An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
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Subtle Destiny ISBN 9781419915437 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Subtle Destiny Copyright © 2008 Beth Kery Edited by Ann Leveille. Photography and cover art by Les Byerley. Electronic book Publication May 2008 With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502. Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/) This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.
SUBTLE DESTINY Beth Kery
Dedication To my family, who have always been there for me through thick and thin.
Trademarks Acknowledgment The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Macy’s: Macy’s Department Stores, Inc.
So there may well be in existence a creature endowed with a rational spirit and a corporeity less gross, more subtle than man’s. For the incubus, by reason of his rational mind and immortal spirit, is equal to man; and by reason of his body, more noble, because more subtle, so he is more perfect and more dignified than man. Consequently, when having intercourse with an incubus, man does not degrade, but rather dignifies, his nature. They (incubi) practice perfect coition and sometimes beget. Incubi, from their nature, may be well be styled Sons of God. It is clear that (incubi) are neither evil Demons nor Good Angels. …the children thus begotten by incubi are tall, very hardy and bloodily bold…It is generally a fact that men thus begotten (by incubi )excel other men, yet such superiority is not always shown by their vices, but sometimes by their bravery, and even their virtues. —Lodovico Maria Sinistrari, Demoniality The Watchers were ‘a specific race of…beings known in Hebrew as nun resh, meaning ‘those who watch’ or ‘those who are awake.’ —Andrew Collins, From the Ashes of Angels—The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race “The sons of gods saw the daughters of men that they were fair…” —Genesis 6:2a
Beth Kery
Glossary Dionytion Ceremony: The Watcher celebration that occurs when a mate in her new incarnation reaches her Second Change and thus can be reunited with her Watcher lover. Dionytion Stone: An ancient, columnar stone that is a tool for raising the vibratory rate of subtle energies. Watchers use it to amplify the power of a mate’s Rush in the Dionytion Ceremony. Druaga: The ancient line of priestesses who were identified at birth as being able to wield power in the subtle realms and then trained for that specific purpose. It was only women such as the Druaga who were able to successfully mate with the mysterious Watcher fathers. First Change: This is the change in a female human’s subtle and physical bodies that equates with what humans would call puberty. Grigori Council: The Watcher ruling body consisting of the king and five other Watchers who have been chosen and tested for their degree of wisdom and strength. Leman: A human female, not powerful enough to be a true mate but still having the sexual power to feed and empower a Watcher to a greater degree than typical women. Rush: The burst of rarified subtle energy provided by a human female’s orgasm. A Rush is essentially Watcher food, their sustenance for existence in the physical world. Second Change: The refinement of a woman’s subtle bodies that occurs when she is in her thirties or forties. The Second Change is too subtle for humans to acknowledge it physically but it is this change that signals that a female human is sexually viable to a Watcher and thus able to perpetuate their species. Sigil: Every Watcher possesses a generally known sigil, or symbol, that connotes him and him alone, in addition to a private one, which he reveals only to those he trusts and loves. This symbol is placed above the right breast of the Watcher mates. Subtle Bodies: Generally speaking, any of the several energy bodies, all of which are more rare or subtle than the physical body but which permeate it and act as the template for the flesh. Truest Image: This is the Watcher’s most genuine form, the one he takes when he is on the Astral Plane, but also at various times in the physical world, such as during his sexual climax, when he takes the Path of Sorrow or during special ceremonies. To see a Watcher in his Truest form can be potentially fatal because of the power and purity of the energy. Only a true mate can witness her lover’s Truest Image. Also known as “Truest Self”. Truest Self: Also known as “Truest Image”.
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Prologue The flames flickered sensually against the velvet blackness of the night, their sinuous movement mesmerizing him for a brief moment. Tiny sparks that danced around the popping fire seemed to temporarily morph into rapidly vibrating creatures of light. Bale Ammadon, the king of the magical race of beings called Watchers, blinked when the old crone addressed him from where she stood in the center of the circle of stones. His eyes stayed on her only briefly before they flickered inevitably to the masked, white-robed woman who stood by her side. “Ye did well to come so quickly, King.” Bale’s lips twitched. “I wouldn’t dream of dallying when I’ve been summoned by none less than the high Druagish priestess.” “And her heir,” the crone said coldly. Bale lowered his head in a gesture of obeisance. “I will be in her service for an eternity,” he murmured softly, his eyes never leaving the eyeholes of the masked young woman. “Do ye know why ye’ve been called here tonight?” “I can guess. My people have an instinctual understanding of such matters.” The old Druaga regarded him stonily for a long moment. “Ye know then that ye’ve been surpassed by another? That yer position as leader of the Watchers must be forfeited?” Bale noticed the rising tension in the lithesome body of the young priestess who stood by the crone’s side. “Yes. Though I’ve come upon this realization slowly, I would have acted very soon if you hadn’t done so before me.” “And does yer wisdom also tell ye the name of the new king?” “It does.” “What is his true name?” the priestess intoned. “Shax.” The flames leapt and popped fiercely in the silence that followed. “Yes. That is the name that my apprentice and I have learned from the faeries. There is another secret in regard to this Watcher—he who is usually the one to divine the secrets of others.”
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Bale nodded. “Yes. I too have come to understand that only he, with the assistance of another—Che, my cousin whose true name is Alloces, has the potential to utterly conquer our enemy, Asmoday.” “Ye perhaps have the most powerful reason to seek vengeance against Asmoday. Ye grant the right to another so easily, eh?” the old woman asked with sly, glittering eyes. His temper flared hotly at the provocation. A quick flickering gaze toward the young priestess cooled it almost immediately. “Then relinquishing my title as leader of the Watchers to Shax will only ensure my vindication,” Bale replied evenly. The old Druaga dredged his depths with her sharp eyes then nodded her head, satisfied. “The Watchers have been fortunate in having yer wisdom at their disposal for so long. Yer service will never be forgotten. But no, the reason that ye mention is not the other secret that we have learned from the faeries. They have given us another prophecy… A long-awaited one.” Bale’s dark eyebrows rose as he glanced in inquiry between the crone and her nubile apprentice, the latter of whom was none other than his life mate, the other half of his spiritual template—Helen. “The faeries tell us that the new king and his mate will bear a child together,” Maerda stated baldly. “And this child, King Ammadon, will one day take my apprentice’s place as the chief priestess of the Druaga. Through the new king’s child the ancient sisterhood of the Druaga will once again be a powerful force to be reckoned with on this planet…and the Watchers will finally know their first mother.” The old woman’s weathered face cracked into a wide smile when she saw Bale Ammadon’s usually stony expression transform into one of incredulity and dawning hope.
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Chapter One Nix left his nanny sitting on the front stoop and raced Skylar’s car down the length of their yard, his long, thin legs pumping faster and faster the closer he reached the imaginary finish line. Despite the eleven years that Skylar’d had to get used to Nix’s unusually large size, she still had to blink once to clear her vision as she watched him race across the yard. Just eleven years old and he already looked like a teenager. Just the thought of Nix hitting puberty made a tendril of panic unfurl in her belly. How was Skylar going to handle that without Duse? Their son was part Watcher, after all. Wouldn’t that mean that girls—even grown women—would be lining up on her doorstep? She really needed to talk to Helen Ammadon about how in the hell she should teach a part-Watcher child about sexual abstinence and safe sex when his father’s race literally couldn’t survive in the physical world without a human female’s sexual response. Nature and millennia of practice had made the Watchers shockingly adept at getting it in abundance. Of course it didn’t hurt their race’s survival that every Watcher in existence looked like a flesh-and-blood god. Nix possessed all the promise of fulfilling that part of his genetic inheritance as well. Little hypocritical don’t you think, for you to be thinking about preaching sexual morality to your son, considering where you’re going right now? a sly voice said in her head. She forced her facial muscles to relax when she registered her self-criticism. Ridiculous. As if her weekly appointment at the rented apartment in Wicker Park had anything to do with sex. True, her behavior had the same quality of compulsion and secrecy that some people might ascribe to a sex addiction. Her desperation just grew and grew as the week progressed. By the time Thursday afternoon came around Skylar was nearly out of her mind with an encroaching darkness. One day it would overwhelm her. But not now. Now, Nix needed her. For now she would cope. For now she would get by…no matter how narrowly. No, she’d never received a hint of pleasure from her Thursday night excursions. Her desire had never been to bring herself satisfaction. It was to inflict pain, to punish, to beat her rebellious emotions into accepting submission. Skylar grinned widely when Nix reached the boundaries of their yard, strained to an abrupt halt and finally pitched forward onto his hands. He never broke eye contact with her. His cerulean eyes—so like Duse’s—sparkled in merriment beneath a long fringe of dark brown hair. He looked so happy.
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But how could she really trust that he was what he seemed? He’d been devastated following Duse’s death. Although her son had demonstrated much of the resiliency of youth in the year following his father’s murder, lately Skylar had begun to wonder. She’d increasingly been hearing him talking to himself in his room since they’d moved to Chicago. When she’d ask Nix about it he’d shrugged it off and changed the subject. Skylar had begun to suspect that he had an imaginary friend. But wasn’t eleven a little old for something like that to be happening? She’d read that such fantasies weren’t unusual or even unhealthy for children. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder how much Nix’s fantasy friend served to fill the gaping hole caused by his father’s absence. Just for a fraction of a second Nix’s stare seemed to penetrate right through her. Her heart squeezed guiltily in her chest. God, Nix was half-Watcher. What if he could divine her secrets just like— She forced herself to smile brightly as she beeped the horn twice. She stilled her rising panic by repeatedly telling herself that of course Nix didn’t know her secrets. It was just that her son’s eyes reminded her so much of…Duse. Yes. That must be it. Why did she feel like she was in a near panic? Just look at her life. The quiet urban street lined with mature oaks and maples and handsomely restored Victorians practically screamed of normalcy. Their existence was downright mundane—definitely the opposite of what their life had been like being the mate and son of a Watcher. Skylar took comfort in their routine—school, her nursery, Friday night pizza, Saturday baseball games in Lincoln Park during the summer, taking Nix and his friends to the movies or to a museum or to the video arcade on a Sunday. As she enumerated all the predictable, unexceptional, thoroughly loved parts of the life her heartbeat began to slow. Of course by the time she entered the empty Wicker Park apartment it had escalated again. She feared this meeting as much as she craved it. After the last time she’d begun to wonder at her judgment. Ray had been so avid in his attentions to her, perhaps too avid. Then he’d suddenly bolted out of the apartment like he was being chased by a swarm of bees. One glance around the luxurious yet sterile apartment told her that Ray wasn’t there as of yet. He always set his duffle bag on the table in front of the couch. Even though he didn’t smoke once she arrived, Skylar usually could smell either the stale odor of last week’s smoke or the fresh one that warned her of his presence. The apartment was never aired, sitting unoccupied as it was except for the hour or so that she and Ray spent there every week. Skylar suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe in the closed-off, oppressive, tainted atmosphere. The patio doors croaked in protest when she pried them open. She carefully rearranged the privacy sheers. She would shut the door again when Ray arrived. Some secrets needed to be sealed away tightly.
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Her muscles went rigid but she relaxed them again out of habit—just like Ray had taught her to do—when she heard the key in the lock. Within a second, though, her tension had mounted to alarm. “Whoa. It’s okay. I’m Ray’s replacement.” “Replacement?” Skylar asked flatly. She backed toward the patio doors. They were on the third floor. She’d probably live if she jumped off the balcony, right? At least she’d end up out on a fairly busy city street, with plenty of cars and people, even if she did have multiple broken bones. That was better than being raped and killed by a stranger, leaving Nix a traumatized orphan. Her rapid train of catastrophic thought ceased when she realized that while the man had closed the front door, his lean body tilted back nonthreateningly instead of aggressively toward her. “He left you a message on your cell phone saying that he wouldn’t be here,” he said in a deep voice. She started toward the patio doors when he moved to the right. He stopped abruptly, palms in the air. He pointed down at her purse, still keeping his hands exposed. “Isn’t your cell in there? I’ll toss it to you.” Skylar nodded once, mutely. She almost dropped the phone when he threw it to her in a slow, graceful arc. Her eyes stayed fixed on him warily as she hit the button to retrieve messages. Sure enough, there was a terse message from Ray saying that he was leaving town and would no longer be able to service her account. There was also a message from Marsha, who worked at CP, apologizing for the late notice of Ray’s absence. She went on to assure Skylar that Cal Richmond could more than see to her needs. Something about Marsha’s warm, professional manner, as though she were informing Skylar of the loss of her regular masseuse or her usual physician instead of something far more illicit, made Skylar blush richly. Or maybe it was the stranger’s steady gray-eyed stare that did that. She hit the disconnect button as she slowly lowered her phone. “You’re Cal?” she asked hoarsely. He nodded once. An uncomfortable silence followed. At least it was uncomfortable for her. Cal seemed completely at ease as he inspected her from across the room, arms crossed casually across his lean torso and thighs slightly spread. “This is a little awkward,” she said so quietly it was almost a whisper. His arms fell and he shifted his hips. “What did you and Ray do to break the ice?” “He said it would be best if we…you know…just began.” He gave a small shrug. “Why don’t you go ahead and get undressed then?” Her heartbeat hammered loudly in her ears in the silence that followed. Despite the fact that she no longer thought the situation warranted jumping off the balcony, she still inched toward the patio door when he took a few steps toward her. He immediately
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stopped when he saw. One brow quirked upward but the rest of his face remained impassive. “Is something wrong?” “What do you mean get undressed? Ray let me just raise my skirt.” His light eyes compelled her not to look away. He reminded of her of someone— who was it? Was it Duse’s cousin, Che Ammadon? It must be the light brown hair mixed with burnished strands of gold, even though Cal’s was clipped short while Che wore his long. But although Cal easily topped six feet and had a rangy, lean build, he hardly reached the height or proportions of a Watcher. “I’ll do things differently than Ray, Skylar.” She paused uncertainly at the sound of him saying her name. “I refuse to take all of my clothes off!” she finally exploded once she regained her composure. “I’ll give you want you need. But I call the shots. Understood?” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts defensively. “I want someone different than you.” “Why?” he asked, seeming only vaguely interested as he glanced around the apartment. She just stared at him mutinously. What could she say? That he was too attractive for the job at hand, too young, too calm, too knowing? “I’ll call Marsha and ask for her to send someone older.” “She won’t be able to do that, Skylar.” “Why not?” she demanded. “Because I said so. And I’m the new owner of CP. Are you going to take off your clothes or not? I haven’t got all night.” Her eyes rounded at that. The new owner? Skylar couldn’t help but inspect him again, this time with more curiosity than caution. What kind of a person would buy a business like Corporal Pleasures? He certainly didn’t look the type, but then again she wasn’t precisely sure what the type was. Most people wouldn’t guess that she looked like the type to pay someone to spank her. She considered walking out the door then and there but her need and guilt tore at her insides with what felt like angry, demanding claws. There was only one way to subdue it. She knew from experience. She kept her eyes cautiously on him as she kicked off her pumps and unzipped her skirt. Her hands shook as she unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it over the back of a chair. She hesitated for a moment before she unfastened her bra. But then she took note of his cool, steady stare. Her chin rose defiantly as she added the bra along with her panties and thigh highs to the pile of clothes.
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“Come over to me,” Cal said quietly when she’d finished. She experienced a sense of dissociation as she complied, like she was watching the scene calmly from a distance. What she was doing was not only mad but clearly selfdestructive. Her acknowledgment didn’t faze her in the slightest. He didn’t move for a few seconds after she stopped a foot away from him. Then he reached up and touched the elaborate design above her left breast. Skylar trembled but she didn’t flinch. “This is beautiful.” Her nostrils flared. His tone had sounded both amused and awed at once. The paradox confused her. She didn’t reply, not trusting her voice. “What is it?” His hand dropped but his gaze remained, feeling like a palpable touch on her breast. She shifted restlessly beneath his stare. Of course she would never consider telling a human about the intricacies of Watcher ways or what it meant to be a Watcher mate. No, her hesitation didn’t stem from that. Her temporary muteness came from the wretched reminder that the sigil she wore was no longer Duse’s. That had faded the second Duse died. Bale Ammadon, Duse’s older brother and the leader of the Watchers, had told her that he had magically applied the one she wore currently in order to protect her during the senseless, grief-wracked days following her husband’s death. The truth of the matter weighed on her like a stone in her chest cavity. “Haven’t you ever seen a tattoo before?” she asked coldly. For a fraction of a second his light gray eyes resembled pale mirrors. She didn’t care for the reflection she imagined she saw there. He grasped her naked hips. His touch felt neither gentle nor rough, just sure. He urged her to turn around. “Bend over,” he ordered. “Grab your ankles.” Skylar’s eyes clenched shut in both humiliation and anticipation as she did his bidding. She felt his big hand skim lightly across her thigh and then her right ass cheek. A shiver raced through her flesh. She braced herself. Her heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears. “Stay still,” she heard him mutter in a low growl. She jumped. Instead of the brisk spanking she’d expected she felt him smooth something cool over one buttock. “I said to stay still.” “What the hell are you doing?” she gasped as she struggled to stand. But he held her down firmly with his forearm while he continued to rub the emollient into her flesh. It must have been no more than fifteen seconds later that he let go of her but it felt like an eternity to Skylar. “Get dressed,” Cal said evenly when she finally stood and swung around to face him, eyes blazing. 13
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She grabbed all of her clothing and stumbled into the powder room to dress, too outraged and humiliated to speak. When she came out a minute later she’d donned a brittle sort of emotional armor in addition to her clothing. Cal waited her for her patiently, his arms spread along the back of the couch, one long leg bent with the ankle resting above the knee of the opposite leg. It was a thoroughly masculine, relaxed pose. Skylar couldn’t say why it infuriated her so much. “Sit down,” he said. “I didn’t come here to be pawed.” “I know damn well why you came here.” Skylar blinked. She hadn’t been prepared for his anger. He’d been so cold and impassive since he walked through the door…even while he’d been touching her so intimately. “Sit down, Skylar.” Did she detect a hint of regret in his deep voice? She lowered herself slowly to a chair several feet away from him. For a second neither spoke as they watched each other like two animals circling. “Why did you do that?” she finally blurted out. “You’re bruised. That man—Ray—he actually put welts on you.” Skylar avoided his piercing stare by glancing toward the patio doors. “So? He usually doesn’t. I am asking to be punished. It goes along with the territory, doesn’t it?” “Skylar, look at me.” He waited until she’d dragged her eyes over slowly to meet his. “You’re wrong. He was supposed to be spanking you, not beating you. Why would you allow him to do that?” “You have a lot of nerve asking me that when you’ve just bought a business that specializes in administering corporal punishment, don’t you think?” she asked sarcastically as she began to stand. “Sit down.” Her emotions bubbled dangerously near the surface but she didn’t race for the door like she’d planned. His eyes seemed to freeze her in place. “Go to hell,” she said in a low, trembling voice. “Too late. I already live there.” Skylar’s mouth fell open at his tense proclamation and the disturbing, potent energy that seemed to surge in the air between them. “Now let’s get a couple things straight, lady. If you want to be spanked, fine. I’m your man. But I don’t get my jollies out of beating a woman, even when said woman is begging for it. Or maybe I should say especially then.” “You bastard, I—”
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“Quiet. Let me finish. Come here next week at the same time and I’ll give you what you need. I put something on you that should help you to heal. You should be all right by then.” Skylar wanted to yell at him loud enough to pierce through both his eardrums and his impenetrable coldness at once. She couldn’t possibly endure a whole additional week without being punished for her sins and even worse, her monstrous desires. “You don’t know what I need! I don’t want to take off all of my clothes in front of you. This isn’t supposed to be sexual. Ray knew that.” Cal inspected his fingernails indifferently. “Spankers have different habits and ways, that’s true. Surely you did a little research into it before you agreed to do business with CP. Some just administer the punishment and keep the whole act separate from sex.” His piercing gaze lanced into her abruptly. “But don’t kid yourself that it’s not sexual, Skylar.” “If you try to touch me aside from doing the job, I’ll make you regret it.” His eyes glittered as he sat forward. “Fine. But there will be several differences in being spanked by me instead of Ray.” Her pulse leapt wildly at her neck. “What differences?” “One, I’ll never leave you marked like he did. Two, you’ll always take off every stitch of clothing for your punishment, unless I specify differently. And three, even though I won’t touch you except to punish you, I’ll become aroused doing it. If that disgusts you then I’m sorry. I’ll try to diminish your awareness of it. But I can’t change it. It’s just a fact of life.” Skylar was floored by how calmly he said it. She gave a bark of disbelieving laughter. “You’re bloody mad.” He shrugged. “I’m just being realistic. I wouldn’t say the same to most women. But you’re very beautiful. Spanking you is going to be exceptionally arousing.” “You’re never going to know one way or another, asshole,” she said scathingly as she turned and headed toward the door. “I’ll know every little detail about spanking you. I’m going to make your ass burn and take away some of your ache, even if it’s only for a little while. I’m just being honest by saying that I’m going to love every minute of it, that’s all. I’ll see you next Thursday, Skylar.” She threw him one last look of undiluted disdain before she slammed the door behind her.
***** Of course, she regretted her glares of haughty disgust when she slunk into the Wicker Park apartment a week later, her proverbial tail between her legs. She hated herself for her weakness. She hated herself, period. 15
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God, how low was she going to sink before she mastered her desires? She immediately knew Cal was already there. He didn’t require smoke to herald his presence like Ray did. Cal himself seemed to smolder and burn. He sat once again on the couch. Skylar glanced over him warily as she shut the door, taking note of the faded jeans that shadowed his lean, hard body and the simple dark blue t-shirt. “Hello.” “What? No ‘I told you I’d see you next week’? No ‘I told you that you wouldn’t be able to live without my know-it-all presence’?” Skylar asked darkly as she tossed her purse onto the chair. He studied her through narrowed eyelids, taking note of her pallor, the thinness of her wrists and waist, the shadows beneath her eyes, the tightness of her delicate facial features. Damn it all to Hades. How long before she broke under the weight of the pressure? “I’ll leave the nasty recriminations to you, Skylar. Obviously you’re the expert at them. Since you don’t seem like you’re in the mood to chat—or even to offer a polite hello for that matter—why don’t you go ahead and get undressed? I’ll inspect your backside first, to see if you’ve healed.” “I’ve healed,” she muttered irritably, already unbuttoning her blouse. “I don’t know what that stuff was that you put on me but you ought to patent it.” Skylar was a healer by nature. She wanted to question him about the emollient. Stronger impulses than intellectual curiosity were controlling her behavior this evening, however. She moved quickly as she undressed. Her desperation had reached the breaking point. She’d managed to hold out calling CP’s number to request an early meeting but only just. She’d become increasingly nervous and agitated as the week progressed. She’d slept a total of four hours during the past two nights. “Come over to me,” he said quietly when she peeled off her last thigh high and tossed it on the pile with the rest of her clothing. Her eyes looked enormous in her face as she neared him. “Turn on that lamp, please.” His eyes flickered to the end of the couch as he watched her. “Lie across my lap so I can make sure you’re okay.” Skylar held her breath as she draped her body across his hard thighs. She released a shaky gasp when he caressed her hip softly. “Your skin…it’s extraordinary. I suppose you’ve heard that plenty of times before.” Skylar clenched her eyes shut. Men had said similar things to her many times in the past but Duse was the only one that this man’s gruff compliment called to mind. It didn’t matter, she told herself. None of that mattered now. Nothing counted but Nix and the need to keep going for him, the necessity to keep living when she felt dead inside. And the part that felt far from dead? 16
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She’d master that, as well. She moved willingly when he readjusted her with a light touch until she was aligned over his lap, the side of her naked torso pressed into his midriff. The lower curve of her breasts ghosted the outer part of his leg. Over-the-knee spanking was alarmingly intimate. Ray had insisted upon it as part of her punishment but Skylar would have preferred just to bend over for him. Yet she’d never experienced anywhere near the alarm she felt with Ray doing it over the knee as she did presently with Cal. She felt his heat and his energies soak unerringly into her subtle essences, as if she were an ice cube that had just been submerged in a pool of bubbling hot water. The sensation terrified her a little. This whole arrangement was supposed to make her feel less, not more. He put his hands on both cheeks and separated her flesh for his gaze. “Don’t!” she cried out in shock. He released her but his right hand stayed on her bottom. “I was just checking to see that you were fully healed. You are. Are you ready to begin?” Skylar nodded. She moaned uncontrollably when she felt him gently grab a portion of her hair at the nape of her neck with his hand, subtly turning her face so that it stayed pressed into the couch, effectively blinding her and keeping her immobile at once. That simple, dominant gesture had a shocking effect on her. Liquid desire surged through her pussy like magma flowing inside a volcano long thought to be extinct. She opened her mouth to protest but Cal effectively silenced her by giving her a healthy crack on her left buttock, quickly following with a stinging slap to the right. Skylar felt her cheeks flush hotly as her blood vessels opened—not just in her facial and ass cheeks but in other parts of her body that she’d rather ignore right now. Better to focus on the sensation of Cal briskly spanking her bottom. She was here to be punished, after all. “Is this what you wanted, Skylar?” he asked gruffly several minutes later. He paused in his spanking. His big hand lightly massaged her burning ass, soothing the screaming nerve endings, readying them for further punishment. Skylar squirmed in his lap, finding his caress to be infinitely more unbearable than his brisk spanking had been. She stilled when he swatted her. The cracking sound of flesh against flesh reverberated like a firework in the quiet room. “Hold still.” Skylar clenched her eyes shut and pressed her face into the couch. She bit her lip to prevent herself from moaning as he resumed rubbing her stinging bottom with his hand. “I asked you a question.”
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“Yes,” Skylar lied. Cal’s spanking was masterful but not necessarily in the way she wanted. True, relief surged through her but so did desire, and to feel aroused was the last thing on her agenda. Her sex swelled and throbbed. This definitely had never been a part of the experience with Ray. She was doing her utmost not to notice the growing pressure and heat of Cal’s reciprocal arousal next to the side of her naked body but it was quickly becoming impossible to ignore. She was so caught up in her awareness of every point of contact between their flesh that it took her a moment to realize how still Cal had gone, as though his consciousness searched meticulously through her secrets like a bright, relentless spotlight. “Stand up, Skylar.” She almost fell in her hasty efforts to separate herself from him. The glint of amusement in his gray eyes told her that he’d noticed. “Go bend over the chair.” He didn’t move from the couch as he watched her follow his order. After a few tense moments he stood and came up behind her. “Spread your legs.” He gave her inner thigh a gentle slap. Skylar complied quickly, spreading her thighs, sending her tailbone higher and leaning down further over the chair. She glanced around uncertainly when Cal didn’t move or speak. Christ, was her arousal entirely obvious in this vulnerable position? “What?” she asked when she saw the glazed expression in his gray eyes. “Where did you learn to do that?” “Do what?” Skylar mumbled, confused. Cal’s eyes flickered up to her face but he didn’t answer. She watched him as he picked up a nylon bag with a drawstring and draw out a long piece of black cloth. “What are you doing?” she asked anxiously as he approached her from the side. “Blindfolding you.” Skylar felt a little dizzy with a strange combination of fear, anxiety and arousal as he tied the cloth securely at the back of her head. Her senses of hearing and touch became exquisitely peaked in the seconds that followed as he moved behind her. She was so tense with expectation that she gasped when Cal placed his hand on her lower buttock. “I’m not going to go easy on you this time. Are you ready?” She nodded. “Good. Brace yourself.” Skylar whimpered as he cracked off the first and second spanks. He wasn’t kidding—he wasn’t going easy on her. She licked her upper lip nervously, tasting the sweat that had begun to bead upon it. “You can take it,” Cal said softly after another brisk slap. Instead of drawing his hand away he ground it into the firm flesh and circled, alleviating the sting. “You have to, Skylar. There will be fifteen more just like that one. Count them off.” 18
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“One,” Skylar began shakily as her bottom trembled slightly from Cal’s popping palm. She was glad he’d told her to count. It felt better, like she had a measure of control. At “five”, however, her anxiety escalated again when there was a pause and she heard the distinct sound of him unbuckling his belt. “Cal…” “Shhh. It’ll be okay,” he said in a low, desire-hoarsened voice. “I told you it would happen, Skylar. You’re very beautiful. There aren’t many men alive on the face of the Earth who could resist you under these circumstances. You got lucky before because Ray was one of them. And so am I. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not turned on by this. I’m really not even interested in trying to control the urge. So deal with it. Think about something else. If you can.” She moaned unevenly as he spanked her briskly again. When she forgot to count because she was so busy wondering if he actually had the nerve to touch himself while she paid him to punish her he spanked her hard enough to make her yelp. “Focus, Skylar. On your spanking. Start again at number five.” Skylar counted. She squeezed her eyelids tightly together beneath the blindfold. Part of her stood back in disbelief that she wasn’t protesting stridently. Her secret mission to punish and humiliate herself was strange enough, but to allow this was downright bizarre. By the Cal reached fifteen, her thighs were quivering and her bottom felt like it was on fire. She recognized some of the signs of relief that came from having endured a good spanking—a surge of adrenaline and euphoria, a lessening of her anxiety, as if the two-hundred-pound weight she’d been carrying around for the past two years had just been gloriously decreased by one hundred and fifty pounds. Cal rubbed her bottom intimately as she tried to catch her breath. The entire time she’d been hyper-focused on any sounds that were indicative of him jerking off but they had been glaringly absent. The only sounds that had filled the quiet room were her breathless counting, the cracking noises of Cal’s hand striking her butt and her own whimpers and moans, most of which, much to her shame, were not in reaction to pain or discomfort at all. “You did well,” he said quietly as he continued to soothe her bottom. “You’re feeling a little better, aren’t you?” Skylar’s chin came over her shoulder. “How do you know that?” “Your body language. Some of the tension is leaving your muscles. Or should I say that a certain type of tension is leaving?” Skylar held her breath when his fingers brushed less than a half inch from her damp sex. “Another type is quickly taking its place.” “Don’t confuse your needs with mine, Cal.”
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She was surprised when he reacted to her icy sarcasm by laughing. It was a deep, masculine rumble that Skylar suddenly wished fervently that she would never hear again. She felt his fingers on the blindfold and was suddenly blinking in the dim light. “Go ahead. Stand up. The coast is clear.” The humor in his voice made her hesitate when she realized to what he’d likely been referring. Her eyes flickered over him nervously—but no, although his t-shirt was untucked the fly of his jeans was thoroughly buttoned. He actually smiled when he noticed the path of her gaze. She just glared back at him. “You’re getting what you need, Skylar. I can’t imagine why you’re still in such a foul mood.” Cal paused as he considered her closely. “I think maybe a good paddling is in order.” Her buttocks clenched at the news. Her hands instinctively went back to cover her bottom protectively. It felt hot and tight beneath her fingertips. “Go over to my bag and get my paddle.” Skylar harried her bottom lip with her front teeth as their gazes clung. When his right eyebrow drew up expectantly she went over to the bag. It wasn’t difficult to locate the paddle. It was about two feet long including the handle and two inches wide. The wood was varnished into a smooth, dark walnut color. Her hand trembled slightly as she inspected it. She turned to go back to Cal but he halted her. “Wait. Bring me another velvet bag.” Skylar rooted around until her fingers touched something that matched his description. “What’s that for?” she wondered warily as she handed it to him along with the paddle. “You don’t want to know.” Skylar couldn’t help but notice the way he flexed his wrist supplely as he held the paddle in a casual, experienced grip. She determinedly resisted closing her thighs tightly over the pinch of lust at her clit. “I want you to bend over and hold on to your ankles while I paddle you.” Skylar nodded breathlessly and started over but he stopped her abruptly with a hand on her shoulder. “I said I wanted that, Skylar. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to make you if you don’t think you can handle it. It’s not an easy position to hold while taking a paddling. You can bend over the chair again if you prefer.” Skylar’s lower lip fell open in surprise. “Are you…are you planning on paddling me really hard or something?” she asked in a quavering voice. He shook his head slowly. His eyes never left her face. “I told you I would never spank you that hard. Your ass is pink right now. By the time I finish paddling you it’s going to feel like it’s on fire. But then your punishment will be done—for now, anyway. No permanent damage. Ever. You’ll still be absolved of your guilt though, no matter how unfounded that guilt may be.” “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
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He shrugged. “Maybe not.” He tapped the paddle against his thigh grimly. “I’ve given you two options for a position. Choose.” Skylar hesitated. Cal’s punishment eased her anguish to a much greater degree than Ray had never been able to accomplish but her arousal was a bothersome side effect. It was beyond humiliating. The fact that her sex felt swollen, achy and very wet at that moment would be flagrantly obvious to Cal currently if it hadn’t already been before. “Will I…will I have to spread my legs if I hold my ankles the same as I would if I bent over the chair?” He nodded once, his mouth quirking slightly in an otherwise impassive face. Skylar turned her head and slowly bent over, exposing herself completely to him. There was a long, pregnant pause. She felt the silk cloth slide across her eyelids again and then the sensation of Cal pressing the long paddle horizontally against both her ass cheeks. Her clit pinched painfully. “Bend your knees slightly. It will help your balance.” Then he drew back the paddle and struck, causing a loud thwacking noise. Skylar gasped. His hand came up to hold her hip firmly. “I’m sorry. Too hard?” Skylar shook her head, unable to speak. Tears burned her eyes but they weren’t from pain. Skylar couldn’t say why she was crying. Nevertheless beads of moisture steadily coursed down her face as Cal paddled her repeatedly, showing neither ruthlessness nor mercy. And although Skylar was uncomfortable and humiliated, the paddling didn’t cause her any great pain. Yet miraculously she almost could physically feel the weight of her burden lift off her spirit, as though each of Cal’s brisk swats on her bottom loosened and fragmented her thick guilt until he smacked it forcefully right out of her body. She wasn’t sure how much time passed. Her paddling may have lasted two minutes or twenty. But suddenly she became hyperaware of Cal spreading her bottom cheeks with one hand and administering a brisk spanking directly over her asshole. The action caused something inside her to break. She sobbed convulsively. Her thigh became soaked with her tears as she pressed her cheek into it. She was only vaguely aware of him cursing and the sound of the paddle landing on the couch with a dull thud. Then his hands were on her shoulders, lifting her, and the blindfold was swept off of her. Her tears no longer fell onto her thighs but onto Cal’s soft t-shirt. She tried to ignore how good it felt to be held in his arms while he stroked her hair but she couldn’t completely block the heavenly sensation from her awareness. “You know, sometimes it’s best just to talk about what’s bothering you.” “What, you’re a psychologist in addition to being a spanker?” she muttered into his chest. “Talking results in a hell of a lot fewer bruises.” “I thought you said that you weren’t going to bruise me.”
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“I never will. But surely a counselor would have been a safer route than this one. I hate what Ray did to you but even so, you might have ended up with someone a hell of a lot worse, Skylar.” Skylar blinked as his words fully penetrated her awareness—as the entire situation fully penetrated her awareness. She abruptly separated herself from the warmth of his body. “Are we finished?” she asked flatly, avoiding his eyes. “For today.” She backed away, trying to ignore the rebellious thought that moving out of his arms felt like the worst punishment of all. Her hands felt like clumsy, useless things as she dressed. She finally sat down in the chair to slip on her stockings. Her traitorous eyes flickered up to locate Cal. He was sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees, watching her. Skylar paused with her shoe poised in midair. He broke their stare by standing and reaching for his bag. “I’ll see you next week then.” “And should I look forward to more lectures?” Skylar blinked in surprise as she heard herself. She had meant to be sarcastic but instead she just sounded amused…almost breezy. “If I think it will help. I’m only here to serve, Skylar.” He gave her a slow, insolent grin before he walked out of the apartment, closing the door softly behind him. She finally exhaled ten seconds later. Cocky bastard. Although she had to admit, he did the job to perfection. She hadn’t felt this light and free in years. Two years, to be exact. If it weren’t for the onerous sexual response she had to Cal things would almost be promising. That was a negligible nuisance though, something that Skylar could overcome with relative ease. She’d been Duse Ammadon’s mate, after all. One didn’t slaver after human flesh—no matter how comely that flesh may be—once she’d been regularly pleasured by the likes of a Watcher, let alone one of the most powerful Watchers in existence. Her eyes settled on the two piles of black velvet on the coffee table. She picked one up cautiously. It was a bag approximately a foot long and maybe seven or eight inches around, both covered and lined with thick, soft velvet. Her expression grew puzzled when she felt the weight at the bottom of it. She almost reached into the deep bag before she realized that it held liquid. Her eyes widened. Her nostrils flared. She caught the unmistakable odor of fresh cum. She made a strangled sound. Her hand startled violently as though she would drop the offending item. But instead she brought the opening closer to her face. Without thinking she picked up the twin bag and did the same. 22
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What she did next shocked her in retrospect. It caused a sharp, sweet pain like nothing she’d ever before experienced to slice through her spirit every time she recalled it—which was way too frequently for her peace of mind. She frantically lifted her skirt and shoved her fingers into her panties. Her outer sex felt swollen and very welllubricated. Her eyes clenched shut as forbidden, graphic images flickered across her mind’s eye, pictures of Cal inserting his erect cock into the bag and pumping himself through the thick velvet while he spanked and paddled her bottom. Just before she fell over the alarmingly steep crest of the wave of her own climax she slipped her fingers below the bags, marveling at the weight. He’d blown all that sweet-smelling cum…for her. She cried out as a powerful orgasm shook her so hard that she fell to her knees, reaching out blindly to the coffee table at the last moment. When she finally became aware of her surroundings again she was still crying and holding the necks of the velvet bags with a shaking hand and a white-knuckled grip, as though she were prepared to defiantly fight a band of determined thieves from stealing her prize.
***** Her Rush felt so powerful and concentrated that he dazedly wondered later if it would have permanently sheared off part of his subtle body if it had been just a tad more focused. The pleasure very nearly knocked his consciousness clean into another realm. It took him several moments to regain his equilibrium. He hadn’t been able to garner this wholehearted, this generous, of a response from her since two nights following Duse’s death—the night he’d made Skylar his by making love to her psychokinetically while she slept. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t have survived. That was how decimated her spirit had been by his brother’s death. It had been the only time Skylar had given herself completely without doubt or guilt. Luckily, their spirits had already been so closely matched. One joining had been all that was required to cement their bond for an eternity. Unfortunately, she’d been denying his existence ever since then. Even at her most vulnerable, while dreaming, she blocked her spirit from him. If Skylar weren’t such an exceptional woman her consistent rejection of him would have been an utter impossibility considering what they were to each other. But she was breaking under the pressure. He worried that he wasn’t just breeching her defenses but shattering her spirit as well. His attempts to reach her were only increasing the fever pitch of her guilt, not to mention exacerbating the utterly unnatural state in which he and Skylar existed. By the Gods, things couldn’t go on like this. Her sex energies were alarmingly volatile. Skylar was sure to destroy both of them in her present state. Her destiny was his now. Jax Ammadon wouldn’t have had it any other way. 23
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He opened his etheric eyes and focused on her, confident in his invisibility from her physical gaze. She looked so small kneeling there by the couch with the velvet bags clutched desperately in her hand, so fierce, so vulnerable…so alone. The degree of love and anguish that filled his being at that moment would have turned a mortal man’s heart to stone, killing him instantly. But Jax had lived with that never-ceasing pain for more than eight hundred years, ever since he’d fallen desperately in love with his brother’s mate, ever since he’d fully understood that Skylar’s spirit was destined to match his own, even if she was already bonded to his brother. Jax now knew the bitter truth of finally having one’s ultimate prayers answered. He’d become a Watcher outlaw in order to be with Skylar, betraying not only a brother whom he loved and respected but his own principles and way of life. Duse was dead now, murdered by the Ammadons’ mortal enemy Asmoday. Jax would never have suspected the degree of loss and pain he felt knowing that he wouldn’t see his older brother ever again. Skylar was finally Jax’s mate now. No Watcher could deny it. The truth was as clear for them to see as a being’s subtle bodies. But Skylar relentlessly refuted that fact. Nevertheless their spirits were now intricately woven together, exquisitely fitted one to the other. Even though she had been near death with grief from Duse’s loss when Jax first made love to her psychokinetically, she had taken him into her as naturally as a flower opens its eager petals to the nourishing sun. She’d fought him with frantic desperation since then. She was as volatile and unpredictable as a hell-bent cyclone. Skylar, we belong to each other now. Your fighting it is killing us both, Jax thought mournfully as he watched in utter helplessness while her wrenching sobs wracked her narrow shoulders. He’d watched her inhale the scent of his most distilled physical essences and felt hope tremble weakly deep inside his core where he’d kept it most guarded and safe. But doubt, its much stronger partner, was immediately there too, nearly drowning out its voice. Would Skylar ever really be able to accept him? Their situation was unprecedented in Watcher history. Both her conscious and unconscious defenses against him were enormously powerful. She’d even managed to contrive this ridiculous scheme to punish herself, all without having full conscious knowledge of exactly what it was she needed to purge from her soul. Jax had warily allowed it while closely monitoring what occurred. He’d experienced Skylar’s wild desperation and subsequent relief as if it were his own, after all. But when that asshole Ray had gotten too rough with her he’d put an abrupt end to the situation by psychokinetically triggering an unbearable cramping in Ray’s bowels.
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His intervention both effectively chilled Ray’s sexual arousal, resulting from his overzealous spanking, and caused him to hastily retreat. Jax had then promptly offered to buy Corporal Pleasures for an exorbitantly high price from the ecstatic owner and proceeded to send Ray packing. And as for the rest… Well, it wasn’t a particularly difficult piece of magic for Jax to alter his appearance in any way that he chose. Skylar felt extremely vulnerable about seeking out her punishment, more so than in any other area of her life. That vulnerability was effectively blocking her usually powerful clairvoyant abilities and interfering with her potent defenses against him. All in all, Jax thought he had reason to be hopeful. Skylar’s desperate attempt to block him from her had inadvertently created the doorway that gave him access to her. As he watched Skylar’s palpable struggle with her feelings, he couldn’t help recalling her innocent, total acceptance of him two nights after Duse’s death. She had been dying then. Her physical body hadn’t yet manifested the truth but her subtle bodies had been losing their vibrancy, the luminous light and dancing color of her exceptionally rarified spirit. When she’d willingly taken Jax into her, when she’d loved him with a breathtaking reciprocity of feeling, Skylar had not only been embracing him but choosing life itself. It was that beautiful, poignant memory that had sustained him for the past two years of being mated to a woman who flinched at the mere sound of his name. As powerlessness and longing overwhelmed him, Jax reached out desperately for that shining memory—the sole reason that he had the right to hope.
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Chapter Two Two years before
“She’s dying.” Helen Ammadon flinched at the old Druaga’s harsh pronouncement. Her wide, cornflower-blue eyes flickered immediately over to Jax Ammadon, anxious about his reaction. The four of them—Jax, Maerda, Helen and her mate Bale—were all standing in the drafty hallway at Dunleavy outside of Skylar’s suite. Grief hung like a tangible entity in the air around them. Who knew? Helen thought sadly. Given all the subtle matter beings that filled the Scottish castle at the news of Duse’s murder, maybe grief was transforming into something solid. “You know what you have to do, Jax,” Bale said. Jax shook his head as his eyes met his oldest brother’s. Bale almost backed down when he saw the desperate entreaty in his gaze. “I can’t do that. It’s too soon. By the Fathers, Bale, if I do this now I’ll never stand a chance with her in the future.” “I’m sorry. It’s the only way. The mating bond will save her. Nix needs Skylar, especially now that his father is dead. He needs you, Jax. You know what our children mean to us.” For one weak moment Jax felt like weeping. He needed Skylar as well. To be denied her again after everything else that destiny had forced him to face would be a cruel brutal blow. But Bale was right, as usual. There had never really been any doubt that both Skylar’s and Nix’s safety were his first priority. He nodded his head once. “Bale, she’ll never forgive him for this,” Helen whispered, her tone laced with dread. Bale glanced down at his mate, so much love in his eyes. He hated to insist that Jax complete the mating bond with Skylar under these circumstances. His youngest brother deserved happiness after everything he’d been through. Instead of allowing his suffering to break him he’d become a powerful, principled Watcher. Jax’s decision would have been the same in the end though, even without Bale’s insistence. Bale knew he was correct in his estimation when he heard the calm, grim resolve in Jax’s voice. “At least she’ll be alive,” Jax said. His hand didn’t waver as he reached for the door that led to Skylar’s suite.
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***** The first thing Skylar noticed was that she felt happy. Something told her that she shouldn’t, that an unburdened, clean spirit was inappropriate and downright wrong at this moment. But then a voice echoed in her head, a voice that seemed both utterly familiar and entirely unknown at once. You’ll be the judge of whether it’s right or wrong, baby. For my own part, I would have you choose life. I would have you choose happiness. Skylar’s brow furrowed in confusion. She knew that hoarse, mesmerizing voice. She wanted to believe the reassurance but something about that voice wasn’t quite right, although she couldn’t put her finger on what precisely. The second thing she noticed was that she was in the familiar Lincoln Park condominium where she’d spent a good part of her young adulthood. How good it felt to be there again! There were her old, buttery-soft taupe comforter. Her favorite mug sat on the maple nightstand, the remnants of her chamomile tea now cool and forgotten. Oh—and there she was, the comforter pulled up securely beneath her chin, her hair a scattered mass of waves and curls across the pillow. She calmly approached the physical manifestation of her self. When she merged with it, she experienced a sense of peace along with a profound appreciation for the sheer artistry, the mathematical precision, the breathtaking rightness of the spirit expressing itself so joyfully in flesh. And as she fully identified with her corporeal body, she noticed a man. He was standing next to the bed with his back to Skylar. She felt desperate for him to turn around so that she could look into his eyes. She rose slowly from the bed, letting the soft comforter fall away from her nude body. The vague realization of her nakedness didn’t deter her from reaching out to touch a rock-hard shoulder muscle gloved tightly with smooth, warm flesh. Yes, they were both naked. But that was nothing of which she should be ashamed. Their unclothed flesh was as natural and right as the dawn. When she turned the man toward her there was something in his clear, light blue eyes that made her ache with unbearable longing. “Why are you crying, beauty?” he muttered. His large hand came up to cradle her jaw, a blunt thumb capturing a skittering tear with a tenderness that belied the obvious strength in his delineated, full muscles. Words failed her. She smiled instead. Why did wonderment creep across his handsome features? “Your voice,” she whispered roughly. “It sounds…very…right.” She blinked several times, eager to fill her vision with the sight of him. As it was, she saw him at first through a shimmering veil of tears. The dawn sunlight streamed through her bedroom window behind him, creating an incandescent, rainbow-like effect around his long, riotous, raven-black hair. She touched it with awe. It felt thick
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and smooth between her hungry fingertips. She feathered her thumb across one of his prominent cheekbones slowly. His piercing, light blue eyes had a slight exotic tilt. They studied her with an intense focus. Such a savage, wild creature, like a fallen angel, a spirit honed and perfected in the fires of torment. “I never wanted you to suffer,” she whispered. “I know that. You wouldn’t want me to suffer then any more than I want you to now.” Skylar blinked. Why did he think she suffered? The question created a temporary sense of nausea and vertigo. She reached out blindly with both hands, sliding her palms along his hard midriff. His abdomen rippled at her touch. The sensation of his uncompromisingly real flesh cleared her temporary disorientation. She lowered her hands across his narrow hips, glorying in the opportunity to touch him without restraint. So long. She’d waited so long to touch him. Several more tears skipped down her cheek as she pressed her body tightly against his. Ah yes. This made everything else disappear. This made everything right. Jax couldn’t draw air, he was so inundated with emotion, but his arms closed around her reflexively. It took him a moment of soaking in Skylar’s rarified energies and becoming used to the blinding pleasure that having her naked body pressing to him evoked to realize that she, like him, was holding her breath. He’d fantasized about kissing Skylar millions of times. But now that the moment was finally here he reacted out of pure instinct, as if she were the first woman in existence and they stood together in the Garden of Eden with nothing to guide them in their lovemaking but their immense desire. He palmed her bottom with both hands and lifted—she was almost a foot shorter than him—until the soft folds of her sex pressed against his erect cock. Her legs came around his hips, locking him to her in a satisfyingly strong grip. Jax delved his fingers into her curls—those silky golden tendrils, just the sight of which used to nearly drive him mad with thwarted desire. He tilted her head back. “Give me your breath, beauty,” he ordered as he brought his mouth to her lips. “Make mine yours.” Air slipped out of her mouth into his on a whimper of pleasure. A tsunami of longing and need pounded into her. Nothing else existed but him, the intoxicating, rich taste she found within his hot depths, the muscular slide of his thrusting, possessive tongue, the molding caress of his firm lips, the sensation of his smooth flawless skin, the feeling of his swollen penis throbbing with desire against her sex and belly. She was so pitched, so out of her mind with the bliss of finally breaking what felt like an eternal taboo, that when he reached up and palmed one of her breasts, massaging her with a potent mixture of greed and cherishment, Skylar felt herself peaking.
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Jax had to pause for a moment to still his intense reaction when he squeezed a shapely breast and grazed his fingertips over a distended nipple. His seed surged in his testicles as if his most vital physical essence possessed an elemental mind all its own and clamored to be released into the longed-for depths of Skylar’s darkest, furthest limits. Every unmated Watcher alive was a little more than half in love with each individual Watcher mate, whether she was currently incarnate or not. They were so rare, the most exceptional women in existence, women powerful enough to grant a Watcher a fully functioning corporeal body from her sexual response to him, women who possessed infinitely beautiful and rarified subtle bodies, awesome creatures who were able to direct their consciousnesses with an amazing amount of precise focus on the physical plane. A mate granted her Watcher lover so much power in the physical world that the Watcher was eventually able to accomplish the nearly impossible, sacred act of fathering a child with her. It was a holy, blessed event for them. Watchers were, for the most part, sterile, after all. It had been the reason that the Fathers had left them behind on Earth—because of their profound disappointment in their mixed progeny. Even in the extremely rare instances where a Watcher became powerful enough to father a child with his mate, the baby was always born a male, further limiting their chances for survival. A human woman strong enough to be a mate was so rare to Watchers, so luminously beautiful to them, that she was considered nothing less than the manifestation of the divine feminine on the physical plane. But Watchers were extremely sensual beings. Their kind had never understood the false boundaries erected by humans in regard to love and lust, bone-deep respect and muscle-clenching orgasm, a profound need to cherish and an insatiable mandate to penetrate, possess and pleasure. For a Watcher, awe and lust were just two sides of the same coin. And Watcher mates were typically the focus of an enormous amount of both. So it wasn’t surprising that any given unmated Watcher could detail the most significant attributes of a Watcher mate like a human boy might memorize the statistics from the baseball card of a hero. Bale’s mate Helen, for instance, was always born with full, curving red lips that always guaranteed intensely erotic kissing daydreams, not to mention face-fucking fantasies that, given the typical proportions of a Watcher cock, were entirely outside of the realm of physical possibility. Helen was the Helen of myth, the light in the darkness of physical matter, the effervescent, luminous spark of the goddess in physical form. She was also deeply revered among them for her ability to focus her consciousness and hold commerce with those wise tricksters of the alternate physical reality that most closely interpenetrated this one, the faerie don. Sophia, Che Ammadon’s new mate, on the other hand, had mastered her focus on the Astral Plane without coaching and—rumor had it—could throw a fully intact vital double, a solid doppelganger, an exact twin of her physical body. She had eyes that were so compelling and mysterious that they could tempt a Watcher into the farthest 29
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unexplored realms of alternate realities at the same time that they teased him to plunder her innocence deeper and harder and faster until he was eager to be tested again unto further heights. Those wide, dark eyes were always both the lure and the prize that led him ever onward. Skylar Ammadon, known also as Devon, the secret name that she kept throughout her lifetimes, was revered for her powers of prophecy and her subtle, healing touch. She was also known for her consistently exceptional skin quality throughout her lifetimes, a pale, uniform peach-colored shade, a radiant glow, a pearly, iridescent sheen. But Skylar was mostly slavered after for her breasts—shapely, succulent mounds that stood in stark contrast to her small waist and narrow rib cage. There wasn’t an unmated Watcher in existence that hadn’t both fantasized about shooting his seed between those luscious breasts and seeing his son suckle from their tips. So even if Skylar wasn’t already meant to be his, Jax likely would have had a serious moment of crisis when he finally held those beautiful breasts in his hands and teased her responsive nipples into further pronouncement. He was only Watcher, after all. Skylar moaned into his hot mouth as her lust crested and he expertly pinched and tweaked her sensitive nipples. As if he sensed her crisis, he abruptly thrust his swollen member up against her clit. Her tension seemed to retract like a coil drawn tautly into its furthest point only to explosively release with Jax’s next precise hip thrust. Skylar held on to his shoulders and screamed as she came. He kept her tightly against him, not permitting her to break their kiss. He swallowed her pleasure even as her subtle energies began to slice through him. His eyes snapped open in blank shock. His thighs, as strong as young, sturdy tree trunks, began to shake uncontrollably. If it weren’t for some vague, unformed knowledge that he supported not only himself at that moment but Skylar as well, he would have fallen heavily to the floor. It took him a full minute to regain conscious control. Her Rush had surpassed anything Jax could have begun to imagine in his millennia of existence. He had thirsted for her for so long but she had just quenched him past gratification, beyond even nirvana, all in a matter of seconds. His suffering had seemed infinite and unendurable. Now it was a small rock that he held in the palm of his hand, a brittle stone that his curled fist smashed to dust. Anything. He could face anything, become anything, do anything with Skylar in his arms. She came back to awareness after her shattering release to the sound of Jax murmuring endearments as he fervently kissed her cheeks, nose, eyelids and then, more feverishly, the sides of her neck. “Gods, you taste sweet…like salt and spiced honey and sex. I’m going to lick you everywhere. But I’m starting with these. I’ve waited so long. Feed me, beauty.”
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Skylar felt so enraptured by his voracious, talented mouth and mumbled words that she didn’t realize that he was lifting her until her ass touched the solid wood of her dresser. He was so tall that it put his mouth right at the level of her chest. He pulled her to him with no further preamble and begun to suckle hotly at her left breast. A hot flame of desire tore like lightning from her nipple down to her womb. Her hands tangled in the thick, soft tresses of his hair. She held on desperately as wave after wave of need suffused her, the quality of it so sharp that it bordered on anguish. Her thighs became wet with her juices. Just when Skylar thought she wouldn’t be able to handle the almost cruel bite of the pleasure, he mellowed, drawing on her more gently but no less sweetly. His big hands played almost idly with both of her breasts while he ceased his suction and began to lash a tightly pulled bud with his supple tongue. Skylar groaned. His tongue had been a gift sent straight to him from the Gods. The sensation created an almost unbearable throbbing tension at her clit—a tension that required immediate relief. She shifted her hips, trying to press her sex to his hard flesh. But one hand came down to firmly still her, preventing her relief. “Let it build, beauty,” was all he said before he transferred his hot mouth over to service her other pouting nipple. Skylar cried out anxiously at the sensation but she dutifully stilled her hips, although it cost her enormous amounts of willpower. Did she imagine it or did his lips flex around her enclosed nipple as though he were smiling? No matter, after another minute of him alternating between torturing her helpless nipple with his limber, strong tongue and drawing on her with such hot-mouthed greed, Skylar’s willpower had evaporated. She rocked against the hard wood of the dresser in desperation. “I’m going to come,” she whispered hoarsely. “In a moment.” “No. Now.” She squealed in protest when he lifted his mouth from her. He placed an openmouthed kiss on her belly, letting his tongue flick out to sample the smooth flesh. He groaned, obviously liking the taste, and explored the surrounding flesh with increased avidity. “How do you do that?” he muttered almost incoherently as his mouth pressed repeatedly to her abdomen and then her hip. “Do what?” she asked breathlessly. The sensation of his kisses was more than a sufficient aphrodisiac but the sight of his quick, long tongue flickering over her almost undid her then and there. “Your skin…it exudes the smell and taste of sex.” He took a small bite at her waist. She squirmed with pleasure. “It’s like the whole thing is a sex organ,” he managed with dazed satisfaction as he nibbled and licked at her bellybutton and the area just below it, at first curiously and then with more hunger. The sensation electrified Skylar. Her clit felt like it was so swollen with blood and desire that it would burst but even that would be preferable to this achy state of 31
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unbearable desire. She’d never been so desperate in her life, so crazed with need. She spread her thighs shamelessly and thrust her sex toward him. He paused, his magnificent eyes fixed hungrily on her. Skylar moaned and glanced away, overcome with emotion by the sight of his naked hunger. She began to tremble in anticipation as he slowly, deliberately lowered his face toward her. She had to keep glancing away to momentarily cool her lust. Nevertheless, her eyes were glued to him by the time he cradled her hip with one palm and spread her outer sex with the other. She thought she would choke on her desire. Her clitoris was red and erect. His mouth lowered to within an inch of her. When he slowly, almost languidly licked the juices off one of the tender folds of one slick sex lip then the other, clearly savoring her taste, Skylar began to shake like she had palsy. “Ahh…p-pl-please.” She couldn’t even beg properly as her breath came in jagged bursts and her entire being vibrated on the crest of an unbearably tall wave of orgasm. He kept tonguing her, meticulously avoiding the nerve-packed piece of flesh that throbbed in agony for him. His cerulean eyes rose to meet her stare. She felt her heart lurch in her chest when he raised his head slightly. “Say my name.” Skylar blinked. Distantly she realized that she’d been avoiding calling her painfully beautiful lover by his name. Why would she do that? But the question was forgotten as her cheeks bloomed with heat and the soles of her feet began to tingle with an unbearable friction. “Jax,” she whispered. His slow smile plunged her over the edge. His strong, talented tongue ensured that her orgasm lasted for an impossibly prolonged period of mindless ecstasy. After Jax had assured himself that he’d coaxed even the smallest shivers of release and pleasure out of her, he lifted her down off the dresser. Nursing Skylar through her crisis had brought him to the brink of his own. Her sweat-slick skin slid against him erotically as he lowered her down his torso. Even in his near madness to be inside of her, he took the time to appreciate the sacred sensation of Skylar pressed so closely to him. He wondered at her feminine, tiny waist, the delicate line of her backbone, the fragile, sweet petals of her sex kissing him wetly…the intoxicating aroma of her arousal. “Hold on to my shoulders, Skylar. Don’t wrap your legs tightly until I’m fully seated inside of you,” he instructed hoarsely. He grasped the head of his stony penis. Skylar marveled at his strength as he held her easily with only his right arm while he used his left hand to arrow his cock into her now-molten pussy. Suppressed air flew past both their lips simultaneously. Their gazes met and held as he spread her wide and
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worked her down just over the straining tip of him. Her mouth fell open when she read the message in his eyes at the same moment that he ruthlessly speared half his length into her. His face pulled taut in agonized pleasure. “By the Blessed Mothers, Skylar…you’re…perfect.” His expression was filled with awe and incredulity as he flexed his right arm and lowered her up and down over the first part of his long shaft. “You’re going to squeeze out every last drop I have to give you, aren’t you, beauty?” Skylar couldn’t break her gaze from his hypnotic stare. “Yes…yes, give me all of you. Plant yourself so deep in me that I’ll never be free of you.” His eyes flamed as if an inferno had just been lit at his core. “You’ll never be free of me,” he vowed grimly. His other hand came up to her waist and joined its partner in pushing her snug, hot channel down on him at the same time that his hips flexed forward and up reflexively. Skylar cried out in agonized pleasure. He hissed through his clenched jaw. Her abundant juices anointed his testicles as he fully buried himself in her. “From now on, beauty, you’ll easier be free of yourself than you will be of me. We’re one flesh now.” As if to prove his point, he leaned forward and hotly kissed the sigil that had suddenly flamed into existence above her breast. His sigil. Skylar was his now. He grasped her ass firmly in both hands and began to pound her down over him at the same time that he thrust with his hips. He saw the expression of disbelieving pleasure that tightened Skylar’s face and knew that it mirrored his own. She felt as if her brain short-circuited at the combined pressure of his powerful arms pushing her down while he stroked up into her with perfect synchrony. Their coupling became fevered…frantic. She felt his fire searing her from the inside out, his power cleaving her, cracking her, boring into her very spirit until he thoroughly hollowed a space that only he would fill…that only he could fill. Tears dampened her face just as they did his. “Say my true name, Skylar,” he said almost angrily as their bodies crashed together at a furious pace. “You’ve known it since that night you walked in while I was making love to Carol on Ockley’s yacht. You’ve known what only my true mate could know.” She stared at him blankly as an enormous orgasm threatened to overwhelm her consciousness. His fingers sank aggressively into her flesh. Every muscle in his body flexed to the point of breaking as he sliced his cock into her so forcefully that he butted against her furthest reaches. His lips twisted into a tormented snarl as he crested. “Say it.” “Shax. Oh God…Shax, I’m…”
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The rest of her sentence segued into a wild, anguished scream of pleasure. She convulsed, her flesh shattering, her spirit splintering. Skylar slowly opened her eyes. Her subtle essences shifted abruptly and locked into place, transforming forever at the sight before her. He regarded her in his Truest Form. His penis released a river of sublime energies into her womb. Luminous light danced around a being even taller and wider than Jax. Skylar felt tiny in comparison to him but so infinitely cherished and loved it was more than her physical senses could comprehend. His cock seemed to be gloved by her entire body instead of just her sex but somehow this didn’t strike her as unusual. Before this sacred aspect of her lover could leave her, she dared to do what she had never done before. She reached out with her corporeal hand and touched his divine face through his fire. “Shax,” she whispered in wonder. The deep hollows of his eyes leapt with dark blue flame at the sacred, profound acknowledgment. Jax shouted out in torment, grabbing her desperately to him, feeling like they were falling endlessly, knowing only that he had taken the deepest vow to protect her while being utterly ignorant as to how. How could he insulate the terrible impact of their jolting, hurtful fall from pure paradise? “I’m so sorry, Jax. God help me, I’m so sorry.” Her sobs brought Jax back into dazed conscious awareness. He opened his eyes but couldn’t see her face, pressed as it was to his chest. He growled out softly in frustration. “What, beauty? What are you apologizing for?” As he spoke, he took three steps and settled her back on the bed, coming down gently over her. His brow furrowed with concern when he saw her crumpled expression and tears. “I knew what I was doing when I asked you to remain alive to be judged by the Grigori Council. I guessed how much you would suffer living while I couldn’t be with you but I shielded myself from that knowledge. All that I thought of was myself, how I couldn’t bear it, how I couldn’t stand to think of you being gone…forever.” She moaned in anguish and turned her chin into the pillow. “How could I have been so cruel, so selfish?” “Hush, Skylar.” He kissed her temple softly. “The fact that you wanted me to remain alive instead of taking the Path of Sorrow hardly seems selfish. It just confirms my earlier suspicions. The impossible really did occur.” He saw her open her eyes. “What do you mean?” “You and I had formed our own special bond, even though you were already Duse’s mate.” 34
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Jax knew that he’d made a mistake in saying Duse’s name when he felt her go unnaturally still beneath him. She looked up slowly. He’d never be able to purge the expression on her face at that moment from his memory. She looked beyond shocked…beyond betrayed. “Duse.” She said the word in a choked, guttural voice as memory flooded back into her awareness. Her eyes circled wildly around the room, questioning her presence there. Jax cringed when she glanced down at their nude bodies pressed together intimately and the subsequent horror that broke over her expression. That look made him feel like the filthiest, oiliest scum imaginable, like Skylar had just realized that he’d used magic to force her into murdering Nix or some other such equally reprehensible deed. “No, Skylar…don’t…let me explain.” But it was too late. They were back in the bedroom at Dunleavy, their telepathic bond severed cleanly by her fury. Jax watched her eyes flash open in her pale face. Those agate-like orbs that held so many colors—green and amber and brown— immediately found him in the darkened room. “Get out,” she muttered in a low, barely controlled voice that vibrated with intense emotion. “I don’t ever want to see your face again, Jax Ammadon.”
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Chapter Three Present Day
Before he’d left her on the night that he’d completed the mating bond, Jax had looked deeply into Skylar’s eyes and stolen the memory of their joining from her in order to save her from undue pain. Or at least Jax had believed he’d stolen her pain from her along with her memories of their bonding. As he reviewed his evening in the Wicker Park apartment last week with Skylar, however, he doubted that he’d fully erased her pain. Skylar was too powerful not to glean some of the knowledge of what had passed between them, even though she currently couldn’t express it with words or make sense of it to herself. And it was an utter impossibility for her to completely deny what her body and spirit craved. The resultant emotions plagued her, making her wild with guilt and a potent need to punish herself. But at least that meant that she longed for him, didn’t it? Why else did she feel the need to punish herself? Jax sighed as he leaned his shoulder against the banged-up locker and watched the two children fifty feet away from him. At least he prayed that Skylar’s increasingly erratic behavior for the past six months meant that her need for him was becoming nearly unendurable. He knew for a fact that he wouldn’t be able to survive much longer without her by his side. “Nix,” he called out sharply. His nephew glanced over his shoulder, surprise and the beginnings of embarrassment shadowing his handsome face. Jax waited while he muttered something quickly to the adolescent girl who had just looped her arm around his waist and came toward him. “Hey, Jax. I didn’t know you were coming today.” “Obviously,” Jax deadpanned. Nix looked away sheepishly through the dark brown fringe of hair that partially obscured his right eye. The girl still lingered in the hallway with a dazed expression of thwarted longing on her face. “That’s Shelly. She was just asking me if I was going to the girl’s track meet later. We run the same events,” he muttered gruffly. “She looked more like she was interested in seeing how long you could go without air while she sucked your entire face.” “Uncle Jax,” Nix mumbled under his breath in embarrassment. He cast one more furtive glance over his shoulder, checking to make sure Shelly hadn’t heard. 36
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Jax gave a small grin and tilted his head down the hallway. Nix followed. “Isn’t she a little old for you?” Jax asked after a moment. “She’s thirteen,” Nix mumbled uneasily, his eyes on his feet. “You remember what I told you about females, Nix? You’re not allowed to even think about touching one until you’re seventeen and only then if you can pass your Ritual. I’m going to have a hard enough time convincing your mom about that,” Jax murmured dryly, not thinking of telling Skylar in his capacity as her mate but as the leader of the Watchers, which he would be by the time it was necessary to have that conversation. “I know.” Jax ignored the irritation in his nephew’s voice. “Then why did you just let that girl touch you?” “She did it before I had the chance to stop her!” “It’s your responsibility to make sure you don’t give her the chance. Did you see that look on her face when you walked away just now? How fair is it that you got her all stirred up like that when you probably weren’t going to give her a second thought until I forced you to?” he asked sternly. Nix’s expression of genuine contrition satisfied him for the time being. “Just think next time, Nixy.” “Yes, sir,” Nix answered soberly before a thought came to him. “Jax, my mom is going to be here to pick me up.” “I know. She’s out front right now. Don’t worry, she won’t see me.” But Nix’s quick mind was already flying to another topic. “Did you come here to tell me that I can attend the Regnausa after all?” “No,” Jax answered evenly. Nix frowned. “But I want to go so bad. I can’t believe you’re going to become King of the Watchers and I won’t even get to see it happen.” Jax gave his nephew a sideways glance and ruffled his silky hair with his palm. “I know you’re disappointed. But trust me, you won’t be missing much. Just a bunch of long faces and boring speeches.” “Zeva said there would be a big party afterward. And Uncle Paim will be there, and Uncle Bale, Aunt Helen, Zeva, Uncle Che…and Ari too,” Nix said, his voice taking on an especially mournful tone as he mentioned Bale and Helen’s youngest son, Ari. There were only nine male children currently alive that had been born to Watchers and their mates. Those few, precious children felt a special bond to each other because of their unique nature. “Jax, why does my mother hate you so much?” Jax jerked to a halt. Nix had never asked him that, despite the unusualness of their situation. As Nix’s Watcher guardian, the responsibility for caring for Nix and teaching him how to control his focus in his subtle bodies and about Watcher ways had fallen to 37
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Jax. It had been a risky business to undertake since Skylar had completely banned him from her life. Fortunately, a good portion of Nix’s education could be undertaken while his physical body slept. “You know how much she loved your father… How much she misses him,” Jax began gently. “She still feels very sad about losing him and guilty for being bonded to me—even though she doesn’t exactly know that we’re joined.” “But my dad told me a long time ago that if anything ever happened to him that you would be my new dad. Why didn’t he just tell my mom that you would be her new mate like he told me that you’d be my new father?” Jax closed his eyes briefly. Every time he heard Nix innocently mention what Duse had done he felt a piercing pain of grief for the loss of his older brother. They’d never really made peace before his death. How could they, with Skylar between them, not to mention Jax’s betrayal? But what Duse had done in officially naming Jax as Nix’s guardian in the event of his death spoke volumes. It indicated that Duse fully understood the connection between Jax and Skylar. And that despite appearances to the contrary, Duse had forgiven him. It also suggested enormous strength of character on Duse’s part. Jax could only hope that he would have found the courage to do the same if their positions had been reversed. “That’s not the kind of thing that you can just casually mention to your mate and wife, Nixy.” When he saw his nephew’s deepening puzzlement he felt vaguely apologetic for not explaining better. “Your mom wouldn’t have taken the news any better back then than she does now. But at least she’s alive and well. That’s the most important thing.” “Yeah,” Nix said. But he still seemed disheartened as they progressed down the hallway. “What did you want to tell me, Jax?” “Just that I have to visit Uncle Bale tonight and I’m not going to be able to take you to the Astral Plane for your lesson.” “But Uncle Che was going to meet us. We were going to practice with the quarterstaff,” Nix wailed in disappointment. “I know. I’m sorry but Uncle Che won’t be there either. Bale has called a meeting of the Grigori Council. Arch is going to come and watch over you and your mom,” he explained, referring to one of his knights, Watchers who had pledged allegiance to him as a member of the Grigori Council and a ranking Watcher. Jax had been elected to take Duse’s place on the Council when Duse had died. Nix frowned darkly before a mischievous light sparked into his cerulean eyes. “Don’t even think about it, Pheynix Ammadon,” Jax growled in a low voice. “You’re not going to talk Arch into taking you to the Astral Plane. And I’ll know if you go there without me. You know what the consequences were the last time you defied my rules and went to the Astral Plane on your own. I didn’t take you back for two
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months. If you do it again it’ll be four. You’ll lose a lot of ground that way in your lessons. Zeva might surpass you on the sword if you give him the chance,” Jax added warningly when he saw the stubborn cast to Nix’s expression. The sight made him hide his smile. His nephew’s sullen scowl reminded him a little too poignantly of himself at that moment. “You and Uncle Che told me that I’m a natural with the sword,” Nix defended hotly. He didn’t like the suggestion that his good friend and constant competitor Zeva—another Watcher-human child close to his age—might surpass him at anything. “And so you are. But you need constant practice, which you won’t get if you ever try to go there again without me. You can’t hold your focus on the Astral Plane on your own yet, Nix. It’s a dangerous place, not a playground. You’d think you would know better after you got a glimpse of what that sylph did to that poor human a while back.” Nix grimaced slightly at the frightening memory. The human Jax referred to had wandered onto the Astral Plane while dreaming and would never awaken, thanks to a run-in with a particularly vicious sylph. Most people couldn’t control their thoughts and fears in the astral world and thus were more vulnerable when they slept than they would ever guess. Watchers attempted to redirect their wandering, confused spirits when they could but on this occasion they had arrived too late to save the hapless human. “Exactly,” Jax said for emphasis when he saw Nix’s reaction. “Now before you get all sulky on me, I do have some good news.” “What?” “Bale is going to visit your mother tomorrow evening and try and convince her to bring you to the Regnausa.” Nix paused in his walking. “Do you think she’ll say yes?” “I think she might. Summer vacation starts for you next week so you wouldn’t have to miss much school,” Jax answered evasively. Luckily Nix was too busy whooping and jumping up and down at the news to notice Jax’s grim expression. The truth was that there was a very good chance that Skylar would attend the Regnausa simply because Bale planned to inform her—ever-so delicately of course—that she must. Uncle Paim and Batos—two Watchers whose memories went back further than any other member of their small race—along with the chief Druaga, Maerda, insisted that some archaic formality mandated that if a Watcher was mated and if he was to be made their king, then the mate must be present at the Regnausa. Maerda kept droning on about the necessity for balanced masculine and feminine energies during the ceremony. Jax felt like she was strongly hinting that Watcher culture would utterly collapse under Jax’s rule if Skylar wasn’t present for a half-hour, antiquated ritual that included speeches and rites most Watchers wouldn’t even be able to decipher.
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Paim and Batos had strong-armed Bale into going along with them. Not one of them seemed to give a damn about Jax’s hot arguments that Skylar didn’t even know she was his mate. She wasn’t going to stand by his side glowing with pride and love as he took his vows to lead his people. He’d be lucky if she didn’t spit on the cairda before they put it on his face. “A touching show of mately worship and adoration isn’t part of the mandate, Jax,” Batos had told him with annoying patronization just two days ago. Paim’s and Batos’ machinations in regard to the Regnausa were increasingly reminding Jax of two matriarchs squawking and preening about as they planned a human wedding. “Skylar just has to be present in the room where you take your vows and the requirement will be fulfilled admirably,” Uncle Paim had added with a determined sort of fussiness that had finally temporarily vanquished even Jax’s rebellious spirit.
***** Skylar’s nervousness had an alarming quality to it as she unlocked the Wicker Park apartment on Thursday evening. Her shallow breathing and irregular heartbeat seemed to herald something far more ominous than just the anticipation of getting spanked. She glanced around anxiously when she saw Cal’s black bag on the couch but he was nowhere in sight. “Hi.” Skylar dropped her purse in the chair and turned around abruptly at the sound of his voice behind her. “Hi,” she returned cautiously as she took in the sight of him. His thick hair was slightly mussed, as though he’d just raked his fingers through it. He looked appealingly normal as he stood there, wearing faded jeans and an untucked, starkly white t-shirt that set off the darkness of his skin. He signaled casually back toward the kitchen. “I just ordered from that Chinese place around the corner. I hope you don’t mind. I’m starving. If I don’t get some sustenance I’m not going to be much good to you.” Skylar wasn’t sure what to say to that. Her cheeks glowed with heat. “Are you hungry?” It was on the tip of her tongue to say no. What did he think this was, a date? Much to her surprise, however, she nodded her head once instead. She tried to tell herself that she was not happy that she had when she saw his lopsided, almost boyish grin. “Good. Come here. I want to show you something. Did you know about this?” he asked a few seconds later as he opened a cabinet in the kitchen. Skylar peered around him in order to see the fully-stocked built-in wine rack. She glanced up at Cal with amusement. “No, I didn’t know about it. I rent this place fully furnished from a guy who took a job out on the West Coast and had to pull up roots quickly.” “It doesn’t sound like he’ll mind if we partake then.” 40
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“Cal—” “What?” he asked innocently as he looked up from his inspection of several wine bottles. “We’ll open this one. It’s at its prime right now, Skylar. It’ll go to waste if we don’t drink it.” She swallowed convulsively as he watched her. Why did she get the feeling that he was intensely curious about her response? It was unnerving, just like everything else about Cal and this situation. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to…drink wine together.” “Why?” he countered quickly. “What are you afraid will happen?” “Nothing.” “Fine.” He gave a small shrug as he began opening drawers at random, obviously searching for a corkscrew. “There shouldn’t be any problem then.” She frowned when he handed her a filled wine glass a moment later. He laughed. “What?” Skylar asked irritably as she warily followed him into the living room. “Would you be happier if I poured some bleach in it or something?” he asked as he flicked back the lock on the patio doors and flung the door wide. A refreshing summer breeze immediately made the sheers billow inward. “Are you really so focused on selfpunishment that you can’t even give yourself permission to relax and enjoy a good glass of wine?” “Of course not.” “Good. Let’s see you prove it.” She bristled at his softly spoken challenge and the hard glint in his gray eyes. Nevertheless, when he turned and stepped out onto the terrace she followed him. She looked around the six- by ten-foot balcony with vague interest. She’d never actually been out there. The view wasn’t tremendous but the refreshing spring breeze was pleasant. And there was a small wrought iron table with two chairs, one on which Cal already sat. The silence between them seemed to vibrate with tension when she joined him at the table. “Take a sip of wine, Skylar,” he growled irritably after a moment. He watched while she raised the glass to her lips, her large eyes steady on him over the rim. “Take another while you’re at it. You’re wound tighter than a spring. What’s bothering you?” “Maybe I’m just curious about the type of person who would buy a business like Corporal Pleasures,” she said as she lowered her glass. “It actually is turning out to be a better investment than I’d imagined,” he murmured with a devilish grin. “There are a lot of people with secret desires that demand an outlet.” “Don’t you find what you’re doing to be the slightest bit…seedy?”
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He leaned back and regarded her blandly. “No. Not really. As long as all parties are consenting adults and no one is getting hurt I don’t see the harm in it. I got rid of all the jerks like Ray. Are you disappointed?” he asked suddenly. “In what?” “That I don’t feel guilty about it like you do?” Her expression froze. “I don’t give a damn what you think or feel about it.” He didn’t actually say liar but Skylar had the feeling that he had when he just raised his right eyebrow and glanced away with an insouciance that infuriated her. She took a gulp of wine, trying to settle her volatile mood. “I assume that you service several of CP’s clients.” Jax’s eyes flashed in surprise. He hadn’t been expecting the tremble of passion in her voice. His heart swelled in his chest. By the fucking Fathers, Skylar seemed downright pissed at the idea of him spanking another woman. “What would make you assume that?” She laughed mirthlessly. “Surely you’re not trying to convince me that I’m the only CP account that you’re seeing to personally.” “I wasn’t aware of trying to convince you of anything. But if you’re interested, you’re wrong in your assumption. I came two weeks ago because we were in a bind and I had no one else to service you.” “And this week…and last…?” “I came because I wanted to.” Skylar held her breath as she watched him take a sip of wine. She got the distinct feeling he was enjoying her discomfort. “You like this, don’t you?” “What?” he asked with a grin. “Watching me flounder around like this.” “Is that what you’re doing?” He sat forward abruptly. “Because I was under the impression you were trying to make me feel like a sleazy scum for getting turned on because I like to spank your beautiful ass.” Skylar’s mouth fell open. He’d just transformed from being a carefree, amused companion to a formidable, eerily focused adversary in a split second. His light eyes flared at her like cold fire. His reaction forced an honest response out of her. “I just don’t understand how you can be so open, so…up-front about your desires,” she said. “I don’t understand why you feel the need to be so uptight about yours. Especially here, with me.” Skylar scoffed and looked out to the street, avoiding his disturbing gaze. “You’ve somehow come to the conclusion that you and this place are somehow related to my desires?”
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“Yes.” Her eyes snapped back to his at his calm affirmation. The image of holding those velvet bags up to her nose crashed into her awareness. Of course he couldn’t be referring to that. He must be making some kind of sly hint to that fact that he could clearly see how aroused she’d been last week when he spanked her. Skylar released her breath slowly. Yes, that must be it. Cal couldn’t read her deepest secrets like the morning edition. “You’re the one who decides if you’re secrets are shameful or not, Skylar. You never know. Someone else might think they’re beautiful.” She jumped a few seconds later when the doorbell shattered the spell of his stare. Jax knew he’d thrown her off balance to his advantage so he didn’t push his luck while she ate dinner. Instead he poured them both another glass of wine and made small talk with her about the gentrification of the Wicker Park neighborhood and the nursery that she owned on the north side. He hid his smile of satisfaction later when she snorted with amusement after she read her fortune cookie. “What’s it say?” “Your destiny awaits you in the form of a dark, mysterious lover. Who do they get to write these? Romance authors? I could do better than that,” she said as she flipped the slip of paper onto her plate. “Oh yeah? Tell me mine then.” “Easy,” Skylar said flippantly after she took a sip of wine. “Beware the moment that you feel like the king of your universe, because your enemies will choose that moment to strike.” Jax’s hand paused in midair as he lifted his fork to his mouth. “What?” Skylar asked with amusement when she noticed his reaction. “You like the romance angle more than the conspiracy one?” “Definitely. Did you say enemies? As in the plural?” “Are you serious?” she shook her head incredulously when he gave a small shrug. “I was kidding, Cal. I don’t even know what the hell I said anymore. What…you’re wondering if you have more than one competitor in the dog-eat-dog business of corporal punishment?” He looked at her blankly for several seconds before he broke into unbridled laughter. Skylar just sat there dumbly, completely decimated by the sound. When his mirth finally quieted he regarded her warmly and shook his head. “Speaking of which, let’s go inside, Skylar. We have some of our own business to attend to.” His casually spoken words reverberated around in her head ominously as Cal shut the patio doors. “Here, give me your glass,” he said when he turned to her. “Go ahead and get undressed while I take this stuff to the kitchen.” He risked a glance at her face, 43
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fleetingly, before he took her wineglass and plate from her frozen hands. She looked pale and very uncertain. Well, hesitancy could be either a good or bad thing, right? He tried to reassure himself as he threw away the remnants of their meal and rinsed out their wineglasses. Skylar hoped he couldn’t see the way her pulse bobbed frantically at her throat a minute later when he joined her. Her eyes danced away from him nervously. She’d been in the process of removing her last stocking when he walked in the room. Once the sheer garment fluttered on top of the pile of the rest of her clothing on the chair she was completely nude. It struck her how unfair it seemed, for her to be so vulnerable, naked and nervous while he regarded her calmly and fully clothed. But that same realization caused a deep, forbidden vein of desire to throb heavily inside of her. “Come over to me,” he said quietly. She approached him slowly, her eyes as wide as a wild animal’s that was being tempted into captivity by a forbidden morsel of food. Her breathing came erratically and shallow as she watched him. When he didn’t move or speak for several tense, long seconds she felt compelled to break the silence. “What?” she asked irritably. “I was wondering what you would do if I ordered you to kiss me.” “I’d tell you to go straight to hell.” “That’s what I thought, so I didn’t bother to ask,” he said with grim amusement. “And what will you do when I tell you to bend over and bare your ass to me?” Without answering, Skylar turned and did it. Jax smiled darkly. He reached out and caressed her ass, something that should have been one of her most private places but instead was a place she insisted upon desecrating. Good thing he wasn’t a foolish human. Not even Skylar could blaspheme the sacredness of him touching her in any way, as long as she chose it. As long as they chose it. And yes, that included choosing a lusty spanking. Still, his irritation at her for trying to despoil what should only be cherished between them might have revealed itself in that first crack on her lovely ass. He almost laughed out loud when she glared at him over her shoulder. “Damn it, Cal. That hurt!” His answer was a brisk follow-up slap on her other cheek that both told her loud and clear that he’d heard her and would attenuate but at the same time, wasn’t in the mood for any sass. “Turn your face to the wall,” he ordered as his striking palm came down on her bottom once again.
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Skylar blushed and turned her head. She hadn’t realized she’d continued to stare at him until he’d spoken. “Surely you see the irony in you not allowing me to kiss you while you will let me spank your bare ass,” he said between cracks. “There’s no irony. Kissing is intimate and sexual.” She moaned slightly at the impact of a firm slap upward on the lower curve of her right buttock. “I pay you to punish me.” She held her breath when he grabbed the portion of her bottom that he’d just spanked with one hand, squeezed it until the skin pulled tauter than usual. He held it captive while he spanked it twice with his other hand. “Oh Cal.” He paused. “Too hard?” He released her flesh and rubbed it softly. “Skylar?” “No,” she muttered hoarsely. It hadn’t been pain that made her cry out like that. Jax hid a grin as he came around to the side of her body. “I want you to stay bent over but put your hands on your thighs. Good. Now arch your back a little like you did the other day.” He recognized that his voice was becoming thick with lust as he watched her adjust her position. Without a word he shifted her arm on her thigh so that he had a prime view of her large, firm, suspended breasts. Her eyes flew up to meet his and her mouth opened to protest. He responded by putting a firm hand at the back of her neck and nudging her downward until her face was parallel to the floor. “You did say that this was a punishment, right?” he asked gently as he sensed her muscles resist him. “Yes,” she admitted. “Put your face down, then. That’s how I want you.” He felt the tension leave her slowly as she complied. He put one hand on her shoulder and lay the other on her ass. His crotch brushed lightly against her naked hip. He cupped a round ass cheek in his palm before he reached back and swatted her deliberately. His other hand held her steady at her shoulder when she pitched forward slightly. Her breasts swayed so beguilingly that Jax spanked her again quickly, entranced by the way the light blow shivered through her voluptuous flesh. Skylar stifled a gasp of arousal. She was already wetter than she’d been the other night after he’d paddled her and they were no more than five minutes into the session. The realization made her consider walking out and never coming back, at least not while Cal was her spanker. But instead she stayed very still, anticipating his cracking palm just like she would a teasing, suspended lover’s touch. Her sex tingled with electrical energy when the spank came with a resulting thwack. “I’m sorry I interrupted you earlier. You were saying something about my spanking you not being intimate or sexual.” Skylar bit her lip to still a moan. She could feel his cock on her hip. He wasn’t pressing it lewdly against her. The fly of his jeans barely grazed her naked skin. But that 45
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didn’t diminish the impact of that dense package that seemed to radiate heat. If anything the light, subtle touch of his bulging fly was a thousand times more compelling than if he’d been rubbing against her rhythmically. Skylar found herself focusing on it to the exclusion of almost all else. “Uh…what?” she mumbled. Cal swatted her and ground his hand down, rotating the stinging flesh. “You were saying that spanking isn’t intimate or sexual. Would you change your mind about that if I made you come just from spanking alone?” He waited tensely when he felt her body tighten. She didn’t answer for several seconds so he reached back and spanked her firmly. “It wasn’t a rhetorical question, Skylar.” “I-I don’t…no, Cal. I don’t want you to do that.” “You admit that I could, though.” Her head swung around at that. “I never admitted any such thing!” He chuckled at the insulted expression on her beautiful, flushed face. His hand caressed her upper thigh softly. He saw her defiance crumble slightly when his fingertips encountered moisture. For a tense moment he held her gaze. A shaky moan escaped Skylar’s throat when he brought his big hand up and rubbed some of her cream into her burning bottom. “I’m sorry to be such a stickler about this,” he said gently. “But I’m going to have to insist that you admit that I could make you come just from spanking you alone. If you won’t admit it, I’ll have to prove it to you.” Skylar felt her cheeks flush with heat. A bubble of molten desire broke at the entrance of her pussy and flooded her tissues. He continued to watch her, his eyes like hard, glittering steel. “And if I do admit it?” “Then I’ll spank you until you come anyway.” She gasped in disbelief at his audacity. “You will if I let you!” His smile caused desire to uncurl at the base of her spine like an awakened, sinuous serpent. “You’ll let me. Stand up.” She did so slowly, all the while watching him warily as he retrieved his bag. A ripple of lust ran beneath her skin when she recalled those long tubes of black velvet. “Come here. Stand about two feet from the wall. Put your arms up over your head and lean into the wall. Send up your tailbone,” he added gruffly as he grabbed both of her hips and showed her what he wanted. She held her breath when he didn’t let go for several seconds and they stood close, her bottom cradled between his hands. “You’re amazingly supple, Skylar,” he finally complimented thickly. He dropped his hands and stepped back when she was posed just as he’d requested.
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She looked like a delicious, carnal confection. Jax believed he’d expire then and there if he couldn’t devour and slurp up every last bit of her. Her fair, peach-tinted skin glowed luminously in the soft light. Her shapely breasts swayed, the fat coral-colored nipples making his mouth water and cock throb. The erotic pose highlighted the elegant lines of her spine and her delicate rib cage. The swell from her tiny waist to her round hips left him mute with longing. He reached out and admired how his dark hand looked against the blushing flesh of her bottom. His cock leapt in his jeans when he heard her soft moan. Skylar started but she didn’t protest when she felt him drape the silk scarf over her eyelids and quickly tie a knot. In the pitched silence that followed she clearly heard the sound of a belt buckle being unfastened. Her heartbeat began to pound alarmingly loudly in her ears. Her hips squirmed in arousal but Cal’s hands braced her. “Stay still,” he ordered. “Spread your thighs more.” Skylar did what he said but a moan of protest fell past her lips. Having her legs open so wide made it difficult for her to self-stimulate her increasingly needy sex. In addition, she was uncomfortably aware of the fact that Cal could more than likely clearly see not only how wet she was but also how swollen her labia were. The thought both humiliated and aroused her beyond belief. She felt him press his paddle against her bottom. “Rise up on your toes,” he demanded. When Skylar hesitated he paddled her. She squealed in surprise and quickly went to her tiptoes. She moaned softly. It wasn’t an easy position to hold, with her thighs spread wide, her tailbone shoved up into the air and her heels up off the ground. She felt like she was pulled tighter than a bow before it sprung an arrow. She cried out sharply when he paddled her again several times successively. Each blow seemed to shove tension further and further into her, packing more and more incendiary energy into her already unbearably taut muscles. The dazed thought occurred to her that he was carefully filling her with greater and greater amounts of volatile fuel so that when she finally blew her blast would be earthshattering. “Cal…” she muttered almost incoherently as he continued to paddle her. “What?” He paused. His hand came up automatically to soothe her burning bottom. She brought her chin up by her shoulder. A lone tear fall beneath the black scarf tied over eyes. “I-I have to…put my feet down for a few seconds,” she said, desperate to do anything to postpone the inevitable. She waited anxiously. She could almost feel the sharp focus of Cal’s consciousness searching out her soul for lies. “Do it then.”
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He knew she was stalling but he also saw how flexed and hard her calf muscles were. When she’d lowered her heels he knelt and massaged the tight flesh. Skylar sighed with relief and pleasure at his sure touch. “Better?” he asked after a few moments. She nodded. “Back up, then.” When she’d obeyed, he placed his hand possessively on her hot, glowing bottom. He felt her go still beneath him. “Do you want to talk about what’s going to happen once I make you come, Skylar?” She licked at her lower lip nervously. Part of her didn’t want to play this game with him but a bigger part of her did…very badly. “What?” she asked warily. “I’m going to put you on top of that table over there and fuck you from behind until you scream again for me. And afterward you can try to tell me again how my spanking you isn’t intimate or sexual.” He stilled the feeble protest on her tongue with a cracking blow of the paddle, quickly followed by another. Skylar groaned in sexual agony. She felt like each time he paddled her he inched her up an orgasmic cliff where there would be no turning back…just a glorious, ecstatic fall. He struck again and again, making flint of her flesh, forcing her higher and tighter until she could take no more. She trembled and cried out in anguish. Jax paused, carefully gauging her reaction. Then he decisively spread back her ass cheeks and spanked her lightly on her swollen cunt with the end of his paddle. Skylar’s eyes opened wide in shock. She screamed as powerful spasms convulsed her entire body, rippling beneath her taut flesh. They still shivered through her seconds later when she became aware that Cal was bent down over her and had folded her knees into her chest. She moaned in disorientation as he lifted her in that exact position to the dining room table. “Send your ass up in the air and press your breasts to the table,” he said a voice that brooked no argument. Skylar’s logical mind had been so melted by lust that she never considered refusing him. She shuddered in post-orgasmic delight when she felt him press the head of a thick, hard penis to her liquid channel. He put one hand at her neck and the other at her hip and held her steady as he flexed. The head of his cock slipped into her resisting flesh. “Take it. Don’t fight me.” Skylar turned a hot cheek onto the smooth wood table. “I’m not fighting you,” she insisted breathlessly. “You’re large and I haven’t been with a man in years.”
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“Relax,” he said a little more gently as he began to rock in and out of her, prizing into her flesh a half inch deeper with each successive pass. He abruptly reached back and spanked her bottom. She startled at the impact but molten heat flooded around his cock. He laughed grimly and sank into another three or four inches before he felt her resist him again. He began to fuck the territory he’d conquered thus far. His eyes rolled back in his head at the cruelty of the pleasure. He heard Skylar cry out brokenly. His hips flexed harder. “Damn it, Skylar. I’ve had enough of you fighting me.” He grabbed the soft curls at her nape and tugged gently, pulling her head up, curving her throat into a graceful arch. “I’m about to take if you won’t give.” Skylar moaned uncontrollably. He felt enormous and hot inside of her as he pried apart her delicate tissues. The position they held, his manner with her and his provocative words called a vivid image to mind—an image that she’d struggled desperately to forget for almost twelve years now—of Jax Ammadon fucking his leman’s ass as he spanked her and ordered her to take every last inch of his cock. Her eyes opened wide in shock. Jax felt the change in her like a jarring blow in his subtle bodies. He held her hip tightly and plunged his cock into her to the balls before she could deny him. She trembled uncontrollably at the impact. “Do you have something you want to say, Skylar?” “Only that I’m going to kill you for this, Jax Ammadon,” she said in a voice choked with both fury and lust. “Maybe. But not until I come deep inside your sweet little pussy first.” Skylar saw through a red haze of riotous lust. She acted on pure instinct, rubbing her slick outer sex against his firm balls. Then she was exploding again and there was no room in her consciousness for guilt or recrimination or anger…just swamping, undiluted pleasure. He fucked her deeply as her indescribable Rush pounded into his subtle being. He had to use all of his strength to keep himself from falling to his knees as her energies smacked into his essences. Their solid flesh beat together in a stormy, wild tempo. As time wore on and his orgasm loomed, Jax’s thrusts became more erratic. He tore at the blindfold she wore and pulled at her hair until he could clearly see her face, which was tight with imminent release. A slight twist of his fist made her eyes flash open and meet his stare. “I meant what I said, beauty. I’m tired of you fighting me.” “I’ll keep fighting you as hard as I can,” she promised him between clenched teeth. He leaned down over her ominously as he continued to crash their bodies together. “Do you know why you were able to walk in on me that time when I was fucking Carol,
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Skylar? Or how it was possible that you walked in on me with Jana? Do you?” he thundered, eyes flaming when she refused to answer him. “No!” “You liar. You know.” He sliced into her so hard that Skylar yelped. “I was meticulous about setting shields with my lemans but a Watcher isn’t able to set a shield against his own mate, Skylar. That’s why you could enter.” “I’m not your mate. I’m Duse’s,” she cried out desperately. “Duse is dead. And you’re wrong. You are mine. Fight me if you will but you’re never, ever going to alter the truth of that.” He thrust one more time into her forcefully and dropped a hand to her sex. He held her hips steady while he found her clit with knowing fingers. At the first touch of her powerful orgasmic energies pounding into him Jax let go. His cock jerked and throbbed in her depths as his cum rocketed out of him, spraying her furthest reaches with his essences…reminding both of them in the most primitive and exalted way at once to whom she belonged. Afterward, Skylar gripped the edge of the table tightly and listened to the sound of their shared ragged breathing. She allowed herself to savor it for a half minute, along with the exquisite sensation of his cock still twitching with longing deep inside her body and the feeling of his harsh, torn breathing caressing her sweat-slicked back. When Jax sensed her rising tension he immediately rose up off of her. They both stifled a gasp as he slid his still-erect penis from her pussy. Despite herself, Skylar tightened around him desperately. But he continued until they were once again achingly separate. She kept her face averted as she came down off the table and walked into the living room. The familiar, hated feeling of helplessness mounted in Jax as he watched her grab her clothing and flee to the powder room. Skylar splashed her face with cool water after she’d dressed. As she toweled it dry she noticed that the refreshing water had done nothing to calm the hot bloom of color in her cheeks, the telltale sign of repeated orgasm and mind-boggingly great sex. The telltale sign of Watcher sex. God, she was going to kill him. She paused as she entered the living room. Her heart lurched in her breast. She’d forgotten how sinfully beautiful he was. Or at least she’d tried to forget. But some things were impossible to completely purge from the memory. Skylar was suddenly sure that the sight of Jax Ammadon was like that, something that would forever be branded into the memory banks of every human with an XY chromosome who’d ever been lucky enough to glimpse him.
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He was sitting over on the couch fully dressed, impossibly long legs spread out before him. Watchers usually created their clothing from their subtle bodies, so Jax wore the same clothing that Cal had but in sizes more suited to a man who was well beyond six and a half feet tall with densely muscled, wide shoulders and a powerful broad chest. His silky, raven black hair was shorter than it had been when she first met him but still fell around his shirt collar in glossy waves. She avoided looking into his exotic light blue eyes. That was Jax’s gift—he could look deeply into a being’s eyes and divine their secrets, no matter how hard a person tried to hide them. “Not bothering to play the game anymore, I see,” she said stiffly. “What’s between us isn’t a game. You know that.” Skylar’s nostrils flared at the sound of his deep, resonant voice. It was Cal’s voice but somehow more, as if Cal had been a shadow of Jax—a toned-down version of him. And, God help her, even Cal had been potent enough to send her into permanent sexual orbit. Damn these Watchers for what they could do to a woman with a flick of an eyelash…and don’t even think about what they might do to you with a smile. She nodded her head in mock somberness, still keeping her eyes averted. “Yes, it’s very serious business when you force a woman into having sex with you against her will.” He laughed mirthlessly. “You were hardly complaining, Skylar. No, I’d say that nothing that happened here tonight happened against your will. And you know better than anyone how willing I am when it comes to granting your every wish and desire. “ Her eyes zinged over to meet his. The only secret he was going to see at her depths presently was pure fury. How dare he allude to her vulnerabilities? He was pushing her beyond her power to cope and she fought back dirty. “If I would have known that I was being tricked into having sex with the man who kidnapped me, betrayed his brother and put my child in profound danger of never being born then I would have fought you tooth and nail.” Jax’s jaw muscle leapt in constrained tension at that. She knew how sorry he was for what he’d done twelve years ago. Skylar had been the first to forgive him. He realized she was throwing wild, desperate punches to keep him at bay but that didn’t ease the pain of her blow any. “I suppose I deserve that,” he said softly. “Go on, Skylar. What else have you got?” She stiffened in the palpable silence that followed. The volatile moment had made her lower her guard. She was staring deeply into his cerulean eyes that were so like Duse’s, so like Nix’s and yet so different…so much more. When she recognized her train of thought she blinked back tears that burned like acid. “I’ve got nothing for you, Jax. This was a mistake. All of it was a mistake,” she whispered harshly, her eyes on the floor. “So steer clear. Do you understand me?”
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Skylar didn’t wait for an answer that she doubted she’d ever get before she turned and fled the apartment.
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Chapter Four Skylar shook her head incredulously as she stared up at the formidable figure of the King of the Watchers. The fact that this meeting occurred in her comfortable, slightly untidy kitchen took nothing away from Bale Ammadon’s regal presence. “Of course Nix and I will come to such an important event. It’s what Duse would have wanted for Nix. But I still don’t understand, Bale. Why would you renounce your title?” Skylar asked in stark disbelief. She’d been floored by Bale’s calm statement. Skylar had only known about the Watchers now for twelve years but already she’d come to equate the concept of “leader” with Bale Ammadon. He’d been designated their king since the Watchers first came to consciousness awareness on the physical plane. “Does this have to do with Asmoday murdering Duse?” she asked warily. Bale set down the coffee cup after taking one solemn drink. They both knew it was a ritualistic welcome offering on her part more than anything. Only the most powerful Watchers ate or drank and then only sparingly. Their bodies metabolized much more subtle, rarified energies than physical food. “Yes but not entirely,” Bale answered. “One of the reasons is personal. I’m becoming more and more mortal. I’ve only got a thousand or so years left, you know. I’m beginning to feel my age.” Skylar smiled when she saw the sparkle in his eyes. He was the picture of a man in his prime—vibrant, handsome and extremely powerful. No one would ever guess that he’d ever seen his fortieth birthday let alone that he’d passed it while most of the humanoids on the face of the Earth still lived in caves. He was usually the picture of a sober, calm leader but as his sister-in-law, Skylar had come to learn that Bale had as much humor and lust for life as Duse had. His reference to being an old man had been a standing joke between Bale and Skylar. He thought a millennium seemed like a relatively short period of time to have left to live while Skylar found the prospect of living that long so incomprehensible she still couldn’t wrap her mind around it adequately. Bale was the most powerful of all the Watchers and as such his corporeal body could become so fixed and solid that his cells were beginning to show the early signs of aging—perhaps the equivalent of an eight-year-old human child’s. Duse had also become powerful in the material world…powerful enough that he had been able to father a child with Skylar. When Skylar had married Duse she’d agreed to take a magical elixir that Duse and Uncle Paim had created. The elixir would prolong her life for about a thousand years,
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making it possible for her, Duse and Nix to share similar lifespans…for them to truly be a family. It had been hard for Skylar to make that decision. How could one really fully comprehend what it meant to take such a step? It had been Duse’s most fervent wish, however, and she had come to share it. Now that Duse was gone the centuries stretched out before her, empty and cold. The image of Jax and the inferno that they’d created together last night flashed briefly before her mind’s eye before she willfully shoved it aside. “But you’re right, Skylar. One of the reasons for the change in our leadership is Asmoday,” Bale continued. “You know about the magical restraint that the Grigori Council and I used to imprison him while he was still here in the physical world?” Skylar nodded tensely. She knew about it all right. It was one of the primary reasons that Duse was dead. Asmoday plotted, in his weakened, non-corporeal state, to return to physical existence. But even if he did, things being what they were, he would still be imprisoned by the Council’s energy prison. The restraining spell that they had placed on him would dissipate once four of the original spell holders were dead. Asmoday had managed thus far to plot to have two of those four murdered. “The spell needs to be recast so that he won’t just continue to try to murder the Grigori Council and myself to meet his personal ends.” “Why does that imply that you have to renounce your position as king?” “Skylar, Asmoday’s powers—the energy stores that he’s acquired by raping First Change women—they’re too foreign, too strange for me to comprehend. My magic can’t counter what my consciousness can’t fully master.” “But you’re most recognized for your magical as well as your physical strength. Duse always said that you’re the most powerful Watcher in existence.” Bale shook his head. “Not anymore, Skylar. That’s another reason I’m stepping down as king. I’ll still serve on the Council but Watchers instinctively recognize a natural hierarchy of power in these situations.” “But who…?” Her question fell flat on her tongue. Bale just watched her with eyes that glowed with banked power. “Jax?” Skylar finally whispered. Disbelief and a heavy feeling settled over her chest. She didn’t recognize it as dread until Bale nodded his head once. “How?” she finally asked. “How can that be?” “As wise as you are I can’t believe that you don’t understand at least part of the truth about that question, Skylar,” he said quietly. She stood up jerkily from her kitchen table and moved over to the window over the sink. Nix was tossing a football in the backyard with one of his friends. Their carefree play and laughter seemed like behavior that belonged to a race of beings utterly foreign to her cold, hollow self.
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“It’s because he’s suffered so greatly, isn’t it? I sensed it when he was being judged by the Council for conspiring with Asmoday. He seemed resigned to his fate…to his pain. I remember thinking that suffering could make a Watcher even stronger than his mate could.” Her voice sounded steady. But when she turned Bale saw tears glistening in her eyes. “Yes, he has suffered. I’m not surprised that you’ve gleaned the truth about how pain and loss can crystallize a Watcher’s physical body as well as his spirit just as wholly as acknowledgment through love can. Skylar…I believe that there was a time before Duse died that you were very anxious for Jax’s well-being. Yet now you seem determined to see him suffer even more. Why?” “I don’t want him to suffer!” she cried out sharply. She glanced out the window at Nix nervously, as though she were worried he’d heard her anguish. “I just…I just wish he would leave me alone.” “He can’t do that.” “He will in the future if he knows what’s good for him,” Skylar muttered hotly. She went still when she saw Bale’s expression. “What’s wrong, Bale?” “Skylar, there’s something I need to tell you. I lied to you about something once. You were out of your head with grief after Duse was murdered. Maerda said that you were dying. We had to do something to save you.” Bale glanced up warily at her. He couldn’t interpret her frozen expression. “Skylar, what I’m trying to tell you is that the sigil that you wear isn’t mine. It was placed on you in the manner that a Watcher typically uses to protect his mate.” He paused again, anxious about her reaction. But she only watched him silently. “I only told you that it was mine because…well…you were so fragile at the time. Helen and I thought it would be best—” “It’s Jax’s sigil?” Skylar interrupted flatly. Bale blinked, recognizing her shock. She looked alarmingly pale and she’d more stated than asked the question. But he wouldn’t continue to lie to her, especially with the circumstances being what they were. “Yes,” he answered. He stood and went to her when her hand went out to steady herself on the counter. Jax’s protective shield yielded to him as he held her upper arms to support her sagging weight. “Skylar, don’t blame Jax for this. He didn’t want to do it at that point. I’m to blame. I made him do it so that you would live. I made him do it for Nix.” She just shook her head for several seconds. “I blame none of you,” she finally said, as though the words were an obstacle she’d had to force out of her throat. Bale studied her anxiously. “Skylar listen to me. This was what Duse wanted.”
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That seemed to galvanize her out of the zombie-like state that had begun overcome her. “What do you mean? You don’t actually believe that, do you?” “I know it. He told me as much, several years before he died. That was how I knew to appoint Jax as Nix’s Watcher guardian. I think you’ll find that if you speak with your son Nix will tell you that his father had a similar conversation with him.” The sound of Nix’s distant laughter trickled through the tense silence that followed. “You’re mad,” Skylar finally whispered. Bale just shook his head as he slowly released her arms. “Not mad. The worst that you can accuse me of in this situation is ruthlessness. And not just aimed at you, Skylar. Toward Jax as well. He’s my brother and I love him deeply. He was wrong to conspire with Asmoday in order to have you for his own but I can’t take an oath that I wouldn’t have done the same if it was Helen who was bonded to Duse. Jax accepted his sentence after your kidnapping. He’s worked relentlessly to diminish the weight of his sin. And just when his soul was burned clean from his suffering I ordered him to take you as his mate in order to save you.” Skylar shrunk back. “He is not my mate. Duse is my mate.” Sadness touched his expression when he saw the wild desperation in her eyes. “Skylar, few know better than I how much you loved Duse. The two of you together were a treasure to behold, the truth made flesh of how the male and female essences combine magically to make something more than the sum of their parts—a reflection of the divine. But Duse is gone now. In the eyes of every Watcher and the precious two Druaga you are Jax’s mate. You’re one of the most powerful mates ever born and thus one of the most powerful women to ever grace this planet. You can see subtle realities just as easily as a human would see that table over there. You know that what I say is true.” “I see nothing,” she exclaimed, hating the shrill, hysterical quality of her voice. But even as she said it she perfectly imagined Jax’s burning, beautiful, truth-seeing eyes that reflected like mirrors, calling her a liar without words. In her moment of vulnerability, her carefully erected barriers temporarily collapsed. She’d been so careful since Duse’s death to function and exist only in the concrete, physical world. But in those weak few seconds love swamped her being, an essence so subtle that only her most rarified bodies could have put shape or color to it but so powerful that it caused every cell in her body to vibrate and resonate with desire for him. For Jax. In that moment Skylar would have forsaken anything for the chance to touch Jax…her pride, her honor…her love for Duse. Her face collapsed in pain. God she hated herself…despised her weakness.
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She wasn’t even aware that Bale steadied her once again when she swayed on her feet. How could she possibly allow Jax into her life? How could she possibly not? Bale sighed heavily. “You see it all right, Skylar,” he said gruffly. “Whether or not you’ll accept what you see is another matter entirely.”
***** She and Nix came upon Dunleavy Castle before dusk four days later. The Regnausa would take place the following evening. The Ammadon stronghold on the Isle of Skye, Scotland was ancient enough but their sovereignty over the land that stood beneath it was more ancient still. The Watchers knew next to nothing about their Fathers, save that they were beings not of this Earth, beings of infinitely subtle matter. Watcher historians and philosophers argued over the phrase not of this Earth. Some said that it meant the Fathers were from other parts of the physical universe—spacemen, to put it simply. Others, however, believed that the Fathers were merely from different realms, other subtle realities that interpenetrated the physical world like the Astral Plane or the faerie don. The Blessed Mothers, however, had definitely been human women. The Ammadons—Bale, Duse, Jax and their cousin Che—knew regretfully little about their mothers but still more than any other Watcher. Batos and Paim hypothesized that Bale was designated as King of the Watchers and Duse, Jax and Che as princes because of their matrilineal descent. Their mothers were Druagish priestesses, an ancient line of women whose power came not only from their carefully cultivated genes but from their specialized training in the magical arts. Only women who could see and wield subtle matter were powerful enough to transform the energies of what were likely almost purely energy beings into flesh, bearing children from the mating with the Fathers. And it was these women who had gifted the Ammadons with the land that Dunleavy sat upon since time immemorial. Skylar never had the slightest problem believing that Dunleavy was a fey, magical place but coming upon it at sunset—that moment in time that cradles both the tangible energies of the physical world and the ephemeral, quickening forces of more subtle realities—definitely drove the point home. Home. It had been her family’s home for almost nine years. Part of the gray stone walls were cast in dark shadow from the surrounding Cuillin Mountains while part of them basked in the light of the setting sun, made even more brilliant from the reflecting waters of Loch Druoga, which lay at the castle’s feet like a supple cerulean scarf. It was a spectacular sight to behold as their car came twisting out of the mountains. Colin, the gray-haired retainer whose family had long served the Ammadons, hummed contentedly as he mastered the hairpin curves and alarmingly
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narrow road with the insouciance born of years of practice. Her glance at Nick confirmed that her son was getting more excited with Dunleavy now in sight. “You’re glad to be back?” she asked, already knowing the answer but still eager to share his enthusiasm, especially when she herself felt a level of anxiety drawing near panic about returning to Dunleavy. It was the location of Duse’s murder, after all. But that wasn’t the primary source of her current nervous state. She hadn’t seen or heard from Jax since their encounter last week but she wasn’t foolish enough to believe that her threats would actually keep him away from her, especially here…on Ammadon turf. Nix nodded excitedly. “Look—the Faeries’ Gate! Mom, can we go up to Noddin’s Ring tomorrow?” “We’ll have to see, Nixy,” she murmured thoughtfully. “Tomorrow will be an important day. There will be a lot of Watchers, mates and children staying at Dunleavy. I expect Uncle Paim, Batos and Maerda will have a lot planned.” Nix looked temporarily crestfallen. “But I’ll be able to stay in my old room, won’t I?” Skylar patted his knee. “Aunt Helen wouldn’t put you anywhere else.” “What about you, Mom? Are you going to stay in your old suite?” Nix asked as he leaned forward in his seat to catch a better glimpse of the crenellated towers of Dunleavy before they disappeared behind the thick foliage lining the front drive. Skylar stared blankly for a moment. “I-I don’t know, Nix.” “But you knew that Aunt Helen would put me in my old room.” “Yeah, but I was just making an educated guess.” “Uncle Che and…” he paused, recovering himself. “Uncle Che says that one of your guesses is worth a thousand people’s unified sworn testimonies.” Skylar watched him carefully for several seconds. “Nix, who were you about to say besides Uncle Che?” “Uncle Bale,” Nix answered quickly, avoiding her gaze. “Why didn’t you want to say his name?” “Because when I came in the house the other day while Uncle Bale was there you seemed mad at him. I was surprised that you said we could come to the Regnausa,” he answered cautiously. “Oh. Well, I was mad. But that’s no reason for you not to mention your uncle’s name in front of me. Family ties go much deeper than a disagreement between two people.” “Mom, look at all the cars out in front. Brilliant…four limousines at once. I wonder if Roma is here. Look, there’s Uncle Che!” Nix enthused as they approached the circular turnabout at the end of the entryway to Dunleavy and he caught sight of one of his heroes.
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Skylar watched as Che Ammadon helped his mate Sophia Galanis from the back of one of the cars. His head dipped in a thoroughly natural, sensual gesture when she rose up next to him. He playfully nuzzled her neck. Despite his teasing grin Skylar noticed Che inhale his mate’s scent and close his eyes ever so briefly in a gesture of profound love. She glanced away sharply as a pain of longing stabbed through her. There were going to be hundreds of people at Dunleavy, she reasoned. She should find Helen first thing and make sure that her sister-in-law had assigned her to one of the smaller rooms. There were mated couples like Che and Sophia who would appreciate the size and luxury of her and Duse’s old suite much, much more than Skylar would. Her anxiety only mounted when she saw the front doorway open and a big, dark man stepped out to greet the arriving guests. Even when she noticed the short haircut and recognized Bale, her wildly beating heart still refused to slow.
***** Skylar paused outside of Nix’s door later that evening after they’d freshened up and rested from their long trip. Dinner was scheduled for eight in the formal dining room. It was an enormous room but Skylar didn’t know how Maerda and Helen were going to contrive fitting more than two hundred people into it. She smoothed her hands over her hips in an effort to ground herself, appreciating the soft, flowing fabric of her lightweight skirt. The weather on the Western coast of the Isle of Skye was typically nice year round. The Gulf Stream kept it moderate even in the winter months. Skylar had been fascinated by the diversity of plants around the Western coast when she first came here and amazed that even some tropical varieties thrived there. Yes, the isle was wonderful year round but in late spring it seemed to throb with fecundity. She’d flung back the casements in the guestroom earlier while she dressed, enjoying the touch of the warm, light breeze on her naked skin and the aroma of richly blooming life in her nose. When she peeked around the heavy door to Nix’s room she saw him standing with his good friend Zeva—Caim and Shana’s son. Both of them were busy examining a beautifully crafted kite shaped like a dragon. “Look at it, Mom! Isn’t it brilliant? He got it for his birthday.” “Oh no, Zeva,” Skylar muttered regretfully as she brushed the young man’s sandycolored hair in fond greeting. “We forgot your birthday last week. Look at you, twelve years old and already so much taller than me. I meant to send something to Shana. I guess it slipped my mind.” “You didn’t forget it. Nix and Ja—” Zeva stopped abruptly when Nix gave him a quelling look.
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“Nix gave me some candy I like from Chicago. We haven’t got anything half so good in Marseilles.” Skylar smiled. “We’ll see if we can’t do better than that during our visit. Aren’t you two hungry?” She wasn’t entirely surprised when they both shrugged indifferently. Unlike most Watchers, Watcher children could eat and metabolize food like humans. But as Skylar had quickly learned Nix didn’t crave food the way she would have imagined a burgeoning boy might. Nix and Zeva were part human, true, but they still were supplemented in their nourishment from subtler energies than Skylar’s flesh could utilize. At first she’d been alarmed by her son’s “take it or leave it” attitude toward food, worried that he wouldn’t grow normally. But even if Skylar couldn’t see their glowing, healthy auras with her subtle vision she would only have had to glance once at their unusual height and youthful vibrancy to know that these two were being nourished in every way that they required. “Well hungry or not, it’s time for dinner,” she told them. She kept up a brisk, cheerful chatter with the two boys as they made their way to the dining room in order to still the impact of the gymnastics display going on in her stomach. There was a crowd of people waiting in the large foyer, spillage from the drawing room where drinks were being served and Batos, Bale and Helen were greeting guests as they shuffled into the dining room to be seated. Several Watchers immediately approached to greet Skylar and the boys. She noticed that the Watchers’ unusually large size made the area seem even more crowded than it actually was. It made avoiding contact a little difficult too, or at least it did for Skylar. She knew from experience that most unmated Watchers weren’t powerful enough to maintain a corporeal body unless they’d just been the recent recipient of a woman’s Rush, and then perhaps only for a short period of time or just with part of their body. Usually if a Watcher was visible he possessed various degrees of solidness. She’d had to learn that firsthand from Duse, who had been so powerful that he could identify with his physical body immediately, making himself corporeal in an instant. Before she’d learned better, in their early days together Skylar had reached out to touch him several times and her hand had passed right through him like vapor. The men that surrounded her, however, seemed to innately leave inviolate an approximate six-inch boundary around her even when their backs were turned. The realization that they were doing so due to Jax’s sigil made her shiver and then grow hot. Her eyes skittered nervously around the foyer but no, his dark head, which would have stood above even this crowd, was nowhere to be seen. Skylar hadn’t really been expecting him to be out here. Jax was the guest of honor for this event, after all. With any luck he’d be so surrounded by his people that he’d never even notice her presence. She and the boys ended up standing by a beautiful mahogany entryway table. A low Ming vase filled with yellow roses sat upon it. Skylar lowered her face to inhale the sweet scent. Her curiosity became piqued when a silence and tense expectancy suddenly fell over the Watchers.
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The doorbell rang. Evan, who was decked out tonight in his most somber black suit and stiffest collar, answered it with formal aplomb. A dark-haired woman in her early forties stood there looking embarrassed but strangely determined as well. Every Watcher in the room stared fixedly at her, including—to Skylar’s growing discomfort— Zeva and Nix. “Oh, hello,” the woman anxiously said as her eyes moved over a room filled with tall, magnetically attractive men. “I was…driving by here…and well…I’m very sorry to disturb your gathering but I think, that is…my car…I…” “There’s no reason to apologize. You’re welcome here.” Skylar wasn’t too surprised when it was Saya who confidently stepped forward to claim her. Saya had taken Zep’s place on the Grigori Council and to Skylar’s knowledge was the strongest unmated Watcher in existence. After Jax, Saya was usually the Council’s choice as scisen for the Issian Festival. But of course Jax could no longer participate in the most powerful public demonstration of sexuality at the Issian Festival. Because now Jax was mated. She closed her eyes to still a brief feeling of vertigo. Skylar had seen a similar phenomenon to what occurred presently, a strange woman showing up unexpectedly at the front door of Dunleavy. The woman was obviously powerful enough to be a Watcher leman. She’d sensed the powerful energies exuding from so many potent subtle beings and had been drawn to this place without any real knowledge of how or why. But Saya would fill her in quickly enough. The brunette’s mouth fell open at the sight of the handsome dark-haired man who took Evan’s place at the door and beckoned her inward. When she hesitated slightly Saya turned and reached for one of the roses in the low bowl. He caught Skylar’s eye and his fingers faltered. Skylar grinned, embarrassed but also flattered that the expression on Saya’s compelling visage as he looked at her temporarily resembled the woman’s at the door as she stared dazedly at him. There were much worse things in life than to have an excess of two hundred powerful, profoundly beautiful male creature’s eyes glaze over with lust and awe every time they looked at her but it was still a bit overwhelming when it happened. “Skylar, how are you? I didn’t see you standing over there.” “Hi, Saya,” she answered warmly. When he remained frozen she cleared her throat and glanced back at the door meaningfully. Saya blinked his singular dark blue eyes slowly but still continued to stare at her. “Here, let me get that for you,” Skylar said softly. She pulled the loveliest bud from the vase and covertly tucked it into his hand. Her worries about whether or not he was corporeal enough to take it from her vanished as he accepted it automatically. Skylar smiled and nodded her head again toward the door. He grinned sheepishly as he finally came to himself.
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“Oh, right. I’ll…uh…talk to you later, okay, Skylar?” “Come on you two, it’s thinning out in the drawing room,” Skylar said as she firmly herded Zeva and Nix away from what appeared to be the utterly mesmerizing sight of Saya handing the delicate flower to the woman and speaking in a low murmur. She distractedly caught Helen’s eye where she stood in a semiformal reception line at the entryway to the dining room and hurried the boys toward her. “You look beautiful, as usual,” Helen greeted her with an airy kiss and caressed Nix fondly on the cheek. The two of them were long-time friends. “And you have two very handsome escorts, I see.” Skylar conversed shortly with her sister-in-law and kept the reception line moving. She greeted Bale and Batos, all the while determinedly trying to ignore Nix’s and Zeva’s excited whispered exchange…and utterly failing. Did you see that woman? How could you miss her? Do you know what she is? Skylar almost groaned out loud. God, how was she going to handle the Watcher aspects of her own son? she wondered distractedly. She suddenly felt like she was treading in deep water with no land in sight. “It will be a challenge, granted, but you won’t be alone in the endeavor.” Skylar froze. Her gaze stayed fixed for a moment on the V at the top of a casual, finely woven untucked shirt that looked blazingly white against the contrast of the smooth, dark skin beneath it. He had been blocking his presence from her awareness. Skylar knew that now for a fact because the barrier had abruptly vanished. Her consciousness narrowed into a precise focus with a shuddering slam. Completely against her will her body swelled and thrummed with excitement. She glanced up cautiously and took in Jax’s starkly handsome face framed by pitchblack hair that fell past his ears and to his collar in gleaming waves. She met his startling cerulean eyes before she quickly looked away again. “Jax, how nice to see you,” she murmured weakly. “Always a pleasure, Skylar.” She heard both the amusement and irritation in his deep voice at her formal tone. Before she realized what he planned he grasped her shoulders in his hands and brought her closer to his body. He leant down to brush his lips in a featherlight caress against her cheek. Of course he was staking his claim. He was the only Watcher in the room who could possibly touch her. “You look like springtime and smell like it too,” he growled softly right next to her ear.
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Skylar’s eyes closed briefly against her will. Delicious tendrils of sensation originated from where his warm breath caressed her ear and tingled down her neck and spine. “Jax, let go,” she whimpered softly. “I will when you do.” She started in genuine shock when she realized that her hands were splayed wide over his rib cage, as though she were cradling his heart. “Uncle Jax!” Nix called out excitedly. Skylar forced herself to step back. Nix swept in to take her place. She watched, half in a daze, as Jax encircled Nix in his powerful arms. Nix looked genuinely ecstatic to see his uncle, Skylar realized with dawning wonderment. She knew they’d always been close, just like Bale and Nix had been…but this… Her eyes flew over to Bale accusingly. She suspected he and Helen had been watching the whole exchange closely but unlike Helen, who politely turned away, Bale held her gaze. She knew that like her Bale was thinking of what he’d said the other day—that Duse had told Nix that Jax would take his place if anything ever happened to him. She lifted her chin defiantly and turned away from Bale’s indomitable stare. God damn these Watchers for thinking they could run every aspect of her life for her. “Skylar…Nix,” Uncle Paim called out joyously from behind them. She smiled tremulously when she looked into the kind Watcher’s dark brown eyes. “Uncle Paim, I’ve missed you so much.” Paim held her warmly with his gaze as he exchanged a hug with Nix. “Come on you two—and Zeva as well, I see. I’ve been saving you special seats.” Skylar turned away from Jax but she quickly realized that escaping him wasn’t nearly as easy. She could have been blindfolded and spun around until she was too dizzy to stand and still pointed to exactly where he stood in the crowded room. Her awareness of him was so acute that it took her a moment to realize how lovely the dining room looked. Three pairs of floor-to-ceiling terrace doors at the end of the enormous room had been opened wide. Perhaps thirty circular tables had been arranged before a long table that had been placed in front of the patio doors. Candlelight flickered from every table. Outside on the terrace Skylar spotted another seven or eight white tablecloth-covered settings. Lit lanterns glowed around the periphery of the terrace. She smiled wanly and brushed her finger across a lush arrangement of violet hydrangeas as she passed. The vibrant blooms came from some bushes that she and Able, Dunleavy’s gardener, had planted years ago. Jax distractedly greeted Force, one of his old friends, at the same time that he watched Skylar wistfully touch a flower as she made her way across the room. Was she
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thinking of Duse at that moment, of the happy years they’d spent together at Dunleavy? He wasn’t sure if she was blocking her feelings from him at that moment or if he was unintentionally shielding himself from experiencing her grief and longing for his brother. His expression hardened as he turned his focus to the next guest. Skylar may long for Duse but she wanted him—Jax—too. Wishing for exclusive rights to her love wasn’t only selfish, it was childish. Duse would always be a central figure in Skylar’s life. Jax figured he wouldn’t really want it any other way. Skylar was what she was and he cherished all of her—including her history with his brother. He accepted that he would never be Skylar’s first or only love. But by the Gods, Skylar had better begin to accept here and now that he was going to be her last, Jax thought grimly. His spirit felt worn thin by the relentless, second-to-second battle that he had to wage with himself in order to control his desire to touch her, to love her…to just be with her. He needed to smell her skin, to bask in her laughter, to soothe her tears. He knew for a fact that Skylar had similar needs in regard to him. It was a fact of Watcher life that she couldn’t continue to deny. Jax wasn’t going to let her. He was done with playing cautious. As far as he was concerned, Skylar Ammadon’s mourning ended tonight.
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Chapter Five When Saya approached the soon-to-be-king in the reception line Jax was staring fixedly at Skylar. She threw back her head and laughed, tossing a few golden curls behind her shoulders as she talked animatedly with Sherry Morton, one of Duse’s former employees who now worked for Bale. Jax was happy to see that his suggestion to Paim that Skylar be seated at a table with Sherry was working out like he’d planned. He knew firsthand how wound up Skylar was but Sherry was the type of person that could put a social phobic at ease in a room full of paranoids. Although Jax didn’t care for the way Ainge, Sherry’s Watcher lover, was ogling Skylar’s chest. The pale green sweater set that she wore with a floral skirt was essentially modest but the way it highlighted how her full breasts thrust forth from her slender torso like firm, ripe fruit brought anything but innocent thoughts to a Watcher’s mind. “You’re a very lucky Watcher, Jax.” Saya’s midnight blue eyes danced with humor when Jax transferred his gaze and scowled at him darkly. It was a custom for unmated Watchers to tease their mated brethren about the desirability of their mates. It was considered a harmless bit of fun, as the bond between Watcher and his mate was sacred and inviolate. “What a shame that we’ll have to wait such a long time for your and Skylar’s Dionytion Ceremony,” Saya added with mock seriousness. He referred to the sacred ritual when a Watcher and his mate were reunited after her inevitable death and subsequent reincarnation. During their lovemaking, the mate’s orgasmic Rush energies were amplified by the Dionytion Stone and experienced by all the Watchers present. Jax ignored his annoying friend, focusing exclusively on the woman who held Saya’s arm while Saya introduced her. “Fate has blessed you with our presence tonight, Joanne. Welcome to Dunleavy,” he said with genuine warmth. Jax wasn’t even aware of Joanne’s slack-mouthed, completely slain expression as she stared up into his face. His charm flicked off like a light. “And Saya—you’re a pain in my solid ass and you’re blocking the bloody line.”
***** At first Skylar had been relieved that Paim had seated them on the airy outdoor terrace. The boys would feel less constrained outside and she wouldn’t have to worry about her traitorous eyes constantly straying to Jax’s face. But as she soon discovered the back of Jax Ammadon compelled her focus and gaze as easily as the front of him did. She felt hyperaware of his presence where he sat at the 65
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head table with Helen, Bale, Maerda, Batos and Paim. Her ears would prick to alertness again and again at the inadvertent sound of his deep voice in conversation with Bale or his low laughter as he teased Helen. When he gave a brief but poignant speech after dinner that focused not on the future of the Watchers under his rule but on the solid structure of wise governance that Bale had built and maintained since time immemorial, Skylar was far from being the only person in the room whose respect for him rose several notches and who was held spellbound by the power and charisma of his presence. Skylar watched him avidly as he returned to his chair in the midst of thunderous applause following his speech. He didn’t turn toward her but she suddenly knew for a fact that he was as hyperaware of her as she was of him. It was a strangely intimate feeling to sit forty feet away from him while his back was turned and yet feel so close to him. He placed his arm around the back of the empty chair beside him. Skylar abruptly realized that the chair next to Jax at the head table had remained empty all evening. Her expression went rigid. It was her chair. That was what Jax was telling her with his subtle gesture. He had been able to convince Paim and Batos to give Skylar her space but no one there would deny Skylar her rightful place beside the new King of the Watchers. No one except for her. The thought made her stomach tighten with a wave of nausea. She murmured a quiet request to Sherry to see Nix to his bed later and kissed her son goodnight. Her room felt blessedly cool. She’d left her window open earlier and now the small, cozy room was filled with the scent of lilacs and dew-covered grass emanating from the small, still courtyard outside her window. For ten minutes she sat on the edge of her bed stiffly as silent tears coursed down her cheeks, trying to still the tumult of her chaotic emotions and the effect they were having on her body. She began to tremble slightly when her attempts at control failed. Duse, I’m so sorry. I’m weak…weak. Why couldn’t I have just died along with you? She groaned wretchedly. She couldn’t continue like this. The emotional friction felt unbearable. Skylar wasn’t surprised when she heard the soft tap on her door a minute later. She rose slowly to her feet, her eyes mirroring her inner torment. Her hand hesitated only briefly on the knob, however, before the door swung silently inward. “Are you all right?” he asked softly, concern edging his tone. Skylar nodded mutely, avoiding his eyes. Her gaze caught and lingered hungrily where his thick, glossy black hair waved next to the white collar of his shirt. God she wanted to touch him more than she wanted to breathe…but she was so afraid. “I wanted to leave earlier but…”
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“Of course you couldn’t. The dinner was in your honor. You probably shouldn’t be here now.” Jax rolled his eyes. “Half the Watchers have left already, thanks to Saya,” he said enigmatically. “I’m exactly where I should be, Skylar.” Her eyes flickered up to meet his at his stark pronouncement. His light eyes glowed with banked power in the shadows of the corridor. “Are you going to let me in?” “I’m not sure,” she answered uncertainly, looking at the floor. “I haven’t forgiven you yet for what you did last week.” “Don’t you think we should talk about it?” Skylar flushed at thoughts of him spanking her and afterward… You’re mine. Fight me if you will but you’re never, ever going to alter the truth of that. “No.” Her eyes flashed to meet his. “You can come in, Jax, but I don’t want to talk about that. Okay?” One black eyebrow drew up curiously at her adamancy but he agreed quickly enough. They regarded each other cautiously when Skylar closed the door behind him and they were left alone standing in the small bedroom. “It’s strange to me, thinking of you being King of the Watchers,” Skylar said awkwardly after a long pause. He gave a half grin. “Not any stranger than it is for me.” “At least you’ve had a little longer to get used to it. Bale only told me last week,” Skylar murmured. Her hands worked together nervously. “Would you like to sit down?” Jax didn’t answer but moved over to the circular turret where a cushioned bench was built beneath the open windows. “Sit next to me, Skylar,” he said when she began to draw up a chair. “Please.” When she acquiesced he immediately took her hands into both of his. The spring night settled around them like a comforting, maternal embrace. Jax examined their hands closely, as if seeing her flesh in his own was the most fascinating sight he’d ever seen. Skylar found herself doing the same. In truth, both of them were trying to find a measure of control in the full, poignant moments of silence. “Your speech was wonderful. I was so…proud of you,” Skylar finally managed in a low, tremulous voice. His head came up sharply. “You were?” She smiled. “Yes. You’ve come a long way from being the man I talked to next to Lake Michigan so many years ago who was having trouble finding himself amongst the tall shadows of his older brothers. That was the right thing to do, to speak of Bale and everything he’s given to the Watchers. I could tell everyone in the room thought the same. You showed good judgment by doing that.” 67
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Jax shrugged uneasily. “It was only the truth.” “Sometimes the truth is hard to say,” she whispered. She didn’t move but she still didn’t fully meet his gaze when he reached up and cradled her jaw. His thumb gently wiped at a lone tear that skipped down her cheek. “I don’t think I can do this, Jax.” “Do what?” “I can’t…I can’t be your mate,” she said wretchedly. Conflict and pain tightened her features. “Shhh,” he soothed softly. His head dipped down closer to her. Their voices were so hushed that someone standing ten feet away from them wouldn’t have understood the words meant only for the other’s ears. “It’s not a matter of whether you can or can’t be. You are my mate, Skylar. We can’t deny that any more than we can stop the Earth from spinning. It didn’t happen in the way that you or I would have chosen but that doesn’t stop it from being a fact of life.” His mouth tightened as his thumb gently wiped away one of her tears. “I was angry at Bale for telling you. I should have been the one to explain.” Skylar closed her eyes causing fresh tears to fall down her face and onto Jax’s stroking thumb. The moment felt unbearably full. “Oh God. I don’t think I can talk about this right now, Jax. It’s just…too much.” “You’re right,” he assured her. He continued when she opened her eyes and focused on him curiously. “We’ll take this at your pace. But you must realize that it’s my sacred duty to protect you. Your denial of me…of us…is hurting you. It’s unnatural to your spirit. It’ll eventually kill both of us. I won’t allow it any longer, beauty. If you won’t take me into your body then so be it. But at least let me into your life.” Skylar bit at her lower lip nervously. “You’re very difficult to take in partial measure, Jax.” Her heart squeezed in her chest when he smiled, white teeth flashing in his dark face. “Should I take that as a compliment?” “You will, whether I tell you to or not.” Before he could let his doubts stop him, Jax leaned down and brushed his lips against the small smile that pulled at her mouth. He lingered, breathing her deeply before he pulled his face back a mere inch from hers. His eyes flickered across the faint shadows beneath her eyes, signs of her seemingly endless turmoil. “Do you know what I’d like to do, Skylar?” “I’m a little afraid to ask.” He chuckled softly. “I’d like to lay with you in bed—let me finish,” he soothed when he felt her stiffen immediately at his words, “and just hold you and kiss your lips until you fell asleep in my arms. You’re so tired, beauty. Would you let me hold you while you rest?”
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Skylar hesitated. For some reason the idea had a profoundly restful, alluring quality to it, an unnamed sweetness for which she longed. “Fully clothed?” she finally asked cautiously. Jax nodded. “And you wouldn’t…try to make love to me?” He sighed. “Skylar, let’s face it. I’m making love to you every time I look at you. I can’t help it. But if you don’t want me to touch certain places on your body, either with my hand or my mind, then just tell me what’s off limits.” She laughed softly. Jax leaned down to feel the delightful sensation run over his lips. “Is it okay for me to hold you in my arms?” “I suppose,” Skylar granted uneasily. “Okay, so we have to make clear where I can touch you with my hands?” He waited until she nodded before he gently squeezed the hand that he already held. “Is it okay for me to touch you here?” She nodded. “What about your face?” She hesitated at that but eventually signaled her agreement. “Your hair?” “Jax, this is ridiculous. You’re not going to name off all my body parts, are you? Just use common sense. Don’t…don’t touch me below my neck except where our bodies come into casual contact from lying next to each other.” “But you just said I could touch your hands.” “Oh all right, my arms then,” she agreed with growing exasperation and amusement. But his earnest, playful manner with her effectively diminished the heaviness and despair that had been clinging to her spirit. “Let’s just go lay down. You’re exhausting me.” She glanced up at him suspiciously when he sprang up from the bench eagerly. One raven-dark eyebrow rose in a gesture of innocent query that reminded her far too poignantly of Nix when he was trying to get away with something. The thought still teased her consciousness when she slowly came down next to his long, hard body on the bed and his arms closed around her. For a few tense seconds she couldn’t breathe at the full sensation pressing down on her lungs. She turned her head, brushing her cheek against the material of his soft shirt. The pressure on her chest eased as she inhaled his scent. “Do you sleep every night, Jax?” Watchers didn’t require sleep, but as a mated Watcher became more and more corporeal he began to sleep for short periods of time. Jax had become so powerful from
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his suffering, though, that he shared many of the same characteristics of a Watcher who had been mated for millennia. Skylar knew for a fact that he slept occasionally. “Not every night. But most nights, for less than an hour, usually,” he said distractedly. Most of his focus was on the sensation of her hair between his fingers. “I’ve always loved your hair.” Skylar closed her eyes, cherishing being touched by him while her guilt was held in abeyance by his charm. “Always?” Jax didn’t respond for a minute while he rubbed a silky curl between his appreciative fingers. “Always,” he finally muttered. “When I first saw you over eight hundred years ago your hair was a darker gold—the color of harvest wheat. But in every lifetime that I’ve known you it’s always fallen in these curls and waves. If I told you the number of times I’ve fantasized about touching it like I am right now you’d never believe me.” She scrunched her eyes tighter to shield herself against his awed tone. He paused. “Do you want me to talk about something else?” Skylar nodded mutely into his chest. “Okay. You missed the big finale to the dinner tonight. Saya and that woman, Joanne, caused quite a stir.” Skylar peered up at him. Wicked humor sparkled in his beautiful eyes. “What kind of a stir?” she asked cautiously, part of her already guessing. “You’re right,” he said with a laugh, reading her mind easily. “The usual Watcher kind. I know Saya would have wanted to shield their activity from others…” “But?” She smiled as she basked in the sound of his rich, masculine laughter. “But it’s not our custom to cast a shield for a woman until after we’ve received her first Rush.” “I’ve never understood that,” Skylar said thoughtfully. “Why wouldn’t Saya just protect her immediately?” Jax glanced up at the ceiling, trying to find the right words. “Incidental sex for us isn’t the same as casual sex is for a human. You know that we’re very careful about casting shields for regular lovers, lemans and especially mates. But for Watchers, even sex outside of true intimacy is something to be celebrated and—” “Shared?” Skylar asked wryly. Jax shrugged. “Sex energy is sacred to us. It sustains our existence in the physical world. We’re don’t degrade it or make it shameful like humans do, although Asmoday has certainly made a go of that,” he muttered bitterly. He sensed Skylar’s doubt and knew its origins. The Watcher outcast and the Ammadon’s greatest enemy, Asmoday, had wanted to force Watcher mates into providing their rarified, powerful sex energies to all of the Watchers, not just their mates. He’d even stooped to rape in order to steal a mate’s energy for himself.
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Asmoday and Asmoday alone was responsible for the current practice of protecting a mate with a sigil. Skylar sighed. “You’re probably not going to entirely convince me, Jax. I’m human, after all. Just finish the story about Saya.” He brought his elbow up under him and placed his head in his hand. His left palm cupped her waist warmly. His long legs brushed against hers. Skylar willed her attention away from the spot just under his hand and the feeling of his hard thighs ghosting hers elusively. “Well Joanne was very eager to get things underway with Saya. I saw her dragging him out of the dining room onto the long balcony. Pretty soon I noticed more and more unmated Watchers looking distracted and disappearing,” Jax laughed softly at the memory. “I could sense Saya’s distress so I passed by there on the way to find you.” Skylar snorted. Jax threw her a dark look. “Come on, Skylar…as if I could metabolize that woman’s energies after you, or even be vaguely interested in trying for that matter. I was just curious and a little concerned as to why Saya was so uncomfortable.” “Why was he?” Skylar wondered. He grinned, the sight mesmerizing her as always. She tried not to notice how he began making small circles with his hand on her waist and then her hip but her attempts weren’t working. She thought of reminding him of the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be touching her below her neck but then she remembered what she’d said about casual contact from embracing and she supposed his rubbing hand might fall into that category. “You know our ways. Watchers don’t like to come before they confer a Rush. But I guess Joanne either fancies herself a fellatio artist or she just became overwhelmed with lust for Saya during dinner but as soon as she got him out there on the balcony she dropped to her knees for him.” “Oh.” Jax’s eyes flickered with brief puzzlement at Skylar’s subdued reaction but he guessed it was due to her overall anxiety about being with him. Still, almost without thinking about it, his hand rose to gently caress her silky curls and massage the back of her head in a soothing gesture. “So Saya was so uncomfortable because he couldn’t set a shield for her until he’d tested her strength by making her come. But this woman was so hot to make him come—and doing a damned admirable job of it. Saya was so vulnerable at that moment that I could clearly read his mind. He was thinking that Joanne must have been born with a golden throat or had some kind of human surgery to make her so accommodating. He kept telling her to stop but she just ignored him. Meanwhile, Joanne was getting so aroused over the whole ordeal that half of the Watchers here tonight had gone non-bod to soak up her energies,” Jax laughed. Non-bod was a slang
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term that referred generally to the variety of incorporeal, invisible states that a Watcher could take. Panic glazed Skylar’s eyes. “Please tell me that Nix was nowhere near that balcony.” “No, of course not. I shielded him from her energies.” Skylar seemed so vulnerable about discussing how things lay between them that Jax didn’t think this was the time to tell her that as Nix’s designated guardian among the Watchers, it was his duty to protect Nix in situations like that while he was underage. “Thank you.” Jax stilled when she reached out to caress his cheek. “You’re welcome,” he said gruffly, temporarily losing his train of thought at her soft touch. “So I…uh…I went out to the balcony fully corporeal, thinking she might let up on poor Saya if they were interrupted. But Joanne didn’t seem to mind witnesses. Batos was right behind me, ready to do battle. He’d noticed that almost every guest at the party he’s been planning every minute for the past two months was gathering someplace else for entertainment. He started ripping into Saya, accusing him of irresponsible, selfish behavior. And you, a member of the Council, he kept saying. Saya looked up at us through crossed eyes because Joanne wasn’t letting up a smidgeon. The Watchers who are pledged to him found the whole thing hilarious since Saya usually likes to be the one at the helm when it comes to making love.” Jax laughed again irrepressibly at the memory. “Meanwhile, Saya’s face was getting as red as his dick and he kept begging Joanne to stop but she just kept vacuuming him deeper and then Batos said—” Jax stopped abruptly. Skylar started at first than went still. He held her head steady and gazed deeply into her eyes. After a long, mesmerizing moment she blinked. “Then what happened, Jax?” “Ah…it was nothing. I’m sorry. That was crass of me to tell you that story.” Her brow crinkled. She couldn’t understand his reaction. Skylar had long ago learned that Watchers spoke about sex as casually as humans did the weather or the score from yesterday’s football game. While she couldn’t say she was completely comfortable with this particular racial idiosyncrasy, it didn’t mortify her like it had at one time in her life. “Crass? I can handle it. I’m hardly a teenage virgin and I’ve been to my fair share of Issian Festivals.” She blushed suddenly, thinking of the last festival she’d attended, recalling in breathtaking detail watching Jax while he kissed a naked woman on a public stage and held her hips steady while her Watcher lover fucked her ass. Heat surged through her pussy. Skylar struggled to ignore her body’s powerful response to the memory while Jax embraced her so intimately and she breathed his sublime scent. “But you know…” She bent her elbow and put her head in her hand, mimicking his position as they faced each other. “I never have been able to understand Watchers’ 72
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insistence on making a woman come before him. I mean it’s very nice,” Skylar assured Jax, blushing again. “But it seems sort of…well…” “Controlling?” Jax asked softly. She blinked in vague surprise at his astuteness. “Well a little. Is there some kind of law that a woman has to come first? Some twist of Watcher nature that I don’t understand?” “No, not exactly. It’s just that for unmated Watchers, any chance to make love with the physical body can only come after he brings his partner to orgasm and he receives her Rush energies.” “Yes but that’s for unmated Watchers. What about for mated ones?” Jax’s hand stilled at her hip. “There’s nothing to prevent it, Skylar. It would just be the couple’s preference and choice.” He saw that her cheeks pinkened further. Her lips too looked flushed, full and thoroughly delectable. He’d been semi-erect since the moment she’d opened the door earlier but he sprang to full, throbbing life with alarming abruptness…despite what he’d just seen when he gazed into her eyes. He utilized his considerable strength of will to not fall on her parted lips and thoroughly defile her lovely mouth. “Skylar, what’s this all about?” he asked cautiously. “Nothing,” she said too quickly. He stroked her scalp soothingly as he held her gaze. “Is that something you want to try?” he asked. “Do you want to bring me off before you come?” Skylar just stared at him as though she were paralyzed. She couldn’t bring herself to say no or yes. Jax cringed inwardly when he fully experienced her inner state. She was so tense he could imagine her breaking apart from the unbearable friction of her conflicting emotions. “Shhh,” he whispered over her lips as he bent to lightly kiss her. The sweet nectar he found just behind her lips drew him forward. His tongue delved her gently. He groaned in satisfaction when he successfully teased her quick, curious tongue to rub against and play with his own. Skylar felt herself melting when he placed one hand on the side of her neck and made a subtle massaging motion while he continued to plunder her mouth. The experience had a sharp, sweet quality that made emotion clog in her throat. But as if he’d foreseen this as well, Jax’s thumb gently swept over her the front of her neck and the tension eased. After Jax could endure no more because he was becoming thoroughly intoxicated by her taste, he nipped at her lush lips and brushed featherlight kisses on her cheeks and eyelids. “Better?” Skylar heard him whisper after a moment. “Yes,” she replied. 73
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He looked into her eyes and stroked her jaw with his thumb. “Beauty,” he whispered reverently. “I saw your secret a moment ago. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…it was all that talk about fellatio that brought it to the surface, wasn’t it?” Skylar swallowed. She’d suspected this when she’d experienced his unearthly gaze a moment ago. “I suppose.” He hesitated briefly, not sure what she recalled or understood about the whole secret. “Tell me what you know about it.” She lowered her arm and laid her head on top of it. “There isn’t much to tell. I never liked doing it with Duse. With anyone…ever.” “What’s so terrible about that?” he asked calmly. “Nothing I guess. Except for that with Duse I wanted to love him that way. I just…couldn’t,” she whispered into her arm. Jax cradled the back of her head and lightly kissed her jaw. He felt her pain as if it were his own. He thought of changing the subject but his instinct told him that would be the wrong thing to do with Skylar. “What would happen when you tried?” “I would just…gag.” Tears skipped down her cheeks. It killed Jax to see it while she avoided his gaze so steadfastly. “It wasn’t as if he…you know…would force himself on me. He was very gentle and undemanding but…eventually we just stopped trying.” “Skylar, look at me.” She hesitated at first but then twisted her face upward. “Do you want to know the truth about it?” Her eyes looked enormous in her face but she nodded her head. Even so, Jax paused to gather himself for several seconds. “You can read subtle energies. You must know that your chakra there—the energy center near your throat—has a block. You never knew why?” He waited until she shook her head. He sighed. “There was a man—in a manner of speaking, anyway. He was your husband in another lifetime. I can’t say when…a millennium ago maybe? I don’t think you know exactly, so it makes it difficult for me to divine that truth. But he used to…force himself on you in that manner. He raped you in other ways too. But it was that particular invasion of your body and spirit that you just couldn’t abide. He would torture you with that knowledge.” Jax said unevenly, profoundly affected by what he’d seen in her eyes. “If he were alive right now, Skylar, I’d break his neck in an instant and then regret afterward that I hadn’t drawn out his pain indefinitely.” Skylar blinked at his abrupt, focused fierceness. The Watchers would never have to fear that their new king wasn’t every bit as ruthless as his predecessor when the situation necessitated it. 74
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“Actually, Duse felt the same way. That man was my husband when Duse and I first were mated. When Duse understood what he did to me he killed him.” “No surprises there.” “I never knew until now…not all of the details. Duse told me about an abusive husband but he said that he’d stopped him immediately. Maybe he never understood the specifics. He must not have fully understood that was why I had trouble making love to him in that way,” Skylar murmured thoughtfully. After a moment she looked up at Jax. “Thank you for telling me.” “You’re welcome,” he said gruffly. Skylar stroked his hair when she saw his eyes were moist. “It was hard for you too. But I feel better knowing. Sort of relieved,” she added before she tried to repress a yawn. “You’re tired.” He lay back on the pillows and brought her against his chest. His hand found its new home at the base of her skull. His fingers began their hypnotic, soothing rhythm. “Go to sleep, beauty. I want to know what it’s like to hold you while you dream.”
***** Holding her and having their flesh pressed together while she dreamt ended up being much more of an exquisite, heavenly torture than Jax could have ever imagined. Skylar awoke to the sound of her own low moan. She felt hot…so hot. Her eyes snapped open abruptly. The first thing she saw was Jax’s face. His facial muscles were pulled tight. His eyes smoldered like glowing embers at the center of a fire. “I wasn’t psychokinetically stimulating you. It was your own dream,” he muttered tautly. He couldn’t read her accurately at that moment. Sleep still glazed her awareness and his own lust was too thick to allow for accurate viewing. As such, he was utterly floored by what she said next. “I know it. I want to do that. Just like in the dream. Right now.” A tense silence followed. Jax finally swallowed. “I’ll try. I might disappoint you, Skylar.” She shook her head adamantly. “You won’t.” “I’ve always been one of those controlling Watchers that you mentioned, one of those jerks who never allowed himself to climax before his partner did.” Skylar smiled at that. She recognized the irony of the situation in comparison to human lovemaking. “It’s what I need from you right now, Jax. Please.” He sat up slowly, never breaking eye contact with her. “There’s no reason to beg. I’m more than happy to comply,” he said with cautious amusement. He could, in fact, completely understand her desperate hunger. It suddenly made strange but perfect sense that she chose to share herself with him in this fashion at first.
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But the fact still remained that Skylar’s emotional state was unstable at best and volatile at worst. Jax didn’t want to take advantage of her but he didn’t think he could resist her either, after centuries of restraint. Nervousness pushed its way into Skylar’s awareness, slightly dampening the intense sexual excitement from her dream as she sat up next to Jax. He cleared his throat uncertainly. “Skylar, I know this is your show but would you mind if I made a suggestion?” Her eyes looked huge in her face as she shook her head. “I’m not an expert on this by any means. But in those years after I…conspired with Asmoday so that I could be with you, those years of my penance, I spent a lot of time with Batos. It was time well spent. He’s very wise. Anyway, he told me something once about clearing the type of energy caused by trauma…about healing a subtle scar. It would help if you knelt between my legs so that I can touch your neck. Would that be okay?” he asked gently. Skylar nodded. “Here,” Jax said gruffly once he’d sat at the edge of the bed and Skylar came between his long, bent legs. He placed a pillow on the wood floor and she knelt on it. The expression in her wide agate eyes when she looked up at him almost made him want to weep. They spoke of fear and longing at once. He recognized how hard she was fighting to conquer her anxiety. His already profound respect for her deepened a thousandfold. “Will you…remove your clothes?” she asked raggedly. “In a moment, beauty. Let me touch you first.” Skylar’s breath felt like it was struggling to filter through a tiny hole in her throat when Jax lifted both of his hands to her neck. His touch felt warm, comforting…very sure. She couldn’t have moved her gaze away from his mesmeric eyes if she’d tried. He began to gently stroke her neck with a downward sweeping motion. She instinctively knew what he was doing. He was clearing and smoothing her knotted subtle energies using his own subtle touch. Her lungs expanded with a slow, full breath as the obstruction in her throat eased. The sensation was heavenly. After several more calming breaths, Jax spoke. “Do you want me to remove all of my clothes? Or just my pants? It’s your call, Skylar.” She considered carefully while she watched him, thinking of his male beauty and the overwhelming impact that his nude body would have on her. She recalled when she had first been reunited with Duse in this lifetime and they had all lived in Duse’s large penthouse in Chicago. Women used to flock to Jax like they were pigeons and he was a lone, succulent morsel of food left on the beach. If she were wise she would take Jax in moderate doses and yet… “All of them.”
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Her nostrils flared in order to bring in sufficient air when he immediately complied. Watchers conjured their clothing from their subtle bodies so they could dissipate them at the blink of an eye. Skylar found herself surrounded by a veritable mountain of lean, hard muscle, smooth olive-toned skin and flagrant male sexuality. She immediately caught his scent and swayed forward, entranced. “You smell like…I don’t know what…” she whispered. Jax stared down at her as she lightly kissed his abdomen. His muscles leapt with pleasure. He unsuccessfully restrained a groan when she pressed her face to him softly and inhaled. “But it’s heavenly. If I could bottle it I’d be a millionaire,” Skylar murmured as she glanced up at him. Jax forced himself to stay still when she took the shaft of his penis in her hand, her eyes never leaving his face. “You’re already a millionaire, Skylar,” he said with rough amusement. “A billionaire in fact.” “Duse’s fortune is Nix’s, not mine. I’m just the humble owner of a nursery in downtown Chicago.” Jax didn’t bother to argue with her, despite the fact that she not only was the sole recipient of his brother’s fortune but, as his mate, also shared equally in his own. At that moment he couldn’t focus on anything but her stroking hand on his cock. He felt beads of sweat pop out on his forehead and above his upper lip. He wanted to draw her into his arms and taste her mouth so badly that it made him temporarily see red. He vibrated with the need to lay her down on the bed, spread her wide and bury his face between her legs until she rippled and screamed in pleasure. But he wouldn’t have given in to those desires at that moment even if he tempted with the divine promise that the Watcher race would profligate and thrive here on Earth. “This is difficult for you, isn’t it?” Skylar asked softly. Jax grunted as she focused her tight fist on the sensitive head of his penis. “Your touch is amazing,” he prevaricated. “Thank you for letting me do this. I know it’s not your way. I’m going to start now,” she told him determinedly. “Do you want to tell me what you like?” “I don’t need to. You could do any damn thing you wanted right now, Skylar, save bite off the head, and I’d still be the happiest creature on the face of the Earth.” Her eyes rounded with surprise and she snorted with laughter. Jax smiled deeply at the sound. He loved to hear her laugh. It was such a rare, precious occurrence. Both of their gazes still sparkled with mirth when she grasped his thick shaft at the base and arrowed him toward her lips. Lust overshadowed her amusement when she inspected him for the first time from such close range. His size was similar to Duse’s but while the head of Duse’s cock had been blunt, Jax’s was the shape of the cap of a smooth paddy straw mushroom. The fleshy head terminated in a mouthwateringly defined thick ridge. His shaft was as 77
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straight as a column with the exception of several prominent veins. Her eyes lowered over him slowly, widening when she reached the base. “How did you get like that?” Jax gave a humorless bark of laughter. The touch of Skylar’s gaze felt more powerful than the knowing caress of the most skilled leman he’d ever possessed. “The same way that a human man would—I shave. Our hair isn’t like our clothes, Skylar. Is it all right with you?” he asked suddenly. Skylar couldn’t pull her eyes away from the sight of the clean-shaven sac that held his round, firm testicles. It was the image of stark, masculine power. She honestly could say that she’d never seen anything so erotic in her life. She answered Jax’s question indirectly. “Can I start there?” “Be my guest,” he managed gruffly.
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Chapter Six She lowered her face and licked curiously. He tasted good. Her tongue slipped beneath his taut sac and cradled one heavy gland. She vibrated it slightly to capture more of his essence. Skylar vaguely heard his grunt of pleasure but mostly she was focused on the sensation of him. Oh…he tasted better than good, like rich musk, tangy salt and distilled desire. She shocked herself by flicking her tongue deeper between his legs, eager for more of that addictive taste. When she felt him jump slightly she moved her fist up and down on his shaft just beneath the smooth, iron-hard head to soothe him. Jax made a choking sound in his throat when she put one hand on his naked thigh and spread him wider for her quick, curious tongue. She dove deep for a breathless few seconds, even treating his asshole to a flirtatious lick that left him temporarily blind before she returned to his balls. He watched her avidly as she delicately took one into the warm sanctuary of her mouth. Her eyes opened and met his gaze. A guttural groan left his lips when she suckled gently. “By the Fathers, Skylar, you’re spoiling that flesh. It’s going to want to take up permanent residence in your mouth,” he muttered between clenched teeth. He suppressed another groan when he felt her lips twitch in an incipient smile. She circled his flesh carefully with her tongue before she slid him slowly between her pursed lips and transferred her attention to its twin. A drop of sweat rolled down Jax’s abdomen. It was an almost unendurable trial to sit still and watch her while she tortured him with her pumping fist, warm mouth, supple tongue and bewitching eyes. Every instinct in his body demanded that he plant himself deeply inside her then and there. He didn’t particularly care where…as long as the glorious end involved her powerful Rush searing into him before he exploded inside of her. But no, that wasn’t what Skylar wanted right now. It wasn’t what she needed. He exhaled sharply when she released his testicle slowly from her gently suctioning heat. She rose on her knees, her eyes on his face. He watched her red tongue flick over her wet lips. “You taste so good. Do you think I could make you come just by sucking on them?” she asked curiously. Jax grunted. “Beauty, you could make me come by breathing on me if you gave it enough time. The answer is yes, Skylar.” His hand came up to caress the back of her neck. “And you were well on your way to proving it. Don’t stop on my account if you want to continue.”
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She shook her head, causing her curls to spill over her shoulders. “No. I want to try it like before, when I slept,” she whispered. His eyes seemed to glow in the dim light. “Do you want me to hold back your curls like I did in your dream?” Skylar nodded, momentarily mute with lust. She stayed very still while he gathered her thick hair, finally transferring it all into his left fist. “Touch me, Jax,” she muttered through a throat that had uncooperatively constricted on her again. She sighed with relief and pleasure when his long fingers came up to soothe the sides and front of her neck. She kept her eyes glued to his for confidence and lowered her mouth to his cock. She paused when he pulled up gently on her hair, stopping her. “Only as much or as little as you like. I meant what I said before—I’ve wanted you for so long and so much that all you have to do is acknowledge me with your gaze and I’ll be happy, Skylar.” Her eyes stung. She wanted so much to give him something to ease his suffering. She smiled tremulously before she spread her jaw and lips wide and worked the head of his cock between them. He tensed when he saw her pause with about an inch of his flesh inside her warm mouth. She breathed slowly through her nose. Her throat flexed beneath his fingers. He urged her up off him. His fingers lightly massaged, loosening the clotted energy that he had sensed in her subtle bodies and that had became manifest in her flesh. When she’d eased, Skylar immediately leaned down again. This time she held him steady with her hand and ran her tongue around the circle of the thick ridge below the cap of his head. “Again,” Jax hissed. He watched avidly as she complied, paused to stick the tip of her red tongue into his slit to steal his pre-cum with apparent relish and then returned to polish the underside of the head once again. When she rose up after a minute of silence broken only by his low moans of pleasure Jax saw the dark pink splashes of color in her cheeks. He felt gratified that she seemed to be enjoying herself. “I want to feel that entire ridge between my lips at once,” she whispered. He almost came on the spot at the look of determination on her face and the sight of her spreading her jaw wide to take his girth, this time with lust burning in her eyes instead of anxiety. He groaned shakily when she slid the head almost immediately between her lips. He stroked her throat, clearing the energy, and she began to slide the first several inches of his cock in and out of the heaven of her mouth. Skylar’s focus became a pinpoint of pure lust. The only thing that existed for her was her desire for him, her need to run her tongue around the gorgeous smooth head of his cock, the necessity to slide her lips up and down over the exquisite underside of that succulent cap. Her hand instinctively increased its rhythm over his long shaft until she stroked him at the same exuberant pace that her lips moved like a piston over his straining head.
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Jax’s eyes were wild with restrained excitement as he watched her staring up at him while his cock slipped in and out of her straining lips. He spoke to her with relative calm initially, telling her how incredible it felt, how perfectly she pleasured him, but as time went on his praise became increasingly uneven and his content more graphic. Skylar grew unbearably excited as she listened to him tell her through irregular, panting breaths that her sweet little mouth was sucking his dick like a straw and that she was about ready to slurp up every drop of cum from his boiling balls. When he began to gently but firmly push her head down over his cock with the hand that held her hair at her head, Skylar felt his peaking desire like it was her own. She strained her head down over him, slipping her tightly pursed lips down over his thick, smooth shaft. When the tip of his penis touched the back of her throat, though, it stimulated her gag reflex. She blinked when Jax immediately pushed her off of him. “Gods, I’m sorry, Skylar.” Her eyes widened when she saw how his handsome, flushed face looked blank with shock. “I got carried away.” Jax watched as tears coursed down her cheeks, thinking how lame his excuse sounded. Skylar shook her head and leaned back over him. When Jax halted her with a hand at her shoulder she looked up at him with vague irritation. “Why are you stopping me?” she asked. “We’re not finishing until you give me what you promised.” Her eyes continued to blaze up at him defiantly as she worked him into her mouth again. It didn’t take her long to resume her former lusty rhythm although she was careful this time not to be too greedy. A woman couldn’t be with a cock like Jax’s, no matter how much she might crave it. The dimensions of her throat and the circumference of his cock necessitated a certain degree of reality acceptance. So what if she wasn’t Joanne of the golden throat? She knew for a fact she was giving Jax pleasure, and that knowledge tasted beyond sweet to her. Do what you did before, Skylar begged him telepathically, when you pushed my head up and down on you. “Like this? You like that?” Jax asked with incredulity as he pushed her head over him gently with the hand that fisted her hair even as he continued to stroke her throat. She’d taken him directly back up a steep slope that was going to end in a mindcollapsing climax but her unexpected request shoved him forcefully higher until he skated precariously on a slippery edge. His balls pulled into his body and the base of his spine burned with combustible energy. Gods, it was going to happen. He was going to come without ever feeling even the edge of Skylar’s Rush. And by the fucking Fathers, he couldn’t bloody wait. His eyes sprang wide. He howled as pleasure ripped first through his flesh then shattered through his subtle bodies in relentless waves. Instinctively he thrust Skylar away from him as he took his Truest Form and his sex energies sizzled like a lightning 81
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serpent up his spine, snapping his head back as they released through the top of his head and out of his sex at once like a surging, double-ended, white-hot fountain of subtle fire. Skylar stared in awe. She’d never been this close to a Watcher’s cock when he took his Truest Form. She blinked in dazed, disbelieving lust. Surely some magic must come into play here. There was no way in hell she could ever harbor that inside her body. When the fires of his Truest Form faded though, Skylar had to wonder which image was more powerful…or more flagrantly sexual. Every muscle in Jax’s long, lean body flexed unbearably tight as jets of thick white cum spurted from his penis. His eyes were clenched tight as he gasped in agonized pleasure. “Blessed Mother,” he hissed tensely when Skylar took him back into her mouth and suckled and swallowed greedily. Skylar pictured herself keening in orgasm several weeks ago as she held desperately onto those velvet bags filled with his cum. Her seemingly bizarre behavior made perfect sense to her now. She’d die happily with the scent of Jax’s semen in her nostrils and his taste filling her mouth. Her—Skylar Halifax Ammadon—who until tonight had preferred to abstain from sucking cock. Despite the fact that she’d never come, what she’d just done with Jax felt like the most exciting, healing, hallowed sexual act in which she’d ever engaged. “Stop, Skylar,” he muttered almost incoherently when he finally came back to reality and realized she was still slurping eagerly on the end of his penis. He grabbed her shoulders and brought her up against him until she placed her knees on either side of his hips. He held her head with both of his hands and kissed her deeply. “Can I take off your clothes?” he murmured a few seconds later against her lips. “Skylar?” he asked when she didn’t respond. It took him a moment to realize that her body had gone stiff in his arms. Skylar saw him through tunnel vision. She registered the stark lines and angles of his handsome face and his tousled, ink-black hair. Some part of her being acknowledged the creased brow and the growing look of concern in his exotic blue eyes. But most of her being was trapped by the truth of what she’d just admitted to herself. Jax resisted the urge to grab her and hold her fast against him when she withdrew and stood up next to the bed. His lips opened to question her hotly but then he sensed her state of being. Despite the fact that he’d never received her Rush he was so fully corporeal at that moment that a muscle twitched in his cheek from his repressed tension. Neither of them spoke when she turned her back to him and took several steps toward the open windows. “Skylar…” he began in a voice that sounded like it was being dragged over sharp glass.
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“Leave. I’m sorry. I know what you must be thinking of me. You must think I’m the worst kind of tease but please… please…just walk out that door, Jax, or I might…” Something in the tight desperation of her voice made him conjure his clothing back on himself and follow her directions. Barely contained fury and helplessness roiled in his gut as he slammed shut the door behind him. He abruptly turned in the hallway and flung one arm up high over the lintel, leaning heavily into the door, breathing like he’d just sprinted miles. Shame warred with his desire. There was little doubt which emotion reigned supreme when he didn’t move but waited tensely with a lowered head and clenched eyelids. When Skylar’s Rush hit him, his knees fell sharply into the door. He sagged as her exquisitely rarified sex energies pounded into his subtle bodies in pulsing waves. Still gasping in pleasure, he smashed his fist against the door furiously, causing a splintering sound. The acidly amusing thought struck him a moment later as he peeled himself weakly off his mate’s bedroom door that his present appearance would hardly do much to reinforce the much-touted rumors among the Watchers about the immense power and strength of their new ruler and king. He was pitiful, resorting to stealing Skylar’s masturbatory Rush energies instead of being the one to create them for her. He identified with his etheric body, fading from visibility. He hunkered down next to the wall, resigned to his bitter fate of guarding Skylar while they were physically separated even when his greatest desire was to do so while she was in his arms…where she belonged.
***** “So you all agree? You’ll be strong about this even when Batos, Paim and—Gods forbid—Maerda try to convince you otherwise? You’ll stand guard during the ceremony?” Jax asked the five Watchers pointedly. “I don’t care about Maerda but Batos better steer clear of me,” Saya mumbled sullenly so that only Jax heard him. Obviously he was still sore about Batos’ scolding last night. Eli Aurelious shrugged his broad shoulders with insouciant grace. “Lesson Number One, young soon-to-be king, is that you never ask our opinion, you just order the members of the Council around like puppets at the end of your string and then somehow manage to make us think the whole thing was our own idea, much like your dear brother always does.” “There’s more art to being a king than you might imagine,” Bale said with a small grin. Jax’s frown eased slightly when he heard the lighthearted quality to his brother’s voice. What a relief it must be for Bale to finally remove the heavy mantle of leadership.
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Jax felt his usual anxiety mixed with optimism at the prospect of donning the cairda but in that moment he also felt a rush of gratitude that he was capable of providing a measure of happiness to his much-loved brother. “Of course we’ll stand guard, Jax,” Dante said impatiently. “You can’t actually think that we’d rather participate in the ceremony. Paim would probably have us lighting candles or chanting in unison or something. Che and I stood guard last night, just in case, and none of us caved into their pressure to sit with you at the head table. But Jax…you’re sure that Skylar said enemies?” Jax sighed. “Skylar’s prophecy isn’t going to change just because you keep telling me to repeat it, Dante. Beware the moment that you feel like the king of your universe because your enemies will choose that moment to strike.” “Asmoday has likely enlisted the help of unstable humans again through the medium of the Borderlands,” Che stated grimly. He and his mate Sophia had personal experience with Asmoday’s proclivity for bending violent humans to his will and utilizing their twisted thought forms as weapons. “No humans save Watcher mates and Maerda will be allowed to attend the Regnausa,” Bale said. “Che’s and my knights have volunteered to stand guard around the periphery of Dunleavy,” Jax said briskly as he stood. “A guard will be set on the South Tower, where several humans are staying, and in the servant’s quarters. All we can do is be vigilant and hope for the best. Asmoday has much to lose if I become king.” “When you become king,” Che said softly. The blazing hard look of determination in his aquamarine eyes when he raised his head clearly belied his tone. Jax’s face relaxed into a grim smile for his kinsman and close friend. Eli, Saya and Dante stood to leave, pausing to wish Jax well and giving him the equivalent of a Watcher handshake—ramrod straight posture, a bow of the head and the ancient saying aeirren provle du shein, which translated roughly—may your spirit be a clear mirror for the divine. After they’d left, Jax addressed Bale quietly. “You’ll mediate this piece of magic between Che and me?” Bale nodded once. “I’ll do my best. I can’t promise anything though, Jax. I’ve never done anything like this.” “I can handle most of it but I need you to act as a bridge. We’d better begin.” “You’re planning on going to Noddin’s Ring with us later this morning, right?” Jax stood up abruptly. “Is Skylar going?” he asked with forced casualness as he picked up an ancient African carving on the table and studied it with apparent fascination. Bale’s and Che’s eyes met briefly before Bale answered. “Yes.”
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“You two will watch over her and Nix for me if I don’t go?” He set down the statue abruptly, as if surprised to find it in his hand. “Noddin’s Ring is outside of Dunleavy’s protective wards.” Bale looked uneasy. “Did you and Skylar fight last night?” “Fight? No. A fight usually implies a degree of involvement between two people, a certain level of passion,” Jax said woodenly. Che snorted. “You and Skylar are mates. There isn’t any higher degree of involvement that I know about in all of the subtle or physical realms.” Jax’s eyes flashed with misguided anger at his cousin. “Yeah, well maybe that’s true, Che, and maybe we don’t know as much about it as we think we know. I’m beginning to think that the Watcher mating bond is pretty much the most powerful, inviolate spiritual joining that there is. I’m starting to think that even Duse’s death couldn’t sever it. Maybe that’s the reason Skylar has the uncanny ability to keep shutting me out of her life.” A tense moment followed in which waves of chaotic emotional energy seemed to flow from Jax to Che. Jax’s eyes blazed with a cutting, cold fire. “Calm down, Jax. Getting into a fight with Che isn’t going to help the situation with Skylar,” Bale said. “A good spar with the quarterstaff might not hurt,” Che muttered irritably, nettled by his cousin’s powerful, turbulent temper. “Jax, listen to me,” Bale said, ignoring Che. “The mating bond between you and Skylar is strong and perfectly intact. Her former joining to Duse isn’t what’s coming between you two—at least not in the way you’re imagining it.” “What in Hades is that supposed to mean?” Jax demanded. Bale closed his eyes to avoid his brother’s truth-seeing direct gaze and took a deep breath. He knew what was coming tonight. He’d made a sacred promise to Helen not to reveal it to Jax but he’d never had so many misgivings about taking a vow. The knowledge that he’d ordered Jax to complete the mating bond with Skylar without her conscious awareness still rankled at him. What would happen tonight was the most crucial thing in history to the Watchers but it could potentially widen the rift between Jax and Skylar even more…a rift that he was partially responsible for creating. Bale exhaled slowly and stepped away from the vortex of emotions that swirled around Jax. “Skylar is human. You’re forgetting the immense power of the human heart. What’s holding Skylar back from full communion with you isn’t any weakness in your bond with her, Jax—it’s her love for Duse, her memories…and her guilt, for caring about you so deeply in spite of all that.” Jax didn’t speak. He just stared darkly at the floor.
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Bale hesitated. He knew the right thing to do would be to advise his younger brother to be patient with Skylar, to treat her with a light touch until she came to terms with her feelings for him. But how could he, knowing what was coming tonight? “She just needs an opportunity to adjust,” Bale finally said, thinking how lame, how inadequate his advice sounded. “Yeah, you’re right,” Jax said after a pause. He looked up purposefully, as though he were trying to clear the fog from his mind. “Don’t you think we should get started?” Che nodded in agreement but Bale looked unsettled. “Why don’t you go with us to Noddin’s Ring later? It might give you a chance to smooth things over with Skylar before tonight,” he encouraged. Jax considered for a few seconds before he shook his head. “No, you were right, Bale. After last night the best thing I can do for Skylar is to give her space. As much space as I can give that woman anyway, without fucking losing my mind,” he muttered under his breath. He inhaled deeply, chasing away his uncertainty on one topic with his firm resolve on another. “Now, are we going to do this piece of magic or what?”
***** Skylar heard Nix bound up behind her from where she knelt on the Dunleavy grounds, patting the earth around a pear sapling. “Mom, aren’t you coming? Aunt Helen says there’s nothing more she can do for the arrangements for the Regnausa except memorize Uncle Jax’s lines for the ceremony for him.” “Maybe we could make up some cue cards,” Skylar said wryly as she stood and glanced around tiredly for Abel, Dunleavy’s gardener. She hadn’t ended up getting much sleep last night. “Come on, Mom! Everybody’s waiting.” She rolled her eyes in amused exasperation at his enthusiasm. Nix frisked next to her in a sideways gallop as they started into the house. “Maybe I should bottle this,” she told him as she eyed his chipper gait. “In Chicago I’d have to wrench you out of bed to get you to go for a nature walk this early. You do realize there won’t be any video games stationed around Noddin’s Ring, don’t you?” “Funny. There’s no place like Noddin’s Ring anywhere in Chicago. It’s so cool.” Skylar started to ask him why he liked the ancient stone circle so much. Was it the innate knowledge of subtle energies passed on to him by both of his parents or was it just his Watcher nature that drew him to Noddin’s Ring? Stone circles were usually the ancients’ attempt to capture and even transform subtle matter into the physical realm— or vice versa. But her mind went back to something Nix said earlier.
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“Who else is going to Noddin’s Ring with us?” Skylar hoped Maerda wasn’t making the short but strenuous trek up the mountain. She respected the old woman but she was tired of Maerda’s repeated suggestions that Skylar pledge her loyalties to the Druaga—the ancient, dying line of priestesses. “Aunt Helen, Ari, Aunt Sophia, Zeva—he’s bringing the kite—and all the uncles,” Nix said jocularly. Skylar missed a step. “What do you mean all the uncles?” “The uncles… Oh, except for Uncle Paim. But Zeva said he’s not my real uncle and that all the Watchers and children call him that. Zeva said Che isn’t really my uncle either but Uncle Jax told me just to ignore him. He said Che was a kinsman,” Nix said experimentally, “so it was okay to call him uncle no matter what Zeva said.” “So Jax is going to Noddin’s Ring?” Skylar asked point-blank, following her son’s rambling reply. Various excuses started to race through her mind for why she couldn’t go when she saw Nix nod. She dismissed all of them almost immediately. She couldn’t ignore Jax forever. Besides, after last night he must be furious at her. He’d probably be just as eager to avoid her as she was to avoid him. Not that she wanted to steer clear of him…not really. Images and sensations of making love to him last night teased her memory mercilessly. She grimaced when she recalled his angry fist jolting her door. God she was an unholy jerk. Why had she ever let him into her room? And how could she have insisted that he leave after what had passed between them? She really must have unguessed-at depths of cruelty inherent to her character. She thought she would be relieved five minutes later when Che and Bale joined them in the drawing room and gave the news that Jax wouldn’t be coming with them on their outing. But instead her heart felt like a heavy weight in her chest, a stone that would have weighed her surely and mercilessly down to the bottom of the loch. She gazed out the terrace windows onto the clear, sunny spring day…seeing nothing. After she’d gathered herself she noticed that Bale had fixed her with his eerie, unreadable stare.
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Chapter Seven “Wow, Mom. You look really pretty. That’s the kind of dress a queen wears, isn’t it?” Skylar paused where she stood just inside the entryway to Nix’s room, a little surprised by the hushed, hallowed quality of her son’s usually jocular, often irreverent tone of voice. He was an Americanized male after all, one who was precariously close to adolescence. There must be sufficient amounts of Watcher in Nix for him to be falling under the fey spell of the night, however. Skylar couldn’t be sure if it was because of Batos, Paim and Maerda’s machinations for the Regnausa coming into full fruition but a magical aura of excitement and promise did indeed permeate the very air of the castle that evening. She laughed as she straightened Nix’s collar over the jacket of his new dark gray suit. “I doubt many queens shop at Macy’s,” she teased. She had in fact bought the royal blue gown off the rack at the Chicago department store on a whim just the day before she and Nix had left for Scotland. She hadn’t been satisfied with any of the multitude of dresses that she’d had exclusively made for her by a London designer while she’d been married to Duse. And she had to agree with Nix, the gown she’d purchased impulsively did do wonders for her complexion and figure. “You’re looking very handsome yourself, Pheynix Ammadon,” Skylar said as she brushed aside that rebellious lock of dark hair from his right brow. For some foolish reason, tears burned her eyes. Nix was so beautiful to her, such a living, breathing testament of her and Duse’s love for one another. When he put out his elbow in a formal gesture her tears threatened to overflow. “Who’s been coaching you on etiquette?” Skylar teased to cover her emotions as she took her son’s arm and they left his room. Nix just shrugged uncomfortably. Actually, it had been Jax who had taken him aside just that afternoon after they’d returned from Noddin’s Ring. He’d instructed Nix soberly on how to treat his mother tonight as her formal escort to the Regnausa. Nix felt a bit dim for not having realized that he should treat her in such a way previously. One had only to look at his mom tonight to realize she was much, much more than just the dependable, ordinary woman who drove him and his friends to baseball practice and occasionally yelled at him for leaving his clothes on the bathroom floor. “How come the Watchers don’t have a queen?” Nix asked instead of answering her. Skylar smiled warmly at Sophia Galanis, who was being escorted down the hallway by Che. She looked particularly stunning in a flowing ivory gown that set off her honey-hued skin. Che winked once at Nix before he led Sophia down the stairs. 88
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“Because there aren’t any Watcher females, Nix. That’s a source of so much sadness among your father’s people.” “But why wouldn’t they call Aunt Helen…or you, queen?” Skylar stopped abruptly and grasped the mahogany handrail. She noticed that Nix’s usually vibrant color washed out of his face. “Why would you say that, Nixy?” His dark pink, perfectly shaped lips fell open but nothing came out of them. Skylar blinked to combat a surreal feeling. “You know? You know about Jax and me?” she whispered incredulously. She felt like a canon ball had just been blown into her gut when he nodded his head once. “Skylar? Is everything all right? Your escort didn’t make you trip, did he?” She looked down the stairs dazedly to acknowledge Che. “No, of course not. He’s the perfect gentleman,” she assured Che. She forced a smile when she saw Sophia’s smile falter as she studied Skylar. Skylar pried her hand from the railing and resumed descending the stairs with her son. She glanced sideways when they reached the bottom, noticing Nix’s stiff, pale profile. Her hand came up to caress his arm reassuringly. “It’s okay, Nix. I’m not mad at you. I’m just…surprised. I didn’t know you knew.” I didn’t want you to know, she added to herself, feeling guilty presently on more than one level. God, what must her own son think of her? “We’ll talk about it another time,” she whispered as they reached the Grand Hall, which was ablaze with the light of eight enormous antique candlelit chandeliers. “Just try to enjoy yourself tonight. It’s an important night for your father’s people.” “It’s an important night for Jax,” Nix stated steadfastly. Skylar stared straight ahead as they followed a Watcher whom she didn’t recognize to their seats. Her shock deepened when she realized it wasn’t only loyalty but pride that tinged her suddenly very grown-up-seeming son’s voice. “Yes,” she conceded softly after a moment. “Especially for Jax.”
***** Skylar admittedly didn’t have a clue as to what was actually being said during Jax’s Regnausa but the profound underlying meaning of the ornate ceremony wasn’t lost on her. Nor was it lost on the room full of spectators, Skylar realized about halfway through the proceedings when she unglued her eyes from the magnetic sight of Jax repeating his vows in an ancient, long-dead language and glanced back over the Grand Hall. Every face in the room seemed to glow with rapt focus as their eyes fixed on their new leader. An almost tangible sense of buoyancy, hope and enthusiasm for the future 89
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hung in the air, undoubtedly inspired by the man who stood on the dais at the front of the hall, whose very presence was like a sustaining, eternal flame that fed every spirit present. Her own eyes swung back irrevocably to Jax as he accepted an ancient carved stone from Bale. She knew instinctively that the large columnar stone was a transformer of subtle energies, just like the Dionytian Stone was. As if Nix had read her mind, he whispered, “It’s called the Reganaut, the King’s Stone—or the King’s scepter.” Skylar nodded, her throat too full with emotion to be able to ask her son how he knew so much about the Regnausa. The sight of Jax held her spellbound. He and Bale both wore beautiful tunics that were almost blindingly white in color with symbols woven into the designs at the waist and along the hems that fell to midthigh. Both men looked awesome and entirely natural in the ceremonial garb. Skylar could see the silver and gold handle of Bale’s kopice, his deadly, curved sword, over his shoulder. Jax wore an elaborate belt with a lapis lazuli buckle and a golden dagger sheathed in it. The tunic was short-sleeved and fitted from the waist up, leaving his powerful arms bare from biceps downward, with the exception of a thick, golden armband with the head of a woman and the body of a serpent…or perhaps a salamander. It bent around Jax’s dense muscles until the primitive tail penetrated the regal mouth. While Bale wore a stunning chest plate of inlaid gold, opal and lapis lazuli, the deep V of the collar of Jax’s tunic left his chest partially exposed, emphasizing his stark strength and virility. Skylar thought Jax seemed calm, immensely powerful, hallowed…like his spirit and been burned clean by holy fire. “There’s the cairda!” Nix whispered in hushed, tremulous excitement. Skylar vaguely noticed that the entire energy level of the room notched up several degrees as Maerda walked onto the dais wearing her ceremonial Druagish robes and carrying what appeared to be a golden, carved mask. Skylar watched, fascinated, as the old priestess and Jax engaged in a ritualized exchange of words in a language that Skylar guessed hadn’t been spoken on Earth in millennia. Bale backed away to stand next to Helen, who also wore the robes of a Druagish priestess. Maerda stepped onto a high stool to formally affix the cairda onto Jax. She stepped back and, in a spine tingling, deep voice that carried the authority of the Goddess, called out to the Watchers, “I give you your new king!” The entire room went black except for the image of Jax taking his Truest Form. The golden mask seemed to glow with the power of a thousand suns. Despite the impossible brightness, his eyes shown like fearsome dark blue flames through the eyeholes of the mask as they fell on Skylar. The moment stretched eternally. The next thing Skylar knew the chandeliers had been lit once again, every Watcher in the room was applauding and Nix was standing beside her, urging her to resume her seat with a gentleness that both touched her deeply and left her utterly confused.
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“What happened?” she asked Nix uneasily. “Nothing. You just stood up and looked at Uncle Jax,” Nix said quietly, as though her behavior had been completely expected by him. “What happened to the cairda?” Skylar asked in disorientation as the Watchers began to file out of the Great Hall and Jax, Maerda, Bale and Helen left the dais. “It dissipates once it’s finished its task of designating the true King of the Watchers. It’s made of subtle matter—faerie gold. Besides indicating the true king, it guards the spectators from being harmed by the gaze of the King’s Truest Form,” Nix stated matter-of-factly. Skylar remained seated even though people were waiting to move past her and Nix. “Why would we be harmed by seeing Jax’s Truest Form?” she wondered in confusion. Nix looked at her for the first time like perhaps maybe she was just a tad touched. “No one can look into a Watcher’s eyes when he takes his Truest Form except for his mate. The power would kill them,” he said as though he were stating the obvious. Skylar’s mouth fell open. “But everyone here must have seen Jax’s eyes through the holes of the cairda.” Nix shook his head solemnly. His stood and took her hand. “The cairda doesn’t have eyeholes, Mom. No one could see Uncle Jax’s eyes but you.” Skylar stood and followed Nix mechanically. The knowledge that she’d been able to look into Jax’s eyes while he took his Truest Form even while Duse was still alive left her flesh vibrating like the Earth’s mantle did during an earthquake because of a profound shift at its core.
***** “Maerda says that we have to make a ceremonial toast together. I tried to tell her no, that you wouldn’t want to, but she’s insisting, Skylar.” Skylar stared at Jax mutinously, barely hearing what he’d said. “You look beautiful tonight, by the way,” he added with abrupt coldness. Jax fully expected her frown at his impromptu compliment. But some truths couldn’t be denied, especially when they were standing directly in front of you. His eyes kept rebelliously dipping down to take in the few errant golden curls that escaped the thick twist at the back of her head and the natural pink flush of her cheeks and lips—color undoubtedly caused by her irritation at the inconvenience of his existence. The fact that she looked as if she’d like to slap him at this very moment was probably only amplified when he let his gaze drop pointedly down over chest. The dress she was wearing made him as randy as a goat. “You’ve been messing with my son, Jax Ammadon.”
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Jax didn’t remove his gaze from the tantalizing vision of Skylar’s full, shapely breasts snugly encased in dark blue silk that couldn’t begin to rival the luster of the pale, flawless skin above the décolletage. The top of his sigil was fully displayed amidst all that firm, swelling flesh. He waited until two ebullient Watchers passed out of earshot and into the dining room before he dragged his gaze to her rigid face. “If you mean that I’ve been attending to the education of my nephew, you’re correct. It’s my sacred duty as his Watcher guardian.” “Watcher guardian my ass,” Skylar hissed furiously as Caim and Shana entered the drawing room. They couple nodded uncertainly in greeting—clearly sensing the volatile energies that popped and snapped between the new king and his mate—before they passed out onto the balcony. “Don’t you think you might have told me that you’d appointed yourself to such a position?” “Why would I? You’ve made it abundantly clear that you have no regard for Watcher ways. If you completely discount the fact that you’re my bonded mate, what chance is there that you’re going to stoop to acknowledge the Watcher law that says I’m Nix’s guardian?” He paused while Skylar opened and closed her jaw like she’d just been magically deprived of the power of speech. “And another thing,” Jax breathed out with an eerily quiet voice that clearly was at odds with the fire that blazed in his blue eyes. He stepped closer to her until his tunic ghosted the material of her dress and she was forced to crane her head back if she wanted to maintain her furious glare at him. “I didn’t appoint myself as Nix’s guardian. Nix’s father did that, Skylar, years before he died. If you have issue with that, bring it up with the Grigori Council—if you even acknowledge their sovereignty, that is.” “Jax, Skylar? Are ye ready for the toast?” They both started at the interruption. Even Maerda’s usually weighty stare faltered and lowered when the new King of the Watchers swung his fiery eyes in her direction. “Let’s get this over with,” Jax muttered tightly as he held out his arm for her. The quicker the better, Skylar snapped telepathically as she accepted it. She couldn’t have repeated the specific details later of what occurred when Maerda led them to the head table in the dining room. The old Druaga spoke both in the old language and in English, saying something completely incomprehensible to Skylar’s befuddled brain about the sword and the matrix, form from chaos, the ever-present, eternal darkness of the feminine and the lancing lightening strike of the masculine. When Helen put a golden goblet in her hand she sipped the herbed wine and handed it back. She had a brief moment of clarity as she felt the goblet still in midair and she was looking into Maerda’s impenetrable gaze. “Drink it all, Devon. It’s required, love.” Skylar hardly noticed that the old woman used her true name, the name she’d been known by for all of her lifetimes. Her eyes rose stormily to Jax’s. He looked truly unearthly standing there—cold and beautiful—as he watched her with a heavy-lidded 92
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gaze. His almost god-like aloofness made her feel like she was standing in judgment. She thought of what he’d said a few minutes ago about disregarding Watcher ways. She grabbed the goblet and downed the wine in three huge gulps. Afterward she spoke briefly to Nix before she hastily fled the room and the disturbing gaze of the Watchers’ new king.
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Chapter Eight Skylar regretted downing that strong wine when she awoke at two thirty in the morning with a headache and dry mouth. She sat up in bed and stretched. Despite the obvious effects of a slight hangover the rest of her body felt strangely enlivened. She stood and drew on a short white terrycloth robe over her nakedness, belting it at her waist. Christ, no wonder she’d gone to bed naked, she thought languidly as she sipped from a glass of water and stared out her open windows. It felt like August in Chicago instead of late May on the isle. The night had a still, humid quality to it that seemed to pulse with incipient life. Surely the sound of distant, throbbing drumbeats was her own blood pounding restlessly in her veins. She started back to bed but instead set the glass on her bedside table and headed out of the room. The thought of returning to bed seemed like a stifling, unbearable prospect. The full moon outside lit the grounds of Dunleavy with a silvery luminescence. Maybe a quick walk outside would cool her flesh and soothe her spirit. She didn’t turn on the light as she descended the back stairway—the one that had been used exclusively by the servants at one time. Her bare feet paused on a wooden step about halfway down when she heard the door to the stairs squeak as it was opened above her. Her breath caught in her throat as she listened for the inevitable sound of footsteps descending. The thick silence that followed seemed somehow more ominous. Skylar flew down the rest of the stairs too quickly for safety. By the time she rapidly traversed the enormous open kitchen and unlocked one of the many back entrances to Dunleavy her heart ran fast in her chest. She didn’t know why she did it. But as she pulled back the heavy door and pushed open the screen she glanced back over the moonlit, empty room anxiously. Jax walked into the entryway. He paused, regarding her impassively from the distance of the hundred feet or so that separated them. The thought struck her dazedly that even though he was only wearing a pair of low-riding jeans, his appearance wasn’t the slightest bit less awe-inspiring than it had been when he wore the garb and regalia of kingship. He looked alarmingly hard and determined. He stepped into the kitchen. The screen door slammed behind her and she was running into the night. She raced in a blind panic. Her brain must have been helping her negotiate the steep path and the dense bracken but if it was, it wasn’t doing so under Skylar’s conscious volition. Her awareness resembled that of an animal being chased by its most feared predator.
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Somewhere in the back of her mind she realized that Jax didn’t call out to her…that he didn’t try to soothe her fear. That alarming knowledge fragmented the primitive, graceful movement of her flight. Her foot caught in a sinuous root and she fell to her hands with a jolting exhalation of breath. In that second of stillness she heard him behind her, his pace steady, sure…relentless. She whimpered and was up again, running blindly into the night. The belt of her robe dragged behind her. Her chest burned and strained for air. Her heartbeat became a loud, staccato drum pounding incessantly in her ears. Minutes later she rounded a bend in the path. There was light coming from the clearing up ahead. Skylar looked behind her, both afraid and desperate to see. He came around the curve, his eyes finding her unerringly in the shadows. “Jax,” she said hoarsely as she backed away from him. He would never harm her. Never. She knew that more surely than she knew her own name. So why did her heart feel like it was going to burst from her chest in fear and anticipation? And why didn’t he speak to her? It was like having her own inner voice silenced. She stumbled and fell to the hard ground. Something grabbed hold of her arms and lifted her. Not hands. Skylar stared down at herself incredulously. Incandescent golden light surrounded her limbs and carried her forward. Just before they left the tree-shrouded path and emerged into the fire-lit clearing, Skylar saw a flickering, diminutive male face take form in the light. It smiled. Skylar was so overwhelmed by that sight that she hardly noticed that she was being pushed into Noddin’s Ring until she saw the largest upright stone behind the blazing bonfire. A force pushed her and she fell gracelessly on an ancient stone slab that was about fifteen feet long by six feet wide and slanted up diagonally from its base, a small tumulus upporting it from below. Helen had told them on their visit just this morning it was a fallen lintel. Her head swam at the abrupt, jarring impact of her fall. “Take off her robe,” she heard a diminutive voice say clearly near her right ear. “Look at her milkers.” “Oh, let me drink from them.” “Move aside, Caeros! So beautiful. Such big mounds.” She heard several other tiny voices call in wonder as well as irritable grunts and hissing. She struggled helplessly to keep her arms in the sleeves of her robe and sit up while an impossibly strong force resisted her attempts, keeping her lying on the stone. She gasped, irate, when she experienced what felt like several hungry, warm, pleasuring mouths fix onto the tips of her breasts. Despite her alarm, desire sluiced through her, as if that forbidden feeling had been just beneath her skin all night, slumberous…waiting to leap into full, glorious manifestation at this moment. She continued to struggle but lust weighed down her limbs as effectively as the faerie magic did. She glanced down blurrily at her breasts, at first only seeing a glow of
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bright light around them. Her eyes narrowed in her desperation to see what she felt. Briefly she saw several little men, perhaps six inches tall, with golden hair, perfect little bodies and cherubic faces. Four or five of them crowded around her right nipple, their forms flickering as fast as a hummingbird around a flower from which it suckled. She groaned when the little man at the top of the mound of clamoring bodies glanced up at her and smiled as he quickly bobbed his widely spread mouth up and down over the center nubbin of her nipple. The brief image was painfully erotic. It brought to Skylar’s mind how she must have looked sliding Jax’s enormous cock between her lips last night. Her pussy instantly flooded with warm, forbidden heat. “Quickly, her honey is flowing. Come taste the treasures below!” a voice called out merrily. “Quickly now, before he comes.” “Oh she’s sweet! Spread her wider, Maleas. You too, Avadon.” “Yes, the king will want her so,” another voice insisted with a supercilious tone. “Hurry, our maidens won’t keep him for long.” “Ho ho, maidens, indeed. You’re right, though. Watchers know all too well that one of ours can’t give him what he truly craves.” Loud grunts and curses followed. “Move aside, you oaf!” “Who will hold her while I taste her nectar, then?” someone asked querulously. Skylar stared sightlessly into the black, flame-cleaved night as dozens of tiny little tongues lapped hungrily at her fully exposed sex and circled like sizzling, tingling fire around and around her clit. She stopped resisting almost immediately, feeling drugged by both the faeries’ magic and the precise stimulation of her body. “You…Mot! Yes, our manmeat on either side of her pleasure-flesh. Look, she likes it.” Skylar lifted her head with great difficulty. She dizzily made out two tiny little men staring up at her raptly as they knelt in the tender, swollen folds of her outer sex and pumped in unison, her glossy red clit pressed tightly between their two cocks and their hands. Her eyes widened in disbelief. Their cocks were enormous—not in comparison to a human male’s, of course, but hugely disproportionate to the rest of their little bodies. As she watched, one of them irritably knocked away one of his encroaching peers with a heavy backhanded blow, hardly breaking the lusty rhythm of his hips in the process. Their penises were admittedly no more than an inch long but still entirely too large and thick to match the rest of the faeries’ proportions. And God bless it if those little cocks weren’t about to send her straight over the edge. Mot and his friend seemed to read her mind. They cackled loudly as their hips thrust more exuberantly. “Ooh our lady loves our attentions, Bathos.” “We are the true lovers of the goddess trapped in flesh, Mot.”
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Skylar thoroughly enjoyed the increased tempo and pressure of those slippery, pressing little cocks but her brain awakened sluggishly when she took in the sly, lustreddened cherubic faces. A graphic, satisfying image flickered through her mind of flicking her middle finger against her thumb and sending Mot and Bathos zooming directly into the bonfire. She felt another little cock slip into her ass. Her rectum started to tingle as she played unwillingly hostess to yet another fairy’s cock. “Ooh, stop it, Oros. She doesn’t like it in her little hole.” Bathos called behind him as his thrusting hips faltered. “No, she loves it. Fuck away!” Mot called out merrily after he’d examined Skylar’s face for a moment. Skylar tried to breathe deeply in order to stave off incipient climax. She did not want to come for these little jerks-offs. How could Maerda and Helen speak so reverently of the faeries? They were nothing but rutting little libidinous blobs of energy as far as she was concerned. Her entire consciousness became consumed with denying what they demanded of her with such annoyingly exuberant skill. “Uh, Mot?” “What?” the faerie asked distractedly as he continued to pump his well-lubricated cock between his hand and Skylar’s tingling, erect clit. “The king…he’s standing right behind us. He doesn’t…look…happy.” Skylar watched as the golden-haired little man stilled in his fucking motions and slowly looked over his shoulder. She followed his gaze. Jax stared down at them darkly from what seemed like an impossible height. The sight of him sent a shock through Skylar’s numbed nervous system. Her abdomen flexed as she struggled unsuccessfully to rise. “Get them off of me,” she growled in a choked, passionate, nearly unintelligible voice. Mot glanced over at Bathos with an oh shit expression that would have made Skylar laugh in a different situation. They both immediately faded to formless light but that didn’t seem to bother Jax. Skylar watched as he reached down, positive from the focused, furious look on his stark features that he was going to squash one of those quivering balls of light between his large fingers. But instead he reached further down. Skylar gasped when she felt the tiny little plug that had gone motionless in her asshole slip free. He flung the little man with a casual flip of his wrist. His lips worked silently. The glowing orbs that had been Mot and Bathos instantly dissipated. Skylar’s head fell back on the rock weakly. Her vision swam but the image of Jax standing over her made her focus. It didn’t surprise her that he was totally nude, nor that his cock was so erect that it poised spearlike at an upward. Her eyes fixed hungrily
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on the full globes of his testicles. Looking upward at those fertile glands was enough to make her pant. Her eyes flew up to meet his gaze. Why won’t you speak to me? she asked him telepathically. What had happened tonight was beyond strange but the fact that Jax wouldn’t speak to communicate with her either verbally or with his mind felt nightmarish. She saw him. Her vision was crystal clear. But it was as if she viewed him through an impenetrable, invisible substance that separated them as surely as if he were divided by the length of the entire galaxy. It made her half-crazed for contact with him. Her hips lifted off the flat rock in a silent plea. Fleshly contact would be better than this hell of separation from him. Much, much better. She saw his features stiffen at her unspoken invitation. His heavy, jutting cock bobbed upward. A snarl of furious determination darkened his face. He started to lower over her. Skylar’s rapid heartbeat paused in tense excitement when she clearly felt his thumb brush past her ear as he spread his hands wide on the rock close to her head. Skylar heard tittering laughter. “I thought you said they couldn’t reach one another yet.” “I did. He’s extremely powerful, this one,” said a golden, hypnotic voice. Jax’s head snapped up. “Patience, King. She hasn’t yet been fully prepared.” Two luminous male creatures, shorter than Jax and much thinner as well, pulled him back at his shoulders. Skylar’s brow crinkled in confusion when she saw Jax snap back into their hold, his muscles rippling and flexing in concentrated power. His face went rigid in fury when he realized he was restrained. His mouth moved rapidly but Skylar heard nothing. The two golden men who held him hardly seemed aware of what seemed to her to be a frighteningly monumental resistance on Jax’s part. They were using some kind of magic on him, Skylar realized. There was no way that those thin, wispy creatures could hold a being as fearsome as Jax. Skylar glanced over her shoulder when she felt a featherlight, subtle touch on her shoulder. She turned her head and looked into the face of beauty. “My name is Eleanor. Don’t be afraid. Helen loves you and so I do as well. You are a sister to me.” “You’re faerie?” Skylar asked in a choking voice, for who could inhale in the sight of such breathtaking splendor? “I am their queen.” When Eleanor smiled Skylar had to close her eyes at the stunning impact. “Those before were merely our elementals—our lustful thought forms, if you will. They’re crude…” she nodded her head once knowingly at Skylar’s flushed, aroused flesh, “but useful in such situations. Calm yourself now, Devon. I must ready you.”
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“For what?” Skylar asked gracelessly. Let’s face it, almost anything she said or did would seem bumbling in comparison to the lithesome, golden creature that knelt over her. Her gaze inadvertently snapped up to Jax, wondering what he thought of Eleanor’s perfectly proportioned nude body and extremely rarified subtle energies. But Jax was busy shouting silently at the luminescent being who restrained him on his right, his handsome face so contorted with rage that Skylar imagined she could hear his roar even across the galaxy. The faerie man that magically held him looked far less confident in his charge than he had a few seconds ago. “For him, the king,” Eleanor replied with a hitch of her regal head toward Jax. Fury mounted in Skylar’s breast. She didn’t know exactly what was happening here but she didn’t relish the feeling of being treated like a pawn, as if she wasn’t even significant enough to be told the faeries’ purpose. She tried desperately to escape again but all volitional movement seemed to have been denied to her but speech. “Do not take fright, sister. The faeries only mean you well,” Eleanor soothed. Skylar had taken just about enough of this. “Listen, sister,” she hissed as Eleanor began to slowly circle first Jax’s sigil and then Skylar’s belly with a forefinger that had been dipped in a dark red pigment. “I don’t give a damn how sweet, charming and gorgeous you are. If you don’t tell those faerie men to release my mate right now and if you don’t take your royal finger out of my belly-button this second, there’s going to come a day when you’re going to beg on your knees for my assistance to get what you most desire…” Eleanor’s finger paused on its path. “And I’m going to plant my sisterly foot right in your perfect ass.” Eleanor’s eyes flickered up to her face. For a second Skylar tried to remember what she’d just said in her fury to illicit such a look of anxiety from the lovely faerie queen. But then she saw Jax struggling and she pushed her advantage. “Release him, Eleanor. And you and yours be gone.” The wide-eyed faerie queen vanished a second before Jax fell on her heavily. “Ouch,” Skylar muttered in a tiny, strangled voice after all the oxygen was forced out her lungs from his weight. Almost immediately though her hands rose to caress smooth, warm male flesh. Jax’s flesh. “Skylar?” Both her hands cradled his jaw. “Are you all right?” she asked desperately. “Yes. Are you?” Jax felt like he’d just dropped from half the distance of the galaxy to land on top of the object of his focused yet heretofore thwarted desire with a rude, abrupt jolt. Despite his thoughts he forced himself to rise almost entirely off Skylar to survey the area for threat.
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“It’s Noddin’s Ring. The faeries—” Skylar stopped abruptly when she looked around her and saw nothing but the brightly moonlit clearing and the shadows of the few sad, sagging stones that created the Ring. Hadn’t they all been tall and upright a moment before? Jax looked down at her steadily. “But you know…there were those little men—faerie elementals she called them— and Eleanor, the Queen of the Faeries… You saw it, didn’t you, Jax?” Skylar asked almost hysterically. For one crazed moment she thought he was going to deny it. “Yes. I saw it, Skylar,” he replied in a subdued, low voice. Her expression collapsed with relief. She reached for his shoulders, trying to embrace him, not noticing initially that he resisted her. “Why weren’t you talking to me?” “I was. You weren’t responding back.” Skylar’s mouth opened in dawning comprehension. “It was their faerie magic. They made it so that we couldn’t communicate with each other in our minds…couldn’t hear each other…” “I could hear you,” Jax interrupted. She just stared as he slowly lowered his hard, hot flesh onto hers. His eyes held her captive. A slight gasp puffed past her open lips when she felt the turgid pillar of his cock settle on her sex and belly. “You told none less than the Queen of the Faeries that I was your mate.” They stared at each other for several full, long seconds. An owl hooted from the dense woods nearby, making a sound that was at once eerie and entirely reassuring to Skylar in its normalcy. “I said it so that she would release you,” Skylar whispered lamely. Jax smiled slowly. “For just once, Skylar, do you think you might do me the honor of stopping your incessant lying?” “And just what is it that you believe I would say if I was being truthful?” “It’s not so much what you would say…” he began in his low, resonant voice at the same time that he thrust with his hips, causing the hard column of his penis to stimulate her wet, delicate tissues, “it’s more what you would do.” “And that would be?” Skylar asked thickly, distracted by the sensation of him firmly rubbing their sexes against each other. “You would offer yourself to me.” Skylar tried to snort disdainfully but the resulting noise sounded more like a low groan of arousal. Feeling Jax’s big, hard body pressed into her flesh, inhaling his rich, masculine scent, knowing that her sex was creaming appreciatively around his sliding cock made her more than a little desperate, especially after everything that had come before.
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“You laugh? Do you know what those faeries were going to do if you hadn’t stopped them by scaring Eleanor with your prophecy?” Jax’s nostrils flared as he studied her lovely, sweat-glistened face at the same time that he rotated his hips against her. The sensation of her silky, delicate folds and her swollen clit rubbing against his cock drove him wild. “They were going to hold you down, spread your beautiful legs and offer you to me. You would have been mine for the taking.” She went completely still at that. Jax saw her pupils constrict with arousal. “You wouldn’t have made love to me under those circumstances.” “I might have. Those little faerie elementals had me feeling like coming was more important than taking my next breath. They seemed to be doing a pretty good job of convincing you as well.” He leaned aside and put his hand between their bodies. Skylar cried out in sexual agony when he matter-of-factly sent a thick finger high into her slit, pausing for an all too brief moment to vibrate her. The sensation brought Skylar to the brink of orgasm. But then he abruptly withdrew, spreading his big hand dead center of the circular marking Eleanor had made on her stomach. He smiled when he saw the surprised expression on Skylar’s face. When he’d removed his finger from her pussy he’d brought an enormous amount of her juice with him, wetting her belly. He brought his face close to hers and spoke softly, intimately. “Your little pussy is filled with warm syrup. Your juices are more liquid tonight than creamy. You must be ovulating.” He smiled when he saw her blank look of surprise. Making love to women for thousands of years taught a Watcher a few things about their bodies. “Now I’d like to think I had been the one to fill your pussy with all that sweetness but I know better. So don’t judge me too harshly, beauty. But if your eyes were as darkened with desire as they are right now and those faerie elementals were offering me your pussy I do believe I would have plunged inside you to the hilt and fucked you ‘til we both found bliss.” He paused, examining the effect his words had on her. Her breath fell in erratic puffs against his face. “So what about it, Skylar? You’ve thwarted the faeries’ plans to give you to the new Watcher king as an offering but would you offer yourself? Of your own free will?” She bit her lower lip to still a groan of desire. “I’m yours for the taking right now, Jax. Surely you can sense that.” “Yes, you would let me,” he admitted distractedly as his finger lazily circled a taut coral-colored nipple. He ignored Skylar’s agonized moan and squirming hips. “But would you offer yourself to me like the faeries would have? Would you allow me to tie
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you up on this rock and then ask me to fuck you?” he asked evenly as he studied her through a heavy-lidded gaze. Skylar’s heart beat loudly in her ears in the silence that followed. There was really only one answer available to her… “I would give myself to you in that way.” She felt like crying in sexual frustration when he gave his slow, knowing smile and stood up. He put his hands on both of her shins and pushed her knees back into her body. To her surprise, when he removed his hands her knees stayed firmly fixed by her shoulders. Her eyes widened when she realized that he’d magically bound her shins to her thighs with several loops of silky rope. Skylar raised her head, her gaze lingering between her thighs. Her cunt was fully exposed and tilted back—ready to be mounted. She looked up at Jax, wide-eyed. His gaze was hotly touring her bound flanks and flagrantly displayed sex. The sight made wetness bubble from her core. “Jax…please.” His eyes leapt up to her face. “Yes. There’s just one other thing…” He put her wrists above her head. Skylar gave a low moan in her throat when he she felt him conjure silky material from his subtle matter and tighten a knot around them, restraining her completely. “I’m going to put a cushion of air between you and the rock. I’d bruise you otherwise.” His hand came down to softly caress her cheek and then the side of her neck. “I plan to take you hard, beauty.” Skylar sobbed with longing. “Now? Please…fuck me now.” He nodded. His eyes were barely banked flames as he caressed her neck tenderly. “Tell me that you’re mine.” “I’m yours,” she cried out desperately. Brutal desire scoured all but the truth from her. “All of me is yours, Jax.” He spread his legs and came down over the slanting stone, his muscular arms bulging as he held himself off her. His heavy cock swayed in the air just a fraction of an inch over her sex. His mouth hovered above a plump nipple. “Swear you will never deny me again,” he demanded. He watched in fascination as her nipple pulled tight beneath his exhaling breath. “I promise I’ll never again deny you,” Skylar said raggedly. Jax smiled in satisfaction. “Arch your back. Offer me your breasts,” he ordered tautly. When she immediately complied he bent his head and took her nipple into his mouth, suckling hotly. He pulled on the sweet crest until she cried and squirmed in pleasurable agony. Without bothering to soothe the hyper-aroused, distended nipple with his tongue, he transferred his mouth to the other, drawing on that one with equal hot greed. By the time he pulled back to inspect her in the silvery white moonlight, both 102
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of her large nipples stood out in stark pronouncement from her firm, white mounds. The image almost made him explode on her belly. Instead he reached with one hand between her legs and stimulated her swollen clit. Just as he suspected it would, it immediately sent Skylar over the edge. “That’s right,” he muttered thickly. “Give yourself to me, beauty.” He convulsed in shared pleasure as her tremendously powerful energies sheared through him. It was a particularly explosive release, lasting for longer than he’d ever experienced from her. While he nursed her through it he reached down and took his painfully swollen member into his hand. It felt so tight that Jax wondered dazedly if his stretched skin would burst over the throbbing flesh. He stroked himself while he stared into her glistening, desire-tightened face and waited until she finally opened her eyes. She whimpered when her gaze flickered between her bound legs and she saw him pleasuring his own flesh. “Ask for it.” Skylar swallowed with difficulty as she met his eyes, knowing that she couldn’t outrun his truth-seeing gaze. “Fuck me. Please.” “My pleasure.” With no further ado he arrowed the smooth head into her poised, tight channel. Skylar screamed out in shocked pleasure when he thrust half his length immediately into the narrow passage. He paused, his face pulled tight with restraint. “Take it all.” Skylar nodded, too overwhelmed with the full, burning sensation of his conquering cock to speak. He spread his powerful arms wide, grabbing the edges of the slab of ancient rock. He thrust his hips. Every animal in the surrounding forest went silent at the sound of their mingled shouts of bliss. Her eyes rolled back into her head as he began to pound his cock in and out of her with a primitive, relentless rhythm. She’d been fucked hard before—both by Duse and Jax—but this went way beyond any of those experiences. She had to struggle to remain conscious as he battered and rattled at her spirit at the same time that he pummeled her pliant flesh, demanding that she take every last drop of his essence into her. He rammed ruthlessly, prying her wide until she surrendered to him once…and then again. “My mate likes to be tied up and fucked hard, doesn’t she?” Jax muttered through a grimace of restraint. “Yes,” Skylar admitted. Shame had long ago been burned away by the inferno of their desire. Those same fires leapt mightily in Jax’s eyes as he pushed into her at a new angle and began building the friction in her all over again. “Ah, that’s sweet. I’m going to come…” he gritted out next to her shoulder, “and I just might fill you up…I’ve got so…much…to give you…I’ve waited so…long.”
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Skylar groaned. She’d seen how much thick cum Jax ejaculated from his beautiful penis and she suspected his estimate wasn’t too far off. He thrust so hard now, every muscle in his body flexed to capacity, that Skylar wondered dazedly if it hadn’t have been for the protective shield that he’d cast beneath her if her body’s shape wouldn’t be permanently pounded into the solid rock. “Give yourself again,” he snarled. Skylar stretched her bound body upward, straining to follow his command. Her eyes sprang wide when she felt him push a thick finger into her ass. His bulging, muscular arms were still holding tightly to the sides of the monolith. “It’s my ethereal flesh… What…Duse never loved you with his subtle bodies?” Skylar shook her head and groaned as his finger began to stimulate her anus, enlivening her sacral nerves until she tingled and burned and squirmed to get more friction. “We have so much to discover together,” he muttered before he covered her mouth with his in a rapacious kiss. She screamed desperately into him as orgasm shattered her. She wasn’t even fully aware that his hand firmly stilled her wildly undulating hips. He thrust once more and began to throb and pulse in her. Jax broke their kiss abruptly, stretched back his neck and roared into the night. Skylar opened her eyes and saw the luminous presence of his Truest Form leaning over her, lighting up the Ring with a halo of fire that did not burn. He regarded her steadily then glanced up. Skylar’s gaze followed, only to realize that it wasn’t only the glow of Jax’s Truest Form which lit up the ring. Hundreds of incandescent, swaying faeries danced joyously around the ancient circle. Jax still convulsed under the power of a tremendous climax. “Yes, I see them,” he told Skylar between a clenched jaw. “Hold still though, just…a moment…longer…” He withdrew his throbbing member and took it into his hand. He pumped. She watched, spellbound, as several milky white jets spurted and landed on dark gold coils of pubic hair and the shell-like folds of her outer sex. Jax continued to piston his fist determinedly and one final, thick globule grew and expanded around his slit. Skylar moaned shakily at the sight. His eyes flashed up to her. “Do you want it?” Skylar nodded enthusiastically, knowing exactly how he would give it to her. She cared nothing for the hoards of dancing, celebrating faeries that surrounded them as he knelt next to her head and she opened her mouth widely. She sucked hungrily on his cock for the last remnants of his salty, sweet cum. He pulsed between her lips. She cried out in weak protest several seconds later when he slid his still ample member out of her mouth and came down over her. He fought for air. He’d never felt so totally sexually spent in his long, long life. “Let me touch you,” he heard her whisper softly. 104
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“I’m sorry,” he murmured, feeling churlish for leaving her tied up while he lay on her as heavily as a whale on the beach, gasping to breathe. She encircled him in her arms when he released her. “The faeries are gone again,” she said softly. “Perhaps,” Jax mumbled contentedly into the hollow between her neck and shoulder. “Do you really think they meant to offer me to you as a gift?” She felt his smile next to her skin. It made her shiver. Her nipples tightened against his solid, sweat-dampened chest. “If they did the faeries are a lot smarter than I’d thought. The Blessed Mothers know there’s no other gift I’d rather have.” His smile widened when he felt her body tremble with soft laughter. It stopped abruptly. “Oh…” “What?” Jax muttered in disorientation when he felt Skylar try frantically to rise. He sat up, granting her access. “What’s wrong?” he asked in rising irritation when she grabbed for the long-forgotten robe that lay crumpled at the base of the rock. He saw her nod pointedly to the opposite end of the ring while she threw her robe around her shoulders. Maerda stood there calmly, wearing her long, dark blue ceremonial robes. The old woman nodded once, gave a small, secret smile and slowly left the clearing. Skylar glanced back at Jax. Maerda had been looking directly at him. “Well, that was…what? Why are you looking at me like that?” Jax asked slowly as he took in his mate’s pale face and disbelieving gaze. “You planned this with her, didn’t you?” His mouth fell open. “That whole ridiculous ceremony with the wine… It was drugged wasn’t it?” She stood up and gazed around the ring with a wide, anxious gaze, her mind racing. “You put some kind of hallucinogen in it or something?” She pinned him with a furious stare. “Do you think it’s funny to jerk me around at the end of your strings, Jax? You’ve tricked me by disguising yourself as another person, you’ve been sneaking around with my son for God knows how long and tonight you forced me to participate in this ridiculous game so that you could get your bloody rocks o—” “Shut up, Skylar.” She blinked cautiously when she heard his eerily cold voice and saw the dark blue flames leap in this eyes. Her mouth opened to give a cutting remark but she held her tongue when he held his forefinger in front of her face. “If you say another word about what happened just now being a ridiculous game,” he said in a low, vibrating voice, “I can’t be responsible for what I might say or do.”
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She regarded him with a mixture of mutiny and alarm. “Whatever, Jax,” she finally muttered with cold disdain before she began to walk away from him. “Skylar.” She stopped, keeping her back to him. “You’re wrong. I didn’t plan any of this tonight. But what if I did? What would be so terrible about a Watcher making love to his mate in a sacred circle? You are right about one thing, though. I have had to stoop to trickery and sneaking around to get you to give me what’s rightfully mine…what’s rightfully the gods’ and goddesses’ for that matter. But no more. Once you get down this mountain you get your stubborn ass up to your room, get your things and move them to my private quarters. You and Nix will take your meals with me, I’ll tutor him openly during the day in addition to while he sleeps and you’ll sleep in my bed at night.” She threw a look of disbelieving disgust over her shoulder. “And I suppose I’ll ask how far when you tell me to bend over too?” He smiled grimly. “I’ll make it easy on you, Skylar. Just assume the answer is ‘all the way’ unless I tell you otherwise.”
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Chapter Nine Skylar gave a weak smile when the maid asked her if she could bring anything else for their dinner. “Maybe a pot of decaf and more milk in a little while,” Skylar replied quietly so as not to interrupt Nix, who was relaying every minute detail of his and Zeva’s failed kite flying expedition yesterday to a patient Jax. They were seated at a small circular table in a pleasant alcove of the outer chamber of Jax’s large suite. The windowpanes behind them were open onto a lovely spring evening. Skylar took a bite of flounder, appreciating the delicate flavor. The light breeze filtering in through the windows carried the salt tang of the ocean upon it. It would in fact be a lovely evening if not for the fact that she and Jax hadn’t spoken to each other all day long outside of polite conversation for Nix’s benefit. Her son had been so thrilled when Jax told him matter-of-factly at breakfast this morning that Skylar was sharing his suite, she didn’t think he’d noticed the strain between the two adults. “Almost got it going once but then we ran out of space and Aunt Helen wouldn’t let us run the kite in Noddin’s Ring,” Nix finished telling Jax sullenly. “Aunt Helen is right. Noddin’s Ring is sacred, not a place to play games.” Her gaze shifted to Jax against her will. He was leaning back in his chair, one biceps hooked behind it, the very picture of a relaxed, confident male. Despite his insouciant posture, however, his exotic, slanting eyes glittered at her. He was telling her that he hadn’t considered what happened between them to be a game and that he was insulted by the fact that she’d accused him of it. Her chin rose in a subtle defiant gesture. But Jax just blinked calmly and resumed his conversation with Nix. “There’s a perfect stretch of land beside the loch that would work great for kite flying. I’ll take you and Zeva there tomorrow.” “Brilliant,” Nix beamed until he noticed his mother’s stiff expression. “What’s wrong, Mom?” “You and I are leaving tomorrow, Nix.” Nix looked crestfallen. “I thought we were staying until the end of the week.” Skylar set down her fork, hyperaware of Jax’s hard stare on her. “We were but I talked to my manager at the nursery today and I really need to get back. It’s our busiest time of year,” she explained gently.
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Nix snorted in disgust and threw his napkin on the table. “I don’t want to go back to Chicago yet. Zeva’s going to be here all week. We have loads of stuff planned. What’s so important about that stupid nursery, anyway?” “Nix, you’re being rude to your mother,” Jax admonished firmly. “Apologize to her.” Nix’s eyes flickered over to Skylar miserably. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “May I be excused? I should go find Zeva and tell him we’re leaving.” Skylar nodded and watched him trudge out of the room like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. “He’ll get over it,” Jax said quietly. “I know he will,” she answered as she examined her plate. She was still trying to adjust to the idea that Jax had become such a central figure in her son’s life. It made her feel good…like she had a partner in the tricky affair of raising a Watcher child. At the same time the prospect of Jax being so involved in their lives caused her to experience an unsettled, unbearable anxiety. Still, she knew to give credit when it was due. “You have a good way with him. He respects you. I know the teenage years must be on the horizon because he’s becoming more and more moody every day. Not that I’m saying that he doesn’t have the right to be disappointed right now.” “I hope you’re not leaving on my account.” “What would make you think that?” she asked evenly as she avoided his eyes and took a tiny sip of her wine. He sat forward abruptly in his chair. “You’re right. I suppose it would be silly of me to think that you actually believe you could avoid me by leaving Dunleavy.” She faced him slowly. “What’s that supposed to mean? “It means that whether you’re in Chicago or at Dunleavy, every single thing I said this morning still counts, Skylar.” She blanched noticeably. “But Dunleavy is the seat of the Watcher King.” “We have no laws that say how much time the king has to spend here. You’re forgetting that I don’t have to spend twelve hours in travel time like you and Nix do. I’ll navigate the whole situation easily enough.” He smiled in a friendly fashion. “Maybe you’d like me to have dinner ready for you two when you get to Chicago tomorrow. I could air out your bed, fluff up the pillows…get everything cozy for us.” “Jax, I don’t want to fight with you. I really don’t. But you must be kidding about this.” “You thought I was kidding this morning? Why did you move all your things in here then? Why have you and Nix been eating your meals with me?”
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“I did it to pacify you until I could get the hell out of here!” Skylar blurted out irritably. So much for trying to remain calm around him. Jax felt his fury mounting to the boiling point once again with alarming speed. He agreed with Skylar. He didn’t want to fight with her. They had to find some way to negotiate this situation. But by the Blessed Mothers she really knew how to push his buttons. “Skylar, you’re my mate. Surely you can tell when I’m lying. You must know that I had nothing to do with planning what happened at Noddin’s Ring.” For a few vulnerable seconds she almost apologized to him. She’d been wrong to accuse him of that last night. She knew that now. But instead she donned emotional armor that was so brittle, so filled with holes that even Skylar was starting to acknowledge to herself that she’d be better off chucking it. “I’m sure you could block the truth from me if you wanted to enough.” He shook his head in disgust. “Duse never let on to anyone about you being such a mean, stubborn little liar.” Skylar tossed her napkin on the table. Regret and anger warred inside of her. It hurt badly hearing Jax say that about her. “I must have saved it all in reserve for my second mating,” she snapped. Her eyes flew to his warily as she began to stand. But it was too late. His sensual mouth curved into a knowing grin at her inadvertent admission that she was his mate. He began to rise slowly. “I don’t particularly like this nasty streak in you. I think we need to get back to some basics here. Do you know what tonight is?” He saw when comprehension dawned on her face. “That’s right. Thursday night, Skylar.” “Jax—” “Don’t say another word.” He leaned forward on the table, eyes blazing. “Last night you promised to never deny me. I was foolish for not specifying that you wouldn’t deny me your heart but if I can’t have that I will have the rest of you, Skylar…starting with your lovely ass.” Skylar turned her back on him and started to walk away. He caught her arm and drew her back against him. “You made a promise,” Jax said next to her ear. “Be in our bedroom at eleven o’clock tonight. You know in what manner I’ll expect to find you waiting.”
***** Helen Ammadon’s pale, shapely limbs sprawled helter-skelter across the couch in her and Bale’s suite. Skylar thought she looked barely older than Nix at that moment,
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wearing shorts, a tank top and hiking boots, her short, stylish blonde hair standing up in unintentional spikes. She barely was older, at age twenty-five. Helen was an anomaly among Watcher mates. Because of her unusual degree of power in subtle realms, and perhaps because of the trauma she’d suffered under the Asmoday’s hands in her former lifetime, she had entered her Second Change at an unprecedented early age in her present incarnation. Her wide, cornflower blue eyes, porcelain complexion and bow-shaped red lips may look like they belonged to a perfect doll but Skylar knew Helen to be an extremely complex, wise individual. And she was the polar opposite of innocent. “You thought Jax was responsible for what happened in Noddin’s Ring?” Helen asked. She grinned saucily when she saw Skylar’s wry expression. The two of them had grown close since Helen first came to Dunleavy two years ago. Skylar had never “seen”, utilizing her subtle vision, a more refined, beautiful spirit in her life than Helen’s. Even the resultant sadness and rage from Asmoday’s cruel murder in her former lifetime and the young woman’s confused rage at Bale couldn’t dampen it. “I mean I know Jax was responsible for what happened in Noddin’s Ring but you really thought that he’d planned it?” Helen added presently. “No, not really, at least not by the time I’d gotten to the bottom of the mountain,” Skylar grumbled as she put down her mug of chamomile tea on the table. She looked up at Helen pointedly. “Who was though, Helen? You and Maerda? The faeries?” Helen ran her fingers through her spiky hair and examined Skylar thoughtfully. For some reason thoughts of the luminescent faerie queen Eleanor entered Skylar’s consciousness at that moment. She had the distinct impression that her soul was being meticulously examined for flaws. The sensation faded almost instantly when Helen sat up and resumed chewing her gum. “All of the above, I’m afraid, luv,” she answered eventually. Skylar stiffened in anger at her admission. “What purpose did it serve?” “It’s an ancient fertility rite. Something similar has occurred on that spot for thousands of years, all the way back in time to when the Druaga were a powerful force to be reckoned with on this planet. The participants were usually a local land baron and a priestess…or a woman powerful enough to see and wield subtle energies.” Skylar studied Helen for a long moment. There was more to this than Helen was saying. But Helen could be very closed-mouthed when it came to the practices of her religion. “So I should assume that you and Bale have been enacting the rite recently?” Helen snapped her gum. “You should,” she said with a naughty grin. “And I’ll miss it too. It’s one of the definite disadvantages to Bale losing his job. That old stone really adds some spice to things but I guess I don’t need to tell you that. Not that Watcher sex requires the extra edge but oy—the stories that rock could tell.” Skylar shook her head and laughed. It was impossible to stay angry with Helen.
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“So what are you going to do about Jax?” Helen asked. “Good question,” Skylar said after a moment. She sighed heavily, feeling utterly deflated. “He’s so overbearing.” “Hmm, he’s an Ammadon all right, through and through. Who knows better than you and I how they can be? Plus he’s got that gift—those eyes that see the truth like we do the color red,” Helen said as she held up a red pillow and tossed it back on the couch carelessly. “Do you love him?” Skylar started at her abrupt change in subject and manner. “I…he’s my mate, Helen. I’m learning very quickly that I can’t live without him. It’s like trying to live without your heart or your lungs.” “Yeah,” Helen conceded with a disdainful scowl, “but who wants to cuddle up on a cold winter’s evening with their lungs? You know what I mean, Skylar. I’m really curious. Is it an imperative that we love our mates? Does it just happen with the bonding, do you think…sort of like a side effect of taking some medicine?” Helen’s brow crinkled in concern when she sensed Skylar’s sudden palpable anxiety. Skylar shook her head adamantly. “No. It’s not like that. I loved Duse madly. It didn’t feel like a compulsion. I wouldn’t have liked that.” Helen fiddled with the multiple earrings in her right ear thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s what’s bothering you with Jax. You never had any choice in the matter. No profound moment of saying ‘yes, I accept you into my life’ like you did with Duse when you were first mated.” Skylar cleared her throat uncomfortably in the silence that followed. “He does you, though.” “Excuse me?” Skylar asked, confused. Helen snapped her gum. “Jax. He loves you. Maybe more so than I’ve ever seen one spirit love another. How else could he suffer so greatly?” “I noticed it right away…centuries ago,” Helen continued. “Bale didn’t believe me. He kept telling me that all unmated Watchers were ‘in love’ with you. But that was rubbish and I knew it. It wasn’t a crush. It wasn’t that intense version of a Watcher being ‘in lust’, which you and I both know is way past what the classic version of a human ‘falling in love’ can be.” “No, one look at the two of you,” Helen snapped her fingers briskly, “and I knew. It was at your and Duse’s Dionytion Ceremony during your second lifetime with him. Bale should have known I was telling the truth when Jax refused to stick around for your Rush. Watchers are such lechers when it comes to that ceremony, aren’t they? Anyway, you should have seen the look in Jax’s eyes when Duse introduced you to him for the first time.” “What?” Skylar asked slowly. This was the first time Helen had spoken of this to her.
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“The look of a man who realized he was living the first day of an eternity spent in hell.” Skylar just stared back. “He was right too.” “What do you mean?” “Because yours and Jax’s spirits…they create the perfect resonance, Skylar. Even before the bond. You understand, right?” Skylar just shook her head mutely. Helen’s rapid gum chewing slowed. “You see, most people think of a couple as being just that—two, you and Jax, Bale and I, Romeo and Juliet—you get the point. But a couple is only a couple because of their relation with a third principle. You know the Watcher saying ‘by the Three’?” She waited until Skylar nodded. “They’re referring to a universal principle…a universal presence. Call it what you like—god, love, light—those are just words, a shadow of true meaning. But the bottom line is that a couple is only a couple, in fact and in degree, in their relation to the Third. Two individuals are ‘in love’ to the extent that their mutual essences accurately capture and enhance the vibrational frequency of universal love in the physical world.” Helen waved her hand and laughed. “I know. It’s boring.” Skylar blinked. “It’s not boring. It’s actually fascinating. Go on,” Skylar encouraged this beyond-ancient spirit who was in the midst of blowing a small bubble with her pink gum. “Watchers fall for a woman who is meant to be a mate because they sense that their spirits are well-matched to this divine purpose. When they repeatedly make love to the woman and receive her energies it enhances the couple’s resonance by shaping their spirits to further refinement. The whole purpose of the mating bond is to perfect the resonance, you see, until the couple becomes an exquisite, finely tuned instrument of the divine here on Earth.” “Aeirren provle du shein,” Skylar repeated huskily. May your spirit be a clear mirror for the divine. Helen gave a radiant smile. “Exactly. But you and Jax, see—you two were a singularity. You and he already created a perfect resonance, as if the bond had already been completed…as if the mirror had already been polished to a crystalline shine. That was why Jax looked like a man who realized he was living the first day of an eternity spent in hell when he met you.” When Skylar heard a brusque knock on the door she started out of dazed reverie. “Oh shit,” was Skylar’s unlikely utterance after such an exalted discussion. “What?” Helen asked, confused by Skylar’s manner as she hurriedly checked her watch. “Tell him I left a few minutes ago,” Skylar whispered desperately as she got up and rushed across the suite to a separate entrance.
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“Wait, Skylar!” Helen called out eagerly, as though she were about to impart a slumber party secret. She waved the red pillow enthusiastically. “You know, gift or not, when it comes to the perfect woman even Watchers can be colorblind. Don’t assume—” Skylar gave Helen an apologetic, confused grimace before she shut the door firmly behind her, cutting off her friend. For a brief second she leaned back and tried to gather herself so that she could deliberately block Jax from sensing her presence. Her heart still beat wildly in her chest though as she exited the spare bedroom in Bale and Helen’s suite and raced down the corridor. She grinned a minute later as she turned into the drawing room, ridiculously pleased with herself for having evaded Jax successfully. “Uncle Paim, how wonderful to see you,” Skylar gushed when she saw the distinguished-looking Watcher sitting in a large winged-back chair with a cigar in his hand and a book in his lap. Paim smiled warmly, quite overcome by Skylar’s enthusiasm at seeing him. “Skylar! Well, this is lovely. Both of you are out and about late this evening.” Skylar’s smile froze. “Both of us?” “Yes. I was just trying to convince Jax to have a game of chess with me.” She watched, stupefied, as Jax unfolded his long body from the winged-back chair that sat opposite to Paim. “You’ll have to wait for another time to beat me at chess, Paim.” He glanced back at Skylar with a friendly smile on his face but Skylar didn’t miss the hard glint in his eyes. “Skylar and I have a previous engagement this evening, although it seems to have slipped her mind.” Skylar’s mouth formed an O of mixed incredulity and panic. “It’s not that important, really. Why don’t you two go ahead and have your match?” She started to edge out of the room when she noticed that Jax was slowly coming toward her. A thought stuck her. “I’ll just go and check on Nix.” “Nix is fine,” Jax muttered levelly as he crossed the room. “I just came from his room before I started looking for you.” Skylar saw the eerily determined look in his eye and decided that her best course of action in this situation wasn’t to run but to stay put. “I wouldn’t mind a match with you, Uncle Paim. We haven’t played in years. Jax? What—” The rest of her sentence came to an abrupt halt when Jax unceremoniously picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder like a hundred-and-twenty-pound sack of flour. Skylar was still trying to accustom herself to abruptly seeing the world from an upside-down position when Jax politely bid Paim good night and strolled out of the room.
***** “Take off your blouse and bra.”
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Skylar immediately backed away from Jax when he set her down on the floor in his bedroom. She had the urge to put up her hands to block the enormous amount of chaotic emotional energy that stormed off of him. What sort of a force of nature had she dared to defy? She shook her head slowly. “No. I don’t want to be spanked by you when you’re angry.” “Too bad. You’re not calling the shots for once. I am. And tonight I’m not spanking you to fulfill your needs. I’m doing it to gratify mine. So take…off…your blouse.” She never made a conscious decision to start unbuttoning her cotton blouse but it was off her shoulders and lying crumpled on the floor before she realized her lack of initiative. She would be a fool to argue with a hurricane or a blizzard for inconveniencing her day. Trying to reason with Jax right now would be just as stupid. Besides, the tremble in her hand and the achy, tight feeling in her sex weren’t coming from anxiety. His eyes smoldered from across the room as he watched her drop her bra next to the blouse. Skylar forced herself to stand firm when he came across the room like a bull on the charge. But he didn’t reach for her, he just sat at the side of the bed. “Come over to me.” Skylar felt a surge of liquid at her core at the familiar, softly spoken order. Their gazes remained locked so Skylar didn’t miss when he nodded grimly to his lap. She crawled over his hard thighs, feeling awkward, foolish…and extremely anticipatory. As soon as the bottom of her breasts were pressing into the outer seam of his jeans he spanked her bottom twice, the resulting cracks sounding like gunfire going off at close range. Her eyes widened in shock. Now she knew why he hadn’t had her remove her skirt. She needed protection from his palm tonight. Her mouth opened in protest. She tried to look over her shoulder. But Jax anticipated this. He pushed her forehead down into the soft bedding with a hand at her nape and cracked her ass twice more, effectively stealing her voice along with her breath. “I’m not in the mood for it tonight,” he said before he spanked her several more times. “I suppose I’ll just have to accept that you’re a liar when it comes to what we are to each other but I…will…not let you go back on your promise to never deny me again.” He emphasized his words with several healthy swats. “You’re the one who is playing the games of a child if you believe for a second that you can make a promise in Noddin’s Ring and then back out of it.” He spanked her once more. Skylar made a muffled sound into the mattress. “What did you say?” Jax asked pointedly, his hand stilling on her ass. “I said I’m sorry,” Skylar said miserably. “I know I promised.” His mouth hardened as he gave her ass another swat. “It was a lust promise but I don’t care. I’m holding you to it.”
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“No,” Skylar struggled to raise herself, wanting to explain but he held her down at her middle back and spanked her several more times with a firm palm, heedless of her moans. “Stand up,” he said after a moment. Skylar quickly obeyed despite the volatile mixture of anger, regret and excitement she was feeling, despite the tears that wet her flushed cheeks. Jax stiffened when he saw her tears. “I didn’t hurt you did I?” “Not-not in the way you’re thinking.” “In what way?” Skylar just shook her stubbornly. Jax’s lips thinned in irritation. “Bend over the bed.” She complied, all too eager to hide her face from his searchlight eyes. She scrunched her eyelids tightly together as he raised her khaki skirt. He shoved her panties down to her thighs and grabbed her right ass cheek. “Spread your legs,” he ordered tautly. He watched with rapt attention as she did. He’d always had a preference for spanking a woman while she was nude but he had to admit seeing those lacy white panties stretch beneath the delectable curve of Skylar’s plump bottom as she widened her thighs had him seriously reconsidering that preference. “Did you let Duse spank you?” He immediately regretted the question as soon as the words were out of his mouth. “Why do you insist on torturing me?” she asked in a strangled voice. “That was an error in judgment,” he said, referring to his impulsive question. He gave her a thoroughly satisfying crack on her right cheek, enjoying the sight of the slight quiver in her firm flesh. “This is the natural consequence of making promises that you don’t plan to keep and this…” He psychokinetically stimulated her sacral energies before he roughly pushed back one bottom cheek and plunging his forefinger into her ass. “Is torture, Skylar.” He finger-fucked her clasping asshole with firm deliberation. “Do you think you’ve got your definitions straight?” Skylar’s mouth sagged open. He was laying it on extremely thick. Watchers didn’t do it often with their mates. It was considered crude. They took much more pride in seducing them physically. But that didn’t change the fact that a Watcher had the very potent ability to subtly reach right into the pleasure center of a woman’s brain and flip her into the “go” position before she could even mutter “please”. Skylar’s root chakra blazed to life, causing blood to pound into her clit with a pressure that might have given her a stroke if it had happened in her brain. Juice bubbled from her core, thoroughly soaking her swollen tissues.
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It didn’t feel like torture. It felt like heaven. “That part’s not the torture,” Jax said thickly, reading her mind. He paused, watching his finger plunge in and out of the closed bud of her pink asshole intently before he clenched his jaw and withdrew abruptly. “That was,” he said. It had been pure torture for him to stop, as well. Skylar groaned miserably at the abrupt cessation of the glorious friction. Before she could fully exhale he popped her bottom twice with his palm. Jax paused when she yelped softly. His hand began to soothe her firm, blushing flesh. “And just for the record, I have never been so tortured in my life as I have been by you for the past two years.” “I had no intention of hurting you, Jax,” she muttered brokenly. Jax paused in his rubbing. Was she telling the truth? He was the one who had taken away the memory of their mating. Still, she was an exceptionally gifted woman when it came to subtle truths. There was no way she could remain completely ignorant given the entwinement of their spirits. “Jax—” “Hush,” he said quietly as he pushed up both of her bottom cheeks at once with his left hand and sent the middle finger of the other hand high up into her drenched pussy. He grunted in masculine appreciation. “You can protest all you want but you love to be spanked.” Skylar groaned and squirmed as he probed deeper. His hand went to her hip, forcing her into immobility. “Stay still,” he directed. His finger found the spot it wanted. He rubbed and vibrated. She screamed in acute pleasure. “Be truthful, Skylar. You knew all along there was something between us. Admit it.” She cried out brokenly and shook her head. He responded by spanking her twice more and then sending his thick thumb into her ass. She whimpered and fell forward on the bed on her elbows. Her eyes went wide at the intensity of the dual stimulation. The friction felt unbearable. His fucking fingers would pop her at any second. She strained for it, closer and closer… He stilled. “Answer me.” Skylar gasped and panted for oxygen. She resisted an almost overwhelming urge to put her own fingers to her sex to bring herself relief. “Keep your hands on the bed.” A red bloom of fury unfurled in her brain. “You’re a sadist, Jax Ammadon. I will not be forced to say what you already know just so that you can get your big bloody rocks off.”
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She made a small whimper of distress when he slid his fingers out of her. The tense silence that followed was broken by the unmistakable sound of his belt buckle being released. He was doing this to torture her further. Jax didn’t need to remove his clothing manually. He was doing it because he knew it would remind her of all those times Cal unbuckled his belt while he spanked her. And it was working. The anticipation nearly killed her. She looked into the large, framed mirror that was on the wall across from her but her own body blocked her view. She strained over her shoulder, eyes wide in her face. Jax was withdrawing his stiff erection from his clothing. She could see a multitude of thick, swollen veins on the surface, amply feeding his arousal. She glanced up at him. The fire in his eyes made her paradoxically shiver. “Face the wall,” he told her coldly when they made eye contact. She bit her bottom lip. “What-what are you going to do?” “Get my bloody rocks off. What else? Now face the wall, Skylar.” Skylar turned her head warily. She noticed in the mirror that her cheeks were stained red with her arousal. “Send up your tail,” he ordered gruffly. Skylar groaned in sexual torment when he pushed up her bottom cheeks and placed the smooth, fleshy head of his cock at her soaking hole. “Brace yourself.” Skylar did her best but when he grabbed onto her hips and thrust she pitched forward on her hands. “Get back here.” He waited until she’d come back into her original position before he thrust again, this time sinking himself in her flesh to the balls with a grunt of satisfaction. “Put your face on the bed and keep your hips very still,” he whispered hoarsely. Skylar lowered herself, moaning shakily as she did so. He felt impossibly huge nestled so intimately in her body, forcing her flesh to give way for him. Once she’d placed herself the way he demanded she became aware of a thoroughly necessary requirement for friction. She arched her back and pushed back on him, wild to rub against the heavy balls that teased her outer sex. Jax grimaced at the pleasure and then spanked her. She yelped in surprise. “I’m going to do all the fucking,” he said. “Don’t move your pretty ass a millimeter or I’ll stop and spank you. Do you understand?” Skylar nodded, her hot cheek rubbing against the cool, smooth duvet. He paused, studying her. “Put both of your arms behind your back. Now, Skylar.” She complied quickly at the tone of his voice. Jax took both of her wrists and held them with his hand, restraining her. “That should stop you from moving too much,” he muttered.
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He grabbed one ass cheek fully with his big hand and fixed her in place. Then he began to buck his hips, drawing out of her to the tip before he plunged back into her again, his balls pressing to her hilt. He gave a low, guttural growl. She was the Watcher equivalent of a decadent, rich dessert when you were starving. He fucked her slowly at first, then harder and faster until he was sure that the incessant, inescapable sound of his thighs slapping against her ass had become thoroughly synchronized with the pulse of his rapidly beating heart. Skylar stared blindly. He held her wrists in such a tight restraint while he fucked her with a brutal focus…a precise deliberation. The pleasure felt cruel in its intensity. She bit her lip, hard, to stop herself from pushing back and joining in the rhythm of his thrusts. If he would only allow her to she would come almost immediately. As it was he was utterly controlling the amount of pressure required to just keep her skating on the crest of orgasm. “Please…” Skylar moaned. Jax paused, drawing out of her more slowly this time until just the tip of his glistening cock was harbored in her snug heat. He straightened so that he towered over her more and sliced his straining cock forward, purposefully fucking her at a downward angle. By the time he made a few more passes like that Skylar’s pleas became desperate. Jax pulled out of her abruptly—better to take the pain quickly—and brought her up off the bed. Skylar blinked in disorientation, confused to suddenly find herself on top of a fully nude Jax who was reclining against the pillows on the headboard. “What—” “Shhh,” he whispered roughly. His big hands shifted her knees until they were by his hips. They both gasped in pleasure when he pushed down on her back until her breasts crushed into his lower chest. The tip of his cock bounced at her lower ribs, eager for her, so he pushed her down an inch until it nested between her breasts. His hands held her shoulders tightly against him while her ass remained in the air. “I’m going to fuck your ass with my etheric double while I hold you and look into your eyes while you take it.” For a second she just stared at him, not understanding. Then his meaning became clear to her and she began to squirm in panic. “What? Don’t tell me that Duse never fucked your ass.” “Damn you, Jax!” Skylar struggled desperately but his arms were like titanium steel restraints. It wasn’t getting fucked in the ass that frightened her—actually that sounded damned appealing at this moment. No, it was the idea of him holding her immobile and looking into her eyes while she was so vulnerable that made her half crazed. “By the Fathers, what’s wrong with you?” he muttered, both irritated and puzzled by her behavior. His emotions seemed to divide as he focused on his etheric body. Suddenly he was watching both Skylar’s twisted face with concern and her well118
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spanked bottom with lust. He sent his etheric hand back and gave her several quick, brisk swats. She immediately stilled. Her eyes were huge in her face when they met his. “Don’t you want it in the ass?” he asked her. She broke when she saw his expression of tender puzzlement. A painful sob ripped from her throat. She pressed her face into the hollow between his ribs. “I do want it there,” she muttered wildly. Jax sensed her shame but he couldn’t understand its origins. He could clearly tell that she was being truthful about being fucked, that she needed it as much as he did despite her chaotic emotions. So he soothed her by stroking her back and assuring her that there would never be anything to be ashamed of between them at the same time that his etheric double—which would be invisible to Skylar’s eyes if she had turned around, although it felt utterly solid to her flesh—parted her bottom cheeks and pressed his penis to her tiny, pink hole. He felt a fresh shudder go through Skylar’s flesh. “Hold on tight, beauty,” Jax whispered at the same time as he firmed his hold on her. He spread her hole as wide as possible and inserted the tip of his penis. The silky lubrication that he conjured had a similar chemical composition to Skylar’s natural juices. It helped, but this was going to be a very tight ride. To ease her he gently stimulated her sacral energies, opening her blood flow and enlivening her nerves until she moaned in tense pleasure at the slow burn. He could barely find his voice so that he could order her to push back on his cock. Skylar complied, eager to alleviate the tingling nerves in her bottom with his hard flesh. She was beyond aroused at that moment. The feeling of being held tightly by one Jax while another slowly but firmly penetrated her anus made her nearly wild. She’d had no idea that Watchers could do such things—perhaps just Jax could, since he was so strong. Whatever the case, she was one hell of a lucky woman. She tightened her hold on Jax’s sides and plunged back her hips. Her sharp squeal segued from being one of acute pain to one of intense arousal. Jax experienced the division in his emotions into his two bodies again. His etheric double held her hips still and popped a plump cheek for her impulsivity. Then he held her steady and took what she’d offered with a steady, slow pump that sank him deeper with each pass. His physical body held her tightly for his conquering cock while he whispered to her and soothed her tense flesh with his hands. “Shhh, relax beauty. You can take me. Gods, you’re so hot…and so tight. I feel like I’m cramming myself into your little hole.” He pushed back her hair and carefully examined her clenched, tension-filled face where she pressed it to his lower chest. By the Three, surely she had done this before, hadn’t she? Watchers considered ass-fucking a particularly pleasurable but normal sex practice. He couldn’t imagine that his lusty brother hadn’t frequently made love to his mate that way. But Skylar felt as tight as a virgin.
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“It’s…it’s been a long time, Jax,” she whispered tremulously, answering his thoughts without seeming to be aware that she had. “Oh God!” She jerked in pleasure when he stopped pushing forward and began sliding in and out of her slowly with the first half of his cock. She began to moan uncontrollably. “Look at me, Skylar.” Skylar went rigid in his arms as he continued to fuck her. “Look at me,” he demanded firmly. She slowly raised her head. “You’re strong enough to take the lightning path, aren’t you?” Skylar trembled uncontrollably at his forceful thrusting but she nodded. For a moment their gazes remained locked. His hand came up to gently caress her face even as he continued to slide his cock further and further into her. “Do you trust me to take you through it safely?” he asked gently. A tear fell down Skylar’s cheek. His forceful fucking of her ass and the tender, profound love in his eyes created a friction, a sparking paradox in her spirit, the resolution of which would either destroy her or make her stronger. But no matter how afraid she was at that moment, his eyes gave her a courage she’d never known existed inside her. “I’d trust you with anything, Jax,” she whispered truthfully. Why lie, when she was looking straight into his truth-mandating eyes? Duse used to insist on taking her through the lightning path—a special type of orgasm that could occur in a particularly powerful woman involving the sex energies at her root chakra suddenly exploding up her spine, causing a temporary loosening of her subtle from her physical body. Skylar used to let him and he’d never failed to guide the powerful, potentially fatal energies safely. Yet she’d always been afraid when he suggested it, never eager, despite the mind-altering pleasure and the glimpse at nirvana that it provided. But the way she felt with Jax right now about the same prospect—it was different. She wanted to share that spiritually shattering, transforming communion with him. Jax’s eyes moistened when he heard her answer and saw the truth of it. He just nodded his head once, silently acknowledging her precious gift to him. His etheric double gripped her hips tightly and flexed forward. They both gasped at the impact of him seating himself to the balls in her ass. Jax reached up and gently ran his thumb over her cheek, wiping away her tears as she took short, panting breaths. He wondered if she’d noticed that his cock was throbbing just as hotly in the valley of her breasts as it was in her ass but he didn’t want to seem crude by bringing it to her attention. Nevertheless thoughts of her lips wrapped tightly around his cock the other night kept springing to his mind in unwanted graphic detail. Sweat broke on his brow. Not that her hot little asshole wasn’t going to be sufficient to take him straight to nirvana. His face twisted in agony at the thought.
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“What?” she whispered. “I have to fuck you now,” he barely made out through a constrained jaw as he thrust. “Ahh…by the Blessed Mothers that’s so good.” Skylar’s eyes rounded into the shape of silver dollars at the impact of him sliding in and out of her ass. He was careful with her, mindful that this part of her anatomy wasn’t used to taking inch after inch of thick, stony flesh. But even at the slow pace that he set, the pleasure tore through her like jagged lightning. “Jax!” she cried out fearfully. She hadn’t expected it to come so soon. “It’s okay, Skylar. The lightning path will wait. Just let go right now. I’ve got you,” Jax urged her softly. His hand spread over her skull, cradling her tenderly. His face tightened with powerful emotions and shared ecstasy when she began to quake and tremble in orgasm. Her Rush sheared into him, conferring them both with a mindcollapsing pleasure. Jax couldn’t prevent himself from deepening and quickening his thrusts, still being mindful to spare her his full length and power. Despite the intensity of her climax, Skylar felt like hardly an ounce of tension had left her when she felt him start to fuck her harder. She moaned deep and gutturally at his primitive invasion. Jax stroked her head and then her hair gently. “Look in the mirror, beauty,” he whispered. Skylar glanced over dazedly, her consciousness nearly completely held prisoner by Jax’s plunging cock. Nevertheless, she gasped at what she saw. Jax smiled at her reaction. “It’s a magic mirror,” he muttered thickly. “Batos gave it to me years ago. It reflects not only my physical body but my etheric one.” Both of them stared for several seconds, held spellbound by the sight of Jax holding her tightly from below while he also plunged his large glistening cock into her ass. The arousal that flooded through Skylar at that sight was so powerful that it made what she’d experienced before seem like it had been a pale shadow. Looking into the mirror brought it home to her that there were two beautiful Jaxs in the picture. Her eyes shone hotly and she raised her head. She focused hungrily on the cock that lay heavily along Jax’s belly with its fleshy head poking into her breasts. “Oh!” Jax growled low in his throat with mounting lust, hoping he was right in interpreting Skylar’s expression. If it weren’t for Skylar’s spiritual scarring he would have matter-of-factly put his cock to her lips several minutes ago, insisting that she suck. But despite the fact that he was laying on the dominant angle pretty heavily tonight in the face of Skylar’s continued denial and stubbornness, he would never have dreamt of doing that given her past trauma. But she seemed the polar opposite of traumatized when she lifted slightly up off him, careful not to alter the angle of her ass too much. Before he could say “by the fucking…” she had her jaw stretched wide and was arrowing cock between her tightly pursed lips.
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“Fathers,” he finished in a voice that sounded like he’d just been stepped on by a giant. He watched dazedly as she began to flick her tongue over the head and then slurp on him with a strong, steady suction while she stroked the shaft in a greedy milking rhythm. He groaned in agonized ecstasy and unintentionally began to fuck her ass at the same enthusiastic pace that her hand pumped him. She took him deeper than she had on that first night in her room. Much deeper. He gently massaged her neck with one hand and gripped at the bedding desperately with the other. She moaned with the tip of his cock inserted in her throat, humming him to spectacular effect. Oh God, I’m going to come again. Skylar screamed out with her mind. Fuck me harder, love. He complied instinctively, riding right along with her on the crest of an intimidating tall wave of orgasm. For a few moments, his control splintered and he showed her ass a relatively thin form of mercy. His etheric double fucked her with shallow, hard thrusts. Skylar didn’t seem to mind though. She screamed onto his cock and bobbed her head over him at the same ruthless rhythm and rate that he fucked her. Despite the sharp cruelty of the pleasure Jax gathered himself with grave purpose, focusing deeply on the immense pool of energy that coiled at the bases of both of their spines. When he knew that he had their essences mastered he stilled both Skylar’s bouncing bottom and her bobbing head. And he thrust one more time, deeply, striking against her buttocks with a sharp thwack. The energy bubbled up once sluggishly, making Skylar whimper. Despite her anticipation, the energy release took her by surprise, abruptly shooting up her spine like a rocket. She vaguely heard Jax’s unearthly roar as he came. She barely had time to notice that she experienced no fear, trusting with a bone-deep instinct that Jax would control the energies masterfully. Pleasure ripped through her flesh with the equivalent power of an inverted lighting strike, zipping through her chakras, loosening her subtle flesh from the physical, making her head snap back as it passed, only to pour out of the top of her head and gather. Her consciousness went with it. She saw her own Truest Form reflected in Jax’s eyes. To stand with him, to look into his gaze while they knew themselves to be a God and a Goddess was the type of poignant, sharp memory that her human mind would strive to understand…would be desperate to remember. But in the end she had to accept that although she couldn’t translate those subtle meanings to her brain directly she would always carry the elusive hint of the divine mystery in her spirit. She would recognize it on some indescribable level every time she looked into Jax’s eyes.
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She found herself doing exactly that when she slowly opened her eyelids a while later. Somehow she’d ended up fully on top of him, their faces only inches apart. Her rectum tingled with the residual sex energies that Jax had just unleashed in her to such explosive impact. She saw his slight smile and realized that her own lips were quirking in a reflection of his. “What are you thinking?” he asked her in a gravelly voice that Skylar found extremely sexy. She resisted an urge to plant her face in his chest. “You know,” she whispered. His smile widened. “That it was a good thing that some sex magic was left or else you’d be starting to feel one heck of a sore butt?” Skylar gave him a wry look. He laughed. “I’m sorry. I might have been a little too…enthusiastic.” “No more enthusiastic than I was,” she admitted softly. She blinked in surprise when he suddenly put both of his hands on her head, framing her face with his forefinger and thumb. “Skylar…there’s something I want to share with you… Something I took from you once,” he said with gruff emotion. “Took from me?” He nodded, his throat too tight with repressed feeling to speak. So instead of telling her he just did it—he looked deeply into her eyes and gave her back the memory of their bonding, praying to his Blessed Mother the entire time that its presence would help her heal more than its absence seemed to have done. A stiff expression of wonder and incredulity slowly overcame her face. Jax stared, for some reason blocked from understanding what she was thinking at that moment. Maybe it was because Skylar was so unsure herself— She abruptly shuddered. His hands stroked her back in an attempt to reassure her. “What was that?” she asked harshly. His hands moved over her silky flesh soothingly. “It was the memory of our bonding, beauty. I took it from you, to save you from undue pain.” “That’s not the memory of our bonding.” He paused, put off guard by her flat denial. “Skylar, it is…” He stopped when she shoved herself off him with alarming speed. His mouth fell open in shock. This wasn’t like before…this wasn’t her typical denial of him. Instead she looked completely crazed with fear as she stared at him and slowly backed across the room. He started to get up to follow her but the way she started like a frightened animal made him stop. “Skylar? What is it? What in Hades is wrong?” he asked with dawning disbelief. Her hands shook as she retrieved her clothing from the floor. The whites of her eyes flashed at him like a cornered wild animal.
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“Skylar?” he repeated. “I never once thought you had it in you to be this cruel, Jax,” she whispered through lips that had gone white around the edges. “What?” he asked. “Just stay the hell away from me. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it,” she shouted. She looked utterly distraught as she stood there clutching her clothes with a white-knuckled grip and trembling—as if she was skating on the thin edge of madness. “I can’t stand another second of your torture. Are you taking revenge for Duse? Is that what you’re doing? Do you think my punishment of myself is insufficient for having been unfaithful to him? Is that it?” A sob tore through her chest before she turned and raced for the bedroom door. Jax stilled an urge to follow her, instinctively knowing that he was the last being on Earth who could bring her comfort at that moment. The realization made pain burn and score at his spirit. He just sat there, stunned by her words, her state of mind reverberating through his consciousness. What in Hades had she been talking about?
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Chapter Ten Noddin’s Ring denied her entry tonight. She stumbled in the darkness as she circled the stone ring nearly falling to her knees. Although the moon was nearly as full as it had been the night before, it shone presently like a vaguer, washed-out shadow of what it had been twenty-four hours ago. Her breath sounded labored and ragged in the almost preternatural stillness. She’d raced up the mountain path as quickly as she had last night when it had been Jax that spurred her on. Tonight it was her own demons that pushed her. Skylar passed behind the one remaining erect stone and once again sensed her denial of entry into the ring. She sagged until her knees hit the cool grass. Her frantic gasps for air segued into a low moan of misery. Her vision wavered and blurred. Guilt weighed at her limbs and stifled her breath. It was no wonder Noddin’s Ring denied her entrance tonight. One who carried so much sin and so much regret should be shunned from such a sacred place.
***** “Sometimes it’s more comfortable to feel guilt or regret instead of admitting that powers larger than ourselves are moving us like pawns on a chessboard. Too often we have as little control over our destiny as a babe in its mother’s arms.” Skylar blinked in disorientation as the words filtered through her awareness like droplets of water trickling through a dense insulation of feathers. Her fingers fell on a warm blanket of wool. Her gaze swept anxiously over a freshly swept hearth, a glowing lamp in an otherwise dim room, a knitted afghan in a worn, comfortable chair. She recognized the house. It was Maerda’s cottage. Skylar used to visit her occasionally when she lived at Dunleavy. That was before Maerda began harping at her to train with her to become a Druagish priestess and sharpen her subtle powers and Skylar began to increasingly avoid her. “Maerda?” Skylar muttered with a rough voice. The old woman leaned forward and poured some steaming tea into a cup. “Here. Drink this. Sleeping in the damp night air has made ye hoarse. Ye should take better care of yerself, love,” she admonished gently as she came over to the couch where Skylar reclined. “How did I get here?”
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Maerda just nodded at the cup she held in her hand. Skylar understood her to mean there would be no explanations until she drank so she dutifully raised herself and took the cup. The fragrant liquid felt heavenly on her scratchy throat, also serving to clear the thick, cottony quality of her consciousness. When the old woman saw that she’d swallowed a good portion she returned to her chair. “I found ye beside Noddin’s Ring, fast asleep behind the headstone,” she said briefly once she’d settled. She noticed Skylar peering around the small living room. “There’s no one else here, Skylar. I guided ye to the cottage while ye were half asleep. There won’t be any unexpected visitors, either. I’ve warded my cottage against intruders for the time being. Ye need some time to think.” Skylar caught the woman’s glittering gaze and knew that by unexpected visitors Maerda had meant Jax. She sat up slowly. “What was that you were saying when I woke up just now?” Maerda’s weathered face cracked into a smile. “Ye heard that, did ye? I was saying that it’s easier to take on the burden of guilt and make ourselves responsible for our fate than to admit that we often have scant control over our destinies.” Maerda nodded significantly toward the forest outside the window. “I could feel yer guilt and yer sorrow. It’s what drew me, much in the way that I know when an animal in the forest has been wounded.” Skylar carefully avoided the old Druaga’s gaze. She sat forward and placed her cup on the table in front of the couch and swung her feet to the floor. “Thank you for coming for me, Maerda. I should be going now though. Nix and I are leaving today.” Maerda continued talking as though Skylar had never interrupted her. “I knew how much ye suffered that night two days after Duse died, as well. It was I who told Bale, Jax and Helen that you were dying. I knew because I’d delved yer spirit, ye see.” Something in the old woman’s voice made Skylar’s eyes leap up to meet her gaze. For a long moment neither spoke. “At first I couldn’t believe what I’d sensed. But then I moved aside yer nightgown and I saw.” Maerda gestured with her head to Skylar’s left breast. “I never told anyone, Skylar. I never spoke of how ye were dying not just because of grief for the loss of yer mate but also from the weight of guilt, for believing ye had betrayed Duse and bonded with another less than twenty-four hours after he’d died.” Maerda paused, wondering if Skylar would speak. When Skylar didn’t but merely watched her with huge, haunted eyes, she continued. “It’s never happened that way before, to my knowledge. Perhaps it never will again, given the fact that Jax and ye are both so singularly powerful. It’s no wonder Jax doesn’t recall it. Watchers have no context for understanding a woman seeking them out for a mating bond. They’ve always been the instigators of it, typically because the bond usually occurs psychokinetically in the beginning stages. Of course for Jax and ye, being what the two of ye are, one time was sufficient to completely seal the bond.” Skylar stared at the empty hearth. She felt so heavy…so numb.
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“What difference does it make if Jax recalls it or not?” Skylar asked dully. “You know about his gift. Even if he doesn’t recall that I—” “Sought him out to complete the bond psychokinetically?” Maerda asked calmly. Skylar swallowed. “Even if he doesn’t recall what I did he should be able to see the truth when he looks in my eyes.” Maerda just shook her head. “No. He only sees the guilt that you feel and that you suffer. He believes it to be because of your grief for Duse—” “It is,” Skylar interrupted. Maerda nodded once. “Aye, in part.” Skylar wrapped the blanket around her defensively. “What else do you think I would grieve about?” “Ye grieve for Jax. Ye grieve for him because you believe that ye don’t deserve to have him. Ye would sacrifice Jax to absolve yer guilt for loving him….aye, Skylar…even while Duse was still alive.” Skylar realized suddenly that both she and Maerda stood. The old woman had stopped speaking several moments ago but her words stayed in the air like a poison in the bloodstream. “The thing that eats away at ye—and that will eventually kill ye, if ye let it—isn’t yer guilt though. No, what ye hate is yer need, Skylar. Ye despise the fact that yer body and yer soul need Jax Ammadon more than ye do air or water. Ye could stave it off while Duse was alive, while the Divine Principle was kept satisfied by that bonding. But the moment Duse was gone something much, much bigger than ye or I made its wishes known. It clamored in yer spirit and yer mind and yer blood until there was only one mode of action that destiny would allow ye if ye remained alive.” Maerda paused, taking note of the tears that ran like a silent waterfall of distilled sorrow down Skylar’s pale cheeks. She shook her head. “Child, ye had no choice but to complete the bond with Jax. It was mandated by something bigger than both of our puny human selves, surely ye can see that?” Skylar just shook her head once in mute denial. “Who do ye believe has been most wronged by yer compulsion to mate with Jax? Skylar?” Maerda prompted when Skylar just watched her blankly for several seconds. “Is it Duse?” Skylar could only nod. Her emotions gripped her throat like ruthless fingers. “Duse would have wanted ye to live. And not just for Nix either. He would have wanted ye to be happy. Examine yer feelings on this, Skylar,” Maerda said gently, despite the characteristic gruffness of her voice. “Ye know what I say is true, don’t ye?” Skylar stared past Maerda’s shoulder sightlessly, tears almost entirely obliterating her vision. “It’s…it’s what…” “Aye, love. It’s what ye would have wanted for Duse had the circumstances been reversed. It’s difficult to judge the situation from human standards. I realize that human 127
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beings have preconceptions about appropriate grieving periods and, of course, ye’re human. But ye’re an exceptional human. As such yer situation wasn’t just about grieving after Duse died, Skylar. It was about survival.” Maerda paused when Skylar inhaled raggedly and then began convulsing with harsh sobs. She nodded to herself grimly, glad to see Skylar’s emotions being released in a cathartic, healthy manner versus held in desperately while she slowly strangled on her guilt and sorrow. “Ye stand before me now, which means that on some basic level of yer being ye’ve chosen to live, lass.” Maerda’s face remained impassive as she watched Skylar collapse slowly to the floor under the weight of her emotions. She made no move to intervene but when Skylar’s violent sobbing had quieted she helped her to her feet and silently led her back to a bedroom. Skylar obediently got into bed when Maerda pulled back the covers. She closed her eyes and was lost in a deep, healing sleep before the old woman even closed the bedroom door.
***** “Are you going with Nix and Skylar to the airport later?” Bale asked. Jax didn’t answer but just continued to stare out the window of the study at Dunleavy onto the brilliant spring morning. “Jax?” Bale prompted. He started from his deep focus. He’d been probing with his mind again, just as he had been almost every second for the past several hours. But no, Skylar was still blocked from him. That fact was driving him near mad with pent-up worry and frustration. He knew precisely where she was and who was shielding her from him. He turned away from the window abruptly. “Do you suppose it’s possible that Maerda could be…dangerous?” Bale blinked. “What in Hades are you talking about?” Jax grimaced at the hard incredulity in Bale’s voice. Jax and Bale trusted Maerda nearly as much as they did Paim or Batos. “Maybe not dangerous, exactly. She just seems to have been…evasive lately. On the night of the Regnausa, for example, why did she scheme with the faeries to get Skylar and me into Noddin’s Ring?” He noticed how Bale glanced away uncomfortably. Come to think of it, his own brother hadn’t been very willing to meet his truthseeing gaze recently either. “Don’t tell me that it was a fertility rite either,” Jax added. “I happen to know that wasn’t the night that event is usually celebrated.” Bale hesitated. “Come sit down, Jax. There’s something I need to tell you about that night.” 128
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When Jax approached the enormous polished desk that had been carved from a single tree Bale stood up from the chair behind it. “Sit here. It’s your desk.” He shrugged when Jax glanced at him in mild surprise. “You’re the King of the Watchers now. I sit here out of habit. You should call me on it, Jax.” Jax just shook his head distractedly as he took the proffered seat. He didn’t feel much like a king and sitting in the chair didn’t change that a bit. His eyes flickered up when he noticed the way that his brother paced in front of the desk restlessly. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked pointedly. Bale hardly ever got worked up unless it somehow related to Helen or the boys. Bale stopped abruptly and threw himself into a chair that faced the desk. He met Jax’s gaze fully for the first time in days. “You’re wrong, Jax. It was a fertility rite. The most important one for the Watchers that’s ever been enacted in Noddin’s Ring.” His brows crinkled when for the first time in days he fully looked into Bale’s eyes, reading the truth behind them. He felt shock run through his system, leaving an electric tingling in its place. “Skylar is pregnant,” Jax stated in a flat, disbelieving tone. Bale nodded. Jax was only vaguely aware that he stood. “And…and it’s my child?” he gasped out through a constricted throat. “Of course it is.” “That’s not possible.” “You seem to have made a habit of making the impossible possible, little brother,” Bale said gruffly. When Jax just continued to stare at him, dumbfounded, he cleared his throat. “It seems that you’ve corporealized in the physical world to such an extensive degree that the normal passage that a Watcher must go through in order to be able to impregnate his mate wasn’t required for you.” “Skylar is pregnant?” Jax repeated stupidly. “Yes,” Bale said in an emotion-filled whisper. “And not with just any Watcher child.” Jax looked deeply into his brother’s eyes again. He shook his head in denial just as Bale began to nod and laugh softly. Tears of happiness swelled in Bale’s eyes. Jax’s hands began to shake where they rested on the desk. “A girl child?” he muttered. Bale’s low laughter escalated to a heartfelt rumble. A few tears spilled onto his cheek. Jax had never seen his older brother so irrepressibly happy. “Yes…it’s true,” he added when Jax continued to dazedly shake his head. “Helen and Maerda swear it.” Jax sat down heavily, the springs in the leather chair protesting loudly. “By the Blessed Mothers—it’s a fucking miracle.” His eyes sharpened when Bale started laughing even more uproariously at his statement. The reality of the situation struck Jax 129
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heavily at the image. His brother looked literally transported by joy. Jax felt his own spirit begin to lift with intoxicating buoyancy. This was the most elusive desire of their small, fading race. For a reason that Watcher scientists like Duse and Paim had never been able to fully ascertain without samples from the Fathers, the Watchers were largely sterile. When mates did become impregnated after several of their incarnations and the Watchers growing strength in the physical world, their offspring were always male. Always before had been male… He and Skylar were going to have a child…a baby girl…a child…a baby girl. The words kept repeating over and over again in his head like a magical incantation. The chant wasn’t interrupted by the brisk knock at the study door. Bale tried to stifle his enthusiasm but he didn’t succeed very well. “What’s so funny, Uncle Bale?” Nix asked as he stepped into the study. He grinned as he watched his uncle shake his head, causing tears to spill down his face. Instead of answering Bale snorted with unrestrained laughter. Nix’s light blue eyes began to shimmer with contagious cheer when he noticed that Jax too wore a dazed, goofy grin. Jax’s eyes lit up when they landed on Nix. “Come here, son.” “Have you and Uncle Bale gone crazy?” Nix muttered nearly incoherently into Jax’s shirt when Jax came around the desk, lifted him high into his arms and hugged him heartily. “Gods, I hope not,” Jax said as he returned Nix to his feet. “But if I have gone over the edge promise you won’t pull me back up.” Nix shook his head and laughed. Jax brushed back Nix’s unruly hair fondly. “It’s not time already to go and fly the kite, is it?” He’d told Jax that there would be time before lunch for them to take the kite out, before he and Skylar had to leave. Jax’s blissful mood sagged slightly when he recalled that Skylar meant to go later that afternoon. Nix shook his head. “No, I came with a message. From Mom.” Jax stilled and Bale’s uproarious laugh slowed to a few choking grunts. “She says for you to meet her in Noddin’s Ring,” Nix finished wide-eyed. “It must be important because she hardly ever uses telepathy with me.” Jax immediately sent out his subtle feelers but no…damn it, he still couldn’t sense Skylar. He was going to talk to Maerda about it too. No one had the right to block a Watcher from his mate. The heavy feeling of fear that overcame him suddenly stood in stark contrast to his former bliss. What in Hades did Skylar have to say to him that required such a singular summoning and sacred setting?
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Chapter Eleven Jax paused when he heard Skylar’s soft voice. She was sitting with her back to him in the lush grass at the center of Noddin’s Ring. Her clothing was rumpled but her hair looked freshly brushed as it fell past her shoulders in glorious, silky waves. “When I came up last night after leaving you the Ring wouldn’t allow me to enter.” “It seems to have changed its mind then,” Jax said cautiously as he came down next to her in the fragrant grass. He held his breath when she glanced over at him. “No. It was only myself that kept me out last night.” Jax opened his mouth to speak but found that he couldn’t. Skylar’s eyes were touring his face with a hunger that stole his voice. He’d never before experienced so much honesty from her. He’d never experienced so much love in his entire life. “Skylar…” he began gruffly. But she touched her forefinger to his mouth and he fell silent. She straddled his lap, facing him. Emotion thickened in his throat when her arms encircled him and he was suddenly surrounded by her soft flesh and singular scent. He’d never dared to hope for a day that she would come to him so freely. “You know how much I loved Duse, don’t you, Jax?” she asked into his neck after a pregnant pause. “Of course I do.” She sniffled as she leaned back and regarded him. “He meant everything to me.” Jax swallowed convulsively. “I know. I respect that, Skylar. Surely you know that I would never try to take his place?” Skylar shook her head sadly. She sank her fingers into his wavy, sun-warmed hair, cherishing the sensation more than she recalled ever cherishing anything in her life. Jax. He’d been forbidden to her for so long…first by circumstances and then by her own guilt. “What I couldn’t forgive myself for wasn’t that I’d allowed you to take his place as my mate. I couldn’t forgive myself because you meant even more to me than him and because in my most profound moment of grief…I reached out to you, Jax.” He went preternaturally still beneath her fingertips. She held his gaze steadily as she lowered her hands to her blouse. “Look,” she whispered after a moment. His eyes glowed like barely banked embers when they lowered.
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She was holding apart her shirt. She wore nothing beneath it but her flawless, apricot-hued skin and his sigil. His hand shook slightly in hers when she lifted it and placed his fingers on the symbol above her left breast that meant Jax Ammadon. Skylar leaned forward until their foreheads touched and her hair encircled them like a curtain. “Do you know why I felt so guilty, Jax? Because I was the one who wove the magic to put your mark on me. The night after Duse died I sought you out while we both slept. And I bonded with you, Jax. I couldn’t have stopped myself from doing it any more than I could have willed water to become dry. I couldn’t because at that moment in time something much, much bigger than me said that I could either make you mine or cease to breathe. And I chose you, Jax. I choose you.” Jax leant back so that he could see her eyes. He’d witnessed the fierceness of Skylar’s spirit once before. He was held in just as much awe presently by it as he had been twelve years ago. “What are you talking about, beauty?” “Just this….” She cradled his head in her hand and looked deeply into his exotic eyes. Then she gave him the memory of their bonding—their true bonding—just as he’d given her his memory the previous night. She moved her hands soothingly against his skull as she watched his eyes widen at first with surprise and then gleam with dawning understanding. She smiled sadly when his gaze finally sharpened on her. “We’ve both suffered. You so much more than me,” she whispered next to his parted lips. “Please forgive me. Forgive me for prolonging it for you. Forgive me for wrongly accusing you last night. I thought you knew…because of your gift, you see?” She shook her head regretfully. “But you never did until now, did you?” Jax just shook his head in wonderment at the unfolding of events. “Let me end your suffering. Let me make it better for you.” Jax felt transfixed as she softly caressed his mouth, molding and shaping his lips to her own. A groan vibrated from his throat when she tilted back his head and slid her tongue between his teeth. A kiss that started as slow and cherishing became hot and passionate. He hissed in protest when she broke it but he quickly was assuaged when she took her left breast in her hand and pushed his head down to it. Skylar’s jaw went slack as Jax took the tip of her breast into his warm mouth and closed around her, creating a divine suction. The sensation pulled like a cord straight from her nipple down to her womb. She whimpered in pleasure. He drew on her so sweetly, so poignantly that tears began to roll out of her eyes even as her juices trickled from her pussy. Her muscles coiled rigidly despite the fact that she’d never felt life and love flow so freely through her spirit. She glanced down and murmured to him softly when he turned his face and fastened on her other nipple hungrily. Moments later, she stared sightlessly at the upright headstone and the incandescent spring day and came silently.
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Jax’s low growl vibrated into her flesh as her Rush fed and strengthened both his body and spirit. He hardly knew right from left or day from night, so dazed was he from being surrounded and enfolded by her freely given, immense love. His stomach muscles tensed and resisted only for a fraction of a second before he gave way and sprawled back on the soft grass when she pushed him. He lifted his neck to capture the spellbinding sight of Skylar standing and kicking off her shoes before whipping her shirt over her shoulders. She held his eyes as she cradled her shapely, firm breasts, running her fingertips over her distended, rigid nipples before her hands skimmed down over her torso and her finger slid along the zipper of her skirt. His eyes met hers as the garment slithered beguilingly over her shimmying hips and down her thighs, leaving her completely naked. He couldn’t help but contrast the image of how her clothes had come off her last night in comparison to now. Last night he’d ordered her to take off her clothes and she’d complied, fueling his lust beyond logical comprehension. Today she stripped for him willingly and his love and his desire pitched into heretofore unknown territories. She gave a sublime smile as she straddled him, bent her knees and lowered over him. He groaned when she aggressively peeled back his t-shirt and kissed him hotly on the abdomen with her wet, fully exposed sex. Her hips undulated against him sensually. “Get rid of the clothes,” she whispered tautly before she leaned down and sank her teeth into his neck. Skylar made a soft sound of immense gratification when he complied and they were pressed together, naked flesh to naked flesh. She continued to kiss, nip and lick greedily, feeling like a starving waif who had been tempted with the most delectably prepared dishes repeatedly, only to have them swept away again and again just as her fork rose to stab at them. But not today. Today she was going to eat up every last bit of Jax Ammadon. His right shoulder muscle felt smooth and hard beneath her seeking lips. Her tongue savored his taste, finding the rounded muscle to be succulent when she gently bit, as were his pecs and the dense meat of his biceps. She heard him groan and say her name roughly when she turned her attention to the flat discs of his dark brown nipples but she gave him no relief as she tempted and teased that sensitive flesh into its full responsiveness. Her tongue lashed once more over the erect, pebbled buttons before she regretfully left them and made a study of his ribs and ridged abdomen. When she felt Jax pull up on her shoulders she acquiesced and rose over him to give her lips to him—she wasn’t trying to exacerbate his suffering, after all, only diminish it. But she broke their delicious kiss when he took her breasts in his hands and began to make love to them again with his adept fingers to such breathtaking effect. She saw the expression in his beautiful blue eyes when she withdrew from his embrace and she smiled. “Relax,” she whispered before she softly kissed the side of his ribs. His skin pebbled appreciatively at the caress. “Don’t you like me loving you?” 133
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He trailed her actions with his hot gaze. “No. I love you loving me.” The manner in which she was delicately sampling and savoring every inch of his skin was driving him to distraction but the way she carefully avoided the increasingly tight column of his penis where it lay along his belly was making him completely nuts. He groaned in torment when she swung her leg over him so that she was kneeling at his hips and a few golden curls teased the shaft of his cock in a featherlight, all-too-brief caress. “Skylar, come here,” he ordered. But instead of sitting up and taking her into his arms he remained motionless, joyfully paralyzed beneath her gentle hands and seeking lips. It seemed like more bliss that he could endure, to lie patiently still while Skylar made love to him with such sweet intensity. But endure it he did. “You have the most beautiful legs in existence,” Skylar murmured. “God must have imagined them in his most inspired moment.” She pressed her mouth into a steely hard thigh that was dusted with crinkly black hair. Once, years ago, she’d accidentally walked in on Jax making love to one of his lemans. He’d held her upside down over him while he stood upright and they pleasured each other orally. Skylar had been ashamed at how aroused she’d become at the display of Jax’s power and potency. His legs had held and balanced the two of them with the ease of two supple tree trunks. That forbidden, erotic image came to her now as she gently separated his thighs and gave them her full attention. “Skylar…” Jax hissed a moment later, his face tight with agonized arousal. She’d spread his legs even further so that she could kneel between them and began to kiss and lick and nibble at every inch of his sensitive inner thighs from his knees to his a scant inch away from his aching balls. He groaned in rising misery. She glanced up at him sharply. “I’m sorry, love,” she whispered next to his scrotum before she took a testicle between her lips and suckled softly. Jax made a sound like something had been ripped out of his throat. His eyes toured a cerulean, cloudless blue sky sightlessly as they rolled back in his head and his eyelids clenched shut. They popped open a second later in dazed lust when her hand continued its upward tour of his body and her forefinger slipped between his cheeks and arrowed straight into his ass. She pushed in and out with a gentle but insistent rhythm while she suckled his testicle and watched the reaction on his face. He felt the blood vessels in his cheeks and cock flush full with blood. “You’re going to make me come if you keep that up,” he said hoarsely. Skylar delicately slipped her lips over his firm ball and began to trail her tongue up his long shaft. “That’s the idea, Jax,” she said before she began to thoroughly polish his smooth head with her quick tongue. His gruff moans and occasional curses were music to her ears as she leaned over him further and took his heavy member into her left hand, giving both his cock and ass hard, sure strokes. 134
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She saw how every muscle in his beautiful body pulled tighter and tighter as he struggled to keep control. “Let go, love,” she told him in a low voice before she stretched her lips over his girth and slid down over the fleshy, tapered cap of his penis. Skylar focused exclusively on her immense love for him, the love that she’d tried to deny for so long, until it burst at the seams of her defenses and overwhelmed her, not with dread but with joy. Her pursed lips kissed several inches of his thick shaft. Liking the sensation so much, she sucked hard and increased her pace. When he shouted out sharply, she instinctively massaged deeply with her finger, stimulating his powerful sacral energies into a bubbling froth that would increase his orgasmic pleasure immeasurably. “Come off me. I’m going to come,” he said raggedly between clenched teeth moments later. “No. Your Truest Form doesn’t harm my body when you come inside of it…why would it hurt me now?” She arrowed him once again into her mouth. “Skylar…ah, blessed…” He lost the capability to resist, despite the fact that he’d never dared to actually come in a woman’s mouth. Watchers never allowed a woman other than their mates to see their Truest Form, either by psychokinetically urging them to close their eyes when it appeared or climaxing positioned behind her. It was not only too powerful of an experience for the woman—even potentially having the ability to kill her if she opened his eyes while he climaxed—but too personal of an experience for the Watcher as well. Nevertheless he couldn’t resist Skylar. Never could— Jax thrust his hips up once and shouted out with sharp incredulity before he climaxed explosively. Skylar’s eyes widened in wonder as he briefly changed form and his musky semen began to spurt hotly into her throat. The fact that the penis in her mouth expanded until it widened and lengthened alarmingly didn’t alter the actual sensation of him inside of her in the slightest. Skylar couldn’t have said if her mouth temporarily widened magically to accommodate him or if his essences were so rarified at that sacred moment that the expansion in size didn’t necessarily equate to the dimensions of physical matter. Whatever the case it was one of the most magical, lust-inspiring moments of Skylar’s life. So much so that even after he’d returned to his physical form and she’d greedily milked every last drop of his cum out of him she continued to suck hungrily. “Ah Gods, Skylar, what are you trying to do to me?” Jax accused dazedly when she resumed sucking him with increased ardor. His body felt utterly confused as to whether it was supposed to feel fully, utterly satiated or potently re-aroused. He groaned deeply and immediately knew which when she pushed another finger in his ass. It felt wickedly good despite the fact that his flesh resisted her at first. He’d always loved fucking a woman’s ass, knowing the extra degree of intimacy and trust required by her to allow him to do it. A woman’s Rush always had an extra potency when she
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came from ass-fucking. He liked when a woman stimulated him there in turn too, especially right before he came, to give his orgasm extra spice. But what Skylar was doing to him right now felt different. He would have never allowed another woman to do this to him. Her fingers were penetrating both his body and his spirit. She was fucking him…mastering him with her thrusting fingers and sweet, hot mouth. He’d never been so vulnerable as he was at that moment but her seemingly palpable love flowed into all of his empty spaces and caressed his spiritual scars. And Jax stared up at the seemingly shellacked blue surface of the dome of the sky and let it happen. He did for a while anyway. Eventually though, he mustered himself and sat up. He ignored her sounds of protest when he firmly gripped her shoulders and raised her up off him. He wished he could have ignored the erotic popping noise that his cock made when he pulled her tightly pursed lips off it. The sound made him seriously think about putting his cock right back into her sucking heat. Instead he stiffened his will sufficiently enough to palm her smooth thighs and encourage her to straddle his hips. “Come up on your feet, just for a second, beauty,” he said as his eyes toured her flagrantly displayed nude body hotly. He focused his consciousness briefly and leaned back a few inches into a firm pillow of air. Sensing what he wanted, Skylar held herself off him with her hands on his shoulders and her squatting legs while he took his sex into his own hand and arrowed it into her soaking slit. She gasped at the sensation of the head piercing the entry of her body. His big hands encircled her hips and buttocks, taking full control of her weight. “It’s okay. I’ve got you,” he told her tensely as she met his gaze. “Let go.” Skylar didn’t hesitate as she looked into his piercing, soulful eyes. Her trust for him was absolute. She gripped his shoulders and lifted her feet from the ground. They never broke eye contact as he slowly speared her body with exquisite control. Their faces glistened with sweat, their muscles pulled tight with mounting tension. Tears swelled in her eyes as he worked her down over him, filling her to the point where the tingling burn of pain mingled minimally with the rapturous swell of pleasure before he flexed his powerful arm muscles and lifted her up over him. With every pass he not only stretched her tissues but expanded her hunger until she moaned uncontrollably and mouthed one word. Please. Jax settled her fully down onto his lap, marveling at the feeling of being fully seated in her warm, clasping sheath. He groaned when her muscular walls sucked him in a tad farther. His eyes never left her beautiful face. He knew the second when their carefully constructed tower of sexual tension collapsed for her, driving the energies incipient in their efforts straight through his subtle bodies with a powerful blast of shuddering pleasure.
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When Skylar came back to herself after her orgasm he was lifting her up and down over him, gloving his cock with her body with controlled, steady thrusts, pulling her forward slightly several inches off his cock and then sinking her back on the downsweep in a rhythm that left him sweating and Skylar gaping. She looked into his eyes and saw a steady stream of love pouring forth from them. How could she have ever considered denying herself that? “I love you too, Jax,” she whispered unevenly. He felt his heart lurch in his chest. He’d always known in his deepest self that she did but to hear her say it so freely and tenderly made him know he’d been the blessed recipient of two miracles in one day. His arms tensed as he pounded their flesh together with hard staccato bursts. Skylar whimpered but Jax saw the moment when a grim determination overcame her expression. She placed her feet back on the ground and added force of her own body and tensing thighs. They both shouted out at the blinding pleasure, crashing together again and again, taking each other higher and faster until their flesh ignited and burned in unison. Later Skylar lay fully on top of him in the fragrant grass. His pillow of air had dissipated when every ounce of focus that he possessed had been channeled into his love for Skylar and his thunderous climax. Skylar ran her lips over his damp neck, submerging herself in his scent and taste…treasuring him with the fullness of her being. She hesitated for a second and then resumed kissing him, this time with renewed energy. Jax’s hand found its way through her thick, soft hair to the base of her skull. “What were you thinking just now, beauty?” he asked in a gruff, languid voice. Her eyes flashed up to his cautiously but she didn’t hide from his gaze. The days of doing that were past. “Truthfully? I was thinking that I’m lucky that you didn’t tell me to go straight to the Borderlands long ago.” She shook her head. “No one should have to put up with that much ambivalence. I’m so sorry, Jax.” Her eyebrows rose in surprise when his chest began to vibrate with laughter beneath her. “What?” she asked with amazement. Her spirit resonated with his and she couldn’t resist smiling. “I guess everything is relative. I considered myself to be extremely lucky to be eliciting ambivalent feelings from you. I’d much rather be the object of both your love and disgust than just your disgust—or worst yet, have you not care one way or another.” “It was never a remote possibility for me not to care about you, and as for me being disgusted…not bloody likely. As Maerda pointed out, I hated myself for needing you
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more than I did air or water. If you hadn’t done what you did in Chicago I likely would have spontaneously combusted with thwarted desire for you,” she murmured weakly. “Skylar,” Jax muttered warmly as he caressed her skull. “Stop it with the regrets. This was our path. I’d take it again a trillion times over if I got to end up in this moment right now.” Her eyes leapt back to up to his. What she saw there made her want to weep like the fool she knew herself to be. “God I love you.” She leaned over and focused all of her feelings into one soft, lingering kiss on his mouth. Jax luxuriated in the moment. He felt sublime, like the universe spread out before his feet like a peaceful kingdom of yellow flowers and fragrant, cool grass. His eyes abruptly sprang wide. “What’s wrong?” Skylar asked in dawning amazement when his head came up like a hound that had caught the scent. His sharp eyes toured the Ring and the surrounding hillside. “Jax?” she questioned again when he just stared at the upright headstone distractedly. “Can you sense Nix?” A tingle of alarm went through her at his abrupt question. “Yes…he’s not behind Dunleavy’s wards…he’s…by the loch, isn’t he? With Zeva and…?” Her eyes flew to Jax’s in confusion and mounting fear. “What’s he doing with her?” “I have no idea,” he muttered but the grim shake of his head said clearly that whatever the reason was it didn’t bode well. Skylar had already stood and was searching for her discarded clothing. She picked up her rumpled blouse and realized that she was wearing it, along with her skirt, in the second that followed. Jax had materialized them on her and donned his own clothing as well. Her eyes flew to his anxiously. “There’s no time for me to take you down the mountain. Listen carefully, Skylar. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
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Chapter Twelve Maerda sat in her comfortable chair, seemingly knitting contentedly, but her sharp eyes kept rising to reassure herself with the sight of the woman pacing restlessly in front of her fireplace. The image gave her a sense of satisfaction of a job well done. She’d planned for this for so long. Skylar Ammadon was the final end result of a lifetime of labor. Or at least the child that grew within her body was. “This is ridiculous,” Skylar said and turned abruptly toward the door. “I’m going down there.” “Didn’t Jax tell ye specifically not to do that?” Maerda asked softly, not looking up from her knitting. “But Nix is fine. I can sense it. Bale is taking him and Zeva back to Dunleavy and Jax and Eli are questioning that woman—Saya’s leman, Joanne—about what the hell she was doing trying to do getting Zeva and Nix out onto that boat.” “It’s obvious, I would think,” the old Druaga said calmly. “What’s obvious?” Skylar asked, pulling up short in her pacing. “She was trying to block Nix’s whereabouts from Jax and ye. It’s yer son’s Achilles heel I’m afraid…the water. Both you and Duse are weak in that element but the shortcoming has been amplified in Nix’s case. The loch would have acted as a shield for his presence even for Jax, who’s equally strong in fire, earth, air and water.” Skylar walked slowly toward Maerda. “But someone would have had to tell Joanne that…most likely a Watcher.” Her face stiffened. “Asmoday,” Skylar whispered with sudden fierceness. “He used the water against Duse as well when he had me kidnapped years back.” Maerda set her needlework into her lap. “Yes. Asmoday,” she said with simple finality. She smiled. Skylar gasped in disbelief and disgust when she saw a thick, white worm stick its eyeless head from a hole in Maerda’s suddenly exposed gums before it plunged back into the darkness. “You called, Skylar?” Skylar stared in rising horror at the sound of the deep, roughened male voice resonating from Maerda’s throat. The old woman’s expression changed subtly, becoming preternaturally alert and sly. “What have you done to Maerda, you murderer?” Skylar demanded in a low, tremulous voice. Fear filled her but so did fury. She’d heard from Duse, Che and Bale
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what Asmoday had done to the past to the people he possessed. He utterly decimated both their minds and their flesh with his rotting, depraved spirit. “You refer to your much-mourned mate Duse, I suppose. In all fairness it was Bale I was trying to kill. Your mate’s interference is what got him murdered.” Asmoday’s manic laughter caused goose bumps to rise on Skylar’s arms. “You can’t hold it against me for noticing, Skylar dear, but Jax seems to have gotten you over your loss quickly enough. Who better to turn to than his brother, I suppose, to fill all your empty holes now that Duse is gone?” “What do you want, you foul, lying demon?” “I want the freedom that the Ammadons have denied me for so long, of course. I want to return to the flesh…my own, that is, not these disgusting rags in which I stoop to clothe myself,” he said with a snarl as he looked down at Maerda’s body. “Your concern for the old woman is unfounded by the way. As usual I couldn’t have possessed her if she hadn’t been having covetous designs on you from the start. It’s true,” Asmoday defended when he saw her look of doubtful disgust. “She wants complete control of what grows in your belly, Skylar. And she was willing to bargain with me in order to get it.” Skylar paused in uncertainty when she heard that. But— “Skylar, come over to me.” Fear swept through her when she recognized Jax’s voice behind her. No…no, this couldn’t be happening. She wouldn’t be forced to lose Jax as well as Duse to this fiend. Not Jax…not when she’d just accepted how precious he was to her. “Jax…go,” she said in rising panic when she turned and saw him standing behind her. He looked calm at first glance but then she saw how his slanting blue eyes glittered with controlled fury. “It’s a trap…Asmoday…Maerda—” “Shax, how nice of you to join us,” Asmoday called cheerfully. “Come over to me, Skylar,” Jax repeated, never taking his eyes off Asmoday’s face as it manifested eerily through Maerda’s aged flesh. She started to do as he ordered but suddenly Maerda spoke—not in Asmoday’s voice but her own. Skylar vaguely recognized the ancient language used in Jax’s Regnausa. She blinked at the sudden burst of brilliant light around Jax. The interior of Maerda’s cottage seemed to go black in contrast. When her sight came back to her Skylar moaned mournfully at what she saw. Two incandescent forms stood on either side of Jax, restraining him. They were the exact same faerie males who had held him back from her two nights ago in Noddin’s Ring. Jax’s lips formed a bitter curse but no sound exuded. She heard only Asmoday’s tinny laughter. “Oh this is perfect indeed.” He rose from the chair, grinning insanely. Skylar realized dazedly that he held one of Maerda’s sharp metal knitting needles like a
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weapon. Her heart hammered wildly in her breast. She would not stand here and watch him kill Jax. She would not— “I’m afraid you have no other choice, my dear,” Asmoday replied flippantly to her thoughts as he advanced on Jax. He waved his hand toward her, never taking his eyes from Jax’s furious, contorted face as he strained between the two faerie men. Skylar’s eyes went wide when she realized that her limbs had been frozen into immobility by Asmoday’s—or Maerda’s?—magic. The second she recognized her incapacitation her eyes leapt to Jax’s face wildly. He abruptly stopped struggling and stared at her steadily. A message passed between them that no brand of magic could prevent. “I’m sorry to have to kill you with such a crude weapon, Shax,” Asmoday said conversationally as he approached Jax. “But your cousin Che stole my dagger from me years ago. He’s worrisome, that one. You may be the strongest of all the Ammadons now but it’s Che who knows my essences better than you or Bale.” Asmoday stopped a foot away from Jax, who stared down at him calmly and coldly…every inch the king that he was. “And as for you, I’ve never been able to divine what your secret weapon is, Shax. Rumor has it that you’re as lethal with the sword as you are the quarterstaff and the spear. It’s always been a puzzle to me, that. But no matter. Maerda’s ward on the cottage would only allow you to enter in fully corporeal form and the faeries will keep you that way. In the end an old woman’s knitting needle will do as well as the most noble of weapons for the likes of you, King.” He raised the sharp metal needle in the vicinity of Jax’s throat. Skylar staved off panic with every ounce of her Will. Her legs and arms were restrained but her mind was free. She stretched with it into subtle realms, vaguely recalling Duse’s frequent reassurances of her power but never knowing it for a fact until looking into Jax’s eyes just now. Release him. Asmoday’s striking arm paused. Fear glazed his expression as he glanced over his shoulder. The old woman’s eyes popped wide at what Asmoday saw. “Release him. I command it of you faeries or you and your kind will be made to suffer through me.” “No! You have sworn yourselves!” Asmoday shouted. “We have no loyalty greater than to that of the Goddess,” the golden creature to the right of Jax said in a steady, otherworldly voice before he and his partner released him in unison and disappeared. Asmoday growled in fury and Maerda’s arm resumed its deadly downward arc. Jax moved with the quickness of a strong man in his prime though, much more rapidly than Maerda’s aged body and reflexes could ever hope to match. There was a flash of metal as Jax’s arm plunged upward.
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The old woman’s body seemed to freeze in place with Jax’s hand buried in her belly. His left hand tilted back the old woman’s face and he looked through the windows of her eyes directly into Asmoday’s trapped spirit. He nodded slowly. “That’s right, Day. It’s your own dagger. Che gave it to me along with what knowledge he had of your subtle essences from the time when you tried to kill him. Yes,” Jax said quietly when he read Asmoday’s panic reflected in Maerda’s eyes, “I’ve divined the words that will finish you once and for all, Day. I say them now in the name of all those you’ve wronged, most especially my brother Duse.” “There are others who will take up where I’ve left off, King. There are those among the Watchers who are sick and tired of you Ammadons and your protection of the status quo,” Asmoday threatened wildly as his lifeforce drained away. “If you mean by status quo the vigilant protection of our mates—women who are nothing less than the spark of the divine feminine in mortal flesh—then you’re right. The Ammadons and the Grigori Council will never cease protecting the status quo. Let your followers come if they will. Me? I think your name is going to become nothing more than a hiss in the darkness.” He spoke a harsh incantation and flexed his powerful arm ruthlessly. Maerda’s body crumpled slowly to the floor at the same time that Asmoday’s spirit blinked out like a light in one subtle realm after another…until he was no more.
***** Nix’s eyelids drooped heavily as he lay in bed later that night but he continued to hold his mother’s hand and ask her question after question. Skylar answered him patiently, knowing that he needed to make sense in his mind of what had happened this afternoon in order to calm his anxiety. Just a casual reference to his father’s murderer was enough to set Nix on edge usually so the events of today had him understandably unsettled. “That was dumb of Zeva and I to go along with that lady Joanne but it wasn’t like we were afraid or anything. Jeez, I can’t believe that was actually Asmoday.” Nix shivered beneath the covers. “How do you think Jax knew something wasn’t right, Mom?” Skylar sensed a subtle change in the air behind her and knew it was Jax. The hand that wasn’t holding Nix’s automatically rose to her shoulder and Jax enfolded it into his own. She twisted her neck and met his gaze. His light eyes seemed to glow with power in Nix’s dim room as he regarded her silently. The pulse at her throat throbbed more rapidly at the sight of him. Skylar had hardly seen him since this afternoon at Maerda’s cottage. He’d been locked up downstairs with the Grigori Council, Paim and Batos as they’d pieced through the events of the afternoon and then spilt up in order to search out any
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remnant of Asmoday in the various known subtle realms. Jax read the question in her eyes and shook his head once. Skylar exhaled slowly. So…Duse’s murderer really was gone for good. She closed her eyelids and offered a prayer of thanks for the subtle, divine action of Justice. “I don’t know if your mother knows the answer to your question, Nixy, although she’s the source of the answer,” Jax replied to Nix’s question. He smiled slowly when he saw Skylar’s puzzled expression. “What do you mean, Jax?” Nix asked eagerly. He’d perked up at the sight of his hero and was leaning up on his elbow, the light eyes that so closely resembled Jax’s shiny with excitement. Skylar recognized with a pleasant shock that her son’s anxiety had just completely dissipated with Jax’s appearance. “It was your mother who predicted that my enemies would strike at the moment when I felt like the king of the universe. At the time I thought she was referring to the night of my Regnausa. The Grigori Council stepped up security for the event. Unfortunately Maerda noticed the changes and asked Helen about them. Being as unsuspecting as all of us were about Maerda’s conspiracy with Asmoday, Helen inadvertently revealed to her the details of your mother’s prophecy.” Skylar blushed when she felt Nix looking at her with amazement. “It was hardly a prophecy,” she mumbled. “I was making up a silly fortune for Jax’s cookie.” “What did I tell you about your mother’s guesses and intuitions, Nix?” “That they were worth more than a thousand people’s unified sworn testimony,” Nix stated matter-of-factly. “And she was right about this one too? You really did know that your enemies were going to strike because you felt like the king of the universe?” Jax stroked Skylar’s hand. “Yes,” he said softly. Skylar stared down at Nix’s bedspread, not needing to see Jax’s gaze to feel it in the deepest parts of her spirit. Before Nix could question as to why he’d felt like the king of the universe, Jax continued. “Unfortunately once Maerda understood the likely meaning behind the prophecy, she and Asmoday subtly encouraged the events that would lead up to it and then set up a diversion by threatening you, Nix. It took my attention away from the real harm and eliminated some of the power of the prophecy, as well.” “It didn’t matter,” Nix said steadfastly. “Asmoday could never beat you, Jax.” Jax smiled at his nephew’s unquestioned faith in him. “Actually he could have, Nix, with Maerda and the faeries’ help. I would have been a goner if it hadn’t been for your mom. Never forget that she’s nothing less than the Goddess’s manifestation in flesh, son, as are all women. Your mom’s power comes from the fact that she knows it…upon occasion.” Jax grinned and caressed the back of Skylar’s skull when he saw the color bloom again in her cheek.
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“Enough for now, Nix, it’s late,” Jax stated with firm finality. After they’d both kissed Nix goodnight Jax led Skylar straight up to his suite. Neither of them spoke the entire time, not even after Jax shut the bedroom door behind them, turned and lifted her into his arms. Nevertheless a potent brew of unspoken emotions bubbled between them. He shoved aside a lamp and set Skylar down on a long table of dark wood. She’d showered and changed her clothes earlier. He whipped the simple light blue t-shirt that she wore over her head. The action seemed to release her unique perfume into the air. His nostrils flared to catch the intoxicating scent. He unhooked the front clasp on her bra and shoved aside the nylon material, exposing her tender, shapely breasts to his gaze. His eyes toured her hotly before they flickered back up to her face. His hands were already on her skirt, lifting it. “You don’t mind, do you, beauty?” he finally asked gruffly. He pushed her skirt up around her hips and hooked her panties with his thumbs, dragging them down her thighs and off her legs. Skylar shook her head, lost in his exotic eyes. “No. I need it too, Jax. I thought I was going to lose you just when—” “Shhh,” Jax whispered. His jeans melted back into his subtle essences and he brought his erect penis into his hand. He knew what she was going to say. He’d thought the same thing up there in Maerda’s cottage—they were going to lose each other only when fate had finally brought them together. She willingly spread her thighs and bent back her knees into her body. “Destiny isn’t cruel, Skylar, just subtle,” he assured her gruffly. He gasped and ducked to catch her ragged cry with a soft kiss as he thrust his hips. “By the Three, you feel like heaven,” he whispered as he slowly began to thrust in and out of her pussy, working himself into her clinging sheath. By the time he was fully seated in her Skylar’s face glistened with sweat as she stared up at him. He lifted her up off the table and she wrapped her legs around him. She encircled his neck with her arms as he took a few steps until they were next to the bed. He spread his hands across her ass and began to stroke her up and down on him. She trembled and moaned at the pleasure as he built the friction in their flesh so masterfully. “I kept thinking that maybe you would have changed your mind about us while I was away from you all day,” he murmured. “Never. Now that we’re together I won’t let anything come between us. Not even myself.” His small smile pulled at her spirit. “Lean back, beauty. I’ve got you.” She drifted back, fearless while she was in his embrace. Despite her trust in him she still cried out in amazement when strong arms caught and supported her from the back. 144
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Her head tilted to look into the magic mirror on the wall next to them. One Jax held her from behind while the other held her hips and fucked her deliberately from the front. Seeing his male beauty times two made her moan deep in her throat. Her juices surged around Jax’s cock. He grunted in apparent appreciation and redoubled the power and pace of his thrusts into her. Her eyes flickered up in the mirror to where he held her from behind. Never breaking her gaze, his etheric double reached around and massaged a full breast in his hand. Skylar’s mouth went slack at the sensation and image of his fingers pinching and tugging gently at the darkening nipple, hardening and distending it until it was a pointed, eager peak. Jax took one look at the result and began to pound their flesh together harder. His double bent in the mirror and covered her mouth with a hot, insistent kiss. Skylar screamed into it as she climaxed. “Did it feel good, beauty?” Jax asked thickly from between her legs where he continued to love her with increasingly relentless strokes. She nodded mutely. Her hips made small, hungry circles. She flexed her vaginal muscles around his cock as she was stung again with sharp arousal. Jax’s ethereal flesh was stimulating her other breast now, much in the way he had the first. She turned her head and watched him as he plucked at the sensitive crest until it was a hard, swollen bullet of flesh. Then he plumped the breast in his hand in offering. Jax’s physical form leant forward to take it into his mouth while his cock continued to thrust mercilessly into her pussy. Skylar cried out unevenly at the pleasure, keening even higher when Jax’s etheric double leaned over the opposite shoulder and took her other nipple into his warm, suctioning mouth. They remained like that for what felt like an eternity, two identical raven-haired heads over her breasts as Jax stimulated her body into orgasm again and again. Jax’s control began to splinter. He gripped Skylar’s hips firmly and slammed her hot channel down over his straining cock one more time, watching in the mirror while his etheric double squeezed both of Skylar’s beautiful breasts tightly together and leaned forward to tongue both peaks at once. The image of Skylar’s surprised face as she tumbled into orgasm one more time sent him right over the edge with her. She came back from the outer realms to the exquisite reality of having Jax’s silky, tousled hair pressed into both sides of her neck at once while his breath filtered raggedly across her damp skin between two gasping mouths. Both of his warm bodies sandwiched her securely between them. Tears flooded down her cheeks at the poignancy of the sensation. She’d never even imagined it was possible to feel this loved…this cherished. “That’s nothing to be sad about,” Jax murmured as he lowered her onto the bed a moment later, having easily read her mind in her vulnerable state.
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Skylar shook her head as he tried to dry her tears with his fingertips. He’d absorbed his etheric double again and his lifeforce shone even more fiercely than it had a moment ago. “They’re happy tears, Jax. You know that,” she admonished him gently. She saw his white teeth flash in his dark face before he buried it in her neck. They held onto each other for a period of time like two survivors of a tumultuous storm. “Skylar?” Jax asked after a while. She blinked her eyes open languidly. “Yes?” “Why do you think that you imagined us making love in Ockley’s yacht on the night that you bonded with me? Why would you associate our mating with a time when you considered me to have betrayed everything that you loved, when I put you and Nix in harm’s way?” “Because Jax, even then part of me wanted you…part of me recognized you. My prior bonding with Duse made it possible for me to stave you off but you’ll never realize how difficult it was to resist you on that night when you told me how you felt about me. Don’t, love,” she whispered when she saw the familiar, haunted expression that always came into his eyes when he considered what he’d done. “You told me no more regrets. I’m telling you the same. Please.” Jax swallowed and nodded once after a tense moment. “Why do you think you imagined our mating in my old apartment?” Skylar asked in turn. She tried to ignore the fresh surge of desire between her legs when he smiled. The memory that he’d given her last night had been every bit as steamy as the memory she’d given him today of her bonding—their true bonding. “Surely you don’t need to ask that. I felt lower than a worm back then for allowing Ockley to use me to hurt you. But I sensed how much you wanted me while we were together on that yacht as well, Skylar.” “I tried not to,” she said honestly. “I know,” he replied as he brushed a tendril of golden hair off her damp cheek. “But that just served to make the knowledge even more potent…and beautiful.” His hand lowered to her stomach and he caressed her softly. He still hadn’t told her about the miracle of what grew inside of her. Just thinking about sharing that blessed news with her made him feel like the king of the universe all over again. He considered how sweet it was when suffering and regret had finally served their purpose and faded, leaving their souls fertile and their futures enriched…infinite with possibility. He gently turned his mate’s jaw so that he could look into her shining eyes. “Skylar…about that night in Noddin’s Ring…” Jax began. The End
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About the Author Beth Kery grew up in a huge house built in the nineteenth century, where she cultivated her love of mystery and the paranormal. When she wasn’t hunting for secret passageways and ghosts with her friends, she was gobbling up fantasy novels and any other books she could get her hands on. As an adult she learned about the vast mysteries of romance and sex and started to investigate that phenomenon thoroughly, as well. Her writing today reflects her passion for all of the above. Beth welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Beth Kery Exorcising Sean’s Ghost Fire Angel Fleet Blade Groom’s Gift Subtle Lovers 1: Subtle Magic Subtle Lovers 2: Subtle Touch Subtle Lovers 3: Subtle Release
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