Into the Light (18 page)

A team of twenty laborers were tasked with building a staircase into the cliff face, so the king and his subjects could easily get to one another. The staircase lasted longer than that original home, but even that had to be repaired every so often. Each stair was wide and made of slate, and a wooden rail ran the length of the staircase. At this time of year, it was an easy ascent, although a long one.

Olivia’s father waited at the top.

He was still an attractive man, she noticed, as she forced herself not to cringe under his disapproving glare. His hair was still blond; his eyes were the same bright blue as her own. His face was fairly weathered, more from the sun than anything else. His reign had been, until now, calm and with very little trouble. In fact, the only real issue of his incumbency was his mate’s inability to produce more than one child.

“Daughter,” the king said in a grim voice.

“Hello, Father.”

“I see you’ve managed to make it safely back to the coterie, thanks to Dane.”

Olivia grimaced. “It is not what you think, Father.”

“A shame. Come. Your mother has been beside herself with worry. She’s already planned another half-dozen parties. I have no idea how she will fit them all in before the end of summer.”

The queen of the lightbearers planned parties as stress relief, and as the solution to the depression she could not shake over her own inability to bear more than one child. She was mated to a king, and was expected to provide him with a son. She felt personally responsible for the fact that Olivia was their only child.

Sander Bennett gave his daughter one of his kingly disapproving looks and then held open the door so she could precede him into the beach house. He led her upstairs to where her mother sat on a wide, wooden balcony that jutted from her personal sitting room.

“Olivia.” Genevieve let out a small shriek and pulled Olivia into her arms. “Where in the world have you been? I cannot believe you left the coterie. Have you lost your mind? There are all sorts of dangers out there. Shifters come to mind, for one.”

Ho boy, were shifters dangerous
. Dangerous for her sensibilities. Dangerous to her virtue. Olivia had never known how much she liked danger, until Tanner stepped into her life.

And then she sobered. Somehow, some way, she had to convince her parents that shifters were not dangerous—at least, the ones she’d brought into the coterie weren’t. The rest, well…There was a reason she needed her parents to believe Tanner and company weren’t dangerous.

It was because the rest of them were.

“I’ve been thinking,” Olivia started. “And I’m thinking our take on shifters might be wrong.”

Her mother and the servant who’d just stepped out to ask them if they wanted drinks stared at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted a second head. Olivia lifted her hand and touched her face, just in case.

Still only one.

Cecilia burst out onto the balcony just then. “Hey, Olivia. Hello, Auntie Genevieve.” She bent at the waist and gave the queen a warm peck on the cheek. “What did I miss?”

“I was just telling mother that our take on shifters might be a little…off,” Olivia suggested.

Cecilia gave a very unladylike snort. “A little? Lights above, we had no idea what they were truly capable of. Did you know that they still hold to that ancient belief that if they kill us they will inherit our magic?”

Genevieve looked startled. Olivia mentally slapped herself upside the head. Usually, Cecilia was the perfect partner in crime. Apparently, getting caught in very real danger had affected her senses.

“Okay, look, forget I said anything,” Olivia backpedaled. Maybe she’d try again tomorrow. Let her parents get over the stress of her disappearance first.

* * * *

“Oh-oh-oh!” Olivia gasped and arched against him, clawing her nails down Tanner’s back as he pressed her back against the stone face of the cliff next to the beach. He pumped energetically, pushing them both toward a fantastic release.

Just a short time earlier, she’d barely stepped into Dane’s small, overcrowded cottage before Tanner grabbed her arm and dragged her away, down to the beach, and into the small niche in the cliff that they’d found the day before.

“Ye-e-e-s-s-s-s,” she hissed as her orgasm caused her inner muscles to cling to him, to milk him to his own climax.

Afterward, as they sat side by side, leaning back against the rocks, trying to collect their collective breathes, Tanner reached over and twined his fingers into hers.

“It’s barely been twelve hours since I saw you last,” she teased breathlessly.

“I was hoping you’d come back last night,” Tanner said as he lifted their twined hands and studied them. Once again, his body shimmered, just like it had yesterday after they’d made love for the first time.

“I like sleeping with you. Sleeping, as in lying in the same bed and actually sleeping together,” he admitted.

“Where did you sleep last night?” she asked curiously.

“On the sofa. My mother and Sofia slept in one room, and Dane and Lisa slept in the other.”

“What?” Olivia asked, as she sat up straight and stared at him. “Lisa and Dane?” They seemed more unlikely of a couple than Olivia and Tanner.

Tanner shrugged. “Dane wanted to sleep in his own bed, and Lisa didn’t want to give it up. I’m sure it’s innocent. Your boy Dane strikes me as more of a brotherly figure than a lover, and Lisa did just whelp. And just lost her mate,” he added.

Olivia slumped back against the rock again. “It still seems strange.”

“You know what’s strange? A small pack of shifters living in a lightbearer coterie. Dane says the only way we’ll be accepted here is if the king gives his blessing.”

Olivia gave him a surprised look. “You want to be accepted here?”

He shrugged again. “You’re here,” he said simply.

It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to her.

A short time later, after they’d returned to Dane’s cottage, she found herself momentarily alone in the kitchen with Dane. “Do you think my father would accept them?” Olivia asked him as she watched him make a sandwich for Sofia.

“He’s your father,” Dane pointed out. “What do you think?”

“I think my father is terribly old fashioned,” she said miserably.

* * * *

For a week, they carried on in a similar vein. Each morning, Olivia headed to Dane’s house, where she spent the day with him and Tanner and the rest of the small group. At least once during each day, she and Tanner managed to sneak off for a bit of alone time. Olivia found she wished that alone time occurred more frequently, but it was next to impossible with the number of people who currently resided in Dane’s small cottage. Unfortunately, sneaking Tanner up to her parents’ house was, of course, out of the question.

At least, it was until Tanner came up with the brilliant idea to shift into the form of a hawk and soar up to the top of the cliff. He was waiting for her when she retired to her bedchamber that evening.

“How did you find me?” she asked, clearly delighted to see him. She literally leaped into his arms just as soon as she closed the door.

He grinned and dropped a kiss onto her nose. “I’m a shifter. We’re pretty resourceful like that. This is a nice place,” he said as he looked around, while carrying her to the bed. “What’s your relationship to the king?”

Her breath caught in her throat at the curious note in his voice. “You—you know about the king?”

“That he lives in this house? Yes. The real question is, why do you live here? Unless you happen to be related to the king. And since you told me that lightbearers live with their parents until they are mated, that sort of makes me wonder…am I about to sleep with royalty?”

She giggled when he dropped her onto the bed and then pounced on top of her. “I hate to burst your bubble, but you’ve been sleeping with royalty for a week now. And so have I,” she added.

He straddled her legs and began to unbutton the row of tiny buttons on the front of her dress. “No, you haven’t. I gave up my claim ten years ago. So what’s the deal? How come you didn’t tell me?”

She watched his face as he concentrated on the tiny buttons. “I was afraid you wouldn’t sleep with me,” she admitted.

“Why? Worried I might think you’re too good for me?”

She decided not to tell him that she was an only child and the only way her father could pass along the throne was once she was mated. Or that her father had already picked out that mate.

It might ruin the mood.

Early the next morning, Cecilia burst into Olivia’s bedchamber, as was her custom, without knocking first.

“Olivia, I have to ask you something. Would you consider—oh my lights!” She gasped the last, when she stopped short, just a few feet from the bed, where Olivia was crouched on all fours, a positively massive, highly attractive, and very naked man poised behind her. For just the briefest moment in time, Cecilia thought it was Dane, and that Olivia had finally gone off the deep end.

But then she realized that Dane was not nearly that big—any part of him—and that Olivia would never, in a million years, do
that
with Dane. And then she realized—

“Is that
Tanner
?”

Olivia and Tanner both gave a start and flipped around to face Cecilia. Tanner grabbed at the sheet, stuffed it into his lap, and then tried to cover up Olivia. She batted his hand away.

“She’s seen me naked a million times,” she explained as she climbed off the bed and donned a short silk robe.

“What is Tanner doing in your bedchamber?”

“It wasn’t obvious?” Tanner asked.

“Well, yes, but…But here?” Cecelia blustered. “In the beach house? The
king’s
beach house.” Cecilia could not imagine that her cousin had introduced the handsome shifter to her parents, nor that they accepted that she was sleeping with the man.

“You need to lock your bedroom door,” Tanner commented to Olivia.

“It wouldn’t matter,” Olivia replied. “Cecilia can get in anyway. Although, it would be nice if you knocked,” she scolded her cousin.

“I’ve never knocked on your door a day in my life,” Cecilia replied. “But then again, you’ve never had a shifter in your bed before. Or any man, for that matter.”

“That’s cheering,” Tanner commented. Olivia ignored him.

“I can explain,” she started, but Cecilia cut her off.

“You’re glowing,” Cecilia commented to Tanner.

Olivia glanced at Tanner and then turned back to her cousin. “Yes. We assume that is because—because…” She cleared her throat and did not continue.

“Because you are having sex with him?” Cecilia suggested.

“We believe so,” Olivia admitted, sounding miserable about the fact.

“So your father had it wrong,” Cecilia said, looking at Tanner.

“So it seems,” he said carefully, as he tried to pull on his jeans without letting Cecilia see any more of him than was proper. Cecilia rolled her eyes and waved her hand in an impatient gesture and Tanner’s jeans lifted to his waist of their own accord.

“Thanks,” he said uncertainly, as he fastened the button at the waist.

“I assume Aunt Genevieve and Uncle Sander do not know?”

“Of course not,” Olivia said on a gasp, and then she gave Tanner a guilty look.

“I figured as much. I imagine Uncle Sander would have you and—” Olivia cut her off before she could complete the sentence.

“Cici, did you need something?”

Cecilia shrugged. “Just wondering what you were doing today. I’m bored.”

“Well, we were—” Olivia cut off Tanner’s undoubtedly smart-aleck comment.

“You won’t tell Mother and Father, will you?” Olivia asked earnestly.

“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. Although a word of advice: I’d figure out a way to tell your parents before your mother’s next party. I’ll see you at breakfast.” With those parting words, she slipped from the chamber.

“What was that about?” she heard Tanner ask.

“I have no idea,” Olivia replied, and then Cecilia closed the door and trotted down the hall, likely heading in search of something interesting to occupy her time.

* * * *

Tanner and the other shifters were discovered that very day.

The situation started out innocently enough. Dane’s sister showed up at his door, in need of a caretaker for her youngest child, so she could go to market unencumbered. The other children were old enough to reasonably stay out of trouble while her mate fixed a leak in the roof of their cottage, but Alyssa was still young enough that Dane’s sister preferred she stay with an adult who wasn’t perched on the roof, or otherwise engaged with home repairs.

Dane stood in the doorway, blocking her entrance, while attempting to come up with a feasible excuse as to why she could not leave his niece with him, when he was presumably home with no plans, and under normal circumstances would have been happy to comply.

Alyssa pointed at the nearest window. “Momma, Momma, look at that,” she said excitedly.

“What, dear?” Raquel asked absently. She lifted her eyes and looked at the window. A dark-haired young child stared out at her. Raquel’s eyes grew wide as she continued to stare at the child.

“Dane,” she said in a hushed voice as she reached out and grasped her brother’s arm. “There’s a creature in your house.”

Dane’s head whipped around, but when he only saw Sofia peering out the window, he sagged with relief. But then he stiffened again, as he realized his sister, whose nickname was Gossip Queen, recognized that whatever Sofia was, she wasn’t a lightbearer. He stepped away from the door with the intention of leading Raquel away from the cottage.

Alyssa darted in through the open front door.

“Alyssa—no,” Dane and Raquel shouted at the same time. They both chased after her.

Inside, Alyssa and Sofia stood in the small front entry, staring at one another. Sofia was, undoubtedly, much more fascinating to Alyssa than Alyssa was to her. Sofia had already become used to the lightbearers and the differences between them and shifters. Alyssa had never before seen a shifter.

“What are you?” Alyssa asked curiously.

Sofia puffed out her chest. “I’m a shifter,” she announced proudly.