Amy's Advantage (29 page)

When she started to rock again, Jordyn pushed two fingers
into her ass, going a fraction deeper in every time she rocked back. The double
insertion twisted the tension building in her body higher, the slight burning
in her ass from the stretching of her sphincter adding another dimension,
driving her to climax. She thrust her body forward hard, squeezed his cock with
her cunt and ground against him with all the explosive need he’d called up.

Jordyn whispered her name, a low, rasping revelation that he
shared this firestorm with her. Just before the tail end of the sensual torment
whipped around to fling her completely into the oblivion of climax, she saw the
fierce, deep desire in his eyes. In the impossibly bright and dark depths of
gray seethed the mirror companion to the emotion that had again and again
punctured her resolve to keep whatever this was between them casual. It wasn’t
casual. It wasn’t common and it wasn’t just sex.

It
was
everything she wanted. Hoped for. Never
thought she’d find again.

Jordyn squeezed the globes of her bottom and thrust high and
hard into her. Once, twice, his body was unyielding beneath hers as he pounded
up into her. His hands moved to grip her hips, holding her locked to him for
his final thrust.

A sense of power spiraled through her at the sight of this
incredibly disciplined warrior being brought to the end of his control by what
she could do to him as the onset of his orgasm tightened his features into
harsh slashes of lust. Though his hands kept her from moving, he couldn’t stop
her from stroking his cock with her cunt in a series of tight, quick
contractions.

She reveled in the command she wielded over his body as his
release poured into her. Then, with her next breath, coherent thought scattered
as she tumbled into the ecstasy after him, her body clutched around his.
Flashes of brilliant light lanced through her in beautiful arcs to catch the
surrounding air on fire as she shattered into a million blazing sparks of
absolute pleasure. With complete abandonment, she flung herself into the heart
of the flames.

Chapter Seventeen

“How long are you going to remain angry at me?”

Ellen looked up from her book at Amdyn’s question. He stood
in the doorway of the Big Boy Playroom with his arms crossed and leaned against
the doorjamb with a nonchalant attitude that didn’t reach the cerulean blue of
his eyes.

“I’m just sitting here in the library, reading a book.”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” she said, uncurling her legs from
underneath her. “We sleep in the same room, in the same bed. Live in the same
house. Eat dinner at the same table.
How
am I avoiding you?”

He stepped into the room, pulling the door shut silently
behind him. Wisely he chose to sit in the large chair across from her rather
than loom over her in lecture mode. Apparently he was a fast learner.

“You’re keeping your thoughts from me.”

Then again, maybe not. “You know I don’t want you in my
head.”

“I’m your mate—”

Ellen snapped closed the book she’d been staring at but
unable to read for the last twenty minutes. “I am not having this conversation
again. Instead, let’s talk about what I could do to help find the traitor.”

Even though he did not shift from his sprawled, relaxed
position, his muscles tensed and the edges of his face sharpened. “No.”

“That’s it. No discussion. Just a flat
no.
”

“There’s nothing to discuss.”

“Except that this traitor is threatening my sisters.”

“Which is why you belong in Ilyria where I can be sure you
will be safe.”

“My mother wasn’t safe there.” She knew from previous arguments
that though the topic cut deep with him, it wouldn’t sway him.

Amdyn held back whatever he had been going to say and closed
his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his accustomed implacability had
returned. “What is it that you really want?” His voice dropped to a low,
intimate tone as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands loosely linked
together. “Do you even know what would make you happy?”

“I want my sisters to be safe and happy.”

Amdyn’s eyebrows rose. “We’ve found all your sisters. All
but Laura already are safe and guarded by men and entire households and cities
that would lay down their lives for them at any threat. Bethany, Brooke and
Aurora seem to be completely happy. All of them are moving on with their lives
in Ilyria and beginning families.” He paused, giving her a chance to argue his
point. She didn’t.

“So there has to be something else. Some other need you have
that I haven’t met, because you still aren’t happy. You still refuse to return
to Ilyria with me.” His words turned hard with frustration. “Still refuse to
accept me as your mate. What, tell me
what
it is that you need?”

Frowning, she turned her head to focus on the serene winter
landscape just past the thin glass barrier of the room’s large windows. Several
sparrows flitted around a birdfeeder Kirry kept filled. Suddenly, a fierce envy
at their ability to fly away in the blink of an eye washed over her.

“What I want, you won’t give,” she said evenly.

“You’re my mate. If it’s within my power and reach,” he
paused before continuing, “and doesn’t put you in danger, it is already yours.”

She turned back to meet his gaze. “I want my freedom.”

Surprise flickered across Amdyn’s face. “You want what?”

“My freedom.”

An eerie stillness settled over Amdyn. An icy quiet that
signaled danger more surely than a hundred red flags set aflame around him.
“Freedom from what exactly?” The subdued tone of his voice only served to
underscore the cutting edge to his words.

Ellen stiffened in the chair, refusing to back down. She had
put the words out there and she would not take them back. Until the moment they
had come out of her mouth, she hadn’t realized how deeply the truth of them was
rooted in her soul.

“Freedom to live as I choose.”

“You are free to choose me as your mate, and beyond that,
I’ll allow anything that does not compromise your safety.”

For a minute, all Ellen could do was blink unbelievingly
back at him. “Do you have any idea how arrogant that statement is?”

“There is no arrogance in truth.”

Sinking back into the cushion of the large chair, Ellen
shook her head in disbelief. “Why do I even try to talk to you?”

“I’m your mate. You can talk to me about anything.”

Ellen’s laugh was humorless. “Thank you, but no. Every time
we
talk
, it turns into you lecturing me. Talking implies a two-way
conversation.”

The line along Amdyn’s jaw tightened, but with an obvious
effort of will, he sat back, his arms open and spread atop the armrests of the
chair. He tilted his head toward her. “I’m listening now.”

“You expect me to believe that you are truly going to hear
what I’m saying? After all these weeks of having you dismiss everything I’ve
said?”

A ripple of tension ran up his arms as his fingers flexed on
the chair. “I don’t dismiss what you say.”

“Really? We haven’t completed the Mating Rite—”

“We will complete it.”

“I thought you said it was my choice.”

His hands curled into fists. “Damn it, woman. You twist my
words.”

“No, you don’t listen to mine. You say I am free to choose,
but if you are my only choice, it is not a choice. Surely you see that.”

“You are bound to me.”

“Again, not by my choice.”

Amdyn’s eyes glinted with anger. “What does it matter how
many choices you have if you are to choose me in the end anyway?”

The bile of indignation rose in her throat. “One choice is
not freedom,” she snapped.

“It is if it is the only choice you want to make.”

She pushed herself out of the chair and walked to the
windows. “That’s my point. What if I
don’t
want you?”

Slowly, very slowly, Amdyn stood, straightened and advanced
on Ellen until he was nearly, but not quite, touching her. She had to look up
to meet the turbulent blue gaze drilling down at her. “Do you not want me?” A
terrible storm brewed in every clear and precisely pronounced word.

“That’s my point. It doesn’t matter what I want. As long as
you keep me here without the choice to leave, as long as the Guardian is in
place that would keep me from choosing another, you can never truly be my
choice.” She lifted her hand and laid it on his chest. Willing him to
understand, she dropped the defenses in her mind that would prevent him from
seeing the honesty from which she spoke.

Her thoughts tumbled into a void she was completely
unprepared for. Amdyn was not pressing in. Not at all.

Between them was only emptiness as he held all his thoughts
behind an impenetrable barrier. Even his gaze had gone flat, an emotionless
wall that gave away nothing. If his heart had not still been beating beneath
her hand, she would have been tempted to think his soul had left his body.

“Without a choice in the matter, at best you are my duty,”
she whispered. “An obligation to fulfill, owed to a world I neither know nor
remember.”

“I am your destiny, not your duty.”

“But not my choice.”

“The Guardian is in place.”

“Remove it.”

“I cannot.”

Ellen stepped away and turned her back on him. “I don’t
deserve to be lied to, Amdyn. I know there is a way to get rid of if. Connyn
was sure of it.”

“Connyn had no business discussing something so personal
with you.”

“Connyn was the only one willing to talk about such things.”

“Only when it suits his purposes,” he growled. “I doubt that
if it were his mate, he’d have been so forthcoming with that information.
Besides, it’s only a legend. It’s never been done and I’ve never personally
come across any such information. If it is real, it’s buried somewhere in the
ancient texts on our homeworld.”

Ellen turned to face him, resting her back against the
windowpane. The cold seeped through the glass and through her sweater until the
chill bit into her skin. “Tell me, if you knew where this information was,
would you find it for me? And if you found it, would you use it?”

Amdyn had been closed off before, but now an expanding chasm
seemed to be spreading between them. “Those are not questions I can answer.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a situation we’re dealing with. There are actual,
real issues that take all my attention. I don’t have time to entertain ideas
based on make-believe and myths.”

She straightened. “If it were real, if you
could
take
the Guardian from me and give me the freedom I want, would you?”

As powers being summoned from a tempest by an ancient god,
the inviolable right and power of incontestable command swirled and settled on
Amdyn as he drew himself up and stated without pretense, “No.”

The answer was in his bearing before it was spoken, volition
etched in his expression as changeless as a commandment carved in stone.
Sovereign and imperial, Amdyn stood holding the weight of his answer without
apology. Deep inside of her, behind the thick fortress walls she’d built up
over the years, she felt a splintering crack form down the center of the last
hidden, fragile remnant of her hard-kept hope.

Before the crack could spread and fracture, she pulled back
inside of herself, wrapping her defenses around her in an insulating cloak and
with wide eyes, feigned shock. “What? No explanation? No pedantic lecture? Just
a cut to the bone no?”

Amdyn stood unaffected by her small performance. His serious
eyes remained steady, but the rigid austerity was gone from his voice, replaced
by a weary resignation when he asked, “Would anything past that word have
mattered to you?”

“Not unless it was a
just kidding
.”

“I would never joke about something so important to you.”

“No, you would just deny me.” She held up a hand to stop him
from further comment. “Save your breath. You’re right.” She didn’t look back as
she walked past him toward the door. “Whatever else you have to say
doesn’t
matter to me.”

* * * * *

“Are you nervous?” Jordyn’s question made Amy jump.

“Maybe a little.” Maybe a lot. She was about to walk into
another dimension. Even so, it wasn’t just switching worlds that was tying her
stomach and her tongue in knots this morning.

“You’re quiet.”

“I’m thinking.”

“I see.”

At Jordyn’s dry tone, she glanced over at him. He was
watching her, but his expression was impossible to read behind the dark glasses
he wore, diminishing the blinding glare of the bright morning sun bouncing at
them from the snow-covered mountainside they had climbed. “What’s that supposed
to mean?”

“You’re usually more talkative. Especially when you’re
nervous.”

“I can be quiet.”

“When you’re sleeping,” he muttered, turning his face away
to scan the area in front of them.

She hugged herself tighter and stomped her feet a couple of
times to keep the blood moving. They’d been on the side of this mountain
watching a spot over a frozen creek for about fifteen minutes.

It had been still dark outside when Jordyn had roused her
from a deep sleep early this morning. By the time she’d managed to clear sleep
completely from her brain, he’d been fully inside her and her body was already
climbing toward a climax. He’d pushed her hard through two more after that
before he came with a white-hot intensity that singed her from the inside out.

But it was the tender, lingering kisses and soft, almost
reverent caresses after the ecstasy that had left her indelibly marked and
feeling turned inside out this morning. She knew those touches and they were
not made by the hand of a casual lover.

Yesterday had been amazing. After they’d finished breakfast
and sex, they’d spent the day as if they were simply a normal couple visiting a
vacation destination. They’d done everything she’d spouted off about wanting to
do the afternoon she’d lectured him while stomping around the room in lingerie
and high heels.

The day floated by as they explored the city as a couple of
lovers on a holiday might. They wandered through an art gallery, the downtown
aquarium, discovered a little Mexican restaurant with fantastic
margaritas—which Jordyn took her word for, opting for a local beer himself.
He’d held her hand as they walked, kissed the side of her neck when she leaned
forward to examine a painting and drew her into his arms for a kiss on the
street corner while they waited for a red light to turn green. It had been a
perfect day.

It led straight into a perfect night as Jordyn took her to
dinner and a casual dance club. She’d been surprised with how well he danced,
holding her body close to his in the dark as the music pulsed around them. God,
the man was sexy when he moved. She glanced over at him. And sexy when he was
standing still on the side of a mountain looking into space and waiting for a
doorway to another dimension to open.

Who was she kidding? The man was just plain sexy no matter
what he was doing.

“It will be okay.”

“What?” His comment caught her off guard because he hadn’t
moved or turned toward her when he’d spoken, his focus seemingly unwavering
from their surroundings.

“It will be okay,” he repeated.

She was still half muddled in her memories of yesterday and
the feel of his body moving against hers this morning. “What will be okay?”

“Getting through the portal. Finding your place in Ilyria.
Everything.”

He still hadn’t moved, the silence of the frozen woods
around them broken only by the occasional
whifft
of snow falling from
the branch of a pine bough close by.

“Thank you for yesterday,” she said after a moment. “I had a
really good time.”

Jordyn lifted his chin slightly in acknowledgment. “Me too.”

An unexpected euphoria fluttered around her heart. She
waited, but he said nothing more. Turning to stare at the spot he was watching,
she asked, “This isn’t the place we went to before to get to Ilyria.”