Anya stared blankly at the tangled heap of giants for several moments, but there was no escaping the fact that both of them were unconscious. Disjointed thoughts flickered through her mind, but it was instinct that made her shove to her feet and race to blockade her door with every piece of furniture she could push in front of it.
Neither man had so much as twitched by the time she’d finished and turned to survey them. Zavier had to be crushing Legion, however. Moving away from her barricade, she surveyed them a moment and finally got onto her knees and began shoving at Zavier until he rolled off of his brother. She was sweating profusely from effort by the time she’d managed it and so winded she felt like she would pass out herself.
They were both battered and bleeding—from pounding at each other with their fists, she was sure—she thought. When she’d managed to catch her breath and gather a little strength into her weak muscles, she struggled to her feet and went into the bathroom for a washcloth. Wetting it with cold water, she wrung out the excess and returned to the main room, hoping she would find them both coming around. Consternation filled her when she saw they were both still completely unconscious.
As little as she understood them, she realized they’d expended too much energy in battling one another—possibly also in repairing the destruction they’d wreaked and helping the people they’d injured. Surely, even as powerful as they both appeared to be there were limits to what they could do just as humans had limits?
Hoping the cool cloth would revive them, she bathed Legion’s face carefully, rinsed the cloth, and then moved to Zavier. They were breathing, but shallowly. She didn’t even know if that was a good sign, but she thought it might be.
Zavier’s eyes flickered open when she drew his head into her lap to carefully clean his battered face. He stared at her without recognition or even comprehension. She stroked his face soothingly. “What have you two done to yourselves, you crazy men?”
Zavier’s lips hitched upward at one corner. “Told you I always win,” he said in a slurred, drunken voice.
Anger surged through her. “What did you win, you fool!”
A mixture of anger and amusement flickered in his eyes. “Take care, little human! I will not be too weak, for long, to pull you across my lap and paddle that sweet little ass of yours!”
The comment unnerved her. His arrogance angered her, and yet, irritatingly, the leap in her pulse wasn’t altogether from either, she knew. “If you ask me,” she said tartly, “it’s you and brother who are sadly in need of discipline!”
She was sorry almost the moment she said it. She knew it was true and at the same time she also realized why they were so undisciplined. They’d reared themselves. It was no wonder they’d yielded to the instincts of the uncivilized when they’d had no parents to guide them, to teach them that they couldn’t simply unleash their anger on one another any time the mood struck them—especially around beings that couldn’t protect themselves from their wrath.
And she knew they hadn’t.
Legion had told her his world had been destroyed. He just hadn’t told her he was nothing but a baby when it had happened.
“Save your pity for lesser beings!” Zavier growled, rolling away from her.
Anya felt like slapping him with the wet cloth. Instead, after glaring at him a moment, she moved to Legion. He’d come around, as well, she discovered, and it was obvious from his expression that he’d been alert enough to hear at least a part of the conversation. The look he gave her halted her in her tracks.
She stared at him uneasily for a moment and finally surged decisively to her feet. Throwing the cloth down, she moved to her locker, grabbed a tote, and began stuffing her clothing inside. “Fine! Suit yourselves! This ‘lesser being’ is leaving! I’m glad to see at least you two aren’t much the worse for your … childish and completely irresponsible behavior! Hopefully, you’ll be recovered enough to defend yourselves when they come to get you. And they will. You two should seriously consider finding a new home—no doubt this is what has kept the two of you on the move! You aren’t going to find any place where you’re welcome if you’ve got no more consideration for ‘lesser beings’ than to wreak destruction where ever you go!”
“We repaired the damage!” Legion growled defensively.
Anya whirled on him. “And you think that makes it all better? Well, it doesn’t! Maybe you like frightening ‘lesser beings’! Or maybe we’re just too damned insignificant to cross your mind? But you two just terrorized the entire city and we humans only have one answer for that—destroy the threat by whatever means necessary! The military will be perfectly willing to reduce the city to a pile of rubble trying to destroy you two! And if, by chance, you survive, they’ll try harder to get you the next time!”
She didn’t realize tears were streaming down her cheeks until she turned to face them and discovered she couldn’t bring their faces into focus. Scrubbing at her eyes, she stalked across the room and began pushing the furniture away from the door.
“Why did you do that?” Zavier asked curiously.
Anya laughed a little wildly. “To protect you two idiots—because I’m an idiot!” She turned to look at them when she’d cleared the door, shaking her head. “I am so disappointed in both of you. You are both—so amazing in so many ways, but when it comes right down to it, you’re just as … mean spirited and jealous of one another as any human ever dared to be! You aren’t better than us! You’re just different … stronger, and more capable of destroying things than the men on this planet!”
Both men struggled to rise and Anya’s heart leapt into her throat as it occurred to her that they’d been gathering strength the entire time she’d been venting. Whirling, she opened the door and fled before they could gather enough strength to get up and pursue her.
It was hell getting out of the city. Every artery was clogged with fleeing people, despite the fact that Anya saw Legion and Zavier had done as they’d told her and repaired the damage. At any other time, that fact might have amazed her, but it only made her feel sicker, because she knew it didn’t matter to the government that they’d undone what they’d done. To them it was only another show of power that was frightening.
Fortunately, although the military was in evidence everywhere, they seemed more focused on trying to keep order than in preventing anyone from leaving, or searching for her.
She’d feared they would be.
Relieved when they let her through, she followed the traffic for a while, trying to decide where to go. In the end, she didn’t actually make a decision. She simply headed home like a homing pigeon.
It was fall, Anya discovered when her mind had finally cleared enough for thoughts other than Legion or his brother Zavier. Cooped up in the city since her return, she hadn’t realized it, but once she became aware, it lifted her spirits to see the countryside decked in the brilliant colors of fall.
It seemed to her that the air was cleaner than the last time she’d visited the old home place. She wondered if it was purely her imagination or if the government’s efforts to clean the air were actually working.
They’d at least succeeded in clearing the most deadly toxins from the air, re-opening the countryside to habitation the year before she’d left.
She hadn’t been back, though, hadn’t felt up to returning to the family farm where her parents and two of her brothers had died in the last global war ten years earlier. Ten years had softened the pain of loss but certainly not eradicated it. She didn’t know why she wanted to go now.
She realized when she parked her car in the old barn, though, why she’d felt the need to go home. Despite her grief, this was the place where she’d once been happy and carefree—the only place and time. It was a balm to her soul now, even with the shadows that lingered.
The house was musty from being closed up so long and she thought, although it might have been purely imagination, that she could smell the faint chemical odor of the agent they’d used to eradicate the viral bomb tha
t had killed every living thing ten years earlier, her family included.
Opening all the doors and windows to air it, she left the house and wandered across the pasture where animals had grazed when she’d been a child. Settling beneath a tree, she gazed up at the clouds, searching the sky hopefully for living things. Pleasure filled her when her search didn’t go in vain. After nearly an hour, she spotted a pair of birds in the distance.
She’d heard they were genetically re-engineering wildlife, but she hadn’t actually expected to see any.
Leaning back in the grass, she folded her arms beneath her head and squinted at the spiraling pair for a while before the warmth of the day and the recession of high emotion worked together to lull her and she drifted to sleep.
She wasn’t certain what roused her, but something caused her to surface toward consciousness some time later and she opened her eyes. The sun had settled at the horizon, she saw, an indication that she’d slept for several hours. Closing her eyes again, she stretched and finally sat up.
Legion and his brother, Zavier, were seated beneath the tree little more than a yard from where she lay, studying her.
Her heart stuttered in her chest painfully. “Am I dreaming?” she asked in a whisper.
Legion frowned, looked uncomfortable. “We are not in your mind, Anya.”
Anya swallowed convulsively. “How did you find me? Why did you find me?”
“You are still angry,” Zavier observed unnecessarily.
Anya glanced at him when he spoke, searching her mind. She shook her head finally, tiredly. “Not angry.”
“Disappointed,” Legion supplied.
She felt her throat close with emotion. Dragging in a shuddering breath, she looked away. “I thought you were the most perfectly wonderful being ….”
She flinched reflexively when she felt his arms embracing her despite the fact that she knew he moved through time and space as if it didn’t exist for him—and maybe it didn’t. Her surprise didn’t prevent her from melting against him, however. Without any conscious decision, she did, feeling warmth invade her.
“I am everything that you believed that I was,” he said earnestly.
Anya tipped her head up to look at him doubtfully, struggling with a mixture of disbelief and amusement.
He blushed. “I will not … I will try not to fight with my brother again if it distresses you.”
“Distresses …?” Anya gasped, torn between amusement and outrage at the understatement of the century, but completely disarmed and thoroughly charmed by his blush. “Legion …!”
He silenced her by covering her mouth with his own. She struggled, briefly, against the intoxicating essence of him that filled her, but she knew it was useless even as she tried. She was already addicted to the feel and taste of him. It took no more than his nearness to stir warmth to life inside of her, a look, the gleam of desire in his eyes. His lightest touch summoned the heady heat of need.
She shouldn’t want his touch, his kisses. She should be terrified of him.
She wasn’t and no amount of trying to reason with herself could summon the instinct for self-preservation.
She was as limp and malleable as molten metal when he lifted his lips from hers at last. A vague sense of disappointment flickered through her when he did. Trying to gather her wits, she lifted her eyelids to gaze up at him.
A jolt went through her when she found herself looking up at both Zavier and Legion. Her lips parted in surprise. Without hesitation, Zavier swooped down to take instant advantage. She sucked in a sharp breath as his mouth opened over hers, fastened greedily to hers, fragmenting her thoughts and sending them spiraling in a million directions as he thrust his tongue into her mouth and explored her with a feverish hunger that skated the edge of roughness. Her belly clenched almost painfully at the rush of heated blood through her veins.
She was drunk with desire, totally disoriented when he broke the kiss at last.
“I will have her first. I cannot wait,” Zavier said in a husky growl.
“We agreed to share,” Legion snarled back.
The anger in both their voices was enough to aid Anya in prying her eyelids up. “Share?” she croaked, thoroughly bewildered but feeling the beginnings of panic.
“I have not joined with her body,” Zavier pointed out tightly. “My need is greater than yours.”
Legion sent him a hard look, but he said nothing else, easing away and watching while Zavier stripped her with hands that shook with eagerness. Despite her confusion and dawning alarm, Anya felt her body responding to his urgency. She sucked in a sharp breath when he tired of tugging at her clothing and ‘waved’ the suit away instead, diving at her the moment it vanished and scoring her flesh with each brush of his mouth and tongue over her throat and breasts and belly, almost more as if he meant to devour her than caress her. Within moments, she felt as if she was on fire, discovered she couldn’t hold still no matter how badly she wanted to savor his touch, to be still so that he missed nothing in his quest to explore her thoroughly.
She clutched at his head, arching against him as he made his way at last to one breast and tugged at the almost painfully engorged tip. Darkness descended over her mind, but she wasn’t certain if it was from the nearly painful jolt of excitement that went through her or if it was from her mostly ineffectual efforts to drag in a decent breath of air. “Zavier!” she gasped shakily, uncertain herself if the distress in her voice arose from the fact that she could hardly bear the exquisite sensations tearing through her or if it was praise and a plea for more.
He released the nipple he’d been tormenting and surged upward to cover her mouth. “Anya,” he rasped even as his lips closed over hers, in acknowledgement of her, or approval, or demand.
She had no idea which, but as he sucked hungrily at her mouth and tongue, stroking his hands feverishly over her breasts and across her belly until he found her sex, her mind found direction, focus, desperation. She moaned into his mouth as he parted the sensitive folds with one thick finger and found her opening, pressing inside of her.
“Minotez,” he gasped hoarsely as he tore his mouth from hers and gnawed a path with his lips and the edge of his teeth along her cheek to her throat. “You taste so sweet. You are so soft. I cannot decide if I most want to eat you, minotez, or climb inside of you.”
Anya felt her heart slam almost painfully against her chest wall at his words, arching instinctively against his hand as he plunged his finger more deeply inside of her. A shudder went through him. He withdrew his finger completely, wedged his hips between her thighs and guided his erection to her opening, pressing into her. She gasped, lifting eagerly to meet his thrusts, moaning in ecstasy as she felt his flesh piercing her, impaling her deliciously on his shaft.
He levered his torso upward, supporting his weight on his locked arms and staring down at her as he at last achieved the deep connection she so desperately wanted and began to pump his hips to glide his cock rhythmically along her channel. She clung to him, rose and fell in counter, relishing each thrust that lifted her higher toward the pinnacle of pleasure, wound the tension tighter inside of her.
A choked cry escaped her as the dam of passion broke over her suddenly, blindingly. Convulsions of ecstasy rocked her, escalating as he abruptly increased the depth and swiftness of his penetration to find his own release. Finally spent, his arms began to quiver with the strain of holding himself upright and he collapsed weakly against her, burrowing his face against her neck. “I thought that it could feel better when I joined my spirit with yours, but that was … unlike anything I have ever experienced,” he mumbled against her neck.
“Mmm,” Anya managed in agreement, too weak to handle anything more complicated—like actual speech.
“I would like to do that again, but I am strangely weak and my man thing has gone limp.”
Anya snickered, more at his tone of outraged disbelief than the comment itself.
He lifted his head to study her with a mixture
of suspicion and amusement.
Legion’s hand settled on his shoulder and gave him a shove that rolled him off of her and onto the grass. She caught the glare he sent in Legion’s direction, but Legion was oblivious to the threat in his brother’s eyes and, within a matter of moments, he’d completely redirected her mind, as well.
Still ultra sensitive from Zavier’s caresses, Anya flinched and tensed when Legion began stroking her to coax her passion once more, but her sensitivity and his determination worked against her. Within a few moments she was as desperate with renewed need as she had been from Zavier’s attentions. Writhing feverishly beneath the touch of Legion’s lips as he thoroughly reacquainted himself with her body, she began to beg him to enter her and appease the ache.
He pulled away instead, leaving her in frustrated confusion for a moment until he pulled her upright and dragged her astride his lap. Aligning his body with hers, he watched her face as she sank slowly upon his shaft until he was so deeply inside of her that he felt like a part of her. She opened her eyes with an effort when he merely held her. His face was taut with need. Holding her gaze, he tightened his grip on her hips and ground more deeply inside of her.
And somehow she knew what he needed. Lifting one hand from his shoulder, she stroked his cheek. “Legion,” she whispered, lifting her lips to brush them across his hard mouth.
“Beloved,” he responded raggedly, spearing his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck and cupping her head as he opened his mouth over hers.
She curled arms around him, kissing him back, rocking slightly in his lap to feel him within her. He tore his lips from hers after a moment. Sucking in a harsh breath and lifting her upward, he hunched his back to bring her breasts within reach, teasing first one and then other with his mouth and tongue until the bubble of rapture he’d built inside of her ruptured, dragging a hoarse groan from her.
Tightening his arms around her, he jogged her up and down along his shaft until she was nearly screaming with the hard convulsions of pleasure wracking her. Even as they began to subside at last, he tipped her onto her back, realigned his body with hers and began to stroke her passage rhythmically until he had pushed her upward to yet another peak.
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