“He better not say anything, because if he did that would mean he was in here while you are naked. And that, little flower, would probably cost him his vocal chords in any event.”
“Oh. Well…when you put it that way…”
Isabella stopped speaking so suddenly that it got Jacob’s instant attention. She blinked once, her gaze going suddenly blank and her body going rubbery in all-too-familiar ways. Jacob instantly dismissed his playful mood, rising up on his knees as he waited for Bella to come back around.
It didn’t last long, and she sat up with a hand on her belly the very instant her vision cleared.
“Get dressed,” she told him, moving to get out of bed herself.
“What is it?” He reached out, circling her arm with a strong hand and forcing her to remain in bed where she belonged. He moved around to sit beside her and see into her eyes. “What did you see?”
As much as he was privy to all of her thoughts, the only thing he could not touch were her premonitions. That place in her mind was blank to him, at the most giving off residual sensation of emotion. Right now, he could feel her confusion, and an underlying sensation of anxiety that accompanied it.
“I don’t know. I…” She shook her head numbly. She was nowhere near mastering this power. She could barely handle the energy drain that had begun to come with it. Interpretation was completely ambiguous, and at other moments like this, absolutely cryptic. “I saw red. Nothing but this color of red. It seemed magnified, you know, like those pictures people take of ordinary objects and you have to try and guess what they are, but it’s hard to because they are so distorted?”
“I think I understand. So why do you feel you have to get up?”
“I…don’t know. Jacob, I just do. Please, I won’t understand this if you don’t let me follow my instincts.”
“No, little flower. Gideon said you are not to move from this bed, and you are not going to disobey.”
“Jacob,” she snapped, losing her temper. “I have a bad feeling about this. I won’t sit here and be coddled while something terribly important…or terribly dangerous might occur. What if this is a warning? I have a responsibility—”
“To what?” Jacob asked sharply. “To run around blindly like a chicken with its head cut off trying to find something red? Can you not see how ridiculous that is? As well as dangerous for you and our child?”
Bella wrapped angry arms across her chest, her fingers grasping hard at her upper arms in frustration.
“I hate this! Six months ago I was the strongest I have ever been in my entire life. Stronger even than the most powerful Transformed Demon. Now I can’t even get out of this bed when I need to! All in a matter of a few days!”
“Stop this. You were attacked. You are not responsible for that.”
“No? And I suppose you were? If you can give yourself the guilts, Jacob, then I sure as hell have just as much of a right—”
She ended the argumentative statement with a gasp. Her head was thrown back violently, her body locking and seizing with brutality. Jacob barely managed to catch her up against himself before she slid from the bed and struck the floor. Instead, he was able to lower her with a modicum of gentleness to the carpeting.
“Bella?!”
He shouted at her as the glassy expression overtook her once more, but this was like nothing they had experienced together before. She was wracked in violent spasms of her body that could only be called a seizure.
Jacob grabbed for pillows, protecting her as best he could, thinking at a frantic speed about how to get help. He closed his eyes and reached out into the night, soaring out into nature and the things within it that he could manipulate. He touched the mind of a wolf. The Earth Demon charmed the animal, coaxing it to go against its natural instinct to stay away from man-made habitation.
Before long, the wolf was loping over the manicured lawns of Noah’s home.
Noah looked up from his studies when the sound of scratching came from the door. He reached out, sensing the energy of the animal outside, his brow furrowing in confusion. He got up and moved to the door, opening it to the wolf, who sat on the doorstep looking at him expectantly. There was intelligence behind those sharp blue eyes, an intelligence beyond what the animal itself had. Noah immediately sensed the residual energy of an Earth Demon in the animal’s aura.
“Damn it!” he swore as he realized he had been so absorbed in his work that he had not even felt the spike of fearful, tormented energy taking place in his own home. The Fire Demon twisted into a column of smoke and flew like a tornado up the main stairwell.
“Kane?”
Corrine moved into the next room, searching for her mate with growing consternation.
“Kane, if you are trying to exercise our telepathic connection again, I will murder you once I find you,” she complained. “This is not fair.”
Corrine had woken up to an empty bed, feeling heavy and disappointed at heart because of it. She enjoyed that feeling of waking up, snuggled against her lover, feeling the weight of his embrace even as he slept. They had come so close to losing each other without even knowing what they would have missed. And as she had healed, she had learned what it meant to love and be loved with a depth that no one who was not a part of an Imprinting would ever truly understand.
It helped that her mate was a little dangerous, a lot irreverent, and playfully unpredictable at the moment. Hopefully their mental connection would continue to improve as she recovered from the damage she had initially suffered. If it didn’t, she was going to be the butt of these impromptu hide-and-seek sessions for the rest of her life, a life that was considerably extended now that her Druid genetics had been awakened.
Corrine was walking through the kitchen when she felt that terribly distinctive pop that accompanied the arrival of a teleporting Demon. She grinned, rounding the corner quickly.
“No fair teleporting!” she sang out to her cheating mate. She was laughing as she ran into the living room. She stopped short when he wasn’t there, frowning and putting her hands on her waist in vexation.
She sniffed the air, looking for the sulfur-and-smoke scent that her fledgling mate always left behind in great quantity, looking for a clue as to how far away he might be in the house.
That was when she was struck violently from behind and shoved face first into her own floor. She landed with a grunt as the carpeting burned across her chin and elbows. The force of the strike bruised her nose forcefully, and as her breath left her in shocked release she sprayed blood over the sky blue fibers.
She knew with sudden dread that it was not her lover who did this to her. He would have killed himself before harming her even accidentally. No, this was an attack, one of vicious malice.
“So, little Druid,” a soft, feminine voice of deceptive beauty purred into her ear, loud and clear as her accoster’s weight came down hard into the center of her back, forcing what little was left of her breath out of her. “Where is that spawning little whore of a sister of yours now that you need her?”
Remembering what had happened to Bella, the one who had been blessed with remarkable fighting instincts and skills after her Druidic awakening, Corrine suddenly felt the most intense terror of her life. Whatever skills it was she would develop, none would be as powerful as her sister’s. If these were those who had attacked Isabella when she’d had all those defenses at her disposal, what chance of survival would someone weakened by a retarded access to her powers have of defeating such an enemy?
“Oh yes, you should be afraid,” that singsong voice of threat cooed to her.
The last thing Corrine remembered was being dragged off by fistfuls of her long, red hair.
Legna awoke with a start and a deep, indrawn gasping breath as she propelled herself into an upright position. Gideon, who had been sleeping with both an arm and a leg securely across her, was awake and alert only a second later.
“Neliss? What is it, sweet?” he asked, his worry and concern pouring over her highly
sensitized emotions.
His attentive feelings helped soothe her, bringing her respirations down to a more manageable level. Legna reached up and pushed back the heavy fall of her hair as she blinked and oriented herself to where she was. She was still not used to waking up in Gideon’s home. But what did she expect, after waking in her own bed without fail for almost all of the nearly three centuries she had lived?
She was, however, definitely getting used to all the sweetly achy places she woke up with. Gideon always offered to soothe any of her sore places, and although she knew he was privy to her thoughts and feelings, she always responded with “What sore places?” making him laugh and grin with a purely male smile of satisfaction.
However, those loving feelings they had engaged in for the past days were close to dormant in that moment. Instead, her heart was gripped with an inexplicable sensation of fear. He moved to face her, close enough that they pressed thigh to thigh as they sat facing each other on the bed. He cradled her head and face in the width of his gentle hands, making her look up into his concerned eyes.
“Tell me,” he urged softly.
“I…cannot. I do not understand. Maybe…just a bad dream.”
“And does this happen often with you? Just like this?”
She mutely shook her head, tears welling in her eyes as the alien fear continued to claw at her.
“Listen, love, things are not the same for you anymore. You will never be like an average female Mind Demon again. My power inside of you changes everything. I do not know how exactly. That will show itself in time. But remember that it will tend to frighten you as you first begin to figure it out.” He paused to kiss her trembling lips, the connection warm and soothing in ways his words could never be. “You have to think calmly. It is just like when your natural abilities first revealed themselves. You have to examine what is happening, accept it, and try not to be afraid of it.”
“How do you know that’s what it is? New power and ability?”
“I can feel it, Nelissuna. I have been feeling it for days now. So have you, but you do not want to acknowledge it.”
Legna exhaled heavily, scattering stray strands of hair.
“Thank you for the timely warning,” she said dryly, giving him a dirty look far too much like the ones she used to give him. But this time it made him chuckle softly.
“If you like, I can leave and let you figure this—”
Legna grabbed his arm at the bicep when he made a strong movement to get up off the bed, jerking him back down definitively.
“Absolutely not! You did this to me; therefore, you get to enjoy the fallout.”
“You make it sound like a punishment,” he remarked, his eyes dancing with silver humor. “There is nowhere I would rather be than in my bed with my beautiful mate.”
He leaned forward to engage her mouth in a tender kiss, their lips clinging together as if reluctant to release. Finally, he sat back, leaving her warm and happily flushed.
“Charmer,” she accused him without malice.
“Siren,” he countered, pulling them back together and into a deep kiss that left them both longing for breath.
“Mmm, what about the nightmare?” she asked absently, her lips brushing back and forth over his, her tongue flicking out to lick against them temptingly.
Gideon pulled back a half inch, arching an inquisitive brow.
“From just a ‘bad dream’ to a nightmare? What do you remember?”
“I think…” She stopped, swallowing hard. “I had this terrible feeling like I was losing Noah, that he was fading away from me.”
“Like a Summoning?”
“A little, but it was not a Summoning. Somehow, I knew he wasn’t in that kind of danger, but I could not escape the feeling that I would never see him again. Gideon, it broke my heart.”
The tears spilling down her cheeks confirmed that emotion, and he leaned forward to kiss them away.
“So, just an average nightmare after all,” he mused.
“How do you know that?” she sniffed.
“Because, love, Noah is going away from you, just as you are going away from him. It is very likely an anxiety dream, brought on by your move out of your childhood home and the comfort of the reach of your family’s love and protection.” Gideon reached to stroke her hair soothingly. “I am only surprised it has not happened sooner.”
“Are you sure?” Her nervousness was clear, but she was truly relaxing already.
“Yes. And so are you. You know everything there is to know about psychology, you tell me what you think.”
“But you thought it was this…new level of ability.”
“And for the first time in a millennium my diagnosis is wrong. I do despise it when such bothersome things occur. Now I shall have to start the ‘No Mistakes’ clock all over again.”
Legna giggled at him, which was of course his intention. She swung her arms around his neck, hugging him warmly.
“You smell so good,” he murmured against her ear a long minute later.
“I smell like sex,” she argued.
He nodded, making a loud noise of appreciation as he sniffed and nibbled her neck.
“You smell of very good sex,” he amended with a voracious growl and an eager mouth moving over her bare skin with bold appetite.
“Gideon!” She squealed as he went straight for her waist, knowing she was ticklish there. The playful flicker of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth drove her mad, and she twisted as she screamed for him to stop.
When he tickled her she absolutely could not use her classic escape method. She could barely catch her breath, never mind her concentration. He replaced his mouth with his fingers, making her yelp as he reached to draw one pert nipple into his sucking lips, his hands perpetuating the torture that made her squeal with laughter.
She tried using her legs to push him away, but only succeeded in giving him the opportunity to grab her thigh in his free hand and push her open to the approach of his body. He stopped tickling her the moment he thrust deep into her.
Legna’s head pushed back, a silent cry locked in her arching throat as her back came up off the bed. Gideon was done with tricks and ploys, and, drawing his lip between his teeth in purposeful concentration, he proceeded to play the interior of her body like the fascinating instrument it was. Nothing would ever equal her abandoned sounds and expression as she met thrust after thrust, her reaction so profound each time it was as if he achieved perfection just by moving. She made him feel like he was a flawless lover, but he knew it was Legna who was the perfect one.
She was meant for passion, for touch and kiss, and for each and every movement that brought them tighter and closer together. Gideon felt her around him, a cocoon of conditions meant to tend to him, created just for encouraging growth and sensation and the remarkable release of rebirth.
She pulled him down to her mouth, knowing that it drove him mad to feel her cries of pleasure vibrating over his lips and tongue and face. It always spurred him on, even when no encouragement was necessary. She met his rhythm with both her reaching hips and her vocalizations. He plunged into her mentally as well as physically, doing all those things to her chemistry that made her go ballistic with mindless bliss.
It was when they both saw starbursts of silver and gold behind their eyes that they broke, a throbbing explosion that made them shout release against each other’s lips. He felt her shudder hard around him again and again, the pulsation of her muscles a sweet, sweet torture.
Gideon refused to relinquish his mate’s mouth or her body. He needed to cling to her just as he was, soaking in the heat and aftermath of her release. She smiled against his mouth, kissing him again and again with all the emotion in her tender heart, allowing him to stay where he was until he was ready to leave.
“Who said I was ever leaving?” he murmured against those soft, sweet lips he would never stop craving.
“Well, not to sound like Jacob, but…Mother Nature?”
He la
ughed, rolling over until she was once more lying limply over his body. He liked to feel her weight like that. No matter what position they began in, afterward he rolled her onto him as if she were a living blanket. Actually, considering the mass and fall of her hair, it wasn’t such a far-off thought.
“I will be right back.”
She disappeared instantly, leaving him feeling terribly chilled. It was a mental perception, of course, because he could regulate his body temperature perfectly. But he was happy to prefer the imperfection of a chill so long as it encouraged Legna to blanket his body.
Gideon was smiling with the thought when a surge of energy skimmed over his senses. He sat up just as Legna rematerialized beside the bed, clad in a burgundy dress that had formerly been in the closet.
“Noah is coming.”
“I thought so,” Gideon said dryly. “It felt like him.”
“Get dressed,” she urged, rubbing her hands together nervously.
“Legna, do you not think he knows what goes on in this house?”
“Gideon, do you not think you better not make me lose my temper?” she threatened. “Please. Please, will you get dressed?”
She popped out of the bedroom instantly.
Destiny forbid her brother should see her coming from his bed, Gideon thought with a sigh. It was so…non-Demon, the way she thought about these things. Legna herself had run across Noah with a partner more than a few times over the centuries, but it meant nothing to her and she accepted it. Now here she was with her future husband, her Imprinted mate, and she was afraid of her brother realizing they had just been having sex?
Stop criticizing my motives and please come down here.
Love, do you not think your brother felt the energy of our love-making from miles away?
I hate you.
Perhaps, but only for the moment, he chuckled.
The beautiful catamount circled the house slowly, her muzzle to the ground every now and then as she tried to make sense of the scents she was picking up. The door was wide open and, with slow steps, the mountain lion progressed into the dwelling. She picked up blood scent immediately and made a beeline to it. There was a stain on the carpeting, still wet with freshness.