“Starla!” Kaelyn exclaimed. Clutching a hand to her chest, she exhaled a short breath as she fought off the sudden shock to her system.
“Aren’t you a bit jumpy?” Starla snaked her narrowed gaze like ice down Kaelyn’s spine. Suddenly, Kaelyn got the feeling that the Druid had caught her with her hand in the cookie jar. She held her breath and swallowed heavily, while waiting for Starla’s next words.
“I understand what you’re going through.” The Druid cast a forlorn look at the tense Medium. Still, Kaelyn did not respond, firmly rooted to her spot out of a paralyzing fear of which she couldn’t rightly place the origin.
“It’s the bond. It draws you to him, doesn’t it?” Starla asked.
Kaelyn could only nod, her eyes wide, and her every muscle still rigid.
Starla sighed, and held out her hand. Kaelyn blinked at the outstretched appendage before flitting her eyes back up to meet those of its owner.
“Do not be afraid. I want to help you,” Starla reassured her, her soft gaze knowing, yet accepting.
Kaelyn slowly let the tension leave her limbs, and carefully placed a hand in Starla’s. Suddenly, the kitchen of the Druid’s humble abode vanished. Instead, her apartment surrounded them: her bedroom, to be exact. Kaelyn’s jaw dropped as she stared around the familiar space in wonder.
“You have strong feelings attached to this place. Right now, Tyrian is resting. I will help your mind connect with his, and give you a boost to keep the connection strong, but you will only have a little more than an hour. Make it worth it,” Starla whispered.
Letting the Druid guide her, Kaelyn settled into the familiar comfort of her own bed. The downy covers cradled her, and lulled her into contentment as she let her mind drift to her mate. The feeling of weightlessness assailed her once more, and she soared across the vast expanse between her mind and his. She knew immediately when she made contact; the warmth and gentleness that caressed her spoke uniquely of Tyrian, and she breathed out a sigh of relief.
Finally, for the first time in days, she felt at home.
* * * *
The Druid leader left the Medium on her bed. No safer place existed to keep her. The enemy, whoever they were, would not be able to find her there, in her own home. A magic much older than even her own Druid legacy protected it.
She had suspected that the Medium would find the path, by accident or design, to open the portal to the Vampire realm. Starla herself had all but foretold it, all those thousands of years before. And now with the long-awaited prophecy finally coming to fruition, a sudden sense of helplessness overwhelmed the small Druid. She had grown all but useless in this battle. She’d even sent one of her own on, likely, a suicide mission against an enemy she still knew absolutely nothing about.
She knew one thing, though, with absolute certainty. Very soon, she would discover the identity of their mystery foe. And when she did, she would rain destruction down upon them the likes of which they had never known, and would never know again.
Chapter 11
Tyrian opened his eyes, then blinked, and stared out into the vast space around him. White on all sides surrounded him; he even stood on some type of surface he couldn’t see. He blinked again, and the room swam sharply into focus, the white nothingness bleeding out into red brick, creamy beige, and dark mahogany. He instantly recognized Kaelyn’s small apartment bedroom for a short moment before white once again surrounded him. Now, however, the whiteness was tangible, downy, and plush, and he realized that he had just been assaulted with a pillow.
Letting the feather contraption fall from his face, Tyrian drank in the form of his intoxicatingly irate Medium in the oh-so-tempting flesh, standing not two feet in front of him. He couldn’t quite bring himself to feel remorse for the obvious upset she projected. Those soft, delicate hands of hers, curled into fists, rested on her hips. Her beautiful face was drawn into a contemptuous frown, and she glared at him through blazing hazel eyes. He itched to grab her, draw her to him, and never let her go again. But he stood his ground.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“You have no idea how pissed I am at you,” Kaelyn ground out through clenched teeth, her eyes flashing indignantly at Tyrian. He felt the heat rising within him every second she kept him locked in that stare. His own passion, it seemed, cared nothing about her intent; enraged or aroused, he wanted her. Badly. To his pleasant surprise, he discovered in the next instant that the same appeared true for her.
She stalked toward him, and twisted one tiny hand in the front of his shirt before pulling him down into a soul-searing kiss. They gnashed lips and teeth against each other with raw abandon. Tongues twisted and roamed in a constant battle for dominance, neither allowing the other an upper hand. Kaelyn’s fingernails ripped at the fabric of his shirt, tore it over his head, and flung it across the room.
Good lord, she was attacking him like a rabid beast.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Tyrian responded in kind. His own pent-up passion erupted in a tidal wave of emotion that enveloped them both in an instant. With heavily calloused hands, he claimed purchase on her hips and drew her tightly against him, rubbing every inch of their bodies together, and committing every contour to vivid memory. He dug beneath the confines of her own top, then roughly dragged the entire ensemble over her head before letting it drop, leaving her bare from the waist up, to the delight of his emblazoned gaze.
He gripped her hips again, and lifted her feet off the ground to allow her to wrap her legs securely around his waist. Two steps to the right had him standing directly in front of the bed. He dropped one knee onto the soft surface, and braced her head with one hand and the small of her back with the other, to keep every bit of them in contact as he laid them down amidst the remaining pillows and covers.
Barely managing to breathe out past fervent kisses, Tyrian said offhandedly, “I thought you were pissed at me.”
Pulling back slightly to glare at him with a hooded, lust-clouded gaze, Kaelyn swallowed. His own vision hazy, Tyrian followed the motion with rapt attention. He allowed her to take one of his hands and softly trail his fingers over the exposed skin of her stomach, then bring them up to gently cup one of her breasts. He watched her eyes roll back in her head as he rolled her hardened nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She gave rise to a sultry smile on her swollen lips then, and opened her eyes to stare into his once more.
“I’ll have time to be pissed later,” she breathed. She dragged her fingers through his hair, and guiding his head down to her chest. “Right now, I need you to touch me.”
Smiling to himself against the underside of her other breast, Tyrian graciously acquiesced. Her soft sighs and moans reverberated in his head, tossing fuel on the already blazing inferno of his libido as he ravished her ample bosom. With her left hand, she gripped his right biceps firmly. Then she wrapped her left leg around his right thigh and flipped their positions, bringing herself to rest atop his heavily muscled chest and catching him off guard. She stared down at him with a sultry glint in her glowing hazel pools, and ran the tip of her tongue lasciviously over the front of her teeth. He didn’t even need one guess as to what that look meant: her chestnut curls tickled his abdomen as she languidly prowled, leaving a burning trail along every inch of exposed skin with her lips.
He almost forgot to breathe when she finally did reach her destination. With lithe fingers, she snapped open the button fastening his jeans and dragged the zipper down with her teeth. Tyrian, already hot with anticipation, thought that any more provocation would cause him to spontaneously combust. Kaelyn did not disappoint him: she made quick work of his jeans and undergarments, tearing them down his legs with the same ardor with which she had divested him of his shirt earlier.
Tyrian’s gaze never left hers as she crawled back up his body. As she went, she placed small, open-mouthed kisses on the insides of his thighs, all the way up to the straining evidence of his all-consuming need for her. It stood tall and proud at the juncture o
f his thighs, pulsing in open invitation for her to do as she would with it. He sucked in a sharp breath, his muscles tensing, as one small hand wrapped firmly around the base and slowly drew upward to the crown.
* * * *
Kaelyn didn’t know what had come over her. She usually kept actions like these hidden within her most clandestine fantasies. It occurred to her then that she and Tyrian shared a fantasy, a projection of thought and feeling over the connection between their hearts and minds, fueled by Druid magic and unbridled need. With that in mind, she threw all caution to the winds and immersed herself fully in the desire consuming her.
She tightened her grip on the rock-hard flesh in her hand. After steadying herself on his thighs, she brought her other hand up and interlocked her fingers around his shaft. Thus encompassing his full girth, she firmly dragged her sweat-soaked palms up and down the entire velvety length of him. A rumbling growl resonated from inside his chest and cascaded up through his vocal cords, drawing her utterly in.
She grew instantly soaked at the unbelievably sexy visage the powerful male beneath her afforded: all straining muscles and glistening skin. His emerald gaze, which had not once left hers, had darkened considerably with desire, and that breathtaking growl of his had somehow settled down into a rolling purr that left her practically dripping with the need to have him inside of her.
As if reading her thoughts, Tyrian broke the sexual tension slowly suffocating the two of them in its embrace. Single-minded intent hardened his gaze, and he shot up from the mattress and gripped her wrists. He wrenched them above her head, gripped them in one hand, and bent them behind her head at the elbow. The position bowed her backward, bringing every inch of their middles into sudden and complete contact with each other.
She vaguely registered a pulling sensation at her lower extremities just before a distinct tearing sound rent the air. She wasn’t even concerned that he had destroyed her favorite pair of jeans, especially not while suddenly and blissfully enveloped in the sensation of being completely filled. A strangled moan tore from her very core at the feeling; nerve endings fired off, one after another, as the combined force of their mingled lust consumed her.
* * * *
It was all too much. Whatever she had intended by taking the reins had flown to the wayside, trampled under Tyrian’s own needs as they finally and completely broke free from his utterly frazzled control. He’d almost lost it when she’d taken him in both her hands and dragged him slowly and steadily to the brink of unreason. The full frontal assault of her heady scent had finally proved his undoing.
Gripping her wrists gently in one hand, Tyrian wrapped the other firmly around the globe of one of Kaelyn’s perfect, round buttocks. He drove deeply into the scorching, wet heat of her center. All the provocation she’d tossed at him had left her drenched and keening, her inner muscles pulling incessantly against him as he rocked powerfully within her.
They forgot all other needs in the haze of passion that consumed them. The need to think, to breathe, to focus on anything other than racing toward the goal that taunted them both vanished, leaving nothing in its wake but raw, unfettered lust. Kaelyn dropped her chin like an anvil against her chest, hazel eyes briefly locking with emerald, before she dove forward and crashed her mouth against his.
It was something akin to combat between them, the insistency bordering on painful. Tyrian released Kaelyn’s wrists, then gripped her waist firmly. Without breaking their connection, he turned her in his arms, bringing her back flush with his front. He spread his thighs, draped hers on the outside of his, and drew them open as far as they would go. Delving one hand between her legs, he then relentlessly assaulted the swollen bundle of nerves nestled amidst her dark curls.
* * * *
Desperate, uncontainable moans and half-screams tore from Kaelyn’s vocal cords, and reverberated through the fabricated room. Tyrian’s pace quickened, falling out of a steady rhythm as he drove into that place within her that caused stars to burst behind her vision with every upward thrust. She quaked in his embrace now, moving against him with the same haphazard undulations as they both fought for the completion that hovered just out of reach.
Kaelyn reached one hand behind her to tangle in Tyrian’s sweat-soaked locks. She tightened that hand into a fist as she clenched her teeth, breaths coming out in short, concentrated puffs. She cried out with wild abandon at the sensation of his teeth clamping at the juncture between her neck and shoulder, canines digging into her flesh and drawing blood. Her body finally reached its limit, unable to rise any higher, and she shattered, breaking apart in his arms while shouting her relief to the heavens.
Tyrian followed right on Kaelyn’s heels, her release dragging him into his own. He came, sighing against her shoulder, and heaved great breaths in and out of his starved lungs. Leaning back against his shoulder, she let her head list to the side, locking gazes with the man of her dreams. Smiling languidly, she ran her fingers over his lightly stubbled cheek, and drew his swollen lips to her own in a slow, gentle kiss.
* * * *
After pulling back softly, Kaelyn gazed into Tyrian’s eyes, her own taking on a seriousness that seemed to chill the room around them almost instantly.
“You’re going to come back to me, aren’t you?” she asked, concern coloring her gaze.
Tyrian cupped her face in his hands, and stared deeply into her eyes. “The thought of returning to you is the only thing keeping me going,” he vowed to her. Then he captured her lips with his once more.
“Good,” Kaelyn breathed into the kiss, “because I’m not done fighting with you.”
Smiling against her lips, Tyrian tightened his hold on her waist, bringing her closer into his embrace, where he fully intended to keep her for the rest of his life. “I think I rather enjoy fighting with you,” he admitted. This earned him a light slap on the biceps, and a slightly admonishing glare from the woman in his arms.
Swallowing heavily, Kaelyn rested her forehead against his, and stared into his eyes, that previous seriousness settling back into her gaze. “Tyrian, promise me you’ll be careful. Don’t do anything stupid,” she pleaded.
Pinning her with his own admonishing glare, Tyrian responded to the thoughts and feelings he’d seen floating around in her subconscious. “I should be saying the same to you,” he said in all seriousness, the gravity of their situation settling in around both of them and significantly weighing down the atmosphere between them.
Smiling softly, with less remorse that Tyrian would have liked to see in the expression, Kaelyn drew back and rested her hand against his cheek, the smile on her lips not quite entering her eyes. “Come back to me, and I won’t have to,” she whispered.
At that moment, Tyrian knew that he had lost the battle. If he didn’t find some way to return to her soon, she would come after him. And he would absolutely never allow that. “I’ll be back at your side before you know it, my love,” he compromised wistfully.
Kaelyn’s smile turned sad; she probably felt the pulling sensation that now drew her back across the realms, to her own body.
“Time to go...” her fading voice whispered in the dark. The room around them brightened once again into the brilliant white landscape it had begun as before fading into black.
Tyrian opened his eyes once more, and stared at the slightly curved black glass ceiling of the room El’on had escorted him to.
So much for that plan.
His encounter with Kaelyn told him that he would swiftly run out of time. He absolutely could not allow her to take matters into her own hands.
Sitting up on the hard leather slab the Vampires called a bed, Tyrian rubbed at his aching shoulder muscles, and ran a hand over his face to drag the drowsiness from his mind. He stared darkly into the empty blackness of the room surrounding him, and thought back on his bleak dinner conversation with El’on and his brothers.
* * * *
El’on’s wife, Li’on, set a plate of dark red uncooked meat in front of Tyrian. H
er gracious smile came off a bit malicious, with her sharp, curved teeth and dark red irises. El’on chuckled, probably at disgust etched across his face.
“Believe me, it is better uncooked. Try it; you’ll like it,” El’on urged. Vampires seemed to share a racial trait of absolute certainty that they knew what was best for you.
Sighing, Tyrian decided that he ought to show a bit of faith in the creatures if he expected them to divulge any information about Caleb’s captor, or his location. He gulped past a gag reflex as he brought a small piece of the raw meat up to his mouth. Then he carefully closed his lips around the provided eating utensil, and deposited the juicy bit of flesh on his tongue. Glancing around the table briefly revealed a variety of expressions, from El’on’s expectant stare, past a few openly amused, brightly colored eyes, all the way around to Vor’on’s disinterested countenance. Slowly, he rolled the chunk around in his mouth and bit in with his back teeth.
The meat didn’t immediately have much of a taste, but when his molars punctured the flesh, it carried to Tyrian’s taste buds a mild sweetness. What had to be the blood of the creature sacrificed for his dinner coated the insides of his mouth in a texture only slightly thicker than water, and of the same consistency. The meat itself, very lean, practically melted in his mouth as he chewed.
Swallowing, Tyrian could not keep the relief from his face as he nodded to Li’on in appreciation. The female Vampire blushed prettily, and bustled off back toward the kitchen without a word. No doubt assured that the Hunter would continue eating, El’on began his own meal, and gestured for the others around the table to follow suit. They all ate in tense silence, wariness hanging in the air.
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