Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (2 page)

BOOK: Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)
11.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

All three looked to the two men standing side-by-side one step beyond the threshold to the room. Their black suits, hand-pressed white shirts, and midnight-black ties were cookie-cutter mirrors of each other, but that was where the resemblance ended.

Agent Paul Thomason was the taller of the pair while Agent Jude Kaiser was the easier-going one. The men served as part of Jacob’s private team, five men who reported directly to him. In addition to their Department of Homeland Security titles, they were Wizards, a fact that made Cassie nervous. They didn’t like Helcyon and made no pretense to the contrary.

Stealing a glance at the Elf, she found that he’d shifted his position and now stood between the agents and her. Jacob shifted beneath her, and she eased off his lap to sit on the arm of the chair, ignoring the quick frown he tossed in her direction.

“What?” Jacob directed the question at his agents, but his hand rested on her thigh, keeping her from sidling any farther away.

“We have a report,” Jude answered. Paul, she’d found, rarely said anything, even when directly questioned. His thousand-mile stare looked right through her and made her shiver. Jacob’s loyalty to his men was a powerful thing or she’d suggest relocating Paul.

He gave her the creeps.

His cold gaze collided with hers, and she suppressed a shudder. Instead of looking away, she stared back at him. Defiance folded its arms in her soul. She’d never said an unkind word to the man, and he could look down his nose at her all he wanted. That didn’t mean she had to take it.

“You might want to hear it privately.” Paul added the words, a judicious pause hanging off the last one as the corner of his mouth curved, barely, upward, as though the smile fought for life against the wall of stone encasing the man’s expression.

“Fine. You talk to her, Elf. Maybe she’ll listen to you.” Jacob squeezed her thigh before rising to stride across the room. The Wizards in the doorway melted backward, waiting for him, and the door closed on all three.

“They don’t like me.” She glanced at Helcyon, relieved to see a half smile hovering on his lips.

“They hate me. They don’t know what to make of you. They worry for the Wizard. It’s to be expected.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s been a week, Cassandra. People take time to adjust.”

“And Elves don’t?” She spared him a dry look, enjoying the smile that flirted his mouth wider.

“We have had decades to adjust to the idea of returning to your world, and for many of us, it is a return. We knew what would happen.”

“Really?” Had he truly expected everything they’d been through?

“I told you we would be lovers.” His voice sent a wave of liquid heat straight to her pussy.

Yes, he’d said exactly that, but that didn’t mean he got to distract her from the topic at hand. Crossing one leg over the other, she folded her arms and met his amused stare. “I’m still not sure why you both think I need to learn to defend against a sword. I work for the Fae.”

“No, darling Cassandra. You are working for the Danae. The Fae did not all agree with her, and while we obey her, some will rebel. Still more will be infuriated if they learn about your true lineage, and those that wish to strike at her will see you as an easy target as her heir or as her human pet. It will matter little what their thoughts are on the matter if their sword separates your beautiful head from your exquisite body.”

Cassie shifted against the arm of the chair, riding the crest of desire that edged his words. “We’re not advertising it. So, I still don’t think it will be a problem—”

Helcyon lunged across the room. One moment he was still, a perfectly formed masculine statue bathed in the morning sunlight, and the next his sword sliced toward her head. Cassie squealed, a noise that seemed to vibrate upward from her toes as she fell backward off the chair arm, hands raised even as she winced a look away. The air hummed around her, blotting out sun and shadow alike.

Above her, Helcyon grinned as his sword hovered an inch away from her hands and the air shimmered between them. The door slammed open behind Helcyon, but he never took his eyes from her. Cassie swallowed, pressing her hands against some kind of invisible wall. Her gaze flickered from the sword to the tense, coiled muscles in Helcyon’s arms.

He was still swinging that damn thing.

“Well, that’s one way to get her to do it,” Jacob commented drily.

“I was making a point.”

“An effective one.” Jacob appeared behind Helcyon’s shoulder, and Cassie spared a portion of her glare for him.

Her arms burned. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Her breath came in short, jerky little explosions.

“Breathe, Cassie.” Jacob circled around Helcyon, one hand extending, and she startled as she was shoved sideways, sliding across the tiled floor and back from the sword.

The world narrowed, and she pressed harder on the shimmering, not-really-there wall. The burn in her arms spread to her lungs, and her vision narrowed to pinpoints.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jacob swore and slammed his hands together in a hard clap. The ripple spliced through the wall with a vicious pop.

She dragged in a lungful of air, her reaction shaking through every limb. Helcyon knelt in front of her and Jacob at her back. A hand stroked over her hair, while another captured trembling fingers.

“You can’t bubble like that,” Jacob murmured. “It cuts off your air supply.”

“But it was an excellent effort,” Helcyon soothed, rubbing her hands together between his. She didn’t see where his sword went. The Elf could summon it from thin air, so maybe he’d dismissed it back to the otherness of Underhill.

“You could warn me next time.” Fear skated over her nerves, stretching her goodwill thin.

“Warning would belie the effectiveness of defensive training. An assassin will not whisper a warning before he attacks nor will he want you to have time to think about what to do. You need to be able to react to the threat, which you did admirably.” Helcyon’s smile failed to comfort her.

“What did you mean by ‘bubble like that’?” Cassie frowned. Jacob’s words niggled something loose in the back of her mind. Two weeks before, an explosion ripped through Grant Park, destroying the bandstand and killing nearly everyone in its path. Everyone except Cassie.

“Yes.” Helcyon nodded slowly, his green gaze fastening with hers. “We think you diverted that blast from yourself. We’ve just not been sure how you did it.”

Cassie pinched the bridge of her nose. It made her head ache when she started listing off all the questions struggling to fill her mind. With her partner, Michael, in jail pending attempted-murder and murder charges, her assistant, Billy, dead, and the drama unfolding around the big Fae reveal, she had to keep it together.

“I’m sorry this is hard for you, Cassandra. But the threat to you remains strong, and you must learn to control the wild magic within you.”

“I didn’t think I had wild magic in me.” She dropped her hand back to his and shifted, trying to watch Jacob’s expression as well.

Helcyon tugged her to her feet and into his arms. Her hands flattened against his chest, and warmth rippled through her. The warmth eddied, drifting on a tide that ebbed and flowed between her contact with Helcyon and her contact with Jacob.

“You had much contact with the Fae before the explosion. You shared an office with Michael for years. It makes sense that you absorbed enough to react with it.” Helcyon’s explanation did little to make her feel better, nor did his thoughts mirroring hers about Michael. Her business partner, mentor, and would-be lover had turned murderer. Michael, who apparently plotted to use her in his own private crusade against the Fae, had killed her family to lure the Danae out into the open.

She forgot about the e-mails, the lists of appointments, and the work that had to be done. Her heart ached.

Jacob rubbed her back gently. “Why don’t you take a break, spend some time together, and we’ll reconvene after lunch.”

“Going somewhere?” Helcyon asked the question that bubbled up to the surface of her grief and she shifted, turning in Helcyon’s arms to look at Jacob.

“Yes.” Jacob pressed a kiss to her temple and pivoted to walk away.

But something in his manner was off. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing to worry about right now, Cassie. Just stay with the Elf and cancel your meetings today. You shouldn’t be running around after that little demonstration.”

Little demonstration?

Cassie retreated from the warm circle of Helcyon’s arms, as much to turn and face Jacob as to retrieve her equilibrium. It was hard to focus on anything when either one of them was touching her, and while they’d never had a repeat of the night after Michael’s capture, a part of her longed to share her bed with both men again. But Jacob was adamant—it was his bed or Helcyon’s, not both.

“Jacob.”

He stopped and looked back at her. His dark hair was tousled over his eyes. He’d complained of needing a haircut, but she loved the scruffy look on him. The hair combined with his sexy, warm brown eyes and stubbled cheeks reminded her of how he looked in bed. Which was a great look on the Wizard.

“What’s wrong?”

Instead of answering, his gaze slid past her, and she sensed another of those wordless pulses passing between the men she loved. They’d taken to this a lot lately, pausing a conversation, staring at each other, and making some decision with regard to her without her input.

It was annoying as hell.

“Tell her, Wizard.”

“Yes,
tell
her, Wizard.” Cassie pursed her lips. Just because the men brought her the most amazing orgasms of her life and turned her heart to liquid velvet with just a look did not give them carte blanche to make decisions without her.

“Michael escaped from Lompoc this morning.”

And just like that, all the heat evaporated from her morning.

Chapter Two

 

Cassie leaned against the wall next to the window seat and stared down into the garden below. The wilting flowers needed tending. Weed vines surged through the loamy earth to choke the daisies, lilacs, lavender, and roses, and those were just the flowers she could identify. A quiet knock intruded on her fury.

“Cassandra, may I come in, please?” The door muffled the request, but at least Helcyon asked. Jacob never bothered. She’d given up locking the door because he just spelled it open if she slammed it on him in a fit of pique.

“If you want.” She didn’t turn at the sound of the door opening. She didn’t want to look into his forest-green eyes and lose her sense of self. It was so easy, with both of them. They were so very different and yet so much alike. They took her breath away, muddled her ability to think clearly, and turned her into a nymphomaniac.

Not that she minded the least, most of the time. None of which prevented them from excluding her from anything they deemed too dangerous for her. She wanted to go with Jacob, but he’d told her no, and when she would have followed, Helcyon’s arms closed around her and they went sideways, stepping into and out of Underhill to arrive on the landing upstairs. She’d made it to the top of the stairs only to hear the giant doors slam shut below.

Warmth shaded her back, but she forced her arms to remain crossed and her gaze on the troubled garden. The sad little garden with its splashes of vibrant color was the perfect metaphor for her life, where Jacob and Helcyon were the dazzling array of passion set against the choking force of a changing world.

“Protecting you is the most important thing in the world to both of us. The Wizard must investigate Michael’s escape, not the least because Michael is also a Wizard. Their council must be allayed, the human authorities reassured, and the danger assessed.”

“So it’s okay for Jacob to go off alone without us, but God forbid I go, because I might crack a fingernail.”

Soft laughter puffed the hair at the back of her neck, and she twisted to give him an annoyed look. The slow grin hovering around the corners of his mouth tugged at her heart, but she fought the urge to smile back.

“Cassandra. If you were there, all the Wizard would be able to concentrate on is your safety. All I would concentrate on is your safety. We could miss valuable clues. His team would be distracted. It would be a threat to all of us, not just your elegant fingernails. Though I admit a certain fondness for them.” Helcyon slid around her to sit on the window seat, and he patted the soft cushion in front of him. The sunlight splayed deliciously over his lean physique. The loose black breeches set off the green silk shirt that matched his eyes. Her gaze drifted to the smooth expanse of chest the unbuttoned garment revealed. It took real effort to look away and a moment to remember the irritation she’d clung to the moment before.

“Will this ever change?” She sat down on the opposite side of the window seat, pulling her bare feet up onto the cushion and hugging her knees. She’d chosen cotton peach pajamas. The loose bottoms and tank top were extremely comfortable.

And shed easily. The men tended to rip these less. So she left her Donna Karan suits hanging in the closet if they lingered at the house.

It saved her a fortune.

If he was upset by her abrupt change of subject or refusal to sit with him, he didn’t show it. In fact, leaning back on the window seat, he was the picture of relaxation. The midnight-black hair spilled down his back and over his shoulders and looked anything but feminine. He slid a leg along the seat until his calf brushed her leg, and despite her best intentions, relaxation melted through the coiled tension locking her muscles.

BOOK: Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)
11.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Pasado Perfecto by Leonardo Padura
Trafficked by Kim Purcell
Cluster Command: Crisis of Empire II by David Drake, W. C. Dietz
The Darkfall Switch by David Lindsley
Decadent by Elaine White
Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury
Nikki and her Teacher by Nikki Palmer