Denying Ecstasy (The Guardians of the Realms Series) (6 page)

Rain’s heart rate accelerated all over again at the healer’s words and their implications. She tried to shake off the anxiety. The abduction was for such a brief time, most of which she was unconscious. The experience could have been so much worse. She was safe by the time the drugs wore off. Both she and Alyssa had been taken, but Gregoire and the rest of the Guardians came for them within minutes. At least that was what she’d been told. Could she have been mated to one of the enemy? Alyssa had been awake and would have had some indication if one of Cyril’s males thought she was theirs. She took a deep breath, more sure than ever about who her mate was.

She cleared her throat. “It wasn’t the enemy. The symptoms started before I was taken.”

Sirena’s delicate brows furrowed. “Then you know who it is?”

She thought about keeping it to herself. What if she was wrong, maybe some weird part of her hoping it was him? She felt certain she wasn’t, but she had no idea where that left her. If the Nereid Guardian was her mate, then judging from his angry expression, he wanted nothing to do with her. His senses were a million times better than hers. He knew; he had to. That meant he didn’t want her for some reason. It was like a physical blow. She was generally a confident female, but she wasn’t made of steel. If she was right, Sirena, who’d become a friend in the last weeks, would know what to do.

“Dorian,” Rain said. All the inhabitants of Tetartos knew the Guardians’ names. He was the only Nereid Guardian, and she’d always found the pictures of him to be the hottest, but they didn’t even come close to the sight of him in real life.

Sirena snapped off a curse Rain didn’t quite catch. Her violet eyes flashed as she started pacing. Rain was still dealing with her own emotions and wasn’t truly processing Sirena’s reaction. Somehow saying his name out loud made it more real.

“Damn him. He should have told me. He carried you in after your abduction. He also came to me around the time you moved in, having problems with his senses around Alyssa. I took tests, but at the time nothing showed up. I told him to let me know if it happened again. No wonder he’s been avoiding me for the last few days. It started right after he brought you in.” The healer murmured some more choice words about Dorian, but Rain’s brain stuck on the part about him carrying her unconscious body from the enemy compound. Why had he touched her? He’d obviously scented her during Alyssa and Gregoire’s ceremony. If he hated the idea of mating her, then why chance touching her and pushing them into this situation?

She frowned hard, irritated that logical thinking was completely beyond her. All she could do was picture being held in his strong arms, against his chest… Her screwed-up mind loved the thought of him carrying her away like some damsel in distress. She chose to pretend that the idea of being rescued by him had no effect on her.

“I’m sorry he’s being an ass, but he has issues that have nothing to do with you. I shouldn’t apologize for him, but knowing how stubborn he is, this won’t be simple.” Sirena paced the sitting area, going essentially around and around the comfy chairs that sat in front of the fireplace. The healer looked as if she were in her own world as she moved. Rain wondered what kind of issues Sirena was talking about.

After taking a bracing breath, Rain decided to start with basic questions. She still needed more answers, because she fully intended to confront the ass with a detailed list of his crimes. “His touch set the frenzy into motion? It wouldn’t have shown up by just being in the same room with him?” She knew the answer. If he hadn’t wanted her, then the asshole should have kept his damn hands to himself. Anyone else could have carried her unconscious ass out of there.

“Touch. Your mortal body wouldn’t have shown anything in your blood work based on scent.”

“What can I expect now? Judging from the pissed looks he was pinning me with at Alyssa and Gregoire’s mating ceremony, he wants nothing to do with me. He sped out of there the minute it was over and has avoided me ever since, other than apparently when I was knocked out.” She hated having to admit all that, but she wasn’t naïve enough to think this would all just turn out perfect in the end. She needed to know her options, leaving her pride to take one for the team. She was fully capable of taking care of herself; she didn’t need him to get her off.

The ugly sting to her ego wasn’t making the reality any less true.

Her heart felt like it was taking a beating too. Not for him. She didn’t know the Guardian, so it wasn’t like she was in love with him. It was the loss of her childhood dreams. The fantasy of what a mating was supposed to be, of spending an eternity with a male who worshipped the ground she walked on for saving him from an eternity of loneliness. Never aging like her best friend, maybe having a bigger destiny than that of a small-shop owner with no real life or love interest. Not that she wasn’t proud of her business accomplishments. It was just that the damn fantasies were ingrained in her and Alyssa as children.

A thought hit her. “Is there a way out of mating?” Would he be looking for a way out? She got the distinct impression he would. She didn’t want a male that didn’t want her, but that would be a final ending to the possibility of having more. It was too rare, the chance would never come again, but that didn’t mean she would consider tying herself to a male that didn’t want her.

“No. There is no way out of a mating. It’s rare, sacred,” Sirena said, and she snapped the word sacred like the thought of Dorian going against it personally offended her. Mating research was Sirena’s whole life. She took it seriously and worked her ass off to get potentially compatible Mageia to relocate from Earth Realm to Tetartos. Mageia were mortal and as such could choose to stay on Earth if they wanted to. They’d discussed it a few times since Rain started living at the manor.

Sirena took a deep breath and sat down. “It’s not you,” Sirena said, irritation bleeding into every word.

“Thanks, but can you explain what the hell I don’t know. The only time I was near him, he glared at me as if I’d massacred his family. I’ve never even spoken to him so I don’t know what his issues are, and I have no clue what’s going on in my body and how it’s going to affect me.” She felt tired all of a sudden. So much had been happening and this was just one more issue she needed to deal with. A huge one and she didn’t know where to start. She wished she could head back to Paradeisos Island and hide out, enjoying an endless array of spa treatments, but that wasn’t going to happen. Her instincts were telling her to go and find that damn Nereid and have him fix this. Confront the bastard for not at least telling her what he’d done. He’d left her to fend for herself with no idea what was happening inside her body.

“I would have let him tell you, but he’s likely in flight mode, and your mating has a time constraint now. You deserve all the information so that you know what you’re up against. He can try to yell at me later for this, I don’t care. He should have been upfront from the start, especially with me so I could figure out how to help you.” She blew out a harsh breath before resuming.

Rain’s stomach clenched, wondering what could be so bad.

“He was betrayed a century ago. Up until that point he’d spent centuries being reckless and a little wild. He was turned over to Cyril by a lover and two other females. They killed one of his close friends in front of him before turning him over to the enemy. I think he still blames himself for Cahal’s death. Drake always cautioned against mixing too closely with the other Immortals, so I think it’s that guilt that still eats at him.”

Sirena took a deep breath while Rain reeled. She couldn’t imagine being handed over to the enemy by someone she’d been intimate with. Jealousy mixed in with the anger that she felt on his behalf, which was idiotic. He didn’t give a shit about her, so she was wasting energy being offended for him.

“Why would a lover hand him over?”

“I don’t know exactly what Cyril promised, but with Immortal life spans and so few finding mates, Immortals can become mercenary out of boredom alone. It’s a very dangerous thing when you’re dealing with those with power. That’s why we employ the warriors to look after the Mageia and spell the cities against attack.” Sirena sighed. She suddenly looked as tired as Rain felt.

The healer cleared her throat and finished, “Needless to say, Dorian distrusts and avoids most interactions with Immortals, especially females. He spends his off time on Earth Realm, avoiding Tetartos altogether unless he’s patrolling the Realm.”

Tetartos was the Realm where the Creators had exiled all the Immortals to keep them away from the fragile humans. Mageia could make the choice to move to Tetartos, but it was a one-way trip, and some families had been there for hundreds of years. Only the Guardians could leave. Shit, her stomach churned. She couldn’t get to him if she wanted to. Damn him.

Earth was the one place she dreamed of visiting. Rain was second-generation Tetartos on her mother’s side and four generations on her father’s. It was her grandmother that had shared all kinds of stories about Earth Realm. Her gammy had lived in a very poor area with abusive parents and had little opportunity when she’d come of age. She said she’d jumped at the opportunity to leave Earth, and loved the life she’d found in Tetartos.

Rain had always been a little obsessed with anything to do with Earth. It just figured that her destined mate chose to live in a place where she could never go.

“I’m not an Immortal,” Rain’s irritation slid into each syllable. His attitude obviously wasn’t reserved purely for Immortals.

“You’re a female, and you will be Immortal when you two complete the ceremonies.”

Rain saw the hard glint in Sirena’s eyes and knew all hell was about to rain down on Dorian in the form of his fae-looking sister Guardian. She didn’t want that, though. She wanted to be the one to personally kick his ass.

“What should I expect to happen physically?”

“The symptoms will intensify. The good news is that he will suffer more than you do. There won’t be any relief until the two of you have sex. It will get worse and worse until it’s unbearable. Damn it, he’ll have to be taken off rotation at some point. It’s been three days…” Sirena’s violet eyes lit with a kind of evil mastermind look that surprised and, yes, impressed the hell out of Rain.

“Is there something you can do to dampen the symptoms?”

“Not that I’ve found. I only started looking into something like that when Sam and Erik were suffering.” Sam was a Mageia abducted and raped by Cyril’s males as some sort of experiment to try to circumvent the mating curse. The spell created by an abused Immortal that had been used as a breeder by Apollo so many centuries ago. It made it so that Immortals could only procreate with their destined mate. Cyril was finally dead, but he’d done a lot of damage before being taken down.

It didn’t bear thinking about Cyril. She shook her head. She had her own issues to deal with. Her nipples had been constantly hard. She was hot and ready most of the time. If her arousal wasn’t as bad as his… He was likely out there on Earth, hard for her… while fucking someone else. “Is it possible to get relief with another?”

Sirena grew thoughtful, assessing. “I’ve never tested it. I’ve never known one to try to get relief from another when in the mating frenzy. I’ve known some who like to share and would include others, but I’ve never heard of a mate seeking ease from another during the actual frenzy.”

Wonderful… She didn’t like the idea that she was the first one experiencing that particular phenomenon. She was resigned and irritated by the fact that she knew the bastard was likely making his way through the female population of Earth at that very moment.

A twisted part of her wondered what those females were experiencing. She remembered his harsh glare. She couldn’t imagine him as a gentle or even playful lover. No, he’d be harsh and intense. She shivered.

He’d touched her, held her in his arms when she was unconscious and vulnerable. What else had he done to her? Did he touch her anywhere else? Run his lips over hers? Touch her breasts? She stifled a groan. She was too damn needy. She didn’t have any intention of finding someone to take the edge off. She’d do it herself.

“Do you know any more about his relationship with the female that betrayed him? Where is she now?” Rain wanted to know what happened to the treasonous bitch that would sell out a Guardian to one of the Realms biggest enemies. Was there a bigger crime against the Creators?

“She’s dead, killed along with the others,” Sirena said with a hard look that only stirred more questions.

“Don’t worry, Rain. I’ll talk to him, and if that doesn’t help, I’ll send Drake,” Sirena said with a deadly serious look on her beautiful face. She wondered just what Drake would do. Drake was his leader, and scary, but she didn’t think his talking to Dorian would really help anything.

“Can you wait for a bit before having Drake talk to him?” She didn’t like the idea of his being commanded to mate her. The thought alone made her stomach pitch.

They both turned at a knock at the door.

She jumped up and opened it. Layla, one of Sirena’s assistants stood in the hall. She smiled. “Sorry to interrupt, but Erik and Sam have been waiting for a while for their weekly exam.”

“Son of a bitch, I forgot they were coming in. Sorry, Rain. Do you want me to contact Alyssa to come see you?”

“No, thank you. She was going to stop by in a bit anyway.”

“Come see me if you have questions or need to talk. I’ll see what I can figure out.” Sirena blew out a breath, and looked sad. “Don’t give up on him. This may take some time, he’s stubborn, but he will be worth the wait. I promise.”

Rain wondered what would happen next. She hated feeling so out of control of her own fate.

Chapter 3

Outside Limni, Tetartos Realm

Dorian was irritated and frustrated. The week since he’d touched Rain had been pure hell. He sank his blade deep into the side of another hellhound, slowing its progression toward the city. Another cut took the beast’s head. Why had so many been sent by the bastard Tria? They’d sent packs over often in the last centuries, but in the last week it had been a constant barrage, and the numbers ensured all the Guardians were needed to help. When they weren’t sending beasts, they were sending demons to possess evil humans on Earth. It was all going down in greater numbers than he’d ever seen. It wasn’t good. He and his brothers knew it had to be some kind of distraction, but from what, they didn’t know, yet.