The Guardian (9 page)

“I have you now, Tsimshian.” Tumseneha's cruel laughter crackled in her ears.

Then the black hole opened beneath her and she tumbled downward. Falling, falling. Pitch blackness, everywhere. And Tumseneha's death-rattle laugh
followed her. Was she being pulled to the underworld?
Please, no!

Her back plowed into something hard and she stopped falling. She opened her eyes and a massive fire filled her vision. Rocks surrounded her, a cavern of some sort. She was trapped on a ritual mound. But not one she recognized. Thick green fog oozed up around her. Totem poles carved with the faces of demons and gargoyles and snakes with human heads stood in five equal points around the mound.

Then she saw Tumseneha's horrible werewolf persona ablaze in the flames, growing, growing until he stood twenty feet tall. A giant, furious, demon seed. He bent over her and smiled, his lips and fangs dripping blood. Was it her blood? She hurt everywhere. Her flesh felt as if it were melting from the heat of the flames and Tumseneha's rage.

She tried to get up, but tight ropes bit into her wrists and ankles. The sacrificial purple robe she wore had twisted around her thighs.

He laughed again and held the Maiden Bear talisman in his hand. It rocked like a pendulum before her eyes, a dead weight, its magic empty. “Struggle, wench, but you won't get away.”

His putrid breath burned her face and smelled of death and decay. A drop of his bloody spittle hit her lips and it blistered.

She screamed and squirmed in pain.

“The end of all Tsimshians finally arrives. I have waited eons for this moment. How you Tsimshians have tortured me. Now I'll be unstoppable. My reign has just begun. You are mine and I'll feed on your power.”

He raised a stone dagger. The purple quartz flashed. The razor-sharp blade winked at her as he thrust it downward.

She closed her eyes, held her breath, and prepared for the death blow.

It never came.

Seconds ticked in a kind of slow torture.

She opened her eyes and Winter stood over her.

“You can make this easy, or complicated,” he said, his voice slick as ice. “It's up to you.”

She couldn't read him at all, couldn't get an impression of his aura. Had Tumseneha shifted into Winter's form? Were they one and the same? “I choose complicated,” she spit back him.

“You can trust me.”

“Like a rattlesnake.”

“Trust me,” he begged, as he dropped to his knees and kissed her.

“Never.” The kiss felt like acid touching her mouth. It scorched her as the flames were doing. He was killing her, slowly, with his lips.

Tears spilled from her eyes and evaporated even before they fell from her lids. She felt her heart being pulled from her chest. A widening void filled the space where her heart once sat, and the chasm turned solid, like rocks being piled on her. And she couldn't push her way through them, or move them. They crushed her, harder, harder, until they were a mountain sitting on her. Then all of her spirit was torn away, along with her resistance.

“Trust me,” he murmured against her mouth.

The magic in his lips consumed her and the last spark
of defiance left her as he touched her face, her neck, her breasts. Then he crawled on top of her and his hand slowly tugged up her robe while he kissed her. He stroked the magical space between her legs, that intimate place where stars collided and suns exploded. She couldn't fight it any longer and orgasmed, crying out his name, tugging at the ropes binding her hands because she wanted to touch him and couldn't….

She woke, heart pounding, body sweating and tingling with arousal. Her breath ragged, she moaned, “Oh, God.”

She stared up at the ceiling and swallowed. Her throat felt scratchy as if she almost tasted the smoke from the flames in her dreams. No way. She was imagining it.

She looked at the window. The sun shot shadows on the building next door, but they were gray, muted shapes, the gray of an overcast sky. What time was it? She'd fallen asleep with her clothes on, her sweater bunched up around her ribs. She jerked it down as she looked at her Kermit watch. Her arms still trembled from the nightmarish erotic dream, and it took a moment to hold her wrist steady. Three in the afternoon. So much for hearing the alarm she had set. She had only wanted to sleep an hour. Now she'd have to hurry to question Senator Kent. Hopefully he'd be in his office.

She sat up on one elbow and leaned over the side of the mattress to peer down at Fuzz's little basket near her bed. He was still curled up in a furry ball.

She sat up totally. As she swung her legs over the bedside something materialized in the corner, near her computer desk. A sudden dead zone blipped on her radar, a barrier that she couldn't breach. Her own senses crashed
against it and it hit her like iron bars. That feeling. She knew it. She'd sensed it in her dream like she was sensing it now. She turned and saw Winter lazily sprawled in her desk chair: a devil wrapped in an attractive package.

T
he gloomy afternoon light illuminated the scar on his cheek, flaunted the sharp curve of his jaw, widened his muscular shoulders until they filled up the whole window behind him. His hands lazily rested in the pockets of his trench coat, and his long legs were crossed at the ankles, the soles of his loafers visible. Jeans and a blue Oxford shirt peeked out beneath his unbuttoned coat. The first two buttons of his collar were open, and a hint of dark chest hair showed in the open V. She glanced back up at his face. His hair was wet, slicked back, and glistening blue. Those sexy stray pieces stuck to his temples. The hollows of his eyes looked deeper, as if he hadn't gotten much sleep, but that satirical metallic shimmer was still in them. He looked dangerous, devilish, and oh-so-off-limits. She remembered the dream, how he'd touched her everywhere, made her come against her will. Unbidden desire stirred in the pit of her belly, and lower. A blush
burned her cheeks as she gritted her teeth and tried to fight it.
Forget the dream. I'm trying.

“Hope I didn't frighten you,” he said, not sounding at all contrite.

She cleared her throat and tried not to look at his lips. “You ever thought of wearing a bell around your neck?”

“Doesn't work. I move too fast through our dimension for it to ring in time.”

“Oh, that whole string theory thing.”

“More or less.”

She realized they were chatting as if they were making polite dinner conversation, and she asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Protecting you,” he said with overconfident arrogance.

“I thought I made myself clear—”

“Orders, Rainwater.” He shrugged as if that explained his appearance, then he took his hands out of his pockets and steepled them. “And they come from the top.”

She stared at his long fingers and recalled what they had done to her in the dream. Her body quickened and a wave of heat shot through her. His smell inundated her senses now. She detected where he'd recently showered, the clean scent of soap mixing with the outdoorsy smell of burned wood and his own masculine pheromones. The primal male scent did strange things to her pulse.

She watched his broad shoulders shift beneath his coat. His tall form dwarfed the small desk chair. “Do your orders include barging into my bedroom?” She realized only two feet of space separated him from her bed and she crawled out, keeping one wary eye on him.

“If I deem it necessary.”

“This happens to be
my
apartment. You're trespassing.”

“And you're my responsibility.” He tapped his steepled fingertips together and eyed her over them, his gaze taking in every inch of her body.

Fala felt exposed, even though she had clothes on. His eyes were so piercing, so liquid silver, that they seemed to swallow her whole. She couldn't look at his hands, or in those intense eyes, so she looked at his chin as she said, “I don't care.”

“But I do.”

“Oh, really? Well, I'm telling you to get out.” She prowled toward him. “What gives you the right to barge in here and try to take over my life?”

“I'm just watching your back.” He stood to face her, his unbuttoned trench coat swirling around him like a cape.

“You'd better watch your own back.” Fala stepped up to him.

Big, big mistake. He was five inches taller than she was, and those inches seemed like feet at the moment. His nearness made her heart skip and clouded her thoughts.

“But that wouldn't be half as fun as watching yours, now would it?” His Maine accent slipped into his words. He leaned down until their lips almost touched.

His hot breath felt molten on her face. Danger radiated from behind that barrier around him, and it screamed at her to use prudence and logic and get the hell away from him. But she didn't want to be cautious, not while every nerve in her body screamed at her to be reckless.

“You like making people squirm, don't you?” she said, her pulse pounding in her ears.

“Only the ones that give me trouble.” He raised his hand and stroked the dimple in her chin. “And you are nothing but trouble.”

She flinched but let his hand stay there. Tingles radiated down her neck. His real touch intoxicated her senses like no dream could ever do.

“You haven't seen trouble, yet, buster,” she murmured, feeling his long fingers tenderly tracing the line of her chin now. A shudder passed through her as she tilted her head, giving him full access.

“It looks pretty good to me….” He seemed to lose the steely control that always radiated from him as he captured her lips. His tongue plunged hungrily into her mouth, awakening every nerve in her body.

Their tongues twined, and her insides turned fluid and viscous and hot with lust. His hard chest pushed against her breasts and she molded her body to his, losing herself in the feel of him.

He tightened his hold around her waist as if he couldn't let her go and backed her up until her legs hit the bed. She fell.

He fell with her.

Then they were tearing at each other's clothes. She jerked off his coat and yanked open his shirt. Buttons flew, hitting the mattress. She went for his jeans and fumbled with the zipper. He wrangled her jeans, sweater and panties off. Then in a matter of seconds, he shed his own jeans.

He unsnapped her bra and suckled a nipple while his leg separated her thighs. Then his finger stroked her, just
like in her dream. Fala cried out, digging her fingers into the corded muscle of his bare back. Oh, God, she wanted his touch, wanted him inside her. Now.

He shared her need, and his hands trembled with lust as he pulled a condom from a jean pocket, paused long enough to roll the condom on, then he spread her legs wide and entered her.

Fala felt him opening her, then he began to move inside her. She bucked her hips to match the rhythm of the thrusts, and they found a motion all their own.

She learned the hard planes of his chest, ran her fingers over the coarse hair there, and found his heart beating wildly beneath her palm, a heart she could detect only through actual, physical touch, its core hidden behind some magical spell. And the urge to break through that barrier, to thaw the ice in his eyes, obsessed her.

She clasped her hands behind his back, locked her ankles around his hips, and pulled him closer with each thrust, feeling the barely restrained power in his body. She lost control of her own desire, and for a moment her spirit shimmered, wavered and flickered, and the beast within her threatened to break free.

They both came, and he took Fala's cry into his mouth.

A brilliant white light showed beneath Fala's skin, her body radiant, and he couldn't take his eyes off her. “Wow, you're beautiful when you're turned on.”

Fala felt self-conscious. The few times she'd made love before she'd never lost control of the magic inside her. She concentrated, and her transparent flesh hardened to bronze again, extinguishing the glimmer, sealing off the Maiden Bear's magic trapped within her.

“Why'd you do that? I wanted to see you.”

“You see me.”

“Not the other part. I've never made love to a shape-shifter before. You sure have an afterglow.” He stayed inside of her and eased down on top of her.

She grinned up at him. “Warlocks aren't bad in bed, either. They glow in other ways.” She felt his delicious weight on top of her, and she ran her hands along the ripples of his back and down to cup his narrow butt.

“We try.” He feathered a kiss across her lips, then rested his upper weight on his elbows, looking down on her. “That happened so fast. I wanted to go slower.”

She smiled. “I'm glad you lost control. What are you like when you let your feelings go, Agent Winter?”

“Call me Stephen,” he said, adroitly avoiding her question.

“Okay, Stephen.”

Pleasure had softened his granite features, but his eyes were still silver cubes of ice. “What's this thing?” His gaze shifted to the medallion.

“Just a talisman.” Fala's hand closed protectively around it as she noticed the red whelp near his heart, branded in the Maiden Bear's shape. “Did it do that to you?” she asked.

“Looks like it got in the way.” He reached for the amulet.

The moment his fingers met silver, thunder rolled outside. Windowpanes shook. Fala felt the repercussion deep in her chest.

He jerked back as if stung.

Flashes of lightning flicked past the window, and in that instant she glimpsed Stephen's features. It was as
if the lightning captured his image in a daguerreotype, all the sharp, bleak, ethereal planes of it. For a split second she couldn't tell if she was seeing Tumseneha or Stephen, and she was right back in her nightmare. The eerie feeling jolted her back to reality as another loud clap of thunder shook the window panes.

“This is wrong.” She jerked the charm from his grasp and pushed at his chest.

“Fala, it's just a freaky winter storm. What's the matter?” He looked confused.

Chest heaving, loins still strumming from their lovemaking, the musky smell of sex clinging to her, she shook her head adamantly. “I'm sorry, I can't do this.”

“Too late, we've already done it.” His raven hair had fallen over his temples, and the way his long-lashed eyes hungrily roved over her, he looked more dangerous than she'd ever seen him.

“This shouldn't have happened.” She shoved at his chest again.

“But it did.” Desire smoldered in the silver flecks of his eyes for a second, then solidified into ice. In one swift move he pulled out and rolled off of her.

Fala felt the cold hit her where his warm body had just left. The musky smell of sex filled her senses as she leaped off the bed. She snatched up her cloths and held them up to cover her naked body. “You need to leave now.”

He stood, pulling on his underwear and jeans. Fala watched the sinewy muscles in his shoulders and back working as he yanked the jeans up over his long, corded thighs and narrow hips. Muscles rippled along his biceps and abs with each movement. As bodies went, his was
male perfection in motion. There wasn't an ounce of extra flesh on him anywhere. He was all rugged angles and coiled brawn.

He jammed his arms in his shirt and said, “It's either me, sweetheart, or another agent. The director might even call out more troops.” He tried to button it, but couldn't find a button. He gave up and angrily jammed his arms across his chest and splayed his legs, six feet four inches of rock-solid defiance. “So which is it?”

Fala didn't want the responsibility of more BOSP agents possibly losing their lives, even if they were gosh-knows-what type of supernatural beings. One warlock she didn't trust was bad enough. She heard herself saying, “Okay. Stay. But what we just did never happened. We'll never speak of it again.”

“My imagination isn't that good.”

“Then you better work on it, buster. And one more thing, keep your hands to yourself.”

“That could go two ways, sweetheart.”

“Don't call me sweetheart. I'm not your sweetheart, and I'll never be your sweetheart. Got it?”

He nodded, his expression sardonic, then he dropped his gaze to her naked thighs and the jeans she dangled between them.

When Fala couldn't stand his open appraisal any longer, she wheeled around, shifting the jeans to cover her backside.

“I've seen it all before. You needn't hide it.”

“I hope you got a good look because you won't see it again.” She stomped to the bathroom.

“Don't bet on it, sweetheart.”

She gritted her teeth, slammed the door and locked it.
She shook it for good measure. Locked tight. Then she felt really stupid. Walls and doors hadn't kept him out before.

He called from behind the door, “Okay in there? Need some help?”

He sounded like he was right outside. Her heart flew up into her throat, and she couldn't answer him for a minute.

At her silence he said, “I'll assume that's a yes.”

She heard the doorknob turn and bawled, “No, stay out!”

“Okay. Are you hungry?”

“No.” She wished he'd stop sounding so agreeable. It just made her that much more suspicious of him. She flicked on the light.

“Good, I'll make dinner.”

Eat dinner with him? She'd rather track a wendigo. She yelled between the door crack, “Don't make dinner. We'll hit a drive-through on the way to Kent's office.”

He didn't answer her.

Fala banged her head against the door a couple of times. He'd invade her cabinets, handle her pots and pans, and poke his nose where it didn't belong. As if using her body wasn't bad enough. She had to shower in a hurry and stop him.

She reached over and snapped on the hot water. The old pipes burped and gasped, and finally water shot out. She tossed the clothes in a pile and decided she'd have to keep her distance.

Oh, he was smooth, all right. He'd lured her into bed with hardly more than a snap of his fingers. She'd become a complete fool with a warlock she didn't trust.
He'd intruded into her life, and she'd thrown herself at him. So why did she still feel his weight on top of her? Why was she still trembling inside from his touch? And why hadn't she been able to control her shifting when she'd orgasmed? If she were being honest, she wanted him more than any man she'd ever made love to. Why? Why didn't she want Akando like that?

Fala jerked out her braid and yelped when she yanked too hard. It just figured. What you can't have you want and vice versa. She groaned out loud as she stepped inside the shower. The hot water beat on her skin and face. She could almost feel Winter's kiss on her lips again, and she grabbed the soap and washcloth and scrubbed her mouth hard.

 

The sound of the water running held Stephen and he leaned his ear against the door. Pure torture. The taste of her still lingered in his mouth. He could still feel her soft, giving body beneath his hands, taste the salt on her skin, smell the scent of her on him. He knew the feel and taste of her nipples in his mouth, the softness of her hair. He envisioned her in the shower, sleek body glistening, soap foaming over her naked, hour-glass curves, her wet hair loose and sticking to her breasts. And he couldn't get over the way her body had lighted and shifted, the overpowering, blinding warmth of her magic glowing next to his skin. It was more than a turn-on. It made him aware of how empty his life had been in regard to women. He'd slept with plenty, but none touched him as she had, made him feel so alive inside. If he were totally honest with himself, he craved more of her warm light, her passion, and he was sorely tempted to join her in the
shower, but he wouldn't. No, he had to clear his head, regain the self-discipline he had mastered his whole life. It was imperative he stay centered on his goal. Get the charm and control her thoughts again.