by J. L. Madore
“Gentlemen, please.” I rub my forehead, my head throbbing in earnest. “We’ve been shouting in circles for an hour. Why don’t we take ten minutes and come back to the table with our thinking caps on? Jayne, get the blinds.”
I turn off the AV presentation and step out of the way as the pixie queen flies toward the refreshment table. When she passes me, she hovers for a moment. “Ignore them, Sir Barron. My people think you’ve done an incredible job with the new initiatives.”
“Thank you, Queen. That’s welcome praise indeed.”
The hum of the blinds opening brings the warmth of sunlight into the meeting room. One more hour of this bullshit and I’ll rejoin Calli and the others. I reach into my pocket to check if I have any messages at the same time my phone vibrates.
“What is that?” the elven aid asks across the room.
“By the Powers, is it a fire?”
I follow the pixie queen’s pointed finger and my muscles freeze. A sickening panic erupts hot in my veins as black smoke plumes up from behind the treetops.
“That’s at the compound,” someone shouts.
“Are we under attack?”
I race out of the meeting room to the balcony at the end of the corridor. I push through the glass door and keep running. The late-afternoon air hits my face like a wall of stale, hot air as I dive from the eighth-floor platform and transform in freefall. I pump my wings, my hawk shrieking a shrill cry of fury.
Yes, we’re under attack.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. The cabin is ablaze. It’s blown to a scattered heap of kindling and the burning wood is sending a choking black smoke billowing skyward. Where are they? My heart hammers as I circle above. My security team is there, scrambling around the edges of the blaze, searching for a way in. They don’t see the opening I do—well done, Lukas.
From my vantage point, I see the only way in. With a great push, I propel myself toward the ground and sweep back my wings to cut through the smoke as quickly as I can.
I suck in a last breath of air before hitting the wall of heat. The supply of oxygen doesn’t last long. Within moments, my lungs burn, my eyes water, and my skin is bubbling in blisters.
Motherfucking hell.
Finding Lukas’s shield blind is a matter of tracking his energy. He’s been with me long enough for me to recognize his magical signature, even in the blinding pitch.
When I bump up against it, I spin and press my back to the dome he erected. He would’ve focused on Calli. I can only hope the others are in there too.
Throwing my arms out, I send out a pulse to clear a path. Nothing. The carnage is unruly. It refuses to relinquish its hold.
I choke and char singes my lungs. I turn my face to breathe through the fabric covering my shoulder. It does little to filter the smoke. Can Calli breathe? I should’ve been here instead of refereeing a losing battle between pompous windbags.
Senseless. Stupid. So-fucking-unimportant.
Still, I can’t help them if I choke to death.
Magic surges and snaps in my fingertips. I create a vortex around me, forcing smoke away while funneling oxygen down from the heavens. I gulp in a breath and cough against the damage done. Again, I think of Calli suffering.
And me not being here for her.
With a cry of rage, I focus on the debris preventing my mate from escaping this hell. My pulse didn’t work. I need to try something different.
If I can’t move the fire, I’ll move the fucking building.
I send another wave of energy outward. The weight of the building’s debris tests every magical muscle I possess, but soon, I feel a shift. It’s moving.
It’s working… just not fast enough.
Turning things up full-blast, I push my limits and access the total release of my bottled-up powers. I’ve always governed myself to about sixty percent of my potential. Magical ability in wildlings is unusual and dangerous. I’ve always kept my powers tightly reined, but if I want them out of this fire, I have to give more.
Harnessing my full potential, I push to my limits and force my will to burst from me like the most powerful orgasm ever.
Power burns in my cells and explodes.
My world detonates. Somewhere in my distant mind, I know I need to pull back or burn myself up completely. I can’t.
If it means Calli’s life… I’ll pay any price.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Calli
A sleeping Hawk is a beautiful Hawk. Considering this is the third time I’ve had the pleasure of sharing time with him when he’s not fully guarded, I consider myself on one hell of a winning curve. The first time was the nap that ended with his hands clenched around my throat. The second was when I climbed into bed with him in the cabin. It held a startlingly domestic warmth to it but when I woke, he was gone. The third, this time, I’m not letting him get away.
Naked, with a chenille blanket draped at his waist, he remains unconscious in the aft stateroom of his plane. Hawk is sex incarnate. I finally get the chance to study the inked sleeves that run from his elbows up to and over his shoulders. Beautifully designed in black and gray, only a very select few key images are highlighted with a flourish of color.
I’m no expert on fae history, but the intertwining depictions look like a violent tale of fae mythology.
And then there’s the platinum nipple ring. I’ve never been one for tattoos and piercings but on Hawk it works. It’s almost worth him being rendered unconscious so I can perform my Florence Nightingale routine.
Warm water in a basin. A velvety soft washcloth. A need to ease some of his discomforts even if it’s the most superficial of all his suffering. It’s hard work cleaning all the hard, flat planes and rolling, muscular bulges of Hawk’s sooty bod.
I’ve never loved a task quite as much.
I douse the little cloth and wring out the excess for another pass on his neck and chest. His biceps are damn impressive. The same goes for the corded muscle that tapers in the man-V from his hips down to his groin. Holy-schmoly, is it wrong to be breathless and randy while he’s still out cold?
I gasp when his hand closes on my wrist.
His eyes pop wide and his breathing stops.
“It’s okay, broody. It’s just me.”
His gaze shifts to me but he looks no less alarmed. “Why am I waking up here?”
“You overdid it with the magical rescue and collapsed in the rubble.”
“Did you heal me?”
I shake my head. “No. A little blue lady with silver wings did that.”
He releases my hand and his focus sharpens. “The pixie queen? Shit Calli, you can’t accept favors from certain species—”
I place my palm on his chest to keep him from lurching up too soon. “Relax. Lukas handled everything. He said you wouldn’t honor any debt to her. She healed you without expectation of repayment.”
He swallows and relaxes back onto the bed. Well, if Hawk ever truly relaxes. “What are you doing?”
I warm my cloth in the basin and continue my work. “You were smoky from the explosion. Since you were in no condition to have a shower, I took liberties.
His grip shifts down to the sheet covering his hips. “Did everyone make it out safely?”
“Yes. Thank you for that.” I bend and press a kiss on the soft flesh of his temple. “Jaxx’s mom and Doc got swept up in our evacuation, so they’re here with us too. And Brant’s a little disgruntled that you pulled our asses from the fire using magic, but it is what it is.”
“And you were all safely contained?”
I nod. “The four of us were talking in the living room when Lukas rushed in. He saw the missile coming in and domed us in a magical shield. It was an inferno and suffocating in there, but we walked away from it, so nothing to complain about.”
“Where’s Lukas now?”
“He evacuated us and stayed behind to investigate the attack. He said he’ll follow when he has something to report.”
Hawk remains quiet as he process
es and then tilts his head to the basin. “And the bedside care?”
I nip at my bottom lip. He’s told me a bunch of times that this isn’t what he wants. Maybe taking liberties wasn’t such a good idea. “I was curious to touch you. Are you angry?”
“No,” he murmurs, a wicked grin curving his lips. “Have your curiosities been met?”
“Not really. No.”
“Then perhaps you should continue your work.”
I hide my giddy grin by dropping my gaze and repeating the douse and wring routine.
“You look pleased with yourself, Spitfire.”
I shrug one shoulder and focus on cleaning around the ring of platinum. “Someone recently told me I have a problem with personal boundaries.”
He laughs and his six-pack flexes under my fingers. “I think you proved my point.”
I sweep the cloth down the rock-hard ridges of his stomach and ease the sheet a little further south. “Does it bother you? Me pushing in on you?”
There’s a beat of silence, and then he relaxes a bit more. “I think I’ve lost my edge on holding you at arm’s reach. I admit you’re not at all what I imagined. I, too, am curious about a few things.”
“Like?”
His grin grows more heated and he shakes his head. “I don’t like being told the answers. I’ll figure them out myself.”
I swallow, my heart racing as my gaze slides over him. I am riveted by this side of the man. The teasing. His firmly etched scowl replaced by a smile. He is savagely handsome. “Might these curiosities involve us being naked?”
His possessive gaze washes over me like a rush of warm water. “A good many of them, yes.”
“Then, since we’ve got nowhere else to be for the next hour, maybe we should try to find some of those answers.”
“I think I’d like to finish my bath first. If you don’t mind?”
First. That means that after that…
I warm the cloth in the basin and dive in for the big finish. I start at his shoulders and descend the slope of his pecs and abs. Gawd, he’s beautiful.
I dip my hand under the sheet to brush his navel.
He hisses, and I press my luck.
Drawing the sheet down toward his knees, I uncover the grand prize. He’s fully aroused. Massively erect. “You don’t mind, do you? I don’t want to get the sheet wet.” I swallow and continue the sponge bath.
“No, please. Whatever you do, spare the sheets. One question, though. How did I get soot down there? I was wearing clothes if I remember.”
I bite my lip and wipe down his beautiful cock and swipe the cloth over his sac and between his legs. “What can I say… I’m a dedicated caregiver. I pride myself on being thorough.”
Hawk
Thorough? Ha. My mate is a minx, toying with me… Calli runs that velvety heat up the inside of my legs to the juncture of my groin, and my heart stutters in my chest. This is new territory for me. I never allow females the freedom to explore my body. As a Dom, I have an unwavering need to be the one in control. Being in power is the way I get off.
Not with her.
Yes, she’s taking her liberties, but her fascination with my body has my animal side rearing up and begging for more. For the first time, that pungent feminine scent of arousal is intended for me. Only me.
“Tell me, Calli,” I say, my voice a deep rasp. “Are you a member of the mile-high club?”
That sweeping cloth stops dead and her cheeks flush. “No. I’d never been on a plane before I met you.”
I expect her to shoot the question back at me, but she doesn’t. It doesn’t take my skills in reading people to figure out why. “Despite what you’re thinking, neither am I.”
Her brow pinches like she doesn’t believe me.
It goes to show how little we know about one another. And while I hate explaining myself, to build trust with Calli, I make an exception. “When I travel by plane, I’m on business and focused on reviewing a presentation or solving a problem. My plane is for work.”
Her lips purse together. “Jayne was work and play.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Jayne was work, a sexual outlet, and access to a powerful network of old-world fae power. She has never been play.”
Calli looks skeptical. I take the cloth from her hand and remove the basin from the bed. Reaching above the bedding platform, I set them on the console. “Calli, until now, my partners either served as personal sexual gratification or a strategic maneuver. Nothing wagered. Nothing invested. None of them have ever been lovers in the sense of what you imagine.”
“Which is why you don’t want to get tangled up with me, right? The mating bond threatens to blur that line.”
I scoff. “It’s too late for that. As much as my hunger for you might be influenced by the mating bond, me enjoying you as a person and wanting more of that connection is all you. You are an enigma. I find you frustratingly irresistible.”
The smile she rewards me with is worth more than ten times my amassed fortune. “That’s a boldly affectionate statement from a guy who insists there’s no inner romantic version of himself to coax out.”
True. I don’t know where this version of me comes from.
Maybe Calli isn’t the only one transforming. “So, back to the mile-high club,” I say, refusing the distraction. “Shall we christen this stateroom or wait until we’ve got more time to explore our curiosities?”
Calli tilts her head this way and that. “Well, you’re stuck here without your leather and chains. If we seize the moment, you’ll have to keep it simple. I wouldn’t want you to be bored.”
I run my hands around her waist and pull her down to lay beside me. She comes willingly and I roll over her, so she’s under my power. “You never bore me, Spitfire. I think we could occupy ourselves enough to keep things interesting.”
Her emerald gaze swirls with the flames of her wild side and my hawk rises to the fore. “I’m not letting you off the hook. I want the full Hawk Barron treatment soon. Then, it’ll be my turn to tie you up. I’m going to make you beg, Barron.”
Her fiery determination warms my cold, misbehaving heart. Calliope Tannis, where did you come from? “I look forward to you trying.”
Jaxx
I knock on the pocket door of the stateroom and clear my throat. “I’m sorry, you two. I hate to cockblock you, but I need Hawk. I wouldn’t interrupt except it’s an emergency.”
“Come.” The response comes quickly but not without a growl lacing his tone.
The pocket door whispers on its track and I feel slightly better when I take in the scene. Calli is clothed and although Hawk is fully aroused, he only looks moderately annoyed.
“Yeah, sorry, you two. I think I royally fucked up and need your help.”
Hawk sits up and props his palms on the bed behind him. “How so? What’s happened?”
With Hawk running the Monster Rights Conference, there hasn’t been time to fill him in on Brant’s quest to find the three missing kids until now, so I start there. I explain our working theory that someone powerful and high up in the FCO erased them from society. Then, I explain how Brant followed the financial trail of one of the FCO cleaners back to Hawk’s office.
“And someone from my office had those parents’ minds wiped of all memory?”
“Parents, teachers, neighbors… it’s broad and extensive.”
“Toss me some pants,” he says, pointing to the duffle Lukas left for him before we took off. The guy looks pissed, and honestly, I’m glad. That kind of fury isn’t easily feigned, and it makes me surer than ever that Hawk isn’t the Black Knight. “Who was the cleaner, Fiske, or Torbie?”
“Alexander Fiske.” I pull a pair of black khakis from the bag and toss them over. Calli looks disappointed that he’s getting dressed, but I can’t help it. I need the guy.
“Fiske has a powerful gift and can affect large areas at once. Unlike most fae with neuro-manipulation abilities, he doesn’t need direct contact with each person he wipes. He ca
n send out a message on a cognitive frequency that encompasses a radius of a small town. That does the work for him.”
“Explains how thorough it was.”
He pulls on his pants and I catch an eyeful of the guy’s inkwork. Man, Hawk’s arms and back are a living tribute to our heritage. It’s breathtaking. Hawk catches me gawking and it doesn’t seem open for comment.
Hawk shifts to stand on the bed to walk over. With the two plush couches pulled down into a bed, there’s no floor space to maneuver. “Fiske is a solid company man. I doubt very much he’s involved in a powerplay conspiracy. I’d bet my left nut whoever is behind this convinced him it was a sanctioned job.”
“So, you can talk to him?”
I hand him the stretch t-shirt and he pulls it over his chest. “Now that you’re involving me in your concerns, I can do a lot of things. Still, I don’t see your emergency?”
I rap my knuckles against the tightness in my chest. “I think when I asked my dad to search the names from the database in his office, someone took notice. He landed at Bergstrom before noon this morning and told my mom he was headed straight into the office. He never arrived and isn’t answering his cell. Mama had a neighbor go to the house and he’s not there either. Brant and I checked with police and hospitals and nothing. I’m worried, Hawk. I think someone might’ve taken him.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kotah
By the time the plane lands and we disembark, Hawk, Jaxx, and Brant have a working plan on how to confirm whether or not John Stanton is truly missing. Needless to say, Jaxx’s mama is beside herself, though no one without a high level of empathic sensitivity would know that. She is an admirably strong female and wears a convincing veil of unshaken confidence.
Our group is walking across the tarmac when the pilot shouts for Hawk’s attention. We turn back and are looking up the stairs when he hauls my sister out of the plane door. “We have a stowaway, sir.”