by Livia Quinn
“I’ll take care of it,” I said and called my fire. The ball of lightning that materialized in my palm was new and I had to just stare at it for a minute. Jack cleared his throat and I shrugged, “Sorry.” With a quick flick of my hand I sent it toward the dead imposter. There was no crack of thunder or bolt of lightning. The intense blue light simply enveloped the length of the body and when it dissipated, it was gone, leaving only the scent of a violent spring storm.
Jack mouthed, Thank you, and released Jordie. “It’s okay, baby, she’s gone. Forever.” His eyes looked at me with what looked like Forever, right?
Jordie’s face reflected surprise and for a minute I thought she and her father might both break out in a jig. There was so much relief it nearly knocked me over. Call me insensitive but I had a sudden urge to break out in a chorus of “Ding dong the witch is dead!”
I really didn’t think the Langs would care.
Jack looked over Jordie’s shoulder at me and I felt the same relief, peace and happiness emanating from him as I’d felt earlier. Another tune came to mind.
“You’ve come a long way baby…”
The parade passed in a blur as I waited for the hour when Jack and I could be together. Aurora had helped Jordie change into her golden gown and quickly redid her hair and makeup, then her daddy escorted her down to their parade vehicle.
Jack and Jordie were a huge hit. Montana had succeeded in talking Conor to stand with her on one of the krewes floats. They’d been enamored with his “costume”.
My heart did a little flip seeing all the people of Destiny, my customers, the teenagers—Jordie’s friends, Shy and Andy—even Mr. Jackson and Inez crowding the street, and all clapping as my beautiful young friend and her hunky father rode by on the back of a red corvette.
As the last vehicle approached, laughter riffled through the crowd. Fathers put kids on their shoulders so they could see the big front-end loader pulling an empty sixteen-foot trailer. When it reached the middle of the block where I stood, I saw that it wasn’t empty.
Dead center of the long utility trailer stood a black dachshund, as regal as the King of England, nose in the air, powerful short legs quivering, an oversized blue ribbon around his neck proclaiming him Numero Uno.
Chapter 32
Tempe
Lovemaking Forecast: 101% chance of weather—thunder, lightning, fireworks, earthquakes, or the sky tumbling down…
I gazed through the big skylight in Jack’s bedroom where that plain old vanilla lunar moon shown down through a clear midnight sky. I loved this moon. It was just beautiful. This moon behaved itself, just doing its gravity thing, fiddling with tides, concentrating its efforts on the tug of war between it and the sun, and left us Paramortals alone.
I sighed and leaned my head back as two powerful arms circled my waist, a hard muscled chest pressed against me. Then warm lips nuzzled my ear and whispered, “You going to stand there all night?”
I didn’t have to wonder if I was where I belonged. If Jack’s house had been human it couldn’t have been more welcoming. Its aura said, Life is good, and when I stepped on the welcome mat at the front door, I was filled with an unbelievable feeling of rightness, of home. I could suddenly relate to Vivie’s longing. But it was for the man, not the house.
I turned in his arms. His silver green eyes glittered, reflecting the moonlight. I tilted my head back and studied his face. It wasn’t the first time I’d done so but it was the first time to be here with him and be able to bask in the fact that he knew everything about me that I knew, and he still… wanted… me.
I loved his tanned skin, the smooth cheeks and strong jaw that had worked in frustration a number of times on my account. I ran my fingers down the taut column of his throat, kept moving, down to the center of his perfect pecs.
“Remember when I first met you?” My hands stroked across one side of his chest, pushing his shirt aside.
He swallowed, his Adams apple bobbing and a smile curving one corner of his mouth. “I remember. It seems like I’ve either been hard or mad, or hard and awestruck ever since.”
“Aww, that’s such a sweet thing to say,” I teased as my other hand unzipped his pants and delved inside to grasp the bulge there. He sucked in a breath. My hand moved down his length. “Even if part of it is a lie. Not this part though…”
His hands went to my shoulders. “Tempe, that’s the God’s truth…ahh. You need to slow down.” He seemed to be searching for something that could make our night last.
He said, “Speaking of storms and fits…”
Were we?
“…not that it wasn’t perfectly timed, as if you knew I needed a diversion—”
Well, not that time.
“—what caused that storm this afternoon, ahh, the one that brought all the trees down?”
I removed my hand. He didn’t know. We hadn’t talked about her, hadn’t mentioned the others in our lives as if we were starting fresh in a cocoon of privacy. I hadn’t wanted to ruin the moment. But I didn’t think he would find this information to be bad news, considering how he and Dylan had faced off numerous times.
I sighed and moved back so he could see my face. He continued to massage my shoulders, probably to keep me from getting tensed up before we could take up where we left off.
“Mother told me that…Zeus, Hera and Titan, this is still so unbelievable. She blindsided me with the news that…” I exhaled, “Dylan and I were never…um…” Jack tilted his head, his eyebrow lifting in anticipation…
“Intimate.”
“Huh?” He frowned, his hands stalling on my shoulders. “How can that be?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know exactly because we didn’t have time to discuss it and besides, I was mad.” I shrugged, “But it was some kind of—I don’t know—traveling glamour, like a spell that was attached to me so everyone saw what my parents planned to be seen.”
His voice took on a sarcastic tone. “So he didn’t really kiss you outside BB’s?” Jack had interrupted Dylan and me in a sexy embrace against the wall of the bar. The look in his eye under the hiked brow said, I believe my own eyes, thank you very much.
I lifted my shoulders and my eyebrows. “Your guess is as good as mine. They were capable of altering reality for everyone in Destiny with this kind of glamour or…” a thought struck me, “they might have gotten the Fae to do something with the time, like they did today with the LIAB.” I shook my head, “I’ll be sure to tell let you know when I find out.”
Jack’s hands continued their roaming. “I knew it was something big because you couldn’t have had your power back when that storm rolled through.” As usual he’d plugged in the pieces of the puzzle quickly.
“Not entirely, but as you’ve said, you are an eye witness to my Tempe tantrums.” I chewed on my lip, not wanting to go backwards, but I wanted him to understand. “It was just that, once again, everyone knew except me. Why did they think they had to protect me, make decisions for me?”
I met his eyes dead on. “I’m done with that, Jack.”
“I’m on your side, my lovely Tempestaerie. I’ve taken the worst and the best Destiny had to throw at me with a once every four-hundred-year Chaos, but I’m also a parent. Could it have been because they love you? All of them? That part wasn’t glamour. Surely.”
The wisdom in his eyes went straight to my soul. I nodded, touching my forehead to his. “So,” his chest rumbled against my breasts, “does this mean you were a…virgin?” He smiled down at me when I looked into those sparkling silver green irises.
“Men.” Next thing you know he’d be throwing me over his shoulder and carrying me to his cave. Well, we were in his cave. “I just need to say that…I belong to myself and choose who I share my love with, but I told you before I’ve never felt this way about anyone.” My eyes went fuzzy as a thought struck me.
“What?” Jack squeezed my shoulders concerned.
I smiled. “I guess we’ve proven what mother told me. I never made wea
ther before during…”
“You just made my point, that glamour and fate may have had more of a role than we thought in our relationship.”
I frowned and he rubbed the skin between my eyebrows tenderly. “Stop frowning.”
I sighed. “There has always been a strong connection between us.” Now wasn’t the time to mention that I could read his thoughts… oops, here comes one now.
When is she going to stop talking and get back to business?
My hand squeezed gently and I rocked against him. He divested me of my t-shirt and I pushed his pants down to free his erection. His strong arms lifted me up and over him, and he filled me completely. As he walked us to the bed I leaned toward him, toppling him backward against the pillows, the weight of my own body driving him deeper. We moaned together.
Hush Tempe. Calm that frenetic mind and let me make love to you. With that thought I allowed my senses to take him in. His heat fanned around me, his scent so crisp and clean, like the wind blown snow after a winter storm.
The moisture on his throat was calling my name so I ran my tongue down that strong column and lifted myself off him. He groaned.
“One of these days,” I murmured, my hands spreading over the smooth skin of his sculpted pecs, running my fingers through the sparse chest hair, “I’m going to spray you down with whipped cream like I’ve wanted to ever since the morning I met you, and I’m going to lick it off—all of it—every inch, like here…” I sucked his nipple, watching his abs expand, “and here.” I sank lower, tasting his navel. “And here.”
I smiled up at him through the wild bright stands of my hair, locked my gaze with his and cupped his balls. A long hiss whistled through his teeth. He opened those pretty baby greens and I took my tongue on a long slow exploration of his erection. This time he didn’t just moan, his hips lifted, all the better for me to practice loving him this way, taking his pulsing flesh into my mouth. .
“Don’t, Sweetheart…agh, I want…” his voice trailed off. After several long seconds and a brief silence, I took a break and peered at him over his impressive length, waiting until his eyes opened again. “Am I doing it right?”
He said, “If you did it any righter, or any longer—” I took him into my mouth mid-sentence, worked my throat against the steely muscle. His hands curled in my hair as he panted, “or deeper, I…”
I guess this was what he was trying to warn me about, I thought, as his seed blasted the back of my throat and his hips spasmed. He groaned. It sounded like pleasure, and then changed to frustration.
“It was that bad?” I asked, grinning down at him.
“If you mean badass, baby, but I must be the one with super powers. This time, I took one of those soaring night flights.” He grinned. “You didn’t ride with me, huh? Well, come ‘ere.” His strong hands under my arms coaxed me over him.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked, remembering the last time we’d made love. Scorched sheets and undies had been the result, along with a lot of amazing fireworks, literally and metaphorically.
“Do your very worst, Tempest. Bring on the fireworks or lightning or whatever. It’s all part of who you are. Every time you throw a storm, I’m amazed,” he admitted, a smile softening his face. If we’d had a Bluetooth connection I couldn’t have received his feelings more effectively. His aura was a shimmering sea foam color of contentment, but as I smiled back and squeezed my fingers around his flat nipple, the sea foam morphed into magenta. Not-so-little Jack nudged me as if putting in his ten cents.
“I can’t imagine what my life would have been if I hadn’t found you,” he said, thoughtful.
Uh-oh, don’t let him go there. I decided to take the reins before he figured out he’d have been better off somewhere else in that scenario. I moved my hips down on him quickly taking him deep. Our sighs mingled, the hard muscle inside me torched my sensitive flesh; heat bubbled up through my nerve endings and spread like molten lava through my body. While his hands cupped my breasts he met the thrusts of my hips, then his lips sucked on each of my nipples, turning them into turgid bullets and sending lightning blazing through me to my center.
A surge of love so strong I could not hold back, made ions and photons, or whatever caused the phenomenon, spark and collide, and made my pores rise like tiny pointed pebbles. With my arms outstretched I felt the rush through my limbs like a haboob storming the desert, the force of the ages empowering it as the tumultuous energy rocked me. I screamed.
When it was over, when the storm and the wind and the emotions driving them had calmed, I fell across Jack wrapping my arms around him and nuzzling my face into his neck. I inhaled him into my lungs, where his essence settled near mine. For a time, everything was perfect.
Chapter 33
Jack
Home is where my Tempestaerie is.
Tempe collapsed over me like a limp washrag. “I love you,” I said. And when she raised her head, a soft expression on her face, I said it again, making sure she saw it in my eyes. “I love you, Tempest Pomeroy.”
No more running, no more denial or equivocation. I was hers. I looked into the eyes of a perfect summer day, blue skies, soft white clouds, in contrast to the blazing suns that had exploded in them at the height of her passion.
My hunger for her was insatiable. I knew I’d never stop wanting her. Every day was a new experience. It was as if she’d healed me, brought color and light—and storms—into it. Life before her had been a mundane black and white photograph compared to the rich colorful landscape of my new unknown. I realized I no longer required the known.
After my career flying into unknown dangers, how had I done such a one-eighty? Once and for all, I admitted that it was no shame to have suffered PTSD at the hands of such a maniacal creature as Georgeanne, especially with everything we knew now. We’d been targeted victims and I still didn’t know why.
Tempe squeezed me once again and I lost that train of thought. I thrust up, using my thighs to go deep and felt something inside me change—the knowing that I belonged here, buried inside of this woman and surrounded by Destiny’s magic.
She moaned long and low, her hot core gripping my cock. This time was different. I heard thunder, saw my Tempestaerie soaring above me, her hair flying around her head in a nimbus, the annals of weather history that dwelt within her, riding the waves of those rainbow tresses. I saw the great rains of the Amazon, the cloud fortresses of the Rockies, the wind powered dust storms of the Sahara, and sensed the icy cold of Siberia.
At the core of it all I became aware of two ancient twins delivering the heritage of her ancestors, where the first Tempestaeries created the elements of storm in the great Hall of Echoes. I knew all of this as the waves crashed over us.
Tempe cried, “I love you, Jack,” and climaxed, her core pulsing so hard, my own hit with a roar. I opened my eyes to lights, suspended in the air, created by our lovemaking, and not just by her nature as I’d thought before. It was our own personal magic. I’d been struck the first time, but this time, I’d been changed forever.
The ceiling had disappeared, replaced by a dark sky and so many stars I thought I could grab a handful and keep them as mementos. I watched as a pale shimmering cloud turned shades of green and lavender and pink undulating like the Aurora Borealis over the Bering Sea.
She rubbed her face against my neck.
I ran my fingers through her hair. “Like I said before, I’ll always know when you’re faking.”
Her lips twitched against my neck. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” We fell into an exhausted, satisfied sleep, spooned tightly against each other.
I awakened at my normal time even without an alarm. Scratching my shoulders, I slipped from the bed and went to pee.
Funny how, after some rest, my thoughts started going back over Georgeanne’s motivation. As plans went, hers weren’t all that grand. Phoebe said that the thing that had taken over the real Georgeanne was something nasty called a groach. It had been mark
ing time, keeping track of us until the perfect opportunity to strike. When Chaos arrived she got her chance.
Fortunately for us, she wasn’t able to have a wider influence, just some wicked reproductive spiders—that was pretty clever—and using her manipulating tricks to convince the fengbo to help her turn our missing citizens. The vast horde of shmoo and squonk, she didn’t command. Their leader was the large goofus Conor and the other green dragon had killed.
The mysterious green dragon.
My questions related to the groach’s great plan. I understood—why Destiny—but why me? How could she have known I’d wind up here? I chuckled. If I’d had even a glimpse of Destiny’s true nature when I’d been searching for sheriff positions in small communities, I’d have definitely chosen somewhere much “safer”, like Idaho. But the way things happen in the Paramortal world, would I have been “safe” anywhere from this new knowledge? Probably not. Like I’d told Tempe, I was beginning to think it was fate.
Some things had been irrevocably changed in Destiny, not the least of which, my life and Jordie’s and our acceptance of Destiny’s other nature. I’d had reservations about how a human sheriff could fit in to this world of Tempe’s, but so far it seems like it will be no different than defending different cultures and races like I have in my other jobs.
Ryan would never be the same, and I was sure a few citizens had probably seen more strange things than they had on the last Hobbit movie.
Dylan hadn’t come out so well. I wondered what the Paramortals would be able to do for him. He didn’t seem to be the type to accept his new life as a mere-dog, or a wolf pup.
Kat had left a text on my phone saying he’d runaway yet again and asked me to contact Conor to see if he might talk some sense into him. How did she know they’d even be able to communicate? I’d like to be on hand for that little dragon-canine chat.