“Of course it was,” she snarled. “We couldn’t let anyone else have it, could we? And then you wouldn’t stop talking about having a child, and my poor darling had to play stud to your mare. But he hated every minute of it! He told me so repeatedly!”
I digested this, my emotions tangled with anger and fury and hurt and quite a bit of confusion. “But . . . how did you know that Gareth was married to Ruth?” I asked Baltic.
“Ruth is the sister to the one who resurrected me,” he answered, glaring at her as he moved over to stand next to me.
“If you’re really married to him, then—” I glanced at Brom, and for the second time in a few minutes, rage whipped through me.
“Ouch. You know, even immortals can suffer from brain damage,” Jim said, leaning over my shoulder as I whomped Gareth’s head repeatedly into the side of the car.
“How dare you use my body! How dare you pretend you were my husband! How dare you do whatever it is you did to me just so I would make gold for you! It really was you who wiped my memory, wasn’t it? Just so I didn’t know what you and Ruth were doing to me! By the rood, I’ll hang your guts from the highest tower!”
Gareth struggled feebly, but he was no match for me. Ruth would have attacked, but Baltic grabbed her by the arm and kept her back while I took out a little of what was evidently centuries of abuse on the man who had deceived me so cruelly.
“How dare you treat Brom the way you did!”
“Uh, Sullivan? I think he’s passed out,” Brom pointed out.
I released my hold on Gareth, suddenly horrified at what I’d done. “Oh my god! I tried to kill my husband in front of my own child!”
“Ex-husband, I think,” Jim said.
“Non-husband,” Baltic corrected, releasing Ruth as I leaped to my feet and clutched Brom to my chest. “ ‘Usurper’ is a better term.”
Ruth cradled Gareth’s head as I hugged Brom tightly. “Honey, I know you must be frightened and confused by what I just did to your father—”
“Actually, I was wondering if I could kick him.”
“—and I have no excuse for it, none at all, but you know I’m not a violent person, and you must understand that I just had a very bad shock, and I lost my temper. Please, tell me you understand!”
“I understand,” Jim said, lifting its leg. “You wanted to beat the crap out of him. I think pretty much anyone would after he played nook-nook with you all that time when he was really married to Scrunchy Face, here.”
“Grah!” Ruth snarled, lunging at Jim as it peed on Gareth’s foot.
The demon bared its teeth, and Ruth collapsed back onto Gareth, patting his cheeks and sniffling to herself.
“Brom?” I asked, releasing his head. He reeled backwards for a moment, his eyes huge. “Are you all right?”
“I couldn’t breathe,” he said, giving my boobs a wary glance.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m so very, very worried that you misinterpreted the little argument your father and I had.”
“Little argument?” Jim snickered. “If you call beating someone to a pulp on the side of a car a little argument, then I don’t want to see you when you really get pissed.”
“It’s OK, Sullivan,” Brom said, patting my arm in a supportive manner. “I don’t blame you for trying to kill Gareth. If you get mad at him again, and really do bash his brains in, can I mummify him?”
“Just tell me this, Gareth,” I said, glaring down at where the man I had thought of as my husband was trying to pull himself up. “Did you ever really want Brom and me?”
He touched his swollen bottom lip, grimacing at the sight of blood on his fingers. “I wasn’t going to let you get away from me, not the goose who laid the golden eggs every year.”
My anger turned cold and settled in the pit of my gut. “So rather than let me have a life of my own, you bound me to you to ensure you could use me each year.” I glanced at Brom, wanting to yell at Gareth for bringing into the world a child he didn’t want and didn’t care about, but Brom had had enough shocks for the day. “As of this moment, you are no longer a part of our lives. I don’t want to see you again, and I will take legal action if you attempt to see Brom.”
Gareth sneered as best he could with a battered face. “I don’t give a damn about—”
Baltic moved faster than I could follow, grabbing both Ruth and Gareth and flinging them into the car. “He will not bother either of you again. You are both mine now.”
“And thank the stars for that,” I said, giving Baltic a grateful look that had him doing a double take.
“Whoa. I know what that’s going to mean,” Jim said, nudging Brom on the hip. “I think you’re going to want to look away. You’re too young to see what Baltic’s about to do.”
“You haven’t heard the last of us!” Ruth swore as she started up the car. “We will not be treated this way! You may think you can hide behind the dragon, Tully, but you are beholden to us! You are ours, not his!”
“Right, that’s it!” I yelled, suddenly furious again. I started toward the car, pushing up my sleeves. “You want a piece of me? You can have a piece of me!”
“Didn’t your mom say she wasn’t violent?” Jim asked Brom.
“Yeah.”
“You can have a piece of me right now!” I yelled, jumping toward the car door. Just as I grabbed it, Ruth, evidently thinking twice about taunting me, jammed her foot on the gas. Baltic wrapped an arm around me and lifted me off the ground, leaving me waving my fists at the car as it spun down the drive, spewing bits of gravel behind it.
“You know,” Jim said, looking thoughtfully at me as Baltic set me down, “I used to think Ash was perfect for the role of demon lord—you should see the way she pinches me, and there’s no excuse for her starving my fabulous form on those diets she keeps letting the vet talk her into—but I’m starting to think that you’ve got her on the ‘beat the bejesus out of immortals’ scale.”
“One more crack out of you, demon, and you’re going to need a whole lot more than a brushing,” I told it, giving it one of my annoyed mother looks.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Jim said to Brom.
“Yeah,” Brom said, agreeing.
“Well,” I said, all wound up after the scene with Gareth and Ruth, “Gareth had it coming to him. Using me like he did . . . the rat!”
“I would have killed him for daring to touch what was mine, but for one thing,” Baltic said.
“Brom?” I asked, figuring he would not want to kill Gareth in front of a child any more than I did.
“No.” His gaze dropped to mine, and I flushed at the sight of the naked desire burning in its depths. “Now you are truly mine.”
I didn’t even have time to digest that before he bent down, slung me over his shoulder, and walked into the house.
“Baltic!” I shrieked, Jim and Brom trailing after us. “Put me down this instant! What did I say about treating me like I was a sack of potatoes?”
Baltic paused inside the hall, and I pinched his back, assuming he had come to his senses.
“Hey, Balters, just a little hint,” Jim said, giving us a knowing look. “Aisling says she hates it when Drake gets all aggressive with her, but she sure grins like a fool afterward, so you might just want to take all that screeching with a grain of salt.”
“I am not screeching!” I said, outraged, glaring at the demon. “You are going to be so sorry—Baltic! I said set me down!”
“There you are. Take care of my son and the demon,” Baltic ordered Pavel, who emerged from the study.
“Dammit, I demand that you release me. I am not Aisling! I do not like arrogance!”
“What’s Baltic doing with Sullivan?” I heard Brom ask as Baltic leaped up the stairs, apparently not feeling my weight slung over his shoulder at all. I spent a moment admiring that fact before I slid my hands down his back and only just refrained from pinching his butt.
“You don’t wanna know. I mean, you will in
about ten years, but for now, it’s just going to mess with your head. You gotta trust me on this. Hey, who do I have to crotch-snuffle to get lunch around here? I’m starving, and my coat goes to Abaddon in a handbasket if I don’t get five proper meals a day. You got any fresh horsemeat, Pavel?”
Chapter Fourteen
“I want to give you something,” Baltic said as he closed the door to his bedroom.
“I just bet you do. I want to give you something, too—a piece of my mind. What on earth do you think you’re doing, carrying me off like you’re some sort of a primitive caveman? What will Brom think?”
“My son will understand that I wish to spend time alone with you, where I may worship every inch of your soft, delicious body, and where you will pleasure me endlessly until I am a shattered wreck of a dragon.”
I thought about that for a moment. Brom was fine with Pavel there. Jim would be watched, and Gareth, that bastard bigamist, was no longer a factor in my life. Was there any impediment to me flinging myself on Baltic and giving in to all those desires that had built up over centuries?
No, there was not! “All right,” I squealed as I suited action to thought and flung myself on him.
He wasn’t expecting that, because the weight of my body suddenly hitting him sent him staggering backwards a few steps. “Chérie, you must wait. I have something for you.”
“Oh, yes, you certainly do,” I said, nuzzling his neck as I slid my hand down his chest, and further below to stroke the length of him through his pants. He groaned, his eyes closed for a moment as I felt him growing in thickness and length.
Suddenly, he pried me off him. “Ysolde, you must wait.”
“You are kidding me!” I said, glaring at him with irate intent as he turned his back on me and strode over to a tall bureau. “You were begging me to do this yesterday, and now you don’t want me?”
“I never beg,” he scoffed, searching through a drawer of the bureau. “I am a wyvern, and your mate. I do not need to beg.”
“You want to bet?” I growled, my arms crossed and my eyes narrowed as I watched him. I knew he wasn’t indifferent to me—a simple glance at his fly negated that idea. “You were all over me yesterday. Why are you spurning me now?”
“Wyverns don’t spurn, either,” he said, his voice somewhat muffled as he squatted, his head in a deep drawer at the bottom of the bureau.
“Well, you’re sure doing something, and it is not celebrating the fact that Gareth is a lying bigamist, as you should be doing. Instead, you’re poking your head in some sort of a desk. What is it you’re doing there, Baltic? Going to write a few letters? Pay some bills? Cut up pretty pictures and make a collage? What’s that?”
He stood before me, a small wooden box in his hand. Engraved on it, in gold, were two stylized medieval-ish dragons, their necks crossed. He put the box into my hands. “It is a gift for you.”
I turned it over, examining it, my fingers sliding over the smooth, highly polished wood. “What is it?”
“Open it.”
I traced the long lines of one of the dragons on the top, and looked up at Baltic. “If it contains a wedding ring, you can just take it back. I’ve had enough of marriage, thank you.”
He made an impatient gesture. “Marriage is for mortals. You are my mate. That is for all time.”
“Till death do us part,” I said softly, then smiled. “And beyond.”
“Open it,” he repeated.
I glanced at the big bed behind me. The room was decorated in shades of cream and a cool blue—attractive, but completely not his style. “Why don’t I open it later, after I’ve given you all that pleasure you think you’re due?”
“I know I am due it,” he said with maddening arrogance, then nudged my hands. “Open your present.”
“I like to anticipate gifts. Once you open them, the anticipation is gone.”
“Open it!” he said, a little line of frown starting to form between his brows.
“Let’s have oral sex!” I said brightly, moving backwards toward the bed, patting it with a seductive glance toward him. “You like that! I remember that you do! You take off all your clothes and lie down here, and I’ll give you a tongue bath that you won’t ever forget.”
“For the love of the saints, woman, open the damned box!”
“And you say you never spurn! You just spurned my offer of a blow job, something I thought no living man could do.”
He started toward me, a look in his eye that said he’d reached the end of his pretty nonexistent patience.
“Fine!” I said quickly, crawling onto the middle of the bed while I clutched the box. “But I just want you to remember that you’re the one who didn’t want oral sex. Stop giving me that look! I’m opening it. See? The lid is . . . ahhh.”
It wasn’t really a word I spoke; it was more an exhalation of emotion. The box held a small object, somewhere between an oval and a circle, made of metal, but now dulled with age and time.
Recognition prickled along my skin as I gazed at it, waves of electricity seeming to ripple down my arms and legs. I knew this object. I knew it well, and yet it was both as familiar to me as the beat of my own heart, and foreign, something I had never seen before.
“Love token.” I spoke the words without even being aware of it. “It’s my love token. You made it for me. But how . . . ?”
“It was at Dauva, in my lair. You placed it there, along with all the valuables in the castle, before Constantine attacked. Kostya raided most of the lair, but he left that.”
So faint I could barely make it out, a roughly drawn tree was engraved into the silver token, with three upper leafy branches, and two lower ones bearing hearts.
I smiled, a faint memory returning to me. “It’s made of silver so it would not distract you when I wore it.”
He watched me closely. “You remember it, then?”
“No. Yes. Both.” I reached out to touch the token, wanting to feel it, to weigh its age in my hand, but the second my finger touched the metal surface, the world began to spin.
I cried out, feeling as if I would fall, but strong arms caught me, warm and familiar, his touch stirring the embers of desire that were always within me. The room darkened, the colors shifting from light to dark, large amber pools lit by tall standing candelabras, the light of the candles flickering and shimmering along the shadows of the room.
Figures shimmered, too, the figure of a man and a woman.
“A love token?” the woman said, smiling at the man. “For me?”
“I made it for you when I sailed from Riga to France.”
“It’s a tree,” she said, and her voice resonated within me, my lips parting to speak the next words with her. “A tree with hearts?”
“A tree because I knew it would please you. Three branches for you, me, and the sept,” Baltic then and now said, one voice slightly echoing the other.
I was pulled toward the figure of my other self as if I were made of nothing but light and shadow, hesitating a moment as I glanced back at Baltic. He nodded and I let myself merge with the memory of my former self. Baltic’s face changed as he, too, allowed himself to sink into his former being.
“And two hearts,” Ysolde and I said at the same time as we smiled up at him.
“I give you this token as a pledge of my heart,” he said, and tears pricked in my eyes at the love shining in his.
Ysolde and I kissed him, clutching the token to our chest. “It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever received. I can’t believe you made it for me.”
“You have sworn to be my mate, and for me there is no greater bond, but you were raised with mortals. I thought you would like it.”
I was so touched, both at the time, and again now, that he would go to such lengths to please me. “It couldn’t have been easy to make it,” I told my Baltic as the other Ysolde cooed happily at the token before offering him her mouth again.
The two Baltics shimmered, the image of one overlaying the other.
/> “It wasn’t. I’m no artist. I almost severed my fingers a couple of times engraving the image in it.”
“Make love to me,” I pleaded as the other Baltic scooped up my former self and carried her to the gigantic canopied bed.
Baltic glanced at the memories of us when I moved against him, sliding my hands around to his back, stroking the muscles there, and wiggling my hips in brazen invitation. “Here? With them?”
“They’re us. We’re in your bedroom. Please, Baltic. I’ve waited so long for you, and now I can have you. You wanted to claim me yesterday—well, now I’m all yours.”
“First you are aroused by the thought of males loving males; then you wished to bare your breasts to everyone with a pair of eyes in his head; and now you want to engage in mating with other people?” He bent and picked me up, carrying me to the bed with an expression that mingled irritation with desire. “We will have a long discussion about these fantasies of yours, chérie. I am willing to oblige you this once, but I warn you—you are my mate, and I have no intention of sharing you.”
He laid me down on the bed next to the other Ysolde, who was now clad in what I recognized as a thin chemise, the black- haired Baltic kneeling between her legs, slowly pushing the chemise higher and higher.
“Whoa,” I said, unable to take my eyes from them, my own emotions as conflicted as Baltic’s. “This is . . . wow. On the one hand, it feels like we’re watching two people about to make love. But it’s us. So how can it feel so very . . . oooh. . . . kinky?”
Baltic, who had been removing his clothing, glanced over at the ghostly pair before returning his attention to me. He stood next to me, his hands on his hips, his penis fully aroused and saluting me. “As I said, we will have a discussion about this at a later time.”
I looked at his groin, making a mental measurement before sliding a quick look over at the other version of him.
“What are you doing?” he asked, accusation heavy in his voice as he climbed onto the bed.
“Nothing!” I said, quickly looking back at him.