But after a moment, Bella’s eyes began to drift over Jacob’s body and the nature of her thoughts changed significantly, punctuated by a sexy, mischievous smile.
“Want to make love to a basketball?” she invited.
Jacob threw back his head and laughed, all painful memories banished in an instant, minimal feelings in the face of his beloved’s wink and smile.
You have not slept for many days together, Legna. Why do you assume you might have success today?”
Legna turned around sharply, driving her gaze and attention out the window, trying to use the sprawling lawn as a slate with which to fill her mind. Mind Demon he was not, but she knew he was capable of seeing far enough into her emotional state by just monitoring her physiological reactions to his observations. Legna bit her lip hard, furious that she should feel like the child he always referred to her as in their conversations. Young one, indeed. How would he like it if she referred to him as a decrepit old buzzard?
You say respect my elders, but what you mean is respecting my betters, is that not right? Are you so full of your own arrogance that you need me to bow and kowtow to you like some throwback fledgling? Or perhaps we should reinstate the role of concubines in our society. Then you may have the pleasure of claiming me and forcing me to fall to my knees, bowing low in respect of your masculine eminence!”
Gideon watched as she did just that, her gown billowing around her as she gracefully kneeled before him, so close to him that her knees touched the tips of his boots. She swept her hands to her sides, bowing her head until her forehead brushed the leather, her hair spilling like reams of heavy silk around his ankles.
The Ancient found himself unusually speechless, the strangest sensation creeping through him as he looked down at the exposed nape of her neck, the elegant line of her back. Unable to curb the impulse, Gideon lowered himself into a crouch, reaching beneath the cloak of coffee-colored hair to touch her flushed cheek. The heat of her anger radiated against his touch and he recognized it long before she turned her face up to him.
“Does this satisfy you, my lord Gideon?” she whispered fiercely, her eyes flashing like flinted steel and hard jade.
Gideon found himself searching her face intently, his eyes roaming over the high, aristocratic curves of her cheekbones, the amazingly full sculpture of her lips, the wide, accusing eyes that lay behind extraordinarily thick lashes. He cupped her chin between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, his fingertips fanning softly over her angrily flushed cheek.
“You do enjoy mocking me,” he murmured softly to her, the breath of his words close enough to skim across her face.
“No more than you seem to enjoy condescending to me,” she replied, her clipped words coming out on quick, heated breaths.
Gideon absorbed this latest venom with a blink of lengthy lashes. They kept their gazes locked, each seemingly waiting for the other to look away.
“You have never forgiven me,” he said suddenly, softly.
“Forgiven you?” She laughed bitterly. “Gideon, you are not important enough to earn my forgiveness.”
“Is your ego so fragile, Legna, that a small slight to it is irreparable?”
“Stop talking to me as if I were a temperamental child!” Legna hissed, moving to jerk her head back but finding his grip quite secure. “There was nothing slight about the way you treated me. I will never forget it, and I most certainly will never forget it!
His mouth came to hers suddenly, hovering above those thirsting lips as he drilled her with the intensity of his mercury gaze.
“Neliss . . .” he murmured, reverting to the elegance of their ancient language. “Neliss ent desita.”
Beauty of the ages.
He opened his eyes then, white fire flaring hotly within them.
“Send me home, Legna,” he commanded her, his voice hoarse with suppressed emotion.
She moved her head in affirmation even as she leaned toward him to catch his mouth once more in a brief, territorial kiss, her teeth scoring his bottom lip as she broke away. It was an incidental wound, one he could heal in the blink of an eye. But he wouldn’t erase her mark on him, and they both knew it.
Finally, she stepped back, closed her eyes, and concentrated on picturing his home in her thoughts. She had been in his parlor dozens of times as a guest, always accompanied by Noah. His library, his kitchen, even the grounds of the isolated estate were well known to her. She could have sent him to any of those locations.
But as she began to focus, her mind’s eye was filled with the image of a dark, elegant room she had never seen before. Hand-carved ebony-paneled walls soared up into a vast ceiling, enormous windows of intricate stained glass spilled colored light over the entire room as if a multitude of rainbows had taken up residence. It all centered around an enormous bed, the coverlet’s color indistinguishable under the blanket of colorful dawn sunlight that streamed into the room. She could feel the sun’s warmth, ready and waiting to cocoon any weary occupant who thrived on sleeping in the heat of the muted daylight sun. It was a beautiful room, and she knew without a doubt that it was Gideon’s bedroom and that he had shared the image of it with her. If she sent him there, it would be the first time she had ever teleported someone to a place she had not first seen for herself. The ability to take images of places from others’ minds for teleporting purposes was an advanced Elder ability.
“You can do it,” he encouraged her softly, all of his thoughts and his will completely full of his belief in that statement.
Legna kept his gaze for one last long moment, and with a flick of a wrist sent him from the room with a soft pop of moving air. She exhaled in wonder, everything inside of her knowing without a doubt that he had appeared in his bedroom, safe and sound, that very next second. Legna turned to look at her own bed and wondered how she would ever be able to sleep.
Nelissuna . . . go to bed. I will help you sleep.
Gideon’s voice washed through her, warming her, comforting her in a way she hadn’t thought possible. This was the connection that Jacob and Isabella shared. For the rest of the time both of them lived, each would be privy to the other’s innermost thoughts. She realized that because he was the more powerful, it was quite possible he would be able to master parts of himself, probably even hide things from her awareness and keep them private—at least, until she learned how to work her new ability with better skill. After all, she was a Demon of the Mind. It was part of her innate state of being to figure the workings of their complex minds.
She removed her slippers and pushed the sleeves of her dress from her shoulders so that it sheeted off her in one smooth whisper of fabric. She closed her eyes, avoiding looking in the mirror or at herself, very aware of Gideon’s eyes behind her own.
His masculine laughter vibrated through her, setting her skin to tingle.
So, you are both shy and bold . . . he said with amusement as she quickly slid beneath her covers. You are a source of contradictions and surprises, Legna. My world has begun anew.
As if living for over a millennium is not long enough? she asked him.
On the contrary. Without you, it was far, far too long. Go to sleep, Nelissuna.
And a moment after she received the thought, her eyes slid closed with a weight she could not have contradicted even if she had wanted to.
Her last thought, as she drifted off, was that she had to make a point of telling Isabella that she might have been wrong about what it meant to have another to share one’s mind with.
Gideon was quickly checking through her muscular structure and then weaving very gently into the complexities of her reproductive system. Suddenly Legna cried out again, her hands hitting his chest and grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, her entire body trembling from head to toe. This time Gideon gave the reaction his full attention. He looked into her wide eyes, the pupils dilating as he watched. Her mouth formed a soft, silent circle of surprise.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her breath falling short and quick.
“Nothing,” he insisted, his expression reflecting his baffled thoughts. “Merely continuing the exam. What are you feeling?”
Legna couldn’t put the sensation into words. Her entire body felt as if it were pooling liquid fire, like magma dripping through her, centering under the hand he had just splayed over her lower belly. So, being the empath she was, she described it in the only way she could with any efficiency and effectiveness. She sent the sensations to him, deeply, firmly, without preparation or permission, exactly the way she had received them.
In an instant, Gideon went from being in control of a neutral examination to an internal thermonuclear flashpoint of arousal that literally took his breath away. His hand flexed on her belly, crushing the silk of her dress within his fist.
“Legna!” he cried hoarsely. “What are you doing?”
She didn’t even seem aware of him, her eyes sliding closed and her head falling back as she tried to gulp in oxygen. His eyes slid down over her and he saw the flush and rigidity of erogenous heat building with incredible speed beneath her skin. And as it built in her, it built in him. She had created a loop between them, a locked cycle that started nowhere, ended nowhere. All it did was spill through and through them.
“Stop,” he commanded, his voice rough and desperate as he tried to clear his mind and control the impulses surging through him. “Legna, stop this!”
Legna dropped her head forward, her eyes flicking open and upward until she was gazing at him from under her lashes with the volatile, predatory gaze of a cat.
A cat in heat.
Say my name,” he countered, his hand wrapping around the irresistible length of her neck. This time it was he who whispered in her ear. “Say it.”
“I do not know what it is,” she said, her breath rushing out of her in an astounding rhythm.
“Yes, you do. I feel it. You only have to search for it inside of us.” “Us” was the appropriate term. It was almost impossible in that moment for them to discern whose thoughts belonged to whom.
Gideon was the oldest of them all. There was no one older, so no one who had once known his power name could possibly be alive. His parents were dead. His Siddah were dead. If Legna discovered his name, the ramifications were inconceivably serious. He would be putting his very existence into her hands. He would be placing all of his power at her fingertips, gifting her with the potential for his absolute submission. Legna tried to step back from him, the shock of what he was offering her too much to bear. But he had made sure to have his hands on her and now kept her tight and close within them.
“I cannot,” she whispered, her body beginning to shake. “No one should know that. No one. I am not strong enough to keep it, Gideon. Any male Mind Demon could take it from me!”
“You are stronger than you think, Neliss.”
“Not strong enough. Please, do not ask this of me.” She pushed at him, jerked herself backward, using the weight of her body to try and break free. He held her for a moment longer, looking deeply into her panic-stricken expression.
“One day,” he said softly.
At least, that had been what he had thought until the night he had lost himself to Legna’s wicked eyes. He had blamed it on the moon, reaffirming the weakness to himself later on when he found himself stalking the halls of Noah’s home far oftener than could be explained away, always watching as Legna floated from one room to another, seemingly oblivious to him, never remaining in his sight for more than a minute at a time.
Jacquelyn FrankShe blushed softly as she viewed herself in the mirror, suddenly aware that he was once more behind her eyes, seeing her just as she did.
“You could at least warn me,” she said aloud, cocking a scolding brow at her reflection.
And deprive myself of this side of you? I would not dream of it.
Legna smiled, moving closer to her looking glass.
She gasped when she got a closer look at herself, her hand coming up to her cheek in shock as she looked into her eyes.
“My eyes!” she exclaimed.
My eyes, he said.
He couldn’t have spoken a clearer truth. It was his mercury-colored irises that had become part of her reflection, the multicolored gray and green gone from their familiar place. She sighed with resignation, supposing to herself that since it wasn’t likely she could do anything about it, she would have to get used to it.
“I do not suppose you will show up here suddenly sprouting coffee-colored hair?” she asked hopefully.
No, sweet, that is not likely.
“Well, this is a highly unfair situation!” she cried with exaggerated petulance. “An exchange historically indicates one thing being swapped for another. So far I only see you in me, but none of me in you. It feels terribly high-handed. How typical of you.”
He did not respond, only a soft impression of laughter flitting through her mind. Odd, but she realized then that she had hardly ever heard him laugh before. She was surprised by how comfortable it sounded on him. He had always been so serious, so . . .
Self-possessed.
“If you do not mind, do refrain from editing my personal thoughts,” she scolded, her arching tone taunting and haughty.
It is a good thing she is on our side, is it not?”
Noah started, turning to confront the Demon who had appeared at his back with flawless silence and concealment.
“Jacob! You just took ten years off my life,” Noah hissed.
“Only ten? I must be losing my touch.” Jacob looked from Noah to the last place Legna had been standing. He nodded his head in her former direction. “What was that all about?”
“I have no idea, but I am beginning to feel like I am the only one who does not know what the hell is happening in his own damn house.”
“Sorry state of affairs, seeing as how you are King and all,” Jacob said, his lips twitching with amusement as Noah glared at him. “That is only my opinion, though. Perhaps I will ask my troublemaking wife for hers.”
Noah had the grace to openly wince.
“You heard that, hmm?”
“And therefore . . .” Jacob prompted.
“She heard it, too,” Noah concluded with comical pain. “Forgive me, Bella. I think I am just in a foul mood.”
“She says she will forgive you as soon as she needs a babysitter.”
“You know, I think you better go out there and enforce some of my laws before I begin to think of how many ways I can set your ass on fire,” the King said meanly, the glare of his gaze all business.
“I would, but I am in need of Gideon. Where is he?”
“How should I know?” Noah asked grumpily, moving to the fire and sinking down into the only thing in the room that wasn’t giving him grief: his favorite chair.
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