Alterant by Sherrilyn Kenyon
"Yes." He brushed his palm against her face. "Don't go somewhere I can't get to you."
Guess that cleared up any question about whether he thought he could get to her in the maze. There went her safety net if Storm couldn't find a way in. "Then do me this favor. Give me two hours before you contact anyone."
"One hour."
"Ninety minutes."
"One. Hour."
She had to give him a reason that would overrule his concern for her. "Ninety minutes. If you call in Tzader and Quinn before I find these three Alterants, the Tribunal might twist it around to appear as though I called them in."
He nodded, unhappy about it, but he agreed to the compromise.
She moved close and lifted up to whisper, "Please understand. If you need me to face something like the Maze of Death to help with finding you-know-who"--she didn't even know the name of the woman Storm was hunting--"I will."
He nodded again, not any happier, but understanding swept his face, uncovering a gaze filled with caring that warmed her heart.
"Need to go," Tristan called over.
When she turned to leave, Storm pulled her back around and into his arms, kissing her before she could say a word.
Embarrassment heated her skin at Tristan watching them, but only for the two seconds it took for her to realize this was a new kiss. Her empathic senses burst awake and told her this kiss had a name and a meaning--possession. Any other time, she'd have shoved a man on his butt and straightened him out about the fact that no one possessed her, but her hands refused to untangle from their grip on Storm's shirt.
She rode a heady wave of feeling at the idea of a man like Storm wanting her this much.
When Tristan made a disgruntled noise, she smoothed her hands against Storm's chest and gave him a slight push until he lifted his head. "I have to go."
He dropped his forehead to hers. "Be careful."
"I will be."
She'd made three steps away when Storm told Tristan, "Bring her back with so much as a scratch on her and VIPER won't end up with enough of you to satisfy a pack of hungry rats."
Tristan smiled and hooked an arm around Evalle's waist. "See you, tomcat."
She closed her eyes, hoping she'd been right about Tristan having a soul, because he was her only way out of the Maze of Death. Sen wouldn't come unless the Tribunal sent for her, and even then he'd probably pretend he couldn't find her.
One way in. One way out.
TWENTY-THREE
Voices skidded through his mind, playing dodgeball with his thoughts.
Quinn kept his eyes shut tight even though the room was as dark as a moonless night and he had an ice compress over his forehead and eyes. He tried to thicken his mental shields to stop the onslaught of voices, but the effort almost sent him back to worship the porcelain god.
He had nothing else left to throw up.
Images flashed in and out from minds he'd linked to and probed. Images as garbled as the voices.
"Quinn?"
Had he heard that voice in his head or in the room? Couldn't have been in the room. No one could get in but Tzader.
No room service allowed since a bullet between the eyes wasn't on the menu.
Energy swirled in the room, whipping the chilly air to frost level. No, not now.
"Quinn?"
He gritted his teeth and tried to reinforce his mental shields, but they were weak, too shaky to battle any real power. "You shouldn't be here, Kizira."
"Then you shouldn't have called me."
Huh? He tried to lift up, but an invisible hammer pounded his head with vicious enthusiasm.
"I didn't call you, Kizira."
"I wouldn't have gone through all I did to be here if you hadn't. I risked leaving my bodyguards in charge of a project I'm responsible for."
Had he called her? He would have known that, right?
"You're in pain. I can help."
"No . . . don't. Go away. Please." His teeth chattered when the temperature dropped severely.
"I can drop the temperature even more to freeze the pain out of your brain."
"No." His thoughts tangled. How had she gotten in here? The mind probe. What had happened to him during that probe?
"You miss me." She hadn't asked, just spoken, as though saying the words would give them weight and value. "Remember the last time we were alone?"
All too well.
Good thing he'd stretched out still fully clothed. The last time he and Kizira had been alone they'd ended up naked.
Like he needed that image worming its way into his splitting head right now? She had to go. He was civilized only when he had all his faculties accounted for, and right now parts of his mind had taken a hiatus.
She spoke softly. "You were in my head today where you shouldn't have been, Quinn. Why?"
He frowned, and even that hurt. Had he reached into her mind during the probe, too? No. She'd climbed into his, fearless of what he might have done to her. She'd been in a vision of the future, not here today. What kind of connection had opened up by tapping the spirit of Conlan's evil father?
No matter what, Quinn had to keep her out of his mind.
He mumbled, "How was I in your head?" but the words might have come out, "Howz I in ure 'ead?"
She made a sound he recalled from their time alone when she'd get exasperated with him. "Can you at least sit up and talk to me?"
"Honestly . . . no. Had a . . . difficult day." When he heard the shirr of material heading his way, he opened his eyes again, but the room blurred.
Kizira crossed the room, her body appearing to flex and reshape as though she'd been caught in one of those warped circus mirrors. She moved silently, but her usual intense glow had dimmed to almost nothing.
He asked, "Why aren't you glowing?"
"You obviously have a volcanic headache, and as I recall, light hurts your eyes." The powder blue gown poured down her body, hugging curves and falling to her ankles. Her flame red hair--now a soft brunette--hung in a long braid over her left shoulder, falling past her breasts.
Beautiful breasts when she'd been naked.
He closed his eyes and indulged a moment of self-loathing at his mental track.
She'd stand out among all the women in contemporary clothes stalking around Buckhead outside his hotel because Kizira was like no other woman.
And she was his enemy.
He needed to keep that thought forced between the erotic images determined to crowd his mind.
The mattress depressed next to him when she climbed on.
"Kizira," he warned. He didn't want to use any kinetic power on her and frankly didn't know if he had it in him to raise a decent defense. Had to keep his energy focused on locking down the walls of his mind.
The ice pack disappeared from his head. The pounding kicked his skull. He released a noise that sounded pitiful to his ears.
Her cool palm covered his forehead.
He tensed, then groaned out a sigh of relief at the instant change from brutal pain to just a splitting headache. "Go, Kizira."
She hushed him. "Shh. Let me help you while I'm here."
Bad idea. But bloody hell, only a fool would refuse her help, especially when he needed to get back on his feet for Tzader and Evalle.
He'd let her do her majik, then he'd thank her and send her on her way.
"Do you miss me?" she asked again. Her words came to him soft as a caress, calling to him as dangerously as the sirens who lured sailors to their deaths. But he'd been the one who'd allowed disaster to happen last time.
Too young to think past the need to have her when she'd given herself so easily to him.
Not this time.
"Quinn?" She said his name as though no one had that name but him. "I'm asking a simple question. It's just me and you."
Why did her words sound like music? She wasn't singing.
Should he tell her he thought of her only twice a day?
When he was sleeping and awake.
He should lie, but he couldn't bring himself to hurt her, when she was easing his pain. "Yes, I miss you, but that doesn't change . . . a simple fact. I'm Belador and you're Medb." Sworn enemies. "You should hate me. I should never have taken advantage of you."
She kept soothing his head with her hand and laughed. The sound came and went as though fading in and out. "I was fully a woman when I met you."
"You were eighteen. I was older than you--"
"By two years only."
"--and should have kept my hands off."
She placed a kiss on his head, and gentle coolness spread across his forehead, dropping the headache to a moderate ache. He relaxed his shoulders for the first time in hours.
Kizira chided him in a cheerful voice. "Your memory must be failing, and such a shame to age so poorly at thirty-three."
He smiled at her jab. Some worry pressed at his mind . . . something he'd just had a grip on a moment ago.
Whispering in his ear, she told him, "I recall when we met that you fell to my charms, not the other way around."
"So you used majik on me then?" He couldn't recall, but he should. His memories bumped into each other in a confusing tangle.
"Only my personal charms," she assured him. "Now you wish me to think that only worked because you were so badly injured?"
Pieces of the memory poked at him.
He'd been alone on patrol in the mountains surrounding Chechnya and found a village destroyed by Medb warlocks. When he heard the scream of a woman being attacked, he intervened only to be captured by three warlocks who turned Noirre majik on Quinn before he'd been able to engage his mind-locking powers. He hadn't developed the skill much at that point. They beat him to his knees.
Then two warlocks had held him in place for the other one to torture so they could peel his mind open.
Quinn hadn't known at the time that the woman he'd saved, Kizira, was a Medb who had just been given her first task on her way to becoming a priestess. She was to capture a Belador and bring the warrior to her queen. A dangerous task for any eighteen-year-old woman, but Kizira had never been an average young girl.
She'd told him later that no warrior who fought so honorably should die by torture. So she'd interfered with the three warlocks, forcing them to stop hurting Quinn.
That had been a grave error on her part. The warlocks had been trained to kill any traitor in the Medb, no matter who.
To interfere with their handling of a Belador had sealed her fate without judge or jury.
They'd dropped Quinn in a heap of torn flesh and broken bones to turn on Kizira as one.
Quinn had rallied the minute they'd redirected their Noirre majik at Kizira. He'd opened his mind, reaching out in a rage of energy he used to quickly overtake the mind of two warlocks, dropping them where they stood.
The other one had been so intent on Kizira that he'd failed to notice the greater danger gaining his feet behind him. When Quinn had finished, all three laid scattered on the ground. He'd taken one look at a shocked Kizira and collapsed on top of the pile of bodies.
When he'd next opened his eyes, he'd found that Kizira had hidden him away in the mountains, where she cared for his battered body.
Just as she was doing now.
He held his thoughts for a moment before they spilled between the gaps in his mind. What had he been saying to her a minute ago? The words she whispered slipped inside his head and floated around. His mind fogged with pleasure from where her fingers rubbed his temples with circular motion. The pleasure seeped into his body as though carried on streams of rejuvenating oils.
Her voice whispered close to his ear. "Do you remember the bracelet I braided from your hair?"
"Huh . . . yes." He smiled at the memory. She'd worn the bracelet until the last day, when he'd suggested she might not want to go home with a Belador token of that sort. He'd told her the bracelet would only make her regret what they'd done.
She'd replied that she was keeping the bracelet to prove she didn't regret their time together.
A silly thing, but he'd been touched that she'd taken the keepsake with her.
It didn't matter. This was a mistake. He mumbled, "Kizira . . . can't be here."
Warm air rushed across his throat when she said, "I told you I'd come if you called."
Her words echoed in slow waves, bouncing across his mind. "Why . . . did I call you?"
Because you missed me. Remember? Her voice entered his mind gently, so much better than hearing sounds. You do remember missing me, Quinn, don't you?
Oh, yes. "I did . . . miss you."
Her hands moved to his neck and shoulders, rubbing deep into tired muscles while her voice massaged his mind. You like to be touched and kissed. Her lips brushed his, then disappeared.
The pauses between bouts of pain stretched longer.
He had something to do . . . something about . . .
Her lips brushed kisses along his forehead. Then her voice flowed into his mind on a soft hum. I care for you, Quinn.
I don't think . . . you should, he answered. Other thoughts flitted up, almost in focus, then backed away just out of his reach. I'm not . . . I'm not . . . right for you.
Yes, you are. Her fingers slid along his chest, stopping to delve into a tight muscle, loosening him inch by inch. I want you, Quinn. Again. Like last time.
Can't do that. Wrong. But he had a new ache that pulsed in his groin.
His belt unbuckled and his pants loosened at the waist.
She reached inside and caressed him.
He hissed, "Kizira."
That was supposed to sound like a warning, not a request.
She said, I've missed you, too. Missed touching you most of all.
The world lost shape, tumbled on its side and lay there.
Quinn tried to open his eyes. Couldn't.
Her voice and touch consumed him, binding him, filling him from the inside out. Her fingers . . . oh, her fingers . . . stroked.
His body took over, all attention shifted straight south. He tensed, ready to surge with the orgasm.
No control.
Couldn't breathe . . . waiting for her to move again . . . he ached . . . pleasure with teeth scraped his nerves. He couldn't move his hands to reach for her. Could do nothing but lie here, waiting . . .
Please.
I want you, Quinn, she repeated over and over. Tell me you miss me.
His muscles strained, everything tied to one part of his body waiting for release. "I miss you."
Her fingers slid along his length up an inch, then stopped, then up another inch. He shook with need.
Do you want me to help Evalle?
"What?"
I could watch out for her. Kizira's fingers stroked back down, her hand first hot, then cold.
His body clenched. He was panting. The edge was close, just a tip away.
Where is Evalle?
He struggled to recall. "She's gone."
But how do I find her?
"Don't know."
Pain shot behind his eyes.
Kizira whispered against his ear, Think, Quinn. Where is Evalle?
He swallowed, panting. Jagged shards of glass stabbed each of his eyes.
The pain subsided again and Kizira was kissing him. I have what you want. What you need.
He reached for her, surprised his arms moved. His hands touched bare flesh everywhere. She shivered and whispered seductive words, begging him to give her what she wanted.
Just ask. Whatever he owned was hers.
But he'd never told a woman that and didn't think--
Her fingers cupped him and he stilled. The delicate touch of her fingers drove him insane. Too gentle to push him into oblivion.
He ground his teeth. She kept teasing him, as if he could
When she finally gripped him firmly, he made a sound deep in his throat, a primal need for release.
She said, Tell me where Evalle is and I will give you anything you want.
Somewhere from deep in his mind, a thought came charging forward, as if he'd commanded the very words to march into battle. "She's with Tristan."
That's all I needed to hear. Now I want to feel you inside me. She removed her fingers.
He wanted to snarl at her to go back and finish what she'd started, but it was as if someone had thrown a switch on his body. His muscles and limbs once again functioned.
His skin burned to rub against hers. He rolled her over, feeling nothing but her and sheets touching his skin.
They were both naked.
Just like last time.
Perfect.
The only thing stopping him from exploding when he finally shoved inside her was a basic male drive for control. Carnal need raced through his cells, burning him to take her. He struggled for a second with the sense this was not right, but her muscles clinched and his thoughts splintered. Pulling back, he slowly pushed into her again, shaking with his need for her.
She urged him, Now, Quinn. Just like last time.
Her nails dug into his shoulders.
Bloody hell, yes. He held her hips and drove deep inside her.
TWENTY-FOUR
That had to be the quickest teleporting trip in the world, which worked just fine for Evalle if not for the brief sick stomach.
Too bad it had been with Tristan and not Storm, her personal favorite as a full-time transport partner.
She opened her eyes and expelled a breath that came out as a white puff in the chilly air. "It's colder than I thought it would be."
"Creepy, huh?" Tristan said close to her ear.
"A kid's Halloween spook house is creepy. This is a twilight zone." She hadn't known what to expect with a name like Maze of Death, but not this. The hand-hewn dirt-and-rock tunnel that stretched in front of her glowed in spots where an eclectic mix of antique gas lanterns had been mounted.
She doubted any fuel lines ran to them.
Who would have been paying the gas bill?
Framed paintings hung along the walls at intervals, and an assortment of rugs covered the dirt floor in places.
Tristan angled his head toward the tunnel. "From what I could tell on my first trip through this place, someone moved personal effects down here. Guess it made the spirits feel at home."
"Wonder how they kept this from being discovered when MARTA built the subway system?"