She made a small choked sound and lowered her head. I realized she was going to kiss me a second before her mouth descended. Her lips moved over mine, soft yet insistent as she boldly traced my mouth with her tongue, sending a jolt of desire through every part of me. My lips parted to let her in, and she answered the invitation with a slow exploring kiss that robbed me of all thoughts except one.
My hands captured her face, and I held her to me, kissing her with a hunger I’d never felt before. Being away from her had been hell. Not knowing if I’d ever be able to touch her again, torture. I wanted nothing more than to carry her upstairs and spend the night making slow exquisite love to her.
“Sara,” I whispered reverently against her mouth.
She trembled as my lips moved up her face to her forehead and back again. Breathing hard, I pulled her head down to my chest and held her close. We lay quietly for a moment as I willed my heart to slow down and basked in the pleasure of holding her in my arms.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I teased gruffly, still trying to calm my overheated body. “I should go away for another week.”
She huffed and pulled out of my arms to rise over me, wearing an adorable scowl that made me want to kiss her again, despite the approaching footsteps. I’d know Chris’s walk anywhere, and I silently cursed him for his timing.
“Maybe I should come back later,” he said, with barely-suppressed laughter.
“Good idea.” My eyes never left Sara’s. I was already thinking about tasting her lips again.
“Where is she?” Jordan called, and I almost groaned at the new interruption.
Sara’s cheeks turned pink as her friend walked toward us.
“Oh. Well, I guess she’s feeling better,” Jordan quipped, and I could tell she was grinning as much as Chris. I was glad the two of them were having fun, but I’d be a lot happier if they’d do it somewhere else.
Chris chuckled softly. “Come along, Jordan. Let’s give these two some time together.”
“But…”
“We’ll see you two later,” Chris said as they walked away.
I smiled at Sara and noticed the dark shadows under her eyes. “You look tired,” I said, lifting her hair away to see her better.
“I haven’t been sleeping well.” She lowered her body to lay her head on my chest with a shuddering breath. “Are you really here?”
“Yes.” The catch in her voice made my chest tighten, and I pulled her closer. “Aine said you’ve been working hard to get your control back. Looks like she was right.”
“She and Eldeorin are so good to me. Eldeorin said I have to start training next week.”
“Yes, he told me that.” I hoped the faerie made himself scarce until then. I wanted Sara to myself for Christmas, at least as much as possible with everyone else here.
“He didn’t say how long it would take,” she said slowly, sadness creeping into her voice.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she mumbled.
I rolled to one side so she was lying beside me and made her look at me. “You are a terrible liar. Tell me what’s bothering you.”
She bit her lip. “I was just wondering how long I’ll have to be here. I know you have responsibilities and I don’t expect…”
Was that what was worrying her? Did she actually believe I’d leave her here?
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, holding her gaze so she’d see the truth in my eyes. “I may have to leave for a day or two sometimes, but I’ll come back.”
“Oh,” she breathed, a smile lighting up her face.
I arched an eyebrow. “You thought I’d leave you after the chase you led me on?”
She glanced away and inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry I took off the way I did. I was upset, but I should have talked to you instead of running away.”
I reached up to stroke her hair, and she brought her eyes back to mine.
“I’m sorry too,” I said regretfully. We would have been saved so much pain if I hadn’t overreacted that day at Westhorne. “I handled the whole thing badly. I saw how upset you were, and I should have known you would run.”
Her lips twitched. “You did know. That’s why you had the twins follow me everywhere.”
I gave her a wry smile. “A lot of good it did. At least Seamus and Niall won’t be making any more wisecracks about how you never would have given them the slip in Maine.”
She toyed with the front of my sweater. “How long did it take you to find them and realize we were gone?”
My smile faded as I thought about that day. “About thirty minutes. Then we spent the next thirty scouring the woods. How did you two get past all our sentries?”
Her lips parted in surprise. “Jordan didn’t tell you?”
“She said she was going to let you tell that story.” I waited for her to start. “Well?”
She looked down. “You promise you won’t get angry?”
“I think we’re beyond that after everything else that’s happened, don’t you?”
She nodded and took a breath. “You already know how we got away from Seamus and Niall. I knew it wouldn’t take long for you to come after us, and the first place you’d look was the woods. There was no way Jordan and I could outrun you on foot so we rode the river to town.”
“You rode a boat down the river? Where did you get a boat?”
“Remember, you promised not to be angry.” She gave me a small smile. “We didn’t use a boat. I used my magic to float us. And before you start yelling, you should know I’m really good with water magic, and we weren’t in any danger. Except maybe from freezing our butts off when we got out. We had dry clothes in plastic bags so we changed into them at the old mill. Then we ran to Derek’s to pick up a car Jordan bought from his friend Wes.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I think I was more scared about her walking around town in the dark than her river stunt. I wanted to say something, but it wouldn’t change what was already done.
“Then you drove to Boise to pick up Roland and Peter. What was in Salt Lake City? Jordan and the others wouldn’t tell us much about it.”
“A friend who set me up with a laptop,” she said vaguely, making me curious to know what friends she had in Utah. “You traced Roland’s and Peter’s cell phones there?”
“Yes.”
She made a face. “You almost caught us at our hotel and we had to take off.”
“I know, and I spent the better part of a day searching for you there.” I didn’t like to think about how close I’d come to catching up with her that first day and how I’d let her slip through my fingers. “Why did you go to Albuquerque?”
Her mouth fell open. “How did you know we were in Albuquerque?”
I smirked at her. “You aren’t the only one with resources. Although, I have to say yours are impressive to help you get as far as you did with us on your trail.” Genius was more like it.
“Aren’t you full of yourself?”
Her look of mock chagrin pulled a laugh from me. “I do have some experience in this area.”
“What? Chasing runaway…orphans?”
“Among other things.” I noticed she hadn’t answered my question about why she was in Albuquerque. “Are you going to tell me why you went to New Mexico?”
“Madeline was there,” she said with a heavy sigh. “We were so close, and we just missed her. But we got a good lead that she was headed for LA.”
Madeline was in Albuquerque? How the hell had Sara gotten that close to her when no one else could?
“Now it’s your turn,” she said. “How did you know we went there?”
“Let’s just say that when a vampire as old as Stefan Price is killed, news travels fast. We’ve been hunting him for years, but he’s always managed to evade us. When we heard a rumor that he was killed by a girl warrior who looked suspiciously like you, we went to Orias’s place to check it out for ourselves.”
She didn’t even try to deny she’d been at the warlock’s. “You know Orias?”
“Everyone knows Orias. He’s a powerful warlock, but he usually stays under the radar.” At least he had until Sara walked into his place. What a coincidence he suddenly suffered from memory loss around the same time? “For some reason he couldn’t mention the names of the warrior and her friends or where they’d gone.”
She lifted her shoulder. “Warlocks are a strange breed.” I had a feeling there was more to the story than she was saying, but I didn’t push her.
She raised her hand, and I caught it. “Tell me the truth. Did you kill Stefan Price by yourself?”
I’d mulled over it countless times and couldn’t figure out how she could have killed one of the strongest vampires in the country. Or maybe I didn’t want to imagine her fighting a vampire like Price.
She nodded. “Roland and Jordan helped, but I did kill him.”
“With your power?”
“That and one of Jordan’s knives,” she said with more than a hint of pride.
I didn’t know whether to be horrified or impressed, so I settled for a bit of both. I didn’t want to think about her fighting Price, so I locked it away to deal with later. Much later.
I let out a breath. “And then you went to LA, and you met the faerie at Adele’s club.” That much I’d learned from Eldeorin, and Jordan had confirmed it was true. Although, she’d been strangely vague about it. All she’d said was Sara went to see Adele about Madeline, and Eldeorin went with her to keep her safe from the succubus.
Sara scowled darkly. “You know Adele, too?”
Her reaction filled me with pleasure. “Jealous?”
“No,” she blurted.
I pressed my mouth to her fingertips and she flushed, making me want to kiss her again.
“Adele is well-known in the Los Angeles underworld, and she has given us helpful information in the past,” I explained.
Sara smiled, looking pleased with herself. “I bet she didn’t tell you that she and Madeline are pals or that Madeline goes to visit her once or twice a year.”
“She told you that?”
Madeline friends with Adele? I knew the succubus couldn’t be trusted completely, but for her to keep this from us, there had to be more to it.
What I really wanted to know was how Sara had pried that information out of her.
Her smile grew. “I told you I was close to finding Madeline.”
Footsteps came toward us, and I almost yelled at whomever it was to go away. What did it take for a man to have a few minutes alone with his mate?
“Um, what are you guys doing down there?” Roland asked, his voice full of laughter.
“What does it look like?” Sara retorted.
“Looks like you got started without the mistletoe.”
“Mistletoe?” She looked at me with wide eyes. “It’s Christmas?”
“Christmas Eve,” Roland told her. “And we’re getting ready to decorate the tree. You two coming?”
I gave him a look that said we weren’t quite done here. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
He turned away with a shrug. “Right.”
I looked at Sara, who seemed distracted. “You’re quiet all of a sudden.”
Her bottom lip quivered. “I can’t believe I forgot Christmas.”
“You had more important things on your mind,” I said gently.
“But I don’t have gifts for anyone,” she protested, growing agitated. “I need to –”
Moving with demon speed, I had her beneath me before she could blink, caging her with my arms.
“Are you going to run away from me again?” I asked gruffly.
“No,” she squeaked.
I smiled. “Then that’s all I want.”
“Oh.”
Her eyes fell to my mouth, and heat coiled in my belly again. I lowered my head until our lips almost touched. “There is one other thing.”
My mouth captured hers again, and I lost myself in the long, leisurely kiss that left both of us breathing a little faster. When I lifted my head to look at her, I smiled at her slightly dazed expression.
“We should probably go inside before they come looking for us,” I said reluctantly. I was all for spending Christmas Eve like this, but I didn’t think the others would agree.
“Oh, okay,” she whispered, but her eyes told me she’d be happy to stay right here.
Chuckling, I rolled off her and stood, leaning down to help her up. Her hair was mussed and her face still glowed from our kissing. I ran my fingers through her hair to tidy it, and she brushed grass from her clothes.
She smiled shyly when I took her hand and led her into the house where we were instantly surrounded. Sara’s eyes welled up when she saw Tristan, Jordan, and Chris.
I squeezed her hand and said, “Merry Christmas,” before she was swept away in a sea of hugs.
“She looks good,” Tristan said when he came over to stand with me by the window.
I watched Sara laugh at something Roland said as he passed her. “It’s good to see her smiling again.”
Chris joined us and handed us glasses of liquor. “For a guy who can’t tolerate human alcohol, Eldeorin has an impressive bar selection.”
I drank some of the well-aged Scotch and nodded in agreement. I had a suspicion this was one of many places the faerie liked to entertain his human lovers.
“How did it go in LA?” Tristan asked Chris, turning the conversation to work.
“Good. Raoul’s unit will be here next week to set up the equipment. Brock’s unit is still in New Orleans, but they should be done there by the time we get everything up and running.”
“We need everyone we can get,” I said, thinking about the reports I’d been going over.
“The Council’s sending Hamid Safar to help clean up LA,” Tristan told us. “He should be there by now.”
“Hamid?” I tore my gaze from Sara, who was on the other side of the room with Jordan, decorating the tree. I was finding it hard to take my eyes off her, but Tristan’s announcement was enough to grab my attention.
I hadn’t seen the Egyptian warrior in years, mainly because he preferred to work closer to home. He was one of the biggest, fiercest men I’d ever met, and he usually worked alone or with his brother Ammon. If the Council was sending him here, they were more worried about the situation than they were saying. I’d fought alongside Hamid a few times, and I was glad to have him here.
Chris let out a low laugh. “Hamid’s one scary bastard. I don’t think we’ll have a vampire problem in LA once they see him on their tails.”
Tristan said something, but my attention was drawn to Sara again. I found her watching me, her cheeks pink. When she touched her lips, I didn’t need to wonder what she was thinking about. I didn’t blame her. Every time I thought about kissing her, I wanted to take her and find a private place to pick up where we’d left off.
Tristan’s laugh pulled me back to the conversation. He shook his head at me. “Are you sure you’ll be able to focus on work with Sara next door?”
I smiled wryly. “I’ll do my best.”
Chris chuckled. “Give him a break, Tristan. He’s been impossible to live with the last few weeks. This is a big improvement.”
I raised my glass to him. “Amen to that. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to spend Christmas Eve with my mate.”
I set down my glass and walked over to the couch where Sara had gone to sit with Nate.
“California is nothing like Maine, that’s for sure,” she said wistfully as I approached.
I sat beside her and took one of her hands, lacing my fingers with hers. “We’ll go back there someday when this is all over.”
“If this is ever over,” she replied sadly. “I guess we can assume the Master knows I’m no longer at Westhorne.”
“Judging by the reports out of Los Angeles I’d say that is a safe assumption,” Tristan said as he sat in one of the large chairs.
“How bad is it?” Sara asked him.
“Over twenty attacks on humans in the last week that we know of. The council has dispatched three teams to the area to deal with it.”
“Twenty attacks?” she repeated, horrified.
Tristan gave her a stern look. “If the vampires weren’t killing in Los Angeles, they’d be killing elsewhere. This is not your fault.”
Roland leaned forward in his chair. “I wonder how they knew we were in LA. The vampires we ran into didn’t live to tell anyone about it.”
“What vampires?” I fixed him with a hard stare. None of them had mentioned seeing any vampires in LA.
“We, um, might have run into a couple after we left Blue Nyx,” Sara said when no one else spoke up.
Chris stared at her open-mouthed. “You killed the vampires in the alley? So you were at the club that night?”
I thought about the vampire bodies we’d found in the alley. We’d been confused because two of them had been torn apart, and one had been killed by a sword. It all made sense now.
“We saw you come in with those other warriors. Eldeorin glamoured us so we could get away.” Sara looked at me. “Why weren’t you with Chris that night?”
“I was there, just a little too late by the sound of it. We got word that two girls were attacked at a hotel, and I went to check it out.”
I silently cursed the faerie and his interference. Sara was half Fae. What had Eldeorin been thinking to allow her to run around alone in a city full of vampires and demons?
“What happened with the vampires?” I asked Sara.
“We were driving back to the hotel when we came across three vampires attacking some people.” She waved at the others. “They killed them. I didn’t even fight.”
“We found the vampires, but no human bodies, just a dead mox demon,” Chris said.
“That’s because they were attacking demons, not humans,” Sara replied.
“You rescued demons?” Tristan’s disbelief mirrored mine.
Sara nodded. “A vrell demon and his friend. They were harmless.”
I let out a breath. “You don’t endanger yourself for demons, no matter what kind they are.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, not trying to hide her annoyance. “Not all demons are bad, you know. The guy who gave me the laptop and helped me track Madeline is a vrell demon. He’s actually a very nice guy.”
Jordan sighed loudly. “We’ve learned that it’s easier if you don’t argue with her about this.” Sara gave her a look I couldn’t see, and Jordan said, “And I guess Kelvan is cool…for a demon.”
“And the vampires?”
Jordan shrugged. “They weren’t that old, no match for all of us.”
“I thought Sara didn’t fight them,” Nate said.
“I didn’t go near them,” Sara insisted. “I shot one with a crossbow, and the boys took him out.”
I raised an eyebrow at her as Chris said, “A crossbow?”
Roland laughed and Peter snorted.
“Yeah,” Roland said. “He started mouthing off to her and she shot him right between the legs.”
I remembered the vampire with the crossbow bolt in his crotch. I had to hide my smile. I didn’t want them to think I approved of their actions, but at the same time, I wished I’d been there to see Sara shoot him.
“Sara has wicked aim with that thing,” Jordan said proudly. “She definitely should start training with one.”
“What happened to our weapons anyway?” Sara asked. “Did we leave them at Greg’s uncle’s place?”
Jordan raised her eyebrows. “You honestly think I’d leave that sword behind? It would take more than a few vamps to separate us.”
Her reply made me think about the large group of vampires that had attacked us. I’d been wondering how they could have known where Sara was. There was no question about Jordan, Roland, and Peter’s loyalty to her, but what about her biker friend?
“What I would like to know is how vampires knew you were at that apartment in the first place. How well do you know that human who was with you?”
Roland raised a hand. “Dude, don’t even go there.”
Sara stiffened and tried to pull her hand from mine. I refused to let her go, and she turned her face away from me. “Greg is one of my closest friends from high school, and he would never do anything to hurt me.”
Roland’s eyes met mine. “Greg’s a solid guy. He used to watch over Sara like she was his sister. I can’t see him betraying her.”
Peter nodded. “Especially after she saved his life.”
Even Nate came to his defense. “I always thought Greg McCoy was trouble, but he did seem to care for Sara.”
“It could have been one of those demons at Draegan’s,” Jordan suggested. “They all knew Sara was playing Draegan for the blood contract, and one of them could have known who Greg was and where he was staying. I wouldn’t put anything past that bunch.”
She made a good point. Draegan had to have known where Greg lived so he could collect on the debt. It made sense that he’d told someone else, especially considering how furious he’d been after Sara won the contract back from him.
“It’s a good thing you called Nikolas when you did,” Nate said. “I don’t want to think about what would have happened to you all if he hadn’t been there.”
Tristan looked at Sara. “Promise us you won’t take off like that again.”
“I promise.”
Heb entered the room carrying a tray of food. He smiled and laid it on the coffee table, telling us dinner would be ready in an hour.
I heard Sara’s stomach growl as Roland and Peter went for the food. Grabbing a napkin, I placed some canapés on it and laid it on her lap.
“Thanks,” she said softly and began eating.
Roland looked at Tristan. “So what happens now? Are you all going home?”
“Sara has to stay here to train with the faeries,” Tristan said. “Jordan and I will return to Westhorne after Christmas. Nate too, unless he wants to stay here.”
Jordan’s face fell. “I thought I could stay here with Sara.”
Tristan shook his head. “Sara will be busy training, and Nikolas is staying with her. You need to continue your own training.”
“But I can train here with Sara,” she protested.
Sara gave me a nervous look. “I have to do faerie training and Mohiri training?”
“We’ll pick it up where we left off.” I’d either make her a warrior, or too exhausted to think about running off again.
Chris laughed. He knew me too well. “I smell payback.”
Jordan gave Sara a pleading look. “You want me to stay, right? We can train together.”
“Yes.”
Tristan picked up a canapé. “We’ll see. I’m not sure of the wisdom in keeping you two girls together. You seem to have a remarkable talent for attracting trouble.”
I couldn’t agree more, but I also knew how close Sara and Jordan were. I couldn’t be with Sara all the time and run the command center, and Jordan would be a good companion for her. Especially since Roland and Peter had been ordered by Maxwell to go home after the holidays.
Jordan grinned. “At least no one could ever accuse us of being dull. Besides, Nikolas will be here. How much trouble could we get into?”
If I’d been eating, I would have choked. Almost everyone in the room howled with laughter, everyone except Sara and Jordan.
“You might want to think about sending a unit here for backup,” Chris joked to Tristan.
“You may be right,” he agreed.
“Everyone’s a comedian,” Sara grumbled.
Something told me there’d be no mistletoe kisses for me if I made the remark that was on the tip of my tongue. I wisely kept silent.
Like Tristan had said to Sara once, a good warrior knows when to retreat.
