by Strong, Jory
“Hard not to. It’s the only thing on the news.”
“There was a survivor.”
“Dead now, according to the news.”
“I was in the ICU when it happened.”
“The cops asked for Etaín’s help?”
“Yes. I dropped the sketches off at her father’s place a few minutes ago.”
“Who’d have thought my son would be making nice with Captain Chevenier. We go back a ways, he and I. When he was still a green cop he thought he’d make his bones by catching me in a sting operation. It didn’t go well for him, though I’ve got no hard feelings toward him, neither does your uncle.”
Cathal felt sure the same couldn’t be said for Etaín’s father. “You know anything the cops don’t about the hit in Oakland?”
“That my son, now interested in joining the family business asking? Or my son, who’s involved with a cop’s daughter?”
“Etaín knew some of the people who got killed. She intends to ask questions, to do what she can to find answers.”
“Could be dangerous to her health.”
“Any more dangerous than getting involved with the Dunnes?”
His father shrugged.
Cathal pressed, “You know anything about the bar invasion, Dad?”
His father took a long drink from the glass in his hand, finally saying, “Drugs would be my guess. I can’t say more than that, Cathal.”
Can’t, or won’t. Gut-sick and unable to stop himself, he asked, “Are you involved in what went down?”
His father’s eyebrows lifted. “No. I’ll even swear it if that’ll make you feel better.”
Cathal believed him. “One other thing, Dad, I’m going to marry her.”
“I figured that might be in the cards. What about Eamon? I could have him taken out of the picture, permanently. Call it a wedding gift.”
The offer chilled him, but not in the way it once would have. It’d be his father who ended up dead if he tried it, maybe his uncle as well.
“Stay out of it. The same way I stay out of your affairs.”
He meant it literally, felt the anger rise on behalf of his mother, though for all he knew, she turned a blind eye to the existence of her husband’s mistresses, women who came and went and didn’t enjoy the same wealth or status she did.
His father lifted his glass in silent acknowledgement of the threat. Cathal rose. “I’ll see myself out.”
“No.” His father set the drink down and accompanied Cathal to the door, surprising him by saying, “I’ll make some inquiries. I’ve got a vested interest now, in keeping the mother of my future grandchildren from getting hurt.”
A quick hug followed, and then he went home, walking in to find Etaín stretched out on the couch, vulnerable in sleep and stirring feelings of protectiveness as well as possessiveness, the depth of which he wouldn’t have thought possible days ago.
He lifted her into his arms, catching sight of the drawing of a green Dragon rising from a dark blue lake, and smiling, until thoughts of one fantasy creature led to another. Elf. He forced it away, along with his fears for the future.
Etaín woke as he placed her on the bed, her eyes going from slumberous to dark molten pools of desire as he slowly unbuttoned her shirt, parting it, hands moving next to the front clasp of her bra.
“You’re overdressed for a cabana boy.”
He opened the bra, pushing it away to reveal hardened nipples. “Any decent cabana boy will tell you the best tips come from seeing to other’s needs first.”
He leaned down, licking the tight, rosy peak as he undid the front of her jeans.
Her hips lifted. He turned it into an invitation rather than a silent demand, a torment by sliding his hand beneath the waistband of panties meant to drive a man to his knees, wispy pieces of material that begged to be stripped away by hands or teeth.
She was wet for him. “Were you dreaming about me?” he asked, sucking her nipple into his mouth, his fingers stroking the underside of her clit, circling the tiny head.
“Maybe.”
He punished her with a bite, followed by the rub of his tongue over her nipple, hiding his smile because she never ceased to challenge him, to intoxicate him with her provocative nature. “Not a good enough answer.”
She laughed. “It’s the only one you’ll get unless you persuade me otherwise.”
Her hands went to her jeans with the intention of pushing them lower, baring herself to him. He stopped his ministrations to her clit, drawing a moan of protest and then a small purr of approval when he captured her wrists, pinning them to the mattress above her head and holding them there with one hand.
Tonight he wanted something different from her, needed it. He stroked his tongue over her nipple, aware of the way her heart raced and her belly quivered where his hand rested, for a second time sliding beneath her waistband and eliciting a cry from her with the capture of her clit, with the filling of her channel.
He could spend hours touching her, looking at her, being enthralled and intoxicated. It would only get worse when she made the change from human into…
He blocked the thought, wanting to concentrate only on the present. On this, maintaining the pretense they were a normal couple.
Lifting his head, he studied the nipple, turned on by the sight of it glistening, wet from his mouth, love abraded from his sucking.
“The other one wants the same attention,” she said. “A good cabana boy would know that.”
“A good cabana boy makes sure he’s done a thorough job before moving on.”
“So I’m a job to you?”
“More like an obsession.” He kissed his way to her other breast, using the change of angle to fuck his fingers deep into her slit, to rub his palm over her engorged clit.
Her breath caught. Then caught again. Her sheath clamped down on him in demand. Her moans were praise and payment enough. Her whispered, “I want your cock inside me,” very nearly derailed the slow pursuit of pleasure.
She liked it hard and fast and rough, probably because touching a lover had always posed a danger, before him. She could touch him with impunity, but at the moment he prevented that touch, knowing how quickly the feel of her hands on him stripped him of civility and reason.
“Promise to be good and I’ll take off the jeans,” he said.
“Define good.”
“Hands above your head, or clenching the bedding, not on me.”
“And if I cheat?”
“Don’t. That’ll be a game for another night, Etaín.”
“Mmmm, that sounds like a threat of punishment. Are we talking spankings? A belt? How kinky can we get?”
He bit her nipple because her question reminded him that he shared her with another man. Because with her teasing words she’d flooded his mind with dark fantasies and unbridled curiosity.
He should know better. But then he’d already admitted that when it came to her, he was a slow learner.
“Do you want the jeans off?”
“I’ll be good. Under protest. But it’s your loss.”
“You’ll make it up to me.”
He released her hands, straightening to look down at her. Clothed, with only her breasts bared, she was still a wanton temptress.
He shed his shirt. Watched her eyes fill with heat and nearly groaned as her tongue darted out to wet her lips.
He undid his pants, freeing his cock from the torment of confinement. There was no pretending he’d be able to hold out for much longer.
“Is this cheating?” she asked, hands going to her breasts, fingers toying with darkened nipples.
Fuck! She was trying to kill him.
He pushed his pants off his hips to drop to the floor, hand circling his cock, sliding up and down on his shaft. “I’ll give you a pass.”
Her smile mesmerized him. It beckoned to him, demanding the press of lips. Hell, her whole body did.
He released his cock in favor of stripping her out of jeans and panties. She spl
ayed her thighs and he was riveted by the sight of her flushed cunt and erect clit. He caught himself leaning down, drawn by the scent of aroused woman, by the craving to taste, to stab his tongue into the hot wet place his fingers had been, an interim fuck before his cock filled and stretched her.
A feminine hand arrived, interrupting one view and giving him another. An artist’s fingers stroking, parting, pleasuring.
“Borderline cheating, Etaín.” He nearly panted. Jesus. What she did to him. But he didn’t tell her to stop touching herself, didn’t protest when her hips began jerking upward, the movements quickening with impending orgasm.
He waited until her sharp cry marked it, and then he lowered his face, unable to deny himself. Inhaling, lips pressed to flushed folds, sucking, tongue lapping, penetrating, consuming.
His hand returned to his cock, not to stroke but to clamp down on it in a vise-grip of restraint. Her fingers tangled in his hair, holding him to her, the promise of good behavior forgotten.
He brought her with his mouth, her second cry and the flood of hot arousal against his tongue very nearly causing him to come.
Once again he straightened, his voice husky when he said, “Definitely cheating.”
“Maybe just a little. Cabana boys probably expect it. But I wouldn’t want you to feel put out.”
She slid from the bed and onto her knees with feline grace, her palms settling on his thighs, her glance sloe-eyed and sultry. “You still want me to be good?”
He guided his cock to her mouth. “Oh yeah, Etaín, I want you to be good.”
Ecstasy. There was no other word to describe it. Tongue and lips working in concert. She took him shallow and deep. Shallow and deep. Swallowing on him, her hands on his thighs preventing him from taking control.
White noise filled his head. White heat filled his cock and he thought he might have begged but couldn’t care as his world shrank to the searing pleasure of release.
They made it onto the bed, probably because they were right next to it. He gathered her close, felt her smile against his neck. “I think I’ll keep you in my employ,” she teased. “Maybe even buy some massage oil for you to work with.”
“Mmmm, maybe I’ll buy you a French maid’s costume.”
She laughed, the tightening of her arms an unconscious shift to things serious. “How’d it go with the captain?”
“About how you’d expect. Your father said if I really loved you I’d get out of your life and stay out.”
“And you told him that wasn’t going to happen.”
His cock began to harden as though to emphasize the existence of the supernatural. He was more comfortable on some level with subtext, especially when it came to the risky. She dodged the question he was really asking, or didn’t recognize it.
He hated the neediness that came out of nowhere. No. Not nowhere, but from seeing her on the hospital floor, dead because she was an Elf changeling who’d used her gift. From insecurity at what it might mean to be a human in the world Eamon had revealed to them.
“In fewer words, but yeah, that’s what I told him. Etaín—”
“Yes,” she whispered against his lips, the soft quality of it bathing him in liquid sunshine. “You’re wondering if this is love. It is for me.”
“Me too.”
She laughed. Parted lips and the tease of her tongue allowed him to escape actually saying the words I love you, neither of them comfortable with them, by the promises they implied for the future.
He lost himself in kissing her, in the scent of her, conversational intentions sidetracked, his will further eroded by the scrape of her nails across his chest to zero in on his nipples.
He managed to leave her mouth but didn’t go far. “I swung by to see my father afterward, to tell him I meant to marry you.”
“How’d he take it?”
“He offered to get rid of Eamon as a wedding gift.”
“I’ll just assume you declined.”
“I was tempted, for a split second.”
“It wouldn’t go well for your dad. Does this mean Eamon is no longer a banned topic?”
His mouth slammed down on hers in answer, his tongue thrusting, rubbing against hers in sensual prelude as he rolled her onto her back, his thighs parting hers, his cock entering her, Etaín’s muffled laugh and eager willingness making his heart sing.
Eight
The dense fog was shades lighter than Eamon’s mood after a sleepless night. He’d lost control of the situation with Etaín, again, and it had nearly cost her life for the second time in a single day. Perhaps now she’d begin to shun involvement in the human world.
Eamon grimaced. He was not a man to engage in whimsy or to purposely delude himself. When Liam had called to report Etaín’s nearly dying at the hospital, it had taken everything in him not to rush to Cathal’s home and demand entry. He’d refrained, barely, and only because there was wisdom in Etaín’s so-called breathing room.
Today he intended no such restraint. He had no recourse other than to join Etaín in her folly, despite the risk to all of them if his presence caused her existence to be discovered by Elven spies or other supernaturals.
He’d given them a night together. A night to calm and consider the things he’d revealed though he harbored no illusions they’d return to his estate unless the situation were truly dire.
He closed his eyes against the pain that thought brought with it, stabbing him with the rejection implied by her actions. She was important, not just to him personally but to those he ruled.
The wet embrace of fog against his skin as the speedboat moved through the dense gray of seeming nothingness soothed him. Courtship was not a seamless dance even among Elves.
He would see to this task and then he would go to Etaín. He’d erred, numerous times, but there had also been hours of enjoyment in each other’s company, unparalleled pleasure as well. He began hardening in anticipation of being with her, fantasy assuaging the ache in his chest caused by the emotional distance between Etaín and him.
The reprieve lasted until reality intruded with a deeply drawn breath, the scent of ocean and fish and diesel causing him to open his eyes. Seconds later voices sounded in the fog and the outline of a fishing vessel came into view.
In the driver’s seat Heath adjusted their course, the deep red of his aura a strike of bold color against the unrelenting grayness. “It’s a fifty-six-footer by the look of her. That’d make the captain Garret.”
Familiar tension filled Eamon. Of all his duties, this one, monitoring and passing judgment on those who were changeling, was the one that left him feeling powerless despite having immense power.
Fear for Etaín clawed its way into his heart again and he fought against curling his fingers into fists, though he would gladly use them to strike out physically at any danger that couldn’t be battled with knowledge or magic. Had she started hearing voices? Or would magic’s will simply manifest as it had when she’d lost control of her limbs, the eyes on her palms seeking Parker’s bare skin to feed on memories that would increase the appetite for them rather than sate it? Or would magic strike as it had done in that moment of weakness at orgasm, when she’d grabbed at his power without any awareness of it?
Thoughts of the damage she might do prior to his reaching her, and worse, the guilt she’d feel because of it, flooded his veins with ice, nearly paralyzing him with one of water’s deadly aspects. He combatted it with fiery determination. He could do nothing until he saw to this responsibility, and then he would go to Etaín and remain with her.
He stood as Heath maneuvered the speedboat to the rear of the fishing vessel, easing alongside a ladder extending down to the water. When they were close enough, Myk, his fourth, standing guard in Liam’s place, climbed upward, his waist-length hair the same dark color of ancient trees.
Impatient to get to Etaín, Eamon followed, though he knew Myk would have preferred him to wait until he could verify there was no threat. The boat’s captain waited, offering
a slight bow of his head when Eamon stepped onto the fishing vessel, murmuring, “Lord,” in greeting.
“The ocean is treating you well today, Garret?”
“I believe it will be a satisfied group that’ll step onto the dock when we get back.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Eamon scanned the deck. There were easily thirty men, women, and children onboard, no small number of them watching, curious about the arrival of visitors.
He needed no permission, but he asked anyway. “May I move about the vessel and speak to your guests and crew?”
Worry filtered into Garret’s expression. He glanced toward the opposite end of the boat, where his changeling son, Farrell, worked at a bait bar.
“Of course, Lord,” he said, knowing Eamon was there to judge how well Farrell was dealing with the magic.
Eamon didn’t go directly to the changeling. Those brief moments at yesterday’s fund-raising event notwithstanding, it was rare for him be out among humans who were ignorant of the supernatural world. While it was true that en masse he had no love for them, individually they weren’t objectionable. Over the course of his life he had even found some of them to be interesting.
Amusement rippled through him. Cathal might yet fall into that category.
Eamon paused at a family group with five children, the youngest little more than six. “Did you catch anything?”
The girl ducked her head shyly. Her older sister answered, “She caught a striped bass but it was too small so we threw it back. I caught a halibut that’s twenty-six inches long.”
Their three brothers chimed in, bragging about their catches and softening Eamon’s smile. It was hard not to react to the young. Among Elves, children weren’t easily conceived, making each of them a treasure.
He felt a tug in the vicinity of his heart as one of the boys excitedly began reeling in a fish. It would please him to have a son—or a daughter. A small copy of Etaín—or completely differing in looks, it wouldn’t matter.
He moved on, stopping next to an elderly couple. The woman was bundled up but shivering, the rod in her hand shaking.
