Storm's Heart (Elder Races #2)(45)

It was time to take another step along that road. As she had said to Tiago, the innocent young Niniane of the past had been killed along with her family. She could never become that Niniane again, so she would just have to forge a different Niniane for the future.

She wiped her cheeks. What kind of time could she manage to get with Tiago? A couple of nights together, maybe at best a week? She would have to hoard every moment, to concentrate everything she had on remembering the slightest detail, because the memories were going to have to last her a very long while.

Faeries could live for thousands of years. If something didn’t kill them first.

That’s what it was going to be like.

Something had happened and Tiago didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one f**king bit.

She had gone to take a shower, smelling of an intoxicating blend of bewilderment and intense arousal. He liked putting that shattered look in those gorgeous gray eyes and being the one to lavish attention on all her sexy pieces. He didn’t like for her to walk away with that shattered look only to emerge again with the pieces put back together in a new unknown, cooler pattern. Unknown patterns meant something had happened in her head that might shut him out.

He was coming to understand why the other sentinels had nicknamed her Tricks. It wasn’t just because they had taught her all the dirty fighting tricks they knew. There was something about her that was just not bloody quantifiable. It was more than the effervescence that winked out of her like sunlight on water. It was an unpredictable feminine quality that could start off at say, point A but then jump to, hell, he didn’t know, an entirely different alphabet instead of going through a logical thought process that led from B to C then D and so forth.

That meant he couldn’t track from where she had been to where she was now.

He might have to break down and ask her what she was thinking.

He scowled.

While he was on the subject of things he didn’t like, he also didn’t like her disappearing from his sight. The last time that had happened, a freaking Djinn had made off with her. The memory caused him to break out in a cold sweat. It held him shackled to the outside of her door, straining to hear her slightest move, the rustle of her clothing, anything to reassure him that she was still safe and sound in the hotel suite.

He’d had a couple of bad moments when she had been in the shower. For a heart-stopping while she hadn’t seemed to move, and all he could hear was the steady sound of the water running. He had almost broken through the door to check on her. Then there had been a muffled clatter like she had dropped a shampoo bottle or bar of soap. The tight band around his chest had loosened, and he had been able to take a breath again.

It was okay when she ran the hair dryer. He could hear that all the way from the bathroom in the second bedroom where he dashed to tear out of his clothes, shower, towel dry and dress in clean black fatigues in five minutes flat. He was clean-shaven in just under two and a half minutes more. By the time she had clicked off the hair dryer he was back in the living room again with his steel-toed boots laced, buckling on his weapons.

He glanced up as she stepped out of the bedroom. In an instant he was so hard for her it nearly doubled him over. She wore jeans that molded to every inch of her tight, round little ass, a pretty shirt with a scooped neck, and a thin sweater that molded the sides of her curvaceous br**sts, looked butter-soft and begged to be stroked. She wore the tiny flat slip-on shoes she had worn earlier. Her black hair was clean and shiny, and she had put on makeup. Somehow she had made her high cheekbones stand out, and glossy pink color emphasized those soft, plush lips. She had used a dark smoky gray eyeliner to devastating effect. It made her eyes even more enormous and compelling. They seemed to gather and reflect all the light in the room.

They also held an expression of distant composure that drove him insane. He stared at her in baffled fury. He was as hard as a rock from wanting her, and everything he had done to bring her to the peak of sensual awareness and desire—it had vanished as if it had never been.

“Are you ready?” she asked. She came to a stop beside him, and those breathtaking luminous eyes of hers narrowed on him. “What is it?”

He glared at what he held in his hands. It was a leather custom-made knife sheath with a leg tie.

He said between his teeth, “You’re so goddamn beautiful it’s about all I can do not to throw you down on the floor and take you right here and now, and even I know that’s not acceptable behavior.”

Dead silence. He shot a glance at her from under lowered brows. That fine clear skin of hers had gone white, the expression in her eyes turned stricken. Then she flushed a deep betraying red and her stricken look turned into a scandalized sparkle. She clapped her hands over her mouth and giggled.

Giggled. What a foreign, feminine sound. And he loved it.

One corner of his mouth lifted in response, and his fury dissipated and blew away on an intangible wind. He threaded the knife sheath onto his belt and buckled it. When he bent to fasten the leg tie, her hands came over his.

“Let me do it,” she said. Her voice was breathless.

He froze and then straightened slowly as he stared at her.

Her eyes dancing, her piquant face alive with mischievous sensuality, she put those sweet, delicate little hands on his thighs as she sank into a kneeling position in front of him. She tilted her head back and looked up at him.

Holy f**k. His abdominal muscles clenched and the blood in his veins transmuted to slow-moving lava.