Rhys’ hands on her thighs tightened their grip. “Lord…,” he breathed. The proximity of his hands to her pussy made her clit throb with tingling anticipation. She was spread open and vulnerable, this way. She sent the thought to him.
His hand slipped along the delicate skin of her inner thigh and between her fleshy lips to stroke the aching, swollen nub just as she had imagined. For each thrust she took, his fingers teased her clit. Sometimes the tips slid down to where his cock pierced her flesh and caressing the folds there.
When he lifted his head and shoulders and began to feast upon her breasts, the early waves of another climax gripped her. Her rhythm faltered and her concentration scattered. Rhys grabbed her hips and tipped her onto her side, bringing her leg up over his hip. He took control of the rhythm as her senses drowned in the deep pool of pleasure.
She reached out blindly for him and he took her hand and placed it against his heart. She felt frenetic beating and opened her eyes a fraction to look at him. “Show me,” she whispered.
He immersed her in his sense/feelings—the climax that began to shudder through him, the delight of being surrounded by her soft, malleable flesh, the delicateness of her, her responsiveness to him, her joy in her own pleasure, to be rewarded thus—
Every tendon in Jenna’s body flexed as her orgasm gripped her. The peak drew out and out and yet further out….
* * * * *
They lay in a tangle of limbs for long minutes after, neither saying a word. Jenna listened to his breathing ease with her eyes half closed and her hand still resting against his chest.
“Jenna.” It was a soft command.
She opened her eyes.
He touched her nose. “You’ve become pale again.”
She caught his quick image—her white face, a handful of endearing freckles standing out in stark relief. The flesh looked almost translucent.
“Time to eat,” he added.
“Again? But—”
“You’re using up energy with every surge.” His thumb brushed across her cheekbone with a featherweight touch. “It has its bonuses, you know. You can indulge in dark chocolate to your heart’s content.”
“I’ve never been a chocolate lover.” She yawned hugely.
Rhys slid her thigh from his. “Food. Let’s go.”
His command was backed up with a mental push. It was a nudge to prod her into action. Behind it, she sensed his concern for her health.
Reluctantly, Jenna dragged herself to the bathroom to clean up and dress.
In ten minutes they were both ready to face the public once more, but Rhys studied her, frowning. “Are you wearing your knife?” he asked.
Jenna felt a genuine shock. “No, and it’s normally so automatic to put it on.”
“Put it on,” he said. “I can offer you all sorts of protection, but only if I’m near you. Even I can’t stop an avalanche or a physical attack if I’m not right there.”
She saw again all the pale scars on his body and shivered. “Even inside the Banff Springs Hotel?” She picked up the spring harness and pushed her sweater sleeve above her elbow.
“Here, their
only
recourse is physical violence. Even they are bound by the Coda.”
She strapped the harness to her forearm.
After so many years of doing it one-handed she had become practiced to the point of barely thinking about it anymore. “Should we even go downstairs? Perhaps we should order food in?”
“The restaurant will be quicker.” Rhys grimaced.
“Besides, I want to test the waters. You’re a professional, Jenna.
You know it’s critical to keep tabs on the movements of the enemy.”
True. She couldn’t deny that gathering information was an essential component of her work.
Enemy movements and deployment was a nasty sub-set of data gathering, but just as necessary.
“I suppose it will be safe enough. Will Clement Hine have realized where we are? Would we have…drawn him?”
She felt odd saying it, but Rhys didn’t even blink.
“Not that precisely and Banff is made of hotels. He could spend a long time searching the town looking for us.” He grinned. “He’s probably already checked out this hotel.
I would have.
It would have been the first on my list.
But the security here is very tight.
He`d never be able to wander the upper corridors freely and they certainly won’t tell him I’m here.
We’re relatively safe in the hotel.”
Jenna considered his analysis, using SIA skills to probe at his conclusions from all angles, looking for weaknesses.
She found a possibility.
“From what you’ve said of him, Hine sounds resourceful.
Not the sort of man who would let hotel security slow him down too much.”
“He is.” Rhys pushed his hand through his hair. “Don’t let my complacency fool you. There’s only you and me against Hine’s dogs, Jenna.”
He hesitated.
“I don’t know if we will be strong enough. I know my own abilities but yours are completely untested and they haven’t been bound yet.”
Jenna’s heart was racing.
It had been a long time since she had been rated as anything less than highly skilled.
Her lieutenant fielded requests for temporary secondments and assignments for her so often it had become a running joke.
But this wasn’t the SIA.
It had only been three hours since the Prince had got coffee dumped in his lap but already she knew she moved in a world a dozen steps beyond any experience on her resume.
She couldn’t take Rhys’ assessment of her skills as anything but unadorned truth and just accept it as it was.
She swallowed.
“And you’re complacent because…?”
“Because even if Hine walked into this room right at this moment and found us both here together, I’m pretty sure he won’t make a move until the solstice. He’ll just watch us.”
“That’s crazy!”
She drew in a breath and shoved the sleeve of her sweater down over the knife harness, reminding herself that she was operating out of her natural element.
Striving for a more normal and reasonable tone of voice, she added, “Why would anyone just wait? I could think of a dozen ways to breach security, even here.”
Rhys headed for the door once more.
“By now he knows we have started the bonding process and that he’s too late to stop it. There’s no point in trying to kill either of us anymore.”
“That was what he was trying to do this afternoon?” she asked as Rhys opened the door.
“Stop the bonding?”
“By any means necessary, as you Americans like to say.”
“He would have killed me?” she asked.
“In the coffee shop, before I knew a thing about any of this?”
Rhys shepherded her out of the room and shut the door.
“Hine knows better than to cause a public scene.
He would have got you somewhere private.”
“Very comforting,” Jenna replied dryly.
“He still would have murdered me and I still wouldn’t have had a clue why.”
“It didn’t happen, so it’s not relevant.
Don’t dwell on it,” Rhys told her.
“Oh, it’s relevant alright,” she shot back.
“It tells me loads about this Clement Hines and what he’s capable of.
Cold-blooded, heartless murder being one.”
Rhys prodded the elevator call button.
“You’re starting to understand your enemy then.
Good.”
Jenna drew in a breath.
“So what will he do, now he has failed to prevent the—what did you call it?”
“The bonding.”
“That.”
“He will concentrate all his efforts on preventing the final binding. The solstice is the critical moment.”
“If it’s so critical, then he’d know we’d be ready for him at the solstice. If I were Hine, I would attack earlier.” She shrugged. This sort of strategizing was second nature to her.
“But Hine isn’t you.”
The elevator chimed and the doors slid open.
The elevator was empty once more.
Rhys selected the second floor and leaned one shoulder against the wall.
“Hine has me to confront. He knows I’m more powerful. He knows he’ll only get one chance at this, for that is all his strength will allow him. If he attacked now and even if he partially succeeded, I’d still be able to recover and reach the solstice, and I’d bring you along with me. He needs to stay his hand until the right moment. For him, that’s just before the solstice, because then he only has to delay us for just long enough for the solstice to pass and that is how he will defeat us.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “For that, his powers are strong enough. But until then, we have a small pocket of time. In that time I must prepare you.” His dark eyes studied her.
“Why me? Why do they want me all of a sudden?” She spoke the words softly and hurriedly, aware that at any moment they could be interrupted.
“Because until the solstice, these powers of yours that you are just coming into could be converted and used for the most obscene purposes.”
Rhys’ face became bleak and sad as his thoughts turned inwards.
Then the elevator doors opened and the hushed noise of the public areas of the hotel floated into them as they stood inside the elevator. Rhys stirred. “Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
* * * * *
Rhys paused at the foot of the stairs that led to the restaurant, gazing over his shoulder towards the big picture windows that looked out onto the street. Without a word he changed directions, heading directly for the windows.
Jenna caught up with him. “What is it?”
He stood before one of the windows, staring out at the thick snow falling in front of the glass. Concentrating on it.
Before he could answer, one of the massive wooden doors opened and a couple stepped inside, stamping their feet to dump the thick encrustations of snow from their shoes.
“Man, that snow!” the male said. “Can you believe it?”
“It came out of nowhere.” The woman brushed the snow from her hair.
The doorman grabbed the handle of the door behind them, but before he could pull it shut, Rhys caught his attention. “Thick out there?”
“Oh, not to worry, sir,” the doorman said confidently. “We’re keeping on top of it.”
Jenna glanced at the small dollops of melting snow sitting on the floor where the couple had stamped them off. If the hotel staff really were staying on top of it, the snow would not have been thick enough to cover shoes and people wouldn’t be tracking it inside the hotel.
She had been staying here nearly two weeks and one thing she had learned was that the hotel was almost obsessive about keeping the sweeping, curved driveway and front parking area clear of every last speck of snow.
They didn’t just shovel the snow away, they swept the driveway daily.
“You’re doing a tough job out there.” Rhys sounded a little awed. “Do they say how long this is going to last?”
The doorman pursed his lips. “Shouldn’t last too much longer, I’d say.” He nodded and shut the door, cutting off the chill that had been seeping past him and curling around their ankles.
Rhys turned back to the window.
Jenna stood next to him.
What is it?
He shook his head.
An uneasy feeling.