The mental images changed, became charged and frantic.
As if it were a dream, their clothes abruptly vanished. Naked, his cock erect and throbbing, Rhys picked her up by the waist and pushed her up against the glass wall of the store, his muscles and sinews flexing. On the other side of the glass, shoppers strolled by, glancing at them with little interest.
He spread her thighs and lifted her up, his hands beneath her ass. His cock pushed inside her and she gasped. She
felt
it, the width of him spreading her, filling her.
At the same time she saw/felt his mouth capture her breast, his teeth nipping and drawing the tip out between them. The same doubling/second perspective shifted her focus. Now she knew his feelings, what it felt like to be inside her, the taste and shape of her nipple and once more, her heady, hypnotic scent wreathing his thoughts, making him as groggy with pleasure as she.
She began to tremble and in a detached corner of her mind knew her climax was going to come while she stood in the middle of a dress shop, without a single physical touch.
Yes. Now
. And she felt his hand on her clitoris, a delicate stroke, the touch of butterfly wings. But it was enough.
She climaxed with a shudder. Bright cascades of light flared behind her eyes and her heart stuttered, as the first big bolt of pleasure ripped through her. Then little secondary peaks flashed and sizzled through her nerves. She gritted her teeth to prevent herself from crying out, her hand gripping the jewellery stand with a death grip. At the same time, she felt Rhys come, with a bright, hard fizzing rush that left her nerves twitching.
For a long moment she clung to the stand, her eyes shut, letting her heart recover and her knees regain their strength.
I can’t believe what just happened!
she murmured mentally.
She felt/heard Rhys move across the store to stand next to her.
I have heard of it before, but not experienced it until today
.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. He had a small smile on his face and his dark eyes were sleepy, like they had been the last time. He was still very much a stranger to her, yet it seemed she had known this man all her life. She understood him without the need for endless explanations.
“Do you have any other tricks I don’t know about?” she asked and her voice was hoarse.
“An entire arsenal,” he said, his smile fading a little.
And she saw/heard/felt him struggling in a swordfight against an overwhelming enemy. In the last moment he had dropped the sword into his left hand, a move that most swordsmen considered unsporting and dangerous, for it left the right flank open to a backslash. But the unexpected move brought him a few precious seconds to pull the man’s dagger from his own belt sheath and plunge it into his unprotected left side.
For the enemy will stoop to worse, and I will take nothing less than victory.
Jenna shivered as she looked into his black eyes, and saw the implacable will there.
Then he grinned and the impression of aged, weary resistance fled. “You have more than a few of your own tricks, too, Jenny.”
And she saw again the coffee shop, this time as Rhys had seen it from the back door as he entered: The prince, lying on the floor howling with anguish as he plucked at his steaming pants while everyone crouched around him. Jenna herself, standing at the table and staring down at the Prince, cool and indifferent to his suffering.
From Rhys’ perspective it was as clear as day that she had been the instigator of the event. If she had not been convinced already, this would have clinched it.
She sighed, suddenly weary. “Let’s go.”
* * * * *
“This is the wrong floor.” Jenna turned back to Rhys, who remained inside the elevator.
He looked at the panel. “This is the seventh floor.”
“I’m on the fifth.”
“My room is on the seventh.” He stepped past her and moved on up the corridor.
“Oh.” She hurried after him, feeling a little foolish. After all, he had to be staying in a hotel somewhere in town. Why not this one?
She stopped just inside the door he opened for her and looked around.
It wasn’t just any room.
It was a suite.
She could see a bedroom through a connecting door, on the other side of the large sitting room they stood in.
Rhys chucked the room key on the desk by the window and turned to face her. “What’s wrong?”
“Who
are
you?” She took a small step into the room. “Who are you, really?”
“Yours.” He came towards her.
She held up her hand. “No. The cynic needs facts. No more putting me off until daylight.”
“I spoke the truth. I am yours.” He stopped in front of her, but didn’t touch her.
Didn’t he know how his answers unsettled her?
Yes, I know, but I cannot afford anything but the truth. I have no time.
“And this room? What do you do to be able to afford a room like this? Or are you on a generous expense account?”
“Is that not a way of asking if I’m on the job?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think what I’m doing is work, Jenna?”
She swallowed hard. “No. Not paid work, anyway. Life’s work?”
“Yes, that will do. My life’s work.”
“And the room?”
“It’s amazing what compound interest will do, given enough time.”
“Riddles.”
“Truth,” he corrected. “But just a glimmer of it.”
She stared at him, unable to stir enough energy to be furious. She remembered, suddenly, Clement Hine’s voice. “
Avaon, damn you!”
That was the name Rhys had used once, long ago. But the name gave her no information. It provoked nothing.
He smiled and brushed her hair from her eyes. “You’re very tired, although you haven’t let it register yet. So, as much as you long to understand it all, even if I began at this moment, it would take longer than you have the stamina for to explain everything.”
He was right. The bone-deep weariness was biting at her concentration and making her thoughts fuzzy.
Rhys picked up her hand. “Come.” He tugged her towards the bedroom and she let him lead her into the room. She registered a huge king-sized-plus bed and the single low-glowing lamp that lit the room, then found herself in a marbled bathroom.
She’d never been bathed before and would have fought tooth and nail to be nursed in such a fashion if it had been anyone else but Rhys. But it felt different with him. She could bury her independence while he administered to her, for he offered small thoughts that comforted her as he worked.
He undressed her and showered her, stepping naked into the stall with her, so he could lather and rinse every inch of her body. As he worked she saw and felt his admiration for her athletic body, for the well-developed muscles and the skills they provided her. With each of the few scars she carried on her own body, he would pause to grieve.
He dried her and led her to the huge bed, still naked. He laid her down on the bed and stretched her on her stomach. Warm oil spilled over her flesh and Rhys to massage the oil deep into her tissues.
Tell me what feels good
.
She opened her mind up, letting him feel what his hands were doing to her and how it felt.
His hands detected every single kink and knot in her body and knew just how to smooth them away. After a time that seemed to stretch forever, he turned her onto her back and worked his way up from her toes.
Despite the lethargy her deeply relaxed state induced, Jenna still felt a subterranean arousal that spread across her whole body instead of radiating from her cleft. Rhys carefully avoided her pussy and breasts, working with skilled hands on her muscles.
Close your eyes. Float with it.
Her eyes slid closed far too easily as his hands grew gentle, the hard fingers no longer digging deep into the muscle fibres. He stroked her oiled flesh, the strokes growing more languorous, longer and more sensuous.
His hands worked down to her breasts and the oil allowed her nipples to slide through his fingers, to be tugged and teased, stirring her body beneath the deep lethargy. She sighed, a half-murmured moan.
He parted her thighs and as his hands captured her breasts again, his mouth closed over the twin rises of flesh protecting her swollen clitoris. His tongue slid inside, to lap at the throbbing button. He teased and stroked it as Jenna trembled and writhed on the bed, gasping. The strokes firmed and grew swifter, building her pleasure.
Her climax came sharp and swift, a series of delicate waves shooting through her, searing her nerves. She gasped. Her head rolled limply to one side as all her energy focused and poured out through her nerve endings in the sweet rush.
Through pleasure- and sleep-hazed eyes, she watched Rhys roll her onto her side, and bring the blankets up over her. Her eyes began to close, sleep already claiming her, when she felt him beside her, tucking himself around her, one hand coming over her waist to tuck itself beneath her breast, cupping it.
His lips rested against her shoulder.
Sleep.
His emotions/thought followed her down into sleep: a quiet, but very deep pleasure and a slow, equally profound gratitude that she lay here with him, at last, in his bed. For the first time in his life he was about to wake up with someone beside him.
Jenna woke when breakfast arrived.
She watched a whole trolley wheel into the sitting room—far grander than a simple tray. She heard Rhys’ voice, the clatter of utensils and sat up, wide awake and enormously hungry.
When the main door had shut again, she slipped on the towelling robe she found at the foot of the bed and went out to the sitting room.
Dim daylight showed through the windows. Thick snow still fell from a heavy, bruised gray blanket of clouds hanging low over the town, cutting out the sun. The subdued light and the low cloud ceiling seemed ominous. Breakfast had been laid on a round table by the second window, and normally the view would be spectacular, but now it seemed bleak. She shivered.
Rhys stood by the table, wearing jeans and a white shirt that hung open and untucked—clearly thrown on in response to the arrival of breakfast.
He either saw or sensed her reaction. “The waiters tell me Banff’s emergency services have been called out—they’re having trouble keeping the highways open.”
“That’s their intention, isn’t it? To cut us off. To have us here alone.”
“Yes.” He came over to her and kissed her. “Good morning.”
She couldn’t help smiling at the prosaic touch of normality. “If you insist.” But the smell of toast and coffee was irresistible and she went over to the table. “Mmm.”
“Sit and eat or it will get cold.”
She sat. Rhys had ordered freely. There was a big pot of coffee, a large pile of toast and under lids waited dishes of bacon, hash browns, eggs, pancakes and a perfectly grilled whole trout, covered in herbs and pepper. Fresh orange and grapefruit juice and real, warmed maple syrup for the pancakes.
Jenna looked it over. “I’ll get fat.” It was a token protest at best. She fully intended to eat whatever Rhys didn’t.
He leaned over her chair and kissed the nape of her neck. His warm big hand slid inside her gown and fondled her breast, the fingers brushing over her nipple. The unexpected surge of pleasure tingle through her and made her straighten up with a gasp.
“You’ll work it all off,” he assured her. But he let her go and sat in the chair beside her and reached for the coffee.
Jenna ate with gusto. Her appetite was ferocious and with Rhys’ assurance that she needed to eat to provide physiological support for her newfound talents, she didn’t stint on appeasing the deep hunger.
Only a single slice of toast remained once they had both finished eating. Jenna eyed it, wondering if she should eat it.
“You can have it if you want, but high glycemic carbs should be low on your list of priority foods,” Rhys said.
She put her napkin aside. “There appears to be a lot I need to learn.”
“There is, indeed.”
She propped her chin on her fist. “What am I, Rhys? What are you? Human?”
“Very human. But something more, too.”
She stayed silent, hoping it would coax him to reveal more.
He sighed deeply and pushed a hand through his hair.
“Reluctant to tell me?”
“Yes.”
She let her surprise show.
He lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. “It has been a very long time since I have had to explain this to anyone. You, who are so resistant to it all…you are the most important one I’ve ever had to tell and I find, now I’m at the point of the telling, that I’m….” He glanced out the window, as if he gathered his thoughts. “I’m afraid.”
“
Afraid
?”
His admission was startling. Rhys seemed to be made of teak. If were afraid of the truth he was about to tell then what would they do to her?
You misunderstand.
He grimaced. “Events are rushing at me. At us. The time I have long waited for is almost here, along with all the danger and the huge risks that come with it. When I tell you what I must, then that moment will arrive shortly after.”
He gave a grimace and tried to turn it into a smile and failed.
“I’m selfish enough to want to preserve this pocket out of time we have just a little longer.”
His gaze caught hers and held it.
“When I have finished telling you, I’m afraid this moment will be gone. Destroyed.”
“Because of me? Because of my reaction?”
“Partly. But also because you will know, then, who you are.”
She shook her head. “Riddles again.” For a brief moment she wondered once more about Rhys’ true identity.
Avaon.
What did that name mean?
He took a deep breath. She could see his chest rise with it. “We, Jenna—you and I and others like us—were born into a unique heritage. We have been gifted—chosen—to protect humanity. To shield it against inhuman, unwanted evil. To be ever vigilant and root out strains of wickedness as they are born and to unceasingly work at the eradication of malice in the human soul.”
Jenna simply stared at him. There was nothing she could say that could possibly be an adequate response to such a melodramatic statement. The only thing that countered the drama was Rhys’ tone.
He didn’t speak with the ringing tones of an orator.
He just said the words.
Flat, without emphasis.
He could have been telling her she had been selected to join the town garbage crew, for all the inflection and emotion in his voice.
He wasn’t giving her time to react, anyway.
He was moving on.
“For our task, we have been given talents, what you call powers.
They raise our perceptions and put us on the outside of the human equation. From there we can observe, adjust and anticipate.”
“We?” she asked, leaping on the pronoun.
“You are one of us.”
He spread his hands flat on the table in front of him.
His gaze was not letting go of her.
“You are perhaps one of the greatest of us. Your coming has been foretold and we…I…have been waiting for it for a long time now.”
She smoothed out a wrinkle in her napkin, fighting her uneasiness. Here was the fantastic again. The myth logic.
Her first instinctive reaction was a defensive one.
She could feel an almost overpowering need to ridicule Rhys and trivialize his pronouncement.
But that was Kevin’s influence at work and old mindsets getting in the way.
Kevin would have tried to slaughter Rhys with sarcasm.
She could almost hear the withering tones Kevin would have used.
So Jenna beat back the defensive ridicule rising inside her and cleared her throat. “Foretold by whom?” Searching for more information was safe enough. With plenty of knowledge, she could find a way to deal with this from comfortable ground.
“No one knows,” Rhys replied. “We have a body of knowledge that is passed down through all of us, one to the other.
Some of it is inevitable knowledge. What people call ‘common knowledge,’ that seems to come from nowhere, but is known by all.”
“It must have come from somewhere, once.”
“Some of us have stronger gifts than others. Some can see into the future. They understand and can read the flow of the field and its patterns. They can predict movements in the field and foresee events. Big events, world-shifting events and the shape they may take.”
“And my…coming…is on such a scale?”
“Your discovery is the marker, the beginning of it.”
“Beginning of what?”
“Of a time of challenge, when all of us will have to be on our guard against a new outbreak of evil.” He sighed and sat back, almost slumping in his chair as if he were tired. “The world is about to plunge into an ugly darkness, when strife and trouble seems to grip the globe with uncanny insistence. We’ve been through them before. The two world wars were the twin climaxes of a troubled period.”
Jenna bit her lip.
“There have been many?”
“How much history do you know?”
“I did a modern history course in college.”
She shrugged.
“It’s not my favourite subject in the world.”
“You’re a forward thinking.
I know.”
He grinned.
“In medieval times, The Huns swept through Asia prior to the arrival of Genghis Khan, and the battle of the Moors against Christians throughout the Middle East was another.”
It was too much for her. Too much at once.
She pushed her fingertips against her temples.
“Do you know how much like a fantasy movie this sounds?”
He looked at her sharply. Strangely. “Where do you think the ideas for those movies and books came from? Even temporals—normal humans—sense the ebb and flow of the fields, even if they do not see them clearly or understand them. They turn that visceral knowledge into stories, myths and legends.”
He sat forward and dropped his voice. “There was another time, one that has fallen into myth just as these coming days will one day be written down in song or poem. A Celtic warlord, at the rise of another dark age—”
“Arthur.” She felt a touch of awe, but also a niggling sense of incredulity.
Again, he glanced at her, his gaze sharp. “Yes, Arthur.
Arturo rex Britannia
.” He rolled the Latin words over his tongue with the ease of long familiarity.
“King Arthur was one of you?”
Rhys shook his head.
“He was just a man who fought for right and good. There have always been men like him throughout history, who wittingly or not help us in our fight. But there was one of us by him, assisting where possible.”
She rubbed her temple hard. “Merlin. You’re about to tell me
Merlin
was one of you?”
Rhys smiled a little. “Merlin is a story, a myth like the Arthur who wore armour and a crown and was proclaimed King of England and had a round table.”
“But there was someone there like that,” Jenna insisted, knowing she was right. “One of you. Someone who prompted the tales.”
Rhys hesitated, studying her.
Was he trying to decide if she could be trusted with the information?
But Jenna already knew she was right.
She could feel it in her bones.
“His name was Taliesin,” Rhys said.
“He was one of the greatest amongst us. There has been none like him since. There have been powerful lords amongst us.
Mighty ones.
But none of them had the power and insight that Taliesin wielded.”
He shrugged.
“That is how it works, Jenna. The field, the power that keeps humanity cohesive and gives us our talents, seems to provide us with a great leader just when the field fluxes and surges the most and creates such strife in the world.”
Jenna stood up, translating her discomfort into action. She began stacking the breakfast dishes onto the cart. “What
is
the field?”
“You know that answer already. You’ve felt it.
You’ve felt the surges. You’ve used it, too. You used it in the coffee shop yesterday.”
“Human auras?”
“If you like, but that scarcely does it justice. Consider something on the scale of the magnetic field that envelopes the earth and you have a working analogy. There’s a whole earth field and then every living object has its own weaker field that meshes with the earth’s and with each other.”
“You—we—have stronger fields than others?”