Jordan

by Susan Kearney

  “Don’t move.”

  Heat flared through her. She started to turn her head, and he swatted her bottom.

  “No looking.”

  The playful sting of his hand only added to the heat. She was on fire for him, and he had yet to touch her core. But she liked the heat of his hand, so again she turned her head to look at him. He’d removed his shirt and had just unhooked the top fastening of his slacks when he caught her ogling his washboard abs.

  With a grin, he swatted her rear again.

  And the heat escalated. All the blood in her body had to be stampeding to her core. She was so damn sensitive, she could barely hold still.

  When his hot mouth came down on her core without warning, she would have bucked, but his hands kept her hips elevated. Already so sensitive, she moaned. As he lapped and licked and stoked, tension inside her ramped up until she quivered with need.

  From the top of her head to the tips of her curling toes, she drew tight, tighter, the sizzling sensations ripping through her. And then he drew back.

  “Don’t come.” And he slapped her bottom several times.

  Shocked at the fiery sting that escalated the tension to another level, she released the chair.

  “Hold on.” With one finger he caressed her, floating her back into position.

  “But—”

  “Hang on.”

  Her nipples ached. She couldn’t seem to draw in enough air. But most of all, if she didn’t find release soon, she was going to scream.

  And that’s when he replaced his finger with his sex. Finally. His fullness, sleek and hard, was exactly what she needed right now. His hips slid against her hot bottom, and he reached around to her clit.

  And then as he ever so slowly thrust in and out of her, his fingers kindled a red-hot fire.

  “Ah… oh… oh.” A delightful explosion ripped through her, and she spasmed inside, clutching him. But he didn’t increase his pace. He stayed with slow and easy friction, and his fingers kept playing with her, never stopping their magical rhythm, extending the explosion until her body fired again and then again.

  She clawed the chair, pumping her hips as moans of pleasure escaped from the back of her throat. The orgasms went on and on and on, crashing over one another until they melded into one giant explosion of pleasure.

  And still he didn’t stop.

  Her pulse skyrocketed. It was suddenly hard to breathe. And she lost it.

  Like some feral thing, she embodied the pleasure. She became pure wildfire. Locking her legs around his calves, she raised and lowered her hips, demanding he take her faster, harder, deeper.

  When he thrust into her and finally spasmed, her name on his lips, she exploded once again and saw stars.

  Several minutes passed before her pulse settled and she opened her eyes to find herself floating, her head on Jordan’s chest, his arms wrapped around her, their legs entwined.

  Total satiation had left her every muscle relaxed. “Thank you.”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  He was a surprisingly sensitive lover. He’d known when to push, when to surprise, when to hold back, and when to give her exactly what she needed.

  She could come to care for such a sensitive man. But she couldn’t nurture those feelings. She reminded herself how they’d come to make love—to avoid the Staff from forcing them into it.

  So what if he’d been kind, attentive, and tender, as well as ferocious and demanding and exciting? So what if he was the best lover she’d ever had?

  Jordan’s memory dropped into her head like a nightmare. Only Vivianne was awake. And she could only watch in horror.

  “Trendonis, what have you done?” A younger version of Jordan ignored the blaster pointed at him, fought down the panic honed to a razor sharpness welling inside his chest.

  With a triumphant gleam in his eyes, Trendonis gestured with his blaster for Jordan to move toward the space ship’s portal. “I’ve lowered our altitude so you have a perfect view.”

  Jordan peered out the spaceship’s triangular porthole to see his home world, Dominus. At the sight of hundreds of deadly missiles racing toward his home, Jordan’s blood went cold.

  “No.” Jordan’s hands fisted. Those missiles would strike farms, cities, schools, and hospitals. So many would die.

  Jordan spun and advanced on Trendonis, who lifted one smirking eyebrow. “The Tribes don’t accept defiance.”

  Jordan’s voice cracked. “Don’t do this.”

  “Watch.” Trendonis shoved the blaster into Jordan’s side.

  He stumbled back to the portal. The missiles had yet to reach the atmosphere. “Call them back.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “Detonate them while they’re still in space, please,” Jordan pleaded, knowing it was a waste of breath.

  Trendonis laughed, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “Once planetbusters are released—”

  “Planetbusters?” Jordan sagged, barely able to take in the reality. The man had purposely ordered the destruction of his entire world. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “See what happens to people who resist the Tribes.” Trendonis snapped his fingers. “They vanish.”

  Jordan cringed. Below, the full force of the missiles struck, the warheads primed to sink to critical depths. The seas came to an instant boil. An entire continent jumped, dropped, and buckled. The poles erupted into tidal waves of lava and ash.

  The air itself turned to liquid fire. And he could do nothing to stop the incineration of Dominus.

  The end of everyone and everything he knew. His home. His parents. His friends. The planetary core boiled, reached ignition temperatures, exploded. Billions of people gone in an instant. Their history, their culture, their art. Gone.

  “You killed them all.” Tears running down his cheeks, Jordan turned to face the man he’d thought of as friend. “Kill me, too.”

  The memory ended as suddenly as it had begun. The destruction of his world might have happened centuries ago, but with Jordan’s memory branded into her mind, his pain saturated Vivianne. She could now taste his bitterness. Comprehend his rage. He’d told her the story, but this time she’d suffered with him. Had felt the fury that clawed at him, the determination to stop Trendonis and the Tribes.

  Jordan was on Earth’s side. The last of her doubts fell away.

  And yet she still couldn’t let down her guard.

  While Jordan’s warning that he would not be there for her in the future seemed far away, Vivianne was a pragmatist. She would work with him, she would make love with him, but she would not care about him just because he’d insatiably caressed every inch of her. She would not fall for a man set on saving her world—not when his success meant his death. She wouldn’t do that to herself. And she wouldn’t do that to him.

  The time to dream is now.

  —LADY OF THE LAKE

  17

  After three days of waiting for the weather to break, Vivianne sat behind the helm, her patience near its end.

  “Any change?” Jordan asked Darren.

  “None.” Darren checked the storm readings on the planet below. The hurricanes on Tempest never seemed to run out of energy. Warm water from the seas kept feeding them, and they showed no sign of diminishing.

  During the downtime, the crew had tried to keep busy. Tennison was calibrating one of the navigation sensors. Sean tweaked the engines. Knox kept trying new recipes, and when she wasn’t in the galley, she and Darren disappeared for hours into their cabin. Gray and Sean played endless games of chess when they were off duty. Lyle was reading and keeping to himself.

  Jordan had spent his time studying the star charts. He’d finally pinpointed the Draco’s galactic location, and Vivianne tried not to think about how many light-years they were from Earth. Hyperspace could take them home—if they could figure out how to navigate through it. But first they needed the storms to ease on Tempest, and then after they found the key, they’d fly to Pentar for the Grail.

&nb
sp; Vivianne had tried to keep busy, too. But mostly she’d felt useless, and she paced, George often at her heels.

  “How long are we going to wait for the storms to clear?” she asked Jordan.

  “Not much longer.”

  She eyed Jordan cautiously. “So you’ve figured out a route to Pentar?”

  “Actually, I’m working out a way to fly down there.” He gestured to Tempest.

  She should have known he would never give up. “The Draco can’t maneuver in those winds.”

  “I know.” Face hard, he tossed aside a calculator and leaned forward. “There’s another way to get down there.”

  “How?” Her stomach knotted.

  “Dragonshape and fly down.”

  Sean stopped tinkering and gasped. Gray turned white and shook his head. Vivianne felt as if he’d just thrust her under a cascade of icy water. “Those winds will rip off our wings. It’s suicide.”

  “Not if I fly through the eye.”

  Oh, God. It just might be doable. The eyes were huge and moving at about twenty miles an hour. “But even if we can make it down, we can’t search the entire planet for the key—not under those conditions.”

  The winds were ripping through at hundreds of miles an hour. Although the surface was dirt, the fierce sandstorms would flay off tough dragon hide within minutes.

  Jordan let out a long, low breath. “I know where the key is.”

  “You do?” How could he know that? Vivianne’s gaze locked with his, and he shook his head slightly. He didn’t want to say—not in front of the others. She pursed her lips but didn’t ask again.

  “Where’s the key?” Gray asked.

  “Here.” Jordan tapped a spot on the island in the southern hemisphere. “I’ll shoot the coordinates over to your screen. We need a hurricane’s eye to pass over that spot. We fly down, grab the key, and then fly back. The Draco will only need to go into a low orbit in the upper atmosphere to drop me off.”

  “We jump out the airlock?” Vivianne asked.

  “Just me.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “And after you jump, you’ll dragonshape. But how will you get back?”

  “That will be trickier.”

  No kidding. A dragon couldn’t fly into the airlock—it wasn’t big enough. “You’ll have to change shape in the air, time the shift to match the Draco’s velocity. Have you ever done that before?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Gray,” she ordered, “notify us if a suitable storm crops up.” She didn’t want to argue in front of the crew and motioned to Jordan to follow her.

  He hesitated, looking reluctant to discuss the issue, but then he escorted her from the bridge. They stopped in the empty galley. She fixed coffee, then took a stool by the counter.

  Jordan sipped, then shuddered and set the coffee aside. “Can I be honest with you about this coffee?”

  “Of course not.” She sipped and grinned. “You’re my employee, and then I’d have to fire you immediately.” She shoved his cup back at him. “It’s an acquired taste.”

  He ignored the coffee. “The Staff has homed in on the key.”

  “Homed in?”

  “The Staff’s pulsing with light. The nearer I go, the more it pulses. I’ll have to take it with me to pinpoint—”

  She almost choked on her coffee. “If you take the Staff, you’d leave the Draco with only limited backup generator power.”

  “There’s enough to descend, for me to drop out an airlock, and then while I dragonshape and retrieve the key, the Draco can maintain a low orbit.”

  “Not for long it can’t. The orbit wouldn’t be stable.”

  “I’ve run the numbers. The ship would have an hour until power runs out.”

  She sighed in frustration. “And how would you return?”

  “Reverse the process.”

  She did rough calculations in her head, then did them again on her handheld. “You’re cutting it too close.”

  “On the upside, maybe retrieving the key won’t take an hour.”

  “Damn it. This is too dangerous.”

  “Some things are worth dying for. We need the key.”

  “So you say. But you won’t die down there, will you?” she asked. “Not as long as you have the Staff.”

  At her accusation, pain flickered in his eyes, and then his face turned hard, bleak. “There are some things worse than dying.”

  “I’m sorry.” She felt badly for accusing him of risking their lives after she’d felt his pain, seen exactly how his entire world had died.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No. It’s too dangerous.”

  This was her ship, too. She had just as much say-so as he did. “I’m not staying here and just waiting for you to return.”

  “You’re not strong enough. You’ll slow me down. You’ll hurt my chance of success.”

  She didn’t take offense. “Two people have a better chance than one. Besides, the shape-shifting back into the airlock is going to be tricky. We can help each other.”

  “No.” He shook his head to emphasize his words. “I’ve had centuries of flying experience. My timing will be better than yours.”

  The last thing Vivianne wanted to do was go down to Tempest. Just the idea of jumping out of a perfectly good spaceship into a hurricane was enough to make her hands tremble.

  “It could take more than just one person to retrieve the key,” she insisted, her every instinct telling her she needed to go with him.

  “I’ll call on the handheld if I need—”

  “By the time you know the situation, it might be too late for me to come down. And if something goes wrong down there, you shouldn’t be alone. That’s why scuba divers have a buddy system. That’s why astronauts spacewalk in teams.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “But if you fail, we should have a backup person to retrieve the Staff. And that has to be me. I’m the only other dragonshaper on board.”

  “You’re not going. You’ll get yourself killed.”

  She shrugged. “I have to die sometime.”

  He reached over the counter and placed his hand on her shoulder. Warmth flowed into her, and she realized he was worried about her. “Are you always so—”

  “Stubborn?” She allowed a smile to tease her lips.

  “I was going to say brave.”

  Her smiled widened. “It’s not every woman who’ll get to tell her grandchildren that she flew into the eye of a hurricane.”

  “Grandchildren?” He scowled at her. “Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself?”

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Having children’s on my to-do list. Right up there with—”

  “Jordan,” Gray interrupted on the intercom. “We’ve got a gale-force storm brewing over Tempest’s equator that appears headed for your island coordinates.”

  “Is there a defined eye?”

  “Not yet. But if the winds keep building, there will be.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Jordan stood, and his fingers slid from her shoulder to her hand. He kept hold of her, even after they stepped onto the bridge.

  Vivianne peered at Tempest and her stomach churned. From here the spinning cloud rotations looked harmless as pinwheels. But she knew better.

  Even if they timed their descent with perfect precision, could they survive? While she’d flown in winds of twenty, maybe even thirty, miles per hour, she’d never dared to fly into hurricane-force winds.

  “What’s the ground temperature at our landing site?” Vivianne asked.

  “You’re going?” Gray asked.

  “She isn’t,” Jordan said.

  She didn’t argue. “The temperature?”

  “Thirty below.”

  “What?” she frowned. “Hurricanes need warm water to feed them.”

  “Arctic storms are shallow, short-lived pressure systems that create fierce blizzards. When this kind of storm passes over water, it can ice over the seas,” Jordan said.r />
  “How long until we know if an eye will form?” she asked.

  Gray peered at his data. “I’d estimate anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour.”

  “I need to be ready to go.” Jordan linked his handheld into the computer’s weather data stream. “Sean, plot a course to intercept with the eye. Keep in mind that this kind of transient arctic storm typically doesn’t last as long as a warm-water hurricane and will produce severe weather and heavy precipitation.”

  Sean didn’t look happy. “Sir, the cloud vortex at the center’s walls are where the strongest winds are located.”

  “True, but like their tropical hurricane counterparts, winds farther inside the eye wall are calmer.”

  “Won’t the storm system decay when it passes over land?” Vivianne asked.

  “Normally you’d be correct,” Jordan said. “But on Tempest, the one island is only large enough to stall the storm, not break it up.”

  Vivianne left the bridge while the men continued to talk. She was done arguing. Jordan was not in charge of her. And if he thought he was, he would soon learn differently.

  The greatest lesson is to love and be loved in return.

  —KING ARTHUR PENDRAGON

  18

  Jordan filled the emergency batteries, then removed the Staff from the housing in engineering. The Draco, already in low orbit, shifted to backup power with smooth efficiency. Jordan contracted the Staff, placed it into his sheath, and headed for the airlock. The leather nanobot sheath would expand when he dragonshaped, and the Staff would remain strapped to his body as he flew down to the island.

  “What’s the progression of the storm’s eye?” Jordan asked Gray through the handheld strapped to his wrist.

  “Looking good.”

  While he couldn’t speak in dragon form, the handheld’s nanotech bracelet would also expand to dragon size and shrink when he transformed back to human shape and allow him to communicate with the Draco. In addition, he carried a harness with winter clothing and a knife. He didn’t expect to need anything else, and more weight could adversely affect his flying.