Fire's Touch (The Enlightened Species Book Three) (12 page)

The wall to her suite had nearly closed when the devil himself slipped into the gap. She turned to tell him to get out. The words lodged in her throat. His determined strides backed her to the wall. His body pressed to hers. The desperate expression on his face declared his intent a moment before warm, sensual lips touched lightly, sensually against hers. His kiss made rejecting him impossible. She was overwhelmed by the rich scent of male, so intimate, her mind churned with questions. With a sigh, she returned the kiss, opening beneath the masterful wielder. With a deep groan against her mouth he trailed kisses across her cheek, his warm breath at her ear as he spoke words so softly she had to strain to hear them. “I crave you, Stacey Winkel. You make me burn.”

His whispered confession brought the realization she probably was burning him, and not in a good way. Since the manifestation of her pyrokinesis abilities, the idea of hurting Johnny had terrified her. Yet Conlon's body trapped hers against the wall. His erection pressed erotically against her. His lips glistened from the moisture of her kiss. His deep voice in her ear sent a shiver through her.

“Shut up and kiss me again,” she demanded.
Just
o
ne more minute.
I can do this.
His warm lips came down on hers again, scattering her thoughts to the wind from the sensation—oh, how this male could kiss. The kiss intensified until all Stacey could think about was the taste and feel of Conlon's lips on hers.

Once she reached sensory addle-brain, the kiss ended and the bastard, his voice husky, whispered in her ear, “Decide, Ms. Winkel. Stop now and see to your meeting or … finish what we've started.”

Stacey opened her eyes to meet the darkened, passionate color of his. He pressed his forehead to hers and drew a deep breath, his neck muscles strained, his jaw clenched, and ragged breaths sawing between his erupted dentes.
Decide?
How could she have him with the least amount of physical contact?

Stacey let a small amount of her true fears show. “I want to finish … but I can’t, Conlon. I’ll burn you. Your chin is reddening from a simple kiss.”

Conlon groaned, “I can take the heat. If it burns I’ll stop.”

Did she dare? “If I kill you, it’s not my fault.” Desire flooded her system and overruled her better judgment. Fates, she wanted him. He nodded as Stacey reached between them to release the front of his jeans; his hands slid her skirt up, bunching it at her hips to expose the thigh-high nylons and the lower curve of her tattoo. Her lace panties were torn away by his urgent hands. She raised one leg to his waist. Conlon hooked it and then her other leg with his arms, suspending her weight on his arms as if she were a feather. Stacey kept her eyes averted from the tattoo. The reminder she usually sought at moments of vulnerability was not something she wanted intruding on this moment.

He gave her a kind of sexy grin designed to turn a female into jelly. Hot and demanding, he kissed her with fervor and an edge of desperation in the way his tongue dueled with hers. She felt her heat rise as she matched his passion with her own.
Control, control, control,
she chanted in her mind

Cradled by her thighs over his arms, she felt the head of his erection teasing against her folds.
Please!
She tried to push downward, needing him inside her. He didn’t plunge it into her. The pace of his penetration was slow, like the flow of thick molasses filling her, stroking her inner walls as her body stretched to accommodate his girth, a balm to the burn within her while stoking her passion higher.

The instant response of her body shocked her. Her sheath began to throb from her building climax as he reached his hilt, and firm, unyielding pressure at her core took her to the edge; greedy moans full of need escaped her lips with every rapid breath she exhaled.

Conlon started circling his hips, stimulating her bundle of nerves meshed firmly against his root, sensation rippled up her inner walls to her core. Her muscles clenched and she exploded with a strangled cry of pleasure cut short when Conlon’s lips captured hers. The kiss seared through her as he circled his hips faster, sending her into a fresh bought of orgasmic spasms. When she felt she couldn't take anymore, he began to thrust in and out, taking her even higher, sharing with her a new perspective of her own body.

A level of passion she didn't know existed bloomed large in her. With a strangled growl, his body tensed and then bucked, burying his seed in her and sending her under another crashing climatic wave. If he could do this to her within a matter of minutes … what would an entire night be like?

Their lips and tongues tangled seductively until her body tremors faded and her inner muscles calmed around the silken steel buried deep. His breath trailed down her neck, his dentes scraping over her pulse tantalizingly as he withdrew from her.

Conlon released his hold of her legs and carefully set her back on her shaky feet, his hand cupping her breast through her blouse. “Do you know what we are?” Conlon whispered, asking her to confirm the very thing Stacey had been trying desperately to deny since the moment she saw him. That denial was harder after he confirmed it to whomever he’d spoken on the phone to.

Bloodmates
. Now she knew … her body
definitely
knew; Stacey felt her heart melt just a little.
Shit.
Too late she found the ability to push him away from her. His eyes never left her face, and his erection was still large and proud, commanding her visual attention. Her dente punctured into her lip, and he leaned in and licked the drop, removing the sting and sealing it instantly. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that or scare you.”

Stacey shook her head. “You didn't scare me. I think you may be right about the … you know. I'm just … I can’t deal with that right now. I won't think about that right now. Later … maybe … but not now.”

He leaned in, challenging her. Stacey wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his head the last few millimeters to bring his lips to hers. His warm lips took hers again, leaving her free of thought, yearning for more as he broke from her lips to trail kisses across her cheek. His breath found the shell of her ear. “Later,” he conceded

She nodded, hating to let him go but feeling the responsibility of her obligations settle heavily onto her shoulder. Then there was the new threat to consider, Johnny's safety, and the hurt Cassie was facing with Mattie and Hans's reappearance in her poor friend’s world.

The complication Conlon posed might not be what she wanted right now, but what he had done to her body … had been exactly what she'd needed. She felt infused, able to conquer the world, energized and giddy. Conlon stepped back from her and dropped to his knees. His chest and arms flamed red. His erection, though still hard, was on the cusp of blistering. Oh, Fates. She had scorched and energy-drained him. Stacey raced to the fridge for a pint of her blood.

“Dumbass, I warned you. Typical male—you just
have
to play with fire.” Tears threatened as she handed the blood to him. He took the bag and smiled, plunging his dentes into the plastic.
I knew better. I thought … I could control it. That was stupid, reckless, dammit, dammit, dammit …

The bag of blood emptied, he tossed it into the wastebasket and rose to his feet. His burns healing quickly, he stepped to the fridge for a second pint. “I don’t want an apology, Stacey. I want to do that again … and again.” Biting into the bag he started toward her.

“Conlon, I could have killed you.” Stacey held her hand up, halting him. His pants hanging open drew her attention to the fact that he was still turned on. What was he, some kind of masochist? Did he enjoy pain? “And I sure as hell didn’t apologize.”

The second drained pint joined the first. All the redness had faded from his skin. “I would have died a happy male. You can’t be afraid of your gift. I’m not.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Stacey snapped.

Chapter Eleven

Huey took a chortal to the SOSC headquarters in Greenland. He bypassed the hospe in lieu of the archive department. Osiris had given him a big order to fill. Before he committed to tossing his career and the life he knew in the toilet, he needed to verify something.

“Dr. Fennel, you’re back again. Still studying the history of Elven evolution?” The young Tellus librarian had grown accustomed to his visits. His feigned interest in evolution had become a well-developed mask for what he usually researched. Osiris had been right on many fronts, including the fact that Huey had kept his true pursuit secret. Was he right about him having a subconscious knowledge that the research put him in danger? Huey wasn’t so sure about that. He’d always felt that being forthright about the discoveries he’d made might give the Hulven males a premature and possibly false hope.

“Hi, Kate. I won’t be here long today. I need to check on a patient.” Lying, he gave her a friendly smile and turned in the direction of the area he usually went. Once her desk was out of sight he detoured to a different portion of records.
Oracles.
He was surprised by how small the section was comparatively; every Oracle ever recorded fit into only three volumes. He quickly scanned the pages. Some had pictures or renderings next to the name, though most did not, including one Jefferson Patra. Huey halted at the name to read the short entry:
last seen summer of 994 AD … presumed deceased …
Well, that settled it—Osiris had told him the truth.

With determination and purpose, he waved goodbye to Kate and made his way to the back entrance of the Hospe. The Elven have been holding the male Hulven back from their destiny for thousands of years. Huey had never known such rage as he did now, hidden behind his smiles and waves to those people he knew so well as they greeted him in the hallways.

He’d been a healer here before Herme had offered him the opportunity to transfer. In the past, the familiarity of these people might have given him pause in doing what Osiris had asked. Not now. Now they stoked his anger further. How many of them knew of the conspiracy against his kind? How many of them knew the truth and kept it hidden?

With the scrambled SAT phone Osiris had given him in hand, he ducked into the central records room and closed the door behind him. Logging into a computer, he plugged in a thumb drive and sent a pulse of energy to jam the cameras for the few minutes of privacy he’d need before security came in and restored it. Then he dialed.

Osiris answered on the first ring. “Did you have any difficulties? I expected your call before now.”

Huey felt momentary guilt over his need to verify Osiris’s oracle before calling, but he stifled it behind a half-truth. “I ran into a friend, no problem.”

“Good, good. Let’s get started, shall we?” Some of the people Osiris wanted full medical dossiers on Huey knew of; others he’d never heard of before: Umbrae Sicarius and the individual workup performed on all four of her children; Jess Reed Einar and her bloodmate Shane; Stacey Winkel. He’d never heard of Stacey Winkel, and from the surprise in his voice, Osiris had never heard of Stacey’s son Johnny. There were no records for Eros Sicarius or any of his sons on file. The last one Osiris requested was for a male named Mick Tenor.

“That’ll do, Huey. I’ve scheduled a personal tour of your new lab once you return. Remember, if you want some kind of equipment above what is there, all you need to do is ask and it will be provided.” The mention of the lab gave him a giddy type of anticipation. With the last file transferred, he quickly grabbed the thumb drive and left with a grin and bounce in his step before security arrived.

Huey ported to his small, isolated house to pack the few items he wanted to take with him. Afterward, he planned to torch it and destroy the lab in the basement. He would never be coming back. The thought filled him with excitement. Today was the first day of the rest of his life. He had a destiny to fulfill and all the resources and backing he could ever need to do it. The SOSC phone, forgotten in his pocket, vibrated against his thigh. He almost dropped it when the headquarters number popped up. Should he ignore it? Had they discovered his pilfering of the medical records already? Hands shaking, he flipped the phone open while anxious dread curled into the pit of his stomach. He lifted it to his ear. “This is Huey Fennell.” His voice didn’t betray him … much.

“Huey … Herme here. Hey, I’ve got a genetic profile that’s confusing as shit. You think you could pop up here and take a look? This is much more your forte.” Was this a trap? The ancient Elven healer seemed laid back, friendly … normal Herme. Paranoid or not, there was no way he would ever get anywhere near the SOSC again.

“Sure, Herme. I’ll chortal in a few hours. I just have a couple of things to wrap up.”

“Let me know when you arrive, and thanks.” Herme sounded truly grateful for Huey’s help before disconnecting the line.

Huey swallowed hard, set the phone on the counter, and slowly backed away from it like a man would a coiled rattlesnake. He forced his fingers to open before the zip drive crushed in his palm as he stared at the object with fear. Did Herme already know he’d infiltrated the files without clearance? SOSC warriors might be on their way to his house right this minute to arrest or … kill him. The phone Osiris had given him vibrated in his other pocket. Huey gave a small, startled scream before he realized it wasn’t a taser hitting him.

With his hands shaking, he withdrew the phone, nearly dropping it. “I have to get out of here right now. You need to send someone here to protect me,” he answered by way of greeting.

“Huey. What happened? Do you think they are on to you already?” Osiris’s annoying, high-pitched voice did nothing to sooth Huey’s rattled nerves.

“I … I don’t know. Herme wants me to return to Greenland right away,” Huey stammered.

Osiris sat silent a moment. “Is that an uncommon request?”

“Yes!” Huey answered sharply. Clarity came slowly. Herme often had Huey check into research for him. A few years back Huey had overseen the genetic team that determined parentage for hundreds of children and adults who’d been separated at birth and subsequently rescued from their cult-like lives by the SOSC. “No,” he whispered. Fates, maybe he was being paranoid. “Herme has requested my aid in genetic profiles many times.” Still, Huey was terrified. “But isn’t the timing somewhat … too coincidental?”