Embrace the Mystery (The Blood Rose 3)

Finally, he slipped his leathers back on, as well as his boots, then stepped outside. He walked the entire perimeter of the tent.

The brigade’s music had ended at last and most of the men headed toward their tents.

His vampire vibration, peculiar to his species, sent a warning straight up his spine and a shot of pain into his head.

He turned to the east. The horizon, even through a dense forest, showed gray. Dawn was coming.

If he stayed out here much longer, the pain would intensify, but he had to have one last look around. His body seemed to know exactly where Batya was and not just because she lay on the tent bed. A powerful call within his gut, demanding he protect this woman, seemed fixed on her like the needle of a compass always aiming true north.

He wondered if it was her faeness, or that she’d come from Davido’s powerful troll stock. He didn’t know. But she had a call on him that both energized and irritated him.

He tried to imagine the moment, after they succeeded in delivering Lorelei to the Ferrenden Peace, when he said his farewells to the woman. But the idea of parting seemed impossible, which also grated on his bachelor proclivities. What was it about this woman that called to him as though she was the moon and he the tides, that he’d always respond to her, always turn in her direction, always say yes?

When the sun broke through the forest skyline, his head throbbed and his shoulder blistered, he finally left his vigil, unsatisfied at having failed to draw even one conclusion, and reentered the tent, securing the flap behind him.

He lit up his vision, seeking out a tear in any part of the dense canvas, and at last satisfied, he drew close to the side of the bed.

Batya lay as he’d left her, on her stomach, naked, her arms and legs spread. She was already asleep, her back rising and falling. He got rid of his boots then his pants, but took a long moment to stare down at her.

He’d loved commanding her, savored how her fae vibrations had flowed over and around his, how she’d taken to his slaps and bites, his domination of her body, the intensity of her response.

His c**k responded appropriately, despite how much he’d already left of himself inside her. He took his shaft in his hand. He fondled what had been pocketed between her legs, her strong nest that had pulled on him. He let the memory play out in his mind and somewhere in all of that, his vibration began to hum.

That’s when he realized he was still joined to her, vibration to vibration. She awoke and turned her head in his direction. Her gaze fell to his c**k and his hand rubbing up and down.

“I wasn’t enough?” But she smiled.

His lips curved. “I’m just remembering.”

She stretched and slowly rolled onto her back, her arms over head, her large br**sts rocking as she turned. His gaze drifted the length of her.

She looked around. “It’s dawn.”

He nodded and took his time stretching out beside her. “We’ll be stuck in here all day.”

“And we won’t have to think twice about the she-devil out there.”

He shook his head, his fist still busy as he leaned over her body and drew a nipple into his mouth.

She made an encouraging sound, using a string of m’s.

Then he was torn. Should he leave his c**k so he could touch her br**sts, or keep fondling what was hard and ready once more.

Her br**sts won out and for the next several minutes he gave all his attention to both br**sts until Batya was writhing and begging for more.

He made love to her again, taking her to the heights, falling back to earth. He dozed and she sprawled.

Once, he took a hard slap to his face as the woman turned in her sleep, so he woke her up and punished her with his mouth between her legs for a good long time.

When at last he woke up, with the sun waning in the west, he lay on his side, spooning Batya, his arm wrapped tightly over her chest.

And in that soft moment before coming fully awake, he felt her vibration laying over his. They’d never completely separated, not in all this time, something he’d never done with another woman. Ever.

But because he wasn’t fully awake, he did something unexpected. He left the entwined vibrations alone, sinking into them and exploring all along their curved ridges.

He sent a heavier vibration along the joined frequencies and Batya moaned, grinding her h*ps against him.

“That’s nice,” drawled from her lips. “Do it again.”

But he didn’t because he came fully awake as shouts from the camp, of a desperate nature, brought him sitting bolt upright.

At the same time, he disconnected from Batya and it was a sudden painful moment that had her crying out as well.

“Sorry, but something’s going on.”

He jumped from bed and dressed fast. Batya wasn’t far behind him.

The problem was he couldn’t leave the tent, not yet. The sun hadn’t set behind the horizon.

But Batya pulled her enthrallment shield close around her as she slipped beneath the flap. “I’ll see what’s going on.”

She returned shortly. “Henry’s coming. I’m going to bathe in the stream—a minute only.”

He felt the strength of her shield, that she’d wrapped herself in a force as powerful as what had kept Margetta out the night before, so he nodded.

Just as he secured the belt over his shoulder, buckling it in place at his left hip, Henry begged entrance.

“Come.”

Quinlan could feel the scowl on his own forehead and had his fears confirmed at the sight of Henry’s three ridges drawn tightly together, a look of dismay in his eyes. “We lost a scout and the other has come in bloodied and half-dead. I’ve sent the healers on the trail to the northeast, carrying him out. Invictus wraith-pairs attacked them at the ten-mile western-most outpost. The survivor said there were twenty pairs, that one of the bound fae bragged that Margetta had brought a hundred with her, that she’d catch us in the Dead Forest, if not in the meadow.”

Quinlan glanced skyward then folded back the upper flap. He squinted against the fading light. He had just a handful of minutes before he could safely leave the tent. He’d have to stay behind with Batya, but he trusted her enthrallment shield would get them to safety.

Glancing back at Henry, he frowned all over again. “How’s Lorelei?”

“Good and she has all my men doing her bidding. One of them had just brought a bouquet of late-blooming wild roses to her, when the scout returned. We’ve rigged a harness that two trolls wear and she sits between them as they fly. We’ll carry her at the front with several Guardsmen in the lead.”