by Lina Jubilee
That was it. It looked as if I’d slapped him. His eyes went wide, but then they narrowed and he grabbed my elbow again. “You’re coming with me.” He tugged and I stumbled, my sore leg not allowing me any leeway to fight.
“Stop!” I said. Was he about to use me as a hostage? “Let me go!”
Damn, if my heart weren’t beating wildly enough to jump out of my chest. Fright mixed with adrenaline mixed with that stupid, unruly libido of mine that tried to scream that I kind of wanted this asshole to grab me and yank me and take me away.
Fuck, you are stupid, me.
“We can test whatever your abilities are in Nelia,” he said.
I laughed. “Good luck with that.” Then panic overwhelmed me again. He was taking me to his kingdom?
We reached the doorway and he yanked me after him, causing me to stumble just in time to avoid a fireball soaring overhead.
“Aurora!” called Nash.
I whipped around to find him running at us from down the block.
Alarik sneered as he looked from me to Nash and back again. A few blocks away, the ground rumbled as the dirt the vines had unearthed went soaring into the air. Jayden had to have been there.
“This isn’t over,” hissed the king. The anger twisting his face relaxed as he looked me in the eyes and smiled. “Aurora. What a lovely name for a lovely human.”
Before I could do more than stare slack-jawed at him, he dropped my elbow and retreated the opposite way, running at speeds only Olympic champions could hope to match among we human mortals.
“Aurora!” said Nash again as he arrived beside me. He took me into his arms and squeezed, kissing the top of my head. “Why did you go and do a stupid thing like that?” he whispered.
A wave of defensiveness rolled through me despite the voice of reason in my head. I pushed away. “A stupid thing like try to help people? Yeah, how could I?”
Nash opened his mouth, but we both flinched as a giant vine soared overhead a couple of blocks over, extending far above the roof of the tallest building. Debris went scattering and Nash took my hand in his, dragging me back to that infernal shattered café. He grimaced as he looked around. “I liked this place. Had good espresso.”
Rolling my eyes, I dragged him farther inside so we could breathe easier near the back. There was a corner outfitted with sectional couches and a small coffee table that looked barely touched from all the chaos.
“We were all worried about you,” Nash began. “Even… Zander.” He bit his lip on the word. “He said he was trying to get in touch with you, but it was spotty and you were ignoring Wade’s comms—”
I took his face between both hands and kissed him. Closing my eyes, I felt the fire I associated with this Flayme man shoot from my lips all the way down to the soles of my feet.
He pulled away slightly, grinning as he rested a hand on my forearm. “Thanks.” Fire practically raged within his eyes—not in an angry way, but in the way a dying ember is suddenly given new life with the strike of a match.
His smile fell and he turned his gaze to my road-burned hand, pulling it away from my face. “You’re hurt. We need Rou—”
I grabbed hold of his face tightly again and kissed him a second time.
Chortling, he pulled away. “I didn’t need a second boost from those Succubus Lips so soon,” he said. “Let me get out there and use my powered-up fire for a few minutes.” He stared at his hand then, flexing it—and then frowning. He cocked his head. “It feels… I don’t know. But I’ll test it out and then I’ll come back for a pick-me-up.”
Dropping my hands from his stubble, I reached for the zipper at my collar. “Let’s do the full boost.”
Nash had the audacity to blush. After all his talk… “Now?” He looked around at the half-tattered café. “Here?”
As if in answer, I finished unzipping my suit, my fingers lingering in front of my pelvis where the zipper ended. “Turn into a god of fire and get out there,” I said. “Blast those otherworldly menaces away.”
Nash didn’t have to be told twice. His hands raced for his own zipper and it was down before I could blink, one arm and then the other peeling out of the suit, which hung like a banana peel off his back. My eyes flitted to his crotch, where the slightest wisps of blond hair poked out from where the zipper ended. I reached forward, diving in, grabbing hold of his thick member.
“Whoa,” he said, though he was not disappointed. “I don’t even know if I need a warm-up, angel. You can always get me revved and ready—”
I kissed him again and peeled the rest of his suit down his legs, grabbing his cock firmly but gently and running my fingers up and down.
“Angel,” he breathed, removing his lips from mine and running both hands through my hair. It drove me wild when he did that.
I quickened my pace, stroking up and down, relishing the quick, pert firmness that yielded to my touch, but not giving him an inch as I kept up with the movements.
“Angel!” he groaned. “I can’t—you work so damn fast.”
Like we had time for lollygagging in the midst of a battle.
His shaking hands gripped the gap in my suit, clutching to either side of it and ripping the material off my shoulders with gusto enough to make my knees wobble. The adrenaline surging through my body as he came at me with all intent of devouring me made the soreness in my hand and leg fade into the background.
“Those tits,” he said—ever the charmer. His lips went to a nipple and I dropped my grip on his cock, my hands riding up his six-pack, up to his pecs, and around his shoulders. He pinched the nipple lightly between his teeth and I cried out.
Pulling back, he started peeling the rest of the suit off my torso. “On the couch,” he said. I obeyed, helping him take first one and then the other sleeve off so the suit just clung around my hips. His arms gripping me tightly, my back hit the cushion, and I was already arching, my groin begging to meet his lips.
He tugged hard on the suit, exposing my ass to the cushion below.
“Beautiful,” he said, as if speaking a forbidden word. “Beautiful…” he repeated, his lips touching my navel and moving slowly downward.
“We don’t…” I said, meaning to tell him we didn’t have time to make this pleasurable, but I had to bite down on my lips—hard—as his mouth moved to my clit, his tongue poking out to run circles around the key to my pleasure.
“Take me,” I wheezed through heavy breaths. “Just… Take me…”
“Angel,” he said, coming up for air.
“Please!” I begged. To get him that power boost fast. To drive away the Nelians. But in that moment, mostly because I needed him inside me—now.
He leaned back up and readjusted himself, slapping his hands on either side of me on the couch—one hand on the back of it, the other mere centimeters from my waist. He locked eyes with me as he slid inside, the moisture that had been there all day—with thoughts of too many damn sexy men in front of me, including that forsaken Nelian king—gliding it in like it was the perfect fit. I groaned. “More,” I whispered.
He obliged, pulling the tip back and rushing back in, over and over, each thrust causing my groans to bubble over more. “More,” I said again.
I waited for my power to kick it all up a notch, to lead us both to levels of ecstasy we as mere mortals had no business experiencing. Right before we should have gotten there—just as his seed went pumping through me—we heard a voice from the doorway.
“Flayme! Succubus!”
Jayden.
Reality set in and I gasped as Nash fully removed himself. My limbs were shaking, my crotch turned to jelly.
“Getting a boost, sir,” said Nash, all business as he slipped his arms back through his suit and zipped up.
I turned to see Jayden grimacing, then, catching my eyes, pointedly staring at the ceiling. “I can see that. Glad you’re okay, Aurora. We’ll talk… We’ll talk later.” He nodded over his shoulder. “We need you, Flayme. The elves are pulling back into a cir
cle around their portal, and with a little more firepower we can push them through—”
“Roger!” said Nash.
I sat up and slipped my arms through my suit. I ached everywhere, but the moment of passion still carried my hot blood throughout my body, easing the pain.
Nash snapped his fingers to make a ball of flame appear just as I zipped up.
“Hmm,” he said. He shook his palm to let it go, then snapped his fingers again.
“What is it?” I asked, the thin lines of his face sending dread to my stomach.
“Nothing, just…” He looked at me. “I don’t think that did anything to boost me.”
Dread turned to nausea as the cold, hard truth of what Alarik and Alanna had been saying hit me.
That elf princess had stolen my powers from me.
Chapter Five
Wade reaffixed the nodule above my breast, apologizing as he tugged on it and caused a welt to appear on my skin. “Sorry about that. Just one more test.”
Roulette pinched her lips from where she was sitting beside me. “If you’re saying it works, it works. I don’t know how much more testing you need to do.”
For about five minutes of this test, Wade’s power-studying program indicated that I had indeed become as powerless as the average Typical. But he hadn’t had a chance to run much data before it had all of a sudden surged back, apparently hitting all the same data markers it always did whenever Wade felt like strapping me up to his machine and making me his guinea pig. He’d mumbled something about a “temporary occurrence,” which made sense—around an hour had passed between when Alanna and Alarik had left my side and when I’d finally gotten home and strapped in to Doctor Frankenstein’s machines. Roulette had ridden with Wade, Jayden, and me to go back in the jeep, while Nash, Darien, and Chastity had stayed onsite trying to see what they could do to work with rescue personnel and minimize the damage done to uptown. Jayden had kept me explicitly out of view of the Renegades before they’d left following the Nelian elves’ retreat into their portal located in the middle of an auto store. But I’d exchanged a glance with Zander as I’d made my way to the jeep, wondering if he was trying to reach me through the bond because I wasn’t hearing anything, even when I thought only of him as I walked by.
Roulette had summoned her healing powers just before we’d gotten inside the vehicle and I was right as rain, except for the shock of losing my Natch powers. And even that had worn off, according to Wade’s data, so I was absolutely giddy now.
“Your abilities may have returned, but I want to run a few more tests to be sure there are no other residual—”
I tugged on the node Wade had just affixed. “Good enough for me.” I knew that by lying down on this table, I’d been signing up for tests and scans and data for the rest of the night. I’d been willing when we’d needed to get my powers back. Now, not so much.
“But I haven’t finished—”
I ripped of the last nodule and jumped down, exchanging a grin with Roulette.
“She’s good,” said Roulette. She looped an arm through mine. “If Nash were here, he’d recommend some practical testing…”
My face flushed. “That was how we figured out it wasn’t working.”
Her lips looked ready to reach to her ears. “I figured it had to have been something like that.”
We stopped in the hall as we passed the briefing room and I looked inside for Jayden. He was likely in his office. “Now that things have died down, I need to share what I found out about the elf who did this to me and… their king.”
Roulette frowned. “Should it wait for the others?”
“They’ll have to know, too,” I said, “but I should let Jayden know ASAP. In case it comes in handy.”
She shook her head. “They’ve never appeared more than once in the same day.” Her comm beeped and she clicked it on, the worried look on her face melting. “Hey, babe. What’s up?”
“Nothing,” came Darien’s voice. “Just checking in…”
With Wade still fiddling with and frowning at his machines and Roulette receiving the away team’s update, I decided to lump them in with the whole team’s debriefing whenever everyone else arrived home. Until then, I would run what I’d found out by the team leader. It made sense in every practical, military-style strategy. Never mind that my heart about jumped into my throat as my feet carried me down the hall to Jayden’s office-slash-bedroom.
My knuckles hovered over the door for a full minute before I knocked.
“Come in,” said Jayden curtly from inside his office.
I opened the door and peeked inside. Jayden was hunched over his desk, peering over a laptop and comparing whatever he’d found on the screen to a folder packed to the brim with papers. He didn’t look up. “What is it?”
My eyes wandered over to his bed in the corner—double-sized, no frills, taking up as little space in the cramped office packed with shelves and filing cabinets as possible—and I willed myself not to think about how Zander and I had once maneuvered ourselves there right as Jayden had walked in on us.
“Too late,” said Zander over our bond.
Damn it. I took a deep breath and squeezed my hands together in front of my abdomen, counting the seconds it took me to exhale and shutting my eyes.
“That hard for you, huh?”
I opened my eyes to find Jayden looking up at me, what could only be called a soft, pitiful smile working its way onto his face. He removed his glasses and put them down on the desk in front of him, pinching his temples with one hand. “To not think of him every time you’re in here?”
I hated when he knew what was going on in my head. “I honestly try not to.”
“I know,” said Jayden, releasing his face and sighing. He grabbed his glasses and slid them back on. “He was just in my head telling me…” He drifted off. “Talking about you.”
When we had so many other things going on? I wished he would use these bonds he shared with Jayden and me to do something useful. Like communicate about Nelian elven movements. Or broker a lasting peace that didn’t involve the Renegades busting down walls and breaking out prisoners every other day.
“They’re innocent Natch prisoners, I’ll have you know,” said Zander over the bond. I didn’t need to be able to see him to picture the grin on his face that came next. “And it’s never a waste to think about you. Darlin’, do you have any idea how easy it would be for the Renegades to win if we counted you among us?”
I bristled at the implication that it was all about my powers for him. But what else would it be, honestly? Why did I lie to myself or even care whether or not there was something more?
But I did care. My heart sunk like I’d had the wind knocked out of me and I focused so hard on the bird’s nest on a branch beyond Jayden’s office window, I didn’t even register whatever nonsense Zander was saying to try to get me riled up. He simply ceased to inhabit any corner of my mind.
Jayden cleared his throat. “You wanted to see me?” His squeaky office chair snapped me back to the moment.
“Do you remember the noises that thing was making when I carried your succulent, bare ass over to that—”
Shut up.
Clearing my throat, I dug a thumb nail into my palm to focus on the discomfort. “Wade says my powers are back. Back in top form.”
Jayden threaded his fingers together and laid his elbows on the desk atop the paperwork. A cursory glance told me they consisted of information about Nelian elves. “Wade gave you the all-clear to leave his laboratory,” said Jayden. His tone clearly indicated he wasn’t convinced.
“He didn’t so much let me as he’s been saying my powers have returned for an hour now and I’d had enough of it.”
Jayden leaned his lips forward to touch the index fingers at the top of his steeple. “So the effects wore off… after how long? About an hour.”
“Based on my account and the time it took to travel back to HQ, Wade estimates it to be anywhere from seventy to a hundred
and ten minutes. The effects of this elf’s power, I mean.”
Jayden dropped his hands off the desk and leaned back, clutching his squeaky chair’s armrests. You’d think with all his money, he’d get that replaced or at least fixed at some point. There were cracks in the vinyl from years in the sun, too. “You’re sure it was this woman elf?” he asked. “All right. Tell me everything.”
I didn’t miss that he hadn’t indicated a feeling either way—relief or regret, even, anything—that my powers were back. His chair swiveled slightly and he stared off out the window. The mama bird was balancing a slithery earthworm between her beak, her ugly-cute little wet-looking babies all stretching their heads up to snatch it.
“Her name was Alanna,” I said. Jayden snapped out of whatever he was daydreaming about and swiveled round to face his computer, immediately starting to type. This was part of why I hadn’t told him all the details on the car ride home. That, and he’d been the driver and he’d looked distracted enough already, his thoughts clearly weighing on him as Chastity and Darien had exchanged ideas for clean-up with him over their comms. “She was a princess.”
Jayden frowned, his fingers hesitating over the keyboard. “Another elf called her a princess?”
“Yes. And she bowed to another elf—a man—and called him her king and her brother. A third elf referred to that man as ‘Your Majesty’ as well.”
“You’re certain she didn’t mean ‘brother’ in a ‘brotherhood’ way?”
I supposed I hadn’t thought of that. They did look a bit different, despite the shared green hair. I felt suddenly stupid as I took a corner of the desk between my fingers. “Maybe. But… I don’t know. My gut told me from how they interacted that they were really siblings.” Not that I’d know since I was an only child.
Jayden’s lips went thin as he stared up at me and I realized as my eyes traveled down that the top of my battle suit was still unzipped. My cleavage spilled out, the open zipper forming two curving lines that just barely stopped beyond my areola. His gaze got stuck there, a slight twitch to his jaw indicating he hadn’t failed to notice and I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling. I made no move to zip up.
