War Bringer (11 page)

He pressed his thumb over her two fingers, increasing the pressure against her clit. She sucked in a sharp breath, then her hips ground against his, her inner muscles tightening like a fist over his cock. Beckoning…beckoning…but still he held off.

“I was afraid,” he whispered, looking up at her. “I wasn’t sure we would fit together.”

“But we’re two halves of a whole.”

“We are.” He smiled, warmed by her words. He caught her breasts in his hands and held her nipples. He felt the tremor that sent through her body. Leaning forward, he took one in his mouth, flicking it with his tongue as he began to pump inside her.
 

She moved with him, rocking forward, leaning back, going straight up and down, fast, then slow. And goddamn, just like that, she was perfect at fucking. He smiled as he kissed her neck. He licked her small, feminine voice box. His lips felt for the pulse in her neck and gently pulled at the place where it beat, faster and harder as their bodies thrust against each other.

When her release overcame her again, he was right there with her, hot and hard, and so deep inside her.

He leaned back against the tiled wall, glad that it was cool despite the steam of the shower. He flattened his hand against her stomach, absorbing the soft feel of her from her hips to her breasts.
 

“I love you.” He looked up at her face. “I never want to make you cry again, Fiona. I vow to you that I will put you before me. Your joy before mine. Your welfare before my own. Your dreams before mine. And I will put us, our family, before the team, before my job, before the world.”

She leaned forward, still connected to him, and caught his hands in hers. She brought them to her chest, held them in the valley between her breasts. “I vow the same to you. But I know how important what you do is—for me, and ours, and everyone. Sometimes, doing for others first is the best thing. I know that. And I accept that.”

He nodded. “I come from a long line of warriors, Fiona.” She looked at the ink on his big arm and gently touched it. “Without my work, I’m not sure I know what I am. But if it interferes with us, I will learn a new me.”

Her smile was pensive. “How did I ever find you?”

“I told you. We were fated.”

She touched his face, moving gently over bruises he’d forgotten he had. “I’m ready for what comes next.”

He eased himself from her body and straightened. “We’d best turn off the water before they come to see if we’ve drowned ourselves.”

She nodded. He left her on the bench and turned off the shower, then grabbed a couple of towels from the warming rack. After helping her to her feet, he wrapped one around her shoulders then started to dry her hair with the other.

She tucked the towel around her body, then pulled the other from her head and handed it to him. He wrapped it around his hips. Lifting her face, he gave her a worried look.

“I wish we could safely relax and sleep for the night, but we can’t. I don’t know what King has in store for us, but I think we should get dressed just in case he doesn’t wait until the morning to come for us.”

* * *

Their closets opened off the bathroom, so they went their separate ways. Fiona flipped on the light switch, stunned again at the room before her. Whose quarters were they in? She’d heard the guy who brought them here say King had made this suite for them, but that just didn’t make sense.
 

Well, the reality was that none of it mattered…and none of it made sense. She needed something to wear, and there was plenty to pick from. She hoped whomever they belonged to wouldn’t mind her using them.
 

And then that thought made her mad. She wasn’t here of her own volition. She’d been kidnapped and was being held against her will. If the owner of these things lived here voluntarily, then, well, it was just too bad that she’d have to share her clothes.
 

She ran her hand over the blouses hanging in their neat section. There were slacks, dresses, suits, casual wear, formal wear. It was an entire wardrobe. All of them had new tags. All were in her size.
 

She opened the lingerie drawers and found panties and bras, sexy and tempting corsets and babydolls. Beautiful silk stockings. Other drawers had folded sweaters and upscale casual attire. There were three shelving units of shoes, most of them high heels. Brand new. Every color and design she’d ever admired.

The jewelry dresser was also full of a stunning assortment of rings, bracelets, earrings, and necklaces. Even jeweled hair clips. Some of these were new; some looked like antiques.

She heard a noise at the door to her closet. Kelan was standing there, dressed in a black tee, black cargos, black boots. Had his clothes been a perfect fit and selection for him as well?

“Where did all of this come from?” she asked, giving him a quizzical look. “It’s weird, but it’s all my size. The shoes too. Even the jewelry, the rings.” She frowned. “How would they know that about me?”

Kelan shook his head. “I’ve memorized the feel of you in my arms, yet even I don’t know what size you wear. If I had to guess, you would be the size of a minute, but I don’t think that’s a real thing.”
 

“Are your clothes a perfect fit for you?”

“No. There was a range of sizes for me to pick from, though.” He sat down in one of the two wingback chairs in the middle of her closet. “This wasn’t a lucky guess. Someone knows you.” He studied Fiona. “One of your friends, maybe.”

Fiona remained standing as her expression took on a faraway look. She looked at him, stunned, the blood slowly draining from her face.
 

“Tell me,” he ordered quietly.

She shook her head slowly then folded her arms across her chest. “There’s a girl I became friends with this semester. I knew her from last semester. We had some of the same classes. I don’t know how or why, but we really hit it off this year. We started doing things together. We went shopping one day after classes in the boutiques in Old Town. She had the salesgirl measure us so we’d know which sizes to look for in the retro dresses.” Fiona looked at him. “She wanted to be a designer, so I let her help me build an ensemble from a mix of styles and eras. We were just being silly. It was a fun way to forget the stress of school.” She looked at the column of jewelry drawers. “We even tried on rings. She got a complete sense of my tastes and sizes. You don’t think she worked for King, do you?”

“Give me her name.”

“Stacey Atkins. She lives in an apartment near the campus. She was so normal. She never once did anything that made me suspicious of her.”
 

Kelan got up and came over to her. His big hands settled on her arms.

“She stayed at the library doing homework with me the day they took me. She called them, didn’t she?” Tears pooled in her eyes as she realized how tainted her world had become. “Is there no one I can trust anymore?”

“No. You need to assume King owns everyone you encounter. Except me and the team. And the girls at the house.”

Fiona leaned her forehead against his chest. “I don’t like this world very much.”

His arms went around her, tight, then tighter. “We’ll work through it. It won’t always be like this.” He kissed the top of her head. “Get dressed. I’ll set our supper out.”

Fiona scrambled into underclothes, then a pair of jeans and a sweater. She managed to find a pair of flats, which felt like slippers on her feet. When she joined Kelan in the main room, she noticed he’d propped chairs up under the door to the hallway and the one to the conservatory. And he’d pulled the drapes closed over the windows on that side of the room, too.

On the table, two plates were set side by side. He held her chair out then sat next to her.
 

“I’ve done a manual check of the room for bugs. Didn’t find any, but it doesn’t mean we’re safe to talk here.” He nodded toward her plate. “Eat what you can.”

Fiona was exhausted and had little appetite. She pushed her food around her plate.

“Fiona, a few bites, please. You must have missed several meals before I found you. And I don’t know what they have in store for us, but whatever it is, we’ll need strength to meet it.”

She took a bite of the chicken. There was some sort of wine- and mustard-flavored sauce with mushrooms. She pushed the mushrooms off to one side of her plate and made short work of the chicken and broccoli. Kelan finished before she did. She watched him look around their room.
 

He leaned close and whispered, “I’m going to see if I can find a way out of here.”

Chapter
 
Ten

A few minutes later, Kelan had checked out the garden room and their suite, looking for a way of getting out. He shook his head when he came back to where Fiona was sitting at the table. “Let’s try to get some sleep. Morning will be here soon.”

They got under the covers fully dressed. This was the first time in a long time that Fiona felt as if she could relax, but worry about the morning kept her adrenaline flowing. She snuggled against Kelan’s side.
 

“Tell me about the claiming ceremony,” she said.

He adjusted his hold around her shoulders. “Not now. You need to sleep.”
 

“I can’t sleep. At least not yet. Your voice calms me.”

“It’s a topic that must be discussed when we aren’t exhausted and have time to properly consider its implications.”

Fiona didn’t argue. He thought he’d gotten a reprieve, until he realized she was softly weeping against his tee.
 

Having her in his arms was like holding the rising sun; her weeping was as devastating as if the sun wept. It made his chest hurt. If telling her about the claiming ceremony would help, he would spend the rest of their time together explaining it.

“I warn you, it is not a short story.”

She nodded and sniffled. “The longer the better. It’ll take my mind off where we are and what’s going to happen next.”

“So, it goes like this. My grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather lived in Iceland,” he began.
 

She looked up at him. “Your great-great-great-great-grandfather.”

He smiled. “I’ll just call him my grandfather. To his eyes, Iceland was a land of unimaginable beauty. In the long winters, his favorite colors were everywhere he looked: blue and white. At night, the sky would come alive with shimmering colors of green, pink, and purple. His people said that fairies were practicing the colors they would paint the land come spring. And indeed, when spring came and the land woke up, the fairies always outdid themselves, washing fields and hills and valleys with colors so rich that you didn’t just see them—you felt them; you breathed them.”

“Is it really that beautiful there?”

Kelan shook his head. “My words don’t come close to doing it justice. When I was a kid, my family visited our extended family there every year.”
 

She gently sniffled.
 

He quickly continued. “The elders in my grandfather’s village felt it would be best if he made a journey around the world so that he could see all of its beauty. He agreed. His journey took him more than a decade. He’d grown from a boy to a man during the time he was gone. He’d seen many wondrous things on his travels. But he had a new yearning that could not be ignored. He longed for a lifemate.
 

“On his way home, he traveled up through the Dakotas here in the U.S. One day, he came upon a scene unfolding in the woods that would forever change his life—and the lives of all of his descendants. There was a huge black bear whose paw was clamped in the jaws of a trap. A woman was nearby collecting berries. She heard the bear’s howl of pain. Instead of running away, she hurried toward him. My grandfather rushed to intercept her, but he was a long way away. She got to the bear before my grandfather could get near her.
 

“The woman eased closer to the beast. He stood on his hind legs, one of his front paws still caught in the trap, and roared and swiped the long claws of his other paw at her. To my grandfather’s shock, the woman began to sing. Her song must have reached the bear’s spirit—as it did his own—for the bear sat down and just groaned at her.
 

“My grandfather stayed hidden in the tree cover, fearing his sudden appearance might further enrage the bear. He had his rifle and was prepared to shoot the beast should the foolish woman try to help him, but he couldn’t because she put herself between him and the bear as she moved forward to do the very thing he feared she would.
 

“She reached the trap. She sang her song as she sprang it free. The steel teeth pulled out of the bear’s paw. He stood on his hind legs and roared a terrible sound. She stayed kneeling before him, her head bowed. My grandfather shouldered his rifle and sighted the bear, but before he pulled the trigger, he saw the woman spill her cache of berries out for the bear to eat.

“When he began to eat, the woman stood and walked away. The bear followed her when he was done eating, and my grandfather followed the bear to where the woman was at the river. He watched as she cut long strips of leather from her skirt. She collected various plants, heated them over a campfire, then mixed them with moss. Again she approached the bear, singing the song that was her gift to him. Again he let her near. She wrapped the poultice around his paw and tied it in place with the thongs she’d cut.
 

“For seven days and seven nights, she treated his paw and brought him fish and berries. When my father woke on the eighth morning, the woman was alone. The bear had gone.
 

“My grandfather couldn’t believe she’d survived tending the bear. He decided to approach her. He had to know her name, had to touch her to see if she was real. Before he could get to her, two white men came forward. They were angry with her for setting the bear free. They fought with her.

“The woman who braved the worst nature had to offer was about to be destroyed by men. My grandfather came out of his hiding place and fought them. The Bear Paw Woman ran away. The men chased after her, but the bear she’d saved chased them and mauled them to death. He turned to my grandfather, stood and roared, clawed the air with his healing paw, then ambled off into the woods.