“I’m liking all the back and forth.”
“Me, too. I mean, it makes total sense.” Why did he have to smell so good?
“You are ignoring me.”
At that, Hannah clicked ‘send’, then swiveled in her chair to face him. He was so close though, that she had to push her chair sideways or they would have collided. “No, I haven’t. Really. Why would you say that?”
Those eyes.
His gray eyes, surrounded as they were with thick lashes, always hit her stomach like a hard punch these days. He had thick, straight brows that made him look ferocious when he frowned. His nose had a slight hawkish appearance and his cheekbones looked sculpted. But it was his thick, curly, black hair that made him look wild, dangerous and unbelievably handsome. How many times had she thought about removing his Guardsman clasp so that she could spend a half hour or so getting her fingers all tangled up.
He was a man’s man at a muscular six-five. Built on massive lines, he was eye-candy of the most savory. Several of her girlfriends had ordered her to call them the moment he showed up at the Gold Rush. They’d arrive ten minutes later, a flock of seagulls descending on a seashore feast.
Did he want two kids? Three? Maybe a dozen?
He flashed a set of brilliant white teeth and her stomach squeezed up. One smile and he could bring down an entire room full of women.
His voice once more filled the room. “Why do I think you were ignoring me? Because you kept typing when you knew I was standing in the doorway. Or do I just annoy you like a cranky forest gremlin these days? Or maybe I bore you.”
She couldn’t help but chuckle. She’d never seen a forest gremlin, but she’d heard plenty of stories so she could imagine what he meant. “You could never bore me. Your life is too interesting and way too dangerous to be boring. So what would you like to know? Although, I’m sure your Kellcasse center has kept you informed?”
He smiled. “Yes, and you were right to recommend Longeness for the job. He’s detail-oriented and keeps everything moving. So, thank you for that.”
“Well, you’re welcome. I just had a feeling he’d work out for you.” Jude had built a communication center in Kellcasse about the same time he’d set up this center in her bar. She’d known Longeness and his wife, both fae, for years since they’d made her bar a second home on their date-nights.
Jude glanced around. The room didn’t have windows, one of the requirements for the access point centers, that way a vampire or a fae would never have to worry about light-and-sun issues. “I wanted to give you a heads up as well. We had a rough encounter about an hour ago. Really strange, though, because we chased a wraith-pair out over the Sound, if you can believe that.”
“You’re kidding.” Hannah was surprised. The deadly wraith-pairs rarely if ever crossed the access point lines. “What were they doing out here?”
Jude shrugged. “Hell if I know.” But something in his expression concerned Hannah.
He eased back against the long, steel-reinforced counter, crossing his arms over his chest. At least he’d left his way-too-sexy Guardsman coat in the bar area of the building, but still looked amazing in his loose woven, maroon shirt, snug battle leathers, and hip boots that had several small intricate silver medallions running up and down the side seams. Lately she’d felt an impulse to touch the medallions, one more sign she was out-of-control when it came to the man.
Jude shifted his gaze away from her and frowned. He dragged air through his nostrils and his jaw ground a couple of times. She knew something was troubling him; he’d been uneasy since he’d helped Mastyr Seth battle the ancient fae a few months ago.
She admired the hell out of Jude. He cared about his men and took his duties as mastyr of his realm seriously. No one loved the beautiful, forested island realm of Kellcasse more than Jude. And he saved lives every night of his life by battling wraith-pairs.
She reached out and clasped him on the shoulder. “What’s going on?”
He met her gaze and grimaced, but nodded.
His smile reappeared as he turned to look at her. “You want me to spill my guts?”
She tilted her head. She wouldn’t stand for bullshit, not from him or anyone. “Yes, I want to know why, for a moment there, you looked like the world was about to crash down on your head.”
~ ~ ~
Jude stared into eyes the color of a beautiful sunset, the kind when the sky goes all violet just before it drifts to gray. No one had eyes like Hannah Osborne, not even some of the more exotic fae in his Realm. She ran the Port Townsend Realm Communication Center that connected every earth access point city with all the other cities. Hannah basically managed this center and kept it working like a well-oiled machine with several employees rotating shifts during the day and night. Some were Realm, others were humans who enjoyed the company of realm-folk, the latter quality one of Hannah’s prerequisites for the job when she did the interviewing.
So, yeah, the center hummed.
She was tall, almost six feet, and he liked that about her. Though she was very fair and almost delicate in her features, she had a strength about her that pleased him and which was the main reason he’d agreed to let her be in charge of the center.
She wore her light brown hair loose about her shoulders. It had a slight curl and golden highlights. With arched brows, thick lashes and full lips, she was a damn beautiful woman.
He’d known her for years and could even remember a time when as a kid she sat on the bar, throwing darts at the dart board clear across the room. This misuse of the darts had brought her father in from the backroom, his face red with rage.
‘You could hurt someone, girl.’ He always called his daughter ‘girl’ when she was in trouble. Hannah had gotten in big trouble and because Jude had encouraged her to misbehave, he’d gone after her.
Finding her sitting on the back step and crying her eyes out, he’d slid an arm around her young, boney shoulders until she hiccupped through a couple of sobs and finally let go of her girlish pain. He’d then given her a piggy-back ride until she was laughing again.
He’d always liked her spirit.
He still did.
But he needed to keep thinking of Hannah like that, young and innocent. However, it was really hard when her shirt had just enough of a
v
-cut to reveal a line of cleavage he’d been lusting after for several months now.
The whole messed up situation had begun in that stupid supply closet. He’d gone there to ask her something about one of the access centers and had somehow gotten lost in her beautiful breasts that grew puckered then and there. And from that point, his cravings for Hannah had all but taken over.
He’d tried to keep his distance, but every time he promised himself to skip a visit to the Gold Rush, he’d head there anyway.
Something had erupted between them in that moment, something new, vital, and damn sexual.
And he absolutely loved the new perfume she’d taken to wearing. She smelled like roses and seashells, which didn’t make a lot of sense, but she did, like if he walked through a rose garden right by the water’s edge, that’s what she would smell like. The trouble was, when he caught the scent of her perfume, his body lit up and he wanted nothing more than to pick her up in his arms and fly her to his home in Kellcasse. Maybe keep her there for a decade.
He’d had several ‘moments’ with her in recent weeks, when her gaze caught and held or she accidentally brushed up against him in the bar and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.
He also knew whatever was going on was mutual to the point that lately he’d started thinking about actually asking for a date. He held back, though. She was little Hannah, the one called ‘girl’, the human, for Goddess’s sake.
And he wasn’t into long-term anything. He’d made that decision a century ago when his wife and daughter had died. He didn’t ever want to feel that kind pain again, not until the ancient fae was dead and the last of the Invictus burned on a funeral pyre.
But right now, she wanted him to talk about what was troubling him.
He debated the matter in his head for a full minute and to her credit, she let him be, let him live with his own thoughts and sort this one out.
Finally, he drew a deep breath and decided to open up. “I never talked much, to anyone, about what happened in Walvashorr with the shifter packs.”
Her arched brows rose, but she made no comment, which once more encouraged him to continue. “I saw the ancient fae. She was surrounded by a strange powerful golden light, but she smelled evil, like something rotting behind a dumpster.”
Hannah grunted softly. Glancing at her, he saw that she’d wrinkled her nose. “Was the imagery too strong?” he asked.
“If it was accurate, then you couldn’t have said it better. We all know that smell.”
“Yeah, we do.” He nodded several times. “Mastyr Seth has a woman now, his blood rose, and I’m sure Lorelei has shared things on your loop.” He waved a hand to encompass her computer monitor. “You know, the one with all you women.”
“Yeah, all us women.” She smiled. She had lovely teeth, white, perfectly straight, nicely shaped incisors. Shit, he even liked the woman’s teeth.
He frowned at Hannah for a moment, searching those violet eyes again. She’d struck up a serious friendship with several of the women bonded to mastyr vampires and the email loop seemed to be blazing or at least simmering all the time.
He knew she’d switched tabs the moment he’d arrived on the threshold to the room. She’d done that before, protecting everyone’s privacy, so he wasn’t surprised. He’d once asked her about it, teasing her, but she’d lifted her chin. “What we women say in confidence, especially about you men, you don’t need to know. It’s a sacred, womanish thing.”
‘A womanish thing’. Another reminder that the child had grown up. And she really wasn’t a child. She was twenty-eight, but against his two-hundred-years she was considerably younger in life-experience.
He forced his thoughts back to what it was he wanted to say to Hannah. “Here’s the thing. Margetta planned this attack on Walvashorr Realm, really planned it. And when Seth and I went to rescue Lorelei, I saw the ancient fae’s army encampment. The level of military organization astounded me because wraith-pairs, aren’t by definitions, soldiers. They don’t group together and form joint goals.”
Hannah nodded. “Which means, Margetta has somehow taken charge of the wraith-pairs and can control them.”
“She’s being very deliberate and I’m worried for Kellcasse, and concerned that Margetta will come after us and we won’t be ready. It’s been months now and everything’s been quiet in all the realms.”
Even as he spoke the words aloud, he wasn’t sure what was prompting him to share this with Hannah. But because of her association with the communications center and with the other powerful women bonded to a few of his fellow mastyrs, she knew a lot about the current war with Margetta. “The problem is, I don’t know what kind of strategy she would devise against Kellcasse, what her goal would be. With Seth’s Realm, she’d intended to invade and conquer the shifter lands, thinking the packs volatile and unable to work together as a unit. With a foothold in the northern part of the realm and the packs decimated, she would have headed south and taken over the rest of Walvashorr.”
“But Lorelei and Seth worked together to change that.”
Jude scowled now, his arms tight to his chest. “Yes, that’s exactly what they did.” Lorelei had become Seth’s blood rose during the time Jude had helped out. Stunned at how the packs had worked together to destroy so many wraith-pairs, he’d fought in the battle against Margetta until she’d called a retreat.
Hannah reached over and touched his arm. “Hey, if you frown any harder, you’ll break your face in half.”
He laughed and his arms eased apart.
Suddenly, a soft alarm sounded within the room.
Hannah slid her chair close to the central computer once more and started moving her mouse, then tapping on the keyboard. Her eyes went wide. “Jude, it’s from Longeness. He’s been trying to reach you.”
He’d already removed his coat, which had both the com attached at the shoulder that connected him to the Kellcasse center and his phone. “Shit. Even my phone’s in my coat.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got your center online. You can video-chat now.” She rose from her chair and gestured for him to sit down.
Jude was grateful that when Hannah originally ordered office furniture, she’d planned on accommodating the Vampire Guardsmen. The three chairs in the room were each built on big lines and could handle his two-eighty and then some.
He sat down and saw his center’s com specialist. Longeness rubbed the tip of his right fae ear, pulling all the way to the elongated point, a sure sign of his distress.
Jude knew better than to react. Remaining calm for his people was a constant part of his strategy. “Apologies, Longeness. My phone was elsewhere. What’s cookin’?”
“Mastyr, we’ve had word that another wraith-pair attacked the access checkpoint. The guards survived but only because the pair was intent on getting to the Sound before dawn.”
For a long moment, Jude could hardly think. Another wraith-pair was headed toward Port Townsend? They rarely, if ever, crossed the earth access-point lines.
“But that’s the second wraith-pair tonight. They never leave Kellcasse.” He felt uneasy. He didn’t say as much to Longeness, but his first thought went to the ancient fae. Something was on the wind. “Was there anything unusual about this pair? Was a vampire part of the bond and if so, was he a mastyr?”
“Vampire, yes. But to my knowledge, he wasn’t a mastyr.”
Jude scrubbed a hand through his thick hair, dislodging the clasp. “Well, thank the Goddess for that.” Wraith-pairs with mastyr vampires as a mate were nearly impossible to defeat alone. “I’ll head out into the Sound and meet these bastards.”
“Do you want me to send Guardsmen to back you up?”
“No. I’m good.” He’d like to see a regular wraith-pair move against him. “And Longeness, how’s the wife?”
“Complaining all the time now.” His woman was expecting twins and only had a month to go.
“Completely understandable. Take her some flowers when your shift ends.”