by V M Black
Chay sat with his legs extended in front of him, leaning back on his hands. She stood over him, a leg on either side of his hips. He tipped his head back to look up at her.
“I know I’m gifted, bae girl, but it won’t reach.”
She giggled slightly and eased down onto her knees, wincing. “I am so sorry. I swear I’ll make it up to you.”
“You can start right now,” Chay ordered, joking less than he meant to be.
Tara giggled again. “Yes, sir.” She rose up just enough to catch his cock with her hand and angled it inside of her.
Chay groaned at the welcoming slick heat, a shock after the icy air. “I won’t hang on long now,” he warned.
“Good,” she said. “I think I’m getting frostbite on my knees.”
He took that as a kind of a challenge to pull one last climax from her, and he moved with her, forcing her rhythm, listening to the speed of her breath as he ground his hipbone against her clit at the end of every stroke.
She came, and a second later, he followed, the fast furnace blast surging through him. And when it went, he let his arms give way, lying back on the ground even as it sent waves of cold through the pine needles straight into his bones.
Tara groaned and stood up. “Okay, I’ve got no pants. I really am going to freeze.”
“Go get them on, and we’ll get back inside.” He rolled to his feet, checking his smart watch reflexively. He had thousands of unread messages from his time with Tara, but still no answer from the elf. “We’ll see if Torrhanin’s got at least one more of those suppressors ready.”
Tara finished tugging her pants into place as she reached the door. “I’m fine with whatever, as long as it’s warm.” She pulled it open and stepped inside, and Chay followed her.
As he did, a deep, low sound echoed through the facility, a distant boom. He could feel it in the floor.
“Did the earth move for you?” she quipped.
“Ha, ha,” Chay said, typing out a quick message on his watch to Ophelia, asking what was going on. The answer was probably in the weeks of updates he hadn’t checked.
He led the way through the maze of corridors down to the level of the spook shop again. A few turns away, he went down another hallway until he reached the door with the word NARNIA stenciled on it.
Stopping in front of it, he looked down at Tara.
“Ready to meet the elf in his lair?” he asked.
“Do elves have lairs?” Tara asked. “Panthers, definitely. Elves should have…palaces, maybe? Or treehouses. Or something like that. Anyhow, what are we waiting for?”
Chay smiled. “An invitation.”
As if triggered by those words, the door slid open.
Chapter Twelve
The door slid open, and Chay squinted slightly against the unrelenting glow that shone from every surface of the curved-walled white corridor beyond. “It gets very…weird in here,” he warned.
“Mind-net-type weird?” she asked.
“Something like that.” He stepped into the corridor, and Tara followed on his heels, grabbing his hand—for reassurance, he realized, but he liked the feel of it inside his own almost too much.
“Why are you bringing me along?” she asked quietly.
He looked at her, his eyes as hungry for the sight of her as his body had been to have her. He still hardly believed that she was back in human form again. Chay had made something out of her that was almost unreal, impossibly perfect in his mind. He hadn’t remembered the tiny scar at the corner of her mouth or the slight crookedness of one of her front teeth. But somehow, these slight flaws only made her more precious to him now—and more keenly aware that he hadn’t even realized everything that he had almost lost.
“You don’t want to come?” he asked.
“Let’s see. A meeting in magical elf land,” she said dryly. “Of course I want to come. I just don’t know why you’re letting me tag along.”
“I just got you back,” he said. “Right now, I don’t want to ever let you go.”
“I’ll take that in the most non-stalkery way possible,” she said.
He shrugged. “Take it however you will.”
They reached the far end of the corridor and stopped in front of the door. Nothing happened except that his smart watch buzzed with the return message from Ophelia. She had no idea what was going on. She’d assumed the noise was from the elves and whatever they were doing for him.
Chay frowned, and Tara let go of his hand to feel across the surface of the doors.
“Is there a button?” she asked. “Doorbell, maybe.”
“No. It’s always opened immediately before,” he said. “Sometimes you have to wait for the outer one because only one door is ever open at a time. But this one always opens.”
“It’s not opening now,” she observed.
“I noticed.” Chay glanced back along the immaculate and featureless corridor. Except…it wasn’t perfectly immaculate. Not this time. There was a small smudge of dirt on the glowing floor, and he felt a twinge of unease deep in his gut because there was never dirt in Narnia. Not ever.
“Maybe we should go back and try again later,” he said, trying to keep his tone casual, but the tension in his voice must have communicated to Tara because she looked up with an expression of alarm.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked, freezing in place.
Chay had opened his mouth to reply when the door in front of them slid open. He gave a sigh of relief. “Apparently not,” he said, and he led the way through.
The inner reaches of Narnia were as strange to his shifter’s senses as they ever had been. It was brilliantly lit, almost painfully so, and yet he could never quite see anything clearly. The sense of something wrong continued here—the glimpses that he caught of passing elven people were confused, and darkness was pulsing at the edges of his vision. He had never before seen anything but light.
Beside him, Tara gasped. “It’s beautiful!” she said. She gave a lightheaded little giggle and let go of his hand, taking a few steps into the strange space that warped around her. “It really is a palace. Oh, my God. I never thought—” She laughed again, spinning back around to face him. “Thank you for showing me this.”
“You see…details?” Chay demanded. “A palace? Really?”
She blinked at him, still smiling. “Yes, of course. But everyone seems to be in an awful hurry. Are elves always like this?” She made a little squeak and dipped to the side, coming perilously close to one of the dark shadows that pulsed at the edges of the light. Tendrils of darkness emerged from it, reaching for her.
A sudden, irrational fear seized Chay, and he grabbed her arm, hauling her away from the darkness with such force that she gave a cry of pain.
“What was that for?” she demanded.
Before he could answer, an imposing figure emerged from the swirls of dark and light, leaning on a staff with an end that gleamed pitilessly, driving back the shadows. It was Torrhanin, but no Torrhanin that Chay had ever seen before. The elf was a full head taller than Chay now, towering over him, and his face shown with a terrible light.
“It’s happened,” the elf said in a voice that shook Chay’s bones. “We were too late to stop them. You must not be here! It’s too dangerous for your kind.”
Torrhanin rapped his staff on the floor, once, twice, three times. With every strike a sound rumbled through the room, and the ground shook. Chay turned around as a flash of movement caught his eye, pulling Tara against his body. It was the door back to the rest of Black Mesa, appearing to float in space. It opened an inch, and Chay could see the merest glimpse of the corridor that they’d just left, gleaming with its almost pristine light.
“Run!” Torrhanin roared.
Chay did, hauling Tara with him as her shorter legs struggled to keep up. The door slid open raggedly, as if something was caught in the track, but it’d be open enough for them to get through when they reached it. The darkness was seething all around now, roaring in his
ears as a wind from nowhere battered him, and Chay knew he couldn’t let it touch them at any cost.
It gathered around the door, mounting up, and then it surged forward, engulfing it, and when the darkness receded, the door was gone.
Chay turned around. Torrhanin was the still point in the center of a maelstrom.
“What do we do now?” Chay shouted over the deafening storm.
“We fight,” the elf said in a voice that rolled like a deep bell over the screaming wind. “Or we die.”
The story continues in…
Out of Control
Taken by the Panther – Book 3
Aethereal Bonds
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Chay Bane has rescued Tara Morland from the panther that threatened to take over her mind and body. But the terrible price of that bargain has only begun to emerge as the elves unleash a danger that threatens to destroy his Black Mesa facility—and perhaps the world.
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About my books
My sifter novella serials usually come out on the fourth Tuesday of every month. If you like this serial and want to try out my vampire serials, you can start with Life Blood. That first installment is free. My vampire serials come out on the third Tuesday of every month.
I’m currently working exclusively in the Aethereal Bonds world, which I’ve mapped out to be big enough to let me tell all the different kinds of stories I want to share with readers. It’s got vampires, demons, weres, faes, and more—all sorts of creatures that are great fun to play with.
About me
I live near Washington, D.C., with my family—the usual husband and kids contingent, with extended relatives who pop in and out of the house from time to time. A proud geek, I love fantasy, romance, science fiction, and historical fiction. I’m a compulsive dreamer, and I feel spoiled to be able to be able to make a career out of imagining things!
Table of Contents
Book Description
Aethereal Bonds
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Afterword
