Evalle struggled to move her arms and fight whatever held her down. “No! I’ll kill you.”
“Evalle, stop.”
She heaved deep breaths and froze at the voice she’d thought never to hear again. She opened her eyes. “Storm?”
“Of course.” His beautiful, naked body stretched out above hers, propped up by powerful arms. He leaned down and kissed her. “I’ve missed you.”
She tried to call up where she was and why she’d been fighting. Squinting, she could barely make out shapes around her in the darkness swallowing them.
Was she at home? The bed felt soft and Storm was here.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?”
Relief washed out of her faster than water over a cliff. “I can’t ... I don’t know. Something happened, but ... ”
He gave her a concerned look. “You were captured and now you’re safe.”
“Why can’t I see our room? It’s just blurry. My vision is better than that.”
His big hands spread over her face and hair. “It’s going to be okay. Give it time. You’re having a reaction to the dark majik.”
“Oh. Who had me?”
He kissed her, paused, then kissed her some more. When Storm touched her, nothing else really mattered. She joined in and wrapped her legs around his nice, taut butt. That gave her a close encounter with one of her favorite parts.
Chuckling, he asked, “Ready, are you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I don’t think so.” One of his hands moved down to toy with her breast, cupping it before he pulled the nipple into his mouth and sucked on it.
She grabbed a handful of his silky black hair and begged him not to stop.
He kept up his siege on her body, moving from one breast to the other and easing down as he kissed a path to between her legs. Her muscles trembled in anticipation. “Enough already.”
Did that push him to hurry up? Nope.
Using his tongue, he took his time, driving her crazy. Then without any warning, he teased the one spot she was sure controlled her entire nervous system. That’s all it took to uncoil the heat in her womb and shove her over the edge.
As she came down from somewhere out of this world, Storm moved up and drove into her. Wow, that felt ... incredible. She met him with every hard stroke, urging him to hold back nothing.
When he collapsed on her with a long sigh, she smiled with contentment. She lived in a crazy, preternatural world, but no matter what life threw at them, Storm was hers and she was his. They were mates.
But … something pecked at her conscience.
He hadn’t used a condom. Not a huge thing, but he’d told her they had plenty of time to plan a child and that he wanted them to bond before that happened.
Maybe he just lost track of it in the moment.
She probably wasn’t ovulating anyhow.
Another thing, and maybe it was silly, but he hadn’t spoken to her as much as he normally did when they made love. He’d whisper in an erotic voice that would send her reeling just as fast as his hands.
Also ... she hadn’t felt his energy the way it normally surged with hers when they joined. Or maybe it was her energy that hadn’t come to the surface.
She’d enjoyed everything he’d done, but this time had felt ... odd.
He nuzzled her neck and she sighed at having him close again, but she had to get her head clear first. Much as she’d love round two, she felt off balance now.
Had something physically happened to her when she’d been kidnapped? Or was this weird feeling left over from the dark majik Storm mentioned?
In fact, who had kidnapped her?
Storm snuggled next to her, probably sensing that she needed time to adjust.
He’d always known exactly what to do.
Now that the heat of the moment had passed, she returned to figuring out what had been going on. The last thing she recalled was riding her bike as she followed Adrianna on her way back to Atlanta.
Then someone intentionally wrecked Adrianna and ...
Evalle flinched at the memory of the truck ramming her motorcycle.
Storm propped himself up. “What?”
“Where’s Adrianna?”
He shrugged. “Have no idea.”
How could he not know? Evalle asked, “How’s Adrianna doing?”
“She’s fine.” He gave her a little kiss on her cheek and started toying with her again.
Evalle put her hand up. “Wait, Storm. I want to know exactly what happened to Adrianna.”
After a long sigh, he said, “I have no idea. All I care about is being here with you.”
Something was very wrong. Evalle asked, “Who captured me?”
“Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“No.” A sick feeling started forming in her chest. He wasn’t making sense to her.
She asked, “Who rescued me?”
“All of us.”
“Who is all of us?”
“Why so many questions? Aren’t you happy to see me?”
She shoved him off her. “What’s going on?”
When he didn’t answer, she searched the room that was still nothing but blurry shadows. “Where are we?”
“Wherever you want to be.”
She tried to jump out of the bed to find the door, but she couldn’t move.
Everything spun.
In the next second, she was sitting up with her arms locked against a wall on each side of her. She jerked back and forth. “Storm! Get me out of this!”
He didn’t answer. She looked over to find him and he was gone.
Warmth soaked the front of her clothing. It smelled like blood.
Wait. What clothing? She was naked a minute ago.
A pinprick of light pulled her gaze left.
Mind hazy, Evalle demanded, “What is going on?”
The light continued to grow until she could make out the inside of the room where she was clearly being held in a cell of some sort. Four walls, a floor and ceiling, no more than ten feet in any direction. Her wrists were manacled to a stone wall. Not a medieval type of manacle. These were shiny blue and glowed.
Sniffing, she recognized another odor with the scent of fresh blood ... ew, was that Noirre majik? She dropped her gaze to see a red stain spread across the top of a sack dress she wore.
Now her chest throbbed with a sharp pain.
She groaned and gritted her teeth.
The fog cleared. She knew in her heart it had not been real, but couldn’t stop the breath that squeezed out a desperate, “Storm?”
“Hello, Evalle,” a male voice said in that nasally tone she’d heard when half conscious.
“Who are you?”
“You may call me Germanus.” He spoke with an odd accent that sounded old, like something from another time.
Her heart sank at the complete flip from being safe with Storm to realizing she was captured. More like still captured, now that her mind continued to pull everything together.
Germanus asked, “Did you enjoy your conjugal visit?”
What had happened hit her like a backhand. This monster had used her memories of Storm to inspire the fantasy hallucination. She snarled, “Stay the fuck out of my head!”
No figure materialized yet, but the voice explained, “That was for your benefit.”
That bastard. Making her believe she’d been rescued and was at home with Storm? “My mate will find you, and when he does, I will cheer him on as he takes you apart one limb at a time.”
A loud sigh answered her.
She was making no headway by yelling at him even if it did boost her spirit. “Okay, I’m here, wherever here is. You must have gone to a lot of trouble to have me captured alive. What do you want?” she snapped. Her body hurt from one end to the other. She had a crooked leg and pain streaked through it every time she moved. One of her arms had been broken when they locked her in manacles. It had also healed poorly.
But her chest leaked blood. Too much blood.
Hair hung down around her face in sweaty clumps. Everything that had happened came back to her. The hole in her chest had been left after someone clawed the emerald chakra stone from her body. That had been her closest connection to Storm when they were apart.
No connection now. Someone, this Germanus, had gone to great effort to kidnap her and leave no trail.
She smelled as filthy as she felt, but one thing was clear. They didn’t want her to die or she’d be dead.
Germanus had not answered her.
Short on patience, she asked, “Why am I still alive?”
“Because I have something for you to do.”
“I don’t remember applying for the position. Tell you what. Have your people get with my people and work out the terms, then we’ll talk. In the meantime, stay out of my head or I’ll find a way to kill you myself.” She grimaced over the ache in her chest, which intensified with every breath needed for talking.
“This will go much better if you do not constantly fight me. There is no way for you to win.”
She cut her gaze from side to side, then up and down. “Are you so afraid of me you won’t even show yourself?”
Energy sizzled and a man emerged from a blurry spot on the wall. There was no door to this cell, because preternaturals didn’t always need the kind of entrance humans used.
His body came into focus from the boots up, filling out a loose pair of dark pants, then a sleeveless blue tunic with a Celtic design of braids and those interlocking shapes she never could name, but the center had a dragon face. The lack of sleeves showed off well-shaped arms, but not big guns, plus the limbs ended in hands too perfect for a warrior.
When Germanus finished coming into view, he had carved cheeks, a narrow nose and smooth lips. His dark eyelashes gave his elf-like, deep blue eyes the look of being outlined. Black hair fell in waves to his shoulders. He wore a thick gold chain with a pendant sporting the same Celtic dragon emblem as his tunic.
What cosplay event had he dressed for? She gave him her best attempt at a bored look, which was tough to do when suffering multiple injuries. “Let me guess. You’re a Sir Lancelot wannabe. No, wait, maybe you’re one of the alien beings from an early Star Trek show. Or ... ”
With a flick of his finger, a cloth gag shoved into her mouth, a wider strip covered that, then tied behind her head.
“This is no game, Evalle. When you’re ready to listen, I’ll tell you what you’re going to do.”
She breathed hard through her nose and hoped she’d managed to jack her glare up to make him worry about ever turning his back on her.
He advised her, “I’m going to allow you ten minutes to heal. I suggest you use it wisely.”
No, no, no. She strained against the gag, grunting that she was ready to listen.
He must not be fluent in grunt speech.
The bastard left.
But the gag vanished with him. She spit to clear her mouth and yelled, “You miserable shit!”
No one answered her, but a small hourglass appeared in the air in front of her at eye level. It flipped and began spilling sand.
Ten minutes was not enough time to heal everything wrong with her, but she called up her beast, hoping to flood energy into her chest first.
The flood turned out to be more of a trickling stream.
What the hell was wrong?
She directed the energy specifically to her chest. Fiery heat burned as she pushed hard to force healing power into her most debilitating wound. She arched away from the wall, enduring the pain, gritting her teeth.
Stars flew through her vision.
Don’t black out, she silently pleaded with herself.
Who was Germanus? What did he want? Maybe the job he had for her was something she could do as long as it didn’t harm anyone.
Exhausted from what little healing she could manage, her eyes drooped. She opened them wide in panic. She couldn’t go through another round with fantasy Storm. Her heart couldn’t take losing him over and over.
A new worry struck her as she played the sexy dream back through her mind.
Maybe Germanus wanted more than her Belador and gryphon powers to perform some task.
He might be able to keep her from tapping her powers, but if he tried to physically attack her, she’d make him regret being born male.