Shadow's Pleasure: The Shadow Warder Series, Book Two (A Paranormal/Urban Fantasy Romance Series) (25 page)

Kiernan ripped it away, tossing it on the floor by his feet. “Don’t fucking hide from me,” he yelled. “Why would you do something this dangerous without talking to me?”

Sorcha pulled her knees to her chest, shielding her naked body as much as she could. Kiernan was a little scary in his rage. Still, she couldn’t help but notice that, while he was yelling out his fury, and his posture was intimidating, he hadn’t raised a hand to her. Not even to shake her or push her away. His restraint, when she’d known too much pain from familiar hands, made her all the more desperate to explain.

“It’s not that dangerous. Not for me. I couldn’t do it before because I was too far away. I had to try.”

“If it’s not dangerous, why didn’t you tell me you were going to do it? You scared the shit out of me, Sorcha,” he accused.

Sorcha stared back at him. Kiernan was seriously pissed, his beautiful, opalescent hazel eyes hard with anger. And he was right. “I knew you’d argue. And it wasn’t a big risk,” she offered.

“You could have gotten lost. Or captured. Trapped outside your body forever. How is that not a big risk?”

“Those were possibilities,” she admitted, looking away.

Kiernan grunted and snatched his clothes off the floor. “I get that you want to find your friend,” he said, not looking at her. “I want it too.” He yanked his jeans over his legs in fast jerks. “But you don’t get to put yourself in danger without talking with me first. We’re a team.”

“I know,” Sorcha said quietly into her knees.
Fuck
.

Shirt in hand, Kiernan stopped at the end of the bed to look at her, his face closed off, expressionless. “I think I’ve been respectful of your strength,” he said. “Even when it goes against the grain, I’ve trusted you to take care of yourself.”

“I know,” she said, trying to meet his eyes.

He refused her, staring at a spot behind her shoulder. “I thought I’d lost you, Sorcha. Thought you were dying in my arms. If you can’t be straight with me, this isn’t going to work.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, wishing she had better words. If he’d scared her that way, she would have been just as pissed. “I—” she started to say.

Kiernan held up the hand gripping his t-shirt as if warding her off. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

He slipped his shirt over his head and said, “This place is almost impenetrable. You’ll be safe here as long as you stay inside. Don’t do anything stupid and piss me off even more.”

The bedroom door slammed behind him as he left. A minute later, Sorcha heard the elevator door. Sliding from the bed, she wrapped the discarded sheet around her body and looked out into the street, leaning her forehead into the cold window. The roar of an engine bled through the glass as Kiernan tore out of the garage on his heavy black and chrome motorcycle.

It was still the middle of the night, but she wasn’t going back to sleep. With a sigh, Sorcha began to strip the sheets off the bed. She’d take a shower, wash the sheets, and see if she could find the coffee. Then she’d wait and hope Kiernan would be open to an apology when he came back.

As she straightened the already clean kitchen, dressed in an old pair of jeans and a dark green fitted shirt Kiernan had picked for her, Sorcha tried to calm her roiling emotions. For an empath, she wasn’t all that great at managing her own feelings. Fear chilled her heart, warring with anxiety, impatience, guilt; the echo of arousal banked but not extinguished. And something else. Something warm and new. Something more than affection.

The desire to curl up with Kiernan, to lay her head on his chest and listen to the thump of his heart while he played with her hair. To take his cock in her mouth and suck him until he cried out his pleasure. To cook him a meal and watch him eat it. Something she loved, like her chili cheese fries with jalapeño sour cream. To go somewhere for fun. Like the beach. Or camping. Maybe a cruise. Sorcha had always wanted to go on a cruise. She wanted to spend time with Kiernan without the threat of loss and betrayal hanging over their heads.

It was the last chunk of feelings that was giving her the most trouble. Sorcha understood her reaction to Caerwyn. She was scared for her friend. Afraid they’d be too late to save her. Terrified about what their conversation meant for Lissa and Sara. She wasn’t ready to digest the possibility that the girls were dead, even as her brain told her it was more than likely. But at least that made sense. Considering what was going on, Sorcha would be a pretty empty person if she wasn’t feeling all those things about Caerwyn and the job they were here to do.

But the stuff about Kiernan? Where was that coming from? They were partners. Yeah, he was hot. They’d ended up having sex. That was all fine. Sex wasn’t the best idea when they had a mission and barely knew each other. But sex was normal. Okay, the sex they were having wasn’t what she’d call normal, but still.

She tended to be picky about her lovers, mostly because of her issues with touch. Sorcha had to be honest with herself and admit that they’d been destined to end up in bed since the second she’d realized his thoughts didn’t leak into hers. Setting themselves on fire with passion? Admittedly, that wasn’t something Sorcha had ever heard of, much less experienced.

But Kiernan wasn’t hers. They didn’t have a relationship. She wouldn’t be cooking for him and they wouldn’t be going on vacations together. The domesticity of cleaning his place was just a moment in time. Not their future. As she plumped the pillows on the couch and drained another mug of coffee, ears straining for the sound of his bike in the street, Sorcha lectured herself.

Stop thinking of him as anything more than a Warder. You’re setting yourself up for a broken heart. A man like Kiernan isn’t looking to stick with one woman. And with a Shadow? No way
.

He had enough problems watching Conner’s back. He wasn’t going to set himself up for life as an exile for her. Not that she’d ask him to.

Useless thoughts chasing each other around in her head, Sorcha paced, stared out the window and drank coffee for hours. Dawn glazed the sky before Kiernan’s bike growled back onto the street. Sorcha was jittery, bored, and simmering with nerves as she watched the elevator door slide open.

Kiernan was still pissed. The ride had helped to clear his head. Now he was pissed on a rational level as opposed to the rush of rage that had hit him when he'd realized Sorcha's unconscious state was her own doing. Even hours later, the memory of waking beside her cool, still body had the power to chill his heart. He'd rolled into her, sliding his hand over her stomach to cup her full breast. He'd expected her to give a sleepy moan and arch into him. Instead, she'd lain there, unmoving. It had taken a few seconds to register her shallow breath, the lack of heat in her skin. After the blaze of their orgasm, the temperature of her skin was almost reptilian. Alien. The growing bond between them had told him very clearly that Sorcha was not in her body. Lying beside him was an empty shell.

Once he became aware of it, the imbalance in their bond was physically painful, a tug that wouldn't relent, pulling at him. Now that he knew what she'd been doing, he thought he understood. The bond had been trying to drag Kiernan into the dream with Sorcha. But no matter that the bond might affect their abilities, it didn't make him a Shadow. Or an empath. He could no more follow her into a dream walk on his own than he could fly. Given Conner's experience, he suspected they could dream walk together if she let him in. And possibly from there, she could draw him into another's dream. But on his own? No way. The physical shell of his body had contained him, stretching the bond tight with pinpricks of pain and a grating sense of loss.

The fear had been far worse than the pull of the bond. Kiernan was never afraid. Not since he'd lost his mother and sisters. He remembered the metallic, ugly taste of terror as he'd watched them sicken, one by one. Wanting to go out and try to steal money for a doctor. Afraid if he did, his family would be dead when he came back. In the end, he'd tried and failed. He got the money, but the doctor couldn't come, too busy with wealthier patients suffering the same fever. The younger of his sisters had faded away while he'd been desperately picking pockets. Maybe while he'd been running from sick house to sick house, trying to track down the doctor. His mother and oldest sister had died holding his hand, slipping from him in their fevered sleep. The moment his mother's hand had fallen limp in his, he'd lost his ability to feel fear. Fear implied caring. A connection to life beyond the day to day.

Until he'd found Sorcha, he hadn't been tied enough to anything in this life to bother with anxieties. He'd worried for Conner, but that was nothing compared to the icy shaft of terror that had gripped him when he'd understood Sorcha's body was an empty, mostly lifeless shell.

The bond had seemed like the best of all worlds. Bonding with Sorcha gave him a family, someone who belonged only to him. Who he could belong to. A future that was more than just the mission to protect humans. More than a few drinks in a bar and a faceless woman in his bed. So what if their world was falling into chaos? For the first time since he was a child, he had something for himself. And best of all, Sorcha wasn't just gorgeous and sexy as hell. She was strong. Powerful. A fighter. A Shadow. She couldn't catch a fever and die. She'd battled Vorati every day, just as he did. She'd be nearly impossible to take from him.

He'd been cocky. Waking beside her empty body was a reality check. Yeah, she was strong. Powerful. Hard to kill. But they were both the target of some bad shit. A powerful Voratus. A corrupt Director. Who knew what else those two had at their disposal. Kiernan had been berating himself for not taking better care of Sorcha, wondering how an attacker had gotten past his wards, when she'd come to. In his relief, he'd almost missed her admitting what she'd done.

None of his careful attention would do shit if she endangered herself. Worse than the enemy or bad luck taking her from him was Sorcha doing it on her own. A nagging voice in the back of his head reminded Kiernan that getting pissed and storming off wasn’t the greatest way to keep her safe. Even if his place was thoroughly warded. So they were both reckless idiots. Not a comforting thought.

The elevator door slid open to the smell of coffee. All the lights were on and Sorcha sat on his couch, watching the elevator, her expression strained. Some of his remaining anger drained away at the sight of her, safe and worried. She stood when she saw him, taking a hesitant step forward before she stopped. Kiernan pulled off his wet coat and dropped it on the kitchen counter. It was still raining outside. A stupid time to take his bike out, but when he was pissed, the bike soothed his temper.

“I’m sorry,” Sorcha said, still standing in the middle of the room.

At least she wasn’t trying to blow him off. His anger eased further, drawn off by her apology.

Twisting her fingers together, she said, “I’ve been so worried about Caerwyn, I didn’t think about what I was doing. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“How dangerous was it?” he asked.

“The dream walk? It depends,” she said. “For me, not very. I wouldn’t have tried it with just anyone. But I’ve been friends with Caerwyn since we were children.”

“I know you’re close, Sorcha. I know this has been hard on you—”

“That’s not what I meant,” she interrupted. Taking a few steps nearer to where he stood at the end of the kitchen bar, she continued. “There are a few dangers in dream walking. The riskiest part is finding the mind of the dreamer. That’s where you can get lost. Or trapped. There are a handful of people I can always find. As long as our bodies are physically close enough, I can always find Caerwyn. Before, when I was stuck in the Sanctuary, I was too far from her.”

“And if you had still been too far away?” Kiernan asked. “Would you have gotten lost trying to find her?” He couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye yet. Her voice had shaken a little, and he knew she was upset. She needed him to accept her apology. But he wasn’t sure he was ready to give it yet. Not until he better understood the risk she’d taken. If he looked in those pained green eyes he’d cave, so he stared over her shoulder and waited for her answer.

“No.” She twisted her hands in front of her. “If I were looking for someone else, a stranger, I would have tracked them the same way I was tracking Caerwyn earlier. Looking for traces. Signs. It’s imprecise, which is why it’s dangerous. In a dream walk, I don’t have to do that with Caerwyn. We used to do this all the time as children. I have a way in. Kind of like a back door. She can’t reach out to me—she doesn’t have that ability. But when we were kids, she made a special gap in her shield just for me. I was betting it was still there.”

“And if it wasn’t?” he asked.

“I would have hit a wall and never left my own body. I promise.”

“What about the other dangers? You said not finding the dreamer is the worst danger. What are the others?” Kiernan stepped behind the bar and occupied himself with making another pot of coffee.

Sorcha stayed where she was, moving only to cross her arms over her chest. “It was possible that Michael or the Voratus had set a trap on her,” she said, the words sounding like they’d been dragged from her.