He took them in, and his hate grew with every new arrival, every squalling baby and scared kid the Immortal bitches in his mother’s line threw away. There was no way to save them, no way to teach them to fight the beast within, the dark power that crouched like a dragon waiting to devour everything, including its host’s sanity. He did what he could. He kept them alive, kept them under control, and waited for a miracle.
Over two thousand years later he was tired of waiting.
The Queen had miscalculated, grown lazy and overconfident. She severely underestimated the females of her line, not just the Immortals’ carnal desires, but the half-blood daughters’ eagerness to breed with human males. For over two thousand years he’d been taking in all of their sons, the boys who were discarded, just as she banished him to Earth when he no longer served her purpose.
He opened the door and walked into her bedchamber.
“Droghan. At last. I have been waiting.” She sat in her bath, naked and on display for him from the waist up. And she was truly beautiful, her body perfect and youthful, her long black hair piled on top of her head to display the long line of her throat to her best advantage. No attendants served her. They were truly alone.
Once, long ago, the sight would have made him ache with want.
“Nelina.” He did not address her by her title, and he hid his satisfaction when tense lines of displeasure formed around the corners of her mouth. Her nakedness was a calculated attempt to tease him, to distract him and manipulate his desires. Any interest he’d had in the Queen or her body had been crushed centuries ago.
“How goes our plan? Will the Gates open?”
“In two Earth days.”
She smiled and tilted her head back, nearly crowing in delight. “Excellent. I will have my ships ready.”
He bowed because she expected it and he did not want to tip his hand this late in the game. The Gates would open all right, but not to Earth.
Droghan returned the way he had come, down the tunnel to the throne room. He lingered there, but the guards were used to seeing him and knew he often had personal business with the Queen. They ignored him, returned to their posts outside the doors.
No one saw him place the human explosives. Such a primitive weapon. Their use would enrage the Queen all the more.
<><><>
Emma dropped a second stainless steel pot on top of her big toe and cursed. The big meeting was over. Celestina and Helene want back up to their ship with a fuming Bran. The Darkwalkers disappeared to wherever they lived. Teagh took Katherine for a moonlit walk on the beach. Mari and Raiden took off in their new sports car, Mari driving like a demon behind the wheel in a stock car race. Raiden held on for the ride, his laughter floating behind the bright yellow convertible as they fishtailed on the pavement.
She hated them all. Every single one of them. She was so angry, she couldn’t see straight, couldn’t take a damn pot off a hook without dropping it on her feet. She was so upset she couldn’t even cook.
Rescuing her second stockpot from the floor, Emma picked it up and took it to the sink. Hot water. Dash of soap. She washed the pots and tried to envision the perfect late-night meal. Maybe hand-tossed pizza with fresh roasted garlic? A salad with grilled chicken and lemon?
There was plenty of time to cook. No rush. Her appointment for cold-blooded murder was at least a day away. Maybe two.
Ice cream. That was what she wanted for dinner.
She rinsed the pots and dried them with the dishtowel, gave up on the idea of cooking for her pitiful party of one, and returned the shining metal to their hooks where they hung suspended over the counter. They looked bright and cheerful. Spotless and perfect. And all the sight did was remind her of how lost she felt at the moment.
Never, ever, had she been so far gone that she couldn’t lose herself in preparing a meal. The entire process relaxed her, the timing and perfection, the blending of flavors and spices, the love and care she served to her little brothers when they devoured her creations.
She’d jumped through time and space, jumped between worlds, and always, the one thing that grounded her, was cooking. Maybe it was stupid or irrational, but she’d never analyzed it before. Food was home for her, and comfort and family. Preparing a meal was her nirvana, her escape, her safe place.
I’m so messed up I can’t even cook.
The dishtowel dropped unexpectedly and she stood staring at her shaking hands as tears threatened to track down her cheeks. Her pulsed pounded like the roar of ocean waves in her ears, the rush of noise too massive to escape. Chest tight, she pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes and fought for every ounce of air. She felt like she was standing on a beach watching a tsunami rise over her head, ready to crash down and crush her.
She had to get out of here. She had to run. To move. To scream.
“Come here.” Warm bands of steel wrapped around her waist from behind and those tight restraints managed to hold in the explosion. They held her together, like duct tape over shattered glass, while her insides shivered and quaked under the strain of the last few hours. “Shhh, Emma. I’ve got you.”
Emma turned around and pressed her cheek to Ajax’s chest, absorbed the comfort and strength he offered her. She closed her eyes and focused on the steady rhythm of his heart, a slow base beat compared to the rapid staccato of her own. She breathed in the scent of him, the unique flavor of his flesh that whispered to her senses of power and pleasure and broken promises. “I can’t do it.”
“Shhh.” His steady grip rose slowly, traced her spine and came to rest at the base of her skull. He massaged the tense muscles there and held her closer, made her feel cherished and protected. Cared for.
More lies. But even as the thought crossed her mind she wrapped her arms around his waist and held on as if her life depended on it, as if she’d shatter into a thousand pieces without his touch, because right now, she would.
“I’m not a murderer.”
“I know.” Ajax continued to pet her and Emma didn’t even try to fight the shaking that swept over her in a wave. She couldn’t control it, all she could think about was standing on Itara, in the throne room, and killing a two-thousand-year-old Immortal in cold blood.
“I can’t do it.” She wasn’t certain that she could. The white fire rose up from inside of her on its own, whenever it sensed evil or darkness too close. What if the fire didn’t come? The Queen was ancient, well respected and feared. What if she wasn’t dark enough to trigger Emma’s fire?
“Things will be all right, Emma. We’ll all be there to help you and we’ll be well prepared.”
“You don’t know that. Celestina said the goddess will grab me whenever she’s ready, whenever she feels like it. How the hell are you going to be prepared for that?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
Emma laughed, a burst of near hysterical sound. She pulled her head back to look up, way up, into his eyes. “There’s no need to lie to me, Ajax.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Then you’re delusional if you think you can outsmart a goddess.”
He actually grinned down at her. “Just delusional? And I thought that was a clear invitation for you to accuse me of being arrogant.”
“That too.”
“And if I am both?”
“Then kiss me so I don’t have time to dwell on your shortcomings.” She released her hold around his waist to trail her hands up his sides and chest, exploring him through his shirt until her hands were raised up and wrapped around the back of his neck. She tugged on his head and tilted her face up, licked her lips. She wanted a kiss. Or two. Or fifty.
His grin vanished instantly, the amused glint in his eyes replaced with instant awareness. She was stuck to him like paint on a wall, as close as she could get with clothes on. She wanted the clothes gone.
“I decided one time wasn’t enough for me.” She jumped up and locked her feet together behind him, thighs riding his hips, her core pressed to his stomach, her
hands tugging at his hair trying, in vain, to move a mountain, to force his lips to hers. “Kiss me.”
Ajax looked into her eyes and she let him see every ounce of raw, gut-clenching, soul-stealing need that held her prisoner. The ground seemed to shift beneath them as his mouth claimed hers in a frantic mating of tongues and heat.
She came up for air to find that he’d opened a portal back to her loft in Portland. They were in the living room, the rug still twisted and wrinkled where they’d made love earlier. But she didn’t want the hard floor beneath her this time. “The bedroom.”
Ajax didn’t set her down, just strode to the hallway on the way to her room. But Emma was impatient, on fire and consumed with need for him. The power within, the heat and magic of her Mark unfurled like a sleepy kitten deep within her, ready to pounce and play, but Emma forced it back down. This wasn’t about Marking him, or trying to claim him again. He’d made that clear.
This was about forgetting everything else. This was about living in the moment and taking what she wanted.
Emma tensed her legs and used the leverage to ride higher in his arms, to reclaim Ajax’s mouth when they were halfway to her room. He staggered and caught them both with her back to the wall. She moaned and writhed, ground herself against the hard bulge in his pants and begged. “I can’t wait. I need you now. Please.”
Ajax reached beneath her ass and freed himself from his pants then sank to his knees on the floor in her hallway. He held her in place against the wall with one giant hand splayed over her stomach, while the other made short work of her shoes and stretch leggings. When she was naked from the waist down he rose up on his knees and grabbed her by the back of her thighs, pulling her feet out from under and wrapping them around his waist as her back slid down the wall.
He shifted beneath her and impaled her in one hard thrust as his mouth took hers over. She was stuck, pinned to the wall as he took her hard and fast.
Her orgasm rushed through her like a freight train and he swallowed her soft cries in a kiss and drove into her again and again, like a perfectly tuned piston. There was nowhere for her to go, no respite from the pleasure. She shattered again and again, and it was never enough, each peak left her desperate for more. And he gave it to her, as her head thrashed from side to side and she whimpered, cried, begged and whispered his name.
When he finally let his own release claim him, she watched him lose himself, watched him shuddered and gasp, and watched white fire spread from her hands to his back in a flash of heat, then disappear.
<><><>
Ajax carried Emma to the shower where he stripped her and washed her beautiful body with care. She was magnificent and passionate. She made him lose his fucking mind and take her like a barbarian against the wall. And she loved it, begged him to take her over and over.
After the shower, he took her again, slowly, took his time and tasted every single inch of her before rolling her over and taking her from behind. Her sweet cries drove him wild when he lifted her back to his chest, spread her legs on either side of his knees and held her upright with his cock buried deep, one hand plucking and teasing her breast and the other mercilessly pleasuring her clit.
She’d held nothing back, reached behind her head to hold him, arching her body to give him better access and tilting her head to the side so his lips could taste and nip at her neck.
Twice he felt the rise of her Mark beneath her flesh, and twice she’d pulled it back under control. He’d told her that he didn’t want it and couldn’t accept it, and so she didn’t Mark him, didn’t claim him again.
Against all logic and good sense, he drove her body higher and harder, made her cry out and collapse in exhaustion, tried to force her to lose control, just so he could taste the sweet fire of her Mark for a few brief minutes.
But she was stronger than that. He both respected her control and wanted her all the more because of it.
But after their loving, when she curled her naked body around his to sleep, he lay awake for a very long time, for the first time in his life questioning his chosen path.
He was a King. It was who he was, who he’d been born to be. The knowledge had lived inside him for centuries and been the bedrock of his small grasp on sanity when the Triscani evil had taken him over.
But to be King was to leave Emma behind, to watch her walk away and take another Male as her Marked Mate. To give her up forever. The Itarans would never accept a human Queen. The prejudice against humans ran deep in their culture. Perhaps not so much prejudice against humans, more simply a view of themselves as a superior race, one above questions or challenges, a race of people who lived forever and ruled all who surrounded them. Their vastly superior nature was simply accepted, a fact so mundane that the Immortals gave it no more thought than eating or breathing or sleeping.
Three days ago, when he’d walked into that Portland bar, there’d been no doubt in his mind that the throne of Itara was not just his destiny, but his divine right. To discover that the thought of ruling without Emma made his inside twist into knots and his chest ache with a grinding, relentless pain, was not acceptable. To discover that the mere thought of her with another male made the darkness rise in him just as ferociously as the Triscani beast she’d burned from his flesh was a torment he was not prepared to face.
He was supposed to make his way to Itara and claim the throne, find a highly connected and powerful Itaran female to take as his bride and rescue the people on Itara from the two-thousand-year rule of a heartless and calculating Queen.
She sighed and snuggled into his chest, one small arm resting across his stomach and one of her short, adorable legs thrown over his. Asleep, she looked more like an innocent princess than a woman with a steel spine and more courage than was good for her.
Predawn light soaked into the room and he studied the soft pink of her lips, the pale curve of her cheek. When he reached her eyes they opened and she smiled at him, content and warm, the terror and heartbreak he’d seen in them the previous night gone for the moment.
“Hi.” Emma turned her head slightly and kissed his chest, right over his heart. It hurt.
“Good morning.”
“You’re up early.”
“I did not sleep.”
“What?” She lifted herself onto her elbow to look down at him, her hair a cascade of color over her shoulder and bare breasts. He tore his gaze from the sight in an attempt to behave. “Why not? Don’t you need to sleep?”
“It is a luxury, not a necessity.”
Emma kissed him, a quick hello and retreat. “Must be nice.”
“Not really.” He liked her here, in the crook of his arm. Emma’s back was pressed to his arm, her breast crushed to the side of his chest. He lifted his hand to trace the contours of her waist and hip from behind her. She was human, and he’d taken her fragile human body with single-minded hunger last night. She would need some time to recover.
Emma kissed him again, a bit longer, softer, lingering over his mouth. He tightened his grip, pulled her closer, and kissed her properly.
So much for giving her recovery time. He was a damn horny teenager, unable to control himself. She pulled away with a moan and leaned her forehead against his, staring down at him like he was her favorite treat.
He wanted this. He wanted her. He wanted that look in her eyes every single morning. Forever. Fuck the Itarans and their rules. Fuck the centuries of dogma insisting that no human could be Queen. He didn’t care, not if it meant giving her up. Not if it meant she’d wake with another male and look at him like that…
“Give me your Mark, Emma.”
She pulled back, the pale blue of her eyes wide and wary. “What?”
“Mark me.” Ajax waited, saw the confusion and pain in her eyes, and knew she was going to refuse him.
Chapter Fourteen
She shook her head and pulled back a bit farther. Her gaze searched his face like she was trying to decode a complex puzzle. “Why now? Nothing’s changed.”
He rolled over onto his side and made tracing the curve of her thigh, her hip, the soft fall of her waist and the rise along the side of her breast a slow and deliberate work of art, like a sculptor admiring his finest work. “Everything has changed.”
“No, it hasn’t. We had sex. That’s it. No strings, remember?” It took her an unusually long time to look him in the eye and the lack of emotion he saw there made his throat feel tight. He didn’t know what to do or say, where to put his hands, how to touch her. If he should touch her. She was shutting him down and shutting him out. In a matter of seconds she shredded his expectations and left him floundering like a fish out of water. This was not the reaction he’d expected. No female had ever refused him. Not once.
He’d anticipated drowning in heat as her Mark flowed into him, pulling her close and taking her body again. Claiming her. Keeping her, basking in the knowledge that she was his and no other male would ever touch her.
“Emma, you wanted me before. Twice. Give me your Mark now, and I vow to keep it, to treasure you, forever.”
She leaned in and kissed him on the mouth, the kiss not a precursor to more sensual exploration, more like a friend offering comfort. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Why?”
She rolled away from him and he let her go. His pride refused to grab at her like a distressed schoolboy trying to keep her in bed. He was an Immortal. A King. He didn’t beg, or ask twice. Ever.
She stood, naked and confident, so beautiful it hurt to look at her, and picked up the cream-colored robe she’d worn the day before when she’d settled herself on his lap and made him forget that his destiny was tied to another planet, another people.
When she’d pulled him down this dark and twisted path of physical pleasure beyond anything he’d ever experienced. Even Angeline, his sweet, loving Angeline, had never made him lose himself the way Emma did. Angeline had been caring and kind, docile and sweet, and when they came together in bed, the mating had felt like a pleasant homecoming, enjoyable and warm.
White Fire: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 5 Page 15
