Mystical Warrior

by Janet Chapman

  The knife in his chest withdrew so suddenly that his heart started pounding even more painfully, and he had her in his arms before she could finish gasping, putting everything he couldn’t say into his kiss. Hell, who needed four stupid words, anyway, or even three, when two were all that really mattered? He reared up before he lost the nerve to say them.

  “Marry me.”

  She went utterly, perfectly still, her golden eyes staring up at him for an eternity of heartbeats, and Trace realized that finding his courage had brought him right back to being an ass.

  Fix it, you idiot. Say something!

  No, kiss her again.

  Oh, for chrissakes, just tell her you love her!

  He opened his mouth, but not quickly enough.

  “I’d rather not,” she whispered, her eyes still locked on his. “Because I was really looking forward to being your girlfriend,” she continued in a rush, her eyes taking on a sparkle. “So I can thumb my nose at all the jealous old fuddy-duddies. And I would also like to drive my brothers insane.” She pressed a hand to his jaw. “Can we just take this one step at a time, Trace? Just so we can be sure I don’t drive you insane?”

  “I’ve been crazy since I met you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said—though she was smiling as she said it. She twined her arms around his neck. “There’s an open condom under your pillow,” she whispered, her cheeks turning a lovely pink again.

  “No, I want to give you a baby.”

  She patted his shoulder, her beautiful eyes filling with amusement again. “One step at a time, okay? It’s not like we can stuff the kid back inside if we change our minds.” Her sparkle turned mischievous. “And I was quite looking forward to seeing how a condom works.”

  Was she serious?

  Deciding that she wasn’t going to vanish on him—at least, not until after she saw a condom in action—Trace tilted her head back and kissed her again. And just to prove that he could also multitask, he slipped the elastic off the end of her braid while continuing to feast on her mouth. He drew in the scent of roses mixed with his own soap, and discovered that the combination turned him on almost as much as the idea of her messing with all his stuff did.

  Apparently not having anything to do since he was already undressed, she started driving him crazy by running her delicate fingers through his damp hair. He was never going to threaten to cut hers again, he decided, remembering how it had cascaded over her shoulders and tickled his chest that day down in the safe room. But when she tried lowering her arms, presumably to go after more interesting parts of his anatomy, he also remembered how she’d taken control of their lovemaking.

  Which meant that he’d better get a handle on that particular problem before this turned into a repeat performance.

  “Huntsman, your door is locked!” Mac shouted just before he knocked hard enough to rattle the window. “Did Fiona come down here?”

  Trace cupped her head to him when she tried to pull away. “He’ll leave.”

  “Fiona! Huntsman! Come on, hurry up. Henry’s upstairs all alone.”

  She relaxed into him. “He probably just has a question about heating up dinner.”

  “Dammit, Huntsman, come open the door!”

  Trace set her away but held on to her shoulders. “You don’t move from this spot, you understand? Not one inch. Promise me.”

  She smiled, nodding.

  He started to let her go but stopped. “Don’t even finish unbraiding your hair, okay? Promise,” he growled, squeezing her shoulders when she frowned.

  “Okay,” she said, giving him a quizzical look.

  “For the love of Zeus, open this friggin’ door!”

  He headed for the hall.

  “Trace, your pants,” she said, gesturing at him.

  “Screw it,” he muttered, figuring that answering the door in his birthday suit would send the bastard scurrying back upstairs quickly enough.

  Trace yanked it open in mid-knock. “What?”

  Mac took a step back, then finally regained his composure enough to glare at him. “Could you not have the decency to grab a towel? I didn’t mean to get you out of the shower, but I thought Fiona was down here.” He looked around the dooryard, then back at Trace, and frowned. “I didn’t hear Kenzie drive in to pick her up. She was just upstairs a few minutes ago but left shortly after you got home, and I thought …” He shrugged, turning away. “I’ll call her cell phone, then.”

  “Don’t bother. She won’t be answering it the rest of the evening or all night.”

  It took the idiot several seconds to catch on, and both of his brows shot into his hairline as he glanced down the porch. “All of her belongings were in boxes out here when I got home this afternoon. May I ask where they are now?”

  “Unpacked in my bedroom and bathroom.”

  Another several seconds went by before the wizard slowly smiled, then suddenly reached out and patted Trace’s upper arm. “You do know that if Kenzie doesn’t kill you, de Gairn will make you wish you’d never been born.”

  “They’ll have to go through their sister to get to me.”

  “Then I guess congrat—” There was a sudden crash on the kitchen ceiling, and Mac’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “Sweet Neptune, I forgot about Henry!” he cried, bolting down the porch and disappearing around the front of the house.

  Trace softly closed the door and locked it—like the smart woman waiting in his bedroom had done earlier—and silently walked down the hall, wondering if he’d find her right where he’d left her. He stopped just short of the door and peeked around the corner, and saw her standing in the exact same spot, staring at the bed, her hair still half braided and her hands balled into fists at her sides.

  So, his new roommate was forming her plan of attack, was she?

  He silently sighed, knowing that a repeat performance could kill any chance of this working out. He reached around the corner and turned off the light, and heard her spin around with a gasp of surprise.

  “I’ve had some time to think about what really happened that day down in the safe room,” he said from the doorway. “And you know what I finally realized?”

  “N-no. What?”

  “I realized that I’d gotten upset with you for all the wrong reasons.” When she said nothing, he took a step toward her. “What I mistook as a submissive eagerness to please was really a rather aggressive attack.”

  She gasped again and took a step back. “I didn’t … I wasn’t attacking … You asked me to kiss you.”

  He stepped closer. “I also gave you the option to slap my face,” he reminded her. “But you didn’t quite dare, did you, uncertain if you could control my reaction, whereas kissing me kept you in the driver’s seat instead of making you a passenger being taken for a ride.”

  “I—I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a twenty-first-century analogy for being the person in control.”

  Having good night vision, he saw her go perfectly still, her hands balling into fists again. “Are you implying that I was trying to control you?” She snorted, gesturing in his direction. “I’m not so foolish as to think I could control a man nearly twice my size.”

  “No, you’re not foolish. In fact, you’re far smarter than any of those bastards a thousand years ago.” He closed the distance between them but still didn’t touch her. “I’m not one of them, Fiona,” he said quietly. “So I would appreciate it if you’d stop treating me as if I am.”

  She backed up against the bed. “But I’m not,” she cried softly, lifting her hand as if to hold him at bay. He saw her take a shuddering breath, and her head dropped. “This isn’t going to work, is it?” she whispered. She looked up, straining through the darkness, trying to read his expression. “You claim it doesn’t matter, but you can’t get past the fact that I’ve been with several men, can you?”

  “Do you trust me, Fiona?”

  “I thought I did.”

  He reached around and gently pulled her braid over
her shoulder, holding on to the curls at the end. “Okay, let’s go with your suggestion to take this one step at a time. Do you trust that I won’t ever physically hurt you?”

  “Yes.”

  He slowly started unraveling her hair. “And how about emotionally? Do you trust me enough to drop the defenses you’ve erected around yourself?”

  “But I already have.” She blindly reached out to clutch his arms. “Would I have moved in with you if I believed you would break my heart?”

  He released a quiet breath, sensing that they were slowly making progress. “No, that was definitely a gutsy move.” He brought her hands down to her sides, guided her away from the bed to the middle of the room, and let go. “Then I guess the next step would be to see if you trust me enough to give up control of our lovemaking.”

  “I thought that’s what I was doing,” she growled.

  He chuckled. “Sweetheart, you’re a bigger control freak than I am.”

  “I am not!”

  He laughed outright at that, waving toward the bed and then the closet, not caring if she could see him or not. “God forbid anything should ever be out of place in your neat little world.” He pulled her into his arms when he saw her stiffen, and cupped her head against his chest with a heavy sigh. “I’m betting it’s a habit you formed a thousand years ago,” he said gently, “right around the time you were abducted. When you lost control of your body, you took control of the only things you could, like cooking and cleaning and organizing everything around you.” He tightened his embrace when she violently shuddered. “And eventually, you learned how to gain control over the very men who were using you.”

  He lowered his lips to her ear. “You discovered that even though you didn’t have any choice about having sex with them, you could refuse to be a victim by controlling the act itself—all while making the bastards think they were in the driver’s seat.” He squeezed her gently. “That’s not lovemaking, Fiona, because nothing is being shared. So, I guess what I’m asking is, do you trust me enough to drop your emotional defenses, so I can show you how special it can be for two people who love each other?”

  Three pounding heartbeats went by, then a dozen, and then an eternity, before he felt hot tears on his chest, and that knife plunged back into his heart.

  “I love you more than life itself, Fiona,” he whispered thickly against her hair. “Please let me show you what that means.”

  “But I don’t know how,” she quietly sobbed, clinging to him in a death grip.

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing that I do,” he said with a chuckle, hugging her just as fiercely. “And I’m betting you catch on to lovemaking just as quickly as you learned to shoot a gun—which, now that I think about it, is really quite scary.”

  She wiped her eyes with a shuddering sigh, and he was pretty sure he felt her wipe her nose on his chest. And then he heard her take in a really deep breath as she straightened and stepped away.

  “So, can I get undressed now?” she asked, obviously determined to try.

  The only thing was, judging by her stance, the woman apparently thought lovemaking was going to kick just as much as a gun did!

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Fiona stood stiffly to keep from trembling, suddenly glad that the room was too dark for Trace to see her fear. She wasn’t exactly sure what to do, and she really didn’t like that she didn’t know what to expect—which is why she jerked when his fingers threaded into her curls and ran all the way to the ends before he let them fall over her shoulders.

  “Easy now,” he crooned, cupping her face and tilting her head up. “I know it goes against every instinct you have, but please try to relax. Try taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly,” he whispered, his mouth only inches from hers.

  Not knowing what else to do, she did as he suggested, but just as the last drop of air left her lungs, he touched her lips with his tongue, making her flinch again.

  “Say you love me,” he quietly commanded against her mouth.

  “I—I love you.”

  “Again.”

  “I love—”

  His tongue swept inside, curling around hers as if he could taste her words, his hands on her cheeks canting her head to deepen the kiss. But the moment she tried to kiss him back, he straightened away and started unbuttoning her blouse, her nipples pushing against his hands when she took another shuddering breath.

  Okay, she could handle this, knowing that some men liked to undress a woman, sometimes slowly, as if they were opening a surprise package. It had always made her uncomfortable, though, because it usually meant she was in for a long night. But she’d learned how to speed things up once the man got enough of her exposed, just by rubbing her naked breasts against his arms or chest or especially his face. And if that didn’t work, she could …

  Fiona suddenly stiffened.

  Trace stilled on the third button down. “Easy. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “You’re right,” she whispered in shock, straining to read his expression. “I always did everything in my power to control them.” She clutched his arms, digging her fingers into his muscles. “If they insisted on undressing me, I’d wait until they had … until I was naked, and then I … I’d do enticing things so they’d get it over with.”

  He pressed his hands to her face and brushed a thumb across her cheek, and she realized she was crying.

  “And that’s how you refused to be a victim,” he said, “making you smarter than all of them put together.” She heard Trace pull in a shaky breath of his own. “I swear I’m not wanting you to relive it, Fiona. But even though I can’t ever know how being with a man makes you feel, I can empathize with your being afraid of losing control, because I’ve been there myself.” He pulled her to him again, gently holding her head against his beating heart. “What if we both just get naked and crawl into bed together, and spend tonight sleeping with our arms wrapped around each other?” He tilted her chin up. “How would that be for taking this one step at a time?”

  She pulled her chin free so she could rest against his strongly beating heart again. “I’m not afraid, Trace, I’m just sort of … angry for some reason. How about if we just do it any way we can this first time, so I can get past those memories by making new ones with you?” She leaned back to smile up at him, not knowing if he could see her. “It’s been a thousand years,” she softly growled. “So I don’t give a friggin’ damn if we have to wrestle each other for control, as long as it just finally happens.”

  His laughter caught her off-guard as much as his arm coming under her knees did, as he swept her off her feet. “Christ, I love it when you talk dirty.” He tossed her down onto the bed and quickly followed. “Please tell me you intend to fight dirty, too.”

  Her heart racing with the joy of being set free, Fiona took full advantage of the fact that she was fully dressed and he was fully naked, and wrapped both of her hands around his manhood just as he started after the buttons on her blouse again.

  He reared up with a strangled shout of surprise and nearly fell off the bed, barely catching himself at the last moment. “Not fair! You’re supposed to wait until you’re naked, too.”

  She sent her mouth after her hands. “Everything is fair in love and war.”

  He grabbed her shoulders as he dodged her advance, flipping her onto her back and pinning her under him with the weight of his body, and then suddenly popped off the remaining buttons on her blouse with a sinister chuckle. He lifted her just enough to slide her blouse down over her shoulders, effectively trapping her arms against her sides. “So I guess that means using my superior strength is fair, too. What the … you’re not wearing a bra!”

  “I don’t like them. Why in hell do women in this age stuff their bosoms into such confounding undergarments, making it impossible to breathe?”

  “Damn, you do fight dirty,” he muttered as he dropped his head to her left breast. He licked her nipple—once, twice, around in a maddening circle—and then close
d his mouth and gently suckled.

  She bucked at the wonderful sensation and started struggling to free her arms. But she went perfectly still when his lips made a fiery trail across her chest and he gave her other nipple a maddeningly slow, wet lick. She shuddered, moaning her pleasure when he blew on it, her fingers digging into the blanket as she lifted her hips into his groin. His manhood poked her intimately through her slacks, and she gave another keening moan when he slowly slid its length over her pelvis.

  “I … my clothes … they’re making me quite … hot,” she said raggedly, hoping he could hear her over the soft slurping noises his mouth was making on her breasts.

  “Hmmm? Did you say something, sweetheart?” he murmured, his lips burning another fiery trail over her skin to her neck. He used his head to nudge her chin out of the way, pulling another moan from her when his mouth found her racing pulse.

  Having moved from unfair into the realm of sweet torture, Fiona decided that if he thought he was having his wicked way with her using brute strength alone, he was about to learn she really was stronger than she appeared.

  And as he’d very kindly pointed out, also quite smart. She gave another moan—really loud so he could hear it—and lightly nipped his ear.

  He reared up in surprise. “Did you just bite—”

  She used his momentum to buck him off, and was out from under him and had her arms free before he landed on the floor.

  “Goddamn it! There’s no need to get physical!”

  She silently slipped off the opposite side of the bed and then ducked under it—glad she’d sent the dust bunnies scurrying days ago—squirming out of her pants and panties as she quietly rolled to the other side.

  “Where in hell did you go?” he growled as the creaky old bed dipped above her. “Fiona! Dammit,” he muttered just as the bed shuddered violently when he flopped down onto it. “I am such a friggin’ ass.”

  She silently rolled out and stood up. “Would that be a horse’s ass or a skunk’s?” she asked, throwing herself on top of him.