Ethan stood on the porch and watched the vehicle’s tail lights disappear between the trees. He turned to see Olivia in the doorway. ‘Shall we?’
She squared her shoulders and nodded.
Olivia woke up with a parched throat. She blinked at the dark ceiling before reaching for the switch on the bedside lamp. Soft light flooded the room. She picked up the empty glass on the side table and padded barefoot into the bathroom.
She filled the glass at the sink, swallowed a few gulps of water, and was wiping her mouth with the back of her hand when she saw her reflection in the mirror. The sea-green eyes staring back at her were filled with an oddly sensuous light. Olivia froze. The memory of the devastating kiss from earlier flashed through her mind and brought with it a shocking and unwanted realization.
The hunger that had filled her soul when Ethan Storm touched her still hummed somewhere deep inside her body, a need that ached to be quelled. The feeling was like none she had ever experienced before and it scared her half to death.
She recalled the incident from a few hours ago, when they had practiced using their powers in tandem once more. This time, the Crovir noble had wanted to know just how far his presence influenced her abilities and had had her remote-view several locations from pictures he pulled up on the internet.
Finding herself on top of the Empire State Building had startled Olivia, as had her unscheduled mental trip to the summit of Mount Fuji, an isolated monastery in Tibet, and the middle of a Bolivian jungle. The ease with which her mind had translocated to those places had been even more surprising, as had the length of time she had maintained the spatial connection.
When Ethan asked her to try and read his and Howard’s minds, Olivia balked at the request.
‘It’s part of who you are,’ he said with a scowl. ‘Don’t you want to know—?’
‘No,’ Olivia interrupted vehemently. ‘That’s one thing I won’t do.’
He’d stared at her, fists clenched at his sides.
‘You never know—it might be fun,’ Howard told Olivia in the strained silence. He raised his hands at Ethan’s glare. ‘Hey, I’m only trying to lighten the mood.’
Ethan let out an exasperated sigh and stared at the fireplace. ‘Well, I guess we’ll never find out just how far your—’
The flames leapt in the hearth, yellow light flaring across the dimly-lit lounge.
Ethan startled and took a step back. ‘What the—?’
The fire roared high up the chimney and spat out sparks. Bright specks landed on the floorboards and started to smoke. Howard jumped up from the couch and stamped them out.
Ethan looked at Olivia, his eyes wide with shock. ‘Are you doing this?’
‘I—I don’t know,’ she stammered, her heart in her mouth.
His gaze shifted to the fire. A focused frown furrowed his brow. He flexed his fingers.
The light faded as the flames gradually returned to their normal flicker.
Ethan blinked.
‘Wow,’ muttered Howard. ‘So you can do fire.’
Olivia shuddered when she recollected the expression that had flashed on Ethan’s face. He had looked both awed and angry, as if she had once more invaded the sanctity of his mind without his permission. She refilled the glass and headed back toward the bed.
The vision came suddenly when she was halfway across the floor.
Chapter Twenty
Fires raged across a desert landscape, the flames buffeted by a violent wind. The deformed shapes of army vehicles were visible in the midst of the blaze, their twisted shells black with soot. Sparks erupted from undercarriages as several were forcibly pushed across the ground. Screams punctuated the explosions echoing in the distance.
Brightness suddenly flared on the horizon, an eerie, blindingly-beautiful white cloud that mushroomed silently from the ground and rose rapidly toward the pale blue sky, dampening all sound.
A shadow appeared in her field of vision. A man grabbed her shoulder and shouted something. His blood-stained features blurred. Olivia blinked.
Ethan’s face swam into focus. He stared at her with a desperate expression before taking her head in his hand. His lips landed on hers a heartbeat later.
A cry escaped her when the vision ended, the image shattering into a million pieces. Olivia returned to the present with a jolt and found herself crushed against a warm, naked chest. She stiffened.
‘Sshhh,’ soothed Ethan. ‘It’s okay. You’re all right.’
He stroked her hair gently, one arm wrapped around her slender frame while the other cradled her head to his shoulder.
The glass was on the floor by their feet, water spilled across the floorboards.
Olivia’s heart thundered against her breastbone, the sound so loud that she wondered whether the man holding her could hear its frantic beat. Her breathing gradually slowed as the aftereffects of the vision faded. It was almost a minute before she raised her head and stepped awkwardly out of his embrace.
Ethan’s arms fell to his sides. He indicated the glass. ‘I heard a noise.’
Olivia swallowed, her voice stuck somewhere in her throat.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ said Ethan, his tone full of concern.
No. I want you out of this room!
Olivia stared at the half-naked man standing before her, her heart pounding.
His legs were clad in cotton pajama bottoms that hung low on his hips and did nothing to hide the solid strength of his limbs. Corded muscles stretched his honey-colored skin from his wide shoulders all the way down to his lower abdomen. Her gaze followed the fine line of dark blond hair arrowing down from his navel and disappearing under his waistband.
‘Like what you see?’
Olivia’s head snapped up. Ethan was watching her with an amused expression.
She flushed, mortified by her brazen behavior. She had practically stripped him with her eyes—not that he was leaving much to the imagination.
He reached across the space separating them and fingered the sleeve of her cotton nightdress. ‘I gotta admit, I’m not normally a fan of this kind of nightwear. On you, it looks downright sinful.’
Air froze in her lungs. His eyes had darkened to a molten, navy blue. His fingertips scorched her skin where they touched her.
He watched her carefully, like a hunter would its prey.
‘This…whatever it is…’ He waved a hand between the two of them. ‘It’s going to happen.’
Olivia’s mouth went dry as his meaning sank in.
A rueful smile curved his lips at her expression. ‘You know, I was angry when Asgard told me we were meant to be together. Angry and…well, terrified.’
Ethan’s gaze grew hooded. It was a while before he spoke again. ‘After losing my family, I promised myself I would never again care for another person as deeply as I had them. Love, and all its complications, was not something I ever wanted for myself.’
Olivia kept deathly still, afraid to break the spell between them. This man, this powerful immortal predestined to be her soulmate, was confessing something she sensed he had never before divulged to a living soul. This realization both humbled and frightened her.
‘I’m still scared of this connection between us,’ Ethan continued in a low voice. ‘But I’m not going to run away from it anymore.’
Olivia drew a shuddering breath. His admission seemed to be sealing something between them, an invisible contract she had yet to acknowledge.
Ethan raised a hand and cupped her chin. His eyes focused on her mouth. She shivered when he rubbed the pad of his thumb across the plump flesh of her lower lip.
‘I want this. I want you.’ He paused, his hot gaze rising to meet hers. ‘How about you?’
Heat ignited from where he touched her and slowly filled her veins. Olivia closed her eyes and felt the hunger sleeping deep inside rise to the fore once more.
‘Yes,’ she breathed.
He took three steps to the door, closed it, and returned to take her
in his arms. His mouth met hers with a desperation that matched her own need.
This time, she parted her lips of her own accord.
Ethan stifled a groan as he speared his fingers through Olivia’s hair, holding her head in place while he learned the shape of her mouth.
He had been awake when he heard the dull thud coming from down the corridor. When he entered Olivia’s room and saw her by the bed, a glass rolling at her feet while she stood frozen in a psychic daze, the need to protect her had him automatically reaching for her.
The desire that slowly filled her face after she awoke from the vision had stopped him in his tracks and sent his blood churning with lust. It had also drawn a stilted admission from the depths of his soul; never in his immortal lives had he been as honest and as vulnerable in front of a woman as he had in that moment. Her reaction to his words and her breathless acquiescence to his question undid the last restraints of his self-control.
He reached for the hem of her nightdress and pulled it over her head, their lips breaking contact for a couple of torturous seconds. He ran his hands from her wrists all the way down her arms, his thumbs skimming the sides of her cotton-covered breasts before curving into the elastic band at her hips and pulling her against him. She tensed and drew back slightly at the intimate contact, a trace of alarm dampening the passion in her eyes.
‘It’s okay,’ Ethan murmured, his heart slamming against his ribs. ‘I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.’
He wondered shakily how he was going to keep this promise when all he wanted to do was push her down on the bed and take her.
Her next words were his undoing. Her fingers curled around his nape and she rose on the tips of her toes to bring her lips to his. ‘Don’t stop.’
He deepened the kiss and peeled off the rest of her clothing. When her hands dropped to the waistband of his pajamas, he covered them with his own and rested his forehead against hers, his breathing ragged.
Her teeth flashed in the golden light bathing the room.
The little imp!
Olivia gasped when he lifted her in his arms and kneeled on the bed. Ethan laid her down and crouched above her, his gaze skimming the length of her body. He stilled, his breath catching in his throat.
He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life as the woman who lay beneath him, her face flushed with desire, the silver locket with the third eye gleaming against her fair skin. He ran a finger down her cheek to her chin, tilted her head, and angled her mouth for his kiss.
A shiver danced along her limbs as she watched him strip. He returned to the bed and gently lowered his body onto hers, his weight pressing her into the mattress. She trembled beneath him. Ethan closed his eyes for a moment, struggling for control. Her hands found his chest. He shuddered and opened his eyes to fathomless green depths. Her fingers flittered across his skin, at first timid then growing bolder in her exploration, her gaze locked heatedly on his. She stroked his shoulders and arms before gliding down his spine and around his hips.
That was when he felt the flutter in his mind.
Ethan froze, heart filling with wonderment as the sensation increased, bringing with it nuances of brightly-colored emotions. He knew this feeling.
‘Is that you?’ he whispered.
Olivia’s eyes flared. ‘You can—’
‘—feel you.’
They stared at each other for a breathless moment, stunned by this new, intimate bond. Ethan dipped his head and kissed her neck, eager to test his theory.
She let out a breathy moan and tilted her head back into the pillow, exposing her skin to his lips. Color bloomed behind his eyelids, gold tinged with red. He felt her pleasure and almost lost it there and then.
The next hours were the most humbling of the immortal’s entire existence.
He held himself back for as long as he could, afraid to hurt her. It wasn’t until Olivia wrapped her legs around his waist and sank her teeth in his shoulder, eyes blazing a brilliant jade and passion sending streaks of red streaming across his consciousness, that he finally took her. She stiffened for a moment, pupils widening. Ethan kept still, his lips meeting hers in a heated kiss while he waited for her pain to fade. A visceral hunger threatened to consume him when she arched her hips against his. He gritted his teeth, curved one hand around her thigh, and gave in to his need.
When she shattered beneath him, her breathless cries echoing in his ears and the brightness of her feelings flooding his mind with a searing white light, he shattered as well, his body shuddering above hers.
It seemed but a moment before desire clawed at his insides once more. He lowered his head to take her mouth, his lips hard and desperate. From the way Olivia gripped his hips with her thighs and clawed desperately at his back, she was just as eager to resume their carnal dance.
It wasn’t until their sated gasps filled the room some time later and he lay with his head against her breast, her heart thrumming rapidly against his cheek and her fingers curled in his sweat-slicked hair, that Ethan realized something momentous.
All that he had ever experienced before, with the dozens of women who had graced his bed during the decades of his existence—that had been sex. This was making love.
Madeleine drummed her fingers against her thigh and stared at the motorway ahead.
An accident just south of Lake Tahoe had delayed them by an hour. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was nearly ten o’clock.
They were still some forty minutes from Carson City.
‘Will you relax?’ said the man beside her.
Their eyes met briefly. Asgard turned his head and focused on the road once more, one hand resting loosely on the steering wheel.
She found herself staring at his fingers. They were long and elegant, the nails short and blunt.
Hmm. I wonder how they would feel against my—Whoa! Where the hell did that come from?
Asgard glanced at her. ‘Hey, are you okay?’
Does he look like that when he’s about to—?
Madeleine bit her lip, opened her window, and fanned herself. The torrid image that had just flashed before her inner vision had her face burning.
‘Seriously, do you want me to pull over?’ said Asgard.
Madeleine felt the SUV slow.
‘No!’ she said more harshly than she had intended. ‘I’m—I’m all right. I’m just feeling a bit…hot.’
She swallowed convulsively and kept her eyes directed at the rolling, dark landscape outside the window.
There was no denying it any more. She wanted Asgard Godard and she wanted him badly. The intensity of her desire for the immortal shocked her to the core, especially considering it had only been a few days since their first meeting. Sure, she hadn’t been in a relationship for some time but she had dated plenty of attractive men over the years. This need was something else, something she had never experienced before. She was going to have to put some distance between them if she didn’t want to rip his clothes off and have her wicked way with him.
Besides, she was only just getting used to all that had happened since she broke into AuGenD and discovered the reality of the immortals’ existence.
Madeleine heaved a sigh of relief when they finally turned onto the residential street where Gillian Hofstadter lived. Asgard pulled over at the curb halfway down the road and switched off the engine.
The house opposite was a one-story, shingle-roofed building with a pale-blue stucco and brick exterior. It sat in the middle of a row of similar properties, a gravel path dividing the lawn at the front. Lights were visible between the gaps in the drawn curtains at the windows.
They stepped out of the SUV and strolled up the footpath, Asgard scanning their surroundings with hooded eyes. He had left his sword in the vehicle.
The front door opened before they reached it. Gillian Hofstadter appeared in the doorway. She was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved plaid shirt, and a tired expression.
‘I didn’t think you were going to m
ake it.’ She glanced up and down the street before pulling the door open. ‘Come on in.’
‘Sorry, we were delayed by an accident,’ said Madeleine with an apologetic grimace.
Guilt flashed through her at the deception they were about to play out on the widow. Before they left the lake house, she had called the woman from the secure line in Howard’s study to arrange their meeting. They decided they would pretend to be private investigators working on behalf of another soldier’s family, their objective to uncover a potential conspiracy to conceal the true facts behind the disappearance of a number of army personnel over the last ten years.
‘May I see your ID?’ said Mason Hofstadter’s widow once they were seated in her lounge.
‘Sure.’
Madeleine took their fake Utah detective licenses and handed them to the woman. It had taken Howard a scarily short amount of time to make the IDs.
She scrutinized the cards for several seconds before handing them back with a rueful smile. ‘Sorry, it’s just habit, I guess.’
‘That’s okay,’ said Asgard.
An uncomfortable silence fell across the room.
Their host cleared her throat. ‘You said you wanted to ask some questions about my husband?’
‘Yes,’ said Madeleine. She leaned forward in the armchair. ‘What happened three years ago?’
The schoolteacher’s hands twitched on her lap. She took a deep breath and composed herself for a moment before she started to talk.
‘As you probably know, Mason was part of the 75th Ranger Regiment. This meant he was a member of one of the best and most well-trained special ops forces in the world.’ Gillian Hofstadter looked at them steadily, her gaze unflinching. ‘I say this without pride or arrogance. It’s simply a fact.’
Her hand rose to the silver crucifix at the base of her throat, her fingers fiddling unconsciously with the metal. ‘It wasn’t Mason’s first time in Afghanistan. He’d been there on at least ten prior occasions on reconnaissance and combat missions. When he told me he was going back in September 2009, I didn’t think anything of it.’ A bitter smile twisted her lips. ‘Well, other than the usual fear and anxiety that any soldier’s wife experiences when her husband goes into battle.’ She paused, a muscle jumping in her jawline. ‘I was at work when the call came. I remember the headmaster coming to the door of the class I was teaching and just standing there with this look on his face. I knew right away that Mason was dead. Two soldiers turned up ten minutes later to deliver the official news of his death.’
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