The Quelling Tide (The Gifted Realm Book 7)

by Jillian Neal

  Dan pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He’d come prepared.

  “Here.” He clasped it around her wrist. “When Halia arrives, we can add hers as well.” She leaned and threw her arms around him. “You are amazing, and this is amazing! I’m just completely overwhelmed.”

  “See, thirty’s not so bad.”

  “Shh,” she giggled through her tears.

  A few minutes later, they were supplied with the roasted chicken Fionna had decided on and Dan’s filet.

  “So, I had fun shopping with Maddie today.”

  Dan laughed. “I had fun seeing what you were shopping for, baby doll. I’m hoping I get to try my hand at getting you out of some of it tonight.”

  “You do have amazing hands.”

  Arching his eyebrow in intrigue, Dan let his fingers stroke over her inner thigh just under the hem of the dress.

  “And,” Her voice stuttered slightly as she reveled in his pliant touch. “Maddie says that I have to stop feeling ashamed of my own desires, that I have to embrace them. She says it’s perfectly natural, and if I want to have wild sex and feel a little more like I’m twenty-one and less like I’m twenty nine for the second time. She says I should just tell you.”

  Choking slightly on the hunk of delectable steak he’d just put in his mouth, Dan quickly took a sip of water. “Oh, baby, if you want to be a bad girl for me, or you want to go wild for the night, you just say the word I’ll make it happen. Anything you want I’ll take care of.”

  “Maddie also told me that you coached Fitz before the first time he asked her to stay over.”

  “I might’ve done something like that.” He admitted sheepishly.

  “Well, you must’ve been a pretty good teacher. She didn’t know it was his first time, until he told her several months later.”

  Dan shrugged. “Fitz taught me a lot, so I figured I owed him. I tried to think of everything I wished I’d known before my first time.” His recalled the night he and Fitzroy had stayed late at the French Senate. They’d been the only two officers still in the Iodex department. Fitz pled for information desperately before he met Maddie at the Moulin Rouge where she was a dancer. He’d been planning on inviting her to his flat that night.

  “How did you and Fitz meet? He didn’t go to Venton with us.”

  Dan recognized the excitement that colored her tone when she was learning something new.

  He continued to let his mind move back in time. “Fitz is a year older than me. My senior year at the Academy all I really wanted was out so I could go into Iodex.” He left out the fact that at the time the driving force had been so he could marry Amelia and get away from his mother. “I pled with Mentor Sullivan to let me go into special ops training that year instead of the year after. He agreed. I was a good student; I guess.”

  “You were head of Ioses order and graduated with a 4.0.” Fionna bragged.

  Dan scoffed over her admiration. “Anyway, my Dad got me in the class, and Fitz had come back to America to go through American Special Ops that year. His mom is French, but his dad is American so he grew up in Norfolk. When his parents divorced, he moved back to Lyon with his mom and attended a Gifted academy here. He usually spent his summers with his dad. He’d wanted to study Special Ops in America, so we partnered up in the classes. I guess the rest is history.”

  Fionna glanced back out the windows to the stunning Paris skyline. “I’m really glad you and Fitz met, because I’m sitting here with you on my birthday. Thank you so much for bringing me here. This is amazing.”

  Bored with his and Fitz’s history, Dan returned his hand to her thigh. He edged the hem of the dress just a little higher as he squeezed and plied her skin.

  With another sexy smirk, Fionna leaned to the side and brushed a kiss along his chiseled jaw. “You’re making me wet, Mr. Vindico.” Her hot breath on his ear set every nerve ending in his body to high alert.

  He turned to gaze into her hungry eyes giving her a look that said he’d devour every last drop of her and then make her beg for more.

  “And that’s kind of a problem.” She continued in a throaty whisper.

  “I’ve never found it to be a problem I couldn’t take care of, sweetheart.” he assured her confidently.

  Fionna slid away from him and took a long sip of her water before she moved back in. “Yeah, I know, but the panties I’m wearing are crotchless.” She shot him a grin that threatened to set him on fire.

  “My God, baby doll.” Fighting the deep desire to demand the check immediately, Dan fought for breath.

  “Yeah, so all of the important things are kind of uncovered just like the matching bra I’m wearing with them.”

  Feeling his muscles vibrate in ardent desire, he stifled the thundering moan threatening to tear from his lungs.

  “You really want that dessert, baby doll? Because I suddenly find myself wanting something else entirely.”

  With a wanton smirk, Fionna giggled. “Be patient, honey.”

  She was going to make him work for each and every inch he gained, and he was more than up to the task.

  Their waiter supplied them with phenomenal pastry puffs covered in hot chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream, on the house.

  “Oh, yum!” Fionna’s eyes closed in ecstasy as she licked the spoon. Then with another naughty smirk, she dipped the spoon back in the ice cream and chocolate sauce. Keeping her eyes locked on his, she brought the spoon to her mouth and proceeded to lick it seductively. She let her tongue spin precisely the way she moved it over his cock when she took him in her mouth.

  “Don’t worry, baby doll.” He assured her in a low growl. “I’ve got something I’m gonna make you lick and suck until you just can’t take anymore, and then I’m gonna show you what happens to naughty little girls that wear extremely sexy lingerie when their husbands rip their clothes off and make them take it hard until he fills them full.”

  Her chest rose and fell in quick gasped breaths. “I want to leave now.”

  “Be patient, honey.” He quoted her before taking another bite of their dessert. She narrowed her eyes in spite.

  After Dan paid the bill and thanked the waiter for their dessert, he led Fionna back to the elevator.

  Marked

  Frustration surged through Dan’s veins as they waited in a large crowd to access the elevator. His mind painted him stunning artwork of Fionna’s nipples peaking through an open-tip bra and her lower lips caught up in crotchless panties. By the time they entered the elevator and headed down to the streets of Paris, his cock had taken over all rational thought processes.

  He fought not to order the hoards of tourists out of his way. People pressed in around them as they tried to navigate to the more open lawn.

  “Buy the lady a Louis Vitton!” A pushy black market seller thrust a large handbag in Fionna’s face. She shrunk back, and Dan deeply lamented no longer having a badge. “Look! Look! Only 50 dollars American. Real leather!”

  “No, thank you.” Fionna’s voice shook.

  “Get the hell away from her!” Dan bared his teeth and glared at the offending salesman. He drifted back into the crowd looking for his next victim.

  “Dan,” she trembled in his arms. “I need to get out of this crowd. Something’s happening.”

  “Fi!” Panic replaced every ounce of sexual frustration he’d felt just a few minutes before.

  He used his sheer size to push through the crowd and got her to the opposite side of the tower base away from the throngs of people.

  “What’s wrong, baby? Is this better? Here, I’ll get a cab.” He turned to determine the best way to hail a cab without having to drag her back through the crowd. Occasionally Receivers rhythms would plummet in a large crowd. It was too many emotions to work through, and they would panic.

  She was as white as a ghost. Her heart was racing, and she’d broken out in a cold sweat. Before he could cast his shield around her, he saw the man approach. In one quick move his hand was in her purse. He paused on
e moment too long and Dan had him up against the tower base.

  “Bad, bad plan motherfucker.” He pressed his face against the cold concrete and drove his body into the foundation forcing the air from the would be pick-pocket’s lungs.

  “Fi, baby, give me that scarf around your purse and call Fitz, please.” She managed to follow his requests though she was still thoroughly shaken up.

  Dan tied the scarf tightly around the guys hands and swept his boot across his legs landing him squarely on his ass. “Don’t move.”

  “I am so sorry!” Fitzroy continued to apologize as Dan fixed Fionna a cup of water at the Iodex station an hour later. The guy was being processed.

  “It’s not your fault.” Dan sighed. “He’s obviously Paris’s lousiest pickpocket. Her wallet was right there.”

  Fionna shook her head. “I was so stupid. I just wasn’t thinking. I could feel something coming. There were so many people. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I should never have taken my purse with me.”

  “No.” Fitz scoffed. “This happens all the time. We’ve tried to clean it up, but I can’t seem to keep them from the big tourist locales. It is never the victim’s fault, Fionna. He’s the asshole. He’s the one going to prison. You should be able to carry your bag wherever you want.”

  “You feeling better, baby doll? You still look a little shaken up.” Dan drew her back into his arms. She’d been there for the better part of the last hour, but her color hadn’t returned and her pulse was still out of rhythm.

  “I’ll be okay. My radar is a little jumpy after all of that I think.”

  Fitz was sick over what had happened. “Let’s get her home.”

  Before they could leave, Eric Oliver, Fitz’s top officer came in carrying a file folder and shaking his head. He offered Fionna a kind smile and then spoke quietly with Fitz.

  “Yeah, fine, turn him over. Tell them I want him off of French soil tonight, though.”

  “Guys got two outstanding warrants. Seems he’s expanded his business from Brussels.” Fitz explained as he guided Dan and Fionna back to his car.

  The next morning, Dan’s eyes flashed open, and he sprinted across the hall.

  “Baby,” he soothed. It seemed the time difference had caught up with her. She was pale and drawn as she stood weakly from the toilet.

  Dan gently wiped her face with a cold rag and supplied her with her toothbrush. He helped her back to bed and held her tightly. He sent a heat cast through his shield. She was shivering from being sick and still seemed off from the evening’s events.

  He flooded his shield with his own energy essentially making her drunk on his love and protection. She fell back asleep almost immediately.

  They spent most of Sunday relaxing with the Fitzroys. Most everything was closed, so the kids played while the adults talked and laughed.

  They all thoroughly enjoyed Maddie’s delicious cooking. She taught Fionna to make Coq au Vin that they all devoured for dinner that evening.

  Fitz regaled Fionna with tales of some of Dan’s more idiotic stunts in their days of training. Alex begged Fitz and Dan to retell the story of the night the two of them had led two teams into an old abandoned house outside of Paris and had taken out ten of Wretchkinside’s men.

  Fitz retold the story, but Dan didn’t add much. He tried to enjoy Fionna’s pride as Fitz heralded Dan’s amazing shot where he took out two guys with one electric cast through a window, but he would never qualify that night as a success. That was the night Cascavel had somehow escaped him again. He could have had him five years before he finally ended the repugnant evil that was Cascavel.

  Dan tried to shake off the emotions of that night. He wished Fitz would stop talking about it. He didn’t want to revel in those days. They were nothing but an endless, hellish abyss, and he’d been given a chance at heaven. He had everything he’d ever wanted, and he was never going back.

  When he awoke for the second time the next morning, he was alone in the bed. He’d gotten Fionna back to sleep after she’d been sick again. With a deep yawn, he realized it was already close to ten.

  Pulling himself from the bed, he shrugged into a pair of jeans and a polo and went to locate his family. Fionna was refereeing an argument between Alex and Aida, while Maddie worked in the kitchen.

  Dan studied the kids. Aida was wearing a paper sack that Fionna, he assumed, had fashioned into a kind of jacket.

  “Princesses do not rescue the prince!” Alex spat. “They rescue the princess and kill the dragon!”

  “But that’s not the way it is in my book!” Aida defied. Her little face held a mixture of fury and frustration. “Sometimes the prince needs the princess to rescue him!”

  “Hey!” Dan scooped Alex up and promptly turned him upside down.

  “Uncle Dan!” He wiggled his legs while Fionna and Aida watched.

  “Trust me, little man. There are a whole lot of times that the prince needs the princess to rescue him, and if you find a princess willing to rescue you then you are one lucky, lucky guy.” Dan winked at Fionna as she beamed at him.

  “Put me down!”

  Giggling, Aida looked quite proud of herself as she narrowed her eyes in on Alex. “Daddy, will you please put Prince Alex down.” She requested in her best princess voice.

  “Why, yes, my little princess, I will.” Dan flipped Alex up and over his back.

  “See, I just saved you!”

  Alex scowled at Dan. “A princess never saved you!”

  “Oh, buddy, you have no idea how wrong you are. You’re looking at my own personal saving princess.” He gestured his head to Fionna.

  She chuckled. “Aida, you know, sometimes the prince needs the princess to save him, but he still kills the dragon. If you two want to play Paperbag princess, maybe Alex could slay the dragon after you save him.” Fionna offered as Dan willfully fought the memories of his own dragon slaying.

  “You can slay the dragon if you say I’m pretty in my paper bag.” Aida negotiated.

  “Fine, you’re pretty in your paper bag.” Alex mumbled spitefully. “The dragon’s in my room! Come on!” He raced through the house with a sword crafted out of cardboard.

  Dan sank down on the couch and pulled Fionna into his lap. “Besides dragon slaying and teaching my godson a thing or two about women, what else did I miss?”

  Fionna kissed his cheek. “Fitz went into the office for a little while, but as soon as he gets home we’re going to the markets. I am so excited, and Maddie’s even going to let me cook tonight.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up, baby?”

  “Because Halia gets you up every morning at five, and you take such good care of me I wanted you to sleep.”

  Just as Dan was finishing up leftover croissants with delectable chocolate sauce, Fitz made his way back home.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” He headed towards his home office.

  Dan followed him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Probably nothing. I hope it’s nothing.” Fitz sank down in his leather desk chair.

  “What the hell happened?” Patience had never been his strong suite.

  “The guy that tried to take Fionna’s wallet last night had reservations at the tower. He was there when you were there and presumably left when you left.”

  Tension twisted up Dan’s spine. He tried to think like a cop instead of an insanely overprotective husband. “Okay, that’s not that odd. High end pickpockets do that. They pick out their targets and follow them.”

  “I know.” Fitz agreed. “And like I said he has two outstanding warrants clearly he’s been in this game for awhile, but you said he didn’t grab her wallet. It’s just odd I guess.”

  “Listen to me. I don’t want Fionna worrying. I want her to just relax and enjoy Paris. She’s been through enough.” Dan demanded hotly. “Our relationship was a disaster before the takedown, and then the hospital, and working through everything that had fallen apart. Besides marrying me, and adopting Aida, this is the s
econd time she’s been pregnant in just a few weeks. Not to mention the fact that she was shot, and now all of this shit with the Angels and the press.”

  Fitz visibly softened. “I know, okay, and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong. You may have struck upon some crappy luck as of late, but does it not strike you as odd that first a brick flew through the window of the apartment where you were staying, and then you were targeted at the tower and her wallet was almost taken?”

  Wondering if he was in denial, if he was so exhausted from living a life in the darkest shadows that he was ignoring some unknown danger right in front of him just so his precious girls could live in the light, Dan fought the vomit that swirled in his stomach.

  He loathed to admit what he was about to say. “Fitz, come on, my wife made a shit-ton of money playing for the Angels. She has very high-end taste, and that’s apparent in what she wears, the bags she carries, and the jewelry she wears. She’s also very sweet and always chooses to see the good instead of always suspecting that people don’t have her best interest at heart. She would make a very appealing target, and I stupidly gave her a rather expensive diamond bracelet last night at our dinner table. Maybe I’m losing my edge. I don’t know, but when he saw that bracelet I’m certain he was foaming at the mouth for us to leave. We were marked from that moment on.”

  “Okay, you are an idiot, but that makes me feel a hell of a lot better.” Fitz’s body slumped in relief. “For the sake of my sanity, maybe try to talk her into leaving the jewelry here, save her wedding rings of course. She obviously doesn’t look French. Her Hawaiian heritage marks her as American, and French thugs know what to look for.”

  Out of the Mouths of Babes

  That evening, Fionna, Maddie, and all of the children were in the kitchen happily creating dinner. Maddie had been letting the boys help prepare food for quite a while, and they were anxious to show Aida everything they knew.

  Fitz asked Dan to help him go through some evidence on the gambling ring he was trying to take down. Dan knew he was hoping to bait him into accepting a position with French Iodex. He had no intention of doing that, but he gave into the temptation to go through evidence and figure out what might be going on. It was in his blood. He couldn’t deny the ardent desire to put his fierce shield to work.