by Kali Argent
His disapproval was practically tangible. “Why would you keep that from him?”
“I’m not.” At the moment, all she could tell her mate was that the chemicals existed, not how they’d come to be in the samples. “I’ll tell him soon.”
Considering the information could potentially implicate Nell in trying to sabotage the project, she wanted to run more tests before she said anything to anyone. She needed proof and not just accusations before she went to Luke. Honestly, she hoped it was all a misunderstanding, but she had the terrible feeling that her hypothesis was correct.
Why would Nell do it? What did she possibly have to gain from poisoning those females?
Different scenarios came to mind, each less likely than the first. The more she tried to rationalize it, the less sense it made. The only way to find out the truth was to get to work and find the evidence she needed to validate her theory.
The lift doors at the front of the lab slid open, the sound unusually loud in the silence of the room. Beside her, Xi grunted when Luke stepped out of the elevator and began walking toward them.
“Be nice,” she whispered as she quickly cleared the displays on the cubicle walls. “I wish you would get to know him. He really is wonderful.”
“You, sister, are bias.”
Jael smiled. “Yeah, but it’s also true. He makes me happy, Xi. Isn’t that enough?”
“There you are.” Approaching the workstation, Luke gave her a shining smile. “Cami said you were down here.” He turned his gaze to the table and frowned. “What are you working on anyway?”
“I’ll leave you.”
Luke stared at the spot where Xi had vanished and sighed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to chase him away.”
“You didn’t.” Maybe a little, but that was on Xi. “He was looking for an excuse to rejoin the party anyway.” Rising out of her seat, she rounded the opaque, glass wall and went directly into her mate’s arms. “How is it going up there? Is Cami happy?”
“She’s thrilled. She especially loved the part where I got up on stage and embarrassed myself in front of everyone.”
“Did you sing? Please tell me you didn’t sing.” He was accomplished in a great many things, but musical talent wasn’t one of them.
“I didn’t sing, smartass.” Chuckling, he took her hand and led her toward his corner office. “She wanted me to make a speech. Well, more specifically, Tariq asked me to make a speech. It was okay, I guess.”
“I’m sure it never occurred to you to refuse.”
Entering his office, he directed her toward the brown, leather sofa. “She’s my sister, and it made her happy. I mean, I didn’t love it, but I was happy to do it for her.”
“You’re very sweet, and she’s lucky to have you.”
“Yeah, about that.” He settled onto the cushion beside her and took both of her hands in his own. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, and to be honest, I don’t really know how you’re going to feel about it.”
She opened her eyes comically wide and leaned back from him. “Are you pregnant?”
He chuckled loudly and shook his head. “I’m beginning to think I’m a bad influence on you, beautiful.”
Yes, but he’d laughed, and she loved that sound more than anything. “I’m sorry, neelum.” She did her best to compose herself, then squeezed his hands encouragingly. “What did you want to tell me?”
“One of the reasons this project is so important to me is because of Cami.” He toyed with her fingers while he spoke and kept his attention on their hands. “She was born fertile, but there was an…accident when she was fourteen that left her unable to have children.”
“Oh, Luke, I’m so sorry.” She had a lot of questions, but it didn’t feel like the right time to ask them, so she kept quiet and let him continue.
“This cure, it won’t help her, but I want to help women like her, females who dream of having children of their own.”
“I think that’s very noble.”
He chuckled again, but this time, the sound was filled with darkness and loathing. “Noble. I’m not noble. I’m not even a very good brother.”
She didn’t believe that for a second. From the moment she’d arrived, she’d witnessed how much he cared for his sister. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her, and that alone made him a worthy male.
“Tell me why you say that.”
“Because I should have protected her, and I didn’t.” Lifting his head, he finally met her gaze with sad, red-rimmed eyes. “You know that most humans have two fathers, right?”
“Yes.” She didn’t understand it, but she knew the custom.
“Well, the reason Cami can’t have children is because one of our fathers shot her with a blaster.”
Pulling one hand out of his grip, Jael placed it against her mouth to muffle her gasp. “That…oh, my stars, that’s awful. When she was just a youngling? Why would he do such a thing?”
He told her about his father, Derrek Brighton, about how no one knew for sure why he’d spiraled into insanity. He repeated theories that it had something to do with his gift of telepathy but emphasized that they would likely never know for sure what had triggered his sudden homicidal rage.
“Our other father, Canaan Hart, the guy who built all this.” He lifted his arm and swung it in a wide arch to encompass the lab beyond the window. “Well, he wasn’t much better.” After telling her how Canaan had manipulated Cami for almost a decade to keep her locked inside her gilded cage, he dropped his head and sighed. “So, now you know. I’m the son of a murderer and a manipulator, and I’m a coward who did nothing to protect his sister.”
“What Derrek did to your sister was not your fault. There is nothing you could have done to prevent it.” Knowing he’d carried that guilt around all this time hurt her heart. The fact that Canaan had let him think it just pissed her off. “As for the rest of it, you didn’t step in sooner because you thought you were protecting her. How exactly does that make you a coward?”
“I should have—”
“No.” Fisting her hand in the collar of his black, button-down shirt, she pulled him forward to claim his mouth in a hard, searing kiss. “You don’t get to take responsibility for this. Once you knew the truth, you did everything you could to make it right. No one could ask more of you than that.”
It was clear from his expression that he didn’t believe her. Jael sighed. Until he was ready to forgive himself, nothing she said would make any difference. He’d been brave to confide in her, though, and she owed him no less.
“Since we are speaking of family atrocities, I have something I’ve been meaning to tell you as well.”
“As bad as your father killing your mother and shooting your sister?”
What her parents had done made his family look like model citizens. “Well, my father didn’t murder my mother, but together, they did slaughter an entire village on the Southern Isle.”
“Okay.” He bobbed his head, his eyes wide. “You win.” Then, his expression softened, and he reached out to caress her cheek. “Will you tell me what happened?”
“It isn’t a particularly long or engrossing tale.” It hadn’t been the first time a Xenon had been seduced by black magic, and she doubted it would be the last. “I wasn’t always the youngest of my siblings. My parents had another child when I was well into adulthood. He died when he was four.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been devastating.”
“Yes, it was quite heartbreaking, especially for our mother, and that was what started the descent into madness.”
Luke inched a little closer to her on the sofa. “I don’t understand. How did that lead to them destroying a whole village? Did someone hurt your brother?” His eyes rounded. “Did someone murder him?”
Humans thought the Xenon immortal, but it wasn’t that simple. While her people didn’t show physical signs of aging, other than the color of their hair, and they didn’t die of advanced age, they could be kill
ed. They were not quite as fragile as humans, but they could die in many of the same ways such as poisoning, infection, blood loss, and so on.
“No, nothing like that. He drowned in the river behind our house.”
“Sometimes, accidents can be even worse because there’s no one to blame.”
“I agree. Maybe if my parents had someone to direct their anger toward, they wouldn’t have invested so much energy into an impossible endeavor.” She smiled sadly. “There are some things that magic can’t do, and others that it shouldn’t. Bringing back the dead falls under both.”
“They tried to bring your brother back from the dead? Using magic?”
“To be clear, nothing in this universe can bring someone back once they’ve been lost, but my parents traveled down dark and dangerous roads looking for it. The deeper they fell into the black magics, the more obsessed they became.” Much like Luke, if she had been there, if she’d paid more attention, maybe she could have stopped it. Maybe she could have saved not only her parents, but all the innocent lives that had been taken because of them. “It drove them mad until I think at some point it became less about the loss of their child and merely a quest for more power.”
“What happened to them?”
“After they slaughtered the village of Danlas, sentries tracked them deep into the jungles of the Southern Isle. They had no choice but to destroy them.”
“The sentries…” He shook his head and blew out a long breath. “Were your siblings there?”
“Yes.” She didn’t blame them. They had done what was necessary to stop an evil threat to their world. “They don’t talk about it.”
“I can imagine why.”
“I don’t hold them responsible,” she hurried to explain because she didn’t want Luke to blame them, either. “Their actions saved countless people.”
Instead of offering platitudes or more condolences, he pulled her into his arms, kissed her brow, and muttered, “Thank you for telling me.”
While she didn’t regret telling him, it was a part of her past that she didn’t like to examine too closely. The memories were just too sad, especially when coupled with the happy times she remembered from her childhood.
As the despair deepened, she gave him a wobbly smile and stood from the sofa. “I’m sorry. I’m not really feeling like myself. I think I will retire for the evening.”
She kissed his lips, then transported to her room on the upper floor. It wasn’t very mannerly of her, but she knew he would have tried to convince her to stay if she had given him the chance. She’d find him later and apologize, but for now, she just needed to alone until the melancholy passed.
Instead of going straight to bed, she stripped out of her lavender party dress and headed for the attached bathroom. Like the rest of the house, it was beyond lavish, an unnecessary extravagance that she was eternally grateful for now. Moonlight spilled through the lone window, the silvery beams glinting off the brass fixtures and bronzed accents.
As such, she didn’t bother turning on the lights, nor did she glance at the wall-sized mirror as she passed the double sinks and the gray, marble vanity. Stepping into the oversized shower stall in the back corner of the room, she closed the glass door behind her and turned on the water.
Icy water stuttered from the shower head, raining over her and splashing off the beige tiles. She shivered, and her lips trembled, but she welcomed the sting of cold.
Eventually, the spray heated, its warmth seeping into her skin, her muscles, and easing some of the tension in her neck. She didn’t know how long she stood there, just staring at the wall, letting the water wash away unpleasant thoughts. At some point, however, she realized she was no longer alone in the room.
“I brought you some clean clothes,” Luke said quietly into the dark. “Those pajamas with the flowers on them you like so much.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t turn. “Just leave them by the sink, neelum.”
She waited, trying to stem the emotional tide threatening, and listened for his receding footsteps. They never came. Jael could feel the weight of his stare on her back, and though he didn’t speak again, she could sense his own waring emotions in the stillness.
There was a rustle of fabric, the soft padding of his footsteps across the tiles, then the door opened, and Luke stepped into the shower to wrap her in his strong, steady arms.
“Is this okay?” His breath fanned over her back as he skimmed his nose across the top of her shoulder. “I just want to hold you, beautiful. Just let me hold you for a little while.”
She not only welcomed his closeness, she needed it. Until then, she hadn’t even realized how much she needed his touch. Resting her hands atop his arms, she leaned back against his muscled chest, letting his strength steady her. His presence soothed her, centered her, and chased away the darkness that threatened to overwhelm her.
“Yes,” she breathed, sinking deeper into his embrace. “Please, stay.”
Neither of them spoke, content to hold each other beneath the warm spray. Minutes passed, the tension eased, and after a while, Jael finally began to feel normal again. Quietness surrounded them, interrupted by only the fall of water against the tiles and their uneven breaths as Luke caressed her skin in soft, gentle strokes.
His hands slid over her hips and up her sides, the water providing a sensual glide. He drew big circles over her belly from sternum to navel, then down the tops of her thighs. Jael trembled as desire flared and throbbed between her thighs, and she placed a hand against the shower wall when she began to sway.
His touch turned lighter, almost teasing, and when his knuckles brushed against the swell of her breasts, he paused. “Still okay?”
“Yes, but are you sure?” She wanted him desperately, but he’d been adamant that he wouldn’t touch her like this until he learned to control his gift.
“We’ll go slow. If anything happens, if I feel like I’m losing control, we’ll stop.”
Jael couldn’t draw enough oxygen into her lungs to answer verbally, so she only nodded. Then, she hissed, sucking in air between her teeth when he cupped her breasts and squeezed. Blanketing her back, his rigid length trapped between them, he traced the vein on the side of her neck with his lips while his fingers pinched and tugged at her sensitive nipples.
“You are so beautiful.” His voice was tight, strained, but also held a note of satisfaction as he twisted the hard nubs. “So beautiful, and all mine.” One hand continued to torture her in the most sinful ways while he drew a line down her middle with the other, pausing at the top of her cleft. “If you don’t want this, now is the time to tell me. I want you unbearably, but I can wait.”
In response, she arched into his hand, crying out when his middle finger slipped between her folds to brush over her clit. The embers of desire erupted into flames of need, burning her from the inside out until everything disappeared except for her mate. His dark, musky scent surrounded her, filled her, stoked the fire that seared in her belly.
“Fuck,” he groaned, resting his forehead against her shoulder as he shuddered around her. “You’re so wet.” Two fingers slid along her core and pressed into her opening. “So warm.” With his palm pressed to her clit, he continued to stroke her, pumping his fingers into her depths. “So fucking tight.”
Delirious with need and unable to hold back any longer, she pushed his hand away and turned to face him, winding her arms around his neck to pull him into a hungry, heated kiss. Their mouths crashed together, their lips and tongues battling for dominance, and Jael moaned as she lost herself in the taste of him.
Crawling up his torso, she locked her legs around his waist and molded herself to him. “Please, Luke. Don’t stop.”
The air rushed out of her lungs when he pressed her roughly against the shower wall, anchoring her there with an echoing groan. Gathering both of her wrists, he stretched her arms over her head, pinning her hands to the cold tiles. He didn’t move, and he barely breathed as he stared into her eyes, and whe
n he spoke, his tone was pained, tortured.
“Just…just give me a minute.”
“Breathe, neelum,” she whispered, trying to hold herself as still as possible. “Don’t fight it. Feel it. Be part of it.”
Burying his face against the side of her neck, he panted and groaned as his grip on her wrists tightened. “I can’t. I…can’t.”
He wasn’t panicking yet, but he was hovering on the edge, obvious by the strain of his muscles and the desperation in his voice.
“Look at me.” When several seconds passed, and he didn’t lift his head, she repeated the order with more authority. “Luke, look at me.” When he finally looked up and met her gaze, she leaned forward, her arms aching as she pulled against his hold. “Kiss me.”
“Jael, I—”
“Stop thinking and kiss me.”
He stared at her for a heartbeat, then pressed his full body weight against her as he slanted their mouths together with a growl. There was no hesitation now, none of the gentleness he’d just shown her.
It was brutal and primal and savage, and Jael reveled in every second of it.
“Yes,” she panted against his lips. “Feel it, neelum. Use it. Channel it.”
Releasing her hands, he tangled his fingers in her wet hair as he devoured her in a dark, fiery kiss she felt down to her soul. Though he no longer held her, she still couldn’t lower her arms, and knowing he was borrowing her own magic to bind her only added to her pleasure.
Thick and hard, his throbbing cock pressed insistently at her entrance, teasing her, tempting her. Her skin tingled, her pulse raced, and her lungs burned with the need to breathe. Dragging her mouth away from his, she leaned her head back against the wall, panting and moaning, writhing against him when his lips clamped around her erect nipple.
Unable to touch him or pull him closer, she arched her back away from the tiles and rocked her hips, writhing against him as his mouth did sinful things to her body. As he moved lower, kissing and nibbling his way down her stomach, she gasped when her hips thrust back of their own accord, pinning not just her arms to the wall, but her entire upper body.
