by Teal Ceagh
Diego followed him. “What is it?”
Sera was there, touching his chest. “It’s something in his head,” she said. “Pain. Agony.”
He couldn’t breathe. It was locked in there.
Sera was touching his face, making him look at her. “I can see the pain, Blake. I can see it. You have to let it out. Let it out.” Her hands were on his chest, right over it, soothing, spreading it and suddenly he could breathe, in great gasping lungfuls. It hurt but he could breathe.
He bent over, trying to control the panic. “My daughter. The Grimoré have my daughter.”
Chapter Five
“He has a daughter?” Zack sat up. “He didn’t bother to mention that to anyone?”
“It was a former lover, an accident but she chose to keep the child and he was helping support her. The girl doesn’t even know he’s her father—at least he didn’t think she did until she suddenly inserted herself into his mind just as they were about to bond and warned him not to seal the bond until they find her.” Seaveth pushed her hair back wearily.
“Find her and kill her, to be precise,” Alexander finished.
“They must have found her, the Grimoré and made her into some sort of vampeen, like we make a vampire…” Zack shuddered.
Alexander rubbed his temples. “She was how old?”
“Eight,” Seaveth said.
“Oh Christ,” Alexander whispered. Wyatt, next to him, gripped his shoulder. Silence surrounded the top end of the long table for a moment.
Mia stirred. “What would have happened if they had bonded, Seaveth?”
Seaveth stirred. “With his daughter a Grimoré vampeen, the whole bloodline is tainted. The trinity would have been corrupted and all the trinities exposed and weakened. It’s what the Grimoré were counting on.”
“They didn’t anticipate an eight-year-old child would have the strength to reach out to her father and warn him,” Alexander finished.
“Would you?” Seaveth asked sadly. “Somehow, some core of humanity remained in her and she used her newly acquired Grimoré powers to reach him and warn him. He says she faded away, so she clearly used all her strength in this one effort. We can’t afford to ignore it.”
Amrod spread his hands on the table. “You’re really going to kill the child?”
“Diego strongly urges that we do exactly that.”
Wyatt opened his mouth, then closed it. Then said flatly, “Diego said that?”
* * * * *
Diego had stopped pacing long ago and now sat on the floor, with his back against the wall, his head tilted back to rest against the plaster. His hands were resting on his knees. He’d pulled on his jeans but barely fastened them. Sera lay on the sofa, her tears drying, wrapped in a borrowed bathrobe.
Blake, wearing his trousers once more, threw himself down next to Diego. “You know I have one hundred and fifty of New York’s finest at my disposal and twenty detectives? I could have them turning this city upside down right now if they would just let me out of this goddam apartment.”
Diego turned his head to look at him. “This is not your kind of hunt, amigo. Where would you begin?”
Blake said nothing.
“Besides, the Grimoré took her not only to taint the bloodline. They want you to come after her.”
“Her name is Emily.” Blake’s voice was hoarse.
Sera slipped off the sofa, sat on the floor next to Blake and picked up his hand. The pain in his voice was difficult to listen to.
“They want you out there where they can cut you off from us and deal with you before the trinity is bonded,” Diego said. “You’re the hunter. Your instinct is to go after them. They know that. They’re counting on it.”
“You speak like a hunter yourself,” Blake countered.
“For three centuries, I have been one of the best,” Diego agreed. “Diego Savage, they call me.” His chest rose and fell on a powerful exhalation. “And it’s all completely meaningless,” he added with sudden bitterness. He jerked to his feet, as if the confession had not been intended and walked stiffly into the kitchen area, pushing his hand through his hair.
Blake stared at him. “If you’re a hunter, then you could help me. We could be out there looking for her. I know Emily well.” He scrambled to his feet. “We could talk to Patricia, find out where they took her, follow the trail. Basic police work.” He followed Diego into the kitchen. Sera return to the sofa, sitting anxiously on the edge of it.
Diego turned to face Blake. “Patricia was your daughter’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“They killed her, Blake.” Diego shrugged. “Sorry.”
Blake turned to stride for the door. “I have to get out of this fucking apartment!”
Diego followed him, grabbed him and slammed him into the wall. He pinned him up against the wall with his arm against his throat, even though Blake struggled hard. “You’re coming into your strength, hunter,” Diego said quietly, “But I’m still stronger than you for a while, so don’t bother trying to throw me off just yet. I could crush your windpipe with just a bit more pressure, so don’t make me do it, because by Christ I will if you don’t listen to me.”
Blake stilled, although he was breathing hard.
Diego backed off the pressure on his throat a little. “You said your daughter’s name was Emily, right?”
Blake nodded with difficulty.
“Here’s three more names for you,” Diego said. “Caterina Louisa. Rosario Espiridión. Ema Valeria.”
“Who are they?” Blake whispered.
“They were my children once,” Diego told him and let him go.
* * * * *
The silence around the top table was almost total. Almost everyone was staring at Zachariah in stunned disbelief, if not outright horror.
“Diego was turned without his consent?” Aubrey repeated. “While he was still alive? Still healthy?”
“And still a father of three,” Zachariah confirmed evenly. “And yes, the mother was dead. Not one of the children was over seven years of age. The vampire that turned him did not ease his transition. He left Diego to find his own way.”
“What happened to the children?” Mia asked, her hands clenched together in tight fists.
“They perished,” Zachariah said simply.
The sound that rippled around the room was one of combined anguish and horror.
Wyatt glanced at Alexander, who sat still at the table. “You knew.”
Alexander nodded.
“That’s why you’ve been able to put up with all his ways all this time.”
“It gives you a different perspective on Diego, once you know,” Alexander admitted.
Wyatt pushed his hand through his hair. “It does, doesn’t it?”
* * * * *
Sera could not help the tears that flowed. She sat with her hands between her knees, staring at Diego as the awful words came from his mouth. Finally, he stopped speaking.
Even Blake stared at him with horror in his eyes. “How did you come back from that?” he asked. “How is it you’re even…normal?”
Diego grinned. “I’m not. There’s a reason for my name, you know.”
Blake shook his head. “You’re sane and moderately balanced. Something bought you back from the madness. What?”
Diego’s smile faded. “I didn’t want it to be for nothing.”
“What?”
“Their deaths. My turning. Any of it. Immortality.”
“But after four hundred years, you’re still looking for meaning.”
Diego growled deep in his throat, an almost animal sound and strode from the apartment, shouldering his way past the guards.
Blake watched the door close behind Diego, his eyes flinty. “He can leave,” he said bitterly.
“He won’t leave the keep,” Sera said. She bit her lip. “They don’t know if you will or not.”
Blake grimaced. “They’re probably right not to trust me. Do you know how much I want to…to
break necks or something, Sera?” His hands fisted, the knuckles turning white. “I’m her father. Worse, I’m a cop. And I have to sit here and wait.”
She rose and went over to him. Hesitantly, she pressed her hand against his chest and he picked it up in his. She could feel his heart pounding out his fear and the unspoken agony of what lay ahead.
“You’re tired,” she said.
He gave a low laugh. “I’ve been tired for a year, seems like. This is just the icing on the cake.”
Sera picked up his hand. “I can fix that.”
“I can’t sleep now,” he protested.
“This isn’t sleep,” she assured him.
She led him into the bedroom and stripped him of his trousers, moving gently and quietly. “Lie down on your back,” she told him.
“Massage?”
“I’m not sure what that word means here.” She kissed him. “Just listen to my voice and concentrate on what my hands are doing. Ignore anything else.”
She began to speak in a low, rhythmic tone. She described elven settings. Rivers, skies, trees. The wind. Sun. Shadows dancing on her hand through leaves. The sound of bugs in tall grass. Flowers nodding in dappled sunshine. Gardens glimpsed through a break in shady trees. Forests carpeting mountainsides. Soaring peaks. Waterfalls. Mountain streams with chilled water so crystal clear the bottom seemed only inches deep but was really deep enough to dive into. Fish flitting through the water. Rocks at the bottom of it. Plant life waving in the running water. Rain on her face. Snow drifting over her hands and feet and upturned face. The first hint of spring, with plants pushing through snowmelt.
And as she spoke, she brushed her hands over Blake’s body, sending her power through her hands. Blake had been abusing his body for too long. She could feel the long-term stresses and where they had taken their toll. There were multiple lesions and chemical imbalances that she corrected as she stroked but even as she worked, she became aware of another growing force.
She was becoming aroused. And so was Blake.
Her hand motions gentled, the strokes elongated and grew more languorous. She stopped speaking because her voice had become husky with want.
“How do you feel?” she dared to ask Blake, as she ran her hands over his forearm and up his biceps to his shoulder.
“Wonderful,” he confessed. “I wasn’t sleeping but I wasn’t exactly awake. I was lying next to a river, it felt like.”
She smiled and stroked his deltoids and collarbone and slid down to the pectorals. Her clit gave out a throb. She wanted to kiss them, not stroke them. So she leaned over and ran her tongue over his hot flesh.
Blake sighed and her pussy rippled in response. Sera sat up and shrugged off the bathrobe. Her nipples were already sharp peaks and her pussy wet and ready. She straddled Blake’s hips and guided his cock into her pussy, gasping as the hard thickness of it spread her and buried deep inside.
Blake grasped her hips, his gaze burning into her. “You’re so tight and hot,” he murmured.
Sera arched her back, feeling her hips tilt forward and her clit throb as her labia clenched around it. She moaned. Somehow, the healing process had reversed itself. She was feeling way too good. Tingling all over. She lifted herself off his cock nearly all the way and slid back down it again.
Way, way too good.
* * * * *
Diego clutched his head in his hand, staring down at the scratched tabletop, his heart pounding. “Who thought up this stupid, fucking bonding thing, anyway?” he demanded. “It’s barbaric!”
He lifted his head to glare at Zachariah, Alexander and Wyatt but all three of them just looked back at him with the same patient expressions they had been showing for the last forty minutes. He swore. “What, cat got your tongues?”
Zack shifted in his chair. “Diego, we know it feels odd—”
“Fucking a total stranger?” Diego snorted. “And don’t get me going on the fact that there’s a man sharing the bed too—”
“It’s nothing you haven’t done a thousand times, my friend. Why is this time any different?” Alexander suddenly asked.
Diego looked at him, groping for an answer.
Alexander leaned forward. “Is it because this time it means something?” he said. “Finally, after four hundred years, it’s not just a stranger anymore. And it’s scaring the crap out of you.”
“I don’t know her from a bag of salt, man,” Diego muttered.
Zachariah shook his head. “We’re not talking about Sera and you know it.”
Diego could feel his breath coming faster. He shook his head. “I don’t…I don’t…”
Zachariah glanced at Alexander, then moved his chair closer into the table and leaned in closer to Diego and dropped his voice. “Look, Alexander doesn’t agree with me but I think you need a push over the line. So I’m going to push. For the last two years you’ve had a love-hate relationship with Lindál, Diego. Now you’ve got Sera there in your arms. Whether you know it or not, you already love her. The bonding is that powerful, Diego. I guarantee that if you look, you’ll see it. You just have to open up your eyes and acknowledge it.”
Diego stared at him.
Zack spread his hands on the table, as if he were demonstrating a point. “In the moments you first saw her, I guarantee there was an instant, something that made you pause, that made your heart give out. Come on, Diego. Drop the savage for just thirty seconds and join the human race once more.”
Diego thought back to the first few moments in the alley, when he’d first seen Sera. As soon as he’d realized who she was, there had been a sick drop in his heart for he’d known that Lindál would poison her against him. Why the lurch? People had been speaking ill of him for years.
Because for the first time in centuries, he had wanted someone to think well of him.
Séreméla.
He curled his hand into a fist. An elven woman. He loved an elven princess. He could feel it growing in him as he sat there. Hot, hard and unbreakable.
“She won’t go through with the bonding,” he whispered. “Not with me. Not now.”
“You have to give her a chance,” Alexander said quickly. “Don’t count yourself out, Diego.”
Diego considered Alexander’s own personal history. He had left Mia and it was only the coincidence of the bonding that had brought them back together. Alexander nodded, as if he could see Diego’s thoughts. “Don’t fuck up like I did.”
Diego caught his breath as he felt arousal wash over him. It was distant but very real. He realized with a start that Sera and Blake had to be making love back in the apartment and it was affecting him. He deliberately drew in a breath, trying to control his reaction. He swallowed, shifting in his chair.
“You okay, Diego?” Alexander asked.
“I’m fine,” Diego said. He pushed his hand through his hair and realized it was trembling. “I’m just not used to…to…”
“Plain speaking?” Zack suggested.
Diego grimaced. “I’ve had to do more of it in the last few hours than in the last century. My budget is run out.”
Alexander shook his head. “It’s not the plain speaking that bothers you, Diego. You speak just fine about lots of things. Sometimes we can’t get you to shut up. If Zack wants to push you over the line, let’s really push you over the line and be done with it. You can’t handle dealing with love anymore. That’s what this is about.”
Diego flinched. Even the raw word spoken aloud was enough to make him recoil. Alexander was right.
“Lots of guys can’t, though,” Wyatt pointed out.
“Oh but Diego is a special case,” Alexander said. “He’s gone four hundred years avoiding it, fucking everything in sight and pretending he doesn’t need it. And now it has slapped him about the chest and gut and he can’t handle it. That’s why he’s sitting there looking like he’s having a heart attack. Because he can’t figure out what’s going on.”
“I can figure it out,” Diego snapped.
Za
ck shook his head. “If you could, you wouldn’t be sitting here with us. You’d be in the apartment with Sera and Blake, holding them. Don’t you see? The bonding means you get to love and be loved by two people. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it except take it in and hold on to it, because it’s the best damn thing that will ever happen to you. Two years ago I would have been sitting where you are, wondering how I’m supposed to deal with a goddam elf and a human in my life, supposedly forever. Right now I’m half an inch away from losing one of them.” He stood up abruptly and Diego was stunned to see his eyes were glistening with real, human tears. “Take my advice, Diego. Inhale every minute the bonding lets you have them in your life.” He walked out of the room, not looking back.
Diego could feel his cock swelling, his balls throbbing. Sera’s climax was drawing near. He glanced at Alexander and Wyatt and swallowed. “I’m heading back to the apartment,” he said and was appalled at how much of an empty shell his voice was.
He started walking, then began to stride faster. By the time he reached the apartment, he was running.
* * * * *
Sera fought to reach her climax. She trembled on the brink of it but could not seem to tip herself over into that pool of pleasure. Blake was groaning beneath her, his hips thrusting and his body was slick with sweat.
Hands on her hips. Lips on her shoulder. “Let me help, Sera, mi amor.”
“Diego,” she gasped. He was behind her. His cock pressed against her ass, as his hand slid down into her sopping cleft and curled around Blake’s shaft as she slid up and down.
Blake groaned. “What are you doing?” he muttered.
“Watch,” Diego whispered. He gathered cream from around her pussy and brought it up to her clit, then with his finger and thumb began to milk it in time with her movements on Blake’s cock. He cupped her breast with his other hand and squeezed the nipple, rolling it with his fingers.
Sera bucked, moaning and panting and instantly began to climax, her pussy gripping Blake’s cock in hard waves, making him groan and clench at the mattress. He watched with an awed expression, his eyes sleepy with lust, as Sera quivered through a powerful orgasm, Diego’s hand tucked in her mons.