Jax’s eyes narrowed and he propped himself up on his elbow as he glared at Sage. His mouth opened but Caris laid two fingers against his lips and shook her head, smiling a little. “I’m not leaving him if I’m going out for a job, Sage. He comes,” she said, looking back at her friend.
Sage’s eyes narrowed and he stared at Jax. “He’s not one of us, Sugar. You want to sleep with him, fine. He may well be a decent guy and if he’s not, that’s your concern and none of mine. But he’s not one of us, so no can do. He’s not coming.”
“He’s closer than you think, Sage. And yes, he is.”
She felt the waves of confusion from this conversation that rolled from Jax and she found his hand in the sheets and held it while she focused her thoughts and projected them for Jax alone.
Do you remember that neat little trick I admired so much?
I do, yes. Slow amusement, like a reluctant chuckle, followed his reply.
Can you use it for more than languages?
I have never tried, for certain. But I would believe so.
Good. There is something I need to fill you in on, but not now. It will be quicker that way. She looked back at Sage who was glaring irritably at her. He knew what the signs of silent conversations were and he was listening but hearing nothing. Caris was a powerful telepath, but only another receiver could hear her thoughts when she was shielding tightly. Which meant only one thing.
“You aren’t one of us,” Sage said, shaking his head. “I know what a Firewalker feels like in my head. And you’re not it. But you don’t feel…human either. And you can hear her. The ungifted can only hear us when we go on broadcast.”
Caris slid closer to Jax, cuddling into the curve of his body. “He’s not. But he’s no threat to me, or to our kind, Sage. I brought him here,” she whispered, still half in awe of that. “I brought him here. If he was a threat to us, I couldn’t have done that.”
“Brought him?” Sage repeated. Jax’s body stiffened.
She felt the light, intimate touch of his mind on hers as he breathed his thoughts into her. I knew it, I felt it. His arms folded tightly around her and she felt the shudder that racked his body.
Sage sighed, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “The dreaming?” he asked quietly, walking to the chair by the bed and throwing his long, rangy body into it. His eyes darkened thoughtfully, broodingly. The dreaming wasn’t dangerous, or it hadn’t been yet, but this was new. Caris had wished herself new clothes as a child, had fixed ancient crumbling statues in her dreaming, and had from time to time used the dreaming to bring a captured or injured comrade out of harm’s way.
But she had never used it to bring somebody who wasn’t of this world into it before.
“Yes,” Caris said. She had to focus. A battering ram of emotion was flowing off of Jax to her and it tightened her throat, made it hard to think. All she wanted to do was turn around and climb onto him, hold on tight while he thrust his cock up into her. Fuck Sage. He could watch or he could go.
But he had said she was needed.
“What’s gone wrong?” she forced herself to ask.
“The boy I took this morning. Something’s been done to him. He’s locked in and we don’t know why. There’s something not right. Ari can’t come and Kelly has somebody who’s been hurt that she can’t leave,” Sage said, staring up at the ceiling, his fist closed and pounding on the arm of the chair. “Morgan sent me to get you. We need you, Caris.”
She sighed and pulled away from Jax. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t come, Sage. I just said I wasn’t coming without Jax.”
“Jax,” Sage repeated, rolling his eyes. He shoved up out of the chair and stalked out of the room, his long black duster whirling around his ankles. “Jax,” he mumbled under his breath, shaking his head. “Are you going to get dressed or what, Sugar?”
“Sugar?” Jax repeated.
“Are you two having fun parroting the other?” Caris asked as she reluctantly climbed out of bed. She winced, moving gingerly. Jax had been greedy and hungry and had taken her time and again throughout the night.
“Parroting?”
“Acting like a parrot,” she clarified absently as she gathered clothing. Raising her voice she shouted into the living room, “Sage! I’m taking a bath. Morgan can wait long enough for that, right?”
“A bath?” She heard his mumbling reply but not a negative and moved into the bathroom off her bedroom, glancing at the vampire still sprawled on her bed.
“So now I am a bird?” Jax asked, his brows drawn together.
“Acting like a parrot, repeating everything back to you. ‘Jax, Sugar, bath’,” she mumbled, deepening her voice, mocking Sage and Jax. She bent over the tub and started the water and felt two big warm hands smoothing over her ass. With a whimper, she pushed back against him, unable to resist. “Shouldn’t you know what that means anyway?”
Jax laughed. “A new language, confusing, this one. Would you like to try adding a fiftieth language to your mind, and not get confused?” he teased as he nudged his cock against her backside.
The pounding rush of water flowing into the sunken tub covered the sound of her gasp as he slid two fingers inside her tightly swollen cleft, sore, sensitive from being ridden all night. “Jax, I’ve got to hurry—”
“Then I shall,” he murmured, wedging his thigh between hers to widen her stance and driving deep, tunneling through her pussy all the way to her core in one stroke.
Jax stared at the slim line of her pale back, at the curve of her ass, watching at he worked his cock back inside her slippery, tight channel. She held him so snuggly, her heat so creamy, so soft. His cock gleamed wet with her cream, and his balls ached. Pulling out, he shuddered as he pushed back inside the tight, wet core, burying himself to the balls inside, listening to the hungry mewling sound coming from her throat. Over the rushing water, the sounds of their loving would not carry to the man Sage, and Jax wished he had turned off the water.
They had been lovers.
They would not be again.
This woman was his. He gripped her hips and slammed into her as his fangs dropped. He should not be hungry again, not for blood, not now. But the scent of her arousal, the sound of her pounding heart called to him as he stroked the pearl just above her slit and felt her quiver. “You stretch so tightly around me, Caris,” he murmured in praise, stroking the soft lips of her sex, gliding his fingers over her clit. He thrust deep, pushed her hips a little lower. “Hot and sweet, your pussy…”
“Ohhhh,” she whimpered, bracing her hands on the rim of the deep tub, her voice barely audible over the sound of the water. Hmmm….he did like the sound of her moaning. He should most definitely have turned the water off.
Pulling out, he drove back in, setting a quick, hungry pace, reaching around to tug and stroke her clit. Her long tawny hair spilled around her golden body, and her slender back arched as he shifted his angle to rub against the notch deep inside that would make her sob with pleasure.
When he had her rocking and riding his fingers, he jerked her torso up, holding her against him and fucking her with short deep digs of his hips, taking one of her hands and urging her fingers to her cleft, to the swollen nub of her clit as he burrowed back inside. He wound her hair around his hand and bared her neck, licking it hungrily.
Her head fell back and she sobbed, shoving her ass against his hips as hard as she could, moaning and whimpering roughly as his fangs raked her neck. The long, perfect line of her body lay naked to his eyes, the roundness of her breasts, her concave little belly, her fingers circling around her clit, gleaming wet with her cream.
“May I?” he groaned against her ear.
She half laughed, half swore. “I told you, you don’t have to ask,” she rasped, rolling her head to the side.
The sweet burning pleasure of his fangs breaking her skin was the last sensation she needed as she stroked her fingers rapidly over her clit and she bit her lip to muffle the scream as she climaxed around him, sque
ezing the thick, hard cock buried deep inside her. His come, hot and molten, jetted off inside her and she shuddered and cried, reaching behind her and winding one arm around his neck as he fed, holding him tightly against her.
He still fed at her neck as he lifted her up and took her into the bath, his stiff cock still nestled snug inside her pussy. She whimpered and shifted against him as he settled them down in the bath, water spilling over onto the floor as he turned it off before reluctantly drawing away from her neck. He pressed his lips to the wound this time, sealing it slowly with his kiss, licking away the lingering drops.
Drowsily, she asked, “Don’t take this wrong, but do you ever lose this?” She squeezed his cock gingerly with her inner muscles. He puzzled out her question by touching her mind with his while he combed his hands through her hair and once he had her meaning his jaw clenched. “I have hurt you.”
“No. I’m just a little sore,” she said, snuggling herself more firmly against him as he tried to move away.
She felt the shame, saw it in his eyes. “I…I have never been able to claim a woman for my own for anything more than a few hours, or a night. It is not a right my kind are easily given. But that does not give me the right to abuse—”
“There’s been no abuse,” she cut him off by pressing her mouth to his. “Something tells me your anatomy is just a little more powerful than mine. I’m not hurt. I’ve just never been one to participate in all night fuckfests.”
His mouth curved in a slow smile, and she felt her heart twist. Damn it, what were they thinking, trying to hold someone like him captive? Hugging him briefly she moved away and slipped beneath the water to wet her hair. She washed hurriedly, all too aware that Sage would grow impatient and barge in, either through the door, or using his less than traditional means.
Jax sat, just watching her, and once she had climbed out, he washed, quickly, economically. “I love baths,” she told him as she smoothed a towel over her body. “I had to pay to have this put in, and to have the water line laid down. Some people have never taken a bath like this, not on this planet. They use more mundane means of bathing these days.”
She ran the towel quickly over her hair, slathered some gel through it so it would dry well—the thick golden hair was straight, but the texture was actually so fine, she either had use the gel or take the time to dry it out, or it tended to dry in stringy clumps.
Caris tossed the towel over the heated bar before grabbing her lotion. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him rise from the bath, the water rolling from his golden body, down his flat belly, his cock, off of thick heavily muscled thighs. Swallowing, Caris dragged her eyes away and smoothed the vanilla lotion over her arms and legs.
He was drying himself using her towel, and watching her with hot, hungry eyes, his coppery brown hair nearly black as it hung down, plastered to his shoulders in wet streaming ribbons. The hard carved perfection of his chest and belly drew her eye as water streamed down his body.
Lifting the towel to his head to sop up the water from his hair, he paused and drew in the scent of it, closing his eyes. “You smell sweet, like spring, like rain,” he murmured, lifting his head to stare at her with eyes that looked glassy, almost drugged.
Caris shuddered. Damn it, he’s distracting. Then he lowered his lashes and shook his head, breaking the spell. She escaped from the bathroom before she threw herself at him. Even though the muscles in her thighs ached, even though her vagina felt raw and battered now, looking at him made her hungry, made her yearn all over again.
He left the bathroom as she was shimmying into a slim fitting pair of black jeans. She topped it with a white tank and white sleeveless top before sliding her feet into air-soled sandals. You never knew when your job was going to take you on serious walk detail so she generally tried to dress comfortably. She pulled a jacket out after recalling the duster Sage had worn and hoped they were not going someplace cold.
Summer had just come to Montana and she wasn’t looking forward to leaving the beauty of it for any reason, much less for a cold place. Jax stood watching her with his head cocked, a half smile on his face, the towel hooked around his hips. “My clothing is in the other—” she watched his eyes close, the look she recognized now that he was searching his mind for the proper word. How many languages did he know? “The living room? Why a living room? Is there one not living?”
A laugh bubbled out of her throat and she shook her head. “No. That’s just what we call it. It’s kind of our focal point, our social area,” she responded, flipping her damp hair off her shoulders. “I’ll bring it in here.”
She was brushing past him when he laid one hand on her shoulder. “I will come out there with you,” he said. His eyes were dark, troubled pools of blue, studying her face. “This…this Sage is a lover of yours?”
“Ah, hmmm. On occasion, yes.”
His fingers curled into her shoulder and his eyes narrowed, his face tightened and Caris watched as it transformed into that of a predator. His fangs dropped down protruding past his upper lip and flashing at her as he backed her against the wall. “Will these occasions stop?” he asked, his voice dropping to a growl.
He was struggling to control a beast that was raging inside him, Caris thought. How had a planet of humans managed to enslave creatures like him? He was so completely dominant. She closed the scant inches between them and wrapped her arms around his neck, lowering her shields, allowing her mind to mesh with his. What she wanted to say was too complex.
She was fond of Sage. He was a good lover and he had helped keep the loneliness at bay. Loneliness for a dreamer wasn’t a good thing.
But she had been waiting for Jax.
Waiting for him to come and find her, claim her, love her. She had been waiting for him, had suffered alone through a million fantasies, and she focused on them, funneling them through the meshing of their minds and pouring them into his. He wasn’t enslaved here, he didn’t have to ask permission to do a damn thing, and she was waiting for him to claim and take and mark her.
He shuddered as he plundered her mouth with his, one fang nicking her lip as he rocked his cock against her covered cleft. This was not a wise time to share such with me. I should have waited on this, he rasped into her mind. With a savage groan he tore his mouth from hers and licked away the blood before putting distance between them.
“You make me lose all control, Caris,” he said, shaking his head. It was reeling from the things she had pushed into his mind. She wanted no subjugation, wanted no submissiveness or subservience. But aggression and dominance, the traits he had been forced to suppress in all but battle for his fifty years of life.
Her dreams, her fantasies, they had all seemed to focus around him, before she had ever met him, before she had pulled him here. Claiming. She wanted him to claim her. I will, he purred into her mind, afraid to move close and touch her again just yet. But now is not the time.
She was still trembling minutely when he followed her from the room into the larger living room—such an odd phrase. But Caris assured him there was no dying room. Sage was stalking around the room in tight, controlled circles. This man, he had much, much anger inside him. When he stopped and turned to look at Caris, Jax had to force himself to breathe slowly, to think past the rage he felt as he imagined this other man bedding Caris—bedding his woman—to the gentleness he saw in the human’s gaze, the urge to protect and keep safe.
“Nice clothes,” Sage drawled, glancing at Jax. Jax watched blandly as he walked to where his flight suit lay on the floor. He dropped the towel and picked up his trousers, donning the smooth veltec as he concentrated on retracting his fangs. He had fed twice, and he had bedded Caris a number of times, so he shouldn’t be easily enraged. But his rage didn’t want to subside. He slid his hand over the seam and it closed over his groin before he took his jacket and donned it. His fangs slowly started to pull up into their sheaths behind his canines. By the time he had closed the seam of the flight jacket, the fangs had retracte
d and he could meet Sage’s eyes levelly before returning his gaze to the floor to find his boots.
“Interesting clothing. Into leather?” Sage murmured to Caris.
Jax acted as though he hadn’t heard. But he got the picture from the other man’s mind. Apparently the other man didn’t realize just how strong Jax’s psy skills were. He saw Sage teasing Caris with a mental picture, her bound to a bed, Jax in his black flight suit, her wearing a tiny black garment resembling the veltec, that pushed her lush breasts up and out. Then another picture, Jax smacking her lily-white ass. His first thought was rage, and his fangs dropped again.
But then his cock hardened and Jax shuddered, wheeled on his bare heel, and stalked out the door into the cool morning air.
“Fuck, Sage, take out an ad on the news screen next time,” Caris hissed, blushing. The images Sage had sent her had her cheeks flaming, but it was with both embarrassment and arousal.
Sage’s eyes narrowed, then widened, and he grinned. “Oops.”
“Can’t you do anything on a level other than broadcast?” she snapped, brushing past him.
“Look, let lover-boy calm down. I’ll come back after I take you to Morgan.”
“Not a good idea, babe,” she drawled. She turned to look at him. “He’s not human. I’m not going into detail about what he is. That’s his choice, his call. But he’s not human. And he possesses…gifts that could make some of ours look like card tricks. He just caught every last thing you thought, Sage. Without even trying. And I suspect if he wanted, he could rip you into so many pieces, they would still be trying to piece you together when the Fire’s Creator comes back to claim us.”
Sage stiffened but she cut him off. “Don’t. Sage, I know you. And I know more about him than you do. Trust me on this. And for God’s sake, watch your manners.”
“Don’t have any,” he returned, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at her slim back as she walked out the door.
Firewalkers: Dreamer Page 4
