They knew from information that Carling had given them that the island was kidney-shaped and four miles long. Behind the house was an extensive vegetable garden and a path that led to a cottage that held her library.
At the other end of the island, an ancient forest of redwoods towered to the sky. The forest was where the shy, winged creatures lived, and as Carling had said when she had briefed Sebastian, there was no reason for any of their group to go to that part of the island. They would only frighten the creatures that lived among the redwoods, and their job lay elsewhere.
Two by two, the rest of the crew rose to the surface of the water to stand alongside him and Olivia and stare at the scene.
“All right,” said Sebastian after a minute. “Checking out the library is going to have to wait until morning. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We have to haul ass if we’re going to get set up before dark.”
“You heard the man,” said Bailey. She had already dragged her containers to shore and stood knee deep in the foamy swirl of water with her legs braced apart and her wetsuit partially unzipped. “Hop to it. Just remember—at the end of today’s work, we get to help ourselves to Carling’s wine cellar.” She grinned at Sebastian. “Hell, I would have taken the job for that reason alone.”
“It is an incentive,” he said. He unzipped a waterproof pouch, pulled out his sunglasses and slipped them on before any of the others could get a chance to look at his eyes.
The next several hours were filled with nonstop physical labor. Sebastian sent Tony and Derrick into the manor house first to check it out, as the rest of them hauled containers and supplies up the bluff path.
The two men came out again quickly enough. After being uninhabited for so long, the house was dusty and occupied with mice, and a few windows had broken, probably from high winds.
But there was plenty of wood stacked in the large kitchen and in woodpiles out the back, and there were fireplaces in every room, a large stockpile of beeswax candles, and also plenty of linens and blankets stored in cedar chests. All of the chimneys were sound, except for one that had some kind of blockage—probably a nest of some kind. The water pumps in the kitchen and washroom worked.
There was also a wide variety of food in sealed jars and cans that could supplement their food supplies. They had come prepared for rough conditions, but in actuality they would be staying in a great deal of comfort. Compared to some of the places Sebastian had camped in for some jobs, this would be like a stay at the Hilton.
The security team traveled back to the yacht to bring over the last of the supplies and more empty containers for the library. Carling’s library filled a cottage, and it would take several more trips to bring all of the containers over, but that was a task that could happen over time.
After bringing everything up the bluff except for their oxygen tanks, which they left wrapped in tarps at the base of the path, they took turns in the large washroom to change out of their wetsuits and leave them hanging to dry. Then they hauled wood and laid fires in fireplaces, beat mattresses and made beds, and nailed wooden planks across the broken windows.
The house was big. While they would have to take turns heating water and using the large washroom behind the kitchen, they could each have their own bedroom. The food supplies were taken to the kitchen, and the empty library containers were stacked in the great hall. As the light of day faded, they filled and lit glass and metal lanterns, and Derrick and Steve even swept the main halls clear of debris.
Finally, Bailey disappeared into the wine cellar while Dendera and Tony scrubbed the large kitchen table with hot water and soap. Olivia and Derrick laid out their supper—cheese and crackers, fresh fruit, and rotisserie chicken that had been packed in ice for the trip. Raiding the pantry, they added olives, nuts and dried fruits, and finally the tired crew members gathered at the table.
Sebastian said, “Dendera, Steve and Olivia, your jobs are in the library, so this doesn’t apply do you, but Bailey, Tony, Derrick and I will take watches at night. Tomorrow we’ll tour the island, or at least the part of the island not covered by the redwoods. Tony and Derrick, you’ll take the watch tonight.”
His people knew the drill, and they nodded, unsurprised.
Steve looked up as he stacked food on his plate and said, “Are you sure that’s necessary? There’s nobody here but us.”
“That’s not quite correct,” said Sebastian. “The only thing we know for sure is that the crossover passageway has not been guarded 24/7 since Carling left. We’ll do as Carling ordered and nobody will go into the forest. But we will maintain watches, just to be safe.”
Bailey reappeared with several dusty bottles in her arms, eyes wide with glee. As everyone in the kitchen turned to look at her, she said, “Hey, the lady wants her library, not her wine. Oh my God, look at this vintage.”
Sebastian chose not to sit at the table with the others. He leaned back against the counter, taking a break for the first time since diving off the yacht earlier that day. His headache had faded several hours ago. Now he was clearheaded and edgy. Restlessness ran underneath his skin.
Earlier he had taken a lap around the house to study the immediate terrain. The flat ocean horizon gave the illusion that this small nugget of Other land was vast and limitless, when in reality, according to Carling, when one sailed away from the island, one would somehow end up coming right back. The vegetable garden at the back of the house had long since turned into an overgrown jungle of weeds. He had walked the path to the cottage where the library was housed, then back again, while subtle whispers of magic skittered along the edges of his mind like furtive mice.
He could still feel those magic whispers, a sensation like the brush of cobwebs against his skin, although the greater distance from the cottage weakened them. Something in the library was restless too.
As Bailey wiped off the wine bottles and uncorked them, he studied each individual. The other three members of his security team, Bailey, Derrick and Tony, were having a good time. They joked with each other and made friendly overtures to Dendera, Steve and Olivia. Olivia laughed at his crew’s jokes and responded in kind. Dendera was the most reserved of the group, but she smiled at the others and at him.
Steve was different. He was a predator Wyr and a symbologist, a combination of characteristics that interested Sebastian. He smelled like some kind of canine, perhaps a coyote. Sebastian had already noted that Steve went out of his way to avoid him.
He had also noticed Steve’s friendly attitude toward Olivia on the flight, but since then the other Wyr’s attitude had done a one-eighty. After Sebastian had marked his claim on Olivia back on the deck of the yacht, Steve refused to look at Olivia, and he went out of his way to avoid her too.
Was the other man jealous? Sebastian smiled coldly. Steve didn’t have a chance with Olivia, so he could just dream on.
Sebastian’s restlessness ratcheted higher. He should eat, but he didn’t want to.
What he wanted had not left his mind all day.
He watched Olivia steadily, his patience eroding fast. She wore a soft blue cable knit sweater and jeans, and it was the sexiest outfit he had ever seen. Her breasts and hips rounded gently from a narrow waist, and her lovely, intelligent gray eyes lit with laughter as she responded to something that Bailey said.
Like Steve, she didn’t look at Sebastian either. Unlike Steve, he knew very well why she avoided his gaze. Sensual awareness shimmered in the air between them. Hell, it all but threw confetti and lit fireworks.
Flashes of what he had done to her, of what she had said to him, played in his mind.
Would you mind if I bit you?
The question had floored him. It was not just that she had been able to ask it—it was that she asked so politely. The very act had spoken volumes.
It said that she hadn’t ever had a lover drive her to bite and scratch. When you reached that level of passion, you didn’t pause to politely ask permission. At that point, permission would have already been giv
en and received.
I will take you to that place, he thought. Where no man has ever taken you before.
He said to her telepathically, Your room or mine?
She had just taken a sip of wine, and she choked and coughed while Bailey pounded her on the back. Color flushed Olivia’s face, and her gaze turned brilliant and sparkling. When she replied, even her mental voice sounded strangled. I don’t care. Either. Both?
Laughter flashed through the heat building up in his veins. It was another surprise.
We’ll start with yours, he said. Then, because he could not stay in that room full of people and pretend to be civilized, he stalked out of the kitchen.
He knew which room she had chosen. He had watched earlier as she had looked outside and carefully marked the path of the sun. Then she had picked the bedroom that would fill with early morning light. As she had disappeared inside with her pack, he claimed the room adjacent to hers. Now he slipped into her room silently, removed his sunglasses and set them on a nearby table.
He stood at the window in the darkened room and looked up at the bright spray of stars in the night sky.
The moon called to him. It always called to him.
Come dance with me, it said. Take wing and fly wild into the night.
And he always had, before now.
This time, he said to the moon, I cannot fly with you this night, for I have another with whom I will dance, and she is even lovelier than you.
And the knowledge of that was both bitter and sweet, as he let go of one thing to reach for the other.
A few minutes later, he heard her footsteps in the hall. He already knew what her footsteps sounded like, quick and light on the hardwood floor. He would recognize her step anywhere.
He turned from the window without a backward glance as she slipped through the door, and with the acute senses of a predator, he knew that she was trembling. He closed his eyes and drew in everything about her.
She gave him a wealth of sensations. Her unique feminine scent drifted delicately through the air, filled with complexity and desire. The bare vulnerability of her ragged breathing played a solo for an audience of one.
His heart, which had grown so cramped with stress, fear and anger over the last several months, expanded, and he thought, It would not be so terrible to be blind like this.
And for that one moment alone, no matter what else happened between them or how badly this might end, he would be forever grateful to her.
Then he opened his eyes again and looked his fill of her. The barest hint of moonlight in the room was enough for his still sharp vision. It followed the curve of her cheek, and gleamed in her shadowed gaze. As he watched her lick her lips, his erection grew full, hot and tight.
As she hesitated, he remembered she had a human’s senses, and he said quietly, “I’m here.”
There, that catch in her breath. He drank it down as if it were the finest wine.
Then suddenly he was angry. He was so angry, he was filled with rage. Rage at his dead enemy, rage at himself. He didn’t want this. He needed to be selfish right now, goddamn it, yet he could not exorcise regret.
“Where are your friends, and why aren’t they looking out for you?” he snapped. He stalked toward her. “What are you doing here with me? Don’t you know you have no business being with a man under a curse? How foolish can you get?”
The dark room reverberated with the lash of his anger. She stood quite still. He grabbed her by the shoulders, and only then did she move.
She lunged forward, knocking clumsily into his chest as she threw her arms around his neck and clenched him tight. “It’s okay,” she said. She sounded quiet and strong, and very sure of herself. “I’m okay. You are going to be okay.”
Astonished, he let her hold him. “You don’t know that.”
She stroked his hair. “I know that I didn’t give you permission to look out for me,” she said. “I can and will look out for myself, and I will be okay because I say so.”
He moved his hands compulsively down her back. She was exquisitely shaped, nature’s violin, playing that invisible, ineffable thing that was her spirit. He did not know that he could feel such anguish at her beauty, or such…exultation.
“You’re pulling me out of my body,” he muttered.
“Shhh,” she whispered. She cupped the back of his head and drew him down to her, and when she kissed him, their lips nestled together again just as they had that morning. He experienced a weird, sensual sort of synesthesia. Their kiss was like a hug, and as he slipped his hands underneath her sweater, the touch of his fingers was like a kiss on her warm skin.
Their bodies shifting together made a delicate, intimate sound. He drew her sweater up, and she helped him by raising her arms over her head. As he reached for her again, he discovered that her soft, round breasts were already bared for his touch. He cupped them, exploring their weight and shape. The velvet jut of her nipples pushed into his palms.
When he flicked the sensitive, delicate flesh with his thumbs, she let her head fall back as she made a muffled sound, gripped at his wrists and shuddered.
The line of her slender, exposed throat cut him loose. Control skidded away, and he turned into an animal. She cried out as he grabbed her by the waist, lifted and threw her onto the nearby bed. Then he sprang. He was on her so fast her body didn’t have time to bounce on the mattress. With rough, jerky movements he undid the fastening of her jeans and yanked them down her hips.
While he worked on undressing her, she took hold of his T-shirt and pulled, her hands shaking with urgency. He barely noticed until it restricted the movements of his arms. Then he had to pause, growling, to yank his shirt over his head. As he did so, she sat up and ran her palms down the extended length of his muscled torso to the fastening of his jeans. Her trembling fingers fumbled at the button.
He put his hands over hers and squeezed. “I’ve got it,” he muttered.
“Hurry.”
That single word, said in such an agonized whisper, sent a line of fire down his spine.
He rolled away from her and tore off his clothes. When he reached for her again, he found that she had finished kicking her jeans and panties off and was naked too.
He fell on her ravenously. The sense of her naked, curvaceous body against his sent a wave of heat over his skin. He yanked her thighs apart and felt between her legs. Under a soft tangle of short hair, her private flesh felt plump and swollen, slick with wetness, and his erection tightened until it was an actual pain. She smelled and felt like an invitation. He came down on her and positioned his cock at her drenched, fluted entrance.
Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he knew this wasn’t the way to go about doing things. He hissed, “Foreplay.”
Way to class it up, dickhead.
She gasped, “Next time.”
She pulled at his shoulders and arched her pelvis up. He threw back his head and thrust into her. Her slick passage gripped him tighter than a fist. He shook his head, growling as he trembled all over, trying to give her time to adjust to his abrupt invasion.
But then she squeezed him with her inner muscles and undulated her sexy body so that he slid out partway and then back in, and he descended completely into madness.
He grabbed her by the hair and rutted on her. She cried out and clawed at his back, trying to draw him in deeper as she lifted herself for every thrust.
“Are you going to bite me or not?” he snarled.
She bared her teeth at him. She looked as crazed as he felt. Then she twisted at her torso and sank her teeth into his biceps. She bit him so hard he felt her little teeth break the skin.
Delight suffused him, along with a fierce, feral satisfaction. Still fucking her, he slid an arm underneath her shoulders to lift her up. Then he bit her too, sinking his teeth into the hollow where her neck met her shoulder. He pumped in, and in, and she clenched her arms and legs around him as her body jerked and shuddered, and he felt her climax in a ripple of intense contrac
tions.
She brought him along with her. Bending his head to the pillow beside her head, his own climax spewed out of him convulsively. As she shivered and groaned, it pulled more of him, wave upon wave of frenzied pleasure.
Gradually they stilled, their bodies slick with sweat. Her breathing sounded in his ear, ragged gasps like shallow sobs. As he buried his face against her, she hooked an arm around his neck to hold him loosely.
She had linked her ankles together at the small of his back. He lifted his head and looked down at her. She gave him a vulnerable, luminous smile. Her expression was utterly gorgeous. When she started to open her legs to let him go, he gripped her thigh.
Her breath hitched.
He whispered against her lips, “I’m not done yet.”
Chapter Eight
He broke her wide open, until something raw and trembling and utterly new crawled out of her old, outdated skin, and it was more fierce and possessive than she had ever been before.
She watched out her window as predawn gradually lightened her bedroom. Then she curled on her side facing Sebastian. He slept stretched out on his stomach, his head half buried by pillows. Even though the room was chilly, he had pushed the blankets down to his hips.
Her gaze followed the peaks and hollows of his wide shoulders and biceps and down his muscled back. His tanned skin bore the marks she had made on him, long scratches on his back and the reddened bite mark on his arm, already fading.
She lifted the covers to look at herself. He had marked her too. Bruises dotted her hips and thighs, and the bite he had given her, at the juncture of her neck, felt tender and sensitive to the touch. But she was only human, and the marks on her body would not be as quick to fade.
She slipped a hand between her legs. She felt throbbing and sore below too. He had spent himself on her again and again, and he had wrung more climaxes out of her than she had ever thought possible. And she was fiercely glad for all of it.
She also knew what that could mean. It was possible—just barely possible—that he might be beginning to mate with her. It was too soon to know, of course. It was too soon for everything. Only time could tell if he would mate with her, or if he would pull away, or if this complete, full-blown obsession she had developed for him would turn out to be love.