Pleasure (9 page)

“Sagan, I love you,” she whispered at last, finally giving herself the freedom to speak it aloud to him. “Let's do this. Let's make a new future for us…and for others who so desperately need us. This will be good work. It will be so much better than hiding here in fear. I won't be so afraid with you to keep me safe.”

“Oh, you'll be afraid…and rightly so, honey,” he corrected her, “but I know you will overcome it and shine brilliantly in spite of it. Anyone who can do what you have done is capable of doing anything.”

“Even becoming the human mate of a Nightwalker?”

“Well”—he grinned in a flash of white teeth—“I may have to run a few tests…”

“Ohhh,” she gasped with a laugh as he turned his attention back to her sensitive body spots. “A lot of tests?”

The sheer eagerness of the question made him laugh.

“Let's just say you have to submit to them on a moment-to-moment basis.”

“Mmm. Oh! The cats!” she burst out suddenly. “They have to come with us.”

With a chuckle Sagan informed her, “They are packing as we speak. Now, let's focus on letting me apologize for leaving you.”

“Oh, yeah”—she frowned—“that was very bad.”

“It was. It won't happen again.”

“I couldn't sleep,” she pouted.

“I know. They told me. I'm sorry.”

“You should be.” She quirked a little smile at him. “In fact, I think you ought to confess your sin and pay a little penance.”

Sagan's left brow shot up in surprised amusement.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. So let's go. Get on your knees.” She giggled, pushing at the top of his head to guide him down the length of her body. “I always wanted to say that to a man.”

“Mmm, but if this is your idea of penance, Valera, it won't be very effective.”

“Then think of it as a reward, instead. For coming back.”

“Now that will be very effective.” He chuckled as he lowered his head to kiss her.

The Shadowdweller Civil War…about thirteen years earlier

“K'yatsume
! To me!”

Guin roared out the command over the sounds of men shouting with the bloodlust of battle, their weapons firing and clashing just a few rooms away. The twin imperial heirs were under direct attack, their nondescript hideaway discovered by their enemies. Apparently, in the game of spies and intrigue, the would-be royal Chancellors of the Shadowdweller society had just lost their current hand. Someone had given their location away and now a worst-case scenario loomed up around them.

Malaya and her twin, Tristan, were in separate locations in the manor. Opposite ends of the same floor, in fact. It had been planned that way for precisely this reason by their bodyguards, Guin and Xenia, who were each responsible for their own charge. Guin protected Malaya, and Xenia guarded her brother.

They had prepared for a scenario just like this, making
certain brother and sister knew to not waste time searching each other out. Each was to get to safety on their own, at all costs, no hesitation or looking back. If they were going to win this war and stand for their beliefs, at least one of them had to survive everything through to the end.

Malaya had been with Guin in her rooms, preparing for bed, when they had heard the first explosion of violence from the front rooms of the house. Guin had been kneeling to open his bedroll at the base of the door outside her bedroom, as was his routine every night. Malaya had been across the sitting room near the only visible exit out of the suite, braiding her hair in front of the mirror there. When the first sound of trouble reached them, she startled visibly, even as Guin surged up from his crouch. There was nothing worse for the guardian warrior than the realization that his mistress was several strides out of his reach just when war and dangerous chaos suddenly started to reign around them.

The bodyguard and the one he protected looked across the room at each other, time gearing down to a heart-stopping slowness.

Guin had known the beautiful noblewoman he guarded for around forty years, and he knew every single one of her expressions better than he knew his own. He realized within an instant what she was going to do, and he suddenly felt his heart sink like a leaded weight into his gut. It was as if thick molasses flooded around him as he tried to move even faster than his lightning-fast reflexes and significant power could allow for.

“K'yatsume
! To me!”

Trouble was, Malaya was just as fast as he was, her lithe and powerful dancer's body half as heavy as Guin's bulk of impressive height and muscle. When she decided to disobey everything she had been trained to do in trade for the instinct to run to her beloved twin brother, she knew she would have to outrun her protector as well as the menace outside of her door in order to have her way. She turned and lunged for the
door, the
k'jeet
she wore in preparation for bed swirling in a light cloud of midnight blue gauzy cotton. The fabric was so thin and insubstantial that the shadow of her shape, even the warm mocha of her skin, was just visible through it. As Guin chased after her into the hallway, he could see her running in the perfect darkness with the material streaming against her body, continuing on behind her like the tail of a comet as she raced around the corner for her brother's rooms.

Guin refused to let her out of his sight and poured on speed, his body churning out the adrenaline needed to push him to the point he desired. He gained on her just as she would have crossed the landing, exposing herself to the fighting taking place in the anteroom at the base of the stairs. There had been no choice. Guin had heard the sound of shots being fired. The use of firearms was rare, the flash of a muzzle just as painful to the light-sensitive Shadowdweller that wielded the weapon as it was to the target being fired at, but clearly their enemy was desperate to achieve their objective.

And their objective was running straight into their sights.

Guin reached out, wrapping his fist into the stream of blue fabric whipping off Malaya's body and stopping hard as he yanked her back with all of his might. He heard the delicate stuff tear, but knew it would hold. It did, and Malaya was jerked backward with a strangled rush of breath as she found herself suddenly flying in the opposite direction from her intention. Her body crashed into Guin's with a bone-jarring impact, but what she felt most was the clamp of an arm muscled in steel pinning her to him around her waist.

“No!” she cried out in despair, knowing she could never escape him now. “Tristan!”

“Sua vec'a
! Are you out of your mind?” he bellowed in fury into her face, making her flinch. Just then the corner of the wall near them exploded into pieces as a large-caliber bullet tore through the plaster.

Guin had no time to be pleasant, polite, or any of those
other things he was never any good at anyway. He bent a huge shoulder to her middle and hauled her right up off the floor like he would a sack of
frousi
. Her shapely rear end ended up in the air, her hip against his cheek and her hands gripping his waist as her top half hung upside down over his back. He rapidly reversed direction and ran back with her into the suite they had come from. Once he slammed the door shut, he could hear her cursing him out in Shadese. Then, just because she was really pissed off, she bit him right on his ass.

“Bituth amec
!” Guin swore at her, having half a mind to bite the little spitfire right back since an equal target was right in range of his teeth. It was a startlingly attractive idea, and Guin had the damnedest time fighting the urge to do just that.

“I want my brother, you big ape!” she yelled at him. She swung at him and smacked him, again going for his backside. For all her noble upbringing, Malaya was no frail, delicate miss. She was damn strong and she didn't hold back as her outrage fueled her strike. The impact shot through Guin with an astonishing amount of shock, the force ricocheting right through the seat of his testicles and down into his thighs, making him stumble in his surprise.

This time he didn't curb his retaliation. But since he held her in one hand and his sword in the other, he had to satisfy himself with using the flat of his blade against her upraised derriere. Malaya squealed in shock. He knew the strike had smarted because he had meant it to. Then, before she could retaliate against him once again, he kicked through her bedroom door and threw her onto her bed. Blue fabric and long ebony hair that had unwound from her unsecured plait went flying over the bedding. She bounced on her back and used her momentum as she sprang back up to lunge up to her feet. Guin stopped her with a hard hand to her breastbone and shoved her right back down again.

“Cease!” he barked at her, bending over her carefully as
he held her down. He knew her temper well enough to know she wasn't above kneeing him if he gave her the opportunity. “Enough, you spoiled little brat!”

Clearly, cooling her temper wasn't his aim. She hated being called spoiled or anything that disparaged her character. It didn't matter that they both knew she wasn't anything close to spoiled, just that he dared to treat her like a child.

However, anything she might have said or done in retaliation was thwarted when the sound of splintering wood came from the outside room. Guin looked at her, saw her eyes draw wide open and her pulse jumping in her slim throat. He leapt off her, grabbed her hand, and yanked her up behind him as the bedroom door burst open.

The muzzle flash blinded him. The bullet hit him hard and fast, ripping into his left shoulder just inches above his heart. But Guin was like a bull as he took the shot and surged forward in fury. He was blinded, but so was the shooter, he knew. He still had his sword arm, and he used it to whip the massive long blade ahead of himself like a Cuisinart on purée. He was more than prepared for when he hit flesh and bone. Once he did, his eyesight no longer mattered. Years of instinct and training took over and in three quick movements he had disarmed, disemboweled, and decapitated his foe. He jerked back as the body fell, listening for others he could not see.

“Guin!” Malaya was shouting at him as she wrapped both her hands around the bulging biceps that bore the weight of his weapon.

He knew better than to ignore the fear in her voice and he moved just in time to be missed by a missile of some sort, he would have guessed an arrow, as it breezed by his face.

He knew he had to clear his vision or he would be useless. Malaya would end up protecting
him
, an idea he absolutely could not stomach. But there was nothing he could do to speed the healing of his scorched retinas. He had no choice but to allow Malaya to push him against the wall out
of the line of fire. Shadows were already forming for him, though, his eyes recovering just enough to see two figures rush into the bedroom.

They met up with the whipping power of a dancer's well-placed kick. Malaya whirled on her pivoting foot until her speed was hard and sharp, the back of her heel crushing the face of the first assaulter, and continuing on to stun the second. The fabric of her gown floated high and tight to her body as she reversed herself, did a ball-change, and hooked the back of her knee into her opponent's throat, dragging him down to the ground with the crushing flex of her amazing thigh muscles. She glided over his prone body, a swirl of midnight blue climbing her bare skin as she moved to catch his arm between her calves, churning in a brutal pirouette that snapped the long bone cleanly in two. Her victim screamed and she didn't care for the potential alarm it raised, so she fed her heel into the poor bastard's throat.

Silence.

Except for the two remaining fighters' heavy breathing.

“Done?” Guin demanded.

“Yes,” she breathed, reaching for him.
“Drenna
, we have to go!”

He agreed and followed her as she pulled him back into the room, leading him to the closet and the escape hall stairs hidden within. The old English manor had once been a buccaneer's home, and both bedrooms had escape routes that dropped down belowground and into a cavern that eventually led down to the beach at the base of the cliffs below them. It was why Guin had chosen the place to begin with. It allowed them to escape the home day or night, avoiding all possible run-ins with light or sunlight, either of which could kill their kind right in their tracks if they were exposed to it.

He took the stairs as fast as she did despite his compromised vision. There were half a dozen flights, and they blew down them. The wood grew damp and slick the farther down they went, some of it even rotted away. But Guin had re
paired what was necessary and they were safe clear to the ledge of the cavern. By the time they hit bottom, Guin could see again. Mostly. As they continued, he swept his princess from ledge to ledge out of automatic courtesy and protectiveness, even though she could have easily leapt the distances for herself, perhaps even better than he could, with her light frame and flexibility.

They only paused when Guin felt Malaya tug on him hard to stop him. He pulled up, turning to her as she pushed him against the cavern wall and leaned her entire body up along his as she laid her hands against his wounded shoulder.

“I knew it!” she hissed to him, her troubled eyes turning up to his as she gripped the fabric of his shirt near the hole shot through it. “I knew you'd been hit!”

“It's nothing.” He dismissed it curtly, thinking it only would have been something if it had punched through him to hit her as she stood behind him. Luckily, he was as thick as an oak tree. He could actually feel where the bullet was caught against his shoulder blade. It would have to be dug out because it was interfering with his ability to move his arm.

“Drenna
, Guin, I'm so sorry!”

“You damn well better be sorry!” he spat at her. “What in Light were you thinking? We talked about this! A thousand times, we talked about this!”

She bit her lip as she tore open his shirt a few inches, inspecting his wound a moment before pressing her palm hard against it in an effort to stop the bleeding.

“I
am
sorry! I couldn't help it! I felt my whole body, my whole spirit scream for him. He is my brother, Guin. I couldn't leave him.”

Guin watched as her darkly beautiful eyes filled with a rare show of tears, the heavy drops falling down her lashes and cheeks, each one becoming an arrow that pierced through him far more painfully than the bullet had. If she had known how much it affected him to see her cry, the little minx would
have probably done it far more often to get her way with him. Usually he brusquely reassured her, saying something nonsensical or by rote and moved on.

This time, feeling her tremor with her own adrenaline rush and her tormented guilt for getting him hurt, he simply couldn't blow it all off. He was furious with her for what she had done, for putting herself at risk, but at the same time he was unable to lay into her again and make her feel any worse than she did. In the end, when their vastly differing roles in their world were stripped away, it came down to the fact that he spent almost every minute of every day with her, not just protecting her, but sharing every detail of her life with her. He had done so for nearly forty years. They were best friends, unable to help themselves after so many years of having their lives be so deeply connected. His faith and his loyalty in her would always lay him like a sacrifice at her feet, to say nothing of his devotion and love for her.