Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted

Only when Ana was fully nestled in under Ian’s arm, her legs curled beneath her while he stretched the length of his out on to the kitchen chair he’d appropriated for that purpose, did she realize she hadn’t yet invoked the second amulet—and that she didn’t dare do it now, for fear he would sense it, no matter its silent nature.

It didn’t matter. Surely Hollander Lerche wasn’t interested in murmured chitchat over a classic movie. Surely he couldn’t expect her to delve into a conversation of more substance until Ian was more comfortable with her—more confident with her.

Although he was, most obviously, comfortable and confident enough to fall asleep on her couch.

She realized it as the film credits began to roll. She drew back from beneath his arm to consider him in the flickering light of the television, pulling her feet up on the couch to wrap her arms around her legs and rest her chin on her knees. Knowing that she ought to be curled up on the other end of this couch, trembling in fear. And that she ought to trigger the amulet, shortening the time she was exposed to Ian and his entitled, arrogant ways.

He was, after all, a man who represented everything about a race of people who considered themselves more than and better than and quite evidently above the law altogether.

But Ian’s touch had given her choice. Brought her pleasure. Inspired her napping dreams. Protected her from a mugger.

It startled her to realize that Lerche’s man had known Ian would leap to her side when the cyclist grabbed at her—that he’d counted on it. She frowned, thinking that one through—or trying to. Instead, she found herself distracted by the way dark lashes swept a shadow across Ian’s high, strong cheek. And by the way his mouth, in repose, relaxed to show the definition of lips that pleased her—their shape, the little hint of a curve at one side that revealed his habitual dry humor. The faint cleft in his chin, the unlikely perfection of the way silvered bangs scattered across his forehead, the equally unlikely short, dark hairs that defined his hairline at sideburns, nape and even buried beneath the lighter strands.

The movie credits ended and the sudden silence alerted him; she saw the glimmer of his awakening gaze and smiled. She felt the promise of that look and of his interest in her. She felt her body warming to awareness—not of the Sentinel, but of the man.

Then again, the Core had always considered her to be weak of heart and mind, hadn’t they?

“Hey,” she said, and even her quiet voice seemed loud in the house. “Feel better?”

He stretched—an indulgent thing, right down to his fingers—and relaxed utterly again. “Hey,” he said. “Much better.” But then his eyes narrowed, and for an instant she felt pinned by his gaze—she felt all the fluttering uncertainty she’d told herself she ought to. “Ana...are those bruises?”

“Bruises?” she said, sounding as stupid as she felt. How could he...darkness had fallen, and she hadn’t turned on any lights. Only what came from the TV, where the bubbles from her laptop screen saver drifted over the surface. Between the makeup and the darkness, she should have been safe from questions about the marks Lerche had left.

“You didn’t have those this morning.” He no longer reclined, relaxed, but now sat straighter, tension filling his shoulders. He tapped a quick pattern against his leg and nodded at her jaw. “I should have seen them earlier, but that headache...”

Of course. Right. Because Sentinels had that vaunted night vision—a spillover from the beast they carried within. What had Lerche been thinking?

But Ana knew the answer to that question. He hadn’t cared.

“Are they that bad?” She touched her jaw, and a wince gave her the answer. Still, she addressed the bigger elephant in the room. “I can’t believe you can see them in this light.”

“Just one of those things,” he said, making no attempt to explain it—but not making anything up, either. “Ana, who—”

“I’m here alone,” she told him, and realized with those words that she was the one who lied to him, who had lied to him from the moment they’d crossed paths. “It was just one of those stupid things.”

He searched her face as if he might find the truth there.

Well, it was one of those stupid things. She knew better than to show disrespect to Hollender Lerche. That was on her, that she’d done so. But she also knew that sometimes Lerche’s mood meant there was no avoiding his temper. That was on him.

Ian let it pass, in a way she thought meant he wasn’t actually going to forget it. He rose to his feet, so fluidly she couldn’t believe he’d been deeply ensconced in the couch an instant earlier, and prowled to the window—looking out into the darkness and seeing who knew what.

“You are feeling better,” she said. “And I guess I have the answer to my question.”

He turned his head just enough to offer a puzzled frown. “Which question is that?”

“The one where I wondered if you ever sat still,” she said drily.

He laughed, short as it was. “No,” he said. “Not often. When I sleep. And...” He gave her a thoughtful look, and quite obviously didn’t finish the sentence.

“Oh, come on,” she said, unclasping her hands from around her legs and letting her feet slide to the floor. “Now you’ve got to tell me. Even if it’s embarrassing. Especially if.”

He padded back to the couch; somewhere along the way he’d lost his shoes, and the barefoot movement only added to the prowl in his walk.

He killed a man. I should be frightened.

But she wasn’t.

She was alive.

Her fingers tingled as he reached down to offer his hand. She took it; her body pulsed as he drew her to her feet. Warmth suffused her, instilling just a hint of weakness in her knees—a delightfully liquid sensation.

“And now,” he said, pulling her closer—not with so much strength she couldn’t hold her own, but with enough ease to demonstrate the strength still lurking. He touched her face; he skimmed his fingers along her jaw so lightly that she felt only their presence and not the pain of the bruises beneath. “Now,” he said, and kissed one eyelid, and then the next. “Now,” he added, and brought his mouth down on hers, kissing her with a gentle assertion—and kissing her, and kissing her, until she threaded her fingers through his hair and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him back, so caught up in the firm sensation of his lips, the tease of tongue and teeth, the impression of being...not taken, but worshiped.

He bent over her and she trusted. He dipped her as if they were in a dance, and she gave herself up to his strength. He settled her perfectly over the cushions of the couch, and she never stopped reaching for him.

She had no idea how much time passed before he groaned and drew back—and said, with no little wonder, “Now. I can’t explain it... I never—”

She silenced him with boldness, slipping her hand inside his shirt to caress skin and feel it flutter beneath her fingertips, a sensitive flinch that came with a grin. She suggested, “Just feel...and follow it?”

He searched her eyes. For once she didn’t feel like the vulnerable one—not with the uncertainty she saw there, or his eyes gone so dark with what she’d done to him. Or for him. Definitely not with the hard tremble of his arms and body—a tremble that in no way came from weakness. “Is that what you want?”

Yes. Because what she felt right now was safe and enclosed and accepted. As if, in that moment, she was everything she needed to be.

How could she do anything other than follow that feeling?

“Yes,” she said, surprised by the husky sound of her own voice. “Yes, please. Let’s.”

“Let’s,” he agreed, and laughed just a little—in relief, she thought. Not that she had much time to think about it. He lowered himself over her only enough so she could wrap her legs around him, ruing the impediment of clothing—and then surprised her when he slipped his hands more firmly beneath her and pivoted to sit, putting her squarely in his lap. Squarely against him and his quite obviously already straining erection.

Pleasure speared through her, startling her into a cry—one she’d not heard herself make before. And then when he moved against her, another, this one echoed by the faint snarl of Ian’s expression—just as surprised as she was, his fingers clamping down on her hips.

Such a pure, hot lightning, striking so deeply within... Her fingers dug into his shoulders, gathering the material of his shirt—but only briefly, because the more she felt, the more she wanted to touch him. Fumbling at buttons, pushing the shirt back to expose the planes of his chest—a lean man’s muscled body, layered in strength without bulk, crisp pale hair scattered to tease her fingers and fade across his abs to reappear in a narrow line above his belt.

As it had before, his skin twitched, more sensitive than she’d imagined. When she spread her fingers across his belly and went seeking beneath the belt, he made a disbelieving sort of sound, half laugh and half gasp, and rolled them over again. The soft couch cushions enveloped her just as he found her mouth. He kissed her with fiercely thorough attention, his fingers at her blouse buttons and then tangling with hers. He moved his mouth to her neck, nipping, as she reached for his belt, and he reached for her slacks button. She tugged his pants over his hips; he deftly yanked hers out from beneath her, his mouth still on her neck, on her collarbones, dipping lower to ignore her bra and find one nipple right through the soft material.

She bucked up against him and reveled in it—reveled in watching herself and her response to him. No man had evoked such response in her...no man had ever tried.

Ian laughed again, this time with a growl in the background. He lifted his head to capture her gaze, and she stilled under the impact of it—bright intensity, heated desire...

“Please,” she told him, understanding the question behind that look. “Yes. Most definitely yes.”

He drew a sharp breath—relief or fettered passion, she wasn’t sure. But then she didn’t want to wait any longer. She kicked her pants aside, shoving her panties off with them, and then went after his boxers. In a moment they were both free, both already warm and wet with the wanting, and she didn’t think twice. She wrapped her legs around his hips and reveled in his unrestrained grunt of pleasure as flesh met flesh.

And then Ian surprised her all over again, flattening himself on her, muttering—grasping for his pants while the couch all but swallowed them both. He made a sound of triumph and emerged with a condom. She shared his breathless victory with a grin, and between the two of them they got the thing unwrapped and in place, and then he was in place again, and with a single nudge of adjustment, they slipped together.

Ana stopping thinking. She stopped being able to think. She barely realized it when Ian swung her upright again, thrusting upward as her knees sank into the couch cushions. Pure hot lightning... Ana reached for more of it, finding a rhythm with him, barely aware of her own cries. She shot straight through that pleasure to sensations she’d never even imagined, and found herself with a sudden new awareness.

His response to her. His gasps and his expression, cords of muscle straining in his neck and his face flushed, his eyes widening with the same sort of startled recognition that suffused her own body. An utter vulnerability that he seemed to fight against and lose to with every thrust, with every breath.

“Ian,” she breathed, and it was a kind of plea, an understanding that she was in an unfamiliar place and didn’t know where to go from there. His hand slid from her waist to cover her pubic hair, thumb sliding downward to touch her just so.

Lightning struck. She cried out in abandon and lost herself to it, a flood of sensation that tugged at her toes and filled her from the inside out, every muscle clenched or throbbing in the best possible way. She dimly heard Ian’s shout, feeling the pulse of his release in a way that had never mattered before but now suddenly did. She opened her eyes just soon enough to see it on his face—ecstasy ripping right through him, laying him as bare as it had laid her.

That’s when she understood, even as the final throb of pleasure ebbed through her body, leaving her limp in its wake.

Being with Ian wasn’t just about seeing where things went or following along in an adventure or feeling, even pulling the most possible pleasure from it all.

It was about doing those things together.

Chapter 4

Ian gulped for air, reveling in the sensation of Ana’s body draped over his. Not to mention the pulses of lingering pleasure and the distinct memory of her expression as orgasm had washed over her. His breathing steadied; his mind steadied.

Quiet. Replete.

A completely unfamiliar inner silence.

He floundered in it, uncertain—looking for some mental handhold, even if it brought him back to the plague of internal noise he couldn’t remember being without.

She stirred, pushing off his chest to look at him with her face still flushed and now blushing on top of it, her hair a delightful disarray. “Oh, my God,” she said, putting a hand over her mouth. “I... I screamed.”

He smiled, finding his anchor in her expression. “Yeah,” he said. “You did.”

“I never—” She stopped herself. “I...never...”

It caught his attention. There was more here than the aftermath of great sex. Stupendously great sex. Even he knew that much, still floating in the physical satisfaction and silence. “What?”

“No, I—” She shook her head, looking around—bringing herself back to the details of what had happened. He knew what she’d see—scattered clothes, scattered couch cushions and a man she hadn’t known all that long still lying beneath her.

He stopped her just before she would have removed herself from it all, his hands over her thighs—enough to encompass, not enough to force compliance—and asked it again. “What?”

She covered her face, only briefly, and then flipped her hair back. “I’ve never come with anyone before.”

He frowned. “At the same time? Because technically, you beat me to that finish line.”

She laughed, but it sounded sad. “No, I mean...when I’ve been with someone. Ever.” She took a breath as he tried to absorb this. “I’m ‘too hard to please.’”

He half sat, his hold on her legs keeping them just as together as they’d been. “Who said that? Because—” Then he stopped, suddenly aware of the depth of his reaction, his protective response. “Never mind. That’s not what I want to say. But just so you know, whoever said that is obviously fucking nuts. Pardon me.”

She laughed again, this time sounding as if, just possibly, she’d been freed from something. But she quickly turned uncertain. “Ian,” she said. “Seriously. Is this how it should always be?”

“Babe,” he told her, still awash in the aftermath of silence within himself, “this is how we always wish it would be. But it should always be good. A man makes certain of that.”

Blessed, blessed silence...

She said, “I’ll have to think about that.”

“Don’t,” he said, and was a little hard pressed to explain when she raised a brow at him. “Think, I mean. Just stay here with me a little while longer. Not thinking.”

“Look who’s talking. I got the impression that you never actually do stop thinking. I bet you run calculations in your sleep.” But she smiled, relaxing the fraction that told him she’d stay. She made another attempt to tame her hair back and gave up on it, instead turning her attention to his chest—chasing whorls of hair with her fingertips and the edges of short, practical nails painted something faintly pink. His skin pebbled in response, all the way down to his balls; he twitched faintly inside her. She laughed, disbelief at the edge of it.

“Hey,” he said, though he couldn’t help but grin back at her. “It is what it is.” Then, as she scraped the outside edge of a nipple, he shifted with a less lighthearted purpose. “But be merciful, if you would. I only brought the one condom.”

She withdrew her hands entirely. “Oh. Well. In that case—” and then she laughed again at his dramatic groan. “Not everything requires a condom, I hear. And there are some things I’ve always wanted to try—”

Of course his body fairly leaped to attention, squirming here and stiffening there, and this time she laughed right out loud—and then laughed again at his ruefully self-aware expression. “That felt to me like you might just be interested.”

“C’mere, babe,” he growled, an exaggerated version of manly prowess. “I’ll show you interested.”

And she had the audacity to stretch—right there, still sitting on top of him and surrounding him, the faint light painting the lines and curves of her body, all beauty and delicate grace. “Okay,” she said, and her tone had changed. More than confident. Eager.

He could do eager. With this woman? God, yes, he could do eager. And in that moment, and in the next, and the one to follow, he barely even noticed the silence in his mind at all.

* * *

Morning brought bright sunshine and the faintest taste of a hangover.

Or what Ian thought a hangover might be. Given the speed at which a strong-blooded Sentinel metabolized alcohol, it took a concerted effort to feel the effects—both during and after. Ian had done the usual youthful experiment and then ceased to bother.

But he was pretty sure this would be it. The underlying throb encompassing his eyes, the uncertainty in his stomach. Leftovers from whatever had struck him the day before.

And that deserved some thought. Ian wasn’t good at being sick because Sentinels generally weren’t. So what had he gotten into, or what had gotten into him?

He stared at the back of his eyelids a moment longer, taking in the unfamiliar sounds and scents of his surroundings, and especially the unfamiliar light. A different window, east-facing, than the one he’d taken here at the retreat. And Fernie’s kitchen smelled of sausage and egg in the morning, not just tea and toast.

Because this is Ana’s place.

Whoa.

Since when did he fall asleep so soundly in a strange place? Since when did he actually sleep the night through in any place? He finished waking in a burst of motion, rolling up to his knees, tangling in covers, and altogether ready for anything.

A cup of tea awaited him by the side of the bed, still steaming. He scowled at it, instantly aware of the significance—that Ana had not only left without waking him, she’d come and gone again with the tea.

And here she was again—padding out from the bathroom in a minuscule robe, scrubbing a towel over her hair. Damp and fresh and smelling... He inhaled deeply in spite of himself. Smelling like woman. Smelling like...

His.

“Not a morning person?” she asked, draping the towel over one shoulder. Her hair was mussed in a way he wished he’d done, her cheeks flushed with the shower and her eyes bright with...amusement?

He realized he’d frozen in that ready-to-pounce yet totally hungover fashion, and looked down at himself. Wearing his boxers, tangled in her sheets, thoroughly unable to get his thoughts together. Nothing to do but shrug. “Generally I’m an everything person,” he said. “Clearly that doesn’t apply to today.” With effort, he clambered out of the bed, straightening himself joint by joint, and reached for the tea. Irish black, oh, thank you.

The first sip finished waking him. When he lifted his head and caught a glimpse of the bathrobe hitting the floor, he went beyond awake and straight to alert. Attentive.

Ana reached into a drawer to extract a bra—faintly pink, like her nails, an underwire thing that would support the beauty he’d seen the night before. Modest in size but perfectly shaped, just ready for his hand or mouth. She gave a meaningful glance at his groin, where the boxers hid nothing. “I’d wondered if I wore you out, but I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“Not when I’m with you,” he said, somewhat fervently. Another Sentinel blessing, that recovery time—but he couldn’t talk to her about Sentinels. Only the think tank aspect of his work.

“Leftovers from whatever got into you last night, then,” she suggested, stepping into panties with faint pink stripes.

Oh, hell. Yes. Exactly so. And not just him. No one had been feeling quite right at the retreat when he’d left. Ian floundered, caught completely behind in his own thoughts. Thoughts he would normally have worked on in pieces through the night, rising to wakefulness long enough to chew on them and then, if he was lucky, falling back to sleep. Either way, awakening in the morning with his thoughts spread out before him, ready for the day.

Not this day.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, gulping half the remaining tea in one swallow and setting the mug aside. His pants must be here somewhere, right? “I need to check on Fernie. And the others.”

She cocked her head, a stretchy bit of ribbed camisole in hand and her expression gone careful. Very, very careful. “Is this you running away?”

Because of course, he could call the retreat. Or he could assume that a house full of adults could manage minor illness without panic. She had no way of knowing that these particular adults were, like him, not used to managing illness at all. Or that anyone with even modestly strong blood did better with a Sentinel healer than they ever would with the average urgent care clinic.

“This is me taking care of my people,” he assured her, spotting the neat stack of his shirt and pants where she’d smoothed and folded them. He scooped them up, pulling them on in record time—and then stopped to regard her, scrubbing one hand through his thoroughly disheveled hair, across the scrape of his beard.

She’d tugged the camisole into place and now looked back at him with evident doubt, and he had to face the brutal truth of his off-balance morning. “Yeah,” he said. “I can use some space while I’m at it. But not because I’m running away. Because...”

Because I wasn’t expecting this. To be affected.

Oh, face it. To be reeling in the wake of her.

She’d put on a mask—the same face she’d worn when he’d first seen her. Unapproachable. Distant.

And, he now understood, self-protective.

She held her ground when he stepped up to her, and when he put a finger under her chin—lifting it slightly so the bruises along her jaw were beyond evident, and careful of them—careful of her. Biting back on fury to see them and knowing he’d find out what they were about when all was said and done, but that this moment wasn’t the right one.

“Because,” he said, “sometimes when you follow the feeling, you get far more than you ever expected. And if you want to do right by that, it takes a little space.”

Something in that stiff expression eased, allowing him back in. “Yes,” she said. “Okay. I can see that. I guess I can even feel some of it, this morning.” She caught his gaze, held it—a hint of honey in the brown of her eye. “Just promise this—when it’s time for you to walk away from us, be straight with me. Tell me you’re going. Don’t leave me wondering. Don’t leave me hopeful.”

The anger bubbled up again on her behalf. “Someone, somewhere, has done very badly by you.” He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Look, I may not always know what I’m doing. I might mess up. But I’ll do it honestly. And we’ll figure this out. By which I mean—” and he couldn’t help but grin as he bent to kiss her “—this.”

Her mouth was just as soft as it had been the night before, just as responsive. And so was he, immediately slipping into a possessive, claiming frame of mind, the strength of which only swelled once he noticed it.