Bound Guardian Angel (14 page)

“No. I . . .
how . . . no way.” His brain rejected the
possibility that Satan’s mistress had set her sights on his
bestie.

“Think about it.” Sam pushed to her knees
then straddled his lap, hanging her forearms over his
shoulders.

“I don’t want to think about it,” he said
under his breath, cupping her ass in both hands. “Cordray with
Trace makes my stomach turn.”

Sam laughed. “Will you grow up for two
seconds. You’re not Trace’s father. You can’t prevent women from
being attracted to him.”

“Cordray is
not
a woman.” He voiced
the sentiment with a little more bite than was necessary.

“Fine. Female. Whatever.” Sam rotated her
hips, teasing his erection.

He relaxed and gripped her hips, churning
her more forcefully against him. “I was thinking she was more like
an ogre.”

She rolled her eyes and giggled, grinding
against him again. “My point is, if she likes him, you can’t force
her not to. Not everything in this world must bend to your whim,
you know.”

Micah yanked her against him, thrusting to
strengthen the friction between them. “Why would you think she
likes him? She does nothing but insult him and give him grief.”

Sam’s eyelids fell erotically to half-mast,
and she smiled. “How does a grade-school boy show a little girl he
thinks she’s cute?”

Micah frowned then smirked. “I haven’t been
a grade-school boy in a while, so I wouldn’t know.”

“He pulls her pigtails and teases her,
silly,” Sam said coyly. “Don’t you see? Cordray is pulling Trace’s
pigtails and teasing him . . . all to get his
attention.”

Micah refused to believe that, because Trace
went after Cordray as much as she went after him. The two were like
bickering children on a playground.

Bickering children.

His heart stopped. Oh God. Sam was right.
More right than she knew. Because not only was Cordray pulling
Trace’s pigtails, he was pulling hers.

“No,” he said aloud, pulling Sam closer, as
if by wielding his possession over her, he could do the same with
Trace.

“Yes.” Sam nipped his neck and clung to his
shoulders. “Face it, baby, Cordray likes Trace.”

He set his jaw and shook his head.

Sam threw her head back and giggled.
“Cordray and Trace, sitting in a tree. K-i-s-s-i-n-g.” She pecked
him on the lips. “First comes love”—
peck
—”second comes
marriage—”

Micah placed his hand over Sam’s mouth
before she could say the last line of the song he’d heard kids sing
from playgrounds for decades. “No more talk about Cordray, or
Trace, or how they’re k-i-s-s-i-n-g in a tree.” He flipped Sam to
her stomach, and she arched her back so that her hips raised to
meet his as he fell in behind her and forced her legs apart with
his knees. “We really need to work on your pillow talk, baby.” He
smoothed his palm over the cheeks of her ass then gave her a swat.
Her supple flesh rippled and bounced back.

She squeaked then sighed, her body drawing
in as if she were preparing for him. “Why?” She moaned as he
positioned himself, using his fingers to spread her slick labia. “I
think we have some of our best conversations when we’re
fucking.”

He thrust into her, making her gasp and fall
forward.

“No more talking.”

She nodded, mewling for more. “Okay. No more
talking. Fine. Just”—she moaned—“don’t stop.”

This time as he took her, he not only
claimed his mate, but willed himself to claim Trace, as well. Sam
was his surrogate to connect him in the most intimate way possible
to his best friend.

He couldn’t lose the most incredible
submissive—a piece as vital to his soul as Sam—when he had only
just found him. In just a few hours tonight, Trace had become
critical to Micah’s survival, and hormonal heat suffused the air
around him as he poured his mind and heart into keeping this new
element of his life intact while pouring his body and soul into his
beautiful, exquisite female.

He wouldn’t lose Trace. Not to Cordray. Not
to anyone. As he shattered into another mind-numbing orgasm more
powerful than the first, Micah forced into the universe his will to
keep Cordray away from his best friend. As much as Sam was his, so
was Trace. Trace belonged to him. Beware all who tried to take him
away.

Chapter 8

Brak stood on the back patio of the house Micah had
set him up in, gazing at the sliver of crescent moon hovering over
the dusky western horizon.

God, he had missed this. Watching the sun
set. Feeling the cool breeze on his face. Hearing the birds sing at
twilight. All of it.

He still wasn’t fully recovered from the
events of the last week and should have been resting, but he
couldn’t bring himself to stay in bed. Not when there was so much
to see and experience now that he was free.

His body protested, though. His muscles were
achy and weak. He always suffered after using his power, especially
to kill, which wasn’t what his mother had intended for his
gift.

In the past week, he had exhausted his
abilities and, as a consequence, his body. Not only had he saved a
life—Gina—by bringing her back from death after pulling deadly
poison out of her, but he’d also killed two drecks and the two
vampires who’d held him and his father prisoner for almost two
hundred years. He needed about a month in bed, but he refused to
remain indoors just because he was tired and ached from head to
toe. He’d spent two centuries locked in a basement cell. The last
thing he wanted was to remain inside, especially when the weather
was so benevolent. Unlike this morning, when cold rain had forced
him back into the house while he’d been lounging, tea in-hand, in
the patio chair with a blanket over his lap. Even so, he’d stood at
the patio door and watched the lightning streak the sky and the
wind whip the tops of the trees to and fro.

While his body cried for recovery, his
spirit needed healing, too. Watching the storm this morning, and
now feeling the refreshing breeze lift his long hair away from his
face as the birds sang their good-bye to another day, was like a
balm to his soul.

Closing his eyes, he lifted his face
skyward, letting the long-forgotten sounds of nature provide the
soundtrack for his evening.

A few minutes later, the sliding door behind
him opened. “Brak?”

He glanced over his shoulder to find his
friend, Cynthia, standing on the shallow concrete step just outside
the door. She’d been the one to care for him while he’d been
imprisoned. She’d sat by his side and cleaned him up after he
returned from his godforsaken killing missions and vomited all over
himself. She’d been the one to lift a glass of cool water to his
lips so he could drink, to cook soup for him once he could eat
again, to help him bathe, dress, and even walk when he was too weak
to do those things for himself.

Cynthia was also the one who’d helped him
learn about the new world. She’d shown him how to use the Internet,
how to invest online, how to use computers to create his music, how
to surf the Net and learn how the world had changed.

But even though he’d seen pictures of
cities, cars, and storms, nothing could compare to the real thing.
The exhilaration of seeing a storm with his own eyes, of feeling
its energy, of riding in a car for the first time, and of standing
in the heart of Chicago, where he could feel the pulse of every
living entity in the city beat against his skin, was beyond compare
to a two-dimensional image.

He was no longer an observer of life. Once
more, he was a participant, and he had a lot of ground to make up
before he was comfortable with the changes the world had undergone
without him.

“Can you hear that?” he said, facing the
trees again.

Cynthia quietly joined him and wrapped her
arm around his reassuringly. “What? What do you hear?”

He breathed in as if he could inhale
twilight’s essence. “The wind. The way it rustles the young leaves
on the trees and bids the sun farewell until tomorrow morning.”

Her arm squeezed his. “I’ve taken for
granted so many things.” She sighed. “Spending the last few days
with you and watching you discover the world again has made me
realize that.”

He slid his hand around hers. “You’ve seen
all this every day.” He waved his other arm as if to encompass the
backyard and beyond. “For me, it’s a novelty.” A slow smile
blossomed on his face as he drank in the ochre colors of the
western sky. “It’s been two hundred years since I experienced any
of this.”

“You’re like a newborn opening his eyes for
the first time.” Cynthia’s fingers embraced his as she leaned into
him and rested her temple against his shoulder.

He towered over her, but she had enormous
strength for a human. Not just physical strength, but mental
fortitude. Without her courage and conviction, he wouldn’t be free
right now. She’d been the one who allowed him to find Jacob and
Haslet and kill them, thus freeing himself and all the others
they’d held as slaves in one way or another.

“Come on,” Cynthia said, “let’s go inside.
It’s getting cold out here, and dinner’s almost ready.” She
shivered against him as she gave his hand a light tug.

Brak didn’t mind the cold. It made him feel
alive. Not the way he had in that environmentally controlled
basement he’d been kept in like a lab rat.

Not the way Trace must have felt in that
dungeon Brak had found him in a week ago.

He let Cynthia lead him inside as his
thoughts turned to his brother. Micah had told him Trace had been
due to be released last night. Early this morning, to be exact.
Before the sun came up. Which meant Trace was free now. Like him.
They were both free.

“Has Micah called?” he asked as Cynthia slid
the glass door shut behind them.

“No.”

He sighed and lowered his gaze. Micah was
supposed to contact him after he’d talked to Trace. Micah had
thought it would be better if he broke the news Brak was in
Chicago, simply because he hadn’t known the condition Trace would
be in upon his release.

Brak was eager to see his twin. To talk to
him. Ask him where he’d been all this time? To tell him why he’d
never searched for him. That he’d been taking care of their father
then locked into servitude by the opportunists who’d altered the
entire course of his life.

From the brief glimpse Brak had gotten
inside Trace’s head a week ago, he had seen the torment Trace had
put himself through—both mentally and physically—over their
mother’s death. That he blamed himself. That the guilt he carried
burdened him as if he were carrying the weight of a hundred suns on
his shoulders.

“He needs to know it’s not his fault,” he
said quietly.

Cynthia turned off the stove. “Who? Trace?”
She ladled his favorite soup—a combination of chicken, spinach, and
artichokes stewed in a brothy cream—from a large stock pot into a
bright-yellow bowl.

He met her gaze and nodded as she turned and
placed the bowl in front of him. “He blames himself for the death
of our mother, and I need to let him know it wasn’t his fault.”

Cynthia’s eyebrows turned up at the inside
corners as she caressed his arm reassuringly. “I’m sure Micah will
call soon.”

He nodded again, as if he were convincing
himself she was right, but until he saw Trace with his own eyes and
heard his voice with his own ears, he wouldn’t be satisfied.

Cynthia ladled up another serving of soup
for herself, and then they ventured to the living room to eat while
they watched a movie.

Twenty minutes later, with their soup bowls
abandoned on the coffee table, he settled into the oversized couch,
his arm around Cynthia’s shoulders as she nestled against him.
She’d always snuggled him during his recovery, so he didn’t think
anything of the gesture.

Tonight felt different, though.

She was quieter than usual. Not just less
talkative. Her energy was quieter, too. Yet it was also thicker.
More electric. As if
she
were a storm like the one that hit
this morning. Except she was still building. The buzz around her
was tight, focused, spiraling toward some destination he could
neither see nor predict, and it was affecting him, as well.

A strange sensation thrummed through his
veins. A charged current that wasn’t necessarily unpleasant, but it
wasn’t comforting, either. His nerves bristled as if reaching for
something palpable that wasn’t there.

He’d never felt anything like this before,
and Cynthia seemed to be the source. Whatever this was, it was
coming from her, wrapping around him, stirring his senses, bringing
his body to life.

“Brak?” The way she spoke his name, so soft,
so husky . . . made him draw in a steadying
breath.

He blinked several times, his brow
tightening as he looked away, trying to figure out what this
sensation was. Why was his pulse racing? Why were his muscles
tensing? Why did his flesh stir between his legs, tingling in such
a provocative way, all from the way she’d lilted her voice when she
said his name and caressed his chest as she snuggled a little
closer?

“Hm?” he acknowledged quietly, absently
tilting his nose into her soft hair.

Like him, Cynthia came from parents of
different races. Her father was Caucasian while her mother was
African American. Cynthia was the perfect blend of both. Fair,
mocha skin. Dark-brown, silky soft hair with tight, wavy curls
framing her face. Effervescent irises the color of cognac, with
just a hint of amber and flecks of green around the edges.

For all her beauty, Brak had never thought
them more than friends. Two people burdened by the same fate, held
prisoner by those without scruples.

Cynthia had been born into servitude to
Jacob and Haslet, taking over her mother’s duties to tend to him
when she was eighteen, when her mother became too ill to do so.
That had been almost five years ago, and in all that time, Brak had
never considered Cynthia could be attracted to him.