Noah (25 page)

She knew he wanted her. She also knew that was an under-statement. There was outright hunger in his eyes, though he tried to hide it behind clouds of smoke gray and his polished manners. Kestra reached up to toy with the neckline of her dress as she fixed her eyes on her target and didn’t look away. Water beaded on his dusky skin, rolling down his chest, arms, and back with a tempting slowness. His muscular form made gravity work for its claim on the clear droplets of liquid. Kestra absently licked her lips as she thought about catching the drop currently running down his abdomen toward his navel.

That naturally focused her attention on the path of dark hair leading down to the edge of his towel, the cloth spoiling her fun and forcing her to skip lower. The dark hair on his thighs was wet, slicked down onto his skin. She had to confess to a weakness for the sheer power and maleness that seemed to be reflected in the rock-steady brace of his thighs. Kes shifted, warmth infusing her entire body as she thought about having the opportunity to touch, to taste…to smell up close the sensual scent of masculinity and smoldering sweet wood.

No, it wouldn’t be so bad to enjoy him for a time if he shared her lighthearted intentions. She craved what he had made her feel. She was starving for it, in all honesty. Partly, she feared it was a fluke that had only come in the heat of that long-awaited moment in the parlor. She was afraid of never feeling that intensity again, that release. God, how she needed that release. It stirred within her so hungrily that a fine sheen of perspiration broke out across her skin. She had to draw in a shaking, cooling breath before she jumped him like a demented sex maniac.

This was so unlike her. Why was she thinking this way? Feeling this way? She was aroused and her body was seeking him even though he was ignorant of it as he moved easily around his bedchamber. If he took a moment to look at her, to see the glistening of her skin and the thrust of her straining nipples beneath red velvet, what would she do? Pull him down to her? Invite him to fill the hollow place he had left between her legs when he’d withdrawn from her the last time? Would that be such a crime?

Noah opened the wardrobe door and stepped out of her line of sight, carefully hiding his expression and forcefully tamping down the surges of emotion and need twisting through him like a storm. He bent his head and tried to breathe, tried to cool the raging torrent of heated blood flooding him into iron hardness until he throbbed painfully with it. Even if he hadn’t seen the obvious sensuality wending sinuously through her body, even if he’d missed the rampant flush of her rising body temperature, he would have known her thoughts. They were so powerful that they had burst the confines of her mind and crashed into his. Not words or sentences, but bold impressions of her desire for him, of her cravings and the demands her body wanted to make upon his.

He had been used to receiving thoughts and impressions from his sister Legna. As a Mind Demon, she had always shared emotional impressions and experiences with him as practice and just because it was a knee-jerk response to their close sibling relationship.

But all of that was a mere shadow compared to the power of reading the wild thoughts of his Imprinted mate. To feel and to know of her appetite for him, to understand with undeniable clarity what she wanted on so base a level, it was intoxicating. However, she didn’t know he was becoming able to read her thoughts, or that she could possibly read his as well. He had to be careful. With her inexperience, it could be
his
needs she was mistaking for her own. She could inadvertently be mirroring his own savage desires if she tapped into what he was trying so hard to repress. He had some mighty powerful passions locked up inside himself; Kestra endangered his control like nothing else could. While many of those passions could be intensely pleasurable, there were potentially dangerous ones as well.

Noah didn’t think that even Demons fully understood the emotions that came with the element of Fire. They thought emotions were attributable to females and therefore, less dangerous. They thought he was all about the physical, the fire, and the energy. The emotions were for Hannah, his sister and a female Fire Demon.

But there were never absolutes when it came to Demon power past a certain age, or perhaps even in a certain genetic combination. As time ticked nearer to making an Ancient of him, his power grew, but additionally, his emotions grew more and more volatile. Only his study, responsibilities, and iron will had kept them under control thus far. Jealousy. Anger. Rage. Hatred. Passion. Love. Devotion. Hurt. Loyalty. Joy. Ecstasy. The potential was staggering. The times when others had thought he’d lost control? They hadn’t suspected that he was actually still half in control in those moments of volatile overflow, that he wasn’t truly flinging himself wildly into the emotional discharge. There was no true release for him, and he did not think there ever could be. Even so, losing half his control had made for some pretty impressive and damaging displays. He couldn’t think about what he would be capable of if he ever lost completely his grip on his inner serenity. He had come so close before Kestra had arrived, before he’d finally touched her and smelled her sweet and soothing availability.

What would happen if someone as green and as unsuspecting as Kestra was were to accidentally tap into that volatility? With no training and no grounding? Noah had to prepare her. He was running out of time, and dawn would be approaching in only a few hours. What could potentially happen between them on the night of the Hallowed moon? No one knew. His kind was a rarity, his power phenomenal and unheard of at this age and level.

What if she wasn’t yet strong enough to dampen the power surges he might give off in the heat of any given moment? He already knew he couldn’t maintain control around her. His ability to protect someone close to his body from fire would protect her, but what of a castle full of aides and visitors? Servants and friends? True, on Samhain they were likely to be elsewhere, the holiday releasing them of duties and obligations by tradition, but those who had nothing to do or were afraid of their own needs were always welcome to stay.

Noah reached to rub at the tension in his temple. He was giving himself a headache with all of these thoughts and worries. There was too much to do and no time in which to do it right. That included taking his beautiful mate to bed the way she deserved, with nothing but honesty, truth, and full disclosure between them. The tension in his head exploded into tightening pain that coiled down the back of his neck and shoulders.

“I can’t believe I slept the whole way here,” Kestra offered at last when she got tired of trying to stare at him through the wardrobe door. “How is that possible? Car to plane to car and all the way up the stairs? I never sleep like that. I must have been boring company.”

“You were exhausted and recovering,” he countered, slowly looking through his clothes before settling on the more modern convention of slacks and a matching black polo shirt.

She supposed she had to accept that. She had to confess that she’d never remembered being so tired, so drained of energy.

Kestra’s brow furrowed and she rubbed at her temple as an unexpected flare of painful tension shot across it and down the back of her neck. It was an instant tension headache, but she couldn’t understand its sudden source. She was the calmest she’d been since she’d been rescued from Sands’s apartment. Noah was pulling on his clothes behind the cover of the wardrobe door, so she was able to push the pain away and formulate a halfway decent smile by the time he emerged fully dressed. He walked around to her side of the bed and took a seat, once again by her hip, facing her. Since she was sitting up, it brought them very close and she could see the lines tucked at the corners of his eyes were not all there because of his smile. There was tension bracketing his lips. She reached to smooth the lines away with a gentle touch.

“Hey,” she said softly, her heart suddenly hitching with confused excitement as it tried to settle on anxiety or exhilaration.

“Hello,” he returned, his charming smile reaching the jade behind the smoke of his eyes.

“Are we going to have ‘the talk’ now?”

Apparently her reminder disturbed him. He reached up to his temple, rubbing at the spot with a strong thumb. At least she wasn’t the only one rattled by all this, she thought with amusement.

“Kes…are you happy in your life?”

Kestra’s breath stopped midexhale as the question impacted her. Her knee-jerk response was to tell him that she was really damn happy with her life, thank you very much, so go piss up a rope. She knew why he was asking. Her heart pounded her ribs into a pulp because he was asking.

“Sometimes.” It was all she could force out of her clogged respiratory system. It was a lame response! She was supposed to be taking a stand here! What the hell was wrong with her?

“You strike me as the sort who leads a very full and busy life.”

“I do,” she agreed with more ease. His acknowledgment compensated for everything she hadn’t gotten across to him. “And an unusual one. Both business and pleasure take me all over the world. I see and do things that make my life very…not run-of-the-mill.”

“I can understand that. My life is not run-of-the-mill, either.”

That she didn’t believe. He had roots here in his big, anachronistic castle. She sensed he had a large network of supportive friends. He was just the type who would engender that type of loyalty. All she had to do was remind herself how easily he had slipped past her rather prickly defenses without her even realizing it. That took a skill with people that, frankly, she envied. It was a skill that produced attachments and ties, however, so she had long ago decided she was better off without it. She could see that he didn’t make enemies easily, and while she tried not to, it almost invariably happened.

He’d said he was a cultural leader, which, while it could mean anything, implied responsibilities of a political nature. He was clearly some kind of rallying point for his people. He had to be. Only people with that kind of power and devotion used the term “my people” with such soft ease.

“I don’t think your life is anywhere near as wild as mine is. I have some fairly hair-raising hobbies.”

“Like?” he encouraged.

“Whitewater rafting, spelunking, cliff diving, base jump—” She broke off because she was watching his expression turn to very still stone. Not anger, not rage or irritation. Just still. “Noah,” she said carefully, fending off disappointment, “don’t ask me questions if you can’t handle the answers. I’m trying to be truthful and I’m not by nature a truthful person.”

Noah blinked at the rebuke, as gentle as it was. She was right. She was also using her enhanced intuition to see past the mask he tried to use to cover up his reactions to her death-defying list of relaxations. How could he explain to her how terrifying the thought of her being hurt or killed was for him? He couldn’t bear life without her. Imprinting or no, he couldn’t live in a world without touching her sugar-soft hair, tasting her sweet mouth, laughing at her barbed humor.

She was proving to be wise, stretching her limits to communicate with him, which proved her ability to adapt and be receptive if she wanted to be. He knew there was pain, that all of those hobbies and the rest of the danger she subjected herself to were an attempt to kill off a fear that she couldn’t touch no matter how hard she tried. The closer her mind got to his, the more positive he was of that.

Still, he had no right to judge or to place limitations on her. He hadn’t even given her the courtesy of telling her that her life would change.

But he would.

“Kes, if you are looking for dangerous things, they are far closer than you might think,” he said softly to her, reaching again to touch her hair. “You were born to be great. You were born to be in a position that will always be dangerous.”

“I already know that,” she said, looking at him with surprise and confusion warring in her features. “I just don’t know how you know that.”

You were born to be mine.

Noah looked dead into her blue-ice eyes and pushed the thought into her mind with all of his mental strength, with every trick Legna had ever taught him to help her read his mind.

Kestra felt a ferocious chill burst over her skin, her headache flared, and then…

The words entered her mind with a growl of permanence, impossible to be her own because they were in
his
voice, loud and clear, rich and sexy. There was no mistaking it, and there was no mistaking the look in his eyes that repeated the phrase over and over.

You were born to be mine
.

“No,” she whispered, instantly shaking her head and trying to dislodge the hand in her hair at the same time.

He only tightened his grip and brought them closer, very nearly placing his mouth against hers, their breath hot as it mingled against their faces in rapid rushes.

“Listen to me very carefully, Kestra. Look into my eyes and remember only one thing. Trust yourself. Trust yourself if you do not trust me. You laugh in the face of fear, remember? It is in everything I have seen and heard you do. I need you to be fearless for me, for just a little while, long enough to hear me out. Do not run away from me without letting me explain.”

Kestra’s eyes were wide, her breath was quick, but she couldn’t form honest fear when she looked into his eyes. Not fear of him. Oh, she was terrified of what that thought floating in her head made her feel. She was screaming with that fear from top to bottom. But that had nothing to do with his belief that she was born to be his, and everything to do with the fact that she believed him.

All the way to her soul.

He shifted his hold on her head, his hand sliding to catch her around the nape of her neck, that soothing, protective grasp that so disarmed her, so relaxed her. God, his touch was like magic. It
was
magic. She was convinced of it now. He was some sort of magician and he was about to pull a bunch of bunnies out of his hat.

She laughed, not caring that it sounded a little hysterical.