Shadow's Awakening: The Shadow Warder Series, Book One (An Urban Fantasy Romance Series) (22 page)

“I should get up,” she said. “I’m sweaty.”

“Wait a few minutes and I’ll take you to the shower.”

“Okay.” Hannah tried to sink back into the sensual haze of their skin touching and Conner’s hand in her hair. Total relaxation evaded her as her other topic of conversation reared its head. “Conner?” she said.

“Mmm?”

“When are you taking me to the Shadows?” she asked, a thread of anxiety in her voice. His hand stopped stroking her hair.

“Do you want to go already?”

“No.” Hannah’s tone was sharper than she’d intended. “No. I’m not ready yet. I want to stay here with you. But I get that this is going to cause problems for you—”

“Hannah,” Conner interrupted.

She didn’t let him finish. “I don’t want you to regret this.”

“Stop worrying about me,” Conner said, his exasperation clear. “I meant it when I said there isn’t anything they can do to me that would make me regret being with you.”

“Conner—”

“No, Hannah, listen to me.” He rolled them to the side and took her chin in his hand, bringing her face up to his. “I’ve been a soldier since I was sixteen. For almost a hundred and forty years. Never, in all that time, have I ever done anything even slightly questionable. I take my duty seriously and I do my job. If I want to spend a few days with you, I will. I’ve earned a little slack.”

“A hundred and forty years?” Hannah asked, squinting at his face for a moment. He didn’t look more than late thirties or early forties. “You’re a hundred and forty years old?” Her voice came out in a little squeak.

“A hundred and fifty-six,” he said, tone dry.

“How?”

“It’s how we’re made. Warders and Shadows both. Our bodies heal quickly—not just from wounds, but from aging. I’ve heard that Shadows can control the aging process so well, they can choose to allow their bodies to age or not. So one might look young but be very old, and another might appear middle-aged and actually be young in comparison to the others.”

“That’s really weird,” Hannah said.

“Yeah. Warders can’t do that. We just age very slowly. Eventually, our bodies slow down and can’t keep up with the effects of time as efficiently. But most of us don’t die of old age.”

“How do you die then?”

“In the field,” he said with a touch of a smile in his voice, as if the answer should have been obvious. “Everyone fights. Soldiers like me and like Kiernan go out every day, patrolling for Vorati. But even the scribes, stewards, handlers, all of them have to fight. The only exceptions are the mages. We don’t have many mages, so they get a pass if they want one.”

“You started fighting at sixteen?”

“We enter the field as apprentices at sixteen. I wasn’t considered a full soldier until I was eighteen. But yeah.”

“Your parents let you fight demons at sixteen?”

“My parents died when I was six,” Conner said. “But they were soldiers, Hannah. They would have expected me to fight at sixteen.”

Hannah didn’t know what to say. She should have. Like Conner, both of her parents were gone. But nothing anyone said to her was ever right. “I’m sorry” didn’t really cover it.

“What happened?” she said, hoping the question wasn’t too intrusive. Conner’s hand twined in her hair again, tugging gently, the light pressure a caress. Hannah took that to mean he wasn’t upset.

“They were killed in a Vorati attack. Vorati don’t usually work together. The nest that held you was an anomaly. The demons that killed my parents weren’t a nest. Just a group of independent demons who got together for one attack. My parents had been stationed in the Orkney Islands as a punishment, so they were the only Warders around. The Vorati got tired of being picked off and thought they’d clean house.”

“Why were they being punished?” That felt way too intrusive, but Hannah couldn’t hold back her curiosity. To her surprise, Conner smiled.

“They fell in love.”

“Soldiers aren’t allowed to fall in love?”

“Warders don’t do love. We don’t do family. We have friendships and we have short-term lovers. Sometimes couples who have children will stay together when their offspring are very young to share the childcare. But most children go to the Academies by the time they’re eight. Children of soldiers are often sent away much earlier so their parents can get back in the field.” A dark expression drifted through Conner’s eyes.

“That’s awful,” Hannah said. No family structure. No love. It sounded so lonely.

“It's not really,” he said, his eyes back to their normal, warm expression so quickly she thought she’d imagined the darkness. “It’s just our culture. We’re a people born of war.”

“What about your parents?”

“They met at the Academy in Europe when they were young. My mother liked to tell me that my father stole her homework and instead of beating him over the head, she let him kiss her. They managed to keep up a relationship, even though they were posted in different cities. When they got pregnant with me, the Directorate gave up and exiled them to the Orkneys. I guess they figured the easiest thing was to get them out of sight. My childhood wasn’t exactly typical.”

“They loved you?” she asked. The affection in Conner’s voice when he spoke of his parents told her that they had.

“They did. My mother tucked me in every night and read me a story. My father took me into the woods and taught me to fish. I didn’t understand how different they were until I was sent to the Academy after they died. Everyone kept warning me not to turn out like them. I learned to keep my head down and follow the rules, but I still don’t see what they did as wrong. They were good soldiers. And good parents.”

Hannah sighed. She could see him in her head, a young boy with chocolate eyes and messy dark hair, bewildered and alone in a cold dormitory. What must it have been like to go from a loving family to life in an institution, being told everything he’d known was wrong? Somehow he’d managed to hold on to his love for his parents and still grow up to be a good soldier. She didn’t see any bitterness in him, no anger for his losses or the way his life had changed.

“Don’t be sad,” Conner said, tugging the ends of her hair so her face tilted toward his. His eyes were soft. “It was a long time ago.”

“I know. It’s still sad,” she said. “I bet they’d be proud of you.”

Conner smiled at her. She was right. His parents would be proud of him. They might have rebelled with their love affair, but they’d been dedicated soldiers. Once he’d adjusted to life in the Academy, Conner had resolved to follow their path. He’d been at the top of his class all through school. A lead apprentice at sixteen. The youngest instructor at the North American Academy until he’d left to return to the field. And all of that suddenly meant very little. Hannah was right to worry for him. When the truth got out, and it would when he brought Hannah in, shit was going to hit the fan.

Let it. What had all his dedication gotten him? Aside from his successes as a soldier—successes that kept the humans safe—his life was barren. He had Kiernan. A few other good friends. The respect of his peers. And he was lonely. He lay in bed at night and watched kids’ movies because they reminded him of the home he’d lost. Nothing, no triumph or accolade, had ever matched the life he’d had with his parents in their tiny cottage in the wilds of Scotland.

His few years with Marie had given him a taste of family again. She was ambitious, not overly warm or affectionate the way he remembered his parents being with each other. Then again, he and Marie hadn’t been in love. Just two Warders who started as casual sex, stuck together out of convenience, then found themselves turned in a completely new direction.

Conner had been caught unaware by the chance to be more than just two people loosely bound by physical attraction. He’d underestimated his need for family, had let it blind him to Marie’s true nature. Her ultimate betrayal, and the agonizing loss that resulted, had eclipsed even the death of his parents. Since then, Conner had shut off the possibility of any real connection with a female. Warder, human, it was just sex. Nothing more. Until Hannah.

Conner had already decided to give her his cell number and address before he brought her back to the city. It was a stupid idea. He wasn’t supposed to have any contact with her at all, much less hook up with her once they left the cabin. He just couldn’t shake the idea that she might need him. Or maybe she’d simply want to see him again. Conner knew that if she called, he’d go, without a second thought to duty. It was wrong, but he didn’t care.

Hannah shifted against him, nuzzling her cheek into his chest. Soothing him. Her mother’s death was too recent for her to understand that while he missed his parents, thinking of them didn’t make him sad. At least not the way she thought it did. Wistful, maybe. He was learning that the need to comfort was a part of who Hannah was.

A flick of her tongue changed the caress to something hotter. His rapidly hardening cock was a surprise. Stamina had never been a problem, but three times in two hours wasn’t exactly his normal run. No other woman had ever lit him up with such intensity.

Conner rolled to a sitting position, dragging Hannah with him, turning her as he moved so he held her in his arms, straddling his lap. Gripping her ass in his palms, he yanked her forward, abruptly too aroused to be gentle. Hannah bit her lower lip and moaned, grinding her soaking pussy into the steely length of his cock trapped between them. Her arms were tucked against her torso, pushing her breasts together into two plump mounds topped by diamond-hard nipples. Good to know they were on the same page. A hot shower had been the plan when he’d sat them up, but now that he had her in such a sweet position, Conner had no intention of moving her. They could shower later.

“I need more of you,” he growled in her ear, lifting her to hover above the tip of his cock, already beading with pre-come. Maybe if he fucked her about a thousand times he’d be able to slow down. He gave a silent thanks that she came so hard, so quickly. With other women he’d taken pride in his ability to drag out sex, to bring them to pleasure more than once before he came. That seemed like a joke compared to his response to Hannah. One second of her tight, molten heat sliding down his cock and all he wanted was to feel her coming around him in fist-tight clenches of her pussy.

At least he could give her quantity if he couldn’t focus on quality. His nonstop erection took care of that. He lowered Hannah less than an inch, barely entering her. Already her body was tightening, gripping the head of his cock in wet heat. He lowered her another inch, giving her a deeper taste of his cock.

“More,” Hannah breathed, twisting, trying to capture the length of his cock.

“Wait. I don’t want to rush this time.” Conner held her firmly, resisting her efforts to take all of him.

Letting her head fall back, Hannah wiggled her hips, answering Conner’s tease with one of her own. He’d had good intentions. Really he had. He was going to take her slowly, with at least a tiny bit of finesse. Instead, she was killing him. Again. She swiveled her hips once more, wrapping the mouth of her slick, tight pussy around the sensitive head of his cock in a twisting motion that tore at his resolve. Again, she pushed into him, gaining another inch. Back arched, her breasts raised to just below his mouth, Conner jumped at the invitation, drawing in one stiff peak. He loved the way she gasped his name in helpless pleasure. He needed more, needed to make this last a few minutes longer before they gave in to the inevitable explosion growing between them.

Every other woman he’d ever touched was as distant and washed-out as a tattered sepia-toned photograph. Hannah writhed in his arms in brilliant color. For the first time in his existence, Conner knew what it was to be saturated in vibrant life. Her sighs, her moans, her damp, soft skin stroking his, the perfection of her tight pussy gripping his cock, her hard, begging nipple in his mouth—all of Hannah was filling empty places inside him he hadn’t known existed.

She was sliding into him, cell by cell. Conner felt himself doing the same with her. Felt some indefinable part of himself reaching out for Hannah with every touch. It wasn’t just his cock sinking deeper into her. It was everything that was him, twining around all that was Hannah, tying them tighter together. Giving her another inch, Conner released her nipple with a slow lick before moving to her other breast. He fought the urge to let go and drop her all the way into his lap. It wouldn’t hurt her to take the rest of his cock so quickly. Even if it was too much, he knew she wanted it. But if he let her, she’d take over and they’d both be thrown headlong into the growing orgasm before they could stop it.

“Conner, please. Please. I need you to fill me up.” Hannah’s voice was thin and strained.

She raised her head and reached out to take his face in her hands. Giving a gentle tug, she pulled him from her breast, unaware she gave a tiny frown when his mouth left her nipple. Their eyes met, both glazed with need. Hannah squirmed against his hands still firmly holding her ass too high to get all of his cock. Conner found himself falling into her passion-bright green eyes.

“Please,” she whispered. “I don’t want to wait any more. I want all of you inside me.”