by Gigi Moore
I am not laughing at you.
Yeah, yeah, she was laughing with him. Well, he wasn’t laughing.
And why had it taken her so long to make an appearance? He hadn’t exactly been a choir boy or Boy Scout since he had come back. He had offered to kill Ki no more than several hours ago. Shouldn’t Brielle or Caith have intervened before now? Or was it because he didn’t have his powers and they knew he couldn’t do the same damage as he had in his previous incarnation that they felt they could be so lax with him?
Goddess knows your heart. You would not have hurt Ki.
He was glad someone knew his heart, because he certainly didn’t.
You are not losing yourself, Prentice. You are finding yourself.
He wanted to believe her, but what did it mean if she was telling the truth? Had his entire life been a lie?
All of those years of isolation and pain were preparation for your true passion.
She made him feel like a caterpillar about to burst free from his cocoon a newly-minted and beautiful butterfly.
Again, he heard that familiar soft laughter.
“Are you trying to tell me my true passion is…is Ki?”
What do you think, Prentice?
“I think you’re avoiding the question answering my question with one of your own.”
She laughed again and Prentice didn’t know whether to be insulted or comforted by her continued good humor, her light and uninhibited tone.
What must it have been like to grow up with her as a mother?
Unlike his own mother, Brielle seemed like the supportive and nurturing type. Caith was probably the stern voice of reason, the one to put his foot down when Thayne and Cade had gotten too rambunctious for the soft-hearted Brielle to handle alone.
I was no saint.
Prentice swallowed hard at her kind, gentle voice. How could she be so nice to him when his parents had killed her and her husband and taken them from their sons? How could she treat him as if he hadn’t tried to kill her sons, as if he hadn’t killed her sister?
She had said she wasn’t a saint, but how else could he explain her behavior?
I believe in the Goddess, and Goddess believes in you.
He was so far from devoted and virtuous, why would any celestial being believe in him?
Prentice felt so unworthy and…impure when he remembered what he had been doing, what he had been about to do, and what he had been thinking right before Brielle had let her presence be known. Another minute and she would have caught him with his hand in his underwear, gripping his cock, trying to relieve the sexual frustration he had been experiencing since first being reunited with Lucy and meeting Ki.
Prentice had never been one to believe in destiny. He’d always made his own destiny. There had been something about his encounter with Ki, though, that screamed fate, as if he had been waiting all his life to meet someone like himself, as if he had been waiting all his life to meet the man who could rock him to his foundations.
Prentice heard a door open quickly followed by the distinct sound of footsteps padding down the carpeted hall.
It’s none of my business.
No matter how much he told himself to stay out of things, however, he found himself throwing back the covers and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He waited a moment for self-preservative good sense to kick in, but nothing did and when he didn’t hear anything from his guardian angels, the silence cinched his decision.
Prentice got out of bed, crossed the room, opened the door, and slipped into the hallway. He caught the diminishing sight of Lucy’s floor-length, peach, lace-and-ruffle nightgown as she scampered down the stairs.
Had they had an argument on their wedding night? Why wasn’t Ki following her, then?
What kind of creepy marriage did they have?
Prentice might have believed Lucy was running down for some restorative snacks after a round of energetic sex except that he hadn’t heard anything that could have been construed as energetic sex. Sure the walls were more solid now than in the twenty-first century, but no one engaged in backbreaking, back-scratching newlywed sex without making at least a peep.
He walked down the hall and paused at the door, thought twice about going into the room to ask Ki what the hell was up, but he didn’t trust himself alone in a bedroom with the guy. The bastard was too sexy for his own good and Prentice was too weak and mixed up to fight off any advances tonight.
Oh, like I can fight off an advance from his too-sexy-for-her-own-good wife?
Damn it.
He reached the kitchen in time to see Lucy putting the tea kettle on the cast iron stove.
Tea? Okay, granted they didn’t have whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and strawberries readily available to grab from a fridge and take up to their bedroom, but tea had to be the most unsexy drink he had ever heard of. It fell right down there with warm milk, evoking visions of cranky insomniac brats and little old ladies in rocking chairs crocheting.
The floor creaked beneath his bare foot as he approached.
Lucy gasped and grabbed her chest before she turned to see him. “Prentice, you scared the bejesus out of me.”
He grinned. It seemed he had a habit of scaring the bejesus out of people since his return, starting with Kelly O’Brien.
God, the night he’d returned to life seemed so long ago and it was barely more than a week. So much had happened in that time though.
“What are you doing creeping around down here so late?” she asked.
“I could ask you the same question.” He crossed the floor and watched her eyes widen as he neared her.
“I asked you first. Besides, I’m making tea. What’s your excuse?”
“I heard you leave your bedroom and I thought you could use some company.”
“I woke you? I’m sorry.”
“I was already awake.”
“In that case you probably could use this tea as much as me.” Lucy nodded at the table in the center of the kitchen before she turned from him to retrieve another cup and saucer from an overhead cabinet.
Prentice could have used something a lot stronger than tea, but he didn’t want to burst Little Miss Lucy Homemaker’s bubble. Instead, he took his cue, sat down, and folded his hands on the table eager and waiting for Lucy to join him.
When she did finally take the seat across from him, he silently admired the way the peach gown made her skin glow even more than usual.
As soon as Lucy realized he was staring at her, that glow intensified with a blush as blood quickly rushed to her face.
“Why are you looking at me like…like—”
“I want you?”
She put a hand to her face. “Yes, like you want me.”
“Probably because I do want you.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“Why not? It’s true. And if you don’t know anything else about me by now, you know I’ve never been anything but honest with you.”
“Usually.” She nodded.
Prentice grimaced. “Is there an instance when you think I haven’t been?”
“You never answered me before. What happened between you and Ki last night?”
Prentice released a sigh of relief. For a moment there he’d thought that she suspected what had happened in the kitchen earlier, that she’d been about to ask him what was going on between him and her husband. “Nothing happened.”
“I find it hard to believe that the two of you spent a night together in this house without engaging in any intercourse.”
The tea kettle whistled as Prentice coughed to cover his shock before he realized that Lucy meant verbal intercourse.
Still, he peered at her as she got up to retrieve the kettle from the stove.
She came back to the table and bent beside him to pour tea from the kettle into his cup.
Prentice closed his eyes and inhaled the sweet, soothing scent of vanilla and musk wafting from her skin and hair—some wholly modern blend she probab
ly got from Healing Magick mixed with her own intoxicating woman’s scent.
When he opened his eyes, it was to see her sitting at the table across from him, sipping her tea and warily observing him as if he was a man-eating predator.
Prentice reached for his cup and took a sip of the tea, trying to put her at ease as much as possible despite what he’d just told her.
He not only wanted Lucy. He ached for her, imagined sweeping the dainty cups and saucers onto the floor and taking her on the table. He wanted to hear her scream his name. He wanted to feel her nails score his back while he ate her pussy and she clutched his hair in both her fists.
“Is staying here going to be a problem for you, Prentice?”
He laughed. It was going to be more of a challenge than a problem. Good thing Prentice liked challenges. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
Just as it had earlier under Prentice’s feet, the floor creaked under Ki’s.
Lucy jerked up her head to look at her husband standing on the threshold of the kitchen.
Prentice took a deep breath, waited a beat, wondering how much of his and Lucy’s conversation Ki had caught. He tried not to panic, tried to calm himself before he glanced over his shoulder to see Ki cross the kitchen floor.
Ki stood at the table for several seconds, looking at Prentice and Lucy in turn before he finally took the seat adjacent Lucy.
“Would you like some tea?” Lucy asked.
“Coffee’s more my beverage.”
“I could make a pot.”
“Don’t.” Ki put his hand on hers to stop her from getting up from the table. “I didn’t come down here for coffee. I came down here for you.”
If he was nothing else, Ki was up-front, Prentice thought. He liked that in a person and grudgingly admitted that he especially liked the trait in Ki.
Who am I kidding? I like him for a lot more than his straightforwardness.
Prentice watched Ki thread his fingers through Lucy’s before he leaned toward her and paused as if waiting for permission.
He held his breath, heart kicking into high gear as he waited. He wasn’t expecting Ki to go through with it, but why shouldn’t Ki kiss Lucy? She was his wife and Ki didn’t seem to be shy about claiming what wasn’t his—namely Prentice—much less what was his.
He watched as Ki pressed his lips to Lucy’s, coaxing her mouth open with his tongue before thrusting it in and capturing her lips in a demanding, eating kiss.
Prentice’s cock sprung to life in his underwear. He could only imagine what Ki’s kiss was doing to Lucy.
He didn’t make a move to leave, though, strangely comfortable in his role of voyeur, feeling as if he belonged there, that he should watch.
Ki’s hands got into the act, grasping Lucy’s face, burrowing in her luxurious, glossy waves as he deepened the kiss.
Prentice hadn’t thought he could be so turned on by a kiss, especially one in which he wasn’t even a participant, but his cock started to throb and he had to stop himself from shoving his hand in his lap to bring it to heel.
Ki pulled away suddenly and turned to stare at him. It was only once Ki asked him if he was all right that Prentice realized he had groaned out loud.
He got to his feet so quickly he almost overturned his chair. He felt Lucy’s and Ki’s gazes on him—the former’s confused, the latter’s amused—and took a few steps away from the table. “I should be going up to bed.”
“Sure you won’t stay and finish your tea?” Ki asked, slowly, sensually running his fingers up and down Lucy’s bare arm.
Prentice stared at Ki’s hand, noticing Lucy shudder beneath his touch. A finger of jealousy as unexpected as a stitch in his side poked him in the heart. He wanted to be the one shuddering beneath Ki’s touch. He wanted to make Lucy shudder.
What was wrong with him?
Absolutely nothing, Prentice.
Hmm, that was a matter of opinion.
* * * *
The Summerland
Brielle took a deep breath, trying to hold the tears at bay, but it was so difficult.
This assignment was the most demanding one with which she and Caith had been charged since their arrival in the Summerland. In more than two decades they had never had to deal with issues so close to home, emotions so close to the surface because the individuals involved intimately belonged to them.
She had known the time would eventually come, that she and Caith would have to face their own demons, face their pasts, but it didn’t mean she had looked forward to it. Two decades was too soon and the wound from Prentice’s past cruelty and treachery was still fresh.
No, she wasn’t a saint, far from it.
Caith wrapped an arm around her and drew her close to his side, which only made her want to cry even more. “I know that was hard for you,” he murmured.
“More than you can imagine.”
“You’re strong, Bri. You can get through this. I’ll help you through it.”
“I wish it were that simple.”
Caith drew back to stare at her. “What is it?”
“I just realized something about the spell and why Prentice had been able to follow Thayne, Cade, and Maia back in time.”
Something in Brielle’s tone and look must have given her thoughts away because Caith gasped and squeezed her shoulder as if that could stave off the truth.
“You don’t believe…”
“That Prentice is our son, too? No, not literally, anyway, but the basis is there. I think he was adopted by the Teagues, and that he’s a descendant of one of our family lines, maybe a distant cousin or nephew. It’s the only possible explanation.”
Brielle closed her eyes and silently recited the incantation in her head, the one that had initially helped her sons and Maia escape Prentice’s wrath.
Unlock the desires of your heart
Release your wishes from the dark
Through land, space, time, and water
Take flight and soar my sons and daughter
She opened her eyes to see Caith frowning and imagined the wheels spinning in his head the same way they were spinning in hers.
Her only sibling had been Aura, and Aura had been childless. Caith had been an only child. Maybe there was something in her and Caith’s parents’ pasts, however, that she and Caith weren’t aware of.
Goddess, she wished Aura was still alive so that she could ask her. Would the Goddess allow her to communicate with Aura as she was communicating with Prentice, though?
This was all supposition anyway and it really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things whether or not Prentice was actually their “son” by default or not.
What mattered was the here and now and keeping Prentice safe and alive long enough to realize his destiny.
With that character who had shot Ethan running around free and determined to succeed where he thought he had failed, however, Prentice’s survival was looking grim.
Chapter 12
Ki assumed the first position then bent at the knees and lunged. He thrust the blade of his épée at an imaginary opponent in front of him and made a slashing motion across what would have been his enemy’s torso.
He had been at this for the better part of an hour, a fine sheen of perspiration on his naked torso that he would have liked to have acquired from a totally different kind of physical activity.
Four days and he had yet to have bedded his new wife. The situation was ridiculous and unheard of and he didn’t know why he continued to tolerate it, but he did.
Ki wanted Lucy to come to him of her own free will. He wanted her to want him as desperately as he wanted her, so desperately that she couldn’t stop herself from making the first move. Lucy, however, remained the epitome of restraint. Ki was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t discipline but maybe Lucy actually didn’t find him attractive and didn’t want him at all.
He shook his head at the thought.
Ki didn’t believe in false modesty. He realized this might be interpreted as conceit
by some but he knew his worth. He possessed several attributes that a bevy of beauties in this town as well as far and wide found extremely appealing. He was a catch, after all.
That Lucy had been consistently eluding his advances every night with nothing more than a word or an elegant shrug of her shoulders baffled his mind and remained a crippling blow to his admittedly healthy ego.
Ki turned on his heels, began his routine again—en garde, prêt, allez—before lunging and slashing the air with graceful, well-placed flicks and strokes of his blade. He growled in frustration that he didn’t have an actual flesh-and-blood adversary to strike. Having a tangible target on which to take out his aggression would have been so much more satisfying than merely hacking at air.
Engaging Ethan in banter didn’t even hold the same appeal for him anymore for the mere fact that he wanted the young man as much as he wanted Lucy, and Ethan was just as elusive as Ki’s wife, if not more so. If he sought to alleviate the coitus embargo with Lucy, turning to Ethan certainly wasn’t the answer. At least it hadn’t been so far.
He had had fun the other night though, baiting Ethan, trying to make him jealous by giving him the impression that Ki and Lucy were more intimate than was actually the case. Not that kissing and caressing his wife had been any great strain on his thespian skills, but he would be the first to admit he had hammed it up trying to get a rise out of the younger man.
Ki tried to look at the situation as if it was a case he was preparing to argue before a judge or present to a jury. He just had to approach Ethan and Lucy like hostile witnesses, or better still like a jury he had to persuade to see things his way. He had to make them want to give themselves over to him. He was going to have to turn on the courtroom charm more than he ever had before. Most of all, however, he needed to continue to be tolerant. He did not want to lose his patience or give either his prospective paramour or his wife the idea that his displeasure was in any way their fault, even if this was the case.
“My, my, my, what has gotten your undies in a twist?”
Ki pivoted and almost lost his balance when he saw Ethan leaning against the doorjamb, legs crossed at his ankles as he bit down into an apple like he didn’t have a care in the world.