Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (3 page)

BOOK: Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)
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“Will what change? The threats against you?”

“The threats. The extremely primitive response the two of you have to me booking a meeting. The inability to think clearly when either one of you is touching me.” The petulant note in the words didn’t escape her notice. She was whining.

God, she hated whining.

Who whined about having two sexy men wanting her every five minutes? Who whined about wanting freedom from the smothering masculinity of their protectiveness? Who whined about the devotion of two distinct personalities?

Maybe she needed a shrink.

“No. Unlikely. And I hope not. Unless it is the Wizard you give up and me you wish to choose.” The blatant sexuality in his voice sent shivers racing up her spine.

Laughter bubbled out before she could stop it, and he smiled truly as she grinned.

“Tell me what is bothering you, Cassandra, truly. I thought your heart wanted both of us and understood what having both of us meant.” He rubbed his leg against hers, a soothing, sensual motion.

“I do. Hels, I love you.” Heat suffused the words, and she dropped her hand to lie on his calf. The tense muscle flexed beneath her fingers, and she squeezed lightly. “I’m not used to the bossiness. The unimpeachable orders the two of you toss around. The absolute certainty that I need to stay away from everyone and everything. My life is out there. My work is out there. Right now I feel like a prisoner. A whiny, bitchy prisoner.” Her mouth drooped. She despised whiny women. Despised it even more when it seemed she could now be counted among them.

“Your life is different now. It has changed. You must learn to accept that some of those changes will be uncomfortable until you adjust. We—I do not want you exposing yourself more than absolutely necessary for three reasons.” He leaned forward, captured her feet and pulled her legs straight. Settling her bare feet on his lap, he worked his thumbs against the arch of one, pressing at the tension curling her toes and sending a tingling surge of awareness to fire off the heat between her thighs.

Pussy clenching, she sucked in a hard, fast breath and then pushed it out, slowly. Holding onto the threads of rationality against the burgeoning need was like fighting to close a door in a hurricane.

“Will you tell me?”

“The first reason is you are untrained.” Helcyon wrapped his warm hands around one foot, thumbs stroking the tension out of her. “We are still learning exactly what it is you can do. We know you can absorb magic and that you can redirect it. You can open a portal to Underhill. You can create your own space in Underhill. As we learned this morning, you can shield. And then there are your eyes. The changing color is not because of the blinding spell. I’ve never known one to do what this has done, but they are pure gold. Liquid gold, like that found in the smelting pots of the great metalsmiths…and I don’t know what it means, but I do know we need to keep it quiet.”

Cassie bit her lip. “There’s one more thing that I haven’t told you.”

He lifted one eyebrow, waiting.

She should have told them sooner. She should have confessed it all, but there had been so much going on she’d pushed it out of her mind. But if they were being honest, he deserved the truth as well.

“Will you tell me?” He echoed her earlier question, rolling his thumbs over the ball of her foot to tease her toes.

“I saw Billy after the explosion…at the park, and then I heard him when I was Underhill after whatever it was blinded me and again in the lake when I thought I was drowning.”

Brows drawing together in a frown, Helcyon paused the massage. “Your assistant. The one Michael tied the spell to?”

“Yes.”

“You’re saying he’s alive?” The careful phrasing didn’t escape her nor did the low hum of rising tension shifting the air around him.

“No. I’m saying I saw a ghost.” She sucked her lower lip in between her teeth. It sounded so ridiculous to say it out loud. To admit she saw ghosts. But in a world populated by Elves, Wizards, Brownies, and magic, were ghosts really that much of a leap?

“I am not going to ask why you didn’t tell me sooner.” His hands resumed their slow, sensuous stroke of her foot, gliding up and down the length of it, which left her both soothed and aroused. “But I do have questions about it.”

“You’re not the only one.” She really should have said something sooner. The confession relieved some of the conflict in her soul. “I only really
saw
him the one time. Every other time it was just…me hearing him, really.”

“And you are certain he was a ghost and not some kind of magical construct?”

“How would you tell the difference?” She frowned. He’d looked and sounded like Billy right down to the nonjudgmental smile and exuberant voice.

“I will build one for you to see, but it’s a complicated magic more suited to the Wizards than to my own skills. Which is why I ask.”

“You think it was a trap by Michael?”

“Perhaps. Or a byproduct of whatever spell it was that Michael attached to Billy. You shielded. It’s even possible that it lingered against you because of that shield during the explosion. Have you seen him since the lake?”

Cassie shook her head slowly. “I almost don’t want to see him again…I mean, see him like that. I would give anything to see Billy alive, healthy and whole. But not a ghost.”

Helcyon’s brow wrinkled as he focused his attention on her feet. But, she didn’t think he was really seeing them.

“What’s going through your mind?” The desire to understand him, to read his expressions, to plunder the mysterious thoughts drifting through his mind, unfurled within her.

“Ghosts, per se, are not something the Fae have much experience with. To be honest, only the most ancient of our soothsayers even mention them. When our dead pass to the Summerlands, we know they will be reborn. They will return to us in some fashion whether it is in the sturdy oak that grows in the garden or the wild hare that races through the grass. Everything in life that passes through the Summerlands from Underhill will return.”

“So, seeing ghosts would be a Wizard thing?” As far as any of them knew, there were no female Wizards. Whatever act of biology and magic created the Wizards from male Fae coupling with human females seemed focused on the XY chromosomes.

When pressed, neither Helcyon nor Jacob could name a female offspring as a product of one of those unions, but Helcyon emphasized the fact that many Fae did not meet their offspring until after their gifts activated. If a female was produced and she never activated, then it wasn’t unreasonable to assume the Fae would know nothing about her.

At the time, Jacob had been forced to agree. Even his Wizarding Council was limited in its ability to identify potential Wizards. Their gifts typically didn’t activate until they were fully into puberty, sometime around the age of sixteen.

“I do not know the answer to that question. We will ask the Wizard when he returns.”

“You do remember that Jacob has a name, right?” she teased.

“Yes. You use it enough for both of us.” The barest hint of rebuke in the words shut down her next teasing remark, and she let it go. Helcyon might be infinitely more patient than Jacob, but his objections to the Wizard went back to the history of animosity between the races. It was better not to push.

“So, we’ll talk to him about it. What are your other two reasons?”

The smooth, teasing caresses of his hand drifted up to her calf, and she barely held back a groan as he dug at a particularly hard knot.

“The second reason is your vulnerability. You have neither the training nor the experience to identify potential threats. Your enthusiasm for your work is admirable, but it blinds you to the darker side of everyone’s nature, be they human, Wizard, or Fae. You nearly died three times in the past two weeks. You were attacked, repeatedly, and with Michael free that danger increases. He wants you for something, and if he cannot have you, he will seek to destroy you.”

Despite Helcyon’s belief that she was blind to the danger, she would never take the threat of Michael lightly. He’d seen something in her at that lakeside, something that made him curse, and he’d turned on her. The vicious hatred in his eyes coupled with lust both disgusted and terrified her. Michael wanted to possess her, but he would crush her given the opportunity.

The visceral pulse of his hatred had been a tangible thing licking pain across every nerve and leaving her soul battered and bruised. Helcyon slid forward along the window seat and tugged her legs until her thighs straddled his and he could wrap his arms around her. She didn’t fight the pull this time. Helcyon was cinnamon, vanilla, and rich evergreens. He was the dark forest with its ancient trees shrouding her.

“I did not mean to make you afraid.” He murmured the words against her hair and she burrowed against his chest, enjoying the searing heat of his skin against her cheek.

“You didn’t. It’s not something I hadn’t already thought about. I wish I knew what he meant when he said I was in front of him all this time. I wish I knew how he knew about the Danae before I did.” And he had known, he’d known for years, because that was why he recruited her right out of college, cultivated their relationship, mentored her, and made her care about him.

That part hurt worst of all. For all his crimes, he’d been her
friend
.

Helcyon stroked her back, chin resting against her hair. “He will never touch you again, Cassandra.”

She believed him. They’d wanted to kill him before, but in the interest of Fae-Wizard relations, they’d made the harder choice to let him live.

“I don’t want to talk about Michael anymore. Tell me what the third reason is.” She smoothed her hand over the fabric of his shirt, toying with the edges. The languid heat of him pushed through the chill and anguish, blanketing her soul.

Helcyon slid his hands up her back, combed through her hair, and then cupped her face, tilting her head back to gaze into her eyes. “The third reason is the most selfish. I love you. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

The hard lump in her chest loosened, softening the bands around her heart. Arching upward, she brushed her lips to his until his mouth slanted and took possession. Her arms wrapped around his neck as he lifted her onto his lap. Her breasts crushed against his chest. His tongue glided past her teeth to stroke hers, and she sighed into the kiss, heat stampeding along her nerve endings, routing the misery, self-doubt, and anxiety until all that remained was the uncompromising need to hold him.

Nipping his tongue lightly, she broke the kiss and rested her forehead against his, noses brushing. “You shouldn’t bury the lead like that.”

He chuckled, the laughter rumbling in his chest.

“I’m serious. You say you love me and I go all gooey and female.”

“I shall remember to tell you I love you frequently, then.” His hands cupped her bottom and pulled her forward until she could feel the thick length of his cock tenting his pants. She rolled her hips, teasing her clit against his hard erection, and shivered at the darkening in his eyes.

“I promise. I won’t run off to confront Michael again. I won’t take unnecessary risks with my life.” She smiled at the masculine satisfaction surging in his expression. Her fingers glided up to trace the tip of one finely pointed ear. “But I also promise you that I’m not going to run away from my life or let the Fae, the Wizarding Council, or anyone else dictate what I can or can’t do. I have a business and a life, and I plan to enjoy them.”

He slipped a hand into the waistband of her pajamas until one hand splayed against the curve of her bottom, his fingers teasing the line separating her butt cheeks.

“You will learn to control your magic.” He slid a second hand beneath the waistband, pushing her pants down until his hands cupped her ass. “You will practice the self-defense we want to teach you.”

“Do you really want me to keep your sword away right now?” Cassie squeezed her thighs and pushed her hips toward his until she could feel the long, hard length of his cock fitting against her pussy through the barriers of their pants. His hands tightened against her bottom and he tugged her lower lip between his teeth.

“You can try. But it will be my goal to breach every defense, to penetrate any barrier until I can fill you with my ‘sword.’” Arousal deepened his voice, and Cassie laughed, opening her mouth to welcome his tongue. He rolled her forward, and the world slid sideways. One moment they were on the window seat, the next she was tumbling backward onto a bed, Helcyon covering her as his kiss grew rougher and more demanding.

Fisting a hand into his hair, she pressed her tongue to his, challenging his possession. She couldn’t help but laugh as a wave of heat rolled over her skin, tingling, and then her pajamas evaporated. The cooler air of his darker bedroom lapped at her overheated skin, and she blinked, looking up. Sure enough, he had transported them to his room. Dragging away from the kiss, she glared up at him.

“No fair. That’s cheating.”

“Oh?” He traced a hand up her rib cage to palm a breast. Her back arched to the touch, the nipple pebbling expectantly.

“You’re still dressed!”

“Ah, my darling Cassandra. Still so much to teach you.”

Chapter Three

 

Helcyon explored the silken smoothness of her skin as if he had forever for that task alone. Cassandra’s youth left her remarkably soft. Trailing soft kisses along the curve of her jaw, he teased the pulse point below her right ear. The spell to whisk away her clothes was among the simplest. The sun-kissed, golden skin it revealed among the most priceless. Teasing the whorls of her ear with his tongue, he caught her wandering hands and pinned them to the bed. She writhed slowly between his body and the bed covering, but he focused on her earlobe.

BOOK: Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)
9.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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