Burning Skies

You bastard! she shouted within his mind.

He froze. He was always shocked by how much she despised him. And there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say. She would leave him.

“Fine,” he retorted. “Run away like you always do. But I don’t think you’ll soon forget how I just made you feel.” He released her and folded his hands behind his head. She was still connected to him, still one with his body. Her disgust with him had pissed him off, scraped his nerves raw once more, and frankly he wasn’t going to make the disengagement easy, not when she came to him at night, not when she teased him by sliding against his cock every damn night. This time, she could do the work.

She shifted her hips and he bucked hard to let her feel the connection once more, that his cock was buried deep inside her, that she had come to him for this purpose. She brought him to this place every goddamn night. Well, fuck her for looking at him as though he lived on the underbelly of a slug.

She gasped then lifted and glided off him. “I hate you for doing this to me,” she cried. She covered her breasts with her arm, rose up, then faded away toward the dark edges of the room. Because she left, his departure from this nowhere place occurred at the same time. Once again, he felt that strange rush-and-glide as pitch darkness surrounded him.

He blinked, straining to see, but one more blink and he was lying on his bed in exactly the same position, with his hands folded behind his head. He was on top of the sheet now and as before completely naked.

For a moment he thought about folding to Second Earth and hunting her down. He knew where she lived, her little condo at the foot of Camelback Mountain. He wanted to get in her face and gloat. He wanted her to know that whatever game this was, for all her distaste of him personally, she wanted him, she pursued him, and he’d pleasured her.

Hah.

Well, at least in that he found a measure of contentment in their little war. At least in that he could smile at the ceiling, settling his shoulders deeper into the mattress. He’d done the very thing he’d been trying to do for four months now, since Alison’s ascension, since his return to his life on Mortal Earth—he’d brought his woman to a screaming climax.

His smile broadened, at least for a time, then it dimmed. Who was he kidding? This would never be enough, these encounters that had no more substance than if he’d awakened in the middle of a wet dream.

Still, he’d kept her with him until the end this time, and he would take satisfaction from that. Sort of.

He’d come inside her, which made him wonder. He looked down at his partially thickened cock still weeping his fluids. He blinked. He felt over his abdomen and chest, but there was nothing of his come present on his body. He felt only a thin sheen of sweat.

If this had been a wet dream, he would have been covered in his seed.

So where was the unmistakable evidence that he’d just had one helluva fine orgasm?

He was pretty sure he knew and once more he smiled at the ceiling. If he was right about all of this, Havily Morgan had one big-ass shock coming to her.

Good.

* * *

Havily knew the encounter was just a dream, like all the others she’d experienced, endured, over the past weeks. Of course it was just a dream, except that in this dream she’d actually had an orgasm. And somewhere in the course of the dream, she’d stripped off her nightgown … as usual.

She lay in bed, staring at her ceiling, at the collection of glittery butterflies. The air conditioner came on, and the large flock moved as though in flight.

She smiled. She didn’t know exactly what this was she had been doing at night, but she could feel the ease of hormones that drifted through her veins now, those beautiful hormones that gave her such a light peaceful feeling.

She had to admit one thing—her fantasies rocked! She could even laugh at herself now. She had given Marcus such form, such shape that when she’d awakened from the fantasy-dream, for a moment she’d actually believed he was real.

Her smile faded. She believed he was real in the same way she had believed the fiery attack on Luken had been real … because the attack had been real.

She shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut. Of course the attack on Luken had been real. She’d made a phone call, and Thorne had confirmed the tragedy.

But this thing with Warrior Marcus was not real, never had been real, couldn’t be real. Oh, God, it really couldn’t.

She took several deep breaths and calmed the feelings of panic that constricted her chest. Of course it wasn’t real. But … and here she closed her eyes … in the dream-fantasy, Marcus had smelled so wonderful.

She touched her fingers to her lips. She smelled all his delicious fennel scent and smiled. In her fantasy he had kissed her—and what had he kept saying to her? Sleep. So she had, and then she’d orgasmed. He was such a big, powerful man and his hips had pistoned hard. And his cock, like a baseball bat.

Desire swept over her once more and her hips rocked as she let all the incredible sensations sweep over her, which in turn caused her back to arch off the mattress. That’s when she felt the oozing between her legs.

She had just finished her period. What the hell?

She sat up carefully and flipped on the light. She grabbed a handful of tissues and pressed between her legs. She looked down at the tissues certain she’d see blood. However, what came out of her wasn’t red.

What came out of her smelled richly of … oh, God … fennel.

This was a man’s essence, his seed.

Marcus?

No.

Impossible!

So what was this? What had happened? She hadn’t been with a man. She’d just had a sexy dream, a hot sexy dream, that’s all.

Really.

Her heart rate increased. Had she been drugged? Enthralled? Raped?

Was someone in her house?

She glanced around at the shadows. She reached out with her senses but she knew her home was safe. No one else was present.

She stared down between her thighs, at the white tissues below her peachy-red pubic hair. Once more that deep, musky fennel scent, like grasses in summer, spiraled up to her.

There could be only one answer. Somehow Warrior Marcus had gotten to her. He’d found a way to penetrate her dreams then penetrate her.

Marcus.

That bastard. What had he done to her? How had he done this to her?

* * *

Antony Medichi, out of Italy in the late Roman era, sat next to Havily on the ratty brown leather couch. The hour was early, not yet seven, and given Luken’s accident and her role in the near-tragedy, she couldn’t have gotten much sleep.

There was a haunted look about her lovely light green eyes this morning.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked. The night’s fighting, thank God, was over and as usual the brothers were together at the Cave, one last bonding before heading to bed for the day.

Havily sat next to him, a venti iced coffee held between her hands. “Of course I’m okay. I mean I could use a little sleep, but all that matters is that Luken is doing so well.” She stared down at her cup and twirled the straw.

“That’s all that matters.”

Thorne had just given a report on how well Luken was recovering; a team of healers was with him and would remain working on him until Horace was satisfied. The warrior had even awakened for a few minutes and conversed with Thorne. He wasn’t in too much pain. Horace had seen to that. As for Luken’s wings, it was a wait-and-see.

Still, Havily wasn’t used to seeing that kind of horror, and he couldn’t help being concerned about her. She’d become important to the Warriors of the Blood, sort of a mascot, a beloved mascot.

He held a café mocha in one hand and a buttermilk doughnut in the other. He took a sip, then a bite. He loved that she sat next to him. He’d forgotten how soothing the presence of a woman could be, especially in the off-hours like this, after a night of battling when a warrior’s nerves were still standing up straight and screaming, his body bruised and hurting. Havily was like sliding into a warm bath, an ease, a comfort. He treasured her.

She was dressed to kill this morning as well, which always helped. She wore a short skirt in light blue that showed off her bare tanned legs. She had on elegant heeled sandals with sapphire-like gems on the front straps. Her blouse was cream silk, and around her neck hung a large piece of jewelry on a chain that sparkled in black and gold with small light blue crystals. The blouse had a perfect V-cut, and because she was leaning forward on the couch, her arms on her knees, she showed a nice line of cleavage. Dynamite.

But her hair was her finest feature. It floated all around her shoulders, a cloud of red, and a beautiful red at that, dark, lustrous. A man could sink his hands into that kind of hair. Her skin was very creamy. She was beautiful.

On her Liaison Officer salary Havily could have afforded a much larger home than her modest condo. Instead, he suspected she spent most of her money on clothes—or at least she looked like she did. She liked the labels. Her Gucci sunglasses hung over the edge of her Marc Jacobs bag, and he had talked with her enough over the years to know that she preferred Ralph Lauren to other designers. Endelle might still dress up in her animal skins, but Havily now set a tone in the admin offices that had all the women fussing with makeup and hair and clothes.

Yeah, the office was improved, and maybe that was something about her he’d never really understood until now. Wherever she went, the environment improved. That may not have been a preternatural power, but it was a certain kind of magic at headquarters.

Even here at the Cave, her magic had been spreading. She’d recently seen to the repair of the TV for them and now it ran on CNN, set up to be activated by a motion detector. As soon as anyone entered the room, the news flared up, not too loud, just a steady background drone full of Mortal Earth info. That, too, had a strange soothing quality.

Okay. He was half in love with her but then they all were.

Lately however, whenever he was around her, he’d started feeling an ache in the center of his chest, a longing he didn’t quite get. He wasn’t foolish enough to think she could ever have feelings for him, not after the breh-hedden in the form of Warrior Marcus had hunted her down in March and shot her full of intense lust for the bastard.