Inked Destiny imw-2

by Jory Strong

  Etaín whimpered in protest at the loss of his attention but didn’t wake. He left her alone only long enough to dress and retrieve the comforter from Cathal’s bed. A kiss followed his covering her with it, the light touch of lips to lips because he couldn’t bear to part from her without it.

  Straightening, Eamon gathered a strand of her hair, the gold of it like captured sunshine twined around his fingers. Using words of magic, he summoned Liam, calling him through the shadows, this type of binding dangerous to his third because it could be used to trap him.

  “Sire,” Liam said.

  “The city wards reacted to something passing through them. I need to pinpoint the place of the breach and see what can be learned there.”

  Liam glanced at the sleeping Etaín. “Given the presence of the other changeling at Aesirs, I assume you want her taken to the estate.”

  “She’ll remain here.”

  “It’s not a choice you would have made in the past.”

  Eamon heard increased concern beneath the none-too-subtle questioning of his decision, that he was being unduly influenced by his seidic intended, perhaps even altered by her uncontrolled magic. “You will better understand the desire to avoid unnecessary conflict when you meet your match.”

  “An unlikely event, Lord. Made more so by what I’ve witnessed of your courtship.”

  “Your time will come. For now I’ll leave you to guard Etaín. In all likelihood, the ward was tripped by the arrival of a tourist possessing some small, native amount of magic, or by an artifact.”

  “And if you’re wrong about what passed through the wards?”

  “Do you question your ability to prevail should a would-be assassin or kidnapper come for Etaín?”

  “Hardly. You’ll take both Myk and Heath with you?”

  “No. I’ll leave Myk outside with orders that no one except Cathal is permitted entry.”

  *

  Cathal shifted restlessly in his chair. He’d handled the most urgent items of business and prepared for the meetings he couldn’t put off tomorrow morning.

  Doing anything more required a level of concentration he couldn’t find. And that lack of focus left room for scenes from the couch and the hot tub to flicker across his mental screen, heating his skin and sending molten blood to his cock.

  Were they done with the lessons yet?

  He grimaced, hearing in that question a kid’s voice asking “Are we there yet?”

  But it was no child’s fantasy that came with a possible “yes.” Thoughts of what Etaín and Eamon might be doing at the moment bombarded him. Images of them in his bed, their bodies joined.

  A shaft of fire streaked through him, pooling in his balls. He clenched his fists to keep from reaching down and freeing himself, from jerking off. Jesus.

  He’d rolled his sleeves up while he worked. Now he looked down at the tattoos she’d placed on his forearms. Honeysuckle and thorn she called them, an apt description encompassing sweet pleasure and sharp-tipped jealousy. The latter had abated, but in its stead had come the ambush bleeding away of confidence, the worry it would one day matter that he was only human.

  He wanted to go back home. He refused to.

  It stung his pride to admit that Saoirse, the club that had been his dream and sole focus for so long, couldn’t hold his interest against the craving to be with Etaín.

  It’ll fade into something manageable, he told himself. Not for the first time. It’s just the newness of the bond and a natural reaction to nearly losing her.

  Christ. He’d nearly died himself at the shelter. If not for Eamon…

  Only it wasn’t Eamon’s acts at the shelter playing out vividly in his mind. It was Eamon thrusting into Etaín’s body, her back arched and breasts flushed. It was her midnight-colored eyes drawing him to her, making it impossible to care she was wet for another man, wet because of another man as he shoved into her seconds after Eamon had spent himself following the erotic display of magic.

  The clench of Cathal’s buttocks drew him out of the memory, a curse escaping when he saw his hand in his lap, circling his cloth-covered erection. “Fuck.” Then fuck again, this one silent as remembering the sensation of being inside her sent a pulse of sheer need through him, forcing his hand up and down on his length.

  He broke the hold of lust when pre-cum escaped, more of it leaking at remembering the way she’d made him come like someone getting his first hand job. “Jesus.”

  To distract himself, he checked in with his father.

  “You at home?” his father asked.

  “I’m at the club.”

  “I don’t like it. Whoever nearly killed you is still out there, unidentified and on the loose.” Meaning none of his father’s sources had come through with a likely suspect in the drive-by.

  “Wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person. Had to be connected to what happened in Oakland.”

  “Probably. I’d feel better if you let me arrange for a couple of bodyguards.”

  “No.” The last thing he wanted was to give the authorities additional reasons to believe he was involved in his father’s business.

  Etaín’s brother and father had already convicted him. Having mafia soldiers as bodyguards would be a piece of incontrovertible evidence to them.

  For Etaín’s sake he didn’t want to do anything to make the situation worse than it already was. She might be willing to sever her relationship with the captain and Parker over him, but he didn’t want to carry that load of guilt, not when he knew how much the estrangement hurt her.

  You think like a human.

  That’s because I am one. Will always be one, he argued in his head with Eamon.

  Distance where there are strong emotional ties is hard to sustain when life is measured in centuries, not decades.

  He didn’t want to contemplate the kind of lifespan ahead of him, ahead of them, or the choices that would come with it.

  “I better get back to club business,” he told his father, and pocketed the phone, the restlessness returning, the heat that came with carnal images of Etaín.

  “Ten minutes,” he said out loud as a way of firming his resolve. Pathetic an internal voice chided, but he couldn’t make himself care.

  He rose and moved to stand in front of the screens monitoring what was going on inside Saoirse as well as at the entrance and exit. The place was packed with no shortage of attractive, available women.

  It wasn’t arrogance to know he could have his pick of them. Until Etaín, he’d never had to work at gaining female companionship, never struggled with jealousy or possessiveness. The one and only time she’d come to Saoirse, he’d hustled her to the office and taken her on the desk, then needed to stay close afterward, alarm bells going off in his head at the uncharacteristic behavior, but he’d ignored them.

  No regrets. Though he grimaced at the effort it took not to check the time to see how many moments remained in the self-imposed wait. He was hard and horny, his club full of gorgeous, available women, but they held zero temptation for him against the hot flame of desire he felt for Etaín.

  A flash of red caught his attention, causing him to focus on one particular woman. Her black hair tumbled down her back in a mass of thick curls. Elf? None of the views captured her face, but on every screen the ring she wore on her thumb glowed in an unnatural way, a deep red captured by cameras that had never enhanced a piece of jewelry.

  He studied those patrons standing near her, but there was no evidence any of them saw what he saw. Magic? He rubbed his forearms, palms gliding over the tattoos, curiosity compelling him to investigate.

  *

  Shock rippled through Cage at seeing Cathal Dunne step from what he assumed was an office. There was no mistaking the ink on Cathal’s arms as anything other than a binding of a human to an Elven seidic.

  What game played out here? What part belonged to Lord Eamon?

  Since arriving at Saoirse he’d seen no Elves nor felt a hint of their magic, and given the
wealth of shadow, he couldn’t imagine the lord’s assassin wouldn’t have used the opportunity to make his presence known.

  The only whisper of magic at all had come from the dark-haired beauty who’d entered a short time earlier, though what magic she bore emanated from the ring she wore. An artifact he didn’t immediately recognize, though he’d already made the decision to examine it more closely and at his leisure while her naked body lay beneath his.

  He glanced in her direction, frowning when he didn’t see her. Cathal too was on the move, but so much in demand by the patrons of his club, that every few steps he was halted. Cage settled against the bar, following Cathal’s progress.

  The music segued into a slow, sultry song. Verses ripe with heated imagery that drew couples to the dance floor, their mouths seeking and finding as bodies melded in grinding, steamy embrace.

  He was not unaffected by the flood of human pheromones or the evocative music. Nor, apparently, was Cathal.

  Cathal headed toward the club entrance, firm strides signaling an intention to leave, or to at least step out into the cold, ocean-wet air.

  Cage abandoned his place at the bar, timing his pace to intercept the seidic’s mate just as he reached the door. In close proximity, heat radiated from the human, magic flaring along the marks on his arm, both familiar and strange.

  “Am I correct in thinking you’re Cathal Dunne?” he asked, stepping out into the night behind his quarry.

  “Yes.” A smooth, courteous answer as befitting a club owner.

  “I am Cristo Cajeilas. Cage.” He offered his hand, both curious and wary as to what the brush of magic against magic would produce, his interest in the seidic deepening at the seemingly sentient stroke and taste, as if in the distance she took his measure, though the human showed no reaction.

  “You are much talked about, as is your mate, Etaín.”

  Suspicion hardened Cathal’s expression. Cage shrugged it off, making a show of glancing downward at Cathal’s exposed forearms. “I am a collector of the arcane. I recognize what’s been written in ink. Are you curious to learn more?”

  Lips firmed and body tensed in response, but Cage had sought treasure for the entirety of his existence and easily recognized the flare and gleam of temptation in another’s eyes. A glance toward the club, the barest hesitation marked with a flicker of concern, preceded Cathal’s saying, “I’ll listen to what you have to say on the way to my car.”

  *

  In the alley, the burner phone vibrated, flooding Lucky with adrenaline. This is it. Time to show Jacko he was a man of his word, a man who got the job done without trouble.

  He angled to the left, wanting to take this rich bastard out quick. He thought he could make out the sound of approaching footsteps but couldn’t be sure. The city was too loud, the club casting off the muted sounds of the band inside it.

  He stroked the trigger. Jacked, wanting to pull it.

  Come on. Come on.

  *

  Cage’s strides easily matched Cathal’s. This was not quite the chat he’d envisioned, but he found he enjoyed the intrigue, the added challenge, and in truth, he was hampered by ignorance when it came to how much Cathal knew of the supernatural.

  The ink suggested intimate familiarity with it, but the lack of any type of protection served as a sharp contradiction and a warning against making assumptions. It left him to pick through possible openings until finally choosing to say, “Are you familiar with Aesirs?”

  Cathal’s pace slowed though not dramatically. “Yes.”

  “And the man who calls it his?”

  “Eamon.”

  Not Lord Eamon. Interesting.

  The blade sheathed at his back drew Cage’s attention with a hungry wave of anticipation before he could tease out an interpretation.

  Kestrel’s focus was on an alleyway ahead, and so that became Cage’s as well.

  Ah, there it was, the rabbit beat of a prey’s heart, the smell of adrenaline and drugs. A human with dark intentions, a killer whose death would be enough to satisfy Kestrel—for now.

  He could easily halt Cathal with a low indication of trouble ahead but allowing the attack was far more advantageous. A step closer and Cage raised his natural shield, expanding it to include Cathal, the ability an evolutionary adaptation arrived at over millennia.

  A murmured spell gained in a bargain with Lord Eamon hid them from cameras. The disappearance from view could, in itself, be dangerously revealing in this technology-addicted world. But it was a necessary risk as he drew Kestrel and sent the blade flying in the instant darkness became the form of a man with a gun.

  Seventeen

  Fuck! Shock surged through Cathal along with adrenaline, his reality twisting and altering further as the ink along his forearms flared in connection to a seamless, eye-blink-fast sequence of events.

  A punk with a gun held sideways gangster-style becoming visible, aiming unmistakably at him.

  The flight of a knife on a whispered cry that sounded like the call of a hawk.

  The unerring slide of that blade through cloth and skin, flaring blue as it pierced an assassin’s heart, that bright color fading to black in a graduated slide.

  “We are safe from the prying eye of camera lens,” Cage said, startling Cathal, suspicion slamming into him, though it didn’t stop him from getting a closer look at the body.

  Gangbanger. Hired gun. Hispanic. And it was no stretch to believe this attempt was payback for what his father and uncle had done to the boys who had drugged and raped Brianna and Caitlyn.

  Justice. Revenge. Sometimes the two were so close as to be nearly inseparable, nothing more than shades of intention.

  Having seen Etaín’s drawings of what his cousin and her friend had endured…He didn’t know whether it was hope or dread that had him asking, “Is he human?”

  “Ah, so you know the possibility exists that he might not be.”

  Cage knelt next to the corpse, his eyes flaring red as he pulled the blade from the body.

  Primal fear urged Cathal to bolt. He stood firm.

  White teeth flashed in a darkness made less so by distant street lamps and a bright moon. “Yes, this killer is human. He is no loss to your race. The same could not be said of you. I’ve answered your question. In exchange, I’ll ask. Do you know what Eamon is?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Etaín?”

  “Yes.”

  “Name it.”

  “Changeling.”

  There was a fleeting expression of surprise on Cage’s face. “And seidic.”

  “Yes.”

  “She recognizes Eamon as her lord?”

  Despite the détente of earlier, Cathal felt a twisting in his gut, a tightening at the prospect of being a human living among the supernatural. “Neither of us do.”

  “You don’t call him Lord, yet. It surprises me that he hasn’t claimed her for his own.”

  Cathal glanced away, images filling his mind, of Eamon between Etaín’s thighs. The sound of her cries of pleasure accompanying the replay of reality, reminding him of why he’d left the club, so he could join them, jealousy submerged under new-found ecstasy.

  Cage read him. Or guessed. “So they’re lovers already.”

  Cathal forced himself to answer. This was the truth of his life unless something changed. “Yes. They’re lovers.”

  Cage understood then the lack of Elven wards or presence, a large piece of the puzzle sliding into place. Among the supernatural, be it territory or jewels or in this case, a mate, you possessed only what you could hold against challengers or thieves or any manner of other predator, though death was not generally a consequence of failure when it came to the long-lived.

  He would not have thought Eamon ruthless enough to play such a game with this bound mortal, but to gain full control of a seidic, a truly powerful one…

  Cage felt no compunction in pointing out the obvious, in using it to his advantage. Indicating the body he said, “Eamon has apparently chos
en not to protect you by assigning a guard. It suggests to me that blame wouldn’t have fallen on him if this human had been successful in taking your life. It’s an easy way to get rid of a rival, wouldn’t you agree? An easy way to free his lover of one choice in order to make a more advantageous one should he wish to share her at all.”

  Suspicion returned with a hot burn, though not directed at Eamon. “Yes,” Cathal said, crouching next to Cage and wondering again if this was a setup to gain his confidence. Familiar paranoia gripped him, a side effect of being a mafia don’s son and one only heightened by the presence of a corpse.

  “The seidic could be yours alone, unless it’s you who prefers an arrangement that includes another man. I have books in my possession, knowledge to ensure she survives the change. It would require a move to Seattle. I can keep you both safe there from Lord Eamon as well as other Elven threats.”

  Cathal rolled his phone in his hand, for the first time becoming aware of having pulled it from his pocket. He’d instinctively meant to call 911 but hesitated because he was in the presence of the supernatural, because it was easy to anticipate Eamon’s reaction. It was easier still to envision Eamon attributing the reason for the attack to the Dunnes and using it as an excuse to remove Etaín from harm’s reach, his power one Cathal couldn’t hope to either challenge or defeat.

  Noting the phone, Cage said, “The spell I cast hides us from cameras only, not from prying eyes. If you intend to call your human authorities, I’ll be on my way and leave you to explain what happened here. Or say the word and I will ensure the corpse is not discovered. In exchange, I ask only that you consider what I’ve said and arrange for an introduction to Etaín.”

  “No demand for secrecy?”

  Cage shrugged. “What do you think will occur if Eamon knows of either my interest in your mate or my offer to help you escape his control?”

  Incarceration.

  Cathal pocketed his phone in answer, going through the dead killer’s clothing and finding a cellphone, but nothing else of interest. He removed it, asking, “How would I get in touch with you?”