To Fight A Fate (Southern Sanctuary - Book 11)

by Jane Cousins

  “… just what are your intentions towards our sister?”

  Marcus blinked, and then blinked again. Intentions? He might be a little bit tipsy, not an easy thing to achieve given his semi-immortal metabolism, but he wasn’t so affected by the liquid fire that he didn’t realise that telling Riya’s brothers that he and Riya were involved in a purely sexual relationship would not go down all that well.

  Slider gave Marcus’s shoulders an encouraging squeeze, shit, he’d forgotten that half-dragons were surprisingly strong as his shoulder blades ground together.

  “Riya and I are just… work colleagues.” Slider squeezed him a little bit harder still, Marcus’s spine protested. “Temporary work colleagues.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Crash was suddenly in Marcus’s face. The crimson ring encircling his iris blazing bright against the outer hazel rim. “You can’t take your eyes off of her for more than twenty seconds.”

  He couldn’t?

  “You smell like her.” Vortex crowded in from the left.

  He did? Cool. No, not cool. Certainly not with ten of her eleven over-protective brothers circling.

  “You won’t move more than ten feet away from her.” Scald, to prove his point, gave Marcus’s chest a hard thump with his shoulder. Marcus’s feet remained firmly planted. Ah, he hadn’t consciously realised the Tong brothers had been trying to manoeuvre him away from Riya.

  Hah, puny half-dragons meet an Elite Warrior of Maat. Marcus hiccupped, hmm, those shots might no longer burn going down but they sure as hell hurt coming back up. He blinked, trying to remember what the topic of conversation had been about.

  Oh, right. Ten supernaturally strong half-dragons had him surrounded, closing in fast. They wanted him to explain his intentions towards their sister. Marcus fought the urge to blurt out that he intended to keep sleeping with the gorgeous Riya until she broke it off or returned to the Southern Sanctuary. Hmm, uncomfortable heat spiked through his guts at that thought.

  It wasn’t like he wanted anything more from her than just sex, did he? Okay, so she made him laugh. But the woman was always trying to manage him, feed him, make sure he got enough sleep… which, okay, was kind of nice of her, but he was a grown man, he knew his own limits.

  And she was beyond doubt a distraction when it came to his work, turning up at his room, at his office, and demanding they have sex… okay, probably another thing he shouldn’t gripe about.

  And it wasn’t like he didn’t have a multitude of systems set up to monitor everything going on as it was… it was just that he liked to oversee the monitoring, in case the machines missed something. Not that they ever did, after all, he coded the work protocols personally.

  Shit, he needed to say something. Something urbane and witty that would take the edge off this increasingly tense situation. Marcus glanced over the mass of Tong brothers just as Riya threw back her head and laughed with joyous abandon at something one of the Flyboys said. Right, that’s it.

  Marcus placed a hand over Scald’s face and shoved the man gently but forcibly out of his way. Then he began shouldering his way through the Tong throng. Elbowing Vortex in the side of the head. Flicking Axel hard on the ear to get him to move. Bringing his heel down squarely on Whip’s left foot.

  “What ever is going on between me and your sister is none of your fucking concern. Get between me and her again, and I won’t be so nice next time.” With one last shoulder thrust, he broke through the Tong barrier.

  Riya blinked as Marcus suddenly appeared at her side, forcing Flynn and Dash to back up slightly. Sweet Merciful Lady, he was alive and in one piece. She shouldn’t feel so relieved. She had thought Marcus would run for the hills. She’d been so tense she hadn’t been able to bear to look in his direction since her brothers had herded him away and here he was, standing so close she could smell the Dragon’s Breath oozing out of his pores.

  She shouldn’t feel so happy… so elated. A small niggling thought reared its ugly head, if her brothers hadn’t been capable of scaring Marcus off, then that meant she would have to take the mature adult route and tell him to his face that she was going to stop sleeping with him.

  Staring up into Marcus’s flushed smiling gorgeous face as he pressed against her ever so lightly, letting his body heat intermingle with hers, things low in Riya’s body began to liquefy with anticipation. Damn, she wanted him. Well, she could be a grown up tomorrow, or the day after that.

  “You okay?”

  Riya smiled, he’d been the one to go a round with her brothers and survive and he was worried about her? How sweet. “I’m fine. It’s a great party.” And suddenly it was, with Marcus by her side. Riya hoped her brothers were enjoying it, especially since it was being given in their honour. Speaking of, just where were the Ten?

  Riya glanced over at the bar and had to stifle a giggle. Whip was hopping on one foot, cradling the other. Vortex had an ice pack held up against the bridge of his nose. Axel was rubbing a bright red ear. While Scald kept shaking his head as if to clear double vision. The one thing all her brothers had in common was that they were all staring at Marcus, clear retribution simmering in their eyes.

  Great, that should make for interesting family get togethers in the future… wait, future?

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Um… I should really be going.”

  “Stay.” Marcus barked out the word, using the exact same tone Riya imagined that he would utilise to tell a border collie to sit.

  For some insane reason Riya found herself lowering her butt back down onto the barstool, glaring at Marcus across the kitchen island as he went about preparing them breakfast. “Watch the commands, Charming. I’m not a dog to be brought to heel.”

  Marcus checked on the toast before returning his attention to Riya. “I’m going to all this trouble to prepare you a healthy breakfast and you want to bail?”

  “You didn’t give me much choice in the matter.” Riya sipped her freshly squeezed orange juice.

  They’d left Dallas in the wee small hours, Marcus and her snuggling down for a nice nap in the fold down luxurious chairs in the rear of the plane while Flynn and Dash piloted them home to Atlanta. At the airport hanger, Riya had initialized the Transportal system installed there to bring the four of them instantaneously back to Maat Tower.

  The moment they returned, the Flyboys headed off to the staff canteen to get something to eat. Riya had decided that sounded like a good idea but when the elevator stopped on that floor, Marcus had grabbed her hand and held her back. Before she could protest he’d whisked her upstairs to his private apartment and immediately begun preparing her breakfast.

  The man was acting beyond strange. He hadn’t even gone within three feet of any of the computers in his apartment when they walked in. Instead, he’d dragged her across the open plan room to the kitchen and insisted she sit down while he did all the work.

  “What do you want?” He was being uncharacteristically… well, not charming, although, in a clumsy blunt kind of way he was.

  “What do I want when?” Marcus finished chopping some mushrooms and added them to a waiting hot griddle.

  “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. Dragging me up here. Insisting upon making me breakfast. You have to be chomping at the bit to check in with your hacker team, find out if any of those thousands of system searches you initialised have made any progress on finding Sek and Mot.”

  “My team are professionals. More than capable of following up on any alerts that come through.”

  Riya blinked. “Did you just make a giant step forward in understanding the meaning of a work - life balance? You haven’t even berated me once yet for spiriting you off to Dallas to see my brothers’ show.”

  “Hey, I’m focused, not an idiot. I know getting sufficient REM sleep is essential for operating at maximum capacity and alertness. We had to fly somewhere, and Dallas was as good a place as any. Besides, you know for a fact I enjoyed the show, and more importantly, those brothers of yo
urs gave me some great out of the box ideas for how to permanently get rid of the chaos rubies. Win, win, win.”

  “Maximum capacity and alertness? Sometimes I think you’ve begun to believe that you are more machine than human.”

  Marcus grabbed a spatula, tossing the mushrooms as he added a handful of freshly chopped parsley to the pan. “You think I’m cold and emotionless?” Funny, that wasn’t a description he would have taken offense at a week ago but suddenly what Riya thought of him, it mattered.

  Riya couldn’t help but laugh. “I can think of plenty of adjectives to describe you, but cold and emotionless aren’t two of them.”

  Marcus gave the sizzling bacon strips one last flip before he switched off all the burners. He should quit this conversation while the going was good but he found himself asking anyway. “And how would you describe me?” Turning his attention now to dividing up the food between two large plates.

  “Let’s see. Intense. Blunt. Single-minded. Detail orientated. Obsessive.”

  “Shit. That bad?” Was he? Absently Marcus slid the plate of food across the island bench towards Riya, grabbed a barstool and sat down across from her.

  “You didn’t let me finish.” Riya picked up a piece of bacon and took a bite, crispy, perfect.

  “There’s more? I’m not sure if I can take another full frontal attack.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Riya waved off his complaint as she dug into her scrambled eggs. “Sure, it wouldn’t go astray if you threw a few more please and thank yous into the conversation rather than just bark orders and expect people to stay.”

  “I’m feeding you breakfast and you expect me to plead for the privilege?”

  Riya rolled her eyes, even as she bit back a smile. “You didn’t ask me what my plans were for a start. For one, Dimity has left me over a hundred messages. I think she might have broken my phone.”

  “You know it’s just a hundred photos of her in different outfits, wanting your opinion on which one to wear for the photo shoot scheduled for tomorrow. At least she’s been too busy to crack another tantrum. Besides, you know she won’t even get out of bed until well after midday. You have hours of peace and quiet yet, why ruin it?”

  “Fine. Though I really should check in back home. Find out if Gaia had a boy or a girl.”

  Marcus crunched into a piece of toast, not liking the way his gut spasmed at hearing Riya refer to the Southern Sanctuary as home. Which was beyond ridiculous, it was her home. Across the other side of the world from here. Her kid. Her family. Her business. Her home. “I don’t know your cousin all that well, but something tells me if Gaia had given birth, you would have at the very least received a gloating text. Next?”

  “Not so surprisingly the most important thing on my to-do list this morning was to have a shower.” Riya was sure she smelt like dust, exhaust fumes and alcohol.

  “Breakfast first. It’s the most important meal of the day.”

  “I think I’m going to add battering ram to that list.” She caught a fleeting glimpse of Marcus wincing almost imperceptibly. “You know none of those words I used to describe you are strictly negative.”

  “They don’t exactly sound like compliments.”

  Riya shrugged. “You hear me complaining?”

  “Yeah, I have actually.”

  Riya wasn’t sure but she thought she saw what could have been a flicker of hurt flash through those sharply intelligent blue eyes. Damn. She kept forgetting that Marcus split his time between killing stuff and working with computers. That he wasn’t like her easy going brothers or cousins, used to swapping casual jokes and jabs.

  “I was just teasing. Honestly, men, such fragile egos.” She finished off the tasty last mushroom on her plate and pushed it away, ignoring the pile of bacon, eggs and toast still waiting to be consumed. Marcus had given her way too much food. And that in a nutshell was the man. Too focused on everyone around him, too intent upon keeping the world safe that he forgot to factor his own well being and happiness into the equation.

  Marcus stared at his plate of food. He didn’t often share breakfast with the women who passed briefly through his life. Either they didn’t eat breakfast, or, because of their heavily over-scheduled life, they didn’t have a moment to spare to eat. Seriously, when was the last time he’d just sat and had breakfast with a woman he was sleeping with? Talked about things other than work? Swapped light banter? Been teased?

  Of course, he had yet to tease Riya back. He pushed his almost empty plate away, eyeing her across the kitchen island. “You know, you’re right.”

  “I am?” Riya blinked in clear surprise. “Say that again, only louder and pronunciate your words more clearly.”

  Marcus chuffed a laugh. “The words you used to describe me are subjective. In a different context, I don’t want to boast, but they could be construed as you downright fawning over me.”

  “Pardon?”

  Marcus’s ocean blue eyes darkened, simmering with promised heat as he got slowly to his feet and began to walk around the kitchen island. Riya felt like she was watching a lethal predator stalk his prey… and her stomach churned in sudden unexpected surprise, realising that she was the prey. Oh, colour her a bad, bad girl, but suddenly she was completely turned on.

  “Intense.” Marcus’s voice was low, almost a growling whisper as he took a step closer. “Blunt.” A shiver of anticipation shot down Riya’s spine. “Single-minded.” Hypnotic blue eyes remained fixed on their target as he took yet another step closer. “Detail orientated.” Riya’s blood heated. “Obsessive.” His warm breath played across the sensitive skin of her neck as he breathed that last word into her ear.

  Riya looked up at him… oh, Goddess, there was something she was forgetting, wasn’t there? Oh, yes, a backbone. She’d been intending to put a stop to this, to them. Repeating the same mistake over and over again was fun… but it was getting too dangerous. She was too close to caring, to becoming attached, becoming entangled. And the very thought of her entangled with Marcus made her breasts ache and her sex throb. She parted her lips, dreading it, but she was going to have to say no, she had to push him away.

  Marcus hadn’t moved, only inches separated them, their body heat intermingling. “And let’s not forget that last one.” His voice barely a rough whisper. “Battering ram.”

  Damn him. Riya grabbed Marcus, but not to push him away. She fisted a handful of his shirt, wrenching him down so that she could taste him. That heat. That desire. That need. She gasped as he picked her up all too effortlessly, their lips still locked together. She clutched at him just as hard as he clutched at her. Even better when he began to walk, rocking her lower body against his. Though she couldn’t help but emit a small sound of protest. The kitchen island was right there… right there!

  Marcus broke their kiss for a moment, smiling. “The least I can do is help you cross off one thing from your to-do list this morning. How about that shower?”

  Riya was beyond words, all she could do was sink her fingers into his short thick mane of hair and pull his head down for another kiss. She wanted this. She wanted him. One more mistake, what would it matter?

  But she was worried that this might be the biggest, costliest mistake she would ever make. Riya was beginning to think she wouldn’t emerge from this little adventure unscathed. No, she had a very bad feeling that she would be leaving a large piece of her heart behind with Marcus when she eventually left.

  But for the moment, in this moment, she could only cling to Marcus, take what ever he was prepared to give her. For him it was one more mistake. For her it was… one last chance to be with him, intimate, sharing. Telling him with her body what she could never allow herself to express in words, that she was starting to…care for him. Damn.

  * * *

  By the Sands, Riya looked sexy as hell right now, kneeling at the end of the bed, chugging water. She’d donned one of his black shirts, rolling up the sleeves a half dozen times. Marcus, reclining against the bedhead, bare-chested, the r
umpled sheet covering his lower half, smiled in warm appreciation. There was just something about seeing this particular woman wearing his shirt that made him hard. Shit, who was he kidding. Riya blinked those luscious long black lashes and he got hard. She breathed and he got hard.

  “It’s getting late.” Riya glanced out the large window. The sky was full of low, dark clouds, a storm was rolling in fast.

  “You had breakfast and lunch here, why not stay for dinner?”

  “Listen to you.” Riya smiled. “Of the two of us, I honestly thought you’d be the one chomping to get back to work.”

  “You’re the one who has been insisting I should have a better work versus play balance.”

  “Yes, but it’s not supposed to be one or the other. Don’t you have some work to do? I know, thanks to you, that I certainly do.” Riya shot him a dirty look.

  “I didn’t hold a gun to your head and make you write that text.”

  “No, you didn’t, but you were being very distracting at the time. And now I have to deliver, don’t I? Telling Dimity that I couldn’t be disturbed today because I’m working on a fantastic new outfit especially for the photo shoot is all well and good. But tomorrow I have to present said outfit to her highness.”

  “I’m not buying what you’re selling. You can’t tell me you don’t already have some perfect outfit in your big bag of tricks that won’t soothe the savage beast.”

  Riya smiled. “Hmm, probably.”

  Marcus raised her a sexy grin, sitting up, placing a large warm hand on Riya’s knee, sliding his palm ever so slowly up along her inner thigh.

  “What do you think you’re doing? I still need to go, we’ve been locked in here for over… Goddess, it’s been almost ten hours.” Riya had attempted to leave several times throughout the day but each time Marcus had proven very persuasive and she had ended up staying. But no more. No matter how much she wanted to stay, wanted him, she had to draw the line somewhere.

  Marcus suddenly found his hand trapped as Riya clamped her legs together tightly. He issued a wicked, low laugh. “You do know I have another hand, right?” He grinned, Riya felt her resolve begin to weaken. “Or, I could just keep my hands to myself until you beg me not to, and instead…” He leaned forward, all but looming over her now. “…I could just…” He lowered his head, kissing her bare knee, then moved slightly higher and kissed her again.