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“Damn, Marcus, how much you been working out? You have the ass of a god.”
He turned to face her, and naturally her gaze fell to his jewels. She shook her head and sighed. “You warriors are so f**king hung and I really do need a man.”
“Get the hell out of my bathroom. Get the hell out of my house and get the hell out of my life.” He turned to face the water, grabbed soap and lathered.
“You don’t have a choice on this one.”
“The hell I don’t. You had one favor. You called it in. I served. We’re done.”
“That was four months ago. I’ve decided I get another one. You do a lot of squat-thrusts? Hey, what’s with the mist? And do you really think I can’t see through that shit?” She snorted. “But if you’re feeling modest, mist away.”
Mist. He should have known better than to try. Mist was designed to confuse the mind, and a powerful mist could confuse the mind of mortals and ascenders alike—just not the leader of Second Earth. Endelle was too damn powerful. Still, it was his bathroom. Privacy would have been nice.
He stopped talking. There was no point. Endelle was as stubborn as the rotation of the earth. But then, so was he. She ought to know that. He wasn’t four millennia for nothing.
“Morgan’s not sleeping very well,” she said.
At that, he stopped moving the soap around his chest. Endelle rarely called Havily by her first name.
Havily Morgan.
Oh. God. Havily. The woman meant for him. The one he craved. The one he fantasized about making love to every goddamn night.
So the f**k what? he sent, the soap moving again.
“She told me about the fennel, vampire.”
“What fennel?”
“She smells you, Warrior. You know what that means.”
“Don’t call me Warrior. I’m a businessman and I’m not going back. Not for you. Not for Havily. Not for anyone. I belong here. I’m happy here.” Sort of. Besides, he’d made one helluva life for himself on Mortal Earth and after seeing the war up close and personal again, he wasn’t having it, not any part of it.
“Morgan drags in to work every morning now. You know anything about that?”
He rinsed off, left the shower, pushed past her and grabbed a towel. He dried his hair first then worked his way down his body. Yeah, he knew something about why Havily might not be sleeping very well. It was his dirty little secret and the hell if he was going to share it with Endelle. What was going on between them was private, a word Endelle respected about as much as she respected his mental shields.
“That’s what I thought,” she murmured. “You’ve been getting into her pants with no one the wiser. You enthralling her or what?”
At that he rose up and glared, straight into her brown eyes. “You think so little of me that you believe I would enthrall her?”
“No. I don’t. I just can’t figure out what’s going on because that little twat of yours has shields I have one helluva time bypassing.”
He glared a little more, then his gaze dropped to the red feathers. They were small, crimson, beautiful. “What are they and where are you getting them?” One of his corporations operated in the fashion industry. Yeah, he was a businessman first.
“A little import shop on Central Two. They come from Mortal Earth. Someone’s raising cardinals in Tucson. Don’t worry. It’s organic. The feathers are collected after the birds are slaughtered.”
“You’re a walking PETA nightmare.”
“You gone vegan on me, or what?”
“No. I still eat steak.”
She looked him up and down. “I know what you mean. Still prefer meat myself.”
He rolled his eyes, swung the towel around his hips, and strolled into his bedroom. Apparently he wasn’t getting rid of the bitch until Labor Day … maybe. And here it was only June.
“Spill it, Endelle. I have meetings this evening until ten.”
He heard her sigh as he worked his way through his sock drawer. He glanced at her and frowned a little. Sighing wasn’t high on Endelle’s list. He straightened up. “You worried about hurting my feelings?”
“No. It’s just one more f**king thing I can’t control. So here it is. I’ve been getting this feeling lately that something’s going on with Morgan, something big. And … I’m worried. I know you’ve been seeing her, somehow, though I haven’t got the how of it figured out yet, but just be careful, would you? And if something out of the ordinary happens, be prepared.”
“You never liked her.”
She jerked her arms at him, her fingers spread cat-like, then shouted, “What the f**k does that have to do with anything? The truth is, I never gave a shit about Havily Morgan one way or the other except that she’s been just one big f**king disappointment from the day she ascended. You wouldn’t know about that because you’ve been here tickling your balls for the last two centuries, but her rite of ascension was a BFD with no payoff. The future streams were all lit up about her, that she needed protection, lots of it, that she would make this huge contribution to the war.
“So of course I gave her Luken as her Guardian of Ascension. I’m rubbing my hands together thinking now we’ve got something, now we’ll see some real shit. Then she ascends and all she’s got are some super-powerful mental shields that make it hard to get into her head. That’s it. Shields. What the f**k good are shields to the war effort?”
He couldn’t help but smile. She probably wasn’t even aware that she was now standing on the arms of the leather club chair near the window.
She looked down at her stilettos. “Shit. I just punched holes in your chair. Ooooh. I feel sooo bad.”
He wagged his head back and forth then moved to the side of his bed. With a pair of socks in one hand and the towel snug around his waist, he sat down. “You’re too impatient,” he said. “You always were. Some powers emerge over time. Look at Kerrick. He can fold now, right? He had all that power but until he completed the breh-hedden with Alison, he couldn’t fold. Now he can. I couldn’t f**king levitate for the first thousand years. Havily’s only a hundred years on Second Earth. Give her time.”
Thoughts of the breh-hedden stopped his mind for a moment. He still couldn’t believe that the breh-hedden had actually touched his life. For centuries this extreme form of ritual mate-bonding between Warriors of the Blood and powerful women was believed to be nothing more than a myth. Then it had hit Warrior Kerrick when his breh, Alison Wells, began her rite of ascension four months ago. Shortly after, Marcus had been struck down as well.
