Storm echo, p.29
Storm Echo, page 29
Lifting their clasped hands, she kissed his knuckles, and they drove on in a silence heavy with the choice she’d asked him to make. The hardest thing anyone had ever asked of him … because it meant that when the abyss beckoned, he’d fall with her in his arms, taking her into the nightmare with him.
Chapter 44
Nzxt: On the scale from one to ten, what species of changeling is the most aggravating?
CC2: Oh, you trying to start a ruckus, Nzxt. I’m not getting involved.
Vixen79: That’s because you’re a panda, CC. Way more zen than the rest of us. I vote for wolves.
Nzxt: Disqualified. You’re just pissed at that last wolf boyfriend of yours. I say it’s cats. Ever tried to ignore a cat? They (a) either don’t care, or (b) refuse to be ignored. You can never win.
CC2: Aren’t you dating a cat? Tiger, right?
Vixen79: Ooooh, BUSTED! Disqualified for being a cheater pants! I think that means your species is the most aggravating!
—Forum of Wild Woman magazine
SOLEIL DIDN’T PRESSURE Ivan. She loved his stubborn head and she was beginning to learn that her mate was a man who needed to work things through on his own timeline. So she’d give him that. And she’d keep on loving him.
Of course, if he tried to reject her, she damn well wouldn’t let him get away with lying to either one of them. Didn’t he realize she could feel his devotion to her through their bond? It was a thing of steel and ice and flame-kissed silver. If he tried to tell her he didn’t love her, she’d call him a liar to his face.
Would she keep her word if he pushed it?
Yes.
It would splinter her into so many pieces that she’d never quite be right again, but she’d honor his choice as no one had honored hers. Even the thought hurt, but she took her own advice and didn’t borrow trouble, instead choosing to live in this beautiful today where she had her mate beside her and they walked in a lush forest on the way to their new home.
Her feet crunched on the leaf litter as she followed the tracking on her phone to the exact GPS coordinates Lucas had given them … to find herself under the shadow of the spreading branches of a massive sequoia.
She gasped at the sheer beauty of the tree’s arms, the way it allowed the sun to peek through in glorious filaments while providing an umbrella of shade and protection at the same time. Its trunk was a thing of age and time, so wide around that it would take ten or more people to encircle it.
It took her a minute to spot the aerie. It was perched far higher than anything in SkyElm. Ocelots were, by nature, terrestrial, but aeries off the ground made sense for security reasons. SkyElm had, however, kept those heights down to a level where someone in an aerie could easily talk to a packmate on the ground.
That wouldn’t work here. A person would have to shout and hope for the best. God, it was beautiful, set solidly on one of the higher branches, and clearly designed to be reached by a cat. Though it did have what must be a hastily arranged rope ladder that had been unfurled so that it hung near to ground level.
A gift from her pack to her, she thought, her heart full. Because she had a mate who wasn’t a cat. “Do you like heights?” she asked the Psy at her side, a Psy who was looking around with an expression that said he wasn’t quite sure what to make of his new living situation.
“How am I going to climb that when I wear a suit?” was the cool question.
She laughed, delighted with him. “It won’t be that bad,” she said after leaning up to kiss his jaw. “Things only come out to eat you at night.”
No laughter, his attention on the space all around them. “I like it.” Quiet words, his hand sliding to stroke her lower back as if he couldn’t be with her and not touch her.
Her cat got all bashful while wanting to snuggle into him. When she gave in to the urge, he just curled his arm around her as if it was perfectly natural for her to nuzzle at him under a forest sky.
“I never thought about how cats like space, too,” Ivan murmured. “I would fit in a pack like this. I wouldn’t feel like an outsider.”
Soleil wanted to do a little jump at this sign that he was thinking about a future in which he walked beside her as her mate. “Come on, let’s go look inside.”
“I think it must be an old security aerie, from a time before DarkRiver extended its security perimeter,” Ivan pointed out as they neared the rope ladder. “Explains why it’s so high.”
“That’s why you’re the security genius and I’m a cat. Race you up!”
As a child, she would’ve shifted right then and there, not bothering about her clothes, but she loved her dress—the dress that Ivan had gifted her—too much to ruin it. So she stripped out of it as well as her shoes and bra. Convenient not to have to worry about panties, she thought with a grin.
It was only when Ivan sucked in a breath that she realized he was standing there watching her—and his eyes were flames of ice. Smiling, delighted, she padded over to him on bare feet, her skin touched by sunshine and shadow as her unbound hair brushed her back. Bracing herself up against him, she nibbled at his throat, pressed a kiss there.
His hands slid down to squeeze her buttocks with the same frank pleasure he’d shown before. It shocked her a little all over again—in the best way. She loved that her outwardly sophisticated Psy was so bluntly carnal in his sexual tastes.
Soleil shivered at the contact but drew away before they got distracted. “I want to see the aerie!” She shifted in a shower of light, her cat soon shaking its fur into place.
He’d seen her before, of course, but she still preened for him, showing off the arch of her ears, the strength of her tail, the way her markings looked in a beam of sunlight.
His expression was one of wonder as he crouched down to run his hand over her back. She flowed like liquid under him, showing him exactly where she wanted to be petted and adored, and knew that there’d be nights when she’d curl up beside him in this form and let him just stroke her. Because she was changeling, the cat as much a part of her as the human.
When her eyes threatened to go heavy-lidded, however, she pulled away and bounded over to the tree. At the bottom, she glanced back and waited. Getting the message, he jogged over to the rope ladder and put his hand on the step above his head.
Then he looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
Laughing within, both parts of her so pleased with him, she jumped up onto the tree and they raced their way to the very top. Though ocelots prefered the ground, they could climb with the best of them.
She beat him, of course, but he was very fast, this man who held her heart. He pulled himself up onto the verandah high above the ground with liquid ease—where she’d waited so they could explore their home as a couple.
Then together, cat and man walked into the aerie.
The human part of her mind stirred to the surface, the cat not as interested in internal things. A number of large and colorful cushions sat on the floor, while pretty curtains of scalloped white fabric hung at the windows. When she poked her head into the small bedroom, she saw a large futon-style bed with a simple bedspread of white with tiny green leaves on the edges.
A hand-knitted blanket, the color a soft mint green, lay folded at the bottom and when she sniffed at it, she whimpered. It carried Yariela’s scent. Her mentor had knitted this, and someone in DarkRiver had made the effort to move it here so it would welcome Soleil home.
“What’s the matter?” Ivan crouching beside her, his hand on her back.
She used one paw to pat at the blanket, an image of Yariela at the forefront of her mind, and love spilling over into her blood.
“She loves you.” Ivan had picked up the image, she realized, understood the depth of her emotions.
He petted her until she found her feet again, could keep on exploring.
Noting the blank walls and bookshelves empty of anything but a single potted plant, she realized the aerie had only been furnished up to a point. There was enough here to make her and Ivan comfortable—but not enough that it was as if someone else had decorated the space for them.
The most personal thing in the aerie was Yariela’s housewarming gift.
A stir in the air, Ivan moving to the bookshelf. Sliding a hand into his pants pocket, he took something out and put it on the shelf. Curious, she bounded over the bed to land beside him … and looked up to see the cat planter she’d given him sitting beside the potted plant.
Oh, he was wonderful. And sneaky. He hadn’t had it on him while driving, so he must’ve grabbed it from his duffel while she stretched out the kinks after getting out of the car.
Home, he was saying he was home.
Soleil’s feline heart ached. She’d pounce on him but a little later. For now, she rubbed her body against his legs as she went to nose around the rest of the place.
She discovered a kitchen area that flowed off the living room, sanitation facilities placed right in back of the aerie, and when she jumped up onto a desk by the window in the bedroom, she saw a quickly sketched plan laid on it that would add another room to the place.
A second sketch sat beside it: a small cabin at the foot of the same tree, with a notation that it would be wired for full comms and have a touch-activated door and floor that would send an alert to the aerie at the slightest sign of a visitor.
Tilting her head to the side, she considered the oddity … then understood on a tide of emotion. Her pack was telling her that if she liked this aerie, she could make it her own. She could have a home, a true home, where she was welcome and where the cubs and Yariela and all her packmates could visit her, stay overnight if they wanted.
The cabin would be for the babies who couldn’t yet climb so high, and elder cats who didn’t want to bound up to this perch … and because she was a healer, her home needing to be accessible to all. Especially wounded packmates who might not be able to use the comms.
That was why Tamsyn and Nathan didn’t live in an aerie, she realized. Maybe Soleil would one day make the same choice, but for now, she loved the option she’d been offered—to have the aerie above and the specially configured cabin below. But most of all, she loved that she had a place that she could make into a haven for her mate, a man who wanted to protect her so much that he might forever break her heart.
IVAN was a creature of cities. Yes, he liked his own space, but he liked that in the midst of cities, with the constant buzz of life outside. He’d been born in a city, had been raised in one, and though he’d spent time in more isolated situations—such as when he’d stayed with his grandmother at the Sea House—that wasn’t his natural milieu.
So this treehouse in the sky should’ve made him uncomfortable, should’ve felt like a scratchy coat on his skin. It didn’t. As he walked around the living room, bending down to check out the large cushions meant to function as seating, then going over to the verandah that had railings on only three sides, he found the tension just melting out of him.
The way the tree leaves rustled, the way the wind blew softly, the way the sunshine speared through the clouds, it was all an extraordinary beauty. But he knew his contentment had nothing to do with that. It had to do with the sleek cat who was currently exploring the bedroom area.
He could hear her because she was making no effort to be quiet—and he knew she’d shifted out of her feline form even before she appeared in the doorway, a goddess naked to the skin with a smile in her eyes.
In a heartbeat, contentment roared into a feral kind of hunger. He’d already taken off his blazer inside, didn’t have that hurdle. Partially unbuttoning his shirt as he strode to her, he pulled it off over his head and dropped it on the verandah, kicked off his shoes, then took her face in his hands.
Kissing, the raw intimacy of it, was still so new and yet so vital to his existence. He wrapped her up in his arms, this woman of heart and steel, and he kissed her long and deep, drinking her in until she moaned, small claws pricking into his back.
He stroked his hand down the sweeping line of her back to the curves below. She was still too thin, but she wasn’t fragile in the least, her strength a thing of courage and grit. So he held nothing back. Could hold nothing back. He kissed her with the fury of the turbulent storm inside him.
Nimble hands at his waist, her fingers slipping his belt buckle free, undoing his jeans, unzipping him. His entire chest clenched when she closed her fingers around him. He still wasn’t used to anyone else’s hands on his body, far less on that most intimate part of him. She squeezed gently, then slid her hand down before sliding it back up.
Ivan’s control shattered like a glass wall that had been hit at the bottom, the cracks spreading outward at a velocity nothing could stop. His mind hazed by need, by greed, by hunger, he didn’t want to stop it. Closing one hand around her throat, he rubbed the pad of his thumb possessively over her plump lower lip. “Bedroom.”
As she shivered, he took his hands off her only long enough to strip off what clothing remained on him. She returned to his arms the instant he was done, small claws stroking up and down his spine and a purr rumbling in her chest when he bent to suck at her throat.
Because his lover wasn’t human or Psy, was changeling.
He nudged her backward, leading her to the bedroom even as he licked and tasted and kissed. He’d never get enough of her, of his healer with the spark in her eyes and the heart so soft it saw goodness even in him. Who had chosen him over life itself.
I would rather have a single perfect day with you than a lifetime without you.
The words reverberated around and around in his mind even as he picked her up, then put her with care onto the low bed. Her eyes were of the ocelot, tawny and gold and wild. Lips curved, she rose up onto all fours, then onto her knees to stroke her palms over his thighs.
He went to nudge her back so he could join her on the bed, but that wasn’t what she had in mind. He bit off a single harsh word, not ready for her mouth closing over the head of his erection, the hot wetness, the suction. It went straight to his brain, the sensations exploding inside him in violent bursts that threatened to melt his neural tissue.
He valued control above all things, but this was Soleil. His mate.
Fisting handfuls of her hair, he held his body in place as she drove him to the edge of sanity, and demanded more, still more. When he felt the release begin to build in him, a tight knot at the base of his spine that was shoving outward with inexorable force, he managed to grind out a wordless warning.
His mate kneaded his buttocks with her claws, and sucked hard one last time.
Chapter 45
Je t’aime … mi corazón. I was … so lucky … to get to love you and our … petite Leilei. See you … in … in—
—Hinemoa Bijoux
IVAN LAY ON his back, his chest heaving and the tiny hairs at his forehead damp. He was fairly certain his heart was racing at Mach speed.
Soleil lay on her stomach next to him, kicking up her legs while giving him the most satisfied smile he’d ever seen. As if she was delighted with herself. It was a quintessentially feline expression and he adored it. He wasn’t a man used to thinking in such terms, but it was the only one that fit.
She was so smug and happy with herself. He loved seeing her this way.
When she pressed a kiss to his chest, then rose, he grabbed at her hand. Looking over her shoulder, she said, “I’m just getting a glass of water.” A wicked grin. “Got something a little salty in my mouth.”
A touch of heat on his cheeks, he released her hand. He wanted to smile at her because what he felt inside, this deep warmth, it was a thing of smiles and laughter. But he didn’t know how to smile, had never done it in his life.
His Lei could teach him, he thought. As long as they were together, anything was possible. Ask him only a month earlier and he could’ve never imagined this day where he lay sexually sated in bed while a beautiful naked woman padded around their residence.
Pushing up into a seated position as he waited for her to return, he found his mind ricocheting back to their conversation in the car, a conversation that had turned his world on its axis.
People have been making decisions for me my whole life.
Don’t you dare do it with the idea that you’re saving me.
I would rather have a single perfect day with you than a lifetime without you.
“One perfect day,” he whispered, and thought that he wouldn’t trade this day he’d had with Soleil for anything, not even a lifetime.
That was when she walked back into the room, a glass of water for him in hand. Tilting her head to the side in that way she had of doing, she said, “What is it?”
He took the glass she held out but put it beside the bed rather than drinking it. “I understand.”
“What, mi vida?” Seated on her knees beside him, her hair a dark rain over her shoulders, she ran her fingers through his own with an affection he’d never known he needed and now craved.
“That if I balanced this day with you against a lifetime without you, this day would win by such a large margin that it’s not a competition at all.” The man he was with her, it was an Ivan that was the very best of him. He’d be hollow without her. As she’d be without him.
It was a cataclysmic thing to accept, that he was so very important to her. But it was the truth. He felt it in her every touch, every look, in how her cat prowled inside his skin, and in her sheer delight at being with him. It was a thing as bright as the stars, as full of sunshine as his Lei.
Pupils huge and dark against the wild tawny-gold of her irises, Soleil lifted trembling fingers to his cheek. “Yes?” she whispered.
Turning his head, he kissed her palm. “Yes.”
And his entire world … shivered, things that had been subtly out of alignment falling into perfect lines.
“Oh,” Soleil whispered, her eyes wet. “Oh, there you are.”
