Lissa Kasey - Dominion 3 - Conviction

by Lissa Kasey

  “We have free rein of the kitchen.” Cat skipped ahead of us. “Follow me.”

  Con smiled at me, a simple lift to the edge of his lips. That smile had been lethal in our younger days. He wore that after we jerked each other off in the locker room between practices. To this day I still didn’t know how we got away with it without being caught.

  “Kelly Harding. You’re looking sunny as usual.”

  “Tanning booths. They’re all the rage. Didn’t you hear? It’s winter in Minnesota.” I snapped up my bag and headed toward the main counter. Jamie and I would need a room, if they had one. Jamie, Sei, and Cat vanished around the corner, probably headed toward the kitchen.

  The woman smiled at me from behind the counter. She was mid-fifties with graying hair pulled back into a bun and happy crinkles at the corners of her eyes. She held out her hand to me. “Louise Gossner,” she said. “Hans’s wife. I’m glad to see you boys are okay. We were worried. Hans is still trying to reach the county sheriff to find out when the roads will be plowed. No one saw that storm coming, else we wouldn’t have rented the cabins out to you boys.”

  “We’re fine. Just hoping you have another room?” I pulled out my wallet to grab my credit card, but she waved it away.

  “The only empty room I have is a single king. I won’t charge you. You’ve already paid for the cabins.” She pulled out two regular keys and handed them to me. “Give one to the other boy. The one with the big brown eyes.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Gossner.”

  Pocketing a key, I turned around only to run into Con again. His face tilted down toward me like he was going to kiss me. I ripped myself away before he could get too close. “What, man? You made yourself clear years ago.”

  “I’m out now. Don’t you think that fate is giving us a second chance?”

  “No.” I stomped up the stairs to my new room, Con on my heels. Opening the door, I stepped inside and then shut it in his face, locking it behind me. My heart slammed in my chest while I waited for his footsteps to move away. Shit, that had been unexpected.

  High school had been hard enough. I learned fast to keep my head low and out of trouble. The one other jock I’d fooled around with had beaten me up when one of his friends jested about me looking at him funny. Didn’t seem to matter much to the guy the night before when he had his cock in my mouth.

  Con had been a whole other world of trouble.

  We panted, coming down from the quick hand job in the back of the shower after training. Con had a dragon tattoo outlined that wrapped from his navel all the way around his back and up to his neck. It would be badass when it was finished. I traced it with my fingers, though all that really mattered was that his skin felt good against mine.

  “Come over after dinner,” he said.

  I’d climbed the tree beside his window a hundred times. Tonight would be different. We’d been together a whole year as of today. And though we talked about it a lot we’d never done it. “Did you get the stuff?”

  “Yeah. I’ll make it good for you, I promise.”

  The shower was good for me. Hot water pouring down on us. His firm grip still massaging the two of us together, and me pressed to his warm skin. I liked what we had so far. “I’ve read it hurts.”

  His lips pulled up in that hot smile that made me want to go down on him then and there. We’d only have a few more minutes before someone else entered the shower, and our game would be over. “I’ll take care of you.” He leaned in and kissed me, all lips and teeth and exploring tongue.

  “Okay,” I said when he pulled away. My heart pounded, and I had to say it. “I love you, Con.”

  “Love you too, K.”

  I shook myself out of the memory. That night had been all about romance. Sex hadn’t been all that great. It had been important because I believed I loved Con. We took classes together. Ate lunch together, camped, fished, and later fucked as much as we could. He’d always been a bad boy and a player, but I thought I could keep him on the straight and narrow. How naïve I’d been.

  I unpacked my things and headed into the shower, determined to wash him from my mind. Somehow I didn’t think that was going to be as easy as I had imagined. Losing him had hurt. First loves were often that way.

  Chapter Six

  Jamie I WATCHED Kelly disappear up the stairs, keys in hand, before I took Sei to find food. Sei nearly had a heart attack when we went into the kitchen. I shouldn’t have expected the cleanliness that Gabe required in his home or his bar to be extended to places outside his reach. Cat had been shocked by his reaction, though it didn’t stop her from clinging to my arm and batting her overly made up lashes at me. Dominion girls were all the same, and I didn’t need that kind of trouble.

  I got Sei fed and calmed. We sat in a couple of recliners in the lounge, finishing up sandwiches and fruit. He watched me with worry and curiosity that I wasn’t used to.

  “What?” I finally asked. He shook his head, looking away, but then his eyes darted back my way.

  Did he think something was wrong? “You can talk to me, you know.”

  He just gave me a sweet smile and stole a grape from my tray.

  “Will you tell me what’s going on with you and Kelly?” Sei would likely have a different opinion of Kelly’s nightmares. I wondered if either of them was giving me the whole story.

  “Nothing’s going on.”

  I wanted to ask why I’d found him and Kelly sleeping together a half dozen times in the past few weeks then, get Sei’s take on his best friend’s behavior, but Sei would probably shut down on me, and after that hug in the lobby, I didn’t want to lose our progress. “I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

  “He’s okay. Just dealing with stuff. That’s all.”

  “Like you were dealing with stuff?”

  “I’m okay.” He glanced my way again. “We’re okay.” I fought to keep my sigh to myself. Tanaka, his mother,

  made him this way. She was so reserved about emotion she’d inflicted fear into Sei about expressing himself. Kelly was good for him in that way, since the guy was pretty open about everything he felt. Except now. Something had changed, and Sei followed his lead, which meant harder times ahead for Gabe and me.

  “I think as soon as the roads clear we should go home.” He frowned now. “But it’s our vacation. We’re supposed to do family stuff.”

  “And you hate the cold and snow. We should have gone somewhere warm.”

  “Then I couldn’t spend much time with Gabe.”

  But Kelly wouldn’t be trembling like a willow tree in the wind, and Sei wouldn’t have that tight set of his shoulders when he thought people were staring at him. Which that tall tattooed guy was doing now as he stood near the stairway. Gabe could have rented an island or something.

  The main lodge door opened, and Hans came in looking cold and distressed. He stopped at the counter to talk to his wife for a few minutes. I caught the words “sled” and “frozen.” That didn’t sound good.

  I brushed Sei’s shoulder. “How about you go and nap with Gabe for a while. You look tired.”

  “I am a little tired.” To have him admit it meant he was more exhausted than he appeared to be.

  I walked him to the stairs, watched him disappear toward his room, and then I headed for Hans. If we had a chance of getting out of here, I would do what I could to make that happen. My bones ached with a familiar pain that made me think something was seriously wrong, and we just hadn’t figured it out yet. With Kelly and Sei safe upstairs, I could search for a way out of the hills and valleys of northwest Minnesota and back to where I could guard them with ease.

  Chapter Seven

  Kelly AFTER washing away the day from my skin and dressing in clean, warm clothes, my stomach rumbled. I found my way back down to the lobby, thankful that Con was nowhere around, and tried to find Jamie and Sei. We still had to talk about that horrible storm.

  “The little one went back up to his room,” Mrs. Gossner said when I asked. “The older on
e is out looking at the snowmobiles with Hans. None of them will start, and we can’t find Ron. He usually does all the maintenance.”

  I wondered if the sleds had been full of gas before the storm hit. If they’d been low, the lines could have frozen. Or maybe the batteries just needed a boost.

  The lodge looked so empty. How many other guests were trapped with us? The sun setting in the distance meant it had to be close to four in the afternoon. Gabe would be up soon. The cold that had gotten to me yesterday didn’t seem to be rearing its head yet. Maybe it was just a fluke.

  I crossed the lodge and headed out the door, hoping to find Jamie and learn just how stranded we truly were. Being at the lodge made the storm seem less intimidating. There were strong walls around us and other people affected too. It just didn’t seem as big of a deal. I hoped I was right.

  The garage door was shut tight against the increasing wind, so I had to rush across the very-snowy lot. Good thing I’d put my Docs on before coming down. The cars were just heaping mounds of snow. I couldn’t imagine how bad the roads were. Out here in the great open north, whiteout conditions were a real threat. Hopefully the sleds worked and we could get to a ranger station for supplies or rescue.

  The wind groaned in crazy bursts through the barren trees, throwing loosened snow at me the whole way across the lot. I stepped inside the garage and shivered. The lights were on, and it was warm, though not the friendly heat the fires at the lodge gave off.

  Jamie hunched over one of the sleds, hands wrapped somewhere in the core of the machine. Hans peered in the gas tank of another. “It looks like they all were,” he said.

  “Shit,” was Jamie’s reply.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Jamie glanced back my way. “You shouldn’t be outside

  without a coat.”

  “I’m inside now.” I gave him a mischievous smile. “You’re almost as bad as Sei.” Though his tone made it

  sound more like approval than a complaint. He seemed to be trying to be angry with me. I moved up beside him and stared down at the sled. The metal glistened with condensation, and frost covered a good portion of the lines. “That doesn’t look good. Water in the lines?”

  “Yeah. All of them,” Hans answered. “Never seen anything like it.” The uneasy feeling the storm had left me last night came back in a quick shudder. Having never lived in a hurricane state I couldn’t equate to that. But if I could imagine, and my imagination was really good, whatever had hit us last night had been somewhere along the lines of a low level hurricane of snow. Lots of wind, water, and pressure, creating a whole soup of bad.

  My eyes refocused on the lines, and I looked up to find Jamie watching me curiously. “What?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Are the radios working yet?” Maybe I should have grabbed my coat. The temp in the garage couldn’t have been more than forty degrees.

  “We got a short CB message through to the ranger station, but no response.” Hans pressed his hat down further over his gray hair. “Can’t find Ron anywhere.”

  Jamie got up and shrugged out of his coat, handing it to me. I shook him away. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re shivering.”

  “You need that more than me. There’s more of you to heat.”

  He growled, much like the bear he became on the new moon, and wrapped the coat around me. “What is it with people not taking care of themselves? Doesn’t anyone train their kids to be self-sufficient?”

  When he put it that way…. “I’ll run in and get my coat.” “Take that one with you. Just bring it back when you come in again. It’s only two or three degrees above freezing.” Jamie went to the next sled, digging into the engine like an old pro. Was there anything he wasn’t good at?

  I turned away, letting myself out but making sure the door was firmly shut. Hurrying across the yard didn’t keep me any warmer, Jamie’s ginormous coat around me or not. Snow had blown heavily around the doorway, and when I pulled on the doors they wouldn’t even budge. What the hell?

  Tugging harder, I tried pushing and pulling both doors. Neither moved. The huge wooden slabs didn’t have any glass to look through, so I pounded on them. Was it the cold, or had someone locked us out? I followed the wall around the opposite side of the house to see if there were other entrances. They must have a fire exit or something. Maybe a delivery entrance.

  The right side of the building didn’t have as many trees, so the drifts of snow towered above me, pressing against the building. I picked my way through the snow, sinking several feet in with each step. The top of a door was visible. Without gloves or a hat I was already shivering. Trying to brush the snow away made only minimal progress. The drift was probably four or five feet wide. If the door swung outward there was no way it was going to open.

  A press of moisture began to fill the air again. I cringed against the cold and that feeling of something wrong that kept digging down inside of me. Had Jamie told Seiran about the storm? Even if he had, there were no working phones, so it wasn’t like he could call the Dominion for help. I was a level five water witch. Did they have someone more powerful they could send to put a lid on the magic?

  Pressure began to build in my head again, making me shut my eyes for a moment to block out the light. Finally, I sucked in a deep breath and climbed up the pile, trying to push everything away from the door so I could open it. The cold stung and froze my fingers when I slipped and plunged into the snow. My feet stopped somewhat further off the ground than I had expected. I dug through the drifting white mass until I found the red plaid of a flannel shirt. Everything beneath it was hard, solid, and unmoving.

  The blue set of flesh was not something I’d ever encountered before. I even dug a little further, thinking I was seeing things. But the flannel led to a jacket, which lead to an arm. My heart pounded like a freight train. Dead bodies only happened in the movies. I was so not ready to be the next Sherlock Holmes.

  Pulsing cold and fear made all logic unattainable. My heart hammered in my chest as I turned and ran back to the garage, slipping and gasping for air like the fish out of water that I was. I slammed the door open and stumble-slid to a stop in front of Jamie.

  “Guy in the snow. Frozen!” I wheezed, lungs cinching tight.

  Both Hans and Jamie blinked at me. Obviously they didn’t get what I was saying.

  I waved my arms at them and motioned in the direction of the lodge. “Side door. Dead guy!” The weight of the water rising in the air closed in on me. I suddenly felt lightheaded from the lack of oxygen. Must have closed my eyes, because when I opened them again Jamie was there, arm around me, holding me up.

  “I’ll go check the kitchen door. Get him inside. There’s another storm blowing in,” Hans said to Jamie while he headed out the door into the whipping wind.

  “C-coat?” I asked Jamie, offering it back.

  He shook his head. “You have asthma?”

  I nodded, though it’d been years since I’d had an attack this bad.

  “Where’s your inhaler?”

  “Room,” I rasped.

  Jamie scooped me up and raced through the cold to the main door. He tugged at it, and it didn’t budge. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He set me down beside the door and reached out, funneling his magic into the wood. The door began to warp and move beneath his hand until it split in the middle and spit the lock out like it had a bad taste. Jamie kicked the door open, picked me up, and raced up the stairs. “Which one?”

  I pointed to the one at the end of the hall to the left. Dark dots began to pour into my sight as I struggled for air. Jamie fumbled around in my pockets, yanking out the key and opening the door. He set me on the bed and looked around the room in a panic. I leaned across the bed and pulled my inhaler out of the bedside drawer, taking several long puffs before some of the tightness eased.

  Jamie finally took a long, deep breath himself and fell to his knees beside the bed. I lay on my side, staring at him while I forced my bod
y to draw even breaths.

  “I’m a whole world of angry with you right now.”

  “Why?” I whispered, happy the black dots had gone away.

  “You never told me you have asthma. How many times have we done something that could have set off an attack?”

  Was that all? “I grew up with asthma. I know how hard I can push myself. I run and swim, remember? Lots of awards.”

  He threw his hands up in exasperation. “You’re just like Sei. Hiding the important stuff. He won’t take his anxiety pills without me reminding him, but he needs them. Without them, he’s a quivering mass of jelly.”

  “That he is.” It felt so much better to breathe again. I sucked in heavy lungfuls of air and watched Jamie pace the room like a caged tiger.

  “Okay, Yoda.” He began to pick up things and put them away. Everything had a place, which was a motto that came from spending lots of time with Seiran’s OCD. “Better now?”

  “Yes. But there’s still a dead guy by that side door. Frozen, I think. He was hard as ice. I hope to never see that again.” I closed my eyes while Jamie still moved around the room.

  “Why don’t you tell me these things? Don’t you trust me?”

  I popped open an eye to stare at him. “I do trust you.”

  He folded his arms across his chest, face pinched like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t. I let my body relax into the mattress and must have fallen asleep since all sounds disappeared for a while. Never felt Jamie grab his coat off, pull the blankets around me, and leave.

  Chapter Eight

  Jamie KELLY was going to make my heart give out. I’d driven him around for months. Had hundreds of meals with him, walked him to class, and spent a lot of time watching movies beside him on the couch, only to find out he’d been hiding a serious illness from me. How many times had we gone running or swimming, or even now on the ski trip, and he could have had an attack? God I hated that helpless feeling.