WarriorsApprentice

by Alysh Ellis

  Huon immediately turned on Tybor. “What are you doing here?”

  “Shut up. Not here. Wait until we get to your room.”

  “My room? Who says you’re going to my room?”

  The anger contorting his face surprised Tybor. He’d expected Huon to be grateful for the help.

  “I say I am. Move it.”

  Weeks of blind obedience had made their mark. Huon’s lips tightened but he turned and weaved his way around the tables toward the door. A heavy hand clamped on his shoulder.

  “Are you trying to get us noticed?”

  Huon spun around to face Tybor. “What do you mean?”

  “I taught you about human customs, human behaviors. You ate—” He stopped and corrected himself. “I ate, you pushed food around your plate with a revolted look on your face. Humans expect you to pay for that.”

  “You ate. You pay.” Huon turned again to leave.

  Tybor’s fingers tightened. “I didn’t bring any money with me. You were provided with a good supply.”

  Huon’s hands went to his pockets. “I have some. But I don’t see why…”

  “Later.” Tybor waited until Huon had settled the bill, then walked out with him.

  Huon marched beside him, his face set and grim, his fingers clenching and uncurling by his sides as every step seemed to fuel his anger. Tybor followed him up the stairs of the hotel to his room and as soon as the door slammed behind them Huon erupted.

  “What do I have to do to convince you that I’m capable of doing this? In spite of what I look like, in spite of the fact that you don’t respect me, I can look after myself!” He shoved his face up against Tybor’s, lifting himself up on his toes to bring them closer to level. “I’m sick of being treated like a failure before I even start,” he shouted. “I can do this.”

  “I know you think you can,” Tybor shouted back.

  “But you don’t believe it, do you? The great Tybor came here to take over from poor, pathetic Huon Green.” Belying the last name Tybor had given him, streaks of dark red painted his cheekbones, standing out even more against the paleness of his skin. “You couldn’t resist that little jab, could you?” he sneered.

  “I came to help you, not to take over,” Tybor ground out. “I couldn’t do this on my own any more than you could. This is more than a one-man job.”

  Huon leaned forward, standing on the balls of his feet, bringing his face level with Tybor’s once more. “I am not a boy. I may not have had as much as experience as you but I am not green.” He yelled the final word, sparks of rage kindling in his eyes.

  Tybor held his breath, counted to ten, then stepped back. “Fuck. The ‘green’ was just a joke. You told me yourself you’re a virgin. In combat, you’re better than anyone I’ve ever trained.”

  “You’ve never said it before.” Huon sounded sulky and resentful.

  “My job was to toughen you up, not fill you full of warm, fuzzy shit.”

  “You toughened me.” His tone firmed. “Why did you come here, then?”

  “To help you.”

  “I don’t need any fucking help.” Huon reached out and shoved Tybor backward.

  Tybor rocked on his heels, riding the blow, then lurched forward again. “Yeah. You do.” He caught the punch Huon threw at him before it landed, wrapping his big hand around Huon’s fist and squeezing. “For fuck’s sake, bo—”

  He stopped himself before he uttered the incendiary word. He forced Huon’s hand down and held his gaze, not blinking, not allowing himself to be angered, not allowing himself to be aware of the fist clenched in his.

  “Brian Hopewood has amassed a group of Gatekeepers.” When Huon’s breathing grew steadier and less ragged he released his hand and stepped back. “I trained you believing you would be sent up against Hopewood and his weapons alone, and even that presented a challenge that few, if any, could survive. Against Hopewood and his mini-army, you don’t have a chance.”

  “Okay. I’m listening.” Huon tilted his head. “What are your orders?”

  “I don’t have any. I’m AWOL.”

  Huon rubbed his hand, massaging the reddened knuckles, but his head jerked up. “What?”

  “I’m here without permission,” Tybor stated gruffly.

  “I know what AWOL means,” Huon said and sighed. “I’m not an idiot. I want to know why. What if someone comes after you? Arrests you?”

  “I don’t think they’ll risk coming here, now, with Hopewood and his team in the city. They’ll wait. If I survive, they’ll arrest me when I go back home. If Hopewood kills me, it will save them the trouble.” Tybor shrugged. “For now, we’re on our own.” He dropped onto the side of the single bed. “We have to work out what to do.”

  “I know what I have to do,” Huon snapped. “I have to follow my orders and those are to get close to Judie Scanlon. I’m supposed to get into her bed…so why the hell did you ask her out tonight?”

  Tybor settled himself on the bed, plumped up the pillows and stacked his folded arms behind his head. “Someone had to do it. You don’t know how to behave around a woman. We don’t have time for you to learn. They should never have sent a virgin boy to do a man’s job.”

  “I am not a boy!”

  Huon grabbed Tybor by the collar and hauled him up. This time the swung punch landed, Huon’s knuckles sinking into Tybor’s eye socket. By instinct Tybor surged up, fist driving into Huon’s stomach, doubling him over. He collapsed onto the bed on top of Tybor, gasping for air. Tybor thrust out a hand to protect himself and it splayed onto Huon’s chest. Once again they lay body plastered against body, rage simmering in both pairs of eyes, one a deep midnight brown, the other the blue of the sunlit waters of the Venetian canals.

  Both men stilled, only the heaving of their lungs breaking the silence. The flames of anger subsided in Huon’s eyes and he whispered between ragged gulps of air.

  “You trained me, Tybor. Believe not just in me, but in yourself.”

  “I trained by your side and I will fight by your side,” Tybor said, his voice low and grave. “I will not let you die alone. Not if I can do something to save you.”

  And he reached up with his other hand and clasped it around the back of Huon’s head and pulled it down until their lips met. He ravished Huon’s mouth with his, hard, savage, bitter, a kiss that tore at his soul and his knowledge of who and what he was.

  Above him Huon tensed, and for a brief moment Tybor felt the backward pressure as Huon’s head jerked up, then his muscles sagged and his lips moved and opened as he took all Tybor offered and slipped his tongue inside, searching for more.

  Tybor’s blood pounded through his veins. His heart thudded, its rhythm timed to the frantic race of Huon’s. His cock hardened and his balls tightened. His hips moved restlessly. Huon settled into the notch of his thighs, lifting and rotating to bring their cocks into alignment.

  Along the line of his body, Huon softened and melded into him. Heat wrapped Tybor like a sheet of molten metal. His hand flexed on Huon’s skin, honed to silk-covered steel by the training Tybor had put him through. The thought of Huon’s beauty destroyed by the tortures of Hopewood and his group doused the furnace raging inside him like forge-tempered steel plunged into cold water. His hand flexing against Huon stilled and his forearm muscles tightened. He pushed Huon away so hard that he hurtled backward, smacking up against the wall of the tiny room.

  Tybor drew his knees up, swung them to the side and pushed himself off the bed on the other side, his back pressed hard against the plaster, his chest heaving.

  The boy pulled himself to his feet, heavy-lidded eyes dazed, lips red and swollen, cheeks lightly grazed from contact with Tybor’s stubble.

  Tybor glared at him, his scowl designed to intimidate, daring him to speak. But Huon refused to be intimidated, now as ever, standing up to Tybor, proving that his courage did not fail him in any situation, physical or emotional.

  “What the fuck was that about, Tybor?” He indicated the bed with a swee
ping gesture of his hand. “An emotional reaction to combat situations? That’s what you told me last time we got hard-ons when we got close to each other. But that kiss was more than a physical reaction to contact.”

  Tybor shook his head. He couldn’t hold Huon’s gaze and looked down at the floor. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? I thought you were supposed to know everything. You’re supposed to be this great warrior who has done it all, experienced it all, and now you’re telling me that you don’t know what’s happening here?”

  Tybor rubbed his hand across his mouth. He could still feel the imprint of Huon’s lips, still taste him. “This has never happened to me before. Not like this.”

  “This has never happened to me at all. I’ve never kissed anybody.” Huon gave a weak chuckle.

  “I…” Tybor swallowed. He felt as raw and awkward as any teenager. He forced himself to lift his head. “I have had sex with hundreds of women. I’m Dvalinn. I’ve never been attracted to a man.”

  Huon’s pale face grew paler. “Yeah, well. I know how different I am. You’ve made it plain enough you don’t consider me a man.”

  Tybor scrubbed his hand across his face. “I lied. To myself as much as to anyone. ”

  Huon looked straight at Tybor, his eyes clear and direct. “What do we do now?”

  “We work out a way to carry out this mission. Whatever this is,” his index finger waggled from Huon to the bed to himself and back again, “cannot be allowed to interfere.”

  Huon snorted. “I don’t even know what this,” he replicated Tybor’s gesture, “is. I was supposed to be having sex with Judie Scanlon before you appeared and took over.”

  Tybor’s breath caught. “You want to have sex with her?”

  “Shit, Tybor. I don’t know what I want. All of this is new. Yes, I think Judie Scanlon is attractive and yes, if I have to take her to bed to protect our people, then I will.” He paused and a small smile flickered on his lips then disappeared. “Who knows? I might enjoy it once I try it.”

  “I should have made sure you had the opportunity before this,” Tybor said grimly.

  “How? Taken me to a brothel?” He began to laugh.

  Tybor’s brow creased. “What’s so funny?”

  Between gasps Huon said, “I can just see it. Me pumping away, you standing to one side, screaming out, harder, faster, go ’round again.”

  Tybor felt his lips stretch into an answering grin. “Maybe not that.” He slumped his shoulders against the wall. “For now, we’ll go with the plan we have, with a slight variation. Both of us will attempt to seduce Judie Scanlon, and see which one of us she prefers.”

  Huon nodded. “And the other thing? Between you and me.”

  “We ignore it.”

  Chapter Three

  Judie Scanlon sat in Harry’s Bar, listening to the soft sweep of the piano, watching the door, waiting for one or both of the men to arrive. She clutched her drink in her hands, holding the glass tightly to still their shaking. She couldn’t believe she’d been so bold. Huon asking to sit at her table hadn’t surprised her. Crowds flocked to Venice, especially for Carnevale, all of them eager to become, however temporarily, a part of the magic that was the city.

  But from the moment she’d raised her eyes and made contact with Huon Green’s electric-blue ones, an odd compulsion had driven her. He was young and gorgeous, but she’d seen hundreds of young and gorgeous men in her time, and none of them had caused that sudden hitch in her heartbeat. His boyish face looked wide-eyed and innocent, but he carried himself with the physical confidence of a man who knew his own strength and had no need to flaunt it to the world at large. The contrast unsettled her. He seemed at once both too young and disturbingly old.

  Then his colleague, Ty Borland, had swaggered in. His body language shouted, “Here is a man who has known the world, who has experienced hardship and overcome it all.” If there was any softness in Ty Borland, he kept it well-hidden. Even his approach to her had a hard, glittering edge. He promised excitement and adventure but not commitment, not tenderness.

  She wasn’t a fool and she wasn’t completely inexperienced. She could have either one of them. Each had sent the message loud and clear. Tonight, when they joined her, she would have to decide. Soft and tender—perhaps someone she would have to teach and coax—or hard, wild and demanding.

  Her choices walked through the door together and her breath faltered. Huon wore a dinner suit, tailored to make the most of his slender frame. He looked cool and elegant. Ty looked burlier, rougher, in his jeans and leather jacket, and together the pair of them looked like one of her erotic fantasies sprung to life. How could she ever decide between two such magnificent and wholly different men?

  Ty looked around and spied her, striding forward confidently. Huon spotted her a second later and stretched out his steps, pacing along at Ty’s side so they arrived at the table together.

  She licked her lips, then realized what she’d done and winced. “Hi.”

  When had her voice dropped two tones and developed a velvet rasp? She sounded like a nineteen-thirties movie siren. If she didn’t watch out, the next words out of her mouth would be, “Come up and see me some time.”

  Except the time was now and here they were. The two men sat, Ty opposite her, Huon to the side. She suppressed a small grin. Ty knew what he was doing, all right. Every time she looked up, she saw him. To talk to Huon she had to twist her head slightly to the side.

  Huon seemed to realize that at the same time she did. He moved his seat closer to hers so their knees touched. Her eyes widened but she didn’t move away. Ty’s head jerked up and he glared at Huon. Huon lifted one shoulder.

  Tension and male rivalry arced across the table. Judie’s lips twitched. Her days were spent surrounded by men, but they remained grimly focused on the job they had set themselves. They saw her as an adjunct to their task, a facilitator, an intellect uninvolved in the physical side of their mission. No one saw her as a desirable woman with needs and hungers.

  Until tonight. Huon and Ty knew nothing about her, had asked only the most basic questions, yet she knew they wanted her. Ty’s eyes were heavy with the heated promise of sexual adventure. He didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. Soon, Judie knew, he would stand and hold out his hand and she would put hers in it and follow wherever he led. He tempted her like dark chocolate or the warm golden brandy he sipped.

  A shadow around one of his eyes, dark and purplish, drew her attention. “You’ve been hurt,” she murmured.

  “It’s nothing.” He shrugged. “A training accident.”

  Huon leaned forward to brush a stray wisp of hair away from her mouth and she noticed a graze on his knuckles. They’d been fighting each other. Over her?

  Some deep part she hadn’t known existed stirred and awoke, responded to the nuances of primitive mating rituals. Her response shocked and excited her at the same time.

  “You wouldn’t fight over a woman,” she breathed, running one finger over Huon’s scraped skin. “Would you?”

  Huon stuttered “No. It’s not… We didn’t.”

  “And if we did fight over a woman, a particular woman,” Ty’s smooth voice cut in, his focus locked on her, “it still wouldn’t solve our problem. It’s not our decision to make. Who would you choose, Judie?”

  The heady presence of male pheromones swirled around her. Huon leaned in, his shoulder brushing against hers, and Ty’s heavy-lidded eyes held her gaze across the width of the table. How could she choose between them? She took a gulp of wine and slammed the empty glass down with nerveless fingers. With the clatter a thought exploded into her brain. She could have them both. She didn’t have to be circumspect, didn’t have to choose. It didn’t have to interfere with carrying out her duties, no one had to know. She looked from one to the other. Took a deep breath. Committed herself to one night of wild passion.

  “Ty, Huon, would you like to come back to my apartment? For…” Her courage deserted her. “Fo
r coffee.”

  Both men stood. Huon moved to her side, helped her rise, then put his hand on the small of her back, guiding her through the bar and out into the Piazza San Marco. The cool night air made her head swim. She staggered and the men reached to support her.

  A look she couldn’t interpret passed between Huon and Ty. Neither of them spoke again as they walked side by side through the streets, over a small humpbacked bridge, down another narrow alley until they arrived at the edge of one of the smaller canals. Across the water, buildings leaned together in ragged rows, their windows darkened hollows in walls bleached bone-white by the moonlight. The romance of Venice could be dark and dangerous.

  A small shiver skittered across her skin. The presence of two men beside her made her feel protected, their strength comforting, their warmth countering the chill breeze blowing off the water, their reality holding at bay fear of things unseen.

  Her apartment building loomed out of the darkness beside her. “This is where I live.”

  She dug in her bag for her keys and opened the ornate outer door, punched in the alarm code and ushered the two men inside.

  “My apartment is upstairs,” she said and began to climb.

  Ty walked beside her, turning his head from side to side, looking around him as if he were absorbing the sight and feel of the place. The unique architecture of Venice often had that effect on visitors. Huon walked behind them, his tread so quiet she was about to turn to see if he was still there, but Ty suddenly asked, “What is on this floor?” He pointed toward Brian’s office. “It doesn’t look like apartments.”

  “It’s not,” she replied. “My boss has leased this whole building and the first two floors are offices and ah…” She hesitated. She didn’t want to mention her laboratory and she certainly didn’t want to get into a discussion of what she did there. “Workspaces. Brian, my employer, has a set of rooms on the second floor as well. The third floor is empty apart from my apartment.”