Four
Stretching, Olivia put a hand out to slide it along Torin’s back. He was incredibly attentive, but when he was ready to sleep, he always preferred to roll away, which suited her. Olivia, too, was not accustomed to someone in her bed. For the past two weeks, they’d been together most nights.
“Lights,” she said, cueing the system to bring up low lights.
He groaned. She’d discovered that Torin was not a morning person. “Tor, you have to go.”
Another groan ended in a growl as he sat up, struggling to waken. After a long yawn, he rolled over on top of Olivia. “I need some help getting my motor running.”
Olivia pushed him off her. “I helped you all night. Get moving.”
She didn’t say what was really on her mind; that he needed to get to the crystal cave to keep an eye on Will. As she’d learned more about what Will was doing there, the deep earth-magics merge, she couldn’t control her concern. She knew what he experienced when he was in one of those merges. It could be overpowering, but more than that, it could be dangerous. That’s why Ife had assigned Torin to be there with him. Luckily, Torin took his role as protector seriously.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m up.”
“I’m up,” he repeated, as if to convince himself he was, but it was another few minutes before he lifted off Olivia’s bed and stumbled to his clothes.
After he had dressed, Torin hovered over Olivia, pulled her sheet back, and kissed each nipple, ran his tongue from one to the other and back again, licking the entire path. “Will I see you tonight?”
Her eyes still closed, Olivia was smiling. “I’m not sure. Dez may have plans for us. I’ll let you know.”
“All right. I guess I’ll get gone. Sleep well.”
After he’d left, Olivia stretched out to take up most of the bed. Torin had been a delight since they’d been together. For the past few weeks, he’d shown he was creative, attentive, and amazingly athletic. She’d threatened to put in a trapeze just to see what he would do with it. He was a good lover, something she needed right now, in spite of the fact that he was close with Will.
A vampire’s imperative to sleep during daylight took over and Olivia submitted.
AT IFE’S COMPOUND
Dani polished off her third bowl of clam chowder, reminding herself once again that she wasn’t vampire and that eating like this would add unwanted pounds. So far, she’d been lucky and still kept the cute figure that brought her a lot of masculine attention these days, although still no dates.
“Dani, I need your latest update.” Ife breezed through the doorway, snatching a cinnamon bun as she moved past a buffet table to join Dani at her small table.
“Of course. Little has changed since we spoke last though. The elements of the crystals have yet to be identified. Fia’s taken the samples to four reliable facilities to see if anyone has any ideas or recognizes the composition. Will remains convinced that with these magical exchanges, he’ll eventually know their source and what they are capable of. He still feels they are here for a reason. We’re waiting for Fia’s lab in Paris. Did I tell you that they are using the same equipment that the U.S.U. uses on Mars? The units are designed to analyze off-world items. Crystals vibrate at different frequencies and these are nothing like any other observed on earth.”
“Thanks. It’s still so crazy to me that all these centuries we had no idea that the cave or the extraterrestrial crystals existed.”
“No, Ife, all these centuries those crystals have waited for us. For Will. What is happening is remarkable in ways I don’t think any of us can imagine. Honestly, I don’t know what Will will be after he’s finished with them and they’re finished with him.”
“I know. He’s not worried at all, and I’m increasingly worried.”
“We must trust him. Only Will knows what the crystal’s power feels like. He’s unstoppable in his need to continue this bonding. But I worry too. Torin says that he seems to be completely comfortable during the sessions.”
“He seems to be. I tried last week to tap into his spirit realm while he was connected, but it wouldn’t allow me in.”
“Really? That isn’t typical, is it? Cairine’s gone into mine and Dylan’s a few times with no trouble. Huh.”
“You’re right, though, Dani, we have to trust him. Will is like no one else I’ve ever met. I agree, I think he has a special purpose.”
“Each earth warrior has a place in the universe, but Will seems to be on the edge of something even grander.”
“Another grand destiny,” Ife whispered.
Unable to stop herself, Dani walked slowly to the buffet to snag one of the cinnamon buns. Oh, my ass, she thought. When she took her seat again, her fingers covered with the generous icing on the bun, she licked her thumb, her eyes on Ife. “Yes, another grand destiny.”
At the Cavern of Starlight
Torin had climbed down that ladder so many times, he knew exactly how many rungs it had and usually slid down the last five. Lately, he’d found himself whistling after he landed on the deep earth and traveled down the corridor that spilled out into the massive cavern.
His eyes moved at once to Will in his usual spot centrally located, his back, arms, legs, and head pressed into the ground, eyes closed, and checked completely out of this place. The glimpse he’d had into where Will’s mind, his soul?, went, had transformed his concept of reality. Although he’d been with Ife for three years and felt fully indoctrinated to the vampire’s world, the magic Will wielded with this living planet blew his mind.
He just hoped it wouldn’t blow Will’s. Working with so much power was inherently dangerous.
Squatting next to Will’s prone body, he checked his breathing and color. Surely this had to be finished soon. This was the thirteenth session. Torin laid a hand on Will’s forehead, which was thankfully cooler than the surrounding air.
“Doin’ okay, buddy?”
Will was deep under, Torin didn’t expect an answer, so, lifting back to his feet, he turned to walk away when Will’s right hand curled around his leg.
“Tor.”
Will’s voice was weak, the volume weaker yet. Torin went to his knees, and cupped his head. “Willy boy, are you all right?”
“Tor,” Will repeated. “Help me up.”
Usually Will came completely out of his merge, and although sometimes he needed a little help to stand so that he could regain his balance, this time, he seemed to be really out of it. Torin supported his friend to the best of his ability, but although he himself was bigger and heavier than Will, it was a struggle to keep Will upright.
“Don’t try to stand. Here, let me bring you over and have you sit against the wall.”
Not listening to Torin’s command, Will tried to remain on his feet, but he wobbled so badly when Torin let him go, he grabbed his arms again. “Will, you need to sit down.”
“But I…I have to get some…”
Using force, Torin finally got Will back onto the ground, but supported against the crystal wall. He’d chosen a section where the stones were smoothest and pressed Will back.
“Good. Stay, Will. What happened? You’re not right, my friend. You’re kind of acting drunk, but I know you’re not.”
“No...” Will drew out the word, his eyes closed again, and following a deep expulsion of breath, he didn’t say anything else. Torin confirmed that he was still breathing, but other than that, he didn’t know what was wrong with Will.
After five minutes passed and Will remained quiet, not distressed, not asleep but not awake, Torin decided he had to have help. His fone in his hand, he was a button away from contacting Ife when Will’s eyes opened, dropped to the fone in Torin’s hand, and shook his head slowly.
“I’m okay. Don’t call her.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Just…stay here…with me. And, um…water?”
That was easy; Torin had a sleek water bottle up to Will’s lips at once, amazed that he drew down all twenty ounces in one swallow.
Again, Will sat motionless, but this time, his eyes were open and began to move across the ceiling. Torin, frozen beside him, concerned, but willing to trust that Will was all right and that he shouldn’t call for help, found his eyes moving upward as well.
“Are you looking for something?” he finally asked.
Will shook his head again. “No. Someone.”
“Someone? Who?”
“It hasn’t been revealed to me yet, but there is another earth warrior who can link with this cave. He or she is near and it is my job, my privilege, to bring us together here for the final meeting.”
“Wow. But you don’t know who it is?”
“It’s how this always works. We’ll find each other, of that I’m sure. What I’m not sure about is how I’m going to get back up the ladder. I feel as weak as a kitten.”
“No worries. I’ve always got you, brother.”
“Don’t say anything to Ife. She worries too much. The last thing I want is for her to think that I have to stop. This is nearly done.”
Torin was quiet for a moment before he cleared his throat.
“Will, what is this doing to you? I mean, what does the planet, those crystals, this cave, want with you?”
Another long pause later, Will answered. “I think that it’s changing my power. In my body, I feel surges, a desire to run, full out, across the land, crawl against the grass, lie under the sky.”
He lifted his downcast eyes to meet Torin’s. “Honestly, I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
“Then you have to stop. Stay away from this hole. Get well again. I’ve noticed you’ve dropped some weight these past few weeks. When you feel up to it, I’ll help you climb the ladder and then we don’t come back.”
“No, Tor, I can’t do that. Look, I know things are strange, I feel weird in ways I can’t describe, but I trust what is happening. It’s for the greater good, of that I’m certain. In the end, we’ll know and I’ll be fine.”
Torin didn’t buy it. When he started to protest, he felt Will’s hand on his chest.
“Tor, you’ve been there with me, you know there is no malevolence.”
“I don’t know what I believe right now, except that my friend looks like he’s been dropped from a lift-car. You know I’ll be with you no matter what, but I think you need to get far away from here for a while. Get well again, anyway. Get some good nutrition. Let that vampiress reenergize you.”
“I like the last part. Tor, for now, just help me get up the ladder.”
That he could do. Torin used all his strength to lift Will from the floor and help him through the access corridor to the ladder. Standing at the first rung, Will groaned.
“Fuck, this is gonna hurt.”
“I’ll be right behind you every step in case you need support.”
“Let’s do this.”
It had taken twenty minutes, but the two men made it up to surface level where, thankfully, Will’s strength increased enough to make it over the landscape easily to Torin’s jet-bike.
Now, entering the compound, Torin tried to supply support without being obvious, but everyone who worked with them was sharp-eyed and intuitive.
“Will, you look like doggy-doo. What happened?”
Dani and her southern U.S. vernacular. She may have phrased her inquiry with humor, but she looked at them with a deadly serious gaze. “You are involved with something we have no clue as to what it is or what it can do. When you look like that, we’re going to ask. And you’re going to answer.”
Ife walked in on the last part of Dani’s comment, her eyes moving immediately to Will. Wordlessly, she walked over to place a hand on his forehead and lean in. The room froze as Ife tried to move deeper into Will’s spirit realm but she was pushed out again as she had the last few times she’d tried to do so. Pulling away, she stepped back.
“Will, I can’t get in, but I can feel your weakness. Are the crystals draining you?”
“No, Ife. Until tonight, I never felt anything less than a euphoric merge. Even today, it was fine, I felt cradled and safe, but later, I don’t notice time when I’m merged, I began to feel worse, I can’t describe it, but I don’t believe it is intended to harm me. Perhaps I’ll get more clarity in my next session.”
“Which I believe he shouldn’t do.”
Ife turned to face Torin after that statement. “I’m not sure I disagree. Will…”
“Stop. You brought me down here to help protect this region and what I am doing with the crystal cave may be exactly what you need. The crystals are here for a reason, and there’s a sentience attached to them somehow. Not the crystals, I don’t mean that, but someone has put them here for us and it is my job to find out why. So, thank you all for you concern, but I’m going into my room to sleep, undisturbed, for the entire night. You go ahead with first meal, I’m not hungry. I’ll eat when I wake later. Goodnight, everyone.”
Striding with as much purpose as he could, Will crossed the room, aware that everyone’s eyes were on him, and gratefully closed the door to his room behind him. It was uncommon to lock doors in the compound, trust in their companions high, but this time, he did so.
Moving into the bathroom carefully, his balance still suspect, Will stopped in front of a wide well-lit mirror and stared at his image.
They were right. He looked bad. His eyes were bloodshot and appeared to be sunken in, his skin tone sallow, and he noticed that his shirt did fit looser.
He’d felt the draw as soon as it had begun, a subtle invasion that slowly increased until something inside of him rebelled. It was at that point he’d called out to Torin to help him. All of his actions were clear, he wasn’t confused about anything, but why it all happened like that tonight, he did not know.
“Shower and bed,” he whispered to the somewhat scary-looking image in the mirror. Peeling his clothes off to step into the shower, Will put his head under the pulsing hot water as it pounded against his skin. Heat and the water massage made him feel better right away, relaxing tight muscles. He knew he would sleep now and heavily. After drying off quickly, he wandered into his room and dropped naked onto his bed. Moments later, sleep took him away from his corporeal needs into a dreamscape built from his own hidden desires.
There, amongst wild flowers on a summer morning, the sun rising in the sky, stood Olivia in a yellow sundress and nothing else. The fabric nearly sheer, he could see her perfect body well outlined and he couldn’t look away.
Yes, my own hidden desires, he thought, and walked toward his dream woman.
AT DEZ’S COMPOUND
“I’m not in much of a mood tonight, Dez. Will you forgive me? I need to catch up on lost sleep. Torin has been with me almost every night for several weeks. He called to say he wasn’t going to make it tonight, so I think I’ll head back to my room.”
Olivia really was exhausted, Dez could see it in her movements and eyes. It wasn’t just marathon sex, though, that made her granddaughter so tired. Emotional distress could do more than anything to mess someone up, which is what she saw and felt when she looked at Olivia.
“Go, sweetheart, get some rest. I’ve got plans for Zach anyway.”
Olivia rolled her eyes along with a dismissive hand gesture. “All right, no details! I’ll see you at first meal.”
Hurried, she was in her room in minutes, undressed, and collapsed on her bed. She’d been serious that she was in need of sleep, but there had been a second reason she wanted to retire to this room tonight, perhaps more important than time in bed.
Whispering to herself on the way down the steps, she’d shaken her head at her folly.
“Social animal Olivia isn’t feeling social.”
Right now, she didn’t want to spend an evening laughing, drinking, dancing, with Dez and her guests. While her time recently with Torin had been stimulating and enjoyable, an unexpected sadness had been creeping in and no matter how hard she tried to get her old mojo back, she hadn’t been successful.
Many of the evenings with Torin had started in the company of Will and Brigitte, and although she’d accepted the fact that the two were a couple, it still stung to spend time with them. Brigitte, highly affectionate, spent a lot of moments wrapped around Will.
Lying alone on her bed with only dim candlelight-style bulbs illuminating the edge of the room, Olivia felt awful to admit to herself, “I don’t want to see them together.”
Finally, she gave in to her need to sleep.
It was rare that she dreamt, but this night, she found herself in a meadow filled with bright yellow wildflowers. A sun partway up a bright blue cloudless sky warmed her skin through a light sundress. Even in the dream, she was aware that the sun was a forbidden gift, and lifted her face to the brightness. She stayed that way for endless moments as distant memories of joy returned.
“A beautiful vampire in sunlight, that’s quite a sight.”
Will? The voice travelled from her left, and she whirled toward it. And just as he should be in a dream, Will stood mere feet away, shirtless in the morning warmth, lightweight shorts his only attire. His smile showed he was as delighted as she to be here.
“Biker.” Softly spoken, the nickname slipped from her tongue before she stepped toward him.
Expectant moments filled the time before he dropped into the flowers and wrapped his arms around her belly, his face pressed into her just below her breasts. Beneath the thin fabric of her dress, Olivia’s dream-self felt his hot breath glide across her moist skin.
“I’ve wanted to do this since that first night you showed up.”
“You couldn’t.”
“No, but it didn’t stop me wanting to.”
Her hands buried in dream-Will’s thick dark hair, dream-Olivia threw her head back to glance toward the sun. No, it didn’t.
“Dreams mean something,” she commented to the dream-lover holding her. She remembered her great-grandmother’s love affair on the dream-realm with her mate. It had been sensuous and beautiful, long before they were together.
But this wasn’t a connection in the dream realm like Tamesine and Marc’s. This was her own mind wishing that Will still wanted her, and that they could be together. It wasn’t true. Still, there were no limits to what they could do while she was dreaming. This couldn’t hurt anyone.
The dream-Will seemed to agree. His hands had moved from her waist, and when he tugged at the neckline of her dress, the spaghetti straps slipped off her shoulders and the top of the dress slid down to her waist.
Dream-Olivia lowered her eyes to watch as his lips moved to one exposed nipple, the hot tongue sliding over it, then around in a circle, back and forth until she nearly dropped onto the ground with him. He held her steady on her feet, though, as he shifted to the other nipple and repeated the sensuous pattern and pulled back to survey the results of his work. He lifted his gaze back to hers.
“Huh. It appears I’ve started something.”
Both nipples erect, dream-Will tugged at each with his fingertips, fully aware than when his hands moved from her waist, the dress would fall, and once it did, his eyes went to the area between Olivia’s legs, no underwear hiding it.
“And more work to be done.”
Yes! Before dream-Olivia could push him down and straddle him, dream-Will surged upright and lifted her into his arms.
“You refused me last year in the Arizona desert. Will you refuse me again?”
“No. I refused you for a reason that makes no difference now. It no longer applies and this isn’t real anyway. What you do to me is exactly what I, as the architect of this dream, wish you to do. Fuck me, Will, and don’t hold back. Use your strength and make me scream.”
“Architect? I don’t feel like I’m being directed, but I like the prescribed action.”
“Shut up and fuck me.”
Lowering her into the grass, dream-Will lifted her legs to let them rest on his back. The sun brilliant now, he ran his fingertips over the inside of her thighs, touching, absorbing her, before he lowered his head to touch his tongue to the same places, nipping as he went. A finger moved to the rigid clitoris waiting for attention, curving around it over and over before he slid it along the entire moist slit.
“Bite.”
Dream-Will glanced up at Olivia’s face. “Harder?”
“Harder.”
It made sense to him that biting would be sexy to a vampire, but he didn’t want to hurt her. Still, he moved back down her inner thigh again, traveling back up and just before he reached her core, he bit, hard enough to break the skin, blood seeping from a small tear.
“Too hard?”
Looking back up into her face, he smiled. Olivia’s arms were over her head, her eyes closed, lips curled up in erotic pleasure. No, not too hard.
No more playing around, Will went right to the center, his tongue moving deep into her sex, pulling back to capture the clit in his teeth before he pummeled it with his tongue.
Dream-Olivia sighed deeply as waves of pleasure overtook her. Her Will making love to her…glorious…as she’d hoped…
Her eyes opened for a split second, and, in her orgasmic state, barely understood the strange movement overhead at first. Whirling white clouds sped in to replace the sky, the flowers, the sun. Within the dreamscape, Olivia sat up, joy ripped from her. The dream was ending, and Will was gone.
Wakefulness came easy, her eyes opened, and, unmoving, slid across the rainbow lit walls. Moments later, a groan came as she remembered the illicit dream, intimate touches from Will, gone now as dreams would do.
But memory remained, and for the moment, having just awakened, it was sharp and caused a reciprocal twitch between her legs. She was wet there from her body’s reaction to her mind’s construct.
Dreams could be beautiful…or nightmares. This one was both. It wasn’t real and never would be. She could still feel the connection she’d created between them in the dreamworld, the feelings of love she’d never get to share with him, his touch she would never really feel.
Nightmare. Not real. Sleep came again, but a full hour later with no remaining memory of dreams again.
Good. Great. Fine.
It was time to go home. Dear friends and family waited for her in Vegas, missed her, always holding the door open for her. This journey to seek some part of a universal destiny meant for her had failed. Staying here watching Will make love to another woman hurt. Olivia had always been a take-charge, take-no-prisoners type of woman, so it was time to go home, find a big vampire and fuck him until neither he or she could move.
She’d enjoy one more night with Dez and Zach, say goodbye and thank you to Torin, and head home after first meal tomorrow night.
In his own bed, at precisely the same time that Olivia slowly woke in hers, Will shot awake, startled, alert, his hand moving down to a hard-on.
What a dream!
Olivia, under his fingers, beneath his mouth…
Sitting up, he reached for a glass half full of Scotch that had been there for two days and downed it. If dreams were a manifestation of desires, this one didn’t surprise him, and although he knew, knew, that it wasn’t real, every second felt seared into his mind, like a memory instead of a dream. The moment he’d fallen onto his knees to hold her, then reached up to drop her dress, his mouth on her nipples, and later, lower, to lick, to nip, to bite, felt as real as the Scotch now burning his throat. Her face lying back, arms over her head, her expression of erotic immersion, then the moment it all faded and he woke violently as he lost the chance to see her orgasm.
Feet on the floor, he palmed the rigid cock that had nowhere to go. A man’s mind could be cruel.
Time for a cold shower.