I don't have her now. 'I wonder if that might be a blessing.' He took the case and traced away.
At the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, in a secluded villa on the beach, Kaderin lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling in misery.
She needed action, but she was forced to wait for the scrolls to update. Yes, action, or she needed sleep.
Normally, she required only about four hours in a twenty-four-hour period, and she could go for days without when pressed, but she wanted to be at one hundred percent after the Antarctica trip. She was sore from her climb—and descent—and soon she would really start to rack up the injuries.
Yet she couldn't fall asleep. Her T-shirt was too confining over her breasts and driving her crazy. She loathed sleeping with anything over her torso, but tonight she had to prepare for the possibility of company. And even the fine bedclothes in this lavish rented residence were like burlap compared to her Pratesi sheets. Worse, the bedroom was large and echoing and dark. Too dark.
Though fearless in battle, the Valkyrie often had secret weaknesses. Lucia the Archer was terrified of missing her target, since she'd been cursed to feel indescribable pain every time she did. Nïx feared foreseeing the death of a Valkyrie so much that, to this day, she never had. Regin, always the first to run screaming a war cry into the fray, was afraid of... ghosts.
And Kaderin? When alone, she had once suffered from lygophobia, the fear of dark or gloomy places, even though she could see near perfectly in the dark.
By the way she was eyeing the bathroom light switch, she apparently had the fear once more. Yet another weakness from before the blessing, rearing its ugly head. She rose to flip on the light, then returned.
The sinister Valkyrie with the nightlight—that was her.
It was uncomfortably quiet here, just as it'd been at her London flat. She'd grown used to living in her coven at Val Hall, amid the reassuring shrieks of her half-sisters and the thunder rattling the manor. All night, Valkyrie pushed in and out of the groaning oak front doors.
She turned to her side in a huff, glaring at her regular bedmate—her sword. Another huff had her back to it. She was... lonely. She still hadn't shucked his loneliness from that morning in his wretched castle.
Why not just think about him? Allow herself to mull over the vampire and be done with it?
For instance, she could contemplate why he wanted to die. Had he lost a loved one? A woman? It made sense. He was in his thirties, and would likely have been wed. If Kaderin had lost a husband, she'd probably see the appeal of becoming a hermit. She might even consider dying if she thought she could rejoin the one she loved.
But if he'd been married, then why would he seem so oddly unsure about kissing her at first? Of course, it'd been a while for him, but there was something so hesitant in his demeanor.
Then he'd quickly gotten back in the saddle.
She'd found herself thinking sometimes about his consuming kisses, reliving them and that entire morning. Worse, whenever she thought about the details of what she'd done with him, she didn't feel only shame. She recalled riding his huge shaft, and an answering wetness came between her legs. Her breasts grew swollen and achy. Her claws curled to clutch him to her.
The changes, these shifts in her personality, couldn't be explained. She believed a god or some power had blessed her with numbness. A mere spell wouldn't have lasted this long, and the Valkyrie weren't very susceptible to spells, anyway.
No, she'd been blessed by a tremendous power.
A power that could be neutralized by her attraction to a rumbling-voiced vampire?
His bottled-up ferocity had a way of calling to her own previously deadened sense of it. Perhaps that was why she was so attracted to him. Because they were alike.
But why did she have to recover desire now, when so much was on the line? Inconvenient did not begin to describe this timing. She turned to her back and skimmed her hands inside her shirt, but her palms felt too soft against her breasts. His hands had been so enticingly callused, and as hesitant in the beginning as his kisses.
Rough hands, delectably firm lips, intense eyes. Everything about him was made for decadent dreams of sex, except Kaderin didn't dream, not since the blessing.
But she did fantasize, and easily called up a memory of his muscular body. She bit her bottom lip. The truth was that there was a lot of him to like. She'd never accepted many lovers—even when she'd been a feeler—because it was hard for her to trust, and of the handful she had welcomed to her bed, she'd never had an immortal one. None had possessed even half of her strength.
The vampire was stronger than she was.
She would never sleep with him.
If he's coming, then where the hell is he?
For hours, Sebastian sifted through all the forms and paperwork in the briefcase, attempting to discern if he had wealth. But his mind was completely preoccupied.
He knew she couldn't go after another prize until the scrolls updated, so he didn't believe she'd be in danger. And yet, at sunset, he finally gave in and traced to her.
He found himself standing in a spacious bedroom, in what seemed to be a private residence. The clock said it was just after 4 A.M., which meant he was on the other side of the world. A bed sat in the center, and he traced to the foot to glance down.
His Bride was sleeping in the center of it.
Would he ever get used to tracing directly to her? The advantages of this couldn't be calculated.
His self-congratulations faded when he saw that she slept fitfully. She lay on her front, her torso bare but for her shining hair cascading down. A shirt was wadded up near her head. One slender arm stretched out to the sword that rested beside her.
A sense of unease passed over him. Did she sleep with a sword as defense against the possibility of his finding her, or was her life always as dangerous as it seemed today? If the latter, he didn't know if he could ever let her out of his sight again.
Her eyes darted behind her lids, and her pointed ear twitched as if to detect the sound of danger. Was she listening for the approaching footsteps of an enemy?
Her breaths were pants, the way young animals breathe in sleep.
Around the sword handle, her fingers curled surely, and seeing that made his chest feel tight. He could protect her if only she'd allow it.
Surprisingly, she seemed to calm in his presence, so he removed his sword belt and jacket and laid them on a nearby bench. With leisure to study her, he drank her in with his gaze. He'd never thought of a woman's back as sexy, but hers was. He wanted to clasp her slim shoulders and pull her close to kiss along the delicate indentation of her spine.
Her smooth, golden skin beckoned him. It couldn't be as soft as it looked.
She murmured something from dreams and shifted her position, turning her head to the other direction. She drew her knee up, and the sheet slid off her, exposing the small pink shorts she wore. They were pulled aside, and in the shadow he caught a stolen glimpse of her female flesh and groaned. She was blond there, too, perfect and beautiful.
Born of gods? He was confident of it.
He had to touch her there, kiss her. He'd never taken a woman with his mouth, though he'd fantasized about it often enough as a mortal man. He barely stifled a shudder of pleasure at the thought of doing it to her.
With his shaft hard as iron, he reached forward...
17
No, Kaderin didn't dream, not since the blessing, so even in sleep, she was confused about why she dreamed the vampire was nudging her legs apart.
Of course, it's a dream. A wicked one. I'd never sleep through a vampire's presence.
She allowed the dream vampire to continue touching her, seduced by his ragged breaths as he skimmed his fingers up her inner thighs, his hands shaking. In her dream, they were hot, one covering her ass, the other tugging
