Storm's Heart er-2

by Thea Harrison

  So she chose to be grateful and stuck to a simple reply. “That’s great, thanks.”

  Naida looked back to smile at her. “Everyone has been clamoring for your attention today. I cannot imagine how tired you are.”

  “I’m pretty tired,” Niniane admitted.

  They walked down a second-floor hall. The hardwood floor was carpeted with a woolen wine-colored hallway runner and furnished with heavy dark antique tables and cabinets. Urien apparently had liked the English manor look to go with the Georgian-style architecture. Toward the end of the hall Naida opened a door then stood back to let Tiago enter first. He did so, turned and indicated that Niniane could step inside. She walked into a large bedroom that was a blur of green and cream. A delicate floral pattern flecked with pink decorated the bedspread and pillow shams.

  She turned to Naida, who was studying Tiago with an inscrutable expression. Naida said to Tiago, “Your bag has been put in the room next door.”

  Tiago nodded, and remained silent. He stood relaxed, his hands on his hips, clearly not intending to go anywhere. His massive black-clad physique and visible weaponry were a barbaric contrast to the room’s light feminine decor.

  Naida’s sleek eyebrows rose a delicate fraction of an inch. She said to Niniane, “If no one has yet shown you, all the rooms are connected with an intercom system. You can request anything you want or need by contacting household staff through the unit on the bedside table. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  Niniane said, “No, thank you.”

  “I’ll say goodnight then. Rest well.” The Dark Fae woman stepped out, closing the door behind her.

  Tiago said, “I think she likes me.”

  She burst out laughing and clapped her hands over her mouth.

  He gave her that sexy, subtle not-quite smile of his. “Don’t you? I’m pretty sure she’s crushing on me right now.”

  Shh, remember how sensitive Dark Fae hearing is. She can still hear you! she said telepathically as she tried to stifle her giggles.

  “I’m not at all concerned about that,” Tiago said.

  Her body couldn’t stay upright any longer. She kicked off her shoes, staggered forward and pitched onto the bed facefirst. She was so exhausted her muscles ached all over and she trembled on the edge of something, she didn’t know what, as all the reactions that she had suppressed from the day threatened to come crashing down on her head at once.

  She fisted her hands into the bedspread. She’d had that flash of conviction in Urien’s study that Rune had been right, she and Tiago were making a monumental mistake, and it had been so strong and felt so real, it had frightened her so that she had stuffed it down and refused to look at it for the rest of the day. Now that the outside stresses had eased up, the memory of that conviction came roaring back.

  She heard Tiago moving about the bedroom. He opened and closed the closet and bathroom doors. Then the bed dipped as he knelt beside her. His large hands ghosted over her. He found the back zipper in her dress and unzipped it. Cool air kissed her skin.

  “I know I’m a high-maintenance girlfriend,” she said into the bedspread.

  “Fuck, yeah,” he agreed. “The highest. You need a whole staff of full-time employees.” He paused. “I just realized I’m not kidding.”

  “I panicked earlier in the study.” He nudged her. She rolled to one side and he eased her arm out of the dress. Then she rolled to the other side, and he eased out that arm too.

  “I got that.” He tapped her at the base of her spine. “Lift up your hips.”

  She lifted and he pulled the dress down so that it slid off her legs. At least he didn’t rip this one to shreds. Maybe he only ripped up dresses that had sequins on them. They knew so little about each other, but that still hadn’t stopped them from plunging together. In retrospect the impetuousness of their actions made her shake. “I panicked about us,” she said.

  Silence. He laid a hand on her back. It felt huge, warm and heavy. “Why?”

  She lifted her shoulder.

  “That is not an adequate response, faerie,” he growled. His Power lay in the room, a heavy brooding presence. “I require a series of words strung together that make coherent sentences.”

  “I looked at you and something happened in my head,” she said. “All I could see was everything that you had left behind just to follow me throughout my day. I couldn’t see how you could thrive doing that, and then what Rune said came back to me. Tiago, are you sure about this?”

  He was silent a moment. Then he said, “Stay put.”

  “Okay.” She snuffled into the bedspread as he walked away.

  Tiago strode into the bathroom and inspected it. It was a large, luxurious bathroom, color-coordinated to complement the bedroom and dotted with the silver gleam of polished fixtures. He noted with approval that there were a lot of expensivelooking bottles of froufrou set out on the counter surfaces. She would like that. He uncapped one bottle on the tub and sniffed the contents. It smelled pink. He started a hot bath running and squirted some of the pink-smelling stuff under the gush of water. It foamed into bubbles. He swished his hand through the bubbles and water. The temperature felt fine to him, but his hand was so calloused he would have to be careful with her delicate skin.

  He walked back into the bedroom and regarded his doubtful faerie’s nearly nude backside as he stripped. That sweet little curvy body of hers embodied the definition of sexy with those two cute toothpick-sized knives strapped in sheaths to her slender thighs. The realization that those knives were poisoned and she knew how to use them made him hotter than hell. How could he ever think that big strapping women were his type? He promised himself a treat one day. He would watch her ride him while she wore those thigh sheaths and nothing else. He cocked his head. No wait. Maybe that pearl necklace too.

  When he was nude, he unbuckled her thigh sheaths, unsnapped the back fastening of her bra and slipped her panties off. Then he scooped her up, took her into the bathroom and tipped her over the water. “Check that,” he said.

  She wiggled her fingers in the frothy mounds of froufrousmelling stuff, dipped them into the water underneath and sighed. “It’s perfect.”

  He deposited her in the tub and climbed in behind her so that she sat sandwiched between his legs. He leaned back in the tub with a grunt and pulled her to him. She moaned and collapsed against his chest. His engorged cock had been on urgent duty call from the moment he had slipped off her dress, and he had to shift a bit to find a comfortable spot. Then he wrapped his arms around her warm, wet naked body and contemplated the concept of perfection.

  “We have agreed that you panicked in the study,” he said.

  Her head moved in a small nod.

  “Do we also agree that you panicked over several things and not just about me?”

  Another nod.

  “Shall we consider the possibility that this was stress induced?”

  “Yes,” she muttered. “But Tiago—”

  “No ‘buts,’” he ordered. “And don’t wriggle.” She huffed but subsided, and he bit back a smile. It was a rare moment when she didn’t have a comeback of some sort. She truly must be exhausted. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Perhaps we should then conclude that what you panicked over may not necessarily be of any real concern.”

  “Tiago—”

  “I’m hearing a ‘but’ attached to that,” he said in warning. “It is implied, but it is still there.” She growled in frustration even as she wrapped her arms around his to hug him back. “You must trust me to look out for myself. I had fun today.”

  “You had fun?” She tilted back her head to look at him in surprise.

  He swooped in fast to kiss her pillowy mouth. “I did. Furthermore, I learned a lot. I learned things about you, and I learned things about the people around you. You might recall, I also figured out exactly what I need to be doing and how.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that.”

  He pulled her up higher so that
she was lying on him, their legs entwined.

  “You keep picking me up and carting me around,” she muttered. “You know, when I’m not injured or drunk on my ass, I do have two perfectly functional feet.”

  “You are just so magnificently portable,” he told her. She snorted out a laugh, her body relaxing against his, her head tucked under his chin. “I like carting you around.” He loved how she felt in his arms. He asked, “So what is the moral of this story?”

  She yawned. “Stop panicking?”

  “Well, that too.” He rubbed her back. “The moral of the story is you must learn to trust me. Don’t try to do your job and worry about me too. It’s too much and, more important, it’s not necessary. You have an immense undertaking ahead of you. I need to be able to trust you too, that you’re taking your best to your job. We both need you to succeed.”

  She kissed his neck. “We both need you to succeed too.”

  “I think that works out well,” Tiago said. “Don’t you?”

  “Yes. Okay.” The bubble bath was warm and lustrous, and Tiago’s body made the most comforting bed imaginable. She slit her eyes open. His dark muscled chest looked intensely masculine against the mounds of bubbles that surrounded them. She looked at the massive bulge of his bicep as she traced the barbed wire tattoo with a finger. “What did you learn?”

  “About you?” His deep, lazy voice reverberated in her ear.

  “No, silly, about other people.”

  He shifted and kissed her forehead. He said telepathically, From his scent and mannerisms, the bug is most likely an addict of some sort. Unless he can convince me he’s ill and on some kind of medication that produces a chemical tinge to his scent, he has got to go. The guard captain has got to go too. My guess is he has a problem with females in authority, but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t like how he responds to you. I like most of the house staff. I don’t have an opinion one way or another about the grounds staff as long as they follow security protocol, and I don’t trust Naida as far as I could throw her.

  You could actually manage to toss her quite a distance, she murmured.

  He conceded the point. Okay, I trust her much less than as far as I could throw her. You get my point. I haven’t made up my mind about Aubrey. Sorry, but I haven’t. I think Arethusa is genuinely investigating the attacks, and she doesn’t seem to trust anybody else. That makes me cautious. And I think Kellen is likely to be trouble, politically if in no other way. And there’s one last thing.

  What is it? Her mental voice was flat, tired.

  He could imagine how difficult hearing all this was for her. These were her people, and some of them were people she remembered from a happy childhood. Her instincts must be warring inside as she wondered who she should trust. His arms tightened. He said in as gentle a voice as he could manage, Perhaps the attacks on you were engineered by someone other than the Dark Fae. But taking everything into consideration, including the timeline of events, I think it is most likely that the person behind the attacks is under this roof.

  She was silent as she considered his words. What is your reasoning?

  She didn’t just accept what he said, or react. Good girl.

  I don’t have evidence, he said. And I could be wrong. But consider: who would have had the time to develop an alliance with Geril and entice him to commit a really bad fucking crime? Geril didn’t just attempt murder. He attempted a political assassination. There had to be a damn-strong motive there, and I’m not sure that money alone would have done it.

  She stirred. What do you mean?

  He explained about the conversation he and Rune had had with Arethusa in the morgue, and the payout Geril had received from the bogus Illinois company that was supposedly owned by Cuelebre Enterprises. Remember, I’m just making suppositions , he said. But given how Urien controlled traffic to and from Adriyel, it seems less likely that an outside agent from another demesne could have had the time to persuade Geril to act. And why would another demesne do that?

  They wouldn’t, she whispered. They would have no reason to.

  Exactly, he said. There’s no motive. Look at it as a risk/ benefit analysis. You’re already known to all the demesnes, and every last one of them is hoping to develop a good relationship with you. They may not like your connection to Dragos, but at worst they would watch and wait to see what kind of monarch you would make. Assassination could come at a later point if they feel you present an active danger to them. To try to assassinate you now wouldn’t benefit any of them strongly enough to offset the risk of inciting war with the Dark Fae or of incurring Dragos’s wrath.

  She was still, huddled against him, and silent.

  Again, I have no proof, he said gently. But what makes the most sense from what we know is that our perp was someone who crossed over from Adriyel to Chicago with Geril. Maybe it’s someone with an allegiance to Uriel’s old cronies; I am very interested in pursuing that line of investigation when we reach Adriyel. Our perp would have had time to work on him by promising a big enough reward. At the same time Geril would have perceived our perp as a big enough threat, so that killing you became more important than leaving you alive and trying to curry favor with you.

  She shook off suds from her fingers to rub at her forehead, which had begun to ache. Geril was a weathervane on risk and benefit, she said thoughtfully. It seems the benefit of a romantic attachment with me would have outweighed the risk from his coconspirator.

  He might even have entertained giving up his partner, Tiago said. Until it became clear you had no interest in him. At that point his original agreement with his partner became more imperative. And his partner had to be in Chicago, not back in Adriyel, because they had the means and opportunity to act quickly to set up the second attack. That’s the best fitting profile we have right now. Everything points to it being someone in the Dark Fae delegation—or at least in their party.

  She had already known there was a strong likelihood that whoever had tried to have her killed was Dark Fae, but somehow it was so much worse to hear it all laid out in Tiago’s cool, relentless logic.

  She said aloud, “You sure know how to ruin a totally excellent bubble bath.”

  When the bathwater cooled, he picked her up and stepped out of the tub. Since he enjoyed carting her around so much, she decided to let him. He set her on her feet and handed her a towel. She scrubbed herself dry, her eyelids half shut. Then he swung her up into his arms again. She was asleep before he stepped out of the bathroom.

  The next thing she knew she was warm all over, and her neck, cheek and ear were burning hot.

  Irritable, she rubbed her neck and tried to burrow under her hard pillow, but she couldn’t figure out how to get underneath it. Her pillow moved up and down, and her eyes opened. She was lying on Tiago who lay sprawled on his back, his head turned to one side. All of the feather pillows had ended up on the floor. She lifted her head to peer down the bed. All of the blankets had ended up on the floor too. They were both nude, and the sheet was their only covering. The window curtains had not been completely closed, and a brilliant yellow band of morning sunlight slashed across the bed. The heat from the strip of sunlight was what had awakened her.

  She tilted her head as she studied Tiago. She had never seen him asleep before. This was only the second time she had shared a bed with him. Apparently he did not understand the concept of bed sharing that well. He owned every inch of the bed and made the queen-sized mattress seem as small as a twin.

  He radiated heat. She could feel it when she held her hand an inch away from his sun-burnished skin. His face was turned away from the morning sun. The arc from his head down the long column of his neck to the heavy flare of his collarbones was strong and graceful. He had a large scar that sliced across the right side of his torso. It started at the base of his right ribs and slashed all the way to his back. His broad shoulders and deep chest, with those defined intercostal muscles that rippled down his rib cage, indicated the kind of leviathan strength that co
uld catapult his huge Wyr form through the air fast enough to bring down a helicopter gunship.

  She touched the scar. One of the persistent legends about Tiago that circulated the Tower was from a time in the late 1960s when he had troops pinned down by enemy gunfire from a gunship. His fighters were dying, so he changed into his Wyr form and slammed sidelong into the helicopter. He drove the helicopter toward the side of a cliff, and managed to pull up just before it exploded against the cliff face. He had sustained serious injuries, as one of the helicopter blades had sliced into him, and he had been forced to take a six-month hiatus. Remembering how he had leaped forward to stop her SUV dead in its skid, she could believe the story.

  As she studied him, the extent of his handsomeness was revealed, with those proud high cheekbones, dark slashing eyebrows, lean cheeks, a bold forehead, nose and chin and that mobile expressive mouth. When he was awake, intelligence and aggression carved him into a natural biological weapon. He was such a battering ram of a male, his personality was the kind of force that could roll over a country and bring down a government. No wonder the Dark Fae reacted so strongly to the possibility of him moving into their lands and home.

  He’d had fun yesterday. Fun. She thought of him sprawled in the armchair in the downstairs study, calmly demolishing pastry after pastry while Aubrey looked at him in shock. Or what about that god-awful dinner? A variety of people looked daggers at him and tried several times to deliver a direct verbal cut, while he plowed through alarming amounts of beautifully prepared food with evident enjoyment for the cuisine and a monumental indifference for anybody else’s opinion. It wasn’t that he didn’t get that people had been trying to insult him. He just didn’t care.

  She pinched her nose hard and bit her lip to keep from laughing and waking him up. He needed so much less sleep than she did, and to the best of her knowledge he had not had a chance to rest since he had arrived in Chicago. She wanted to enjoy this rare treat of watching him while he slept.