Through Time-Pursuit (3 page)

~ Two ~

The Dark Prince Pestale

“DAMN, HOT DAMN, I like this Earth, and these humans make excellent subjects,” the Dark Prince said out loud before glancing at the pretty human in his bed. He stood naked next to the window overlooking the busy street below.

He smiled to himself and walked back to the bed, bent, and fondled the young woman’s full breasts. “I wish that my brothers were here with me to share you … lovely thing …”

“Oh yes … oh call them … tell them to join us …” she said on a husky note.

He laughed. “I only wish it were that easy.” A hard look took over his dark features. “Soon—it will be soon.”

“Are they as handsome as you?” she said, crawling on her knees to touch his cock and lick its length.

“Yes … each in his own way.” He held her head and pushed himself into her mouth, worked her hard and fast, and then even as she choked on his largeness he went off to the sound of his pleasure. He removed it from her mouth and allowed his seed to drip over her breasts. “Rub it on your nipples …”

She was already his, ruined for all else but sex. She would never recover from the Lianhan sexual addition. She did exactly what he asked and smiled for him.

He moved away from her and went back to the window. The Queen of the Seelie Fae had vowed to find him and return him to the Dark Realm. He sneered to himself. Let her try …

He wasn’t about to allow the Seelie Trackers to capture him and return him there to a dead world, not now, not when all of the Human Realm lay before him, ready to devour.

He was fairly certain he would rather wish to cease to exist!

So, he kept a force of Dark Magic surrounding him as he evaded their efforts to find him. He didn’t think of it as running from them but rather simply staying free until he could find a way to accomplish his plans.

He was pleased with his efforts thus far. He had given them a merry chase, almost doing circles around them as he used his black magic to disguise his scent. He was nearly impossible to track.

He thought of Gaiscioch—Gais, who was nothing in the end but a mad fool. Gais had become obsessed, and that obsession had ruled his actions. Now Gais was dead. It was what Pestale had planned for the Seelie traitor all along. He had just been biding his time, but then the Seelie Fae put an end to him.

Pestale felt so much above what Gaiscioch had been. His goals were clear-sighted and not driven by obsession. While it was of paramount importance that he free Morrigu and his two remaining brothers, he would not give up all for them.

It was as simple as that. He would do what he could—he would leave no avenue untraveled, no corner unturned in his efforts to free them—but should a choice have to be made, he would always choose self-interests first.

If he had to choose between his freedom and theirs, he could and would forsake them.

He’d often thought about himself in this wild Human Realm where so much was put into two categories—
good or evil
—and had concluded that he was not evil. The Seelie Fae had labeled him as such, but he’d decided that his actions were reasonable. He was, after all, a superior being, a Royal, and just as humans destroyed insects that annoy, he had the right to do the same—and there were so many he considered them no more than insects.

However, a complication had definitely arisen. That complication had begun the moment he had seen her and had grown into a yearning he had never known was possible for him to feel.

She had stood there in the midst of a screaming horde of humans during the close of Gais’s war two days ago. Her flaming red curls blew around her stunningly beautiful face. Her magical aura and her delicious scent wafted to him on a wave of something emanating from her—
was it emotion?
—yes, he felt the vibes of her uncontrolled emotions, and he couldn’t look away from her.

And then he saw the child—a boy on the ground—and the Dark Fae creature, one of his own in fact, retreating from her. She didn’t take the time to chase and kill it. Instead, she said the child’s name and bent to him.

He watched as she enacted the Féth Fiada and rendered herself and the child invisible to the crush of people running in all directions. Although a Dark Fae, Pestale was a Fae, and the Féth Fiada had no effect on him.

He frowned, wondering why she had not given chase to her enemy—the Dark Fae who ran for its life. As a Seelie Fae, she should have run the creature to earth, yet she stayed with the unconscious boy.

The beauty intrigued him. In fact—
he could not look away.

He stood unblinking as he watched her, mesmerized by her loveliness and the force of her ‘emotion’, a thing he did not possess. He saw the grace in her lines and her movement. He saw her vitality. There was purpose about her, an aura that glowed with her essence—
and he knew he had to have her.

He drank in the vision of her alabaster skin, which was perfection, and her lips—
damn
, but he immediately wanted to kiss those lips right then and there. He wanted to scoop her up and make her his own on the spot.

A short cry escaped her, and the sound of her voice thrilled him as she repeated the child’s name, “David,” while she stroked the boy’s face. He thought of her touching him like that, stroking his face, and even two days later he could recall how his hard-on had throbbed for her.

People had been milling about, but no one saw the two on the ground. The driver of the car that had hit the child was looking around himself like a man crazed. He had seen the boy go down, but there was no sign of him. He repeated over and over, “He ran right in front of me …”

Pestale watched a tear roll down the beautiful Seelie Fae’s cheek as she laid hands to the child’s many wounds and heard her say, “
Forgive me, my Queen
 …” as she clearly broke the Seelie Fae rules and healed the child.

He immediately wanted her for himself. Here was a Seelie Fae who did what she wanted regardless of her queen’s wishes. He liked that a great deal. He didn’t know her name, and he didn’t know how he would find her, but her image played with his mind.
She
was the
one—
the one he knew he had to have for all time … or until he wearied of her.

However, he had to keep on the move for his scent to stay disguised. He had seen both Danté and Breslyn just the night before, and he was certain those two would be difficult to evade once they figured out how he was disguising his scent.

She was a princess
. He had seen the gold torque around her neck with the etchings of her Seelie House—
Nimrough.
And although at the time he’d had to make his retreat, he had decided beyond all doubt that he would find her and make her his own.

He had shifted away, keeping the pleasure her scent gave him in his memory. He had shifted away, but her face was there …

From that moment on, he had thought of her constantly. Even when he took his pleasure with the pretties he had taken to his bed, he thought of her …

He sighed to himself. The humans were a source of sexual relief, but he needed more; he needed the redheaded Seelie princess, and the time was coming when he would search her out and take her.

He thought of his father, the Dark King, whose powers were untold. His father could put an end to all of this and imprison him with the blink of an eye, but he knew the Dark King could not be bothered to leave his precious world, where he and his Crystal evolved together. So much for interference from them!

It amused him that Chancemont considered himself the hunter—that he, a Royal Prince, should be the hunted.

He wanted to stand and fight the Milesian and display his exceptional warrior skills, for he knew himself to be a worthy opponent. However, he meant to pick the time and the place and the method. Then he would lay the Milesian low … him and that young Seelie Fae prince whose woman he had killed.

Yes
, he’d killed her with the Death Sword, and he had no regrets about it.

Regret—such an odd word,
he thought
.
It had no viable meaning for him, and he had no use for it. He had done what needed to be done at the time.

He had wondered at first why they’d sought revenge. The Milesian woman’s action called on his action: she had killed his favorite brother; thus,
he’d killed her.

It was over
. Done—as the humans said: an eye for an eye … a life for a life.

Now what he needed to concentrate on were his goals. He would design a dimension of his own. He was equipped with the power and the magic to do so. He had watched the Dark King play at just such a thing, and he had memorized the spell and the knack of it. Now, he would make use of what he had learned. His father—his oh, so great Dark King father—had never meant for him to have the skill to accomplish what few others (save the Seelie Royals) knew how to do. He would have to draw on a living dimension, which would of course die—as would all its inhabitants—when he usurped what he needed.
No matter.

He would bring his redheaded Seelie princess to his new dimension and make her his consort, and together they would free his Dark Fae brothers and the Dark Fae creatures, also in some macabre way his brethren, and rule the earth as it needed to be ruled.

She would help him in this endeavor because in the end, by any means available to him, he would make her worship him as her mate!

For now, however, he had to attend to his immediate needs, and thinking about the beautiful Seelie princess had made him hot. He looked at the human woman spread out so lusciously across his hotel bed. She had served to assuage his needs.
She was of course ruined
. She would never be satisfied by any one male. She would never get enough sex, and in the end, she would die.

He spoke softly to her. “You want to please me, pretty—don’t you?” He moved to her and fondled her plump breasts, teased a pink nipple, bent his head, and licked it as she groaned. He came up to whisper as he bent her backwards once more, “That’s right … you want to take care of your prince …”

“Yes … anything you want …” She pursed her lips for his kiss.

He looked at her and thought,
Lovely
. When he was done with her, the kind thing would be to kill her. But for now, he wasn’t done. He moved into a sitting position, pressed up against the cushioned headboard, and said softly, “Get on it … kiss it, lick it, suck on it again …” He watched her scramble eagerly to do his bidding. He closed his eyes as her mouth worked his dick and he held her head, making her glide up and down its length faster and faster still.

All at once, he growled hungrily, pushed her onto her back, and rammed into her. He worked her furiously, roughly, assuaging his lust, but he thought of the pretty redheaded Seelie princess, which brought him to a resounding climax.

He wasn’t done though; he had just shot off his load, but he was a Fae, ready almost at once to give it another go. He picked her up, set her on her hands and knees but this time on the floor, and rammed into her butt.

His thoughts were,
I am Pestale, the Dark Prince, and I shall have everything I want!

~ Three ~

PROVING HERSELF TO Chancemont was going to be so much harder than she had at first anticipated.

Princess Royce stood with her feet apart and a hand on her denim-covered hip. The temperature in Dravo was warm, so she removed her denim jacket and slung it over one shoulder. She looked around, fascinated by the ongoing busy scene. It was like nothing she had ever seen before, and it was completely captivating.

This was the world of the Milesians.

She had heard all the tales about them, none of them any good. The Seelie Fae still resented the Milesians and weren’t pleased about the Treaty.

She also knew they were immortals; some in Faery said it was by accident, others said it had been by design. She rather thought, as she looked around, it had been a combination of both.

Their treaty with the Milesians, who had been their enemies in the war where they fought to keep the occupied land now known as Ireland and Scotland, had been in effect and respected by both parties for thousands of years.

After the Treaty, the Milesians found they could no longer live amongst mortals and had created Dravo … and this world was absolutely nothing like what she had expected.

Rolling green hills outlined the sky in the distance. Past the town she could see farmland. She did a turn in place and realized she stood at the curbing of a small and charming park in the town square.

People of all ages milled about laughing and seemingly ordinary as they went about their business, but what was not ordinary was the fact that some groups of young and old wore clothing of modern times, while others were dressed in fashions of bygone eras. What was not ordinary was the fact that clippity clopping horse-drawn carriages occupied the same hard gravel roads as automobiles.

Two eras stood out as dominant—medieval and modern—and yet they cohabited in peace and harmony.

Houses and shops lined the paved streets of the town, and people were clothed in anything and everything.

She had opened and closed her mouth more than once as she contemplated the scene when a hardy laugh and a finger under her chin made her turn sideways and look up into a handsome young prince’s face.

“Red! What are you doing here?” exclaimed Trevor with a wide grin.

“The queen …” she answered on a heavy sigh.

“The queen?” He frowned. “Never say you have to do some kind of penance in Dravo? That doesn’t make any sense.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Penance, yes, but not in Dravo. I have been assigned to you and the Milesian Chancemont on this quest of yours to find Dark Prince Pestale.”

Trevor’s face was drawn with concern. He shook his head. “
No
, that can’t be right. This isn’t
your
battle …”

“Apparently the queen thinks it is. She said I might be helpful, and she is anxious to have Pestale routed out and captured so that she can return him to the Dark Realm before he does any further harm in the human one,” Royce answered again on an unhappy sigh as she continued to take in the scene around them.

“No,” Trevor repeated. “Red—you can’t mean it—she didn’t actually think
you
would be able to help
us?”

She took instant umbrage and folded her arms across her chest with her jacket tucked in under her arm. “Excuse me, Trevor?”

“Well, you never took your warrior training seriously at all, did you? When it came to jousting, hand-to-hand combat, and such, you always cried off. Royce,
you can’t really fight
.”

She relented. It was true. She had never enjoyed participating in the actual contact fighting that went on. “Well, as to that, perhaps I didn’t find it as wonderful as you did, but I did take it seriously, and you are wrong about me. I had quite a few combat sessions, with Breslyn in fact. When he heard I was worried about taking another Fae student on and possibly hurting him, he offered to help me out and taught me how to control my royal powers.” She put up her chin. “And he said I did very well, in fact.” She smiled superiorly at him. “And then, I didn’t need to keep practicing the same skills every single day … had other things to do.”

“But, Red … you don’t even have a death weapon … do you?”

She pointed her open hand into the air above her head, and her Death Sword appeared. She closed her fist over it and said, “What do you think this is? My brother has my father’s sword, and I have my mother’s.” She sent it off once more.

“But … look at you. You aren’t even dressed for this—jeans and sneakers!”

She looked down at herself. “What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?” Her hand waved over his leather vest that he wore over a brown tee, with leather pants and sandals. “I’m dressed just as fight-perfect as you.”

“You don’t look intimidating,” he scoffed. “You look like a human—a schoolgirl,” he added on a laugh.

“What, and you think that you look intimating in that leather outfit? You look like a hunk on the make—nothing more.” She snorted.

His well shaped brow went up. “A hunk? Really?” And then he remembered his argument and stuck out his chin. “I am a warrior, dressed in the leathers of a warrior. You … well, Red, you look like a young and inexperienced Fae—if it weren’t for your torque, I wouldn’t even notice that you are a princess.” He shook his head. “Pestale will laugh if you pit yourself against him dressed like some human teenager!”

Unconsciously her hand went to the gold torque around her neck, a sign of her royalty. She often forgot it was there. She sighed and silently conceded that what he was saying had a ring of truth to it. She often dressed like a human, toned down the iridescence in her eyes, tried to fit in with them. She loved humans. She understood them and had unwittingly tried to mimic them. Did that diminish who she was, she wondered. At any rate, she waved this aside. “I don’t intend to challenge him. I mean to help you and the Milesian in other ways—like finding him for instance.”

“I am proud of being a Milesian,” said a strong male voice at her back. “But I have a name, and ye may use it when referring to me.”

Royce looked around and saw a huge, muscular, amazingly handsome male, naked to the waist but for a leather strap across his chest that held the Death Sword sheathed at his back. He like Trevor also wore leather pants—in fact, she thought with her mouth dropping, he wore them very well!

The next thing she knew she was picked up by the waist and brought up close to his body. She stared, stunned for the moment. His blond mass of thick waves blew around his face in the breeze, and his tattoos were intricate and spoke of a mixture of Dark and Light Magic. As his blue eyes scanned her own, her brain jumbled into freeze position and went blank—totally blank. She could think of nothing to say,
certainly not
‘unhand me’. No, those words never came to mind.

He was virile, his voice was deep and intoxicating, and he was in command of himself in a way that gave off sensual vibes.

The princess tried to recover and cleared her throat. However, at that point in their meeting he picked her up cradle-like in his strong arms, and she had to hold onto his neck for balance. She freed one finger and pointed it at his nose as she told him, “Put. Me. Down.”

“Ye doona want me to do that, do ye, Seelie Fae?”

“I do and now—right now!”

He laughed, set her on her sneakered feet, looked her over, and laughed again. She felt her cheeks fill with heat and avoided meeting his gaze as she bent to pick up her denim jacket, which had fallen during their meeting.

“Och aye, if ye point that sweet peach at me ye’ll be finding yerself in m’arms once more, lass,” he said on a low and husky note.

She unbent and gave him a scalding glance as she held her jacket to just below her breasts, which drew his eyes to her breasts. She felt hot all over.

“This is Princess Royce,” stuck in Trevor, shaking his head over this and frowning. “Apparently our queen has asked that she tag along and … er …
help us
.”

“Help us? She be no more than a slip of lass!
Help us
,”
scoffed Chancemont.

“I am a Royal Princess, and I am more than capable of lending a hand!” Royce stood up to the Milesian in spite of the fact that he made her feel unlike herself. In fact, he made her insides quiver, which was she thought very uncomfortable.

The next thing she knew she was in his arms and they were shifting. There was no time to object, but she realized at once that the Milesian mode of shifting was different than a Fae’s. She didn’t like it.

It was a rocky ride, and she held onto him. However, she scarcely had time to consider in how many ways she didn’t like their form of locomotion before she blinked and discovered he held her firmly on a bed of smooth green grass. Judging by the array of colors, extraordinary foliage, and extremely unlikely wildlife milling about, she knew they were in quite another dimension.

“Let go of me, and where are we!”

“Aye, take a good look about, lovely Royal Princess. This is where ye belong … at a place like this, with a man, ready to pleasure ye …”

She made a fist and punched him in his rock-hard stomach. Milesian strength was comparable to Fae strength, and he didn’t flinch. Frustrated she said, “How dare you!” Silently she marveled at her stupidity.
How dare you
? What was she—from a medieval time?

He ignored it and said, “Ye should be back
in Faery
. Ye should be doing … lovely things with yer lovely …” He took her fingers and put them to his lips, brushing them with his lips, and she felt her eyelids get lazy. He moved further down her hand to her wrist, placed a warm kiss there, and whispered, “… with yer lovely hands. Ye should leave the battle to the warriors who know how to stay alive.”

“I … I …” She was trapped in sensation. His kiss on her fingers had sent shooting stars through her brain, frying all meaningful thought. She was momentarily stunned and refused to admit her overwhelming sexual attraction to this big, blond he-man.

She had to get it together, she told herself, and tried speaking once again. “Don’t speak to me like that. You have no idea what I am capable of doing. Perhaps you and Trevor will be pleasantly surprised.”

He grinned a superior grin, and she wanted to slap it off his handsome face. Before she could put thought into action, however, his mouth managed to find her lips, and that was the end of all logic for Princess Royce.

His tongue teased her bottom lip and then entered and tasted her waiting tongue while one hand went to the nape of her neck and drew her closer. She found herself meeting his thrusting, oh so delicious tongue with her own. She found herself bending to his touch, melting against his body.

What are you doing, Royce?
A voice inside her head attempted to bring things back to order.
Shut up
,
another voice answered. She didn’t know she had so many females in her brain!

His kiss lasted, or had he moved it into kiss two without her realizing? All she knew was that she wanted the kiss to go on and on. She wanted this feeling to continue to cover her and keep her, and she was damn sure she had never been kissed like this before.

When he released her, his hand moved from the back of her neck down her spine, sending tingles of wondrous shivers through her body. His hand went further, grabbed hold of her ass, and pulled her into him with a gruff, determined movement, and he whispered hungrily, “Now that, wee beauty, is what I want to do with ye. That is what ye be made for. So doona ask me to make ye a part of a team out to do one thing, kill …
ye weren’t made for killing.”

A part of her ‘thinking’ brain conceded silently that he was right. She had never wanted to kill anything, but she knew she had the skills to help him and Trevor find their foe. She could help with the finding.

“I … I don’t mean to fight, though I will if needed. What I can do is all about the
tracking
 … I have special skills for tracking,” she whispered.

His hands went to either side of her head. He took fistfuls of hair, raising the tresses up and then suddenly dropping them as he let go and stood back. His voice was low and husky and made her body silently moan for more of him. “Lovely …” he said.

“Stop—you have to stop and take me seriously.” She made a valiant attempt to get matters in hand.

He ignored this and took her back into his arms, bent his head, and kissed her hard and long, and she allowed him.
Hell
, she thought, it was as though her body begged him to kiss her.

It was true; she just had never experienced anything like him before. He was larger than life and full of himself, yes, but with good reason, and she was on sexual fire. It was time, wasn’t it, that she found herself in that position?

All she knew was that she was totally aroused, in body, heart, and mind and wanted more. However, she was made of sterner stuff and managed to pull out of his hold.

“Enough. I can help, and I am going to help—get used to it.”

“Ye are helping. Giving pleasure to a warrior … is a great deal of help …” Chance said huskily.

It is amazing how the wrong words can reverberate in the air until you can hear nothing else
, she thought as she replayed his words. Give pleasure to a warrior? That was how he saw her—e just for pleasure? Well, maybe that was how Milesian females allowed themselves to be perceived, but she was a Fae, a Royal Fae at that, and proud to be a female and an equal! Chance’s words woke her from the dreaminess of his kiss and set her on her own two feet!