White Fire: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 5 (21 page)

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Ajax carried Emma to the shower where he stripped her and washed her beautiful body with care. She was magnificent and passionate. She made him lose his fucking mind and take her like a barbarian against the wall. And she loved it, begged him to take her over and over.

After the shower, he took her again, slowly, took his time and tasted every single inch of her before rolling her over and taking her from behind. Her sweet cries drove him wild when he lifted her back to his chest, spread her legs on either side of his knees and held her upright with his cock buried deep, one hand plucking and teasing her breast and the other mercilessly pleasuring her clit.

She’d held nothing back, reached behind her head to hold him, arching her body to give him better access and tilting her head to the side so his lips could taste and nip at her neck.

Twice he felt the rise of her Mark beneath her flesh, and twice she’d pulled it back under control. He’d told her that he didn’t want it and couldn’t accept it, and so she didn’t Mark him, didn’t claim him again.

Against all logic and good sense, he drove her body higher and harder, made her cry out and collapse in exhaustion, tried to force her to lose control, just so he could taste the sweet fire of her Mark for a few brief minutes.

But she was stronger than that. He both respected her control and wanted her all the more because of it.

But after their loving, when she curled her naked body around his to sleep, he lay awake for a very long time, for the first time in his life questioning his chosen path.

He was a King. It was who he was, who he’d been born to be. The knowledge had lived inside him for centuries and been the bedrock of his small grasp on sanity when the Triscani evil had taken him over.

But to be King was to leave Emma behind, to watch her walk away and take another Male as her Marked Mate. To give her up forever. The Itarans would never accept a human Queen. The prejudice against humans ran deep in their culture. Perhaps not so much prejudice against humans, more simply a view of themselves as a superior race, one above questions or challenges, a race of people who lived forever and ruled all who surrounded them. Their vastly superior nature was simply accepted, a fact so mundane that the Immortals gave it no more thought than eating or breathing or sleeping.

Three days ago, when he’d walked into that Portland bar, there’d been no doubt in his mind that the throne of Itara was not just his destiny, but his divine right. To discover that the thought of ruling without Emma made his inside twist into knots and his chest ache with a grinding, relentless pain, was not acceptable. To discover that the mere thought of her with another male made the darkness rise in him just as ferociously as the Triscani beast she’d burned from his flesh was a torment he was not prepared to face.

He was supposed to make his way to Itara and claim the throne, find a highly connected and powerful Itaran female to take as his bride and rescue the people on Itara from the two-thousand-year rule of a heartless and calculating Queen.

She sighed and snuggled into his chest, one small arm resting across his stomach and one of her short, adorable legs thrown over his. Asleep, she looked more like an innocent princess than a woman with a steel spine and more courage than was good for her.

Predawn light soaked into the room and he studied the soft pink of her lips, the pale curve of her cheek. When he reached her eyes they opened and she smiled at him, content and warm, the terror and heartbreak he’d seen in them the previous night gone for the moment.

“Hi.” Emma turned her head slightly and kissed his chest, right over his heart. It hurt.

“Good morning.”

“You’re up early.”

“I did not sleep.”

“What?” She lifted herself onto her elbow to look down at him, her hair a cascade of color over her shoulder and bare breasts. He tore his gaze from the sight in an attempt to behave. “Why not? Don’t you need to sleep?”

“It is a luxury, not a necessity.”

Emma kissed him, a quick hello and retreat. “Must be nice.”

“Not really.” He liked her here, in the crook of his arm. Emma’s back was pressed to his arm, her breast crushed to the side of his chest. He lifted his hand to trace the contours of her waist and hip from behind her. She was human, and he’d taken her fragile human body with single-minded hunger last night. She would need some time to recover.

Emma kissed him again, a bit longer, softer, lingering over his mouth. He tightened his grip, pulled her closer, and kissed her properly.

So much for giving her recovery time. He was a damn horny teenager, unable to control himself. She pulled away with a moan and leaned her forehead against his, staring down at him like he was her favorite treat.

He wanted this. He wanted her. He wanted that look in her eyes every single morning. Forever. Fuck the Itarans and their rules. Fuck the centuries of dogma insisting that no human could be Queen. He didn’t care, not if it meant giving her up. Not if it meant she’d wake with another male and look at him like that…

“Give me your Mark, Emma.”

She pulled back, the pale blue of her eyes wide and wary. “What?”

“Mark me.” Ajax waited, saw the confusion and pain in her eyes, and knew she was going to refuse him.

Chapter Fourteen

She shook her head and pulled back a bit farther. Her gaze searched his face like she was trying to decode a complex puzzle. “Why now? Nothing’s changed.”

He rolled over onto his side and made tracing the curve of her thigh, her hip, the soft fall of her waist and the rise along the side of her breast a slow and deliberate work of art, like a sculptor admiring his finest work. “Everything has changed.”

“No, it hasn’t. We had sex. That’s it. No strings, remember?” It took her an unusually long time to look him in the eye and the lack of emotion he saw there made his throat feel tight. He didn’t know what to do or say, where to put his hands, how to touch her. If he
should
touch her. She was shutting him down and shutting him out. In a matter of seconds she shredded his expectations and left him floundering like a fish out of water. This was not the reaction he’d expected. No female had ever refused him. Not once.

He’d anticipated drowning in heat as her Mark flowed into him, pulling her close and taking her body again. Claiming her. Keeping her, basking in the knowledge that she was his and no other male would ever touch her.

“Emma, you wanted me before. Twice. Give me your Mark now, and I vow to keep it, to treasure you, forever.”

She leaned in and kissed him on the mouth, the kiss not a precursor to more sensual exploration, more like a friend offering comfort. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Why?”

She rolled away from him and he let her go. His pride refused to grab at her like a distressed schoolboy trying to keep her in bed. He was an Immortal. A King. He didn’t beg, or ask twice. Ever.

She stood, naked and confident, so beautiful it hurt to look at her, and picked up the cream-colored robe she’d worn the day before when she’d settled herself on his lap and made him forget that his destiny was tied to another planet, another people.

When she’d pulled him down this dark and twisted path of physical pleasure beyond anything he’d ever experienced. Even Angeline, his sweet, loving Angeline, had never made him lose himself the way Emma did. Angeline had been caring and kind, docile and sweet, and when they came together in bed, the mating had felt like a pleasant homecoming, enjoyable and warm.

Emma lit his hair on fire. Literally. And he wanted more. “Where do you think you’re going? We need to talk about this, Emma.”

“No, we don’t.” She shook her head and bent down to pick up her clothes from the floor where they’d hastily discarded them on their way to the bed, and threw them into a tall bin next to her dresser. “You made your feelings on this issue perfectly clear when you refused my Mark. Twice.”

He stood and walked to her. She didn’t flinch or look away, and he was hard and ready to taste her again. It had become his nearly permanent state of being since he’d met her. “I was a fool, Emma. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to the side, considering him. “Do you still plan to return to Itara and assume throne?”

“Of course, with you as my Queen.”

The slight curve of her lip was sad. “That’s what I thought.”

“You will make a wonderful Queen.” He reached for her, but she twisted away from his arms at the last minute and backed away, shaking her head.

“No. That’s the problem, Ajax. That’s my dirty little secret, the thing I’ve never told anyone. Not my parents or Bran. No one.”

“What?”

“Your rejection hurt me, Ajax. All my life I’d been told the story of how I’d meet you, and Mark you, how we’d fall in love and rule Itara together. How being your Queen was my destiny.”

“It sounds perfect to me, Emma. Come here.”

“No.” She held up her hand so he’d let her finish talking. “When you rejected me, it stung, but then I thought about it. You did me a huge favor. I’m human. A Timewalker. The Itarans would never respect me. Every day of my life as their Queen would be a struggle for power and control. You let me off the proverbial hook when you didn’t accept my Mark. I don’t want to be Queen. I never did.”

“Then why seduce me?”

A blush crept up her cheeks and he knew he’d hit on a sensitive and very personal subject. “Because no one ever made me burn before, Ajax. I didn’t want to let that pass me by.”

“No one?”

She ignored his question and kept talking. “I was selfish and self-indulgent, and I’m sorry if I hurt you, but I didn’t want to have to wait another forty or fifty years to find someone I wanted in my bed. You’d already rejected me and refused my Mark. Casual sex seemed harmless at that point.”

“So, you do not want me, and do not want to be my Queen. What do you want?” Speaking the words was acid in his throat. Impossible. Painful. Her answer ripped open old wounds, memories of his mother speaking of similar things before they’d been found, days before his brother and sister were taken and his mother beheaded and burned. His mother had been running from her destiny as well, flitting about and fighting fate.

“I want to fall in love and not have to worry about saving the world. I want to go dancing, instead of listening to lectures on Itaran politics. I want to learn how to sail a boat because it’s fun, not because it’s a survival skill. I want to have sex on the beach and bask in the sun instead of spending my afternoons learning to throw knives. I want to live, Ajax. I don’t want billions of lives to be affected by my decisions. I want to be free.”

“Your decision is affecting them now.”

“No. It was your decision, Ajax. And when you refused my Mark, you set me free.”

At last she approached him, but he didn’t reach for her. He had no idea what to say. He couldn’t promise her any of the things she claimed she wanted. Life at Itaran court was notoriously dangerous, the ruling Circles vicious and sly. He stood before her naked, and for the first time in his life, felt like he wasn’t enough.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him before turning her head to place a chaste kiss in the center of his bare chest.

“I went into this with my eyes wide open, Ajax. I thought you did, too.”

“I did.” Oh, yes. He’d known. One time. That was all she’d asked of him. He’d made the mistake of letting her go in the first place, and then of thinking one day in her bed would be enough.

She nodded and padded her way to the bathroom. “I’m going to take a shower and make breakfast. Then we’ll join the others. We need a plan to take care of the young ones that come through the portal tonight. Nicodemus can’t keep that many people at the Darkwalker house.”

“And then what, Emma?” He stared at the door, kept his back straight and didn’t look at her.

“Then I wait for the goddess to come get me, I guess. I’ll go fry the Queen and you can have your throne.”

But I won’t have you
.

The thought was punctuated by the soft click of the latch on the bathroom door. Soon he’d have everything he thought he wanted, a clear path to the throne and the freedom to find a high-born and powerful Itaran female to be his Queen. He would finally, after seven hundred years in the dark, finally be going home. But if he’d looked down at his chest, he’d have sworn there was a hole there big enough to punch his fist through.

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Thunder shook the ground and the wind howled, the gusts strong enough that Emma had to lean into them to stay upright as she made her way to where Katherine and Mari stood, hiding from the wind behind the hulking outline of a car that stood on its end.

“What is this?” Emma yelled to be heard over the storm as a giant jolt of lightning lit the dark sky, followed by a boom of thunder that shook the ground beneath their feet. Huge drops of rain poured from the sky. Their entire party had ported out of Florida about an hour earlier, and arrived in the middle of hell on earth. It was close to midnight in the middle of nowhere Nebraska. A thunderstorm whipped the few hardy oak, willow and cottonwood trees side to side and flattened what she could see of the prairie grass and weeds.