Worlds of Obsession (Celtic Otherworlds) (9 page)

             
“Well, you can’t stay here.  Those Buggane have probably already told whoever sent them that you have the female, and you can bet whoever it is wants her back.”

“
Fuck!  What Buggane?”  The nasty, ogre-like shape-shifters were seldom seen beyond their native Isle of Man, although they could tunnel unseen underground for great distances.  Usually when they were hired to do someone else’s dirty work.  If they were here… well, that was no coincidence either. 

“The ones I saw hanging around last night, trying to pass themselves off as human.  The claws always give them away
.  That and the drool.”  Jace made a disgusted face and shivered.  “They took off before I could get to them.”

“Fuck”, Bastien said again, shoving his hands through his hair.  That’s not good… I have to get her out of here.”

“You could always go to Avalon until things calm down.  Or at least until we get more intel.”  The Isle of Avalon was, of course, its own realm, only accessible by water, and only by those who had clearance to be there.  At least he would have some time and space to think, and he could start sending out a few discreet inquiries to beings he trusted, to see if he could find out who Liv was and what had happened to her.  The sooner this whole mess was resolved, the better.

“Yeah
, you’re right...  Okay, I’m gonna take her there.  Would you do me a favor and call ahead to Conan?”

Jace frowned, but nodded his head.  “Of course… but Bastien, are you sure you’re all right to do this?  You seem… off.  I can take her to Avalon if you…”

“No!  I got this.  I’m good, really.”  Yeah, he was anything but good right now, and all he really wanted was to run up those stairs and check on Liv.  He could barely concentrate, wondering if she was still there, waiting for him to come back like he’d told her to.  “I’ve got one more night of duty this week, then I’m leaving”, he told Jace.  And yeah, he started running by the time he was halfway up the stairs.

Chapter 7

              Liv’s heart beat exponentially faster when the door finally opened and Bastien walked into the room.  Oh god, what was it called when the victim fell for her captor?  Oh yes, Stockholm Syndrome. 
I think I might be coming down with it…
  But really, what man had a right to look that
hot?
 

She had spent the past hour or so
either pacing the room or lost in thought, and okay, going through Bastien’s things, not that he had many.  Several of the drawers in his dresser were completely empty, and his wardrobe seemed to consist of nothing but jeans, black tee shirts, and leather.  Not that she was complaining, because he looked absolutely gorgeous in denim and leather.  There were no personal items other than a few toiletries, no photos, nothing to tell her any more about him, unless it was in the big mahogany desk sitting in the far corner.  All of its drawers were locked.

Well
it wasn’t as if he’d actually hurt her, she reasoned.  All he’d done was to keep her with him for reasons which he couldn’t disclose.  But he must have reasons,
right? 

             
Liv smiled at him as he stood in the doorway, actually looking less hard-assed and more adorably uncertain.  “Hi.”

             
“Hi.”

             
She smiled.  “You can come in… I mean it’s your room and all.”

             
“I know… I just wanted to make sure you didn’t need anything.  Did someone bring you food?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t that hungry though.  Still a little nauseous from the sedative, I think.”

Bastien winced and looked a little guilty.  “You should get some sleep now”, he told her.  “I’ll be just down the hall.”

             
“You don’t have to… I mean the bed is huge…”  She watched as his eyes flared wide for a split second and his looked at the bed, then he looked at her.  His eyes grew darker and his whole body seemed to tense.  He liked the thought of sharing a bed with her… and that was really good to know. 
Maybe you should have been asking more important things, Liv, like, oh I don’t know, why you’re really here and when you can leave?
  Yup, Stockholm Syndrome, and she’d come down with it in record time, too.

***

             
Bastien wanted to knock his head against the wall.  Repeatedly.  She was offering to share his bed, and it was slowly, torturously, blowing his mind. 
She
was slowly blowing his mind.  He had saved her from a deadly attack, only to essentially kidnap her and jab a sedative into her arm.  Then he had brought her to a strange place and locked her in a room alone for hours, was basically a total jerk, and here she was offering to let him sleep by her side.  Fucking
fearless
.  His respect for her kicked up another notch.  But, unfortunately, so did his attraction to her.

             
But he couldn’t sleep next to her, because no fucking way would he be able to keep from touching her, and he already felt guilty enough for wanting a female at all, let alone one female in particular.  He was still mated, after all, and that was meant to be forever.  Wanting
any
female was arguably need, wanting one in particular was definitely cheating.

             
“No”, he told her, backing slowly out of the doorway before he could change his mind.  “I’ll see you in the morning.”  He went to the guest room he had claimed and flopped back on the bed, but it was a long, long time before he got any sleep.

It was just after 11 am when he woke up.  Bastien looked at the alarm clock by his bed and swore, then turned and rubbed his eyes.  He never slept this late, even after he was out all night hunting.  He usually only needed a few hours of sleep, tops.  He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, wondering what the hell was wrong with him.  Maybe he
was
finally losing his fucking mind.  He frowned at the sound of feminine laughter coming from somewhere downstairs. 
Liv.  Downstairs?
He vaulted out of bed and threw on his jeans and the same black tee he had worn the day before. 

The door to his room was open, and Liv wasn’t in there.  He had locked the door
when he left her last night… he remembered locking it.  Turning, he headed for the stairs.  When he reached the kitchen, he paused in the doorway, taking in the slightly surreal sight before him.  Jace must have returned early from hunting, and now he and Liv were apparently making breakfast together.  The sight of Liv in a cozy domestic scene with a powerful and, okay… really good looking Berserker made him want to throttle something.  But
not
because he’d had any recent fantasies about bringing Liv breakfast in bed after a long night of passionate sex, then cuddling up beside her to feed her bites of toast. 
Nope
.

             
Liv turned from where she was buttering a pile of said toast.  Her smile at seeing him there made him feel… all goddamn warm and fuzzy inside, which clashed horribly with the vicious spike of jealousy he had just experienced.  “Good morning Bastien, did you sleep well?”

             
He grunted some sort of reply and went for the coffee pot, grabbing his favorite mug from the dish drainer and pouring himself a tall cup of black.

             
“Jace let me out of your room so I could get something to eat.  I think he must have heard my stomach growl from all the way downstairs.  We’re making breakfast, if you want some.”

             
Shit!  He hadn’t even fed her breakfast.  The female was hungry and all he could think about was his cock.  He really was being a complete, selfish ass.  He scrubbed his hands over his face, annoyed.

Jace, who was stirring a pan of scrambled eggs on the stove, gave him an ‘I think we have some catching up to do’ look, before darting his gaze to Liv.

              Bastien gave him a little nod.  They would talk later.  As a high-ranking member of the Glasgow area division of the Guild, Jace had a right to know exactly what was going on.

             
With the silent communication from Bastien, Jace relaxed his stance and returned to stirring the eggs.  There had to be at least two dozen in the pan, enough for two or maybe three males.  As Bastien sipped his coffee, Erath came in behind him and slid an empty mug across the granite counter top. 

             
“Some for me, too.  Late night last night.”

             
What the fuck?  Now the Vampire was here too? 

“What are you doing here, Erath?
  I thought you were sent to London yesterday.”

             
Erath shrugged as he piled sugar into his coffee.  “I took a few days off.  Thought you might need me here.  Plus Jace owes me big time from our last poker game.  I have to collect before he weasels his way out of it.  Besides which, this place is so much fucking nicer than London.”  He winked at Liv, and she smiled as she finished buttering the toast and put the heaping plate of it on the table. 

             
Jace must have filled him in on the situation with Liv, but Bastien didn’t like the swift bolt of anger and possessiveness that hit him hard when she smiled at the other male.  It was like he wanted to drag her off to his lair and keep any other male from so much as
looking
at her.  It was
just
like that.  And that was just
fucked up
.             

***

They ate breakfast together, and Liv watched in amazement as the three guys devoured everything on the table.  Not surprising, since all three were some of the biggest, most muscular specimens of maleness that she had ever seen.  And all three were absolutely gorgeous, on top of that.  But it was Bastien that caught her eye, and not just because she had met him first.  It was almost as if she could
feel
him there, feel his presence as if they were two magnets, pulling on each other.

             
As they were cleaning up, the doorbell rang, and Jace went to answer it.  “Leanan?”  The shock in his voice was apparent.

             
Liv watched as a lithe beauty with striking green eyes and gorgeous red hair sauntered into the room carrying a plate covered in tinfoil.  “Hello Jace, dear”, she said, patting his cheek affectionately.  “Erath!” she called, quite loudly.

             
Erath appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking stunned and confused. 
“Grandma?”

             
Liv did a double-take. 
Grandma?
  Was that some sort of an inside joke?  The woman couldn’t be any older than thirty, tops.  And what was up with all of these people being so good-looking?

“Now Erath”,
the woman called Leanan chided him with a put-on frown, “You know it makes me feel old when you call me that.  Call me Leanan, dear.  Or Lee.  A lot of my friends call me Lee.”

             
“Okay… um… what are you doing here?  I don’t think I’ve seen you since the last family reunion, like thirty years ago.” 

             
She held out the plate with a big smile, her perfectly manicured red nails reflecting in the shiny foil.  “I baked you some cookies.  All by myself.”

             
“You did?  Why?”  He took the plate from her and gingerly peeked under the foil.  They certainly
looked
like cookies, although upon closer inspection, each one said ‘Oreo’ on top.

             
“Why wouldn’t I bake cookies for my favorite grandson?”  Erath narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but she only clapped her hands and looked around the room.  “So kids, what are we doing?”

             
Now Bastien and Jace were looking at her with narrowed eyes as well.

             
“Seriously, what are you doing here?”  Jace dead-panned, but Leanan had already focused her attention on Liv.

             
“Ah, there you are, honey.”  She paused to rummage around in the purse which was slung over her shoulder.  “I found your phone.”

             
Liv blinked in confusion as Leanan handed her what
did
appear to be her phone, right down to the pink, crystal encrusted case that Jess had given her for her birthday.  She tried to remember where she had last seen it, had she still had it when she got into the car with Bastien that night?  It was all such a blur.  “Where did you get my phone?”

             
“Bastien’s car.  It fell down between the seats.”

             
Bastien pushed off the wall he had been leaning against, suddenly alert.  “What the fuck were you doing in my…”

             
Leanan held up her hand right in front of his face to silence him.  “The important thing is that I found it.”

             
Bastien growled in annoyance and swatted at the hand, which Leanan dropped as she turned back to Liv, handing her the phone.

             
“You have a whole bunch of new messages from someone named Jess.  You might want to call her back, because she sounded really worried about you.”

             
“You listened to my messages?”  Liv was incredulous.  These people were all so
strange
.  She was seriously beginning to wonder if she was on some Scottish version of Candid Camera.  Or maybe the Twilight Zone.  Wait, hadn’t her phone been completely discharged?

             
Leanan shrugged.  “I pressed the button accidently, and then it wouldn’t stop.”

             
Liv bit her lip and looked down at the phone.  Ten new messages, all from Jess.  Damn, she must be really worried, or maybe something bad happened.  She glanced at the stairs, not really wanting to make a call in front of everyone.

             
Leanan leaned closer.  “Go”, she whispered.  “I’ll keep them busy.”

             
Liv nodded and headed back upstairs for some privacy.  Not even bothering to listen to any of the voicemails, Liv just hit re-dial.  Jess picked up on the first ring, as if she had been waiting for the call.

             
“Liv?  Where the hell are you?”  Even over the less than stellar cell connection, Liv could hear the distress in her best friend’s voice.

             
“I’m in Glasgow…  Jess?  What’s wrong?”

             
“What’s wrong? 
I’m
in Glasgow.  I closed the deals early and decided to come surprise you, but I’ve been calling for hours and you weren’t at your hotel.  I was worried sick!  What’s going on, Liv?  Where have you been?”

             
Liv put a hand to her forehead and rubbed at the spot between her eyes.  How could she have not thought to let Jess know she was okay?  Would Bastien have even let her make a call?  “I’m sorry Jess...  I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to worry you.  I know I should have called.  I just… well, some strange things happened, and my phone went missing and I only just found it…”