling to if I let myself take that chance.

  Sighing, I stretched out
on the bed and turned toward him as he lay down beside me. It was crazy how solid he seemed, how real, as if nothing had changed, right down to the scar on his shoulder. There was nothing about him that screamed ghost unless I tried to touch him.

  I closed my eyes and traced my finger over the scar. We may not have been lovers for very long, but I knew Kristair’s body better than my own. He wrapped an arm around my waist and tugged me closer. I regretted not getting undressed first so I could feel every inch of him against me with no barrier.

  His skin was warm under my palms. I kept wanting to open my eyes to make sure I wasn’t imagining it all, but I kept them closed and held on tight.

  Kristair leaned his forehead against mine. “Open your mind. I can’t explain what happened to me. It’s too much. But I can show you, give you an understanding of what it’s been like.”

  I relaxed, sensing him take control as our minds merged together like they had during his meeting with the Syndicate. For a brief, glorious moment we were one, existing together. One mind. One soul. Our bodies pressed together, heartbeats in sync. If it had to end, couldn’t it just end right here, just like this?

  Then my sense of the world blurred and faded away as Kristair unveiled what had happened since his disappearance in the warehouse. He must’ve held back the full weight of it, but still my mind spun, my psyche buffeted with the overwhelming enormity of what he’d become, what he’d experienced in the many months he’d been gone. I could only taste the edges of it, yet it was still too much.

  Then he showed me his arguments with Nerissa, his desire and desperation to get back to me, and the decision to have him sent back to break the link.

  “NO!”

  Abruptly, I was flung back into my body. The break was so violent that my heart stuttered in my chest. I sat up, my head spinning as I struggled to catch my breath.

  “Jacob, are you all right?” Kristair asked with concern in his voice.

  “Yeah, just give me a minute.” I turned my head toward him and laid it on my knees. Kristair watched me, a slight furrow between his brows. I couldn’t begin to understand it all, even with Kristair’s memories in my head of those last moments of his argument with those creatures who had once whispered in his head. If I thought things had been unequal between us before, now… now it just seemed damn near impossible that we could make any kind of a relationship work.

  And perversely, that made me want to try even harder.

  “What are you?”

  Kristair winced. “They call it being one of the Ascended. I think some of the more arrogant ones would liken it to being a god, but I don’t hold to that belief. I am what I am, who I’ve always been, only more.”

  “Kristair, next time, don’t answer.” I thumped my forehead against my knees a couple of times before realizing that I just wasn’t going to be able to process what Kristair had become. Dating a vampire had been enough of an adjustment. Being in love with what he was now was something else entirely. So I ignored it and focused on what I could understand.

  “They want you to end it and you came back to do it, didn’t you? You were going to let me go,” I accused.

  “I was trying to work around that. It’s why I wasn’t planning on coming back right away. I wanted to come up with a solution so I wouldn’t have to go back.” Kristair brought his hand up to my hair but this time was unable to ruffle it to make the cowlicks stick up the way he liked so much. “But then you went and got yourself snatched off the street and as soon as you woke I had them send me back so I could help. I didn’t expect them to make me sleep until you returned.”

  There was a whole number of uncomplimentary words Kristair aimed toward those whom he called the Ascended on that matter.

  “What are you going to do?” I demanded.

  What could he do? Even if he wanted to fight them, he wouldn’t be able to hold them off. They were the ones who had caused his change last spring, with all their pushing and prodding, driving him crazy by making him lose control. I seethed. Just let me get my hands on them. I’d give them hell for….

  Kristair began laughing, the wonderful sound startling me out of my thoughts. “Oh, I’d missed you so. If anyone could tell the Ascended off and make them listen, it would be you.” He clasped his hands around his ankles, holding back his desire to touch me. His expression told me how much he didn’t like not being able to any more than I did. “They can’t make me. For all their power, they cannot force change upon another of their number.”

  “But they can make you miserable and keep us apart anyway.”

  Kristair nodded. “As usual, you see right to the heart of the matter. They can do all that and more. They’ve kept me from you all these months. At first they even kept me from sensing you, though that actually might have had more to do with me being overwhelmed at first. It was so huge, all I could do was drift and try to soak it all in.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  The rush of tenderness that went through Kristair just about made me hum with happiness inside. I’d missed this, just this, so very much. Maybe we could make it work even if I could only touch him when I couldn’t see him, because it did nothing to dampen our connection. I sensed him just as strongly now as I ever had.

  “We will think of something. I won’t give up.”

  I scowled at him. “See that you don’t.” I couldn’t deny the need to touch him anymore, to taste him. I closed my eyes and reached for him, groaning as he came into my arms.

  “You’re wearing too many clothes,” Kristair complained and dragged my coat off of me, then my T-shirt.

  Blind, except for my sense of touch, my lips found his throat and I kissed my way up to lips, kissing him hungrily. I couldn’t get enough. Time wasn’t on our side, but fuck, I swear if I wasn’t inside him in the next few minutes, or him inside of me, I was going to explode. It was like a bonfire had lit up inside of me.

  I kicked out of my shoes while Kristair tugged off my jeans with impatient jerks until I was as naked as he. We knelt on the bed, our bodies pressed together. It was like coming off a withdrawal and being consumed with need as we indulged in each other. No matter how much I touched, how much I kissed and tasted and breathed him in, it wasn’t enough. I craved more. I had to have it like it was a basic essential to survive.

  “You still wear it,” Kristair breathed against my mouth, brushing his fingers over the torc around my throat.

  “Only take it off for showers and football.”

  My lover chuckled inside his mind. “Only the important things then.” He cupped my ass in his hands, urging me to straddle him as he sat back on his heels. I was going crazy, his skin scorching as it brushed against mine, his cock hot and hard pressing into my stomach.

  “Bite me, Kristair. Can ya still do that?” I wanted to feel that pain again. I had to have it; it would make it so real. Like pinching myself, only better.

  He hesitated, his mouth lifting from mine. “I don’t need to feed anymore, not like I used to. The instinct is no longer there.” Before I could protest, his lips slid down to my throat and he licked my pulse point. “But I’ve missed your taste.”

  My lover struck so quickly, I had no time to register he was going to do it before his fangs pierced me. I cried out, clutching his shoulders, hissing in pain, almost crying from the pleasure. This was nothing like my dream experience. This felt like it used to, complete with the sense of satiation from Kristair. He might not need the exchange to survive, but he still desired it as much as I did.

  I clung to him, shudders wracking my body until he lifted his mouth from me. “Oh god, oh god. Jeezus, screw the foreplay, Kristair. I need you now.” I wrapped my hand around his cock and gave it a squeeze, before releasing him and turning around on my hands and knees. “Fuck me. Fuck me now.”

  “Just as demanding as ever,” Kristair murmured. I gasped as I felt the slick head of his cock rub against my entrance. I dug my hands into the blankets and pushed back, my body raging. “Where’s you
r lube?”

  Blindly, I gestured toward the desk. “I can’t believe you’re talking about lube at a time like this. You won’t kill me.” With the way I was healing, I knew he couldn’t hurt me that much either.

  Kristair groaned and then his weight was gone from the bed. A few moments later he was back and my breath caught as his slick cock pushed into me, the burning sting so very welcoming. I clenched my teeth and drove back. “Oh fuck.” He was inside me, filling me up, and it was so damn perfect I thought I might die. “More,” I gasped and drove myself back again as he guided my hips.

  My lover didn’t say a word. Then again, he didn’t need to. His hands were gentle on my hips, his thumbs brushing my skin in tender sweeps even as he met me with hard thrusts of his own. His emotions rolled me over, swept me under, and I closed my eyes and lost myself in the undertow.

  Our minds came together, merged, and I sensed how it felt for him to be inside me so hot and tight, saw the way he imagined how my body looked to him as we fucked. I would have killed to be able to see the expression on his face. I could picture it, though. I’d seen it often enough, his lips parted, desire hazing his dark brown eyes.

  “Fuck,” I panted, almost sobbing. “Not enough.” Maybe it would never be enough, not after our forced separation. “More. Jeezus, don’t stop.” Dimly, somewhere, I think I heard my cell ring, loud and insistent until it finally fell silent.

  Laughter echoed in my mind. “Good thing you have me as a lover; you’d probably kill a human man.”

  “Ain’t I just good for yer ego.”

  Kristair stretched out over my back. I savored the heat of his skin against my own as he nuzzled my neck. All of those sweet, tender gestures amidst our heated fucking drove me wild. “You’re good for much more than my ego, mo chroí. I need you. I think I forgot how much you make me whole.”

  If Kristair kept talking like that he was going to turn me into a wreck. He’d managed it last night somehow, but I’d be damned if I would allow it two nights in a row. I snaked my hand around to the nape of his neck and turned my head to kiss him. Ours tongues tangled wildly and then Kristair pulled back with a rough curse.