Warrior (Relentless #4)(206)

“I asked if you are going next door after dinner,” she said.

“No.”

Sara’s lips parted in surprise. “I thought you had to work.”

“Raoul can handle things for a few hours, and I told him to call me if something comes up.”

She gave me a radiant smile as she laid down her napkin. “I’m glad.”

I stood and looked out the window at the moonlit lawn. “It’s a nice night. Would you like to take a walk with me?”

She pushed back her chair. “I just need to grab my coat.”

“Don’t mind us. We’ll just entertain ourselves,” Jordan quipped as Sara ran from the room.

Laughing, Chris stood as well. “Come on, Jordan. Let’s go write up the report for today.”

Her face fell. “Report?”

“All part of the job,” I told her. “You’ll get used to them after the first hundred or so.”

“Ugh.” She made a face. “Why can’t we just kill vampires and let someone else do the paperwork?”

Chris and I exchanged grins because we’d been saying the same thing for many years. I had a feeling Jordan was going to give the Council more heartburn than I ever had.

“Field reports are also used to keep track of our kills,” I told her. “You’ll be entered into the central warrior database today.”

“Really?” She jumped up from the table. “Let’s go, Blondie. We have a report to do.”

Sara appeared in the doorway as they were leaving. We used the French doors in the dining room to exit to the back lawn. It was a cool, clear night, and we could hear the waves crashing against the base of the cliff the house was built on. We turned away from the cliff, and I took her hand in mine as we walked toward the gazebo that had been rebuilt on the other side of the small lake.

Sara gasped in pleasure when we entered the small building and it lit up with thousands of faerie lights. “Wow, it’s beautiful here.”

Eldeorin’s light display was impressive, but it paled next to the picture she made as she stood by the rail looking at the lake.

I wrapped my arms around her from behind, blocking her from the small breeze that blew off the ocean. “Are you warm enough?”

She leaned back against me. “Yes.”

She was quiet for a moment. “What do you think would have happened if someone else had found me in Maine? Or if I’d been found when I was little?”

I brushed my lips against her hair. “What do you mean?” The thought of someone else finding her in Maine didn’t sit well with me, but that was a moot point now.

She shrugged. “I mean, who knows when we would have met? I would have been just another orphan, and you might never have noticed me.”

I laughed and hugged her tighter. “I’m pretty sure I would have noticed you.”

I’d often wondered how different our relationship would have started out if she’d been raised at Westhorne. I would have known her already, and she would have understood bonding and what was happening between us.

A warm breeze suddenly blew over us. Sara turned in my arms, tilting her face up to me as her hands stroked my abdomen through my sweater. Her bold caress took me by surprise and sent heat curling in my stomach.

“Sara?”

Her smile was seductive and shy at the same time. “Will you kiss me?” she asked huskily.

“You never have to ask me that.”

I framed her face with my hands and captured her mouth with mine. She opened to me without coaxing, kissing me back with a passionate abandon she’d never shown before. In all my previous sexual encounters I’d been the seducer, but I’d never known a woman who could unravel me so completely with a kiss.

I sucked in a sharp breath, and a groan formed deep in my throat when her hands slid beneath my sweater to trace the muscles of my stomach. Fire raced through my veins and pooled low in my belly as her fingers moved over my bare skin, branding me and marking me as hers.

Deepening the kiss, I let my hands slide down her shoulders to the front of her coat. I undid the top buttons, needing to be closer to her. One of my hands slipped inside and cupped her perfect breast through her shirt and bra.

She moaned softly against my mouth, and I –

I stared in confusion at the moon reflecting off the lake as the wind cooled my heated skin. Sara was in my arms, but her back was to me as it had been a few minutes ago. I felt disoriented and…aroused?

Shock rippled through me. What the hell was going on?

“Sara? What just happened?”

She turned to face me, wearing an apologetic smile. “Eldeorin paid us a visit. He put you in some kind of dream state.”

“Khristu!”

That son of a bitch. Only Eldeorin would toy with someone’s private thoughts that way.

“I really don’t like that faerie.”

“Eldeorin’s a bit outrageous, but he does have a good heart.” She reached up to touch my face. “You’ll be happy to know that he’s gone to Faerie for a few weeks.”

“This must be my lucky day,” I muttered, trying to shake off the very real aftereffects of the not-so-real dream.

She smiled up at me. “Best day ever.”

Her expression was so like the one from the dream, I thought for a second I was back in that place. I lowered my head and kissed her long and slow, with all the reverence she deserved. Her hands curled in my hair, and her lips were pliant and sweet under mine.