Inked Destiny

in her to redirect or cool.

The Dragon stood for other things as well. Chaos. Upheaval. Drastic change. That her magic presented itself in those terms…

His arms tightened on her. Need slammed into him, a desire transcending the physical. He took her ear lobe between his lips, pulled with tender sucks. Fierce satisfaction burned through him at having her hips cant immediately, her leg climbing over his so she could press her heated mound to his hardened cock, craving the joining of their bodies despite being submerged in sleep by utter exhaustion.

His smile dissipated as the barest disturbance in the wards surrounding the city reached him. It was a small, nearly imperceptible ripple. One he might not have noted at all if he hadn’t strengthened the magical alarm system after she and Cathal left the estate, and one, even now, that gave nothing away as to what had passed through the barrier. The disturbance was so minute it might have taken hours to ripple its way through the wards until it reached him.

The chill returned. There were assassins, the queen’s among them, who were said to be able to move through wards without triggering a warning.

Fierce protectiveness gripped him, and the spell to trap Etain in sleep rather than risk her refusing his order hovered on his lips and tingled in the fingers touched to her skin. It was madness to continue allowing her any place other than the estate or Aesirs.

Cathal could be persuaded to his side and to his view. And yet…

Eamon hesitated. His will not sufficient enough to hold the spell or direct it. The trust brought by the events of the day was too precious a thing to risk. Not only Etain’s trust, but Cathal’s, who’d left expecting to find her here when he returned, and who might well view with suspicion the claim she had to be moved.

The argument could be made that in allowing Etain to remain, he demonstrated his care for her wishes as well as Cathal’s. He had no real evidence she was in greater danger now that the rippled note of passage had reached him.

Eamon stroked the soft nape of her neck rather than trace a sigil onto it. His mouth returned to hers, swallowing sleep-murmured sounds of pleasured welcome.

His hand went to her breast, cupping its weight, her back arching with the brush of his thumb over a nipple drawn tight with the need to be suckled.

Forcing his lips from hers was a prelude to levering his body up and away from the paradise his cock sought. He caressed her lobe with his tongue, daring a shallow thrust into her ear canal then brushing his mouth against the still-rounded tip before finally managing to separate from her.

Etain whimpered in protest at the loss of his attention but didn’t wake. He left her alone only long enough to dress and retrieve the comforter from Cathal’s bed. A kiss followed his covering her with it, the light touch of lips to lips because he couldn’t bear to part from her without it.

Straightening, Eamon gathered a strand of her hair, the gold of it like captured sunshine twined around his fingers. Using words of magic, he summoned Liam, calling him through the shadows, this type of binding dangerous to his third because it could be used to trap him.

“Sire,” Liam said.

“The city wards reacted to something passing through them. I need to pinpoint the place of the breach and see what can be learned there.”

Liam glanced at the sleeping Etain. “Given the presence of the other changeling at Aesirs, I assume you want her taken to the estate.”

“She’ll remain here.”

“It’s not a choice you would have made in the past.”

Eamon heard increased concern beneath the none-too-subtle questioning of his decision, that he was being unduly influenced by his seidic intended, perhaps even altered by her uncontrolled magic. “You will better understand the desire to avoid unnecessary conflict when you meet your match.”

“An unlikely event, Lord. Made more so by what I’ve witnessed of your courtship.”

“Your time will come. For now I’ll leave you to guard Etain. In all likelihood, the ward was tripped by the arrival of a tourist possessing some small, native amount of magic, or by an artifact.”

“And if you’re wrong about what passed through the wards?”

“Do you question your ability to prevail should a would-be assassin or kidnapper come for Etain?”

“Hardly. You’ll take both Myk and Heath with you?”

“No. I’ll leave Myk outside with orders that no one except Cathal is permitted entry.”

* * *

Cathal shifted restlessly in his chair. He’d handled the most urgent items of business and prepared for the meetings he couldn’t put off tomorrow morning.

Doing anything more required a level of concentration he couldn’t find. And that lack of focus left room for scenes from the couch and the hot tub to flicker across his mental screen, heating his skin and sending molten blood to his cock.

Were they done with the lessons yet?

He grimaced, hearing in that question a kid’s voice asking “Are we there yet?”

But it was no child’s fantasy that came with a possible “yes.” Thoughts of what Etain and Eamon might be doing at the moment bombarded him. Images of them in his bed, their bodies joined.

A shaft of fire streaked through him, pooling in his balls. He clenched his fists to keep from reaching down and freeing himself, from jerking off. Jesus.

He’d rolled his sleeves up while he worked. Now he looked down at the tattoos she’d placed on his forearms. Honeysuckle and thorn she called them, an apt description encompassing sweet pleasure and sharp- tipped jealousy. The latter had abated, but in its stead had come the ambush bleeding away of confidence, the worry it would one day matter that he was only human.

He wanted to go back home. He refused to.

It stung his pride to admit that Saoirse, the club that had been his dream and sole focus for so long, couldn’t hold his interest against the craving to be with Etain.

It’ll fade into something manageable, he told himself. Not for the first time. It’s just the newness of the bond and a natural reaction to nearly losing her.

Christ. He’d nearly died himself at the shelter. If not for Eamon…

Only it wasn’t Eamon’s acts at the shelter playing out vividly in his mind. It was Eamon thrusting into Etain’s body, her back arched and breasts flushed. It was her midnight-colored eyes drawing him to her, making it impossible to care she was wet for another man, wet because of another man as he shoved into her seconds after Eamon had spent himself following the erotic display of magic.

The clench of Cathal’s buttocks drew him out of the memory, a curse escaping when he saw his hand in his lap, circling his cloth-covered erection. “Fuck.” Then fuck again, this one silent as remembering the sensation of being inside her sent a pulse of sheer need through him, forcing his hand up and down on his length.

He broke the hold of lust when pre-cum escaped, more of it leaking at remembering the way she’d made him come like someone getting his first hand job. “Jesus.”

To distract himself, he checked in with his father.

“You at home?” his father asked.

“I’m at the club.”

“I don’t like it. Whoever nearly killed you is still out there, unidentified and on the loose.” Meaning none of his father’s sources had come through with a likely suspect in the drive-by.

“Wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person. Had to be connected to what happened in Oakland.”

“Probably. I’d feel better if you let me arrange for a couple of bodyguards.”

“No.” The last thing he wanted was to give the authorities additional reasons to believe he was involved in his father’s business.

Etain’s brother and father had already convicted him. Having mafia soldiers as bodyguards would be a piece of incontrovertible evidence to them.

For Etain’s sake he didn’t want to do anything to make the situation worse than it already was. She might be