by Tina Folsom
Before he’d even spoken the last word, he withdrew from her sheath and plunged back in. This time not as gently as before. But she didn’t mind. On the contrary, she welcomed it.
“Now we’re talking.”
“Talk’s over,” he said and kissed her.
Farther below, his hips started moving, his cock thrusting back and forth, in and out of her drenched pussy. Oh, yes, she was wet. He’d made her climax so violently that even now her body was still hypersensitive. And with every thrust, every stroke of his magnificent cock, he was driving her toward that same abyss.
Winter slid her hands onto his back, touching, caressing, exploring what she could reach. His butt muscles flexed with every thrust into her, and she couldn’t help but urge him on by digging her fingers into his backside and driving him deeper with each stroke.
All the while, Logan was kissing her, her lips, her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. As if he couldn’t get enough. His chest was covered with a light sheen of perspiration, his breaths came in short pants, and his cock thrust relentlessly. The sound of his breathing was mixed with deep moans, and the cords in his neck were strained, as if holding onto his control was costing him the last ounce of his strength.
How she loved a man who gave his all when making love. How she loved a man who only lived in the here and now, only worked for this one moment of pleasure and pure bliss. How she loved a man who made her feel desired. A man who drove her to such heights.
With every movement, every stroke, every kiss, every thrust, her body heated more. Her pulse was racing now, and she knew she was heading for another monumental orgasm.
“Oh Logan!” she cried out.
As if he knew what she was trying to tell him, he shifted his angle, and with every thrust of his cock, his pelvic bone rubbed against her clit, igniting her. Waves of pleasure rushed over her. Then a different kind of wave followed. Logan’s cock spasmed inside her, and liquid heat flooded her as his seed released inside her.
Logan’s moans mingled with hers, before his movements slowed and he finally came to rest on top of her, his weight braced on his knees and elbows, his cock still inside her.
When she met his gaze, he smiled.
“You felt so good,” he said and brushed his lips over hers. “Thank you for allowing me to make love to you.”
She couldn’t remember any man ever having thanked her after sex. “I feel I should thank you.” After all, he’d made her come twice, and she’d really needed that after the many revelations she’d had to deal with today.
He slowly withdrew his cock halfway, then slid back inside, wringing another moan from her lips.
“You keep doing that and we won’t sleep tonight,” she warned.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you sleep like a baby tonight. I’ll watch over you.”
She stared at him. “You won’t sleep?”
“Only with one eye closed.”
Winter raised her hand and combed it through his hair. “Don’t you think we’re safe here for tonight?”
“We probably are.” He pressed a kiss to her lips, then slowly rolled off her. “You should sleep.” He made a motion to get out of bed.
She reached for his arm and stopped him. “Won’t you stay in bed with me?”
Logan gave her a hesitant smile. “You don’t want me to use the other bed and give you some space?”
She shook her head. “Unless you’re the one who wants the space.”
“I don’t. But my… uh parts might react to holding you in my arms all night.” He pointed to his groin, where his cock was still semi-hard.
She moved closer until her lips were only inches from his mouth. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” She slanted her lips over his and kissed him. Moments later, she felt the mattress at her back again and Logan’s naked body sliding against hers.
15
Logan had slept on and off. And though sharing a bed with Winter had raised his desire for her even more, he hadn’t acted upon it and let her sleep. She needed her rest. Instead, in the darkness of the hotel room, he’d worked on a plan for how to proceed. He knew he had to be careful. Not only were they running from the demons, they were also hiding from the Stealth Guardians—at least for now, until Logan could figure out a way to convince the council that Winter should live. Until then, he had to take every precaution to evade his fellow guardians. Which meant he couldn’t ask them for help. He had to find help elsewhere.
He’d already showered and gotten dressed by the time Winter stirred. He walked to the bed and sat on the edge. When he pressed a kiss on her shoulder, she hummed softly.
“Time to get up,” he said. “We’ve got a lot ahead of us today.”
She turned and wiped the sleep from her eyes. Her hair was rumpled, and there was a soft glow about her. She looked rested. And irresistible. But guilt was churning in him again this morning. He’d slept with Winter, but hadn’t told her that he’d gone to her shop to kill her. He felt like a cad for deceiving her like this, but right now he couldn’t tell her the truth. What if she ran from him once he confessed that he wasn’t only an immortal guardian, but that on occasion he also had to be an assassin?
“Good morning,” she murmured and wrapped her arms around him.
The gesture was so trusting, it made him feel even worse. But he couldn’t let her believe that something was wrong, so he hugged her back and pressed a kiss into her hair. “Being with you last night was amazing.” It was true, though that wasn’t the reason he was saying it. He knew only too well that on the morning after, regrets could surface, and he didn’t want her to regret her actions from the night before. Even if he regretted having been too weak to resist her allure. What he’d done was wrong. Still, having Winter in his arms, making love to her had been the best thing he’d ever done.
Slowly he eased out of her embrace and stood up.
“Why don’t I get us some breakfast from downstairs while you take a shower and get ready?”
It would be best that way. At least then he wouldn’t be tempted to follow her into the shower to make love with her again. And repeat his mistake.
“Sure.” She shrugged, looking somewhat disappointed, just as disappointed as he felt inside. Why couldn’t he have met her under other circumstances?
He forced himself to smile at her. “Eggs? Bacon? Pancakes?”
“Bacon and eggs, and coffee. Black. Thanks.”
“Be right back.”
Logan left the room and made his way downstairs to the breakfast buffet. A dozen other people were already chowing down on their food and gulping down their coffee. On one wall, a mounted TV screen showed the news. The TV was muted, but Logan read the closed captioning. No news about any dead men with green blood found two states over. Had the police found men oozing green blood, every TV station in the country would be reporting on it. It meant that his compound mates had cleaned up Winter’s shop and disposed of the demons.
By now they would also have found his car and traced his cell phone. Whether they were following the fake trail he’d left was another question. His compound mates weren’t stupid. The diversion wouldn’t keep them off his trail for long. They had to assume that he would eventually use one of the lost portals to transport them somewhere without being traced. But how quickly would they figure out which portal Logan intended to use?
Logan had memorized the location of three portals in the area. He could, of course, travel farther afield, but it would mean logging into the Stealth Guardians’ system from an unsecured public computer to research the location of other portals. Once he did that, his compound mates would be able to determine his location by the IP address of the computer he was using. He couldn’t risk it. There was a more complicated way of figuring out the location of a portal, but unfortunately Logan wasn’t sufficiently well versed in the intricate mathematical calculations necessary to perform such a task. He had no choice but to choose one of the three portals close by.
Minutes l
ater, Logan entered his hotel room with a tray of food. Winter was already showered and fully dressed, her hair still damp at the tips. Her eyes were wide, and she looked scared.
He set the tray down on the desk, then rushed to her. “What’s wrong?”
“I saw him again.”
“Whom? Where?”
She gripped his arms tightly. “The demon who tried to kill me. The one you choked to death.”
Logan didn’t correct her that the man who’d tried to kill her wasn’t a demon, nor did he tell her that he knew that Manus wasn’t dead.
“Did you leave the room? Where is he? Where did you see him?”
Winter shook her head. “I was in the shower. I had a vision. It was different this time. Maybe because I knew what it was. I didn’t fight it, not at first. But then I saw him. I thought he was dead. I thought you killed him. But he’s still alive.” Tears brimmed at her eyes.
Logan pulled her to his chest and stroked his hand over her head. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
She looked up at him. “It was a warehouse, I think. Red brick. He was staring at something. At a wall. It looked like something was carved into it, but I couldn’t make it out. It was too dark. But I saw the dagger at his belt. He was waiting. I think he was waiting for me. For us. As if he knew where we would go.”
Because Manus did know. He’d figured it out. He’d put two and two together and deducted that Logan would go to a portal to disappear with Winter. And at one such portal, Manus was now lying in wait. And Logan had to figure out which one, and whether any of his other compound mates were guarding the other portals. Luckily, he knew there were too many portals within a fifty mile radius of Philadelphia for his fellow guardians to guard them all. They would have to make an educated guess where Logan would appear, and that’s all it would be, a guess. Because they couldn’t rely on transit cameras to find him and Winter, nor on credit card charges. Logan had made sure of that.
“You’ve done well,” he said to Winter.
“Well? But he’s chasing us.”
Logan shook his head. “He’s waiting for us at a place he believes I’ll go. Which means we’ll have to make sure not to show up there. I need a computer.” He pointed to the tray. “Eat something and be ready.”
He walked toward the wall that connected this room with the one next to them.
“What are you planning?”
Logan looked over his shoulder. “I’ll use another guest’s computer to check three possible addresses on Google street view. If one of them looks like the one you saw in your vision, we’ll avoid that address and go to one of the others.”
“What will we find at those addresses?”
“Portals.”
When her mouth opened for another question, he stopped her. “I’ll explain later.” Then he made himself invisible and stepped through the wall into the other room.
~ ~ ~
Logan had thought it safer to walk to the portal he’d chosen rather than take public transportation or steal a car. Safer to walk invisibly. Winter didn’t mind. At least the cool air helped her clear her head.
On the way, Logan explained what a portal was.
“You mentioned Star Trek yesterday. Think of it as the transporter room. The door to a portal is marked with a carved dagger. Only the hand of a Stealth Guardian can open it. You step inside, like you would step onto the pods in the transporter room in Star Trek. But our portals don’t need an engineer to work.”
“What do you mean?” Winter asked. “Then how do you beam from one place to another?”
Logan tipped his finger to his temple. “With my mind. I concentrate on my destination, and it takes me to the portal closest to that destination.”
“And the demons? How do they do it? In my visions I saw something different, yet strangely similar. Fog and smoke, all swirling around. And they disappear in it.” And it had scared her.
He nodded. “It’s a portal of sorts. We call them vortexes. But they are mobile, not tied to any specific place.”
She stopped walking for a moment, her heart pounding. “Are you telling me that they can appear anywhere?”
“Almost anywhere. They do have restrictions.”
“Such as?”
“A demon can only conjure a vortex on the ground.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the surface on which they project their vortex has to be directly connected to the earth. So, for example, it’s possible for them to project a vortex on the ground floor of a building, but not on a floor higher up.”
Winter thought about it for a moment. “In that hotel we had a room on the second floor.”
Logan nodded. “Otherwise a demon following us would have had a chance of entering our room without having to kick the door in.”
“Oh my God! So, really, nowhere is safe.”
“Not exactly. A demon has to have a visual of his destination to transport him there. Either he has to have been there before, or he needs a picture of it, needs to know what it looks like.”
“How do you know so much about them?”
“We observe, we analyze, we learn. Occasionally we get the opportunity to capture a demon and torture him for information.”
“And torture, it works?”
“Sometimes. But the demons have a very high tolerance for pain. It’s hard to get information out of them. They’d rather die. So we oblige them.”
There was something matter of fact in Logan’s voice, as if the killing of demons was a daily occurrence. Maybe it was. Just another day in the office. She almost laughed at that. Almost. But the situation was too dire.
Logan seemed to misinterpret her silence, because he said, “They have to be killed. You do understand that, don’t you?”
She quickly glanced at him. “Of course. They deserve to die. I’m not judging you for killing them. I’m grateful that men like you exist. Or I would be dead now.” Or worse, living in the Underworld, doing the demons’ bidding.
She shuddered at the thought.
“We’re almost there,” Logan suddenly said and pointed to a building.
Winter read the inscription over the double doors. “The library? The portal is in a library?”
“Come on. Once we pass those trash containers over there, I’ll make us visible. Then we’ll go in like ordinary citizens wanting to check out some books. Ready?”
She nodded.
They had no problems entering the library. It was late morning and not busy. Once in the stacks, Logan turned to her and lowered his voice. “We’re looking for a wall, either made of stone or wood with an ancient dagger carved into it. Keep your eyes open.”
Winter knew what a portal would look like. She’d seen several in her visions. “Let’s split up. I’ll walk around the second floor wall, you take the first floor.”
Chuckling, Logan shook his head. “Not a chance. Have you never seen a horror movie? When did let’s split up ever turn out well?”
She grimaced. “You’ve got a point.”
He took her hand and ushered her toward the outer wall of the old building. “This way.”
For several minutes, they searched for the telltale dagger that would reveal the entrance to the portal, but found nothing.
Back where they’d started, Winter met Logan’s eyes. “Maybe upstairs?”
He shook his head. “Extremely unlikely.” He pointed upwards. They were standing in a small atrium that allowed them to see the walls of the upper floor. “The walls are too new. Probably an add-on to the original building. They wouldn’t have used old stone or salvaged wood up there that could contain the portal’s entrance.”
“But where then? Are you sure this was the address?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
Footsteps behind them made Winter spin around. Logan did the same. A woman in business attire and with a nametag that read Chief Librarian smiled at them.
“I’m sure you’re wondering where it is,” the woman said in a ple
asant voice.
Winter felt Logan tense next to her, his hand already reaching inside his jacket.
“Uh, yeah, uh,” Winter stammered.
“You wouldn’t be the first,” the librarian continued and pointed to an area behind the history stacks. “The permanent exhibit is still in the history section. We thought of moving it, but it would have been too costly. Feel free to browse and come back to my desk if you have any questions.” Then she moved her hand toward them, and only now did Winter see the brochure she held out. “Here you go, you forgot to pick up a leaflet on your way in.”
Logan, still on alert next to her, didn’t move, but Winter forced a smile and reached for the leaflet. She glanced down at it quickly, not wanting to let the librarian out of her sight, just in case she was a demon. But one look at the photo displayed on the leaflet, and she jabbed Logan in the ribs.
“Thanks so much,” she said to the librarian, then looked at Logan, and in a much lower voice she said, “Look at this!”
Only when the librarian had walked back to her desk, did Logan finally look down at the leaflet.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” he murmured.
Winter nodded, her eyes scanning the text on the brochure. “They think it’s a stone the Vikings brought to North America during their explorations.”
Already walking toward the history section, Logan said, “It’s much older than that.”
Holding onto Logan’s hand, she rounded the corner just behind him. And there it was. A monolith with an engraving. It was hard to make out what the engraved symbol was if one didn’t know already. But she knew what it was, and therefore she recognized the dagger instantly.
“The portal,” she murmured full of reverence.
She exchanged a look with Logan.
“We’ve gotta be quick before she comes back,” Logan said and stepped over the cordon.
Winter followed him and watched as he put his palm flat over the dagger. A few seconds later, the monolith was gone and in its stead, an opening leading into darkness appeared.
Logan turned to her and must have seen her fearful look, because he said, “Trust me.”
