Her back to the door, she opened a drawer and retrieved a patch of sheer white cloth. Dangling the scrap of cloth from one finger, she yanked a shapeless piece of gray material out of another drawer. She dropped the towel without warning. Brand’s vision blurred and blood pounded through his veins as Addy wiggled the snippet of cloth up her firm thighs and over her curvaceous rump. He watched, fascinated by the way the filmy material hugged the lush curves of her backside. It was a ridiculous garment, designed to serve little practical purpose other than to inflame the male senses. Brand wanted to run his tongue along the edge of that lacy scrap of nothing and tear it off with his teeth. He swallowed a groan and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, she had slipped the gray garment over her head. Oversized and shapeless, the shirt hung to her thighs and covered her backside. His tortured gaze followed her as she strolled back into the bedroom. The thin fabric teased her swaying breasts as she walked. Mercifully, she got into bed and pulled the blankets up to her chin. He took a deep breath, struggling to regain his customary calm. His reaction to this woman was an aberration. He willed his galloping heart to return to its normal rhythm. Now that she was in bed, her delicious form hidden beneath the covers, his raging libido would subside and he could do what he came here to do: kill the djegrali. He exhaled in relief, comforted by the thought.
His heavy sigh was audible in the quiet room.
“Who’s there?” Wide eyed, Addy sat up and looked around. She spotted the dog and relaxed against the headboard. “Oh, Dooley, it’s you. Come here, girl.”
Dooley gave Brand a look that said,
Sorry, duty calls,
and ambled across the room. The dog shoved her long nose into Addy’s hand.
“ ’Course it was you, wasn’t it, Doodle Bug?” Addy rubbed the dog’s ears. “I’m being silly, I guess. Truth is I’m still a little freaked out. Things were nuts tonight, you know?” A wave of lust hit Brand at her throaty little chuckle. “Come to think of it, you were a bit on the bizarre-o side yourself this evening, old doggie, old pal. For a while there, you looked like a window display in Skeeter’s Taxidermy Shop. It was creepy, I gotta tell you.” She scowled. “That was Blondy’s fault though. Should have shot him when I had the chance.
Such creatures are invariably noisy.
” She mimicked Ansgar’s haughty tone. “Jeez, what a pain in the rump. Right, Dooles?”
The dog gave a sharp bark in answer.
“Right.” She rubbed the dog’s ears again. “Glad we agree. What say we crash? Old Man Farris’s funeral is tomorrow afternoon, and he’s got a butt-load of relatives. Going to be a big day at the flower shop.”
With a soft snuffle, Dooley curled up on her dog bed and laid her head on her paws.
“Good girl,” Addy said.
With a yawn, she turned off the lamp and settled in the bed. A moment later, the light clicked back on.
Dooley raised her head and gave her mistress a questioning look.
“I think I’ll leave the light on,” Addy told the dog. “You know, just for a little while.”
Brand’s gut clenched when he heard the slight tremor in her voice. She was frightened. The knowledge hit him like a steelclad fist. More shocking still was the overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and comfort her. He ground his teeth, stifling the impulse with an effort. He was a warrior, not a nurse maid. Swallowing a growl of frustration, he retreated to the far side of the room. He needed distance from the female if he was to control these ludicrous whims. He sank to the floor and folded his arms across his chest, his gaze on Addy’s supine form. He was here to protect her. That was all. He could not allow himself to have feelings for her.
Feelings.
He suppressed a snort of derision at the thought. Such a
human
concept.
The very idea was laughable or would be if he possessed a sense of humor. But the Dalvahni did not indulge in levity. Theirs was an immortal race created for one purpose and one purpose alone. To hunt the djegrali and return them to their proper plane of existence or slay them as need be. The Dalvahni did not
feel.
There was no place for emotion.
Brand shifted in sudden unease. A Dalvahni warrior did not lie, even to himself. Something had happened to him when he encountered this female.
He
felt.
Some of the emotions he recognized. Lust, for example; the Dalvahni knew well the sharp claws of desire, especially in the wake of battle. Thus the need for the thralls, although never to this degree, and never in combination with other more dangerous emotions . . . such as the odd sensation he experienced earlier this evening when he realized Ansgar also found the human female desirable. It was as if a demon had taken residence in his chest and tried to claw its way out. He wanted to howl with rage and tear the other man limb from limb. Ansgar, a brother
warrior
!
Most unsettling.
He scowled. And then there was the pleasurable sensation he felt when the woman said and did certain things, a lightness that rose up inside him and made him want to smile. What was that? And what name did one attach to the desire he’d experienced a moment before when he sensed her fear and wanted to hold her?
He was a warrior, a man renowned among a stoic race for self-restraint. Yet in the space of an evening, thousands of years of self-control had been decimated by one maddeningly unpredictable female. The woman had to be a sorceress, her enchantment magic of the most powerful kind. She was dangerous, more dangerous than a hundred demons. If he knew what was good for him, he would hunt down the demon and leave this place.
If he knew what was good for him.
Chapter Three
B
rand closed his eyes and recited the creed engraved on the walls of the Hall of Warriors.
We are the Dalvahni. We seek the djegrali through space and time. We do not tire. We do not fail. We hunt.
He faltered, the familiar words wiped from his mind by a soft rustling movement across the room. No matter how hard he concentrated, he could not ignore the woman in the bed. Once she’d fallen asleep, he turned out the light, thinking the darkness would be his ally. Wrong. Her scent filled the air. He heard each breath she took. The whisper of her smooth skin against the sheets, her gentle sighs in her sleep played like a siren’s song upon his tortured nerves, luring him to his doom. Again and again his unwilling feet carried him to the bed. He stood over her and watched her sleep, trembling with need. Each time, sanity returned, and he retreated to the far side of the room. No battle he ever fought had left him so exhausted. He had been in a fever of lust for hours, imagining his limbs tangled with hers, his tongue laving her pebbled nipples, his hardness thrusting into her silken heat. The heated images left him sweaty and shaken, filled with longing for a dawn that would not come. Never had he imagined such agony.
Never had he felt so alive.
He rose and strode to the window to look out. Not long until dawn. The knot in his belly eased. The longest night of his very long existence was almost over. At daybreak he would resume the hunt. He would find the djegrali, slay it, and depart this place. He would repair to the Hall of Warriors and slake his desire upon a thrall. He glanced down at the bulge in his leather breeches. Two thralls, maybe three. He would not think of the human female again. He would forget the uncomfortable emotions she evoked, return to the familiar emptiness. He would avoid Earth for a few hundred cycles. He would forget.
He was Dalvahni . . . He would forget.
With a muffled grunt of impatience, Addy rolled over. Brand froze at the window, his back to the bed. The soft swoosh of the blankets told him she’d thrown off the covers. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He would not look. Sweat beaded on his forehead with the effort not to turn his head. His neck muscles moved of their own accord. He opened his eyes and saw her. She lay on her side, her long legs bared to his perusal, the gray garment bunched around her waist. His gaze roamed up the firm curves of her calves and thighs and stopped. The ridiculous snippet of cloth she wore over her heart-shaped ass had ridden up on one side, exposing the bottom half of a lusciously rounded buttock. All the blood drained from his head and went straight to his groin. With a groan of defeat, he moved toward the bed.
Warm hands caressed Addy’s skin, slid up her calves past her thighs and inside her panties, stroked and kneaded her bottom. A deep voice murmured wicked words in her ear.
I need you,
the seductive voice whispered.
I want you. Pleasure me, little one. Let me pleasure you.
Her shirt eased up. Rough palms cupped her breasts. Hot breath brushed her bared nipples. She arched her back in silent entreaty, begging for more. A velvet tongue licked the tip of one breast, and then the other.
That is it, little one. Give yourself to me.
Addy shivered as cool air drifted across the wet buds. It felt wonderful, sinful, beyond anything she’d ever imagined, the most erotic dream of her life. She didn’t want it to end.
A callused thumb grazed her aching nipples. She stretched, seeking the caress with hungry eagerness, and rubbed up against a warm, hard chest.
Her eyes flew open. She sat up in bed, wide awake, but the dream did not end. Invisible hands tugged her T-shirt over her head, leaving her naked except for her panties. Numb with shock, she watched her shirt sail across the room and land in a rumpled heap on the floor. She squeaked in surprise as unseen fingers traced a delicate path along her collarbone and over the slopes of her breasts. Her eyes widened as her breasts were fondled and lifted. A hot, wet mouth fastened upon one nipple and then the other, suckling. She gasped and dropped her head back with a moan of protest. The smooth slide of a phantom tongue soothed the tortured peaks. Heat flared in her belly and between her legs.
This could not be happening. Either she was crazy as her great-aunt Etheline, who talked to lampposts and saw flying cats, or she was being made love to by a ghost.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” she said, coming to her senses. She swung her arm at her amorphous seducer. To her surprise, she contacted solid flesh. Solid
unyielding
flesh.
“Ouch.” She rubbed her bruised arm.
Brand materialized on the bed beside her, a frown creasing his perfect brow. He scooped her up in his strong arms and deposited her in his lap. “You have harmed yourself,” he said, examining her arm. “This I cannot allow.”
“
You.
” She scrambled to the floor and crossed her arms over her naked breasts. “I told you to leave. How did you get back in my house?”
“I entered through the door of this domicile, in the usual manner of your species.” He rose and stalked her around the room, backing her against the bed. “I found it pitifully easy to breach your defenses.”
In more ways than one, Addy thought, her cheeks growing hot at the memory of her wanton response to him. She raised her chin. “Oh, yeah? Well, I don’t remember asking you to protect me.”
“It is my duty, in case the djegrali returns.”
“Are you telling me you’ve been here
all night
?”
“Yes. All night.”
He pounced without warning and pushed her onto the bed. Pinning her arms above her head with one hand, he trailed his other hand over her breasts and stomach and farther down, past the top of her panties. “I watched you sleep, you know.” His tone sounded conversational as he traced a lazy pattern between her legs with his fingers. “Counted every sigh, every breath you took.”
She twisted beneath him as he stroked her through the outside of her panties. “Oh, my God, that feels so . . . Oh,
please.
”
He lowered his head. His long hair tickled the skin of her breasts and stomach. “I sat in the lonely darkness, listening to the whispered sigh of your hair across the pillow as you stirred.”
His tone no longer sounded neutral. Alarm and something else skittered along Addy’s nerves at that low, rumbling growl.
“I ached for you throughout the endless hours of the night, imagined the silken kiss of your hair and lips upon my flesh.” His mouth grazed hers. “I burned. All night I burned for you.” He slid his hand inside her panties, his fingers tangling in her damp curls. His fingers found and teased the sensitive nubbin between her legs. “I am the sun, Adara Jean, and you are the flower. Such sweet petals. That’s it. Open for me, little flower.”
“You should have heeded my advice and availed yourself of a thrall, my brother,” a low, disapproving voice said. “Such strong emotion is not advisable in a warrior.”
Brand jerked Addy beneath him, covering her nakedness with his body. “Ansgar.” His voice was without inflection. “What is your purpose here?”
The blond warrior shrugged. “What else, but the hunt? I tracked the djegrali into the village near here and lost him. I thought, perchance, we might join forces. But you pursue game of a different sort, I see.”
“How came you past the safeguards I set in place?”
“You timed your spells to end at sunrise.” There was a hint of mockery in Ansgar’s cool tone. “The sun is up, my brother, and you have yet to continue the chase. Or is that the djegrali you grapple with, cleverly disguised as a . . . flower, was it?”
“Let me up.” Addy was mortified beyond belief. God, she was such a skank, a hoochie mama, a slut of biblical proportions. What was the matter with her? She’d come within an inch of . . . well, within an inch of
coming
and letting this guy do her.
Brand’s cold gaze flicked over her and back to the other warrior. “No. You are unclothed. He will see you. This I cannot allow.”
“Cannot allow? Cannot
allow
? That’s it. I’ve had enough of this macho crap.” Addy shoved against Brand’s broad shoulders, but he did not budge. “Get off of me, you big ape.”
“Not while you are unclad.”
“Then tell that blond horse’s ass to get out of my room.” Addy decided to take refuge in fury. “Better yet, tell him to get out of my house And you, too, while you’re at it.” Her head whipped around at a sudden thought. “Wait a minute, where’s Dooley?”
“Do not distress yourself. The animal is unharmed.” Ansgar sounded bored. “She chases a stag through the smallish wood situated at the edge of this demesne.”
“Stag? You mean a deer? This is a gated community. There aren’t any deer here.” Addy’s blood pressure rose. “You’ve done something to my dog. Again. That tears it. Out. Both of you. Out of my house. NOW!”
One moment, the heavy weight of Brand’s muscular body pressed down upon her, warm and hard and unbelievably sexy, and the next instant he was gone. Addy sat up and looked around. Ansgar had disappeared, too.
“Good riddance,” she mumbled. She wiped her stinging eyes with the back of her hand. Tears of humiliation and outrage, that’s what they were. No way was she crying because that big jerk got her all hot and bothered and turned into Icicle Man once his buddy showed up. She stomped over to the closet and pulled on a pair of shorts and a clean T-shirt. Shoving her feet into a pair of flip flops, she stormed out the back door in search of Dooley.
Brand landed on a wide stretch of mown grass beside a paved road, his senses still spinning with Addy’s intoxicating warmth and scent. He looked around. To his left, the wind sang through a forest of pines. On his right, an immense field of freshly tilled earth stretched like a fallen red clay giant in the early morning sun. It was a peaceful scene, at odds with the firestorm of lust and frustration raging within him. He was rock hard and aching with lust. He wanted Addy. Wanted to lose himself in her sweetness and warmth until the devil’s brew of desire and emotion she aroused in him was spent.
Barring that, he wanted to slam his fist in Ansgar’s smug face for interfering.
As if summoned by his thoughts, the air shimmered and Ansgar appeared.
Brand schooled his face into an expressionless mask. “You have a purpose for bringing us to this place, I assume?”
Ansgar raised his brows. “I? I thought this was your doing.”
“No.”
“How . . . unsettling. I hoped you had perchance come to your senses and abandoned the wench.”
“In good time,” Brand said through his teeth. “But first I will use her to trap the djegrali.”
“Very clever of you. I suppose it was necessary to disrobe the human in order to—er—bait the trap?”
Something dark and unfamiliar clawed its way from the deepest recesses of Brand’s soul. The sensation was strange and disquieting, and it was a moment before he recognized it. Jealous; by the sword, he was
jealous.
Ansgar had seen Addy in all her unclad glory, her exquisite body bare but for an inconsequential wisp of fabric that hugged her delectable backside. The other warrior’s eyes had roamed the graceful curves of her back and long, smooth legs. Perhaps he even caught a glimpse of Addy’s luscious breasts before Brand pulled her beneath him. The knowledge made Brand want to kill Ansgar with his bare hands, to wipe the memory of Addy’s body from the other man’s mind. With an effort, he tamped down his anger. Such emotion was undesirable in a warrior. He was a demon slayer, he reminded himself. In a race of disciplined fighters, he was renowned for his self-control. He would not lose his temper. “She is amusing, I will admit.” He shrugged. “But the Dalvahni are immune to human wiles, as you well know.”
“So I thought, but she is a most distracting female, is she not?” Ansgar’s cool voice held a thread of amusement. “Such spirit and fire contained in a delicious package. Small wonder if you were distracted, brother. It makes me want to—er—check her snare myself.”
The demon of jealousy burst forth. Brand slammed his fist into Ansgar’s face and knocked him to the ground. He stood over the other warrior, fists clenched. “You will keep your distance,
brother,
” he snarled. “If you value your life.”
Ansgar climbed to his feet, his expression one of stunned disbelief. “You hit me. You hit me over a
woman,
Brand. Such unbridled spleen is unsuitable in a warrior. I should report you.”
“But you will not. Because that would mean abandoning the hunt, and that you will not do.”
“No, I will not relinquish my prey. But that is not all that keeps me here.” Ansgar rubbed his bruised jaw and gazed at the smudge of trees on the far side of the plowed field. “Strange forces stir in this place. The djegrali gather here, but to what purpose? And then there is your behavior. Most uncharacteristic. In the eons I have served beside you, you have always been a model of restraint. But no more, it would seem. Why, I ask myself? My curiosity is aroused, as well as my hunter’s instincts. I have questions, and I mean to find the answers.” He turned to Brand, his silver-gray eyes sharp. “For instance, if you did not transport us to this place, and
I
did not, then who did? This, at least, is a mystery I think you can answer. How came we here, brother?”