There was no rush, as far as Liosh was concerned. No race to the finish line. Of course he hoped to be able to heal her completely the first time he tried but he was prepared to try again and again and again if he didn’t.
Melinda was worth waiting for.
So they were just getting to know each other, chatting about everything and nothing as she lay curled against his chest every night. Melinda loved being held and cuddled—it seemed to feed a part of her soul that had been starved since she was a young adolescent. That was fine as far as Liosh was concerned—he never got tired of touching her and holding her. He sometimes thought that even if they could never make love, their relationship would be able to survive on the strength of their connection and their mutual love of cuddling and being close.
Apparently, he and Melinda weren’t the only ones getting along, either. Only that morning Liosh had gotten a Think-me call from Vorn. He’d been sitting quietly with nothing to do while Melinda took a test in one of her classes when he had gotten the very strong feeling that someone wanted to talk to him. Knowing it must be Vorn, he had opened himself up to the call…
“Hello, Brother—how goes it?” Vorn’s mental voice was as deep and growling as his physical one. Liosh was glad to hear from his friend.
“Very well. And you?” he sent back silently. “Have you seen any sign of the Varians?”
“None on my end,” Vorn sent back. “What about yours?”
“Nothing,” Liosh told him. “Any word from Commander Sylvan?”
“Jodi and I went to the HKR building yesterday,” Vorn told him. “He said they found the weakness in Earth’s security net and are working to patch it but it may take some time yet. In the meantime, nobody has seen any more of those scaly, lizard-looking bastards.”
“Maybe they gave up on retrieving the T’lix-Kruthe,” Liosh suggested, naming the sacred artifact that the M-Switch Kindred, Chainor, had stolen back from the Varians.
“Maybe.” But Vorn had sounded doubtful. “Anyway, we just have to be vigilant and protect our charges.”
“And how is that going on your end?” Liosh had asked. “I know you and the Lady Josephine weren’t exactly getting along the last time I saw you.”
“Oh, well…we’re getting along considerably better now. We came to an…understanding.”
There was a surprising heat in Vorn’s mental voice and Liosh had gotten a quick flash of the Beast Kindred and the human female he was guarding in an extremely intimate position.
Sitting in the back of the classroom while Melinda took her test, he had uttered an involuntary exclamation of surprise.
“Goddess!”
Heads turned and the professor—who had agreed to allow Liosh to “audit” the class—glared at him. Melinda shot him a look of concern and Liosh gave a quick shake of his head, to indicate everything was fine. He also mouthed, “Apologies” to the professor as all the students went back to their tests.
Looking back down at his hands, clenched on the top of the desk he was sitting at, Liosh concentrated on his link with Vorn.
“What in the Seven Hells was that I just saw, Brother? I thought you and the Lady Josephine disliked each other. And I further thought that she was spoken for and Joined to another male.”
“They’re not Joined yet,” Vorn sent back, his mental voice sounding irritated. “They’re just engaged to be Joined. Not that the bastard deserves her!”
“Still why are you doing that with her if she is linked to another male?” Liosh asked, sending back the mental image he’d picked up from his friend. It was extremely unusual to get images and not just thoughts during a Think-me conversation. Vorn must have been thinking about it hard for him to catch it.
“Oh, you saw that, did you?” Vorn growled. “Well, yes, we have been, er…playing a bit together as Jodi puts it.”
“Playing?” Liosh frowned. “There didn’t seem to be anything playful about what I just saw. It looked extremely serious to me, Brother.”
“Don’t judge me,” Vorn sent back and it sounded as though he was frowning as well. “None of this is my fault. Jodi’s scent was driving me crazy—you know how attuned to her I am. And then it turned out that my scent was making her crazy as well—my Mating Scent, that is. Apparently my body started making it in response to certain…similarities Jodi has to females of my home world. So we were trapped in this kind of…cycle where both of our scents were making the other one more and more, er, aroused and we had to fucking do something about it or we were going to end up, well…fucking.”
“So…your body is making your Mating Scent for her?” Liosh asked, extremely surprised. If anyone had asked him, he would have said that his friend and Melinda’s big sister were completely incompatible.
But apparently Vorn’s body thought differently.
“Yes, it fucking is,” Vorn growled in his head. “And you know how it is—the Mating Scent is an involuntary biological function. I can’t shut it off and since it keeps affecting Jodi and making her hot so that she makes her scent, we can’t stop, er…playing. Not that I want to,” he added honestly. “She’s amazingly inventive with our play. Not to mention gorgeous and intelligent and sexy-as-hell—she’s a truly formidable female, Brother.”
Liosh tried to hold back a laugh.
“It sounds to me like you’re completely gone on her,” he told Vorn. “Why don’t the two of you stop ‘playing’ and get serious—Claim her, Brother. It’s clearly what you want to do.”
“I can’t.” Vorn’s mental voice was filled with frustration now. “She’s been with this idiot fiancé of hers for
