He thrust inside her pussy. The walls clamped down on his cock, creating a delicious friction. His shaft was sensitised. Saffron rocked forward then tightened around him. Her breath hitched and she spasmed as she came. Kenric moaned as he pulsed, joining her in pleasure. Shuddering, he held her as she shivered. Her whimpers mixed with his exclamations as they continued to come. Slowly it abated. Changing his touch he lay back, holding her against his chest. Saffron snuggled against him, her body limp. Sleep overcame him and he went under.
Kenric jerked away at the pounding sound. Blearily he sat up. He was alone in bed. Scowling, he wondered where Saffron was. The pounding came again. Staggering to his feet he went to the door.
Jerking it open partially he growled. “What?”
“You need to keep better track of your woman. She just left the compound again. My guess is she’s heading out to one of the other sites,” Flare stated calmly.
“Why the hell didn’t you stop her?” Kenric moved away from the door.
He dressed quickly. Turning to face Flare he pushed past him and strode down the hall.
“I didn’t see the damn woman leave the compound. I spotted her through the binoculars. She was way up on the steppes,” Flare said.
Kenric heard the underlying displeasure in his tone. He paused in front of the door outside.
“She’s on foot. Is she crazy?” he said.
“Must be, to be out there this time of night. I sent someone to wake Shade so he can follow us with more men. He’s not going to let me forget letting her get past me,” Flare replied.
Kenric snorted. “She did the same thing when he was on duty.”
“She did, huh? He never mentioned it,” Flare said.
“You and Shade stay here. I’ll head after her. Which way did she go?” Kenric yanked open the door.
“Off to the right, Boss. You better take a Jeep. She was moving fast. It was the damnedest thing I ever seen. ” Flare sounded impressed.
Kenric strode to a Jeep, taking the rifle Flare handed him as he got in. After he placed the gun on the seat beside him he started the vehicle. Kenric drove, keeping an eye out for trouble.
At the first site he asked the men if they had seen her—they had but she was gone. When he questioned them why they had let a lone woman go, they said they hadn’t, but didn’t have a clue how she had left without them seeing. They had detained her because she had arrived on foot and didn’t seem to have any mode of transport or guards. Kenric frowned when they explained that when they’d gone back to check on her she had disappeared.
Kenric got back into the Jeep and went to the next area. As he went to each, the story was the same. He’d just missed her and they hadn’t seen her leave. It was baffling that she had got so far on foot.
Pulling up to the last site he frowned at the darkened place. There should have been some illumination, and guards posted. Moving with stealth, he approached the location. The darkness was almost absolute. A lone blaze came from the shaft. A light flared. He dropped to the ground, moving up behind a truck. Peeking around it, he narrowed his gaze.
“That’s the last of the charges. Let’s get out of here before all hell breaks loose.” The man strode out of the lift.
The rest of the men followed him. Kenric didn’t recognise them.
“I always knew you were a weasel, Frank.” Saffron’s voice cut through the night.
Kenric stifled a curse as Saffron came into view.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Frank Grimmel, the boss’s brother, said.
“Righting a wrong that you are doing to what I protect.” Saffron’s voice seemed to echo.
“I knew Kade sending you here would be a pain in my ass. Oh, big brother Kade, thinking he is above everyone. I thought changing the maps would make this place blow. But then he sent you in, and somehow you convinced that asshole Kenric to change path from what was on the maps. You’ve forced me to come back to this godforsaken country. For that alone, I will kill you. And then, when this place blows, the company and all Kade built, as a supposedly ethical and environmentally aware man, will go with it. And Kenric will either be dead or blamed along with him. There is nothing you can do.” Frank sneered. “Get her out of my sight.”
The men closed in on her. Saffron didn’t move. Her voice lashed out.
“I sentence all of you for atrocities against the earth. I banish you to its depths.”
One moment the men were there then they started to fade. Kenric stood up, shocked at what he could not possibly be seeing.
“What is happening?” Frank roared.
“Justice,” Saffron stated coldly.
He disappeared from view. Kenric strode towards Saffron. Once he was close to her he spoke.
“What—”
“Hang on.” Saffron reached out and touched him.
A sense of displacement filled him and his ears rang. In a moment it passed. He staggered then the sounds around him registered. Kenric glanced up, recognising that they were at a different site. Men were running from the site they were working at. The lift arrived and men poured off to get away. Flare and Shade were last off, running and shouting at the others to clear out. A loud boom shook the ground. Kenric took a step forward, his legs like lead. Flames licked up out of the hole and spurted at them. Flare and Shade screamed as they were engulfed. The fire rushed to the other men. Time seemed to slow then everything before him went still. Kenric shook, his eyes wide. A sensation travelled up along his back. Turning he stumbled away. A massive, translucent lion stared at him with unblinking green eyes. It opened its mouth and roared. The sound rattled his bones. It lowered itself and lay, legs crossed, on the ground.
“Helis!” Saffron yelled.
Kenric glanced higher. Saffron was standing on its back, her hands widespread. A light spread out of her right hand, curling around her wrist then flowing outward. It slithered and hissed as it came towards him. It paused a second, looking at him with eyes the same colour as the lion’s. A serpentine tongue licked his cheek, then the luminous snake flowed past him, rippling. Saffron’s left palm seemed to glow and a lotus flower bloomed. Its stem wrapped around her wrist and it extended. The soft petals brushed his cheek, seeming to caress him as it went beyond him.
Kenric stepped back slowly then shifted to the side. He hissed as he moved through the stream of light for the flower stem. The seemingly electric current made goose bumps break out all over his body. He turned, following where the snake and lotus flower went. He shaded his eyes against the incandescence. Once his eyes had adjusted, he lowered his hand. The snake slithered around the ground, all over the camp. Wherever it touched, the area seemed to repair. As it plunged down the shaft, the flames lowered then diffused.
Shade and Flare still smouldered with fire. The smell of burnt flesh reached his nose. The lotus surrounded the men then slid under them, lifting them up. It closed over them, enfolding them within its petals, and glowed bright violet. It slowly lowered back to the ground and opened. Flare and Shade strode off. The lotus disappeared. The snake came out of the shaft, rising high in the air. It nodded its head at him then it faded. Flare and Shade spotted him and came over. Time started moving again and the site was busy as people hurried around working. Kenric stumbled back, shaking his head. A hand between his shoulders stopped him.
They don’t know what has happened. None of them do.
Her voice sounded in his mind. Intimate and personal. Kenric glanced at Saffron, sharply stepping away from her touch. She raised her chin.
“Good call, Boss. We finally hit the natural gas. Kade will be pleased,” Shade said cheerfully.
“And before the deadline,” Flare added.
Kenric didn’t know what to say. They continued to talk about getting a call that something was wrong, then all of them heading out here to see what had happened, and Kenric figuring it out and leading them to the natural gas they had been after.
“Those maps were way off. I wonder why?” Flare mused.
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“They were probably done by someone who didn’t know what they were doing,” Shade said.
Kenric stiffened. They didn’t seem to have any idea of what they had discovered earlier. Of anything.
No, they do not. It is best to keep that knowledge to ourselves.
Kenric ignored her and walked away with the men. Much later, when they returned to the compound, there was a celebratory atmosphere. He stood with Shade and Flare, watching Saffron as she talked with some of the other men. They were too far away for him to hear what was said. None of them knew what had happened earlier. How close they had come to disaster. He did. The memory was burned in his mind. He raised his beer to his lips. Saffron said something and left. Kenric put down his bottle and followed.
In the hall, he spotted her heading towards the exit. He moved after her. Outside, he didn’t see her. Instinct made him go left, and moments later he stood behind her. She stood barefoot in the same spot she had the first time she’d sneaked away from the compound. The moon cast her in an ethereal glow, making her beauty radiate even more. The gown she wore left her shoulders bare. The dress flowed around her figure as if raised by some unseen power. Her firm thighs and long legs seemed more delectable than usual. The silhouette of her body made his cock hard. Furious, he strode up to her.
“I should have known the words of a human—about being accepting—would be false.” Saffron sounded cold.
“Don’t pull the martyr shit on me. What the hell are you?” he demanded.
She faced him, raising her head back. Grace, power and arrogance seemed to fill every molecule of her being.
“A goddess.”
Chapter Six
Kenric blinked then blinked again as he ran her words over in his mind. A goddess. Really? Sure, that whole thing with the lion, flower and snake had been weird, but he could reasonably chalk that up to the fumes.
Couldn’t he?
Saffron turned so that her entire body faced him completely. She seemed to glow. Her eyes were what hit him hardest. They were no longer the dark brown pools he’d willingly have drowned in. No. These were liquid, golden fire.
In that second, he realised that he was in more than a bit over his head. She moved towards him, her feet not even touching the ground. When she halted before him, her scent engulfed him, even stronger than before. The waxing moon only added to the aura around her. Golden sprinkled with moonbeams.
“A goddess?” he asked, hearing his own disbelief.
Her lashes lowered briefly before lifting. They looked like they’d been covered in diamond dust.
“Qetesh,” she replied, her expression impersonal, as was her tone.
He had no idea who that was but nodded anyway. “Egyptian, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
I’m officially going insane.
No, you know what you are seeing and hearing to be true.
That familiar and intimate feminine voice he’d heard after she’d saved Shade and Flare slipped through his mind. The anger returned.
“This is what you’ve been keeping from me,” he growled.
“It’s not exactly something I go around telling people.”
“So, you’re a goddess who protects the earth,” he said more for himself than as a question. She seemed to take it that way for she didn’t speak. “What did you do to Frank?”
“He has been banished.” Flames flicked in her eyes.
“Banished, like…to what, inside a rock?”
“You have heard of the Greek stories of Tartarus?”
“Yes, of course.”
“That is the kindergarten version of what I sentenced Frank and his men to.” There was such frost in her words it made him almost step back.
“And Shade and Flare?” he asked.
Their lives had almost been lost and it was his fault. This was why he always had them separated, so that if something happened it wouldn’t be to both of them. However, Saffron had had him so confused he’d not paid enough attention to the schedule. And that ate at him. Bitterly. Forcing that under control, he focused on actually making it through the conversation.
“What about them?”
“You saved them.”
A laconic lift of a shoulder. “They are important to you.”
“But not to you?”
Another shrug. “They are humans. I have no use for them, one way or the other.”
Either she was the most callous person who lived or she spoke the truth about who she was. “But you act like you like them.”
“They are nice enough.”
But she could be just fine without them in her life. While the words weren’t spoken, he knew she meant it.
Raking a hand through his shaggy, dirty blond hair, he tried to figure out how to handle this. He was pissed off, and yet something about the way she stood there made him wonder if she wasn’t just waiting for his condemnation. Especially after what she’d said when he’d first approached.
“Well, thank you for that, at least.”
She gave a regal inclination of her head.
“What about me?” he asked, all the while damning the devil on his shoulder who prompted him do so.
Her eyes shone brighter with golden liquid as she raked him up and down with her gaze. “You?”
“Yeah, me, Doc. What about me?” he prowled closer to her, loving how the pulse along the side of her neck kicked up a few notches and she swallowed rapidly.
Then she changed, composed herself, and stared down her nose at him. An impressive feat, considering she was inches shorter than he was. “You lied about accepting me.”
“Oh no,” he growled. “You don’t get to throw that out here. I still don’t know what or who the hell you are. I didn’t lie to you, Saffron…Qetesh…whatever the hell your name is. You know all there is to know about me, but all the while you kept this from me.” He lowered his head until their noses were almost touching.
“You should have trusted me,” she said.
Narrowing his gaze, he held her own. “And you should have trusted me.” With a snarl, he backed away, pivoted while muttering to himself, and whipped back around as an ugly thought occurred to him.
“What about Kade?” he asked, furious to think that his boss would know something like this about her while she hadn’t shared with him.
“What about him?”
“Don’t fucking play with me, Doc. Does he know about this…this side of you?”
“No.”
Kenric couldn’t explain the relief that swarmed through him at that single word.
“Why?” he demanded.
“Why would I tell him?”
“No, why didn’t you tell me?”
She stared solemnly at his face before she shrugged. “Because, when I first arrived, I wasn’t sure if I was going to kill you or not.”
Ice poured over him and he fought the shiver that raced up his spine. She’d said that as if she was talking about the weather, or what she just ate for dinner. Nothing about her right now was the woman whom he’d told he loved, and who’d said the same thing back to him.
Clenching his jaw, he nodded. “I see.” He wanted to roar his anger to the heavens but kept the fury locked away. “So, are you done here, then?”
“I have done what I came to do.”
If he’d seen a sliver of the woman he’d fallen in love with maybe his heart wouldn’t hurt so much. But he didn’t. This one was so distant and it made him want to gnash his teeth at her.
“Good. Safe journey,” he said and walked away.
Every fibre of his being screamed out for him to return to her, but he ignored it and continued on his way. He heard her muttering about humans under her breath but still didn’t stop. I wasn’t sure if I was going to kill you or not. Her words ran in a continuous loop through his head.
Back at camp, he waved off Shade’s questioning look and ducked into his room. Shit! The place still smelt like her and it made him want her even more. With a muttered curse,
he grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder then headed back out.
“Where are you going?” Flare asked.
“Patrol. There are guys out there who deserve to be here at the celebration.”
He walked away before Flare could comment again. Tossing his bag in the Jeep, he swung in and drove away in a flurry of dust and spinning tyres. Kenric drove to the farthest outpost and sent the ones there back to camp.
In the back of the Jeep, he swung one leg as it hung over the open tailgate. His guns were in their holsters and he had a rifle across his lap. The radio at his side was very low. He sighed and continued to sweep the area with his gaze. The moon was too bright to use an infrared camera, so that and the computer were stowed.
Sitting there, he had memories of patrol in the Middle East. There were vast differences, but also some similarities. Both places were deadly and if you dropped your guard at any moment it could very well be your last. But they were also beautiful. A slight smile lifted his lips as he gazed around the untamed land of Somalia.
As the hours passed, Kenric thought about what Saffron had told him. “Qetesh,” The word sounded much less graceful off his lips than it had hers. Who the fuck was Qetesh?
She’d been cold when she’d spouted off that crap about humans being accepting a lie, but, beneath that, he’d heard hurt. And that gave him some hope. For what, he wasn’t sure, because, as much as he wanted to go hash things out with her, he had a job to do. And work came first.
So he stayed there, alternating between being furious that she’d come with the intention of possibly killing him and grateful she hadn’t. His eyes were grainy and he was tired when his relief arrived. It was Shade.
“Morning, Boss.”
“Shade,” he said with a nod of his head.
“Everything go okay last night?”
He shrugged. “Yes. Why do you ask? I didn’t radio in for any help.”
“No reason,” he said, his expression smoothing out.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Flare just said he saw Saffron packing a bag. We thought maybe she headed out here.”
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