He squeezed Jilly’s arm. “I promise you’ll meet him, Squeak, but right now we’ve got things to talk about. Things they need to hear alone.” He jerked his thumb toward the kitchen. “Now, go find Orla and tell her to be ready for my call. I’ll ask her to come get Brenna and bring her to you when we’re done.”
Jillian shrugged in half-hearted surrender and glanced at Brenna. “Come find me when you’re done and we’ll go to the cove.”
Brenna’s tiny smile crept back in place.
“She’ll make you do that,” Eryx said, drawing Brenna’s attention.
“Do what?”
“Smile.”
Brenna flushed and ducked her chin. On the bright side, whether she realized it or not, she was alone with a relative unknown man and hadn’t yet run for the hills. With the briefest touch on her arm he steered her toward the stairs. “Come on. Let’s go see Lexi and her friend.”
“Why did you call her that?” Brenna followed behind him, lifting her gown to clear the steps.
“Call her—oh, Squeak.” He chuckled and motioned down the hallway when they reached the landing. “Ramsay gave her the nickname. When she was little, he’d throw her in the air and she’d let out a funny squeak. The name stuck.”
A wistful look of longing washed across Brenna’s face, too much understanding of everything she’d missed for someone her age. Damn it if he didn’t hate the choice he was about to lay at her feet. He opened the door to Ian’s room with his mind.
“Brenna.” Lexi bounded from the far side of Ian’s bed and wrapped Brenna in a quick hug. “You look fantastic. That color’s great on you. And I’m so glad those braids are gone. How do you feel?”
“Probably better if you’d let her get all the way in the door.” Ian lay propped on the bed on top of the covers, more like a guy kicked back on a couch than an invalid. He’d dressed since Eryx left this morning, the same button-down and jeans combo Ian had worn the first night they’d met, though this shirt was tan instead of blue.
“I see someone made a clothes run while I was gone.” Eryx shut the door behind him. “Button-downs aren’t in high demand here.”
Lexi tugged Brenna beside her on the bed. “Ramsay sent one of his men. None of your stuff fit and I don’t think I could get Ian to wear leather at gun point.”
“That’s for damned sure.” Ian shifted on the bed and winced. “Who’s your friend?”
“Oh.” Lexi leaned back enough so as not to block Ian from Brenna’s line of sight. “Ian, this is Brenna, the woman who saved me. Brenna, meet Ian. Usually he’s a pain in my ass, but still my best friend.”
Brenna dipped her head and laughed. A tiny laugh, but happy all the same. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Ian rolled his shoulders up and back as though trying to give his ribs more room move. Not surprising since five of them had been broken. “You gonna tell us what’s got your back so straight, Eryx? Or would you rather stick to uncomfortable small talk first?” The man was amazingly shrewd, though as a retired cop he probably caught more than the average Joe.
Eryx winked at Lexi and mentally slid the gold wingback nestled in the corner closer to the bed. “Can’t have uncomfortable small talk. We’ve got too many big topics to work through.”
“More than unknown races, superpowers, and rebellions out to start a war?” Ian smirked at Lexi. “Helluva rabbit hole you fell in, sweetheart.”
“And took you with me.” Lexi frowned and traced the damask patterns on the ivory comforter.
Ian tilted his head. “Something I’m supposed to be hearing in that message?”
Lexi’s head lifted, a silent apology in her eyes.
Eryx let out a frustrated breath. “Myrens have laws like any other race, most of them similar to yours. There are two that supersede all others. No sharing the existence of our race to humans, and no interference in human destiny.”
“Kinda screwed the pooch on both of those with us.” Ian stared at Lexi. “So you’re in hot water?”
Lexi shook her head. “Not me, Eryx.”
“I’ve already approached the ellan, our form of government,” Eryx said. “If they choose to bring charges, that’s on me. Though if they think to take my throne without a fight, they’re in for a surprise.”
Brenna piped up, a heavy dread weighting her voice. “That still leaves us.”
Eryx nodded. “It does.” He leaned in, resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped. “My recommendation to the council is the two of you be given the option to live out the rest of your days here so long as you abide by Myren laws. You’d be held by the same tenets as us.”
“Or?” Ian’s eyes narrowed.
Eryx met his stare. “Death.”
“Serious stuff.” Ian dropped his head back on the propped up pillow.
Brenna gazed out the open arched window, her hands gripped tight in her lap, thumbs rubbing back and forth. “You should have let me die.”
Lexi covered Brenna’s hands with one of her own and glared at Eryx. “Nice delivery.”
“She deserves the truth.” He left his chair and crouched beside Brenna at the foot of the bed. “I’ll make this right for you. After all you’ve done…all you’ve gone through, you deserve that much. Can you trust me long enough to see what I can do?”
Shiny, unshed tears welled in her eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“We always have a choice, Brenna. Try for me. For Lexi. Find what joy you can here and trust me to do what I can to make accommodations.”
A tear slipped down Brenna’s cheek.
Lexi wrapped her in a hug and half-whispered, “We’ll have fun while we wait. Explore, and meet new people. We’ll do it together. Okay?”
Eryx sent a mental summons to Orla and sat back in his chair. Lexi could help the girl more with her innate compassion than he ever could. Ian, on the other hand, he could relate to. “Where’s your head in this?”
Ian studied the ceiling. “Think Brenna hit it pretty square.” He paused a second. “Hate the idea of no electricity, especially since I’m not naturally plugged in like you two. No football, no Internet.”
Lexi frowned at him, her arms still locked around Brenna. “Since when are you techno-savvy?”
Ian grinned and a few beats later, he lifted his head and aimed the smile at Lexi. “Truth of the matter is, everything I care about’s here anyway.”
Lexi shifted, gifting Ian with her megawatt, no-holds barred smile over Brenna’s head.
A sharp knock sounded and Orla popped her head around the door, her waist-length hair loose and trailing over one shoulder. She zeroed in on Brenna huddled close to Lexi. “Goodness, she’s only been awake a day and you’ve already got her in tears.”
Funny how she zoned in on Eryx as the culprit. “That’s why I called. I thought you and Jillian might take her mind off things while we finish with Ian.”
Before he’d even finished his sentence, Orla urged Brenna off the bed and tucked her under one arm. “Whatever the problem is, it can’t be that bad. Jillian and I are elbow deep in dough. We’ll talk it out and pound out your frustrations at the same time.”
Brenna sniffled and laid her head on Orla’s shoulder. They shuffled out together, muttered words Eryx couldn’t make out sounding just before the door snapped shut.
“If you’re hustling off crying girls, I gotta think there’s more. Probably worse.” Ian lifted both eyebrows. “Am I right?”
Eryx looked to Lexi. “He always like this?”
“Yep,” she said with a smile that made him want to move mountains.
Eryx pooled his thoughts. “Some time ago, my men were called to investigate a cottage. The neighbors were suspicious, and said they hadn’t seen the woman and her daughter for some time. We checked the place and found the mother dead, and a barely one-year-old child starving. We brought her here and she’s lived with us ever since.”
“And?” Ian’s attention zigzagged between
Eryx and Lexi.
Lexi squirmed on her bedside perch and fiddled with her crimson tunic. “She’s nearly nineteen.”
Laughter rippled up from the garden below, and a breeze whistled through the window.
“The story sounds nice, but I’m thinking if you pull the Band-Aid off quick this would work better.”
Lexi peeked at Eryx, uncertain.
“It’s your call, Lexi. I can tell him if you want.”
She shook her head, pulled in a tight breath, and gave Ian a shaky smile. “Her name is Jillian, and we think she’s your daughter.”
Chapter 19
Reese thwacked another log in half and buried the axe’s blade in the sawed-off tree stump. The wind whipped his bare, sweat-slicked torso and his shoulders burned, but damn it if the outlet wasn’t sweet.
He grabbed a halved log and centered it over the deep scars at the center of the stump. He needed a plan, not just where Galena was concerned, but for his whole fucking life. Land wasn’t his thing. The homestead’s peace and quiet was his mom’s dream. He needed a cause, something to protect and defend.
Hefting the axe high, he slammed the blade home. The wood snapped in two and tumbled to the ground, the strike still reverberating across the open field. Maybe he should bide his time with Galena for now, build his future first and start fresh with her. Unless she’d been the one who asked Eryx to kick him out.
He shook the thought off and set up another log. He’d doubted himself and too many other people in his life and he wasn’t about to add Galena to the list. The pleasure on her face when she’d come for him, so open and honest, hadn’t been a fluke. He’d find a way to win her, one way or another.
He lifted the axe, muscles tensed for the downswing, and tingles flared across his nape and shoulders. Adjusting his grip, he spun and froze mid-swing, nearly fumbling the tool. “Galena.”
She stumbled back and pressed her hand above her gown’s square neckline, fingers trembling against the soft swells of her breasts. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have sneaked up on you.” With a tremulous smile, she dipped her head toward the axe and laughed. “Especially with that thing.”
“My mind was somewhere else.” Like back in bed with her, pretending the real world didn’t exist. He buried the axe’s tip in the stump. “I should have been more focused. If you’d have been Maxis, I’d be dead right now.”
“He knows where you live?”
Reese’s lips twitched but he managed to hold back his grin. “Hard to blackmail a guy without knowing where to find him.”
“Then you’re not safe here. You’d be better off at the castle.”
“I’m fine here.” Though her eagerness to welcome him back into her family home went a long way toward negating her involvement in kicking him out in the first place.
“Hardly. What if he catches you unaware?”
“A run-in with Maxis wouldn’t be altogether unpleasant, particularly since you and your brothers evened the playing field.” If anything, that tidbit had been the one saving grace of Eryx’s polite request to vacate. Out here in the middle of nowhere, Maxis might opt to finish what he’d started and give Reese another shot at furthering the spiritu’s mission, or at least offer up a fair fight if talking didn’t pan out.
Still, Galena wasn’t safe here, not out in the open. Blue skies stretched above them and nothing pinged against his senses, but with her black and crimson gown she’d draw more than a passing glance for someone skilled at masking. “Probably not the best idea to wave your presence for anyone interested in a fly-by.” He cupped her elbow and guided her to the greenhouse behind him. “Come on. I’ll grab my shirt and show you another route into the main house. I’m surprised your brothers let you visit with Maxis still free.”
The light in her eyes dimmed and she tensed. “I didn’t ask for a hall pass. Contrary to what they and anyone else might think, I make my own decisions.”
He pulled her to a stop.
She averted her face, lips tight.
“Galena?”
Her jaw hardened and her chest rose and fell in quick, shallow moves.
“Galena.” Keeping his grip on her arm, he lifted her chin. No tears marked her face, but she was well and truly pissed, her aqua blue eyes sparking. “I asked for your safety. Nothing more.” He traced her lower lip and the tension there ebbed, the berry-red fullness soft against his thumb. “I’m not blind to the tug-of-war you’re in. I won’t add to it, at least not intentionally. If you choose me, it’ll be because you want me, not because you gave way.”
Her lips parted, more than a little surprise coloring her expression.
Instinct pulled him, urged him to erase the confusion on her face with his kiss and with slow teasing touches.
Histus, he’d just promised her he wouldn’t push her and now he was fantasizing just that. He opened the door to the shed and squeezed her elbow. “Go inside. I think you’ll like what you find.”
She blinked, studied him a second, and stepped across the threshold. Her gasp fluttered back to him, carried on the scent of rich, damp soil and herbs. Plants of all kinds lined either side of five rows and along the back wall. “These are yours?”
“Me?” He followed her inside, snatched the towel he’d tossed down with his shirt, and wiped his brow. “Praise the Great One, no. I’m surprised my mother even let me in here. I can kill them with a single look.”
Her lightness was back in full force, her strides quick to roam the aisles of all his mother’s favorite plants.
He settled in to enjoy her response. “I hired a nearby couple to keep the farm up. The wife loves plants as much as mom did.”
Galena dipped to sniff a tiny pink flower with sharply pointed petals and traced the leaf beside it. She stopped at the drishen bush nestled at the far corner and lightly flipped one berry so it wiggled on its tendril. “My brothers used to eat these until they made themselves sick. These are a lighter color than what we grow at the castle though, more white instead of pink.”
He looped the towel around the back of his neck and held tight to both ends. If he was smart, he’d keep his distance and stay out of trouble. He took two steps forward anyway, then two more, close enough to tempt himself, but not quite enough to touch. “Try one.”
She reached for a cluster higher on the bush and traced the rib of a fat leaf. The sun streamed in from the skylights and accented the sweep of auburn hair down her nape. Stretched in that position, her breasts strained the top of her gown. It would take two, maybe three seconds for him to get the bodice unlaced.
“What am I to you?” Galena murmured.
His brain clambered up from its single-track strategy on how to get her naked. Drishen. They’d been talking about drishen.
“Earlier,” she added still studying the fruit. “You said, ‘if you choose me.’ How can I choose if I don’t know what I am to you?” She lowered her hand and turned, her raw vulnerability cranking his protective inclinations to full bore. “Am I a fling? A passing interest? A curiosity? A—”
“Everything.”
Shit. So much for no pressure. His knuckles protested his grip on the towel and his forearms ached from the morning’s hard use. Did he keep going? Or try to keep things light?
Fuck waiting. She was here of her own free will. If he’d learned anything the last few months it was to face the challenges life threw him head on. “I keep thinking about how to make my life right. Everything I’ve missed and everything I want. For me, it all comes back to you.” He stepped closer, only inches and her sweet scent between them. The rough towel grated beneath his fists. “But I won’t hide. Not anymore. So the question is, what do you want from me?”
She studied him, his face, his bound hair, down his neck to his chest, and his belly. She traced the top ridge of his abdominals and her voice cracked. “I’m scared.” Slick from the sweat still on his skin, her fingers slid up, slow until her palm covered his heart. “But I’m not torn. Not in th
is.”
The touch rippled through him, contractions spearing to the base of his cock. Everything he wanted was right here, his if he’d dare to reach for it. But he couldn’t pressure her. She had enough of that already. It had to be her choice. Her desire. He covered her hand with his, the beat of his heart reverberating through the touch. “You’re sure?”
She leaned close and the turquoise in her eyes glittered bright. Her heated exhalations danced across his skin. “I’ve come for you. Twice.”
She meant visited. Surely that’s what she meant.
With a tentative, yet innocently wicked lick, she sampled the skin along his sternum. “I’d say that shows certainty.” She dipped her head as though to make another pass.
“No.” He pulled away, not enough to break contact, but enough to let him catch his breath. Without conscious direction, he buried his hand in the hair at her nape, fisting the thickness in a loose grip. “Come inside where it’s safer. I’ll shower and we’ll—”
“I don’t want safer.” She held his stare, regaining the distance he’d created. “Don’t cosset me. Let me feel.” She kissed his chest, lips parted and tongue trailing a wanton path. “Let me fly.”
He tightened his hold, every scrap of his attention lasered on her plump, perfect mouth and the press of her soft breasts. Her white teeth peeked out for no more than a heartbeat, and he imagined them digging deep for a sweet, torturous pain. She wanted to fly? Fuck, he’d make her soar. “You didn’t try one.”
Lips still pressed to his skin she lifted her gaze, eyelids heavy, yet questioning.
He turned her and wrapped one arm across her collarbone to grip her shoulder, tucking her back against his front. Drishen berries dangled high overhead. With a quick snap, he pulled one pearl fruit free and brought it to her lips. “Open.”
Her heart fluttered beneath his arm. Dropping her head to rest on his shoulder, she opened her mouth, gaze locked to his.
He pressed the fruit against her mouth. “Bite.”
Damn, if the color of her eyes didn’t deepen. Her perfect little teeth rent the delicate flesh in half and her eyes closed on a quiet moan. “Sweet.” She licked her lip. “Like lemonade without the bite.”
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