Solstice Surrender (12 page)

Harder.

Yes!

 
And they strove for a mutual orgasm, feeling it build, from his toes to her ears. The sharing of sensations spiralled the pleasure upwards, until Jenna threw her head back and screamed, the pleasure ripping through her with an intensity that bordered on pain. Rhys cried her name as his seed spilled into her in hard, tight spasms, and sweat beaded his temples.

They showered together in order to stay together and shared quiet words. Jenna lathered him and this time she lingered over each of the many scars he wore.
 
For each he would give her the sense/image of the occasion of its delivery.
 
Most of them were painful battle scars earned fighting against an enemy that wore so many faces they blended into an amorphous Enemy that he had battled his entire life and still had not beaten. The scars were the product of knives, guns, swords and all manner of weapons and objects that had taken their toll on him.

Jenna wept a few bitter tears for each of them.
 
She thought the shower spray hid them until Rhys took her in his arms and kissed her eyes.
Don’t cry for me
. And the thought came with the sense that he would willingly do it all again, knowing she waited for him somewhere ahead.

“Does your strange world not know mercy? Is there no rest, no reprieve?”

“There are moments. For anyone, even the merely human, there are moments.” He smiled down at her. “Such as this one. And the moments add up.”

She rested her head against his chest for a moment and felt his heartbeat. Yes, it was a peaceful moment.
But I, too, can feel the tension building now. I need answers.

You shall have them.
And she felt him sigh.

Who is the Enemy? I thought it was a part of humans, the dark half, that you worked to root out.
She thought of Clement Hine.
People like him seem purely evil and bent on defeating you
.

Hine is human and watcher, both. But he, like all humans, has a dark side, a capacity for evil. And during his life he went astray.
Sadness touched him.

Jenna realized that Rhys had known Hine for a long time. Long before Hine had ‘gone astray’.

“The dark side of the force?” Jenna quipped.

That’s very close to the real truth
. His thoughts leapt onwards, encompassing all of humanity with its capability for evil. She saw the social conscience and personal ethics that keep most from wickedness and the threat of human laws that subdue others. But for some, the bad ways are easier, quicker and less troublesome and the laws don’t hold them. These people twist human nature to suit themselves, regardless of the long term consequences. If that sort of person has a will that can bend others to his nature, he can lead those weaker others into the same dark paths.

Rhys showed her how that might happen, how influential people with evil in their hearts corrupted other souls and how he and others like him forever kept watch for people like that and for the corruption they spread, so they could root it out and destroy it before it took seed.
Those are the sorts of patterns and pockets we watch out for and deal with as we can.

This was the work she was destined for? She straightened her back, drawing away from him so she could focus on his face properly, causing the hot water to spill down between her breasts. Rhys was nudging her out of her comfort zone again, with the reminder of a “fate” she still hadn’t wholly accepted. She sought, instead, for information.
Hine has been led astray
?

He is human first and he uses his greater skills to pursue human ambitions. Greed, mostly, for money and power
.

Jenna saw another, darker figure behind Hine. It was a symbolic image. There was a greater evil leading Hine. Bonded to him.

Does their bond make them stronger?

Yes.

Who is the other, the stronger one?

“A man called Jude Marcher.” Rhys’ lips thinned and he turned off the shower with a compulsive jerk on the faucet and stepped out of the stall.

“You’ve met him?”

“I have battled him many times. Him, or his servants. He has many like Hine, Jenny, and always more to choose from, for the human capacity for black deeds seems endless.” He thrust his arms into the towelling robe and went into the bedroom.

Jenna dried herself off quickly and followed him out. “But what does Marcher want? From what you showed me, it felt like he has power and probably money because of it. What else could he want?”

“To see the world plunged into chaos. To see us fail.”

“But
why
?” It seemed so gratuitous.

“With the watchers defeated, Marcher would have his way. He could be the Lord of Misrule.” He dressed swiftly as he spoke. “Would you….” He hesitated. The look he sent her held some awkwardness.
 
“I think you should move into this room, Jenna. Collect your things and bring them here.”

Jenna felt a leap of…something.
 
She had no idea what the feeling was and no time to analyze it while Rhys was watching her so carefully and could tap into her mind at will.
 
“Because it’s safer?” she asked carefully.

“Partly,” he agreed, his tone neutral.
 
Then he shrugged.
 
“And partly because…I would like you to.”

“All right.” The answer emerged without consideration. It was just there, automatic and without thought.
 
And immediately, Jenna could hear a dozen major objections rise in her mind.
 
Was she crazy?
 
She’d only known Rhys for less than twenty-four hours!
 
She should run a security check at the very least.
 
Wait a day or two or a year.
 
What are you thinking, Jenna MacDonald?
 
You’re not thinking at all—well, not with your brain, anyway….
 
All of the objections seemed to be phrased in Kevin’s sarcastic voice, which made her drop a mental shroud over all of them and shove them away.

That was stuff that the old Jenna might have worried about.
 
Things had changed.
 
She made herself look calmly at Rhys instead and not take back her agreement to move into his hotel room.

Rhys turned away, heading for the sitting room. “Good.” He picked up the room key, keeping his head averted. “I’m going down to the foyer. I want to nose around a bit and see if Hine or his cronies are up to anything.
 
And I want to find out more about the snow.” He put the room key on the table next to the door. “You take that. I’ll get another one while I’m downstairs.”

He wasn’t looking at her at all.
 
Was he regretting the invitation already?
 
“Rhys?” she called as he opened the door.

He paused and finally looked back at her. He was smiling and his thought/feelings touched her: a bubbling euphoria delivered as a mental kiss—she felt his lips on hers as if he had actually kissed her.

He stepped out of the room and shut the door, but his joy lingered.

* * * * *

Jenna packed her belongings quickly and hauled them upstairs to the big suite without incident. Then she plugged her laptop into the high-speed internet outlet and went surfing.

Her first question was answered within seconds. Solstice really was at 10:04pm MST this year. That small confirmation made her heart thud hard.

She went to her favourite search engine and plugged in “Avaon”, along with every spelling variation she could think of. For a moment she paused before clicking on “search.” Did she really doubt Rhys? Did she really want confirmation?

Then she clicked. It was unlikely she would get a straight answer anyway. The internet could be frustratingly blank on some subjects.

A dozen pages popped up, that dealt with baby names, hotels, jewellery and other bizarre connections with the variants she had plugged in. She was on the verge of shutting down the browser, feeling a huge guilt for sneaking around behind Rhys’ back, but a perverse need to know it all made her click on the second page of results.

She found the result she hadn’t wanted to find right down the bottom.

Adaon ab Taliesin Adaon or
Avaon
, son of the chief of the bards, and
a bard himself, was also celebrated for his valour. The Traids…
camelot.celtic-twilight.com/infopedia/a/adaon.htm - 4k -
Cached
-
Similar pages

She looked at the entry and it seemed to pulse on the page. She knew very little about the Welsh language, but she did know that ‘ab’ meant ‘son of’. With a hand that shook, she clicked on the link.

The page that opened up featured lines of verse that her gaze picked out first:

“Hast thou heard what Avaon sang,

The son of Taliesin, of the recording verse?

The cheek will not conceal the anguish of the heart.”

Quickly, Jenna hit the power button and held it down, shutting down her laptop in an emergency overdrive.
 
It shut down with an almost silent sigh, the screen blanking out without ceremony.
 
She tried to push the laptop away from her but the rubber grips wouldn’t let it slide across the table and her hand shook too much.
 
Instead, the computer just flipped over onto its lid and the heavy keyboard half of it slapped shut on top of it.

Jenna sat back from the table. She felt ill.
 
Cold sweat had broken out in her armpits and the back of her neck. The shakes had grown worse.

The name didn’t have to apply literally. It
couldn’t
be literal. That would make Rhys…how old? Before she could even begin to mentally tally the centuries, she sheered away from it. Ridiculous.

She pushed at her temples, massaging them. What had Rhys said?
It’s a name I used once, long ago.

Coincidence. That’s all. Plenty of men called Arthur walked around these days and none of them was a legendary warlord from fifteen centuries ago.

She went and unpacked her belongings, but the task had lost its sheen and eventually she found she was standing in front of the window, staring out at the snow. Rhys’ effervescent mental kiss kept playing over in her mind. She had not imagined the joy behind it, the almost bashful happiness. That simple pleasure didn’t belong to a man who had lived hundreds of years. After such a long life, wouldn’t he be jaded? Cynical...even mistrustful and world-weary?

How could she even entertain the possibility of someone living that long? To where had her own sense of reality fled? It scared her that she could even consider it rationally! Hastily she retreated back to the comfort of his mental kiss. The simple pleasure in it.

She wanted him back. Now. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and feel his solidness. His human-ness. Flesh and blood couldn’t be denied.

* * * * *

A package was delivered an hour or so later, and Jenna used the chain on the door and the spy hole to verify who it was before she opened the door enough to accept the big flat white box.

A note was taped to it. A big flourishing scrawl spread across the small sheet.
It’s all right. You can open it. Rhys
.

Even though the scrawl seemed to fit with Rhys’ personality, she still had no real way of knowing this came directly from him. She considered it for a moment. It was an unsealed cardboard box that typically held flowers and seemed totally harmless.

She reached out with her mind.
Rhys?

Jenny. I’m here.

She showed him the box.
Did you send this?

Enjoy it, Jenny.
 
The replay
came with his warm mental caress. Then his presence withdrew.

Reassured, she pulled the lid off and brushed tissue paper aside. Then she grew very still.