Somehow, she could feel Terje’s enormous strength behind, his hands reaching out to stop her. But he just gripped the tips of her long hair as she hit the wall. Pain didn’t reach her, but a plunging sensation as though she jumped into a pool of paper, the dry sheets whispering across her face and body. And then she found herself outside the walls of the complex, heading into the marsh, barely dodging tree after tree.
“Oh!” She held out her hands, barely missing a thick trunk. A tingle washed over her, slowing her body. Isla looked up, spying a misty cloud following her. To her left, Terje was by her side, running in a blue blur. This sensation was…exhilarating. She grinned like a fool. “I’m running!”
“Stop!” He was yelling, reaching for her. But she slipped through his fingers. “Pull from your center! Make yourself stop!”
He was so fired up, she figured she would listen. Her center… her center, where was her center? Isla pulled hard from her gut, tightening her body, and snap.
Thump.
Whack!
“OOF!” Isla’s breath left her. She sucked in another one, glancing up at Terje.
He stood in front of her with two hands in his hair, yanking. “Oh, fucking hell!” Then he turned around, waving several males back. “I’ve got it. Yeah, all under control here.”
Oycher misted in next to Terje, walked steadily to her without gliding. He surveyed the high walls surrounding the complex and then looked back at her. “That was impressive.” He tapped the tree right next to her. “Until this happened.”
She looked down and horror filled her eyes. “I’m in the tree.”
Terje groaned, “You’re in the fucking tree.”
“How did I get inside a tree?” A sob left her as she yanked her shoulder back, but nothing would budge. “It’s in my body.”
Terje lifted her chin with two fingers, his gaze flaring his Beast. “Correction, you’re in its trunk. How did you learn to mist?”
That caught her off guard. “Mist?” She wiped a tear away with her only visible hand. “I thought I was running.”
“We can discuss this later,” Oycher intervened. “It’s time for you to mist out.”
She nodded, wary. “How do you suppose I accomplish that?”
“Whatever made you mist in the first place,” he said levelly, “do it again.”
Tears burned her eyes. “You pissed me off and I left!”
Terje gritted his teeth. “He wasn’t the only one you left, Isla. Remember me?”
Isla smiled weakly. “Sorry about that.”
Oycher held out a hand. “Let’s focus on the tree, shall we?” He walked again, coming closer, closer, and closer, until his body pressed against hers. At least, the part that was sticking out from the tree. “I know how badly you want to get away from me.” Her mind flickered as though a hundred fingertips were dancing across file folders. “Go ahead.” His muscles rippled as his hands moved up and down one half of her body, touching her arm, her rib cage, her waist, delving to her hip. “Run away from me,” he taunted on a low rasp.
His long finger dared to graze the line between her apex and leg, tantalizing close to… “This isn’t working!” Oh, how she hated crying in front of a vampire.
“Can’t you coax it out of her head, Oycher?” Terje reached between them, cupping the side of her face and wiping a tear with his thumb. “You didn’t earn the nickname Mind Stalker for nothing.”
Oycher shrugged casually, staying infuriatingly calm. “Although, as my Bride, she’s awarded more privacy than most. I can read her here and there.” He winked at her. “I’ve learned a few things.”
“That’s just wrong,” she argued, feeling the urge to stretch.
Oycher clucked his tongue. “Says who?”
Her missing leg popped out, but she was too pissed to give it a second thought. This vampire could pick through her mind? How dare he! “The lack of ethics speaks for itself.”
“Isla,” Terje chided, “he was born that way. Ethics have nothing to do with it. It’s more like a birth defect.”
“I am not defective,” Oycher’s eyes dropped to her chest. “I can prove I’m operable in every way.”
“Stop looking at my breasts!” The other one popped out of the tree, bouncing, followed by her shoulder and foot.
Oycher laughed softly. “I feel like Sage.”
She remembered the green-eyed Vojak. “Sage may have thrown me over his shoulder, but he didn’t look at my breasts.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “You didn’t give him a chance.” But his eyes said a different story: Sage would never look at Isladora’s breasts and live to tell about it.
Terje’s winter gaze flicked to the tree, where her arm remained. A gentleness in his voice made her heart stutter, “You’ve had a rough day, and all I want to do is attend you. Whatever you need.” His fingertips brushed her throat with such tenderness, she closed her eyes and breathed him in. “Just relax.”
She felt the rest of her body slide away from the tree. “I did it!” Isla jumped into his arms, kissing him on his mouth. He took her kiss and deepened it, delving between her lips with his seeking tongue. And the world seemed to disappear for a little while.
Terje made a strangled growl and lifted her in his arms, turning toward the walls of the complex. “Don’t do that again, Isla.”
“Is that a command?”
“Actually,” he said, bending his legs and springing from the ground, “it is.” They landed on top of the perimeter wall, at least twenty-five feet off the ground. One side was the miasma shrouded complex, the other filled with marshlands leading to the ocean. “Don’t look at me that way. I’m responsible for your safety, and you could have easily decapitated yourself. What would have happened if you’d ended up in a moving car?”
“I didn’t know I was doing it!” She gripped him tighter and looked over his shoulder. Where had Oycher gone? And why did she feel a pang of regret at the loss of him?
They hit the ground silently. “How can you be so lithe at your size?”
“I can teach you how to jump and land properly from great distances. That is, after you become immortal.”
“I never agreed to becoming immortal.”
“We’ll see.” His canines were at half-mast. “Hell, I’m still shaking. Do you realize you should have died doing that?”
“Really?”
“Really.” He tightened her body against his chest, striding towards the private marina. “After everything you’ve been through, I’m left wondering when your luck is going to run out.”
“How can a creature governed by the moon, who also believes in fate, believe in luck?” She fooled with the locket housing the tiny paper her rescuer had given her. Isla could have easily put it in her phone instead of hiding it around her neck. But after Dax destroyed her phone, she was doubly glad she’d kept it right where it was. In case of emergency, break locket. Of course, it wasn’t a good luck charm, but it felt like one. She just hoped she never had to use it. Because according to her shadowy rescuer, if she called the number, it would be her very last resort.
“I don’t think I do, actually. But werewolves have hope, otherwise, they wouldn’t wait patiently for their mates to come around,” he said meaningfully.
“I can walk.” She wiggled when they hit the dock. The sounds of wood planks groaned beneath his weight. “I’m not hurt.”
“Oh, I know you’re not hurt. My Beast just needs to keep a hold of you for a little while longer, right in my arms where you are tangible.”
She flushed when a few Pack males saluted her with beer bottles. “Did everybody see?”
“Maybe not, but word travels.” He stepped over several ropes tied to what must be a yacht and lowered her past the inside steps. “Ah, here we are. My fishing boat.”
“This is a fishing boat?”
“Well, considering the weight of my friends and family, the size of this vessel isn’t an extravagance, it’s a necessity. By the way, I’ve never had a reason to use the master bedroom.” He wagged his eyebrows. “Until now.”
Isla yanked Terje to her and nearly slipped when her eyes caught sight of Oycher. “H-he’s back.” Gone were the leathers and weapons. Standing on the sun deck, the Commanding Vojak of North America was dressed in black jeans and a gray graphic T-Shirt, molding his mouthwatering…Her eyes snapped to his. He was grinning back with cool calculation. “Stop eavesdropping in my head, it’s rude.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said serenely, offering her a hand up three more steps.
She didn’t want to show any fear, so she took it. His fingers, long and warm, curled around hers. Why couldn’t vampires be cold and dead and ugly?
“I’m not Undead,” he answered her unspoken question. “The vampires made by other vampires are cold and somewhat dead, but, frankly, I’ve never seen an ugly one.”
“You okay while I phone Dax?” Terje called up to her.
She asked Oycher, “Have you fed?”
“Are you offering?”
She clenched her fists. “How long is that phone call going to be, Terje?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Oycher explained, his nostrils moving in and out as if he were scenting her. “My last bite clocked in at nearly two-hundred miles per hour. Not my personal best, but it had been a long night. Terje could stand right next to you, and it wouldn’t make a difference. If I wanted to sink my fangs into you, I would.” He leaned down, pressing his mouth against her temple. “It’s kind of like Russian roulette. Will the big bad vampire bite?” He stepped back and slid on a chaise with vampire grace, his body pouring like water over stone. “Or not.”
He regarded her a moment. “Come.” He patted the teensy space left on his oversized chaise, where she would barely fit. “Sit with me, while we enjoy the Florida sunshine.”
“But you’re mad at me.”
“Come.” He tore his shirt overhead, and her mouth basically hit the deck. “If you don’t want to get to know me,” he said, sliding a slow hand down his torso, “then we’ll call it work.”
She didn’t know where to look first. Scarlet wings were etched across his chest, not necessarily a tattoo, but some kind of marking. And they seemed to move, whenever he did. His skin was free of hair and his abs rippled when he scooted over some more to give her room. When his jeans waistband pulled away from his lower stomach, she spotted the V thing most men never had.
Holy shit.
“I’m reading your mind,” he reminded silkily.
“Can you, at least, pretend you aren’t?”
“Not if you keep thinking that way,” he said tightly, adjusting his zipper.
For the briefest second, she wondered what was nestled beneath that zipper. “So, how exactly are we calling this work?”
“I gave my word to your Alpha that I’d relax you around my kind, and that’s what I intend to do.” He kicked off his boots. “Of course, you could always drop this foolish notion of working for werewolves.”
“Yeah, well, I’m part werewolf.”
He peeled off his socks. “What, did I offend you?”
So he was going to play that game. “My objections to vampires are fair.”
He shrugged a shoulder, his muscles rippling with the movement. “You could always have a seat and tell me how imperfect we are.” He reached out and offered a steady hand. “I am a warrior, after all, and I think fate wouldn’t be so cruel as to gift me with a coward, Isladora Evdokimov - Arud.”
She took his hand and sat next to him. “Of course, I’m not a coward.” On most days. “And that’s not my surname.”
“Oh, really? My inherent instincts must be way off, then.” With arms that could have been sculpted by Michelangelo, he reached down and started removing her sneakers. “Now, let’s discuss your discrimination issues.”
She chewed her lip when his fingers curled beneath her sock, tugging, grazing over her sensitive arch. “Your Coven supports the monarchy.”
“We have no choice,” he said patiently, tugging down the second sock excruciatingly slow. “If Dynasty Vampyrs cease to exist, we’ll become extinct right along with them.”
“Why?”
Lifting her right foot, he threaded his fingers through her toes, gently sliding and twisting. “We need their strength. Werewolves and shapeshifters walk this earth among us, but there are other immortals.”
Her heart started pounding, after he moved to the opposite foot and repeated the process. “Like what?”
“Druids, for instance, would rise if it weren’t for some of the sorcery Dynasty Vampyrs could throw back at them.”
Somehow he flipped her on her stomach without her knowing it. “Hey!”
“You’re working, remember? Trust the vampire.” He circled her ankle, his long fingers overlapping as he moved his grip up her leg, squeezing and releasing in a sensuously familiar rhythm.
“So,” she breathed, a trickle of sweat gliding between her breasts, “how did you become a Vojak?”
“We’re all born of certain bloodlines.” He slid both hands up the backs of her legs, stopping mid-thigh and using the same squeezing and releasing rhythm. “There are monarchs, Vojaks, soldiers, civilians, Lovci, and Gryphs, plus many more categories of my species. When not civilian, we honor our blood by upholding the position fate chose for us. I was born of warrior blood, so I am Vojak.”
When his hands reached higher to cup her ass, he disappointed her by detouring over her hips. Still, he needed to be put in his place. “I don’t think Dax had this in mind.”
“Dax isn’t here.” He turned her gently, slowly. Staring down at her, he asked, “Is it so bad, Isladora, to be touched by my hands?”
“No.” Her hands found his chest. “But I refuse to be a part of your vampiric world.”
“In any world, power begets power.”
She glared at him. “The Dynasty shouldn’t take.”
“At risk of death,” he said, his sunset eyes flicking to her lips. “I’m fighting for Donors’ rights. Even though on most estates they’re treated like gems, they shouldn’t be forced to stay caged. But Donors will always be fed from, Isladora.” Oycher pushed against her hands until she dropped them, and placed a small kiss at the corner of her mouth. “Could I ask you to give up food and water and still expect you to live?”
By God, he almost made sense. “I’ll never approve of any of it.”