by Kita Bell
“Swore. If I found you. Took you. Would do this. Would see your eyes. Would make you need.” Brand didn’t deviate. He kissed her throat, hands in her hair.
“Please,” Eva whispered, several minutes later as the fire agonizingly kindled up through her toes, her calves, her breasts. The slow build was killing her, the deliberate feel of his slick unhurried thrusts in and out her swollen flesh maddening. Her mind was flying to pieces. Too much control, she thought. She needed him to let go. Brand sucked her bottom lip, and Eva gave a half-sob, trying to push her hips against his own as that impossible thickness bore down to fill her again.
“Brand, please,” she moaned, the slow flames licking up through her thighs, her arms, through her chest to trickle down her spine and gather in her belly. She had never had a lover take this much time with her. Eva wasn’t sure she would survive it.
She felt her body begin to react, the slow arch back, the sensation of being poised on the edge of a precipice…
“Brand…” She needed.
“Eyes open, Evita.”
She blinked…
Brand buried his length in her, began thrusting – brutal, hard, deep.
Eva exploded.
The orgasm shuddered through her, her body clenched around his thickness, milking him as she spasmed. Heat and pleasure and hunger spiraled through her and distantly Eva heard Brand groan, shout in another language. His body clenched, his erection heavy and throbbing…then he flooded her. Eva screamed tightening her calves at the jetting streaming pulses, her nails digging into the hard flesh of his back as she took him in, as Brand filled her womb. She came again, drinking him in, hungry.
His breath was harsh. So was hers. She shook as they waited slowly, desperately, for his orgasm to subside.
The heat settled as the pleasure diffused into exhausted well-being, and Eva found she was staring into Brand’s eyes. The bed was soft against her back, her face was gripped between his palms. Brand was staring into her eyes. His irises were dark, pure red, no other color. His jaw was tight, his face flushed, intense.
His body gave one last shudder at his final pulse deep into her, and Eva moaned softly. Then it was done.
Brand hadn’t moved his gaze, not once. His strong fingers trailed through her hair, down her cheek… then, as if remembering what she had told him about Rohe, he settled his thumbs behind her neck, cradling her. And Eva realized she had kept her eyes open. Like Brand had asked. The entire time.
I didn’t think I could.
Yet somehow, even when her mind hadn’t known what it was doing, Eva’s body had.
It was frightening. Terrifyingly intimate, and frightened her to the bottom of her soul.
Eva pushed against Brand’s chest, pulling back…and could have kicked herself. For something shuttered in Brand’s gaze. She hadn’t realized how open they were, until just now. The red drained into gold and blue; Brand dipped his head to the crook of her neck and inhaled, pulling her scent into his lungs before licking the flesh there, nuzzling gently.
Eva felt awkward, had no idea what to say. He was still thick inside her, semi-erect and she could feel him growing by the moment…and she was oddly embarrassed.
It would have been easier if she were with a stranger.
“Brand,” she started to say, not sure what she was going to tell him…and then she felt an almost inaudible rumble settle through her bones. It coursed through her skin, her body, and into the tight sensitive flesh of her breasts and thighs, seeming to course down into the mattress itself. “You’re purring,” she whispered in amazement, awkwardness dropping away as she twined her fingers into his hair and stared in surprise.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to purr in bed?” Brand murmured, the vibrations running up and into his voice, making it gravelly. There was a deep wickedness to his question, a sexiness only added to by that faint bleed-through of accent. “Hasn’t a man ever made you want to purr, Evita?”
Just you.
Sex was sex. It took the edge off, then it was done. Or at least, that was what it had always been. Eva closed her eyes against Brand, trying to deny the desire she felt rising again in her own body. She should have been sated. She should have been done. They should have been done. But for some reason, she wanted more. Needed more.
“Haven’t you?” Brand pushed, refusing to accept silence.
Eva turned her face away, trying to deal with the need, the hunger, and…that frightening sense of knowing. Of knowing Brand. With that sense of connection that somehow, somewhere, had snapped into place, deeper and stronger than any sense of connection she had ever felt for anyone in her life.
Including her family.
It terrified her. Almost as much as the intimacy between them, or the look his eyes, this connection terrified her.
Brand smoothed a hand down Eva’s spine, gentling her. Soothing her. That he could do that, so easily, that he could read her, so easily… Perhaps this was just the way it was between two Kaspians. That was it. That was all it was.
“Eva,” Brand insisted, jaw setting, fingers running lower, behind her thigh.
Her answer broke in a gasp, “No.”
“I will make you purr, Evita,” he promised, and took her breast with his mouth again. Then Eva forgot what she had been thinking, what she had been feeling, what she had been so afraid of. She forgot everything except the feel of him on her. In her.
“Brand…”
He made her purr.
Brand was gone the next morning when Eva groggily pulled herself up off the tangled mattress and looked around for a clock. She had a vague memory of him kissing her hair at some ungodly hour, saying something about “work” and “Seth” and telling her to borrow anything she needed.
Eva had no problem with that.
But what she needed most was to call her sister. That, and complete the task she had come here for – to give Stronghold information on Rohe. Then she could go home before, well, before whatever it was she had shared with Brand grew to be too much. Attachment was dangerous – attachment didn’t last. And attachment to a Kade?
He had probably been with hundreds of women. Thousands.
She hated them all.
Eva found Brand’s luggage at the foot of the bed and dug through it to find her own clothes; then she showered and changed before searching out Nikandria.
Brand’s sister answered the door before Eva had a chance to knock. Her thick pale blonde hair was messy, and she looked as if she had slept in her clothes…but then she blinked and smiled and Eva felt dowdy by comparison. “Good, Seth’s looking for you. Are you hungry?”
Seth? Eva winced. Remembering the half-conversations via phone she had witnessed, she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet him. “Sure. Also, I need to call my sister.”
Nikandria nodded and stepped back so Eva could come in. “I’ll find something. Brand had errands this morning, otherwise he probably would have done it himself. I’ve got to go change, but grab something from the kitchen. Can’t let the brothers catch me looking like this – they’re completely irrational,” Nikandria rolled her eyes before hurrying across the thick carpet to the staircase on the far side. Sunlight poured through huge windows with thick velvet drapes, glinting off rapiers crossed on the far wall, before coming to a stop at the edge of the dull black dagger on the mantel. “It will only be a moment,” Nikandria said, ducking away upstairs.
Eva looked around and shivered. It’s like Brand’s rooms.
If Brand lived in what Eva considered to be a large comfortable apartment, then Nikandria lived in a set of suites made for a queen. It was loft-style like Brand’s, and wonderfully open in a way that deeply relaxed Eva…even as the huge oil paintings on the walls and expensive antique hardwood furniture set her on edge. Nothing about Stronghold was anything like her home. Stronghold had obviously been built for Kaspian tastes…expensive Kaspian tastes.
The small house she shared with Rainey was a shack in comparison.
A warm cozy shac
k.
Eva padded across the carpet to the mosaicked kitchen, and felt oddly homesick.
It made no sense. She had spent her entire life trying to get away from the Turner Gens but now, she missed it.
No, it’s Rainey I miss, Eva realized, as she opened Nikandria’s fridge to find the interior empty except for a small stack of beef jerky and single-serving bottles of orange juice. At the bottom, shoved to the far back, was a half-eaten casserole that smelled…wrong. Perhaps it was made that way? Eva wrinkled her nose, then snagged out a stick of jerky. A door slammed on the upper level, and there was the sound of light approaching footsteps.
“Here, grab one for me?” Nikandria called, pulling a pale green sweater over her shoulders, layering her shirts as she hurried down the staircase. “Seth wants you over at the Infirmary office ‘Now’.” Nikandria mimicked, making a sour face. “He mentioned something about tranquilizers?”
The beef jerky turned to mud in Eva’s throat. “Rohe guards shot me with something. At the Asylum. It put me to sleep.”
“That’s not good.” Nikandria grimaced – probably the only person who hadn’t doubted Eva’s story – and shook her head. Then they went out the door, Eva following across the vast expanse of Stronghold.
Everything was huge, covered in snow and quiet, and yet Eva had a sense there were more people around than she knew. Which was only corroborated when Nikandria nodded to the right and said, “Most prefer the private quarters. They have their own house there, especially if they have children or live-in families. But it works better for the immediate family to live at the Operations Building.” Then, cutting across another short snowy path and through another building, “Did Brand show you the Supplies Building last night?”
Last night. Last night Brand and I… Eva flushed before her mind started working again.
“We cut through it on our way to the Infirmary,” she murmured, sneezing as her eyes adjusted to the changing light. She cleared her throat. “The girl that you and Brand were helping. Is she okay?”
Nikandria’s face clouded as they took a turn down a hall. “Her name is Meghan. I don’t know. She was damaged, and Samuel and I are doing our best. But her ability got out of control, and I’m not sure any of us are qualified to teach her how to regulate it.”
Eva looked at Nikandria’s face, saw a shadow there. “Why not?”
“She can call fire.”
Eva shuddered. “No one in my Gens has that kind of ability. It sounds…terrifying.” Horrifying.
“She was terrified,” Nikandria said quietly, an odd note in her voice. She narrowed her purple eyes on Eva. “Did you really offer to take Seth into your memories of the Asylum?”
A chill tingled through Eva. That.
“It’s the reason I came here,” Eva forced out. But the thought of someone inside her mind, forcing Eva back to Rohe’s Asulym…was frightening. More frightening than anything else.
Nikandria touched her arm, a warm presence on the snow-packed path. “You can change your mind, Eva. No one here would blame you. I certainly wouldn’t.”
I would. She was doing this to help. Not to be useless. Not to be weak. She hadn’t fought before. She could fight now. “I think your brother might.”
“Brand wouldn’t—”
“He would, and I would too. And really, I want to do it,” Eva repeated stubbornly, rubbing her arms.
There was a pause. “Very well. Thank you,” Brand’s sister said finally, softly, then turned to lead the rest of the way to a small office in the Infirmary. “Seth might not tell you, so I will say it now – we appreciate this. We really do.”
The room was partially dark, with a huge oak desk, walls plastered with medical charts, and office chairs lodged in the remaining space. A tall thin man with liquid silver hair and unsettling gold eyes rose as they entered the room; she recognized him from the Infirmary the night before. “Hi,” Eva began, wondering if she had been mistaken and that this wasn’t Samuel, but Seth…but the man’s gaze latched onto Nikandria and the two began to speak.
Eva’s eyes fell to the base of his throat and – she knew it was rude – but she stared: it was a mass of pale scars. She hadn’t noticed the night before – no, he was wearing a scarf, Eva remembered. The sight was almost as unsettling as Joshua’s scarred hand…Kaspian just didn’t scar. Not scars that set, or turned white, like humans’ scars. Wounded flesh usually stayed pink, then faded. Which probably explained the roughness of his voice.
“If you have finished staring, that is Stronghold’s healer, Samuel Gaviros,” said a cool voice beside her. “And I am Seth. Brand might have mentioned me.”
Only when cursing, Eva thought, feeling herself flush bright red as she turned. “He has.” Then she bit her tongue.
Oh god. I am so out of my depth.
Brand was roughly gorgeous, Khael starkly menacing, and Nikandria stunningly exotic…but this brother was pure, terrifying elegance. Seth’s thick golden hair was several shades darker than Nikandria’s and fell in waves; even with glasses, he was ridiculously handsome. Eva flushed. She wasn’t attracted to Seth, but even she knew beauty when she saw it.
Seth looked over his glasses, examining Eva like she was a bug. Her impression of him curdled.
“Good. Then you know why I asked you here?”
Eva tried to gather her train of thought and ran a hand over her jeans. “You want to know about the tranquilizers. And Rohe. And you need to go inside my head for that.”
“Precisely.”
Chapter 9
Seth’s cool distance didn’t last nearly as long as Eva expected.
Or hoped.
“Stay still,” Brand’s brother snapped half an hour later, gripping the arms of the office chair he had placed across from Eva’s. “I cannot get anything if you won’t let me catch you.”
“I’m trying,” Eva snarled, rubbing her temples as she tried to hold her thoughts still. But each time she felt the reaching tendrils of Seth’s mind, they slipped away. The whole experience reminded her unpleasantly of Rohe. “I thought you were a mind reader. Can’t you just read my mind?”
That would be so much easier.
“Not mind reader. Telepath,” Seth corrected with frigid dignity, “I cannot “read” your mind if I cannot catch your thoughts. And when you will not hold them still, you waste time, Eva.”
He made her feel like a dirty peasant child. Old Europe definitely, Eva thought, remembering one of her Gens’ favorite curses about the Kade family.
“Then,” Eva bit out, “you must not be a very good telepath, because I am holding my thoughts ‘still.’ Just because you can’t catch them isn’t my fault.”
Brand was sexy, handsome and relatively sweet. Why couldn’t Seth be a little bit like that, too?
Nikandria choked back laughter when Seth’s gaze flickered gold as he looked at his sister. Then he dropped his eyes again. His face settled into smooth comprehension.
“What?” Eva asked suspiciously. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be on the receiving end of Seth’s curiosity.
“Rohe never got into your mind?”
Eva shrugged. She fidgeted with her sweater cuff. “What do you mean, ‘got into’?” she finally asked. “Do I have…nightmares…about Rohe? All the time. But did she do to me…what you’re trying to do? No.”
Eva knew, without looking up, that they had glanced at each other.
“We have reports that Rohe can compel humans. And less-powerful Sakai. Seth is trying to ascertain whether that vulnerability extends to Kaspians too,” Nikandria’s voice was soft; she touched Eva’s shoulder. “Seth wants to know if she compelled you, Eva. Made you do – or feel – anything. Anything that wasn’t you.”
Eva twisted to meet Nikandria’s deep purple gaze. “That’s why the guards acted like that? Why they always did what she said? Even when…” Eva swallowed, dug her fingers into the chair back. “She had one – she had him cut off his own – ” Eva shuddered. “He bled everywhere,”
she whispered, caught in the memory. Nikandria’s hands settled on her shoulders, giving a gentle outward stroke that was suddenly so reminiscent of Rainey that Eva wanted to cry. But the comfort that welled her from Nikandria was undeniable and strong, and Eva looked at Seth as she answered the question.
“No. Rohe never caught me with her eyes. She never…she never made me enjoy what she was doing. Not like the guards did. She tried to make me Change. She always asked, after…” Eva felt herself pressing into Nikandria’s touch, and forced herself back, desperately wishing Brand wasn’t busy on errands, “afterwards, she always wanted to see my beast,” Nikandria’s fingers turned to vices, then loosened, “but I never let her.”
“Good for you,” Nikandria said softly, as if Eva were a small child or a friend. Eva closed her eyes and pretended those fingers were Brand’s.
“I was an idiot to let her capture me,” she whispered. “Sometimes, I’m just…weak.”
There was a pause, and she opened here eyes – embarrassed to have confessed as much.
“You can avoid my mind, Eva,” Seth said coolly, removing his glasses to peer at her for a long moment. “Either by luck or nature you avoided Rohe’s ability. If you had not evaded her, you would not be here. You would be back in whatever miserable cage she kept you in, turning into a pet tiger on command. You are not weak, so don’t empower your enemy by dismissing yourself.”
Eva closed her mouth, surprised.
Then they tried again.
After taking a short break, Eva sat nervously tapping her foot against the infirmary chair and waited for Seth and Nikandria to return. Only Samuel was in the office with her, sorting through a stack of medical journals and papers. He didn’t seem to have any more of an idea what to say to her than she did to him, so they both sat in silence. Eva didn’t mind; she rather liked Samuel. He was nice, polite. At first she had thought he was cold, then realized that he was just incredibly distant.
She eyed the scars on his throat and felt a question push at her. Seth walked in the door.