by Gena; Butcher Showalter; Gena; Butcher Showalter; Gena; Butcher Showalter; Gena; Butcher Showalter
Suffice it to say that when I touch you it feels really good. When I stop, not so much."
She felt the same way. She opened her mouth to tell him to just keep touching her before she realized how it might sound. She didn't even know the man. She certainly wasn't going to offer to let him put his hands on her, no matter how lovely the idea was.
He moved and a sword appeared in his hand, as if conjured from thin air. "How did you do that?"
"The sword is invisible when it's strapped to my body. Keeps the locals from freaking out."
"But . . . how?"
"Magic."
Magic. The word trickled into her, shifting puzzle pieces in her mind. What had been a confusing set of facts before now became a clearer picture. If magic was real—and she was looking at proof that it was—then that explained a lot of things. All those stories she'd read. All those artifacts that seemed to have a purpose, but no one could ever determine what it was. It was all beginning to make sense.
Neal laid the flat of the blade against his forearm, pointing the pommel toward her. She leaned over the piece, enthralled by the power of it. It was beautiful, a thriving, pristine work of art. The detail was incredible. Intricate leaves etched with such precision she could see the veins wove around on a vine, forming the guard. Part of the detail in the hilt had been worn away with use, making her wonder just how old this piece was. "Where did you get it?"
"My father had it made for me when I was born."
Part of her excitement deflated. He couldn't be more than thirty-five, making the piece a beautiful replica, but nothing more. "Did the metalsmith pattern it off of an antique? Is that why it looks so worn?"
"It looks worn because it is worn."
"It would take decades of hard use to manage that."
"Yeah. It would."
"What? You're saying that you've done that? You can't have even been using it for more than a decade or two."
"I'm older than I look."
The way he said it gave her pause. She wasn't sure she should ask, but she really needed to know. "How old?"
"You sure are a curious thing. I think I should stop answering your questions until you start answering mine."
"The only thing you seem to want to know is where the artifact is."
"Now you're catching on."
"If I tell you, what's in it for me?"
"How much do you want?"
"I'm not interested in money. I want your sword."
He let out a hard laugh. "Not on your life. This sword in the wrong hands could be dangerous."
"It's dangerous in the right hands, too."
He gave her a slow wink. "Glad you noticed."
Another shiver coursed along her limbs, and this time it had nothing to do with his touch. All he had to do was give her a wink and she melted.
He sheathed his sword and it faded out of sight. She was dying to get her hands on the sheath to see how he managed it, but she didn't think he'd appreciate her making greedy, grabby hands, especially near his manlier parts.
Not that she was thinking about his manlier parts. She simply knew they were there. She was not going to look, no matter how much she'd piqued her own curiosity with the thought.
Her eyes slid down his torso, admiring the way the mock turtleneck hugged his muscular contours. She'd almost embarrassed herself by staring at his crotch when his voice jerked her attention back to his face, where it belonged.
"See something you like?" he asked.
She cleared her throat, ignoring his question. "So, if I can't have your sword, do you have any other items I might be interested in?"
"I don't know. What kind of things do you collect?"
"Items from a long-dead group of people called the Sentinels."
Neal went still, his eyes glittering in the dark confines of the truck. "Where did you hear about the Sentinels?"
"Books. You should give them a try sometime."
"I'm sorry to break it to you, but those books of yours had at least one thing wrong. They're not long-dead, sweetheart."
Viviana's body went numb at those words. "What do you know of them?"
"More than you, I'm sure. I happen to be one."
"Liar," she spat out before she could stop herself. It was easy to say he was one of them, but for all she knew, he'd researched her obsession with the Sentinels in order to win her over so he could get what he wanted from her.
There was one way to test him. "Which race are you?"
His brows lifted in a show of admiration. "You really have done your homework."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"Theronai," he said, waving the ring on his finger in front of her face. "Though I would have thought the luceria would have given it away."
Luceria. She rolled the word around in her head, letting the sound of it soak into her memory. "I don't remember any mention of a luceria."
"Guess you don't know everything, then, huh?"
"I know there's one sure way to prove what you say is correct."
"What? You mean that slaying those sgath wasn't proof enough? What about the way you feel when we touch? I bet no human man has ever made you feel like that before."
"I don't feel a thing," she lied. She couldn't remember reading anything about feeling odd at the touch of a Theronai, but that could have been the fault of her translation, too.
"No?" he challenged. "So you wouldn't mind if I touched you again, then?"
Yes, please. She'd like that very much. Not that she'd ever tell him so. This man needed no more weapons against her now that they shared a common interest. Sure, he said he was a Sentinel, but that had to be a fabrication. They were all dead.
Weren't they?
"Show me your lifemark," she demanded.
A slow, hot smile spread out over Neal's face. "If you wanted to get my shirt off, sweetheart, all you had to do was ask."
With that, he pulled the long-sleeved shirt off over his head, baring his chest.
Viviana stared and forgot to breathe.
Not only was he a living sculpture of masculine perfection; he was also telling her the truth. He was a Theronai. The giant tree spanning his chest, stretching from his left shoulder to well below his belt, was proof of that.
The detail was astounding. Even in the dim confines of the truck, she could still make out each individual leaf and twig. The bark was so lifelike, she itched to feel the texture of it under her fingers. As she watched, the tree seemed to sway with some invisible wind.
It had to be an optical illusion caused by the steady expansion of his ribs as he breathed.
Viviana reached out a hand. The compulsion to touch such an amazing work of art was uncontrollable.
Her fingers came to rest lightly on the image, and only then, when she felt the warmth of his skin, did she remember that this was no mere image on a canvas. She was touching a living, breathing man.
Beneath her fingers, she felt the branches shift, swaying toward her touch. An electric current flowed out of him, tingling her fingertips.
Neal sucked in a breath and held it. "I was right. You are one of ours."
"One of your what?"
"People. You're a Theronai. Like me."
Shock jolted Viviana's gaze up to his. He wasn't teasing. His dark blue eyes were steady on hers and there wasn't even the faintest hint of a smile anywhere to be found.
She started to pull her hand away, but he flattened his palm over her hand, holding it in place.
His warm skin was stretched tight over hard muscles. She could feel the subtle vibration of his pulse pounding in his chest.
Her breathing was too fast when she finally found the ability to speak. "I don't understand."
"You're not the first woman we've found who didn't know she was one of us. There are others like you—women fathered by men from another world. I know this all must be really confusing to you, but believe me when I tell you that you, Viviana Rowan, may be the only person on the face of this planet wh
o can save my life."
Chapter Four
Neal could hardly believe his eyes. Only the chaotic swirl of colors in his ring proved to him that he wasn't just experiencing a bout of wishful thinking. Viviana really could save him.
If she chose to do so.
She tugged on the hand he had pinned against his chest, but Neal wasn't ready for her to stop touching him yet. He was dealing with enough without adding an avalanche of pain on top of it.
"What do you mean?" she asked. "What's wrong with you? You seem perfectly healthy to me."
"How much do you know about lifemarks?"
"I read they were magical images put on men at birth that marked them as one of the Theronai."
"That's partly true. We're born with the mark, though it's merely a seed at that time. It sprouts and grows as we do."
"How is that possible? A tattoo doesn't grow."
"It's not a tattoo. It's a living mark that's as much a part of us as freckles or a birthmark—like the ring-shaped one you have."
She sucked in a shocked breath. "How did you know about that? I know you haven't seen it."
The fact that she bore the mark of a female of his race was simply more proof he was right.
Neal smiled and leaned closer. "Where is it, sweetheart? Want to show me? I showed you mine."
She turned a lovely shade of pink and her spine straightened. "You were explaining to me exactly how I'm supposed to save you."
"See how bare my lifemark is?"
She looked down and he knew what she saw. He had only a few precious leaves left hanging on.
"The leaves are gone."
"That's right. When the last one falls, my soul starts to die. I'll become evil and twisted. Unless I kill myself first, which I'd planned to do, right up until I met you. You can save me from that fate."
To his relief, she didn't seem appalled at how much he needed her, only curious. "How?"
"There's power inside me, power I can't use. I've been collecting it since I was a boy, saving it for the one woman who could use it. You're that woman, Viviana."
She let out another indelicate snort—the only unladylike sound he'd heard her make all night.
Even her screams of fear were prim and proper. "No, I'm not."
He pressed his hand harder over hers, pushing a few sparks of energy from his chest into her skin. "If you weren't, you wouldn't feel that." He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm.
More sparks fled his lips and jumped eagerly into her as if they'd been waiting to make the trip for years.
"This can't be happening."
"Why not? You said you've been studying us. You should know all about this."
"None of my books covered . . . this. It's all too much. I need some time to think."
A pang of disappointment fell over Neal, but he was tough. He could take it. Some things simply couldn't be forced. Getting a woman to commit the rest of her life to him was definitely one of those things.
"Okay. I'll back off, but not about the gadget. I need it. Torr needs it. I won't take no for an answer."
She gave him a shaky nod. "All right. It's obvious to me there are a lot of things I don't know. If you promise to take me with you and answer my questions along the way, then I'll take you to the artifact."
"It's a deal."
Neal pulled up to the home of the retired Professor Reynolds, the man who had possession of the healing device.
"All the lights are out," said Viviana. "I hate to wake him."
Her slender fingers were laced through his, and even though it made driving harder, he wasn't about to let go. He'd been pain-free for nearly an hour now, and it was enough to make him euphoric.
"I'm sure he won't mind, considering this is an emergency."
"I want to tell him about you. He loves these artifacts as much as I do. That's why I loaned the disks to him."
"Maybe some other time. I'm not sure I could handle another barrage of scholarly questions tonight. I might go hoarse."
Truth was, he hadn't minded her nonstop questions at all. The fact that she was interested in him and his people was just going to make her transition into his world that much easier.
He knew how hard it had been on Helen to leave behind her human upbringing. He hoped Viviana's background would make it easier on her.
He really did want things to be easy on her. The thought of her suffering made him want to pound on something with his bare fists. Not good for his carefully held control.
Neal kept her hand in his as he hopped out of the truck. She scooted to the edge and stopped.
Her hazel eyes were dark with worry as she stared at him for a long moment. "What am I doing?"
"Helping a man in need?"
She looked at their joined hands. "I can't stop touching you. I feel like a kid with a crush, and I don't even know you. This is not like me at all."
She was getting cold feet, letting all the confusion and questions sink into that clever head of hers. "No? What are you like?"
"Slow. Methodical. I think things through. I don't jump into trucks with strange men in the middle of the night and hold their hands."
"I'm your first, then?" he teased.
She didn't smile. "I'm scared, Neal. This whole thing scares me more than those monsters ever could. You're telling me that my whole life has been a lie. That I'm not even human."
"Nothing about your life is a lie. You just didn't know your own family tree, that's all."
"You think I'm going to save your life."
"I won't pretend it's not what I want. I don't want to die. I want to keep fighting. I honestly never thought I'd find you in time, but now that I have . . ."
"You want to keep me."
"We'll go slow," he promised. "I still have time. I'm not going to force you into anything you don't want."
"My life as I know it is over, isn't it?"
He trailed a finger over her cheek, reveling in the softness of her skin. She was so pretty. So elegantly unattainable. He had no business with a woman like her, even if his luceria thought otherwise. "I prefer to think of it as the start of a new life for you—one surrounded by the people you've been reading about for years. This will be your chance to study us in a way no one else ever has: from the inside."
"You're pushing all the right buttons to gain my cooperation, aren't you?"
"Sweetheart, if I'm ever lucky enough to push your buttons, you won't wonder why I'm doing it.
You'll know."
That delightful pink flush rose up from the prim collar of her shirt, making Neal wonder just how far down her blush went. He could think of a lot better ways to be passing the night with her than showing up uninvited at some stodgy professor's house.
He'd strip her out of all those proper clothes and get as much skin-on-skin contact as possible.
The play of sparks between them—the feel of minute traces of his power soaking into her skin—
would be enough to light the sheets on fire. And even though he wasn't supposed to want a woman like Viviana, the luceria thought they'd be good together.
Who was he to argue with centuries of proof that the system worked? If the luceria wanted him to have her, he was going to enjoy convincing her to play along with tradition.
And part of that convincing was getting her thinking in the right direction.
He cupped the back of her neck and pulled her toward him. She went along for the ride, closing the distance between them. She slid forward on the seat, which shoved her skirt up her thighs.
Neal stepped up, wedging himself between her knees so he could get as close as he needed to be.
Her eyes slid to his mouth and he knew in that moment that he had her. Victory surged through him, making him feel stronger, more powerful. Just the thought of this woman wanting to kiss him was enough to send him into overdrive. Bring on the battle. Let a dozen charging Synestryn bear down on him. He'd take them all out. Not one of them would get close to his lady.
&n
bsp; A low sound of warning rose up from his chest and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop it.
He felt Viviana stiffen slightly under his hand, but it was too late for second thoughts now.
He pressed his lips to hers, forcing himself to keep things light. No open mouths. No tongue.
Just the contact of her lips on his.
It wasn't even close to enough.
He wanted more. Desire spread through his body, pooling in his gut, making his limbs vibrate.
His luceria was freaking out, hopping around on his skin as if celebrating the contact.
Against his will, his fingers tightened around her neck, stroking slightly over her bare nape. He wanted to taste her there, to kiss and suck and bite while he took her from behind.
His cock was throbbing and swollen, and the need to push her legs wide and rub himself against her was swiftly taking over all rational thought. He slid a hand up her thigh, feeling the silkiness of her stockings, then the even softer texture of her bare skin. Thigh-highs. Naughty girl under all that prim-and-proper.
Just the thought made him lose control.
Neal opened his mouth to deepen their kiss, but she was way ahead of him. Her tongue danced across his lips, flicking against his, making his blood heat. She fisted her hands in his shirt, jerking him closer, and all he could think was that he wished he hadn't put it back on. He'd give anything to feel her palms against his bare chest again—feel his lifemark arcing to connect with her.
She slid to the edge of the seat, widening her thighs to make plenty of room for his body. The bite of her fingernails through his shirt was an exquisite torture, but not nearly as good as the sharp little nips of her teeth on his bottom lip.
A soft, feminine moan filled the space between them. Cold air swirled around them.
He'd have to keep her warm, cover her body with his. Not that he'd mind. He'd be her living blanket any day of the week and count himself a thousand kinds of lucky.
Neal cupped her breast, feeling the slippery silk fabric of her blouse warm between them. Her nipple puckered in his palm, though the damn layers of fabric she wore kept him from feeling it the way he wanted. He wondered if her nipples would tighten like that for his mouth, too.