“Ellen, that’s Eric’s mom,” she clarified. “She worked at juvie. Her job was housekeeping and the meal hall mostly. They let the staff take the self-defense classes if they wanted to, so she did. That was how she met Jirou.” A sweet smile graced Jess’s face. “They fell in love. When I was released, she took me in. Shihan Yamamoto, Aymee’s dad, had gotten cancer. He died before I was released; Aymee inherited her father’s part of the business. Aymee and I have been friends since my first class. Once I had finished business school and secured a loan, I bought Jirou’s half. Ellen and Jirou married right after Eric turned eighteen. They are in Japan now, helping with Jirou’s aging father. I miss them.”
He couldn’t take the separation between them any longer. Grabbing her arm, he tugged her around and back into his arms. He wondered how many people, if any, she’d ever shared that with. Pretty damn sure it wasn’t many. As Jess cried softly against his chest, all he could do was hold her, making what he hoped were soothing words into her hair. When she was spent, he lifted her chin to peer into her eyes, letting her see his understanding. He didn’t give her pity. She didn’t need or want pity.
“Remind me to never piss you off,” he jested, trying to acknowledge her strength and determination without being patronizing. Pleased to see some of the shadows lift from her eyes, he returned her half smile.
“Never piss me off.” She leaned into him for a kiss, which he gave her without a moment’s hesitation. His blood began to heat, and he felt her hands exploring his chest and abs. A trail of fire burned everywhere she touched. She was working her way downward. Shane nearly exploded when her hand wrapped around his engorged shaft. The siren swallowed his groan with her kiss. He could tell she was feeling empowered. Lying back, he relinquished control of the encounter to her. After everything she’d told him, she needed this.
Gritting his teeth, holding the release she’d incited the second she touched him, he watched her. Rising, she straddled him and slid over him, hot and sweet. Her hands balanced on his chest, she rode him quick and hard. Their voices combined in pleasure.
****
Moira had stomped out her front door after Jess had ported away. She had been trying since Jess’s twenty-fifth birthday to find a way to talk to her about coming to visit for a long period of time. Maybe actually come to Italy and stay with her. The time just never seemed right. Either she had things that interfered, or Jess would talk about something coming up in her life. Inside she knew that was complete bullshit. She was afraid to tell Jess everything she needed to. Afraid that Jess would hate her once she found out Moira was the reason Marja was dead. She missed her sister so much. The tears again began to fall. She reminded herself to remain calm.
She had never told Jess she wasn’t a dream. Jess was too smart. She would demand to know why Moira hadn’t aged. Why hadn’t Moira come and gotten her when she was a child? Why hadn’t Moira helped her deal with her psychic overload? Those didn’t come close to the things she was afraid to explain. She’d tried to justify her reluctance with the idea that Marja wanted Jess to live a normal life for as long as she could. She had made that very clear.
That justification didn’t hold up once Jess turned twenty-five. At this age, Jess could Become or enter into her first estrus heat at any time. Oh, hell, what if that was happening right then? What if it was estrus in the presence of an Elven? Was Jess Becoming?
She had failed her sister. Kicking a bucket outside her door, she watched it fly three hundred yards to slam into the side of her greenhouse. It didn’t sooth her conscience in the least. She again reminded herself to STAY CALM. According to her sources, her time might have run out. Jess might have come to the attention of the Elven. If she was harmed, it would be all Moira’s fault. Again she was failing her sister. She was responsible for every terrible thing that had ever happened to her sister. Now her reluctance to face her culpability in the horrors her sister had to face in their life, not once but twice, might have resulted in the breaking of her final promise to Marja.
She had gotten the strength and speed of their kind, but Marja had received the psychic abilities, and because of that Moira’s hands were tied. She had no choice but to either wait for Jess to return, or do the one thing she had never wanted to do: reveal herself to her sources, see if they would be willing to help her make direct contact with Jess. Their involvement in making that contact would be very dangerous for Jess, Moira, and the sources.
Returning to her living room, she threw herself into the chair Jess had recently vacated, chewing on her thumbnail, a habit she had been unable to break after centuries of trying. She decided to wait one more day in hopes that Jess would come back in her sleep tonight. Maybe Jess was safe. Maybe Moira had it wrong. Maybe whatever medication it was that Jess was taking was the reason Jess had not been significantly affected by the class she’d taught today. Jess’s history, though, would indicate that this long of an exposure to that level of stimuli should have all but incapacitated her. That she “seemed fine” did not bode well.
She would not give Jess her CPT drink until after she had at least confessed that she was more than a dream. Nearly blinded by her own tears, Moira stumbled to her office. Opening the hermetically sealed cabinet, she ran her fingers lovingly across her grandmother’s diaries. Her decision was made. She would give them to Jess, together with a transcript.
Moira had hoped the Elven would never find out about Jess. If they had, however, Jess might need the help of her great grandmother’s contacts. If Jess refused to listen or believe what Moira needed to tell her, Moira would offer her the diaries to take with her so that at least Jess would have them and could read about her origins.
Firing up her satellite link, Moira logged onto her computer. She ran through her normal sweeps and scans, answered a few emails, and monitored a couple of support groups.
There was a new request for membership in her in-box. Pulling it up, she read through the post. The writer was asking for information on spiritualism. She’d had an out-of-body experience, yada yada. What peaked her interest to schedule a web interview herself was the girl’s age—twenty-four—and what wasn’t being said. No reference to this being a new experience, or that it was felt “all her life” either. Usually those inquiries ended up being simply a wannabe pagan, someone looking for an excuse to run around naked in the moonlight or have a séance.
There were many, however, who had need to be in groups, supporting each other while protected by the anonymity afforded them by Moira’s encryption skills. The sites were completely impenetrable to hackers and available by invitation only. An invitation that was only procured once Moira had full background checks and history.
There were Hulven, Elven/Human hybrids, within her network. Most members were Heredity, those humans whose immune system did not kill foreign species’ sperm. Only they could give birth to Hulven offspring. Both types of members were being hunted. Moira’s mission was to ensure that if any found a way to her, she would do anything she could to protect them. She managed underground networks, creating layers of identities and societies for the people to hide within, all from her little farm using her computer.
She was preoccupied with the one person whose protection was the most paramount. Where was Jess?
She sent out an auto-response to the inquirer with a time for an interview, allowing the virus inlaid into the response forty-eight hours to search for any flags within the recipient’s system. She added instructions for how to receive the transmission when the time came. Leaning back in her chair, she returned to chewing her thumbnail.
****
“We got it!” The shout came across the office from one of the many live feed monitors on the wall. Fualth looked up from the file he had been thumbing through to see the image of a Hulven male, located in the Haitian nest, air punching and bouncing like a prizefighter. A female was looking at the prizefighter’s computer screen. “I don’t friggin’ believe it. You portrayed yourself as female.” She looked over her sho
ulder at her partner. “Nice! You need to call it in.”
His attention captured, Fualth watched the male lift a receiver and glanced down to another screen to see the corresponding call connect to the Elven Leader in Haiti’s nest. The two spoke for several minutes while Fualth observed them from his office in Maine. There were hundreds of monitors on the walls, monitoring his organization all over the world. All of them had voice stress analyzers so that moments like this were brought to his attention instantly.
The leader clicked on his keyboard, setting remote view to the screen under discussion. He hung up, leaned back in his chair, and ran his hand through his hair before reaching into his pocket and coming up with a familiar sat phone. The corresponding phone seated on Fualth’s desk began ringing. Seven minutes had elapsed.
“Talk to me, Frank.” A younger-generation Elven, the Haitian leader had a modern name. Fualth was currently using the name James Dalton Mason. Over the centuries he’d learned to use names that were interchangeable. It both created and saved the confusion of multiple aliases. Mason, James, Jimmy, JD, Dalton, even Mase worked with this one.
“Mr. Mason, we believe we may have made a preliminary contact with the host of a server used to support and aid many of the targets we seek,” Frank began to explain. Could it be? Fualth feared to hope.
“Which server would that be?” he asked, feigning mild interest.
“The Elusive,” Frank stated.
“And you think it’s her because …?” It had long ago been determined that the Elusive was female from the few pieced-together snippets collected from her groups and members. On the extremely rare occasions that they had been able to infiltrate one of her secured sites.
Twenty-five years he’d sought the female. Her sites were buried under layers and layers of algorithms and constantly changing random IPs. The longest contact to his knowledge had been sixty seconds. That had been the closest they had ever gotten to her. What was supposed to get him to a beginning point of one of her underground railroads had turned into a bloodbath. The woman he had encountered had immediately slit her own throat while a human male watched, forcing Fualth to place a hurried psychic patch over his mind, probably turned the poor bastard into a vegetable. That had been fifteen years ago.
Frank explained that the auto-response had set up the interview for the next day. Fualth only half-listened until Frank began to explain the complex structure of the simple message and the behavior of the response within the computer system. Buried deep into the response was a Trojan that deleted all history of her response and the original inquiry within five minutes of having opened the reply. That was one of the Elusive’s many skills. If the inquirer were a fraud, they wouldn’t have the original email to reference in any way.
“How would you like to handle the interview?” Frank asked, aware that chances were fifty-fifty they would lose the lead rather than gain any advantage. If the virus she’d sent detected one wrong thing in the computer memory, one wrong inflection in the vocals of the presenter, any kind of red flag, all trace would be wiped out completely.
“I will be bringing someone with me. A female decoy, who should be able to imitate the type of individual who would make access.” He pondered for a moment before adding, “You should also make available any individual you have under your leadership who you feel could bring us the advantage with the Elusive. I will consider all suggestions.”
“There are a few who would appreciate being considered for the task,” Frank replied. Fualth knew he would be grateful that his members’ contribution to this contact wasn’t being minimized or overlooked.
A few strokes on his own computer and he informed Frank, “My arrival time is confirmed for 3:00. That should give us time to select the candidate and plot a course.” A slow smile spread across Fualth’s face. “Please convey my congratulations to your staff members. Good work, Frank.”
“Thank you, sir. I will be sure to let them know you appreciate them.” The monitors showed Frank standing in the computer room surrounded by not just the two involved but a half-dozen more members of the team. They were thumbs-upping and high-fiving one another as Ed spoke. “We will have everything ready for your arrival.”
Fualth disconnected. Unable to contain his smile, Fualth hit the intercom button. “Pack a bikini, Sofia. We’re headed to Haiti.”
“Yes, sir,” came the immediate response of a well-trained Hulven assistant. No hassles, no questions. She was also psychically strong and blood-bonded to him. This situation was not something he would entrust to an unknown. He would need to know that whoever would be interviewing with the Elusive was truly loyal. A loyalty like that would require a bond that most would be reluctant to offer.
Speaking of bonds. Fualth telepathically reached for his mentor. “My liege.” He waited for a response. His mentor, Osiris, had the ability to shield from even the most powerful of bonds. Fualth wondered if even a bloodmate would be able to fully connect to the ghost. Osiris could shield and shadow himself so completely, he could be standing in front of you and you wouldn’t know.
“Yes, Fualth,” came the eventual reply.
“I believe we may have a line on the Elusive, sire.” Fualth informed him in the most direct way possible, telepathically forwarding the memory of his exchange with Haiti to Osiris.
After another moment Osiris commented, “You have the situation well in hand. However, keep me informed of your findings in this. I am pleased, Fualth.”
Then the connection was broken. Fualth preened under the rare autonomy he was being given in attempting to acquire this female.
Chapter Eight
“Jess.” Lying on his back, holding her in his arms, running his fingers up and down her arm, Shane hated to wake her from the few hours of sleep she’d fallen into after they’d made love.
“Hmmm.” Her voice purred. She was curled into his side with her head on his shoulder, the full length of her heat pressed against him. She fit perfectly, felt perfect.
“We should talk before you return to Moira.” He was stunned at the return of the liquid fire she easily turned his body into. He needed to talk to her, but his body wanted to do other things with her.
“I have to concentrate on her as I fall to sleep to go to her.” She lifted her head and leaned over, sucking his bottom lip into her mouth, pulling a groan from him. Her eye’s mischievous, she said, “She’s not really on my mind right now.”
Shane marveled at his reaction to this woman. He had expected his lust to be satisfied after having had her. No such luck. If anything she was drawing him to her even more. He felt like he was touching the edge of a Jess cyclone, believing he was in control, only to find she was spinning him faster and faster, pulling him in until she owned his soul. That thought should have given him pause, but looking into her emerald green eyes, studying the many points of the gold starburst pattern within, he felt like he was coming home.
“So you believe in your ability to physically travel using psychic energy?” Her easy acceptance was too good to be true.
“The drink does help me in the real world. I am still skeptical—you could be crazy. I’m hoping that I don’t have to admit to myself that I just had a gruntfest with a nutball.” She rolled onto her back beside him.
He turned onto his side, rising onto his elbow to peer down on her silly smile lighting up the room. “Gruntfest? You have got to be kidding me. That is how you refer to this?” Her outrageousness made him laugh.
“That’s what my best friend Aymee calls it,” she admitted, reaching up to cup his face in her palm. “I’m not sure it’s an adequate term for the last few hours. Is it always like this?”
“I have to admit, it’s never been like this before for me. I’ve never felt this type of connection to anyone before.” His chuckles drifted off in his sincerity. Was that really him saying something so sappy? She still gave him a look full of tentative hope laced with just the perfect amount of skepticism. Usually he appreciated a female whose heart was
n’t attached to her sex. Fates knew he’d had his share of females who got clingy after a single orgasm. He preferred someone sexually confident, though confidence didn’t always guarantee that an emotional attachment didn’t develop, resulting in the inevitably distasteful teary scenes. With Jess he longed to see love there.
“I did note you didn’t deny the nutball part.” She wiggled her finger at him. She seemed just as uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation as he was.
He leaned in for another kiss, but the rumble of her stomach drew him up short. She blushed adorably. “Did I mention I’m starving?” She batted her eyelashes at him with an innocent, toothy smile, making him laugh again. He snatched up the robe she had shrugged from her body earlier. Tying the sash, he trotted off to the kitchen, where he’d abandoned her snack earlier.
****
Jess watched Shane leave the room, his defined calves visible below the hem of the robe. Throwing her arm over her face as soon as he was a safe distance from her, she thought, I am in so much trouble here. She had thought, coming into this, that she would finally have one of Aymee’s infamous “ten-day true-love flings with a hot gruntfest” to share with her overly social best friend and business partner, naively thinking she would finally have an experience to share.
That would have been just too freaking easy. Sure as shit, karma kicked her right in the girl parts. Literally. What she was feeling bordered on obsession rather than Aymee’s form of amusement. No, she was going to be the pathetic loser who fell for the guy who popped her cherry. Left with a broken heart. It didn’t help that he was saying stupid sappy shit to her, all of which she craved to hear. Nor that she felt like she could tell him everything. And freaking had, damn it! Why couldn’t he just say something guyish, like, “Thanks, Babe, that ROCKED.” Or something equally lame. She vowed to not turn this into an emotional quagmire, feigning nonchalance when she heard him returning.
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