The Thorndyke Trilogy 2: Dancing at Midnight

by Lynne Connolly

  She slept in his arms. Her hair was tangled over her face and shoulders but still straight. Gently, taking care not to disturb her, he smoothed it back. He’d love to brush it, to watch it become a shining sheet of liquid jet. She didn’t make much noise when she was asleep, but her breath puffed over his chest, raising the sparse hairs with each exhalation. He liked it.

  What had initially shocked him was her resistance to his mental invasion. He’d tried several times tonight, cautiously, since he didn’t want her to know he was a Talent or suspect anything wrong. But she had a strong mental barrier.

  That he accepted. Many mortals did. But at the point of climax, he’d tried and failed again. He had a strong urge to know for sure that she wasn’t a Talent. She’d pushed him out again.

  Something in her drew him as no other woman had before, and he’d had his share. She was dangerous at a level he didn’t yet understand.

  When his shoulder began to go to sleep he shifted her slightly. A damp spot on his chest showed where she’d touched him with her lips—a sleep kiss. Nice. The trouble was, he liked her too much when he should be on his guard. He needed to do that research into her identity, discover if she was telling the truth about breaking down and trudging here in the snow, but finding her car had gone some way to persuading him she might be telling the truth.

  It had stopped snowing. He’d closed the door but not drawn the drapes. No need with insulated glass and no neighbors near enough to see anything. He liked waking up and staring out into the night. The sliver of window at the far corner of the room showed no more flakes were falling.

  Her eyes opened, and she stared up at him, instantly awake. He felt her system go into motion like a wound watch, her mental barriers sliding easily into place. Did she sense him there? Instinct took over, and he withdrew, although he wanted to ease in and stroke her from the inside as well as out.

  With a bright smile, she swung over him, straddling him so her pussy wet his thighs. Already? She touched his balls, then the base of his cock, just grazing the eager flesh, then moved down to his thigh. He should have guessed she’d notice his sigil, the mark of his other creature.

  “What do we have here?”

  He grasped her waist, reveling in the soft, satiny skin under his hands. “Shall I let you guess?”

  “I don’t have to. It’s a tattoo.”

  She ducked to one side and examined it. His little blue dragon, the reminder of his other form. It was like a dragon on a coat of arms, shown in profile, its wings closed.

  The sigil had appeared at the moment of his first shape-shift when he was thirteen. It was far more ingrained than a tattoo; it wouldn’t fade or discolor over time.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything that good on anyone else.” She laughed. “One guy had his dick tattooed. Must have hurt like fuck, but the work wasn’t nearly as good as this.”

  The thought of her with other men disturbed him, and he almost laughed at the stupidity of his instinctive response. He’d fucked Talented women who’d lost count of the number of sexual partners they’d had, and it had never bothered him. He’d never been a hypocrite. So why this? Why now?

  He needed to relax. All but one part of him. She had him well in hand, although her fingers didn’t meet when she tried to circle his cock. Slender fingers, with the nails cut fairly short and french polished, somewhat chipped. The thought entered his mind, of her running those nails down his back, his chest, marking him, and he took a sharp breath to dispel the notion.

  Nor would he mind if she kept squeezing his cock and pumping it, simulating the act of fucking. He watched, enthralled. So good. He forced reason back, for however short a time it lasted. “So this is your turn, huh?”

  “And how. Any objections?”

  Stroking his thumbs over her waist, Nathan shook his head. “Can’t think of one. Go for it.”

  “Oh, I intend to. It’s definitely my turn.”

  Without looking, he grabbed another condom from the drawer.

  In truth, not being able to make her pregnant or give her a disease, he didn’t need the condom, but if it made her feel more at ease, then he’d go with the flow and let her put it on him.

  He put it on the pillow where she could see it but made no attempt to sheathe himself. The way she was going, they might not reach that point.

  She smoothed the liquid that had emerged from the tip of his cock over the head, glossing the tight surface. Nathan had to hold back his reactions, not wanting to let her know how insane she was driving him. He should have more stamina than this.

  But she seemed to know anyway, grinning at him before resuming her task, and then—holy fuck!—she bent and sucked him in, spreading her tongue over the head to smother it in lavish, wet heat.

  “Jesus!”

  When she sucked, he thought he was going to lose it. He gritted his teeth and held on, tightening his grip on her. He wanted in her—now—but she wouldn’t budge. He could move her easily, but he’d promised. This was her turn.

  She pulled away, letting the cool air chill his cock for a bare moment before she kissed her way down the shaft to his balls. She sucked them one then the other, then back to his shaft and up to the head. Her hand performed a movement a bit like a figure eight, swirling around him.

  “Fucking tantric?”

  Chuckling, she moved away. “Just instinct and a bit of rhythm work.”

  What the fuck? Oh yes, dancer. Rhythm. Keeping his head, at least both of them for the moment—the one he thought with and the one that was controlling him now—he plucked the condom from the pillow and handed it to her. “It’s up to you. I’m happy here, and you can give me the blowjob of my life, or we can get there together. I want to see what you look like riding me. Do your breasts jiggle?” Letting his gaze linger on the tender morsels he’d sampled earlier, he watched, fascinated, as their color changed from pale cream to pink. “You blush all over. That’s beautiful.”

  She wouldn’t look at him, then shook her head and laughed. “Yeah. Hot flashes before my time.” About thirty years before her time.

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  She flushed deeper. “Twenty-eight. Dancers last longer these days.”

  “Especially prima ballerinas,” he said, pressing his point. “The companies like to keep them until they don’t have any Achilles’ tendons left. Have you snapped yours yet?” A penalty for dancing en pointe, some dancers had very little left of the tendons in their ankles.

  “Not yet. I’ve been lucky.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder, giving him the best view of her body. Had she ever danced naked? He’d love to see it.

  It might be possible. After all, they were both headed for the Windy City—No. He stopped his thoughts right there. He liked her too much, and he didn’t trust himself where she was concerned.

  He had too many secrets to let a stranger waltz into his life, sexy or not.

  The short respite had given Nathan a chance to draw breath and regain his senses. A little bit anyhow. Enough to enjoy the sight of her astride him, the sinews in her thighs in strong relief as she strained to encompass his body between her legs.

  She’d obviously had experience sheathing a man before. Her movements were deft and efficient. She paused to smooth the latex down his aching cock.

  Nathan reverted to caveman. “Do it.”

  She knew he was losing it too. He caught her feeling of satisfaction before it disappeared behind her mental barrier. “Such finesse.” She lifted, giving him a magnificent view of her dripping wet pussy. They were too eager for much foreplay. He should be grateful she managed as much as she had. He supported her as she moved up. Not that she needed it, but gentlemanly instincts were ingrained into him, even now. She hovered over him and gripped his shaft, and he groaned. When she moved gently, teasing him with possibilities, recognition hit him of the way she mirrored his actions earlier and he laughed. “Getting your own back?”

  “Oh no,” she said. “
That comes later.”

  Plunging down, she gave him about as much mercy as he’d given her. None.

  And she started to ride as if she’d kicked her mount from walk to full gallop, bypassing trots and canters. Slamming her body onto his, she arched her back. He lifted his knees to give her some support. She ignored his efforts to be a gentleman, other than to work him harder, lift higher, and slam down on him, bathing his balls with her essence. He’d never wash again. He wanted some tangible memory of this, even though he knew better.

  Nothing lasted. Nothing at all.

  “Your turn to stop thinking,” she said breathlessly. Her eyes gleamed in the dim light, the blue darkened with passion.

  She was right… It was. He strained up to meet her, matching her frantic plunges with deep thrusts up into the bliss of her pussy, hot, open, and for now, all his. They danced in time with each other, his athleticism meeting her grace and strength, in many ways a perfect physical match. She was slender elegance, and he was brute strength but with a reined-in control that nobody had broken. Kristen came fucking close.

  He struck gold when she froze and then moved again, more frantically this time. He’d found her sweet spot. Just where it should be, as if he’d crooked his finger inside her and tickled. Next time. There was so much he wanted to do with her and not enough time to do it. The story of his life.

  Ecstasy beckoned a short stretch away. He could see it if he closed his eyes—

  “Open them. I want to see them.”

  Grinning, he recognized his sentiments from earlier. She was getting a bit of her own back. He had no objection to keeping his eyes open when the view was so good.

  Her breasts jiggled just the tiniest amount, enough to tempt him to move his hands from her waist. He cupped the sweet, soft mounds, ran his thumbs across her nipples repeatedly until they were hard as bullets, then covered them with his palms and pressed. She pushed back, rubbing them against his hands and moaning his name.

  Gritting his teeth, he had to work to hold on to his senses. He could have come at any time, but now it was becoming inevitable. She plunged harder, and he released one of her breasts to work her clit with his thumb, holding it against his body so every time she came down, she brushed it. A few thrusts later, he went with her, pinched it hard. When she moaned encouragement, harder still before releasing it and letting her do the work. Then he delivered another pinch. She liked it, although it must be giving her a twinge of pain.

  His first hint that she’d reached her apogee was the flutter of her inner passage against his cock. Then he took over, holding her steady with one hand while he worked her clit and fucked her. Careful to maintain the angle, or as careful as he could be given the circumstances that his whole body was running out of his control. She gripped him, her pussy clenching around him, and his balls tightened. His sperm shot up, spurted, and he groaned, but he didn’t stop holding his body stiff for her and flicking her clit. Nor would he until he’d taken every bit of her. She screamed his name, cried out, and he fucked her through his and her orgasm until she went lax, her essence flooding him, balls and thighs.

  Only then did he release her and let her fall forward over him. He eased out of her gently, dealt with the condom, and dragged the sheets over them. Oblivion beckoned.

  Chapter Three

  “One thing I can tell you for sure, she’s not PHR,” Nathan announced as he walked into the kitchen the next morning. He closed the door carefully, hating that he had to even mention the name of the organization that liked to call itself the Perfect Human Race, but was nothing of the kind. In fact, the PHR was the enemy of every Talent on the planet, be they shape-shifter, vampire, or Sorcerer.

  Dalton glanced up from his seat at the table. “So you did fuck her, then?”

  Of course he’d know that. The energy they’d been putting out must have been off the scale.

  Nathan felt like driving his best friend’s teeth down his throat. He clenched his fist, then deliberately relaxed it. “Maybe.”

  “If you didn’t have a good time with your guest last night, a banshee visited us. That lady’s a screamer.”

  Dalton missed Nathan’s satisfied grin when he turned back to the coffeemaker. Nathan made sure he did. But he couldn’t stop the smile when he recalled her reactions to their midnight tryst.

  Dalton persisted. “I thought you didn’t like her. You despised her for lying to you, last I heard.”

  Having schooled his features into affability, Nathan faced his friend. “I don’t know. I have no idea why I did it, but I needed to right that minute. Maybe my dick’s bigger than my brain.” Shrugging as if last night meant little to him, he turned back to the counter.

  “Maybe it is. Or maybe the lady intrigues you. I haven’t seen you so twisted up over a woman for a long, long time.” Dalton sounded totally at ease, unlike Nathan’s edginess.

  “I read her.” Finally, after the second time, she’d opened up enough for him to confirm what he wanted to know. By then he didn’t care. He just wanted more of her luscious body, but when their thoughts merged, he knew for sure. She hadn’t known about him before she’d come to this house. His main annoyance was that someone had tracked him down here, in his refuge, but the house was safe for now from predatory females.

  “You read her deep enough to know for sure that she’s no threat?”

  “She’s mortal, and there’s none of the coldness and the calculation our enemies display. She’s a hot-tempered little thing.” His cock stirred when he considered exactly how hot-tempered she was.

  ”I thought she might be PHR. I don’t buy that she’d endanger her life just to meet the dance impresario, but PHR members are crazy. One of them would give the old blizzard a try in order to get us to herself. I locked my door and put a few alarms around. I didn’t want to be murdered in my sleep. But I trusted you, my friend.” Dalton leaned back and tucked his hands behind his head, stretching.

  Nathan raised a brow. “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

  So Dalton had thought that too. With three Talents in the house, they’d be prime targets for the organization that regularly attacked their kind. “No.” The PHR knew how to control its members’ minds and trained them in hiding their thoughts.

  After a night of delicious discovery, Nathan was sure Kristen’s barriers were natural, probably inborn. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve broken through to a deeper level, but that would have hurt and bewildered her. No sense doing that when they were ships passing in the night. They passed a number of times, though. Just to make sure.

  “So where is she?”

  “Sleeping.” Nathan had woken her long enough to get her hot and bothered. Then he’d left her to dream about him and come downstairs for a quiet word with Dalton.

  “So here’s the question I never got around to asking you last night. Why leave your comfortable home to find me when a storm was brewing? What did you need to say to my face that you didn’t trust to the phone or Internet?”

  Dalton had arrived shortly before the storm hit hard, and then they’d been too busy ensuring everything was secure and the backup systems for power were working properly to talk about anything else.

  Dalton poured out the fragrant brew before he answered. He picked up the cream jug and added the barest spot of milk. Nathan shook his head when Dalton offered it to him. “Okay.” Dalton blew on his coffee and took a meditative sip. “Do you remember that mess last year, when the PHR nearly caught up to you?”

  Nathan nodded grimly. His friend Jay Trevino had sent a woman down the escape line he helped run. “She went back to Jay, but she left a shit storm behind her. Not her fault, but a cell’s in Jay’s Texas home. Her brother’s still in Chicago at Saint Paul, and I’m having him carefully watched in case it happens again.”

  “I’m sure you have a fresh cell in your area,” Dalton said. The PHR took lessons from the terrorist handbook and organized in cells—small, self-contained units.

  Nathan sighed an
d gulped his coffee. It burned the back of his throat. Almost without conscious thought, he partially shifted for a moment, long enough to invoke the healing properties of his dragon. “What makes you think so?”

  “We got a member.”

  Now Dalton had all Nathan’s attention. “When?”

  “Two days ago. He wasn’t a key member, but a Sorcerer got to work on him. The poor sap was a kid, barely out of his teens.”

  “They like to recruit ’em early.” Nathan remembered other such kids. In Chicago, with its large student population, the threat was always there.

  He had no sympathy for the kid. He couldn’t afford it. Talents had too much to lose from the bastards dedicated to wiping them from the face of the earth. “Indoctrinate them while they’re young and impressionable; that’s their motto.”

  “Yeah.” Dalton ran his hand through his hair, pushing the long forelock back so his temples stood out in sharp relief. “This one didn’t take much probing, thank God, but he didn’t know much. By the time we’d got to the address he gave us, his pals had gone and taken their evidence with them. But we got enough to know another cell has started. That should put you on your guard. It’s not the man in front of you with the sword you need to worry about; it’s the one behind you with the dagger.”

  Nathan knew that too.

  He grabbed a mug from the cabinet and poured another coffee, then, after a little hesitation, put the cream jug next to it and opened the cupboard to find the sugar. “She’s a dancer, so she might take sugar,” he said.

  One good night was all they’d have. He couldn’t afford to let her get close to him. Not without finding out a lot more about her, and he’d been too busy to do anything but the basics. He made a sudden decision. “I’m leaving this morning, and I’ll take Kristen with me since she’s anxious to get to Chicago. I need to get back to town to make sure everything is locked down and safe. You can stay if you want.”

  Dalton drained the last of his coffee. “I’ll come with you. I want to test the situation in Chicago. You’re an important link for the Thorndykes and their mission.” This time he wasn’t talking about himself, but the network his family had set up to help Talents start new lives or spirit them out of danger. Even beings as powerful as Talents could be threatened.