Jory Strong: Inked Destiny

“Where’s my daughter?” the captain said, not bothering with pleasantries, his voice edged with tension, the fierce concern of a parent.

Eamon was willing to believe this man loved Etaín as his own, despite it not being the truth. He was willing to accept that one day he might have to add these two humans and those related to them to his clan, but currently he had only one concern with respect to them. “She and Cathal will join us once certain matters have been settled.”

Twin expressions of dislike and disapproval appeared on his visitors’ faces. Eamon very nearly smiled over the reaction. If their hostility alienated them further from Etaín, and with it, human concerns, then it served him.

“Why is Niall Dunne’s son still with her?” the captain demanded.

“Surely you know she’s seeing Cathal.”

“You find that acceptable?” Disbelief, condescension, a hint of moral outrage, the question making it obvious Parker had correctly interpreted the relationship and passed the information on to his father.

Eamon shrugged. “Some battles are best avoided. I mean to keep Etaín safe and one of the things I will protect her from is the harm that comes of using her gift at your behest. You will not be allowed access to her if the purpose of your visit is to ask her to touch crime victims and relive the horror of their memories. In fact, you will be escorted out of my home immediately without seeing her if you are unable or unwilling to swear an oath you did not come here with such a request.”

The captain leaned forward, enough menace and aggression in the gesture to have Liam straightening out of his laconic pose. “If my daughter refuses to use her unique abilities, and I hear it directly from her, I’ll accept Etaín’s wishes. I don’t know who you are. Until today, I’d never heard of you or seen you in all the times I’ve been to Aesirs. I don’t know what your connection to the Dunnes is, but be assured I’ll be looking now that you’ve come onto my radar screen. I demand to see my daughter. Get her in here or I’ll—”

“Dad, let’s calm down here. Please. I need to get my paperwork wrapped up and you wanted to make sure Etaín was really okay. Eamon knows this meeting with Etaín has to happen. I let her leave the crime scene without giving a statement. I let them all leave. Let’s shelve this discussion for now. All Eamon has asked is that we promise we’re not here to ask for her help on another case. I know I’m not. Are you?”

“No.” The answer was glared, delivered with open hostility.

“Good enough?” Parker asked, meeting and holding Eamon’s gaze.

It would have to be. Eamon had vowed to himself that this night would not pass without Etaín knowing the truth of what she was, and would be . The sooner this was done, the sooner more important matters could be addressed.

“Neither of you will mention this discussion to her.”

He hadn’t intended to set the men at ease, but his words had that effect. “Fine by me,” Parker said, placing a folder on the coffee table and flipping it open. A glance at the elder Chevenier gained his acceptance of the terms, a sharp nod and an easily read expression of confidence rather than defeat.

Eamon hid his smile. Neither of them thought him capable of persuading Etaín to give up their cause of justice. They were mistaken. His word was law in the world Etaín would soon learn existed.

“I’ll return momentarily with Etaín and Cathal.”

In the presence of Etaín’s family members, his third refrained from issuing a mocking comment, though Liam’s eyes glistened with suppressed amusement and unholy anticipation.

“He who laughs last, laughs best, and that will be me,” Eamon murmured a step away from Liam. “The day will come when you fall in love.”

“You’re mistaken. That particular nightmare is not for me.”

“I think otherwise and will enjoy every moment of your discomfort.”

“And here I didn’t think you cared, Lord.”

Eamon allowed himself the smile he’d held back. There was hardly any point in suppressing it, given that its absence wouldn’t curb Liam’s tongue.

He passed through the doorway, moving without haste to the bedroom to find Etaín on her side with Cathal against her back, his arm across her belly and his thigh over hers in possessiveness.

He joined them, Etaín’s lambent gaze making him wish he could resume where they’d left off. She rose onto her elbow, tempting him with the thrust of pink-capped breasts.

Eamon leaned in, claiming them with light sucks, lingering until her soft sigh expressed her desire for him. He moved to her mouth then, a long kiss followed by a feathering of them to her ear, his tongue flicking into the canal before licking the rounded tip in both reminder and promise of pleasure.

“Mmmm, back for more,” she said, hand going to the front of his pants, sending a jolt of lightning-white heat up his spine with the grasp of his cloth-covered erection.

“I wish it were so.”

“What’s up? Besides the obvious?”

“Your father and brother are here.”

Her hand left him and he felt its loss as a howling, twisting, storm wind. His mouth returned to hers in a spill and mix of magic, his controlled and hers a wild buffeting, though there was no threat, no grappling for control other than what came of being in her presence and wanting nothing more than to join his body to hers.

He drank her down, aware of Cathal’s hand sliding up her side to cover her breast, intensifying the eroticism of being with her, though he didn’t need to share her to find utter satisfaction. She’d enthralled him from the very first and remained a dangerous fascination. He’d given her more leeway than he once would have imagined possible.

The kiss ended with a moan of protest on her part, sending satisfaction purring through him. “It’s the work of moments to satisfy the reason for their visit. The sooner we attend to them, the sooner we can return to this much more interesting pursuit.”

“True,” Etaín said, nervous at the prospect of being in the captain’s company, and then immediately irritated at feeling that way. She was self-aware enough to know what lay beneath the nervousness—hope, an often bitter emotion when it came to her relationship with the man she’d once called “Dad.” She hadn’t seen him in months, and that last encounter had ended in an argument the same as many of the previous ones had.

She played with a length of Eamon’s hair, letting the silky strands of it distract her. It made her think of gentle waves lapping over pristine beaches.

“Do you have a bathrobe I can borrow?” She’d arrived at Eamon’s estate in nothing but his shirt, the clothes she’d been wearing when she was abducted no doubt bagged as evidence in the Harlequin Rapist case by now.

“I can do better than a bathrobe.” One last lingering kiss and he left the bed. He crossed to folding closet doors, the wood polished and expensive, the swirling designs carved into it turning the functional into elegant artwork.

He pulled them back, revealing several feet worth of woman’s clothing, grouped by occasion, from casual shirts through elegant eveningwear. “I arranged for the beginnings of a wardrobe.”

Her heartbeat sped up, dismay crowding in. Everything in that closet would be far more expensive than what she would have chosen to buy or wear. Now it begins . The changes she’d known would come, the expectations she wasn’t sure she’d be able to accept or tolerate or accomplish.

She glanced at Cathal, who grimaced and said, “Lucky you. Clean clothes. Now I’m sorry we didn’t swing by my place on the way here.”

“Mine too.”

Surrendering the warmth and comfort she gained with the touch of her skin to Cathal’s, she left the bed, and he did the same, heading for the bathroom.