Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (5 page)

Her ragged breathing mirrored his, and as the tremors eased, her fingers began to stroke through his hair.

“Lesson number three.” He swallowed, barely recognizing the low timbre of his own voice. She destroyed him, shattered him, and brought him back together so seamlessly. He would never grow tired of plundering her body for such complete pleasure. Dragging his head upward, he looked at her sweat-dampened face, the way her lashes kissed her flushed cheeks, and he kissed each eyelid carefully.

The lashes fluttered up, and the full weight of her golden gaze struck him. Her eyes glowed as though fueled by some fiery inner light.

“You just have to have the will—” The lesson died on his tongue. The breath stuttered in his lungs.

Cassandra’s eyes glowed, incandescent, brilliant and beautiful.

“The will to what?” Her husky voice washed over him, jerking him into the reality of the moment. His cock jerked with renewed vigor.

“Your eyes.” He couldn’t believe it. The glow beckoned him like the decadent siren of old, begging him to crash into the rocks.

“What?” Her teeth caught her swollen lower lip. “Are they glowing again?”

“They have before?” A primitive carnality shuddered through him and his cock hardened, surging against the tight, swollen sheath of her pussy walls.

“Yes. With Jacob… We didn’t know what it meant and…”

Helcyon didn’t hear the rest of the words. Cassandra’s eyes glowed, and he began to rock his hips, thrusting his cock against her again. He had to have her again. He had to come.

Her low moans stripped away the veneer of the lesson, and she dug her nails into his shoulders. He slid an arm under one of her legs and pushed it higher, increasing his access, and every stroke sent her crying out as he worked a thumb between them and caressed that swollen clit until her body thrashed madly, her fists pounding into the bed even as he drove himself deeper.

“Look at me,” he ordered her, and her gaze jerked open, the wild fire of those hot, smoldering eyes striking sparks in his soul. “Take me, Cassandra. Take all of me.”

The pledge erupted from the vaults of the ancient past, and he offered up his soul even as he demanded she take it. His orgasm pulled his balls up until hot seed shot forth from him. Cassandra clung to him as he filled her pussy again, pledging every part of his being to her.

He rode the drift of release down until he nestled against her, the whole length of his body pressing hers into the bed. Catching her lips with his, he swallowed her soft sigh and lifted his head to look into those glowing golden eyes.

“You are a gift, Cassandra. A magnificent, beautiful, and brilliant gift.”

“You know why my eyes are glowing.” The words were tremulous, tripping off her ragged breathing. The quakes of pleasure eddying from her nipples to her pussy continued to clench his cock, sucking greedily at his softening length, which just kindled a renewed vigor to have her again.

“Yes.” And he would have to tell her. Her eyes glowed for the Wizard, too. He ignored the savage urge to steal her away, burying them so far Underhill the Wizard would never find them. He’d given her his oath. Her eyes glowed for him, though, and he could barely contain the demanding devotion he wanted to lavish upon her.

“Will you tell me?”

Nuzzling her cheek, he kissed the tears that slipped from her eyes. She was so easily overwhelmed by their lovemaking, and he’d pushed her so hard with this coupling. He pushed her to pull power from him, and his body exulted at her success.

“You’re fertile,” he murmured, trying to mute the edge of glee escaping into his voice. “Among the Fae, a woman’s eyes glow when she is fertile for the lover she has chosen. It is a rare and exquisite sight.”

“Fertile?” Cassandra’s voice cracked.

Smothering his own exuberance, he nodded his head slowly. “Yes, my darling Cassandra.”

“Did we just get me pregnant?” The distress in her voice dampened his celebration, but he shifted, rolling over to pull her into his arms and cuddle her. So many changes, so fast. She couldn’t possibly understand the joy that her glowing eyes gave him. He restrained his mirth, because she was so much more precious than she knew.

“Forgive me, my darling Cassandra, if I hope so,” he whispered and braced himself for the storm.

Jacob leaned back against the wall, arms folded. Paul and Jude mirrored his pose, taking up positions to his right and left. Dalton St. James took up the position of inquisitor in the interview room at Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex as they questioned the man who let Michael Wentworth stroll out of his cell and into the ether. The prison offered medium- and low-security facilities for male inmates, but they’d adapted a cell and a housing plan specifically for Michael.

“Walk us through it again, Phil.” Dalton’s manner set the nervous guard, with his ruddy jowls and sweaty brow, at ease. The man mopped his forehead three times with a handkerchief that had long since turned yellow. The sour stench of his perspiration carried heavy undertones of licorice root, garlic, and mugwort.

The room was ripe with the stink of magic, but Dalton pursued the line of questioning relentlessly.

“It’s like I said, I started my rounds. Wentworth is allotted twenty minutes a day in the yard. I came by to pick him up, and we passed through the checkpoints the way we’re supposed to, only instead of opening the door to the yard, I opened the front door and he walked straight toward the guards at the gate. They let him out. All I did was walk him from the cell to the main door. And I don’t get it, it was the yard, man, I’m telling you, the route we took, the points we checked, we did the same ones every day this week.” At fifty-two years of age, Phillip “Phil” Carter was not in the best shape.

Jacob flicked a look down at his phone and the man’s work record and detailed history. He’d worked for the California penal system for thirty years without making any waves positive or negative. He was married with three kids, two in college and one about to graduate high school. His wife worked as a schoolteacher. They lived in a suburban house and made little to no extra. In fact they’d just taken out a second mortgage to cover tuition, and the youngest kid had been working on scholarships.

They didn’t come more average than Phil.

“We’re done, Carter. Turn in your papers to your desk sergeant and take the rest of the week off. You should also see a doctor about that perspiration issue.”

The penal officer jerked as though he’d been stung with a Taser. His wild gaze struck Jacob’s and the chair squealed noisily as he scooted it backward to stand. The man seemed to have forgotten the other agents were in the room.

“Agent Book, I can’t afford to lose this job.”

What the hell had Michael done to muddle the man’s mind? He needed to worry about his life, not his job.

“Don’t worry about it, Officer Carter. Go home, see your family, make a doctor’s appointment, and come back to work next Monday if your doctor approves.”

A desperate man will cling to flotsam in a flood, and Phil was no exception. He latched onto the possibility that it would all be fine and shuffled out.

“He’ll be dead before Monday.” Paul’s cool tones carried no inflection. He might as well have been commenting on the weather.

“Maybe. Call Jensen at Los Angeles Memorial. Have him drive down and get a look. He might be able to do something.” Unfortunately, Phil’s problem couldn’t be Jacob’s priority. Michael Wentworth walked out of a magically secure prison cell and was in the wind. The bastard killed Cassie’s family and had nearly taken Cassie’s head as well.

Putting Michael in the ground was his priority,

“Why bother?” Paul’s laconic question echoed in the dry gazes of Dalton and Jude.

“We bother because we protect humans from the things that go bump in the night. Whatever the hell Michael did to him, the man didn’t deserve it. Call Jensen then go review the memories on those guard gates. They weren’t as out of it as Phil, but something wiped them. I want to know what it was.”

Paul nodded and exited the room without another comment. His icy attitude might bother others, but it was just his way. Paul cared for no one and nothing beyond the scope of his team. Jacob rescued him from a concentration camp in the mid-1940s. At just ninety pounds, the man should have been dead, but the Wizard’s strength burned fiercely within and he’d beaten the odds. It took Jacob three years to get to the truth, but he’d learned that Paul had been consigned there by another Wizard, his magic bound and his family taken along with him.

He’d seen his wife and three children die in that camp while he survived, even his bound magic more than potent enough to keep him alive. He’d never railed against the loss of his family, cried or laughed. In the seventy-some-odd years Jacob had known Paul, the man emoted nothing.

“Dalton, review the security tapes for every day since Michael was incarcerated here. Check the footage for the route that Phil talked about. If they took the same route every day, there might be something on there to show us how the hell Michael pulled this off.”

The younger Wizard bobbed his head and followed Paul out the door. Jacob resisted the urge to call Cassie. She was with the Elf. As much as it stuck in his craw to admit it, she was safer with him.

“Whatcha thinking, boss?” Jude still leaned against the wall, his hands in his pockets. At barely forty-two, Jude was the most easygoing to the Wizards under his command. Born to a hippy mother in the flower-child sixties, he just didn’t let anything harsh his Zen for life.

Not even escaped homicidal Wizards.

“I haven’t decided yet. That man stank of magical influence. But for it to be so ingrained that he’s sweating it out, it suggests he consumed it.”

“Which means Wentworth had outside help.” Jude cut straight through the bullshit.

“Go to Phil’s place. Let’s see if they got to him there.”

“What are you going to do?”

Jacob’s phone chose that moment to buzz, and he read the message with a sigh. “I’m going to see Gustav.”

“Take Miller or DuPois with you.” The younger man shuddered. “Gustav is not a nice guy.”

“He’s not a guy at all.” Jacob motioned Jude out of the interview room ahead of him. He had to move. The inquisitor general of the Wizard Council demanded his presence now. He shuttled thoughts of Cassie to a quiet place in his mind and barred the door. He packaged the memory of her smile, the allure of her scent, and the low, throaty sound of her laughter. He bound it all, the sensuous hum of her, the sense he’d had since she’d pushed magic through both him and the Elf at the lake and muted all of it behind the mental barricade.

“I want Miller and DuPois on the perimeter.” He strode down the hallway, ignoring the penal officers sidestepping to get out of his path and Jude dogging his steps.

“Boss, I’m not kidding. He was pissed when you sent Paul last week.” The younger Wizard cited Roddenberry, Lucas, and Tolkien as his muses from the Prime Directive to the good side of the Force to the oath of the One Ring. Jude’s inspirations offered a more diplomatic world view on their cases, an almost optimistic one that Jacob lacked. They gave him a hard time about it, but that refreshing optimism saved their collective asses on more than one occasion. It amused the hell out of Jacob because Jude maintained an open mind to every subject.

Every subject except the inquisitor general.

“Jude, go to the officer’s house and watch your back.” He clapped the younger man on the shoulder as they badged their way out of Lompoc. Jude nodded and jogged toward his car. He preferred vehicles to Glashtyn. To each their own.

Jacob’s SUV door swung open as the engine vroomed to life. The Glashtyn’s welcome snapped the air like a popgun discharge. Concern layered through the being as he slid inside, and he secured the seat belt before answering the unspoken question hovering in the air. “Yes, he escaped. No, we’re not going back to Cassie. Because the first thing I would do if I wanted to get close to her is wait for me to make that mistake.”

The Glashtyn growled, the engine revving, and Jacob checked his phone. No messages from Cassie or the Elf. Not that he expected any. She’d been furious with him when he told her she had to wait and madder still when Helcyon pulled her through Underhill and deposited her at the top of the stairs. Her screech of outrage followed him out the door.

He thumbed through his contacts to the Elf’s number. The idea that the Fae had phones didn’t sit right in his gut, but he ignored it. He typed in four words.

Hunting. Keep her safe.

He deleted the contacts from his phone. The Glashtyn’s awareness opened like a blossoming flower in the back of his mind. The creature’s obedience to Jacob was part magical contract, part genuine affection. Named Domoir, he had been Jacob’s first true summoning as a youth, appearing like a savior, bellowing fiercely and attacking the men who would have beat Jacob to death.

One just didn’t forget that kind of loyalty.

Of course, Domoir’s loyalty to Cassie threatened to outstrip his long partnership with Jacob. But the Glashtyn wanted her safe and would avoid their mountain retreat until Jacob gave the all clear. He let the creature drive, choosing to focus his senses on the gloomy landscape surrounding the prison.